Just got back from our prayer retreat at the Christian Renewal Centre in Rostrevor. We had such a good time.
We went down on Saturday morning and joined them for an all day prayer for Ireland event, which finished around 4pm. We then went for a walk, had dinner and spent the evening reading, praying, and just enjoying being with Jesus. Sunday was more of the same – reading, praying, talking, dreaming, eating, more praying. It was a really restful and restorative time.
Continue reading ‘Ding, Ding, Ding…’
Really interesting post on Carl Medearis’ blog about what a missionary is. Such a familiar conversation (not with our children, of course). Highlight:
I asked her what she thought we were doing while in Lebanon. Her answer was as shocking as it was insightful. ”We were just living in Lebanon as regular people loving others in Jesus’ name. All our friends were Lebanese. “Missionaries” don’t do that. They don’t hang out with the local people as much as we did. They do projects.”
Whether Carl was a “missionary” or not, I want to be what he was. Click here for the full post.
Mark
Ange and I are reading a book called Red Moon Rising. It’s about the 24-7prayer movement and it’s really interesting. This passage really struck us and, strangely, gives me a lot of hope:
J. Edwin Orr, a widely respected historian, in a message called “Prayer & Revival,” described the situation in America in the 1780s. Drunkeness was epidemic, and the streets were not judged to be safe after dark. What about the churches?
“The Methodists were losing more members than they were gaining. In a typical Congregational church, the Rev. Samual Shepherd of Lennos, Massachusetts, in sixteen years had not taken one young person into fellowship. The Lutherans were so languishing that they discussed uniting with Episcopalians who were even worse off. The Protestant Episcopal Bishop of New York, Bishop Samuel Provost, quit functioning; he confirmed no one for so long that he decided he was out of work, so he took up other employment.
“The Chief Justice of the United States, John Marshall, wrote to the Bishop of Virginia, James Madison, that the Church ‘was too far gone ever to be redeemed.’ The great philosopher Voltaire averred and the author Tom Paine echoed, ‘Christianity will be forgotten in thirty years.”
The spiritual state of America’s universities at the time concurred with such gloomy predictions, giving little or no hope for the future of the faith in that land:
“Take the liberal arts colleges at that time. A poll taken at Harvard had discovered not one believer in the whole student body. They took a poll at Princeton, a much more evangelical place, where they discovered only two believers in the student body, and only five that did not belong to the filthy speech movement of the day. Students rioted. They held mock communion at Williams College, and they put on anti-Christian plays at Dartmouth. They burned down the Nassau Hall at Princeton. They forced the resignation of the president of Harvard. They took a Bible out of a local Presbyterian church in New Jersey and burnt it in a public bonfire. Christians were so few on campus in the 1790s that they met in secret, like a communist cell, and kept their minutes in code so that no one would know.”
It’s hard to believe that this was taking place in America 200 years ago but then, Orr continues, God intervened, and He did so by mobilizing His people to pray.
“A prayer movement started in Britain through William Carey, Andrew Fuller, John Sutcliffe, and other leaders who began what the British called the Union of Prayer. Hence, the year after John Wesley died (1791), the second great awakening began and swept Great Britain [and eventually America].
…
“Out of that second great awakening came the modern missionary movement and its societies. Out of it came the abolition of slavery, popular education, Bible Societies, Sunday schools, and many social benefits.”
We are not too far gone.
Mark
For the last two years I’ve been spending time with a group a of Indianapolis pastors, facilitated by Loving Accurately Ministries. They have a weekly prayer meeting for pastors and meet monthly at the Broadripple Brewpub. I’ve learned so much from these guys, especially the guys that lead it – Geoff Wybrow, Jim Falk, and Steve Freeman – about what it means to love people well.
One of the principles I’ve learned from them is things work better when relationships lead the way. There are people at that table that I wouldn’t agree with about a lot of things, theologically or organizationally, but because we started with prayer and relationship it’s different, because there is something powerful that happens when you see someone’s heart and his (or her) passion and his love for Jesus.
The interesting thing is that a lot of times at cross-denominational gatherings like that, there’s a shallowness and a sense of compromising issues we’re passionate about in order not to offend. What I’ve seen, though, is that if you start with a relationship, there’s actually room to have those discussions and disagree heartily and healthily – there’s room for “iron sharpens iron,” for stretching each other. The effect that I’ve sensed is that there is actually a sense of going higher and farther together instead of watering down.
Paul also refers to Jesus’s whole body (i.e. the Church) being held together by “every joint and supporting ligament,” which I’m coming to think means the relationships that connect us. I think that’s how it was made to function. If you don’t have ligaments, you either have disconnection or a LOT of pain (I’m told bone-on-bone in joints is excruciating). The spirit of religion, then, is the “arthritis” of the church – going after the joints to keep the whole body from functioning.
This is also one of the key values we are taking with us to N.Ireland. We want to everything we do to stem from loving others well – as Paul says: “deeply, from the heart.” It’s the only way for us to be “known by our love.”
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the underlying messages in our communication. For example, I can say something to my wife that sounds totally supportive, right and loving, but the message is “You need to change A and B for me to accept you” – which is neither loving nor supportive.
The same principle applies in communicating the Gospel, especially in preaching. Christians give a lot of lip service to “God loves you just like you are” and “you are saved by grace alone, not by trying hard and doing good.” If that’s true, why is the underlying message so often about “you’re not measuring up” or “you need to do A, B, and C to be a good Christian” or “we’re better than those other churches”? Even then, the things we lay on people are often totally bizarre – like how do we end up distilling everything down to “go to this Sunday School class, read your Bible more, come to the men’s pancake fundraiser, etc.”?
The truth is that the Gospel is MUCH more radical: you were more guilty than you can ever imagine, but Jesus paid that debt more completely than you can ever image. God is more in control than you can ever imagine. Every step in the Christian life is an undeserved act of grace. You start out with God’s favor and He delights in your immature love more than you can ever imagine. That’s good news and that should be the primary message – explicit and implicit – of EVERYTHING we do.
I think there’s another truth here, though. If you start with and really believe the Gospel, there is a MUCH more radical response. People who are changed by the Gospel will give everything for it. I think most Christians are actually longing to be called to something radical and costly. I think most of us are bored, honestly. BUT, we’ll never risk everything for a God that’s mostly dissappointed with us and is just itching to torch us if we fail. But if He really loves us and death is really an upgrade and He’s really more precious than any amount of money…
