Life on the 'mainland'

As I inferred in a previous blog the tables flippers have all moved on to other spheres of ministry, one to a student organisation and another to church in Belfast. As for me I decided to move country and as of today I am a student at Oak Hill Theological College in north London.

I would be lying if i said this hasn't been a culture shock; already I see the pace of life so much faster than Northern Ireland, for example;
My journey to church yesterday evening involved 3 tube changes interspersed with a lot of running up and down stairs and at one stage nearly going the way of the prophet Isaiah, being rent asunder, albiet by the train doors!

Apart from that is has been an amazing experience so far and contrary to public opinion, English people are quite friendly (who knew!?).
God has been amazing gracious towards this table flipper in bringing me to Oak Hill, I have to pinch myself every now and again to make sure I'm not dreaming. I can't wait to get stuck in to college life and go deeper with Jesus in order that I might serve him better.

Proper Coffee

As the only Flipper who enjoys a good cup of 'black gold' can i commend to you all a short pamflet by fellow blogger David Bish on the art of good coffee.

http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B6Ay4oX76v6fNjVhYzc3YzMtNDRhZS00NGZlLWEzMWEtMDc2NGY5M2ExZWE5&hl=enid=0B6Ay4oX76v6fNjVhYzc3YzMtNDRhZS00NGZlLWEzMWEtMDc2NGY5M2ExZWE5&hl=en

Busy Summer

What a summer it has been for us here at the flippers; weddings, new jobs, not to mention a relocating to a different country but God has been immensely gracious in all of it!

However amidst all the chaos of the past few weeks I have acutely aware of Peters expression that Christians are 'elect exiles' (1 Peter 1:1), which means, that Christians are a foreign people in a foreign land, we are all pilgrims walking together towards the Celestial city.

In my home church this has been illustrated by a series in the Psalms of Ascents (Psalm 120-134) where the Psalmist begins his journey in 120 amidst the pagans, far away from God and his people but finishes (134) in the presence of the Lord.

This means we don't get too comfortable in this world because there is a restlessness in each of our souls which longs to see the shores of our heavenly home. So we press on, 'keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the JOY set before him endured the cross, despising the shame and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God' (Hebrews 12:2).

Lots of things have changed for the flippers in recent days but one thing remains, we press on, as that great cloud of witnesses cheers us on our way we press on so that we might hear the most glorious words in the whole universe:

"Well done, good and faithful servant, enter into you masters joy"


The Table Flippers

The Problem of purity

In our society purity is something to aspire to, something to be grasped, we are told that Vodka is triple distilled for absolute purity. But what does the bible have to say about purity?

Well in the gospel of John we get the answer in a strange place, in the story of Jesus turning water into wine. You can read the whole story in chapter 2 but i just want to look at one verse of it. Verse 6 says, "Now there were 6 stone water jars there used for the Jewish rights of purification, each holding twenty to thirty gallons." These jars, which were filled with water would be the ones that Jesus would turn into wine, but Jesus is making more of a point here than its ok for Christians to have a bit of a drink. These jars the Jewish people would have dipped there whole arm in incase they had touched anything that a gentile had touched and by doing this would have been purifying themselves from the world around them. But so what? What does this have to say to us? Well my question to you reading this is are you really any different? Granted you probably dont put your arms into jars to purify yourself before God, but i guarantee that you are doing something. Maybe you are relying on going to church and going to church events to be pure before God? Maybe you are trusting in all the things that you do, such as giving to charity or helping old ladies across the road to get you pure before God? Or maybe you are trusting in all the things that you dont do to get you right before God, well i dont drink or smoke or swear so i must be right before God right? Well no im afraid not. The only way to achieve real purity before God is through his son, through his death and his resurrection, this is is the only way to achieve real purity, never mind being triple distilled.

But so what? What does it matter? Well it matters if we are pure before God or not because one day we will have to stand infront of a holy God and give an account for the lives that we have lived, and at that stage God wont ask us how many times did you go to church? Or how much money did you give to the poor? Or did you enjoy the odd drink? He will simply ask what we have chosen to do with his son? Are we trusting in him for our real purity? It is my prayer that you are

"We'll make heaven a place on earth"

The prophetess Belinda Carlisle once sang:

Ooh, baby, do you know what that's worth ?
Ooh heaven is a place on earth
They say in heaven love comes first
We'll make heaven a place on earth
Ooh heaven is a place on earth

And the great 21st century theologian Bryan Adams worte:

Baby you're all that I want
When you're lyin' here in my arms
I'm findin' it hard to believe
We're in heaven
And love is all that I need
And I found it there in your heart
It isn't too hard to see We're in heaven

But is this a big enough view of Heaven?

Its true, heaven is about the intimacy of relationship, and it might even be true, on some secondary level, that it is a perfect relationship between human beings, but is that the whole story?
It seems to me that the relationship the Bible wishes to emphasis is our relationship the living God:

"And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God." Rev 21:3

The final act of redemption history is the coming of God to be with his people; the sin that separated us from our creator has been finally destroyed and all that remains is love, fellowship and intimacy with the one for whom we were made.

As I have dwelt on these things this week I have found it interesting that "heaven" in these lyrics is relational, particularly, sexual intimacy. There is no doubt that sex is wonderful, glorious and good but it is a shadow of the intimacy and 'oneness' enjoyed by Jesus and his bride, the church.

In buying into these sentiments as a culture, have we narrowed our view of Heaven or is it just a pipe dream to think that we can ever be close to a transcendent, majestic and holy God?

One of the most wonderful pictures in this passage of revelation is the image of God comforting each individual believer, wiping away each tear with tenderness and mercy:

"He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away." Rev 21:4

On the 20 March 1991 Eric Clapton's four year old son Connor fell to his death from the 53rd story of his mother's apartment building in New York. This tragedy prompted him to write one of the most moving songs I have ever heard and in thinking about Heaven this week I wonder if Eric wasn't onto something when he wrote:

Beyond the door
There's peace I'm sure.
And I know there'll be no more...
Tears in heaven

The problem with living sacrifices...

The Christian life is marked by humble service and reverent submission to Christ, out of gratitude for what he achieved at the cross, namely, our salvation. With this in mind, Paul exhorts the believers in Rome to present their bodies as LIVING SACRIFICES to God (Romans 12:1); “living”, because it is Christ who died in their place and “sacrifices” because the motivation for such a life is praise and thanksgiving.

We all are “living sacrifices” wholly devoted to God, renewed each day by his Spirit and living for his Glory no matter what the cost… at least … that’s what we ought to be…

Thinking about what it means to be a “living sacrifice” makes me feel like the “chief of sinners”, I know I don’t live up to the definition it wrote just thirty seconds ago so what is the problem with “living sacrifices”?

Answer – we keep crawling off the altar.

We long we be people who are devoted to gospel living, and look up to men like Paul who declare “to live is Christ and to die is gain” (while he stands atop a skyscraper with his cape blowing in the wind) but the sad reality is that there are two things that cause us to crawl off the altar of living sacrifice:

1) We stop being a “living sacrifice” when we crawl off the altar of praise and thanksgiving in order to wallow in the old sins of our old life.
As human beings we love sin, can’t get enough of it and wouldn’t do it if we didn’t enjoy it; lust, pride, greed, envy, fear of man (in no particular order). As Christians we still struggle with the presence of sin (Romans 7) and this can leave us feeling frustrated and discouraged but, remember, Paul has brought us to Romans 12 via Romans 1-11! And in Romans 6 he declares that we DIED with Christ and as a result we live as though we are dead to sin and alive to God; not least because that is exactly what we are.
Moreover, Jesus has brought our JUSTIFICATION (our being right before God) “by his blood” (Romans 5), this means that the sin that entices us away from a life of living sacrifice can be overcome because Christ’s death secured the victory over sin and its effects. Therefore, we must rejoice and be motivated by our new life in Christ, he has brought us from death to life and as a result we live a transformed life by the power of his Holy Spirit.
Too often we look longingly at our old lives and desire sin like it were a meaningless moment of adult naughtiness and not as it really is, the relationship destroying, decay and degradation for which Christ had to die.

2) We stop being a “living sacrifice” when we crawl off the altar of praise and thanksgiving in order to contribute something to our own salvation.
Christianity looks like to easiest religion in the world, it not about what we do its all about grace and what Jesus has done for us. The reality is, however, that as humans we feel a innate sense of indebtedness, that we ought to repay someone’s kindness. Often this comes from a place of pride, we work or pay back or reciprocate so that we don’t feel beholden to anyone. How dangerous this is for our salvation!
The greatest gift anyone has ever given is God’s own giving of himself in his son Jesus to be our saviour; for this reason Paul can say that “we are saved by grace through faith, not of ourselves but a gift of God, not a result of works so no one can boast” (Ephesians 2: 8-9)
The problem with such immense generosity is we want to pay God back so that we can say, “I did something to earn that I don’t have to feel so bad about accepting it”. What subtle pride!
If our motivation ever strays from, gratitude and praise into working for acceptance we have emptied the cross of its power and rejected the sufficiency of Jesus sacrifice.
As living sacrifices we must lay down our pride and come to Christ with open hands and declare with the blind man “Son of David, have mercy on me a sinner”

...thoroughly equipped...

2 Tim 3:16+17 says 'All scripture is God breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God is thoroughly equipped for every good work.'

Unfortunately it seems that the church today, especially the Church of Ireland rewritten it to say that, 'All scripture is nice and makes us seem holy and is useful for training in religion so that the minister comes across a nice guy and holier than thou.'

I only wish this were an exaggeration! How else would we know about God unless he reveals himself to us, which he has in the bible, and yet we pass off the bible as if it's just another tool among other viable options such as culture and emotion?

It's time that we realised the truth of God's word. Realised the authority it has and the divine origin it comes with as it is 'God-breathed'.

It's time we actually taught the Bible with passion and vigour and gave it the treatment it desserves; not as an ammo dump for anecdotal tid bits but as the divinely inspired, expired word of the living God.

It's time we used the bible to rebuke those who need rebuking as Titus 1:9 so rightfully backs up-no one is exempt from this, to correct and to train men of God with the powerful testimony of Jesus Christ shown throughout Scripture.

It's time we seen that the bible is central, it is the final authority, it is powerful and it is the key to making all Christians everywhere... thoroughly equipped!! Thoroughly equipped for every good work, not just some good works like social justice, or giving us good advice but EVERY good work.

Are we prepared to realise that ''All scripture is God breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God is thoroughly equipped for every good work.'

Let's pray that we will not fall short and that everyday we will strive to be... thoroughly equipped!!

A Health Warning

Health warnings can be a helpful way of pointing out dangers in life. We all know that smoking is bad for our health, not least, because of the millions of pounds spent on ad campaigns and clear labelling; hazardous beaches carry warnings to prevent people getting caught up in a strong undercurrent; even foods now carry colour coded labels so that we know what is okay and what will educe a coronary!

However health warnings aren’t always used for good reasons…

The recent General Synod of the Church of Ireland passed a bill to put a ‘health warning’ before the 39 Articles, (the historic doctrinal statements of Anglicanism). This took the form of a preface which outlined the Church of Ireland's commitment not to offend anyone and to champion the Arch Bishop of Armagh's crusade of inclusivism (incidentally not leaving much room for a conservative evangelical position... but no surprises there)

"negative statements towards other Christians should not be seen as representing the spirit of this Church today." (http://ireland.anglican.org/cmsfiles/pdf/Synod/2009/bills/bill1.pdf)

Compare Titus 1:9
"He must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it."
Here we see Paul encouraging the use of "negative statements" as he outlines that an overseer must be able to teach (give instruction) AND refute error (rebuke those who contradict it).

But where do you draw the line?
The problem with adding this preface is that we say “if you are offended by what you read here, don’t worry we don’t really believe that any more because it wouldn’t be ‘loving’”

Are we as a denomination in danger of becoming a caricature like Father Ted; “sometimes the Pope says things he doesn’t really mean”?

Health warnings can be good but they are designed to preserve life NOT a persons sensibilities!
The sad fact of the matter is that the liberal theology that has so infected the Cof I should carry a health warning to every congregation in the land;
“Listening to this lay person, Rector, Bishop or Archbishop can SERIOUSLY damage ones eternal health”