Living urgently, alertly and appropriately replete in the 21st Century has been the focus of this blog series so far. Thomas, Andy and Joshua have kindly helped us to honestly consider our Christian lifestyles, provoked by Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, and to what extent we’re living with urgency or lethargy, with alertness or sleepiness and with souls well-fed or deficient in even basic, Bible nutrition.
Continue reading “Ready: Living Prepared For The Coming Storm”
The early church exploded from a small group of misfit disciples into the most dynamic and cohesive movement within the Roman empire in just three hundred years. They were the new kids on the block and they were taking over the place. One early critic was claiming that they had ‘turned the world upside down’ (Acts 17.6).
In seeking to cultivate a lifestyle that is truly ready for Jesus’ second coming, directed by His Sermon on the Mount, we could contribute their success to a few factors:
They were courageous. They witnessed that Jesus was Lord in the face of persecution.
They prayed. Without much money, celebrities, or smoke machines, they relied on the power of God.
They were alternative. They preached a fiercely counter cultural message against both sexual immorality and greed. They lived chaste lives and gave freely to the poor.
Psalm 29 pictures the holy voice of Yahweh as being like a thundering force of such powerful glory that it breaks Cedars of Lebanon, strips vast forests back to their bone and provokes adoring worship in all the earth.
His speaking voice is like a cloud of stone-softening exhale as Kings and Presidents plot, as ethne balk and as nations conspire in vain.
But, to those who *know Him*, John 10 describes His voice as a Shepherd’s call into closer proximity, something more akin to a calling-by-name through gentle, Galilean accents of parental knowing. Indeed, Father God is always speaking like the perfect trailing sentence – always present & always continuous.
The communication of His heart to yours will, at times, be subtle and even mistakable; in other moments, it will be so flooring that nothing & no-one could lead you to conclude that He hadn’t and isn’t speaking.
Occasionally, His voice will sovereignly crush the persistent traffic in your mind; more often, it will emerge like the warmth of sunshine on your face as you determine to silence it first.
Sardis Church was one of those churches which everyone knew was a ‘great church’. Its auditorium was packed, its worship services were humming, it was involved in loads of great stuff in the community, its statement of faith was sound, it was growing, it was a strong church… but then Jesus gave his verdict: “You are dead. Wake up and strengthen what remains and is about to die” (Rev. 3:1-2)
I think Sardis would have been stunned by that diagnosis. In fact, all the surrounding churches would have been shocked as well. Surely not Sardis Church! Everyone knew that they were the alive church, the happening church, the buzzing church (Rev. 3:1). But Jesus says they are the spiritually comatose church. They have “soiled their clothes” – how’s that for an image!
I’ll be up front – I am writing this at the worst possible time for my family and me. Rachel and I are in the throes of moving from Thailand to Vietnam. Not only are there the logistical challenges of visas, accommodation, flights, ‘yard sales’ (to borrow a term from our American friends) and endless packing, there’s also the emotional upheaval of goodbye meals with friends and colleagues, daily ‘lasts’ of what have been routine activities for the past five years, and a variety of emotions that range between excitement, sentiment and a growing realisation that we have little idea of what we are heading into.
We had our final packing day on Tuesday, and then we officially leave Chiang Mai, Thailand, on Thursday. In fact, since this is scheduled to go live on the second Friday in April, you’re most likely reading it on our very first day as official residents of Hanoi. Oh, and add a three and one-year-old into the mix, and you will be rightly wondering if spending time writing this is the wisest use of my time… and you’d be in good company with my long-suffering wife. (Editor’s note: thank you, Rachel!).
Continue reading “Ready: Living Urgently in a Messed-Up World”
Most of you who read Firebrand Notes on even a semi-regular basis will know that about eighteen months ago we produced a film/music project called Jesus Come. Not only were Mairi and I really pleased with the way the project turned out, we passionately believe in the message that it carries: that the world is in a desperate, desperate mess (more than we can see) and people are hurting (beyond our capacity to understand); Jesus Christ is the only hope to bring justice and order and He is coming again.
For generations, the church has flitted between the excessive polarities of, on the one hand, talking about the Second Coming too much (while doing very little) and, on the other, focusing on an ‘attractional’, ‘relevant’, seeker-sensitive model of church (while failing to teach disciples to live in the reality of His coming).
In both cases, the gospel is generally more of a fix-my-life-make-it-better prescription than it is an invitation to surrender, suffer, die and live in the evangelistic power of the early church.
Houston, we have a problem.
To find someone in need who desperately needs your help, complete the following 5 simple steps:
1) Wherever you are about your day, look up from whatever you’re doing
2) consider what you see
3) pray for discernment
4) pray for courage and wisdom and power
5) open your mouth/move your feet
We’re soon starting a new blog series called “Ready” because we’re convinced that most of us aren’t.
Ready for what?
For the second coming of Jesus Christ!
In Ephesians 2:12 a scene is painted that is unimaginably awful: living in the world without Christ and without hope.
The chronic brokenness in people’s lives is as obvious and constant as the rising sun and you and I are called to be life-giving hope in Jesus’ name!
Whether you think about it a lot, only occasionally, increasingly, infrequently or as little as possible, the reality is that Jesus Christ is en route to planet Earth as King and as Judge. We have to be found living ready, like a present, continuous tense.
We’re called not to bunker mentalities of passive, fruitless waiting, but to *urgent* lifestyles of prayer and worship and bold intention to tell of Jesus.
You know you are!
We’re looking forward to welcoming special guest writers to the blog so please join us over the coming weeks and make this blog series happen.
Thanks so much for reading
Maranatha
It’s been a complete joy for me to run this blog for the last decade. My own fire to see Jesus known and loved has, I hope, grown in intensity through the storms and calms of life.
Now I thought it was time that I offered my services in photography/videography and writing production to help anyone wanting to improve their own digital presence.
So, have a look at the new portfolio site below! I’d love to hear from you if I can help and would be very grateful if you might be happy to send a shout-out.
Thank you 😎🎈
When you’re relaxed and at peace, when things are sweet between you and God, (currently not just fundamentally), you tend to notice things. This is because the spaces that you need in order to hear, and the discipline that you need in order to listen, are too often rammed with the traffic fumes of anxiety and fear, idleness and unbelief.
I was with Mairi walking through a small Scottish village on the Eastern coast of the UK a few hours before Christmas last year, passing through plumes of our own breath and treading the seasonal crispness under foot. It had been a stressful end to a stressful year and we were easing in to a couple of weeks away from the front line.
The sting of injustice is never pleasant. Like an incurable disease plaguing the entire world, all of us can see injustice functioning on a global scale every single day. We witness Robert Mugabe, corrupt Bankers, terrorism, famine, Rogue Traders, lazy Landlords, disallowed goals that have crossed the line, recruitment processes that look legal but that are internally rigged, false imprisonments, false biblical teaching, the ivory trade, endangered tigers, abuses of power, human trafficking and a whole other nightmare of unimaginable dysfunction that, somehow, manages to endure.
Despite the rare pockets of glory, our best efforts to act justly and the promises within the redemptive mission of God, we still live in an unjust, broken-down world.
Global injustice like this is meant to provoke us into faith-filled action and to woo us into the caring shelter of God, but, like a nauseating hors d’oeuvre before our eventual main course of numbness, it has a nasty habit of shutting us down.Continue reading “The Hardest Lesson I’ve Ever Had To Learn”
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