I’ve grown accustomed to your faith

Blind Faith (book) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

What sort of faith do you have? I’ve maintained for a long time that a Christian’s faith can’t possible be faith ‘contrary to the evidence’, as many atheists would have it, because that would require us to have less faith in the event of an answered prayer or whatever.

Thankfully, someone way cleverer than me has pulled together a little summary, together with lovely little pictures, to explain what different people mean when they say ‘faith’. I’ll retell it here, but if you want the original click to see the original Four Types of Faith. In each case, Christianity is a chair and sitting on it is our act of faith.

• Blind faith is as if we’re approaching the chair wearing a blindfold; we can definitely sit in it, but we can’t tell if there aren’t better chairs everywhere else, or if the chair’s on a conveyor belt about to tip us into a cauldron of boiling oil. This is not good faith.
  
• Irrational faith is the faith the daft atheists (as opposed to the not daft ones, I’m not caricaturing here) say Christians have; chucking reason over our shoulder we intentionally sit on what we know is a broken chair which isn’t just foolish, it’s dangerous.
• Warranted faith is faith based on evidence; it’s the sort of faith you and I use every moment of every day. I have faith that the pavement won’t randomly turn into jelly today, yet I have no evidence to disprove that theory. We look at the foundations of the chair, observe it to be stronger, more reliable, with a better creator, and safer than all the other chairs, and sit confidently in it.
• Biblical faith is faith which is based on evidence, yet with the catalyst of the Holy Spirit. I put something up on the blog a bit ago showcasing some straightforward evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ; I’m reasonably sure it was seen by at least one non-Christian, yet I didn’t get any responses saying ‘I believe!’ Why not? Because the Holy Spirit didn’t awaken that faith. It’s as if we can see the chair but we know it’s been made by someone we hate more than anything else, so out of spite we refuse to sit in it until he comes over and gives us a hug, reassuring us that he’s actually a pretty nice guy. And his chair’s really comfortable actually.

Related articles

• Burner: A Proof that the Christian God Does Not Exist? (withalliamgod.wordpress.com)
• The Case for Christ – An Atheist’s Nightmare (cheviceunited.wordpress.com)

1,000 Days: The Ministry of Christ by Jonathan Farwell

Jesus’ teaching and healing ministry lasted for about three years – close to 1,000 days – and this book has been written to summarise that ministry so that we can apply it to our lives. Each chapter takes a different aspect of that 1,000 days and explains what it means for us and how we can apply it. Each chapter ends with a series of questions for self-application or group study, and there’s a big appendix which breaks the book into a full group study series.

The thing I liked about this book more than anything else is its simplicity. The language is straightforward and the logic is straightforward. It’s focussed on Jesus’ life, death and resurrection, uses lots of Bible and useful analogies, and has plenty of practical application tips. It covers a broad range of topics so the chances are that a typical reader would find some chapters more applicable than others, but everything in there is good, solid stuff which we’d all do well to revisit from time to time.

If pushed I’d say the only issue I had with the book is that at times the chapters didn’t really sit that well as a cohesive whole; with some exceptions the chapters weren’t chronological or linked to one another so although the content was great the overall theme and direction of the book wasn’t phenomenal. That said, the finish was probably one of the strongest ends to a book I’ve ever seen.

I’d certainly be happy to recommend this book to any Christian wanting some general encouragement and healthy challenge. And if you’re a Christian not wanting encouragement or challenge, you definitely need this book.

I got this ebook for free from BookSneeze.com in exchange for an honest review.

You only live once

Man thinking on a train journey. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It’s a bit of a depressing thought, but have you ever had that moment where you think, ‘one day I’m going to [insert dream here],’ only to realise that you’ve had that same thought every year since you can remember, and that your available time is only getting shorter and shorter?

So I’ve never visited the pyramids in Egypt. I’ve wanted to since I was about 10 years old, and always thought as a kid that I’d do it when I grew up. As a student I figured I’d do it once I got a job and could afford it. Once I got a job I figured I’d do it on my next holiday. Then I got married, and got caught up in visiting family and doing husband-wife stuff, and now I’ve got a kid, who sort of restricts the ability to travel a long way.

But I still want to go, and every so often catch myself thinking, ‘I’ll do that one day.’

So I wonder…what do you have that you’ve said you’ll always do but haven’t yet? What’s your excuse?

Good news:

1. Nothing matters except for Jesus; the very best of this earth won’t even be comparable with the very worst of a perfect eternity with him.
2. Christians will have the rest of eternity to do all that stuff we don’t manage to get round to in this life; we won’t spend eternity playing harps on clouds but living on the new, redeemed earth.

A case for the charismatic

English: Charismatic Ελληνικά: Χαρισματικοί σε ώρα λατρείας (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I don’t know Jared Moore. I’m sure he’s a lovely guy. He’s written an article entitled ‘A Case for Cessationism‘. No need to read it.

It’s basically an attack (a bit of a strong word, so take that with a pinch of salt) on another article arguing the case for the charismatic. Fair enough; people are allowed to hold different theological opinions, and they’re allowed to debate them. I’d encourage it.

But I find the case for cessationism on the vast majority of occasions weak and lazy.

The opening point of the article reads as follows:

He’s overly simplistic and dismissive. It’s undeniable that for over 1600 years of church history, the miraculous spiritual gifts were inactive in the church.

Um…is it just me, or does that statement come across as overly simplistic and dismissive? I doubt that Jared Moore was present during the particular 1,600 years he’s talking about, or has read anything from that period saying explicitly that ‘no churches practice spiritual gifts’…it’s a bit of an argument from silence.

So here’s my case for the charismatic. I believe that spiritual gifts are here for the church for today:

Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. (1 Corinthians 13:8-10)

Note: I’m using the Bible. Disagree with me, but don’t disagree with God.

I don’t know if anyone’s looked around recently, but I don’t think the perfect has come yet. So until that happens, we ought to earnestly desire the spiritual gifts, as the Bible tells us to.

Odd socks in the dark

Rainbow striped toe socks worn with thong sandals (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Of all the things I’m world-famous for, I’m pretty certain that wearing matching socks isn’t up there in the top ten. My morning sock choosing strategy is based entirely on which are closest to the top of the drawer and not at all on whether the designs are even vaguely similar.

This is normally not an issue; the visible parts of most of my socks are plain black, so I can get away with it. But the other morning was a different story.

I had an important meeting that day, so wanted to wear matching, plain black socks. I carefully compared the socks in the drawer and found a smart pair, and left for work feeling confident in my sock choice.

Of course, when I got on the train and looked down I realised that my initial confidence was founded in a lie; I was wearing one black sock, and one blue sock! D’oh! The room I’d chosen the socks in was too dark to properly compare the socks, so despite my efforts I ended up doing exactly what I’d tried to avoid.

It’s not really about the socks.

How often do we make important choices based on incomplete or inaccurate information without realising it’s wrong? I would have bet money that morning that my socks were matching and black, but they weren’t, despite me having checked and double-checked – I was making the decision in the dark.

But Jesus is the light of the world. With him, important decisions are not made on poor information, they are made with perfect information. He tells us what’s right and wrong, but more importantly he gives us access to the Father and, by the Holy Spirit, the ability to choose right from wrong.

Being a Christian is phenomenal.

I prayed about it, so stop bothering me

 

English: Christian Bible, rosary, and crucifix. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Does anyone else think it’s funny that many Christians claim to have been created in the image of God, yet their God seems more to have been created in their image? Not funny ha-ha, more funny strange, that is?

What I mean is: there seem to be a lot of people who end up making decisions which seem to contradict God’s instruction under the guise of ‘I prayed about it, and God said it was fine.’

I was a university student when I became a Christian, and if I knew one thing about Christianity it was that Christians don’t believe in sex before marriage! Whatever that means. So when a very, very Christian fellow-student told me that she started sleeping with her boyfriend when he proposed to her, I was confused. But she said that she’d prayed about it and that ‘God had given her peace that what he was really talking about was a lifelong commitment.’

Hmm…I’m still confused about that today. And Ed Welch has written a pretty useful article about people who have ‘prayed about’ stuff and coincidentally found that God has made them an exception. Here’s a sneak peek:

“I prayed about it”…is invoked when Scripture clearly teaches one thing and the person wants to do another. For example, a Christian woman is (somehow!) granted that coveted spiritual exception to marry an unbeliever. When challenged by her friends, she says: “I prayed about it.” Or another follower of Christ is startled to hear the Spirit say a resounding “YES, you can move in with your girlfriend,” or “YES, you can leave your spouse, because, after all, I want you to be happy.”

What “God” are these people praying to? This perverse, self-deceived foolishness is apparent to everyone except the person involved. How can we respond? We have a few possibilities.

The obvious place to start is to wonder if we are looking in the mirror. Where do I justify my own desires? Yikes, I don’t have to look hard. Lord have mercy on me.

Amen. Have a read of the entire article to get the full picture.

We’re going church planting!

Image via Wikipedia

For the past couple of years Anna and I have been on a journey which has led us to the current state of affairs: we’re leaving the lovely local church we’ve been a part of for the past nine years (Crown), and we’ve joined a radical church-planting team in the London Borough of Ealing! We’re massively excited about it and I thought it could be useful to explain how we know this is the right thing for us (even if it’s only useful for my own sanity).

The Bible told us to go

Above everything else the reason we love the idea of church planting is because the Bible does! Simply put, I reckon you should obey the Bible, simple as that. The primary model of evangelism in the New Testament is that of planting local churches. We’re completely sold out on the fact that it’s a great idea!

The Holy Spirit told us to go

But simply knowing something’s a good idea isn’t the same as saying that we have to do that particular action. Why church planting and not building an orphanage in a third world country? Well, we’ve received prophetic words  which really helped to shape our vision. For example, summer 2009 a really close friend of ours saw a prophetic picture: we’d been given a burden which had been put on the mantelpiece, but now was the time to put it out in the front garden where people could see it – it might get knocked around and a bit dirty, and some people might judge us for it, but in the end people would be made to feel accepted into the Kingdom of God through it – this was really the catalyst!

Random acts told us to go

So after that summer we decided to take the next step towards church planting. In January 2010, we applied for a church planters’ training weekend called Base Camp, and on our application form said we wanted to plant a church in Ealing. It’s a highly populated area, really multicultural, influential in terms of media and political figures living there, and it’s right down the road from where we were living at the time – it seemed a no-brainer.

But we still weren’t sure, so we decided to ask God to give us a really specific location. We opened up a map of the UK, and right there, in a big circle, sat the word: Perth. Now this was significant because the people who had planted Crown (Pete & Nicky Cornford) had recently announced they were going to plant a church over there, as in, Perth, Australia! Oh dear. That’s a long way to go, but that sign was pretty hard to argue against without simply denying it, which seemed sort of disobedient.

Christian leaders told us to go

So we went to Base Camp with two provisional ideas in our mind: Ealing, and Perth. And David Stroud, who leads the Newfrontiers UK team and ChristChurch London, said to me that he felt that Pete was my spiritual father and that I shouldn’t write off the idea of moving to Australia just because it’s a long way away. We still wanted some convincing so we met up with Simon and Kiralie Leigh-Jones, of X1 Watford, who suggested that as Timothy had simply followed Paul to his various church planting locations that actually this whole following the Cornfords thing might be the right thing to do. Tope Koleoso, of Jubilee Church London, said that he agreed and that following the Cornfords was the right thing to do.

Common sense told us to go

We did visit Perth, but it was pretty clear that it wasn’t church planting. Things simply weren’t as they should have been, and the Cornfords were considering returning to the UK. It seemed that all our thoughts so far had been wrong: we’d thought Ealing but were wrong and had been sent to Perth. We’d gone to Perth but now it turns out that was wrong as well! We returned to the UK thoroughly confused about the future – we loved Ealing, some of our best friends lived there, and it was still waiting for a church to be planted, but we wanted to follow the Cornfords and they seemed to be out of the picture…

So as I’m sure you appreciate, when we found out that the Cornfords were going to plant in Ealing we instantly knew we had to be a part of it! Sometimes when someone asks if you’d like to be a part of something you have to answer: ‘I’ll pray about it.’ Sometimes you simply know that the answer has to be: ‘Yes!’

…

Perhaps you’d like to be a part of it too?

A bit of heresy never hurt anyone, did it?

Image via Wikipedia

Oh, it’s been a while since something properly controversial has happened so when T.D. Jakes was invited to speak at The Elephant Room, chaired by one of my heroes, the mild-mannered, softly-spoken Mark Driscoll, I thought we were onto a winner.

There was a bit of a flutter at the time, speakers pulled out, bloggers went crazy, and ultimately it all went forward as planned. And, yes, the Big Issue was discussed…for those who aren’t familiar with the situation, the Big Issue was that T.D. Jakes had previously denied the fundamental Christian doctrine of the Trinity. Instead, he believed in ‘oneness’; that God is one and only one, yet manifests himself in three ways (like H2O manifests itself in ice, water and steam). This may not seem that important but when it comes to something significant like the doctrine of propitiation, oneness just doesn’t quite cut it.

During The Elephant Room Driscoll just comes out and says (you can read a sort of transcript here):

the issue between Trinitarianism and modalism is one God three persons, or one God manifesting in three ways.

In other words: ‘Come on, Jakes, what do you actually believe?!’

The response was relatively woolly, but seemed to submit to Scripture and simply admitted that humanity is never going to quite get it right:

I stand today on one God, three Persons. You describe manifestations as modalism, I call it Pauline. “For God was manifest in the flesh.” The semantics can be this way or that way, but before the controversy started, Paul used the word manifested.

There are distinctives. Father didn’t bleed and die. The person of Jesus did that. We are baptized into the body by the Holy Spirit. That is consistent with my belief system.

I’m with you. I have been with you.

So it seems that Jakes agrees with the doctrine of the Trinity, but doesn’t see a massive issue with using slightly different words to articulate that.

I don’t have a problem with that, but I’d definitely rather he use the word ‘Person’, if only to acknowledge orthodox doctrine. As it is he seems to basically want to avoid any direct doctrinal discussion, and the only reason I can think of is that he doesn’t want to lose his following among Oneness Pentecostalists…

And it would seem that some who listened in to the debate had a massive issue with the fact that T.D. Jakes didn’t publicly repent of this heresy! Check out, for example, this post (which I like) that says it all:

But hey, if a bunch of middle-aged American pastors in the Elephant Room tell you Nicea and its delegates — and all the Christians who have suffered and died to maintain its truth over the centuries — are irrelevant, who am I to question them? To do so would surely be the height of arrogance. Ahem.

And probably the most in-depth and just overall best post of the whole lot has to be either ‘the Don’ Carson and Tim Keller’s response over here, or Thabiti’s latest version of events over here (and a testimony from someone he knows who really suffered from Jakes’ teaching here).

I think I’m still pretty confused. And surely this brings up the question: What’s more important, doctrine or unity?

One what, three whos

Image by Steve-h via Flickr

A little thought to break us into the weekend…in the West it’s pretty much part of culture that God is one. Popular TV shows happily refer to God as existing but rarely talk about there being multiple gods.

And I think that this cultural pressure has actually meant that the church doesn’t understand the concept of God as well as we could. Christians believe in one God in three persons – the Holy Trinity. But I think that we find ourselves relating to God more as one, and less as three. But he is three and one.

The Father is not the Son. The Son is not the Spirit. The Bible mentions each individually on multiple occasions without ever suggesting that God is not one. So it’s pretty odd that we hear people praying, ‘Oh yeah, Father Lord Jesus…’ Hang on, who are you talking to?

I think our concept of God has the danger of not being ‘one God in three persons’ but ‘one God with multiple personalities’ – not the same thing!

Without wanting to stray into heresy, would the church in the West do well to attempt to think of God more as three and less as one, at least to tip the balance in the right direction? God is fully one, but he is also fully three.

Discuss.

A bit o’ Spurgeon for preachers

Image via Wikipedia

Here’s some food for thought…

It seems to me a curious piece of absurdity, if not a specimen of blasphemy, for a preacher to ask the help of the Holy Spirit in his preaching, and then to pull his manuscript out of his pocket! Where is the room for the Holy Spirit to work? Have they not bolted and barred the door against Him? What thoughts can He suggest? What emotions can He excite? The paper is the guide of the hour. Why, then, should they mock the Holy Spirit by asking for His assistance—an assistance which they will not follow? Or, if I shall have committed every word to memory and prepared every sentence, and then shall come into the pulpit and ask to have an anointing from the Holy One to help me to speak, what do I but ask Him to do what I do not want Him to do, since I can do quite as well without Him as with Him, and should be thrown out of my course if He did assist me? It seems to me that after due study of the Word, if the preacher—if you, dear Friend, the teacher—will cast yourself upon the teaching of the Spirit of God, though distractions may occur, though in the congregation or in the Sunday school class there may be much to throw you off track and to make you lose the thread of your discourse. If you can rest upon the Spirit of God, He will enable you to speak with power, point, propriety, and personality.

Well, I’m not sure I agree with Spurgeon that the Holy Spirit can only act in a spontaneous way (i.e. a preacher’s hand can be guided in the preparation of the ‘manuscript’ they pull out of their pocket), but I’d have loved to have heard these words being shouted from the pulpit of the Metropolitan Tabernacle on 17 March, 1867!