Speak up,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,or not

Reading 1 Kings 18 and it really grabbed me.

It is the picture of Elijah challenging the people as to whether The Lord is God or if the Baals are God.

That prompted me to think in relation to a current church issue, where do we stand as a congregation

Is the Lord God, or are we bowing to someone or something else

Elijah says god is the one who answers by fire, and finally the people say 'The Lord! He is God!'

What do we say? Is he God? Or not?

If he is, it is about time we took him seriously at his word, in a number of ways.....

a few things come to mind...........

Holiness (we are called to be set apart for Him, different, peculiar, special, etc)
Worldliness (see 1 John 2:15-16)
Evangelism - are we telling the gospel story?
Use of money - how do you earn it? what do you do with it? How does that measure up with the Bible guidelines?
Discipleship - how are we directly contributing to making disciples?

And so it goes on........

How do I do on these and other things - probably not that well, and i am counting on my brothers and sisters to help spur me on to love and good deeds. I want to do that to you too.

May we run the race faithfully, looking unto Jesus the author and perfecter of our faith, counting all things rubbish but to know Him. May we be like Paul and long to as he said to the Corinthians, to know nothing but Jesus Christ and him crucified.

God bless you as you grab hold of the Lord Jesus and his purpose for your life

Mark

The Man of sorrows - worth reading

http://www.tscnyc.org/monthly_sermon_newsletter/2010/June/2010-06_Carter_Conlon_Understanding_the_Sorrow_of_Christ.html
Carter Conlon is a pastor at Times Square church in New York

Classic bit of Tozer on worship

Taken from an excellent book 'The worship driven life' by A W Tozer.

'First, worship is to feel in the heart

I use that word 'feel' boldly and without apology. I do not believe we are to be a feelingless people. I came into the kingdom of God the old fashioned way. I believe I know something of the emotional life that goes with being converted, so i believe in feeling. I do not think we should follow feeling but I believe that, if there is no feeling in our hearts, we are dead. If you woke up in the morning and suddenly had no feeling in your arm, you would call a doctor. You would dial with the left hand because you right hand was dead. Anything that has no feeling it you can be quite sure is dead. Real worship, among other things, is a feeling in the heart.

Worship is to feel in the heart and express in some appropriate manner a humbling but delightful sense of admiring awe. worship will humble a person as nothing else can. the egotistical, self important person cannot worship God any more than the arrogant devil can worship God. there must be humility in the heart before there can be worship.

When the Holy Spirit comes and opens heaven until people stand astonished at what they see and in astonished wonderment confess his uncreated loveliness in the presence of that most ancient mystery, then you have worship. It is is not mysterious, there can be no worship; if I can understand God then I cannot worship God.'

I love that, and hope it spurs you on to worship HIM, and out of that worship, the gospel burns ever brighter in and through you to a lost and hurting world

God bless you as you go and tell the world

Mark

Just had to rush this one out before the weekend arrives and we get too busy with guests arriving and all that, for our 40th wedding anniversary

A great quote from William Booth

'Not call!' did you say?

'Not heard the call' I think you should say.

Put your ear down to the Bible, and hear him bid you go and pull sinners out of the fire of sin.

Put your ear down to the burdened, agonized heart of humanity, and listen to its pitiful wail for help.

Go stand by the gates of hell, and hear the damned entreat you to go to their father's house and bid their brothers and siters, and servants and masters not to come there.

And then look Christ in the face, whole mercy you have professed to obey, and tell him whether you will join heart and soul and body and circumstances in the march to publish his mercy to the world.'

Something for us to ponder - are you, am I, really publishing his mercy to the world?

Grace and truth

Well, heard a guy from Fuller Seminary, Doug McConnell, speak at my church on Sunday about grace and truth. Reminded me that telling the truth is very important - and also much neglected as people tell a 'happy come to Jesus gospel' rather than the true gospel. Also reminded me that we have to flavour the truth with grace, and treat people graciously, love them, and so on. Just as the Lord showed grace to us, we should show grace to others.

But, but but........ do not compromise the truth in an effort to be loving, gracious and caring - for as Romans 1:16 says 'For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes, first to the Jew, and also to the Greek'

Note quickly - it is the gospel. The whole gospel. Do not omit sin, personal responsibility for sin, the need for people to be convicted by the Holy Spirit of sin, and the need to repent. Turning to Jesus for a better life, or promises of other stuff - no no no..... that is not the gospel. That sort of gospel produces false conversions.

Please proclaim it truthfully, lovingly, graciously and see the Lord transform lives

OK - all I have time for right now. Hope this is some sort of encouragement to you

Mark

Some other blogs and sites for your viewing pleasure

The following sites have a lot of helpful information if you are at all interested in evangelism. Everything from inspiration, to instruction, to biblical basis for evangelism and so on

Please check them out. There are of course many more, but I just wanted to share with you some great ones.

www.gospelforasia.com.au

http://www.soulwinning.info/

http://www.openairpreaching.com/home.html

www.onemilliontracts.com.au

www.sethbarnes.com

http://www.answersingenesis.org/media/radio

http://www.missiontoamerica.org/evangelism/index.html

http://raycomfortfood.blogspot.com/

http://www.whatisthegospel.org.uk/

http://evangelisminspiration.blogspot.com/

www.biblicalevangelism.com

www.wayofthemaster.com

www.traintoproclaim.com

Makes me wonder

This is something (now slightly modified) I wrote a little while back, but it still makes me wonder, so thought you may like to wonder with me.

Some numbers I have heard several times in relation to young people coming to the Lord - 1. 80% of all people who become Christians do so before they reach 18 years of age, and 2. 97% of people not Christians by age 12 will never be one!!

Based on that, we are then supposed to put more emphasis on evangelising young people lest they slip through the gaps and drop into the abyss.

I agree that evangelism of young people is important (yes, very important). However, as I came to know the Lord at 36+ and Karen my wife came to Christ at 35, I also see the value (even if for selfish reasons) of reaching out to people well beyond school age.

There are different ways of interpreting the numbers quoted above. One says that if we don't 'get them' young, we won't 'get them' at all (in most instances). And that is probably the line I have heard taken. However there is clearly an alternative that says in effect that we, the Christians at least in the western world, do a generally lousy job of reaching older people with the true gospel of Jesus Christ. I cannot actually find a biblical mandate that indicates we should focus on young people to the exclusion of the older (over 18 or so).

The Bible seems to tell me that in Acts, we see people of non specific ages saved en masse. I don't read where the focus was on just the young. In fact, it probably sounds like more older people may have been saved in those early accounts.

So these statistics about young people coming to faith make me think not so much about putting more work specifically into the young (although I absolutely agree it is important to reach them effectively), but to think - where are we going wrong with older people?

I ask myself some questions:
Has God changed?
Is the gospel no longer the power of God unto salvation?(for people over 18)
Are Christians today able to say.... 'we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard'?
Are Christians today truly ready to give an answer for the hope that we have? And even take the initiative and don't wait to be asked.....
Are we people today who could say as CT Studd said 'Some would live within the sound of church and chapel bell, I would run a rescue shop within a yard of hell'?
Are we really sold out to Jesus?
Are we prepared to be fools for Christ?
Are we prepared to bring words like SIN, HELL, JUDGMENT and so on back into our vocabulary? Or do we want to be politically correct, or inoffensive? Or tolerant? Or inclusive? And as a result preach a watered down gospel that is no gospel at all?
Where does Gods Law fit into our thinking and theology and doctrine? Is it a thing of the past - or is it as Paul said 'schoolmaster that brings us to Christ that we might be justified by faith'?
Have we neglected the Law and its pointing out our sinfulness and just given people a soft gospel of good news, be nice, lead a good life, and all that - which tends to be a promotion of living a good life and that will get you to heaven. Utter rot and woe to those who teach such rubbish - a heaven without confession of sin and repentance and genuinely turning to Christ in faith

There is more to this situation, perhaps I will come back to it in a future post.

So what am I to do after pondering this? Pray is one thing of course. And come up with some answers to my own questions above

I guess my conclusion is not to just blindly accept and be content with the high statistics in relation to young people coming to faith, and older people not doing so.

Is that how the Lord wants things to be, or does he have some higher desire in this regard?

Let's not choose between reaching one of the two groups of people - as Jesus said, the harvest is truly plenteous, but the labourers are few, pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest that he will send forth labourers into his harvest - let's see workers (note that does not mean only people employed in Christian ministry) raised up for both aspects of the work.

It is time for the self serving western church to stop patting itself on its back, stop living with a 'bless me mentality', to step out of its comfort zone and put it on the line for the gospel of Jesus Christ - I need to and if you are reading this perhaps you need to take a further step of faith too (step back and work out how you fit into this part of His Story) ...... Or at least pray for me that I would be able to take that confident step of faith as Joshua was strengthened to take (read Joshua 1:1-9) to fulfill that task to which the Lord has called me.

The Lord bless you as you follow him!!