Merredin Uniting Church

Whew! Its today, and yesterday is behind us…

Praise God that we are the Easter People, the people of the empty tomb, the people who are constantly led forward by God into the land of His promise.

I am writing this before our Strategic Planning Day so in a sense, I am writing from a step of faith. I believe that the day was a success – anything we put into the hands of God always turns out well. We are probably all a bit exhausted but I am sure that there is a stirring in the spirit and an excitement about what lies ahead. Our next step is to take all the things that were discussed and all the proposals and suggestions which were made and to create out of that a timeline for implementation. I am sure that some of those things have already been decided yesterday but there is value in caution. And we need time to prepare. I believe that we should always strive for excellence in anything that we do for God, so lets get the foundations right. We have some time anyway – the Harvest is about to begin, soon we will be into the Christmas Season and then the holidays. When we all get back at the start of February we will have had time to think and plan and will be filled with energy for the year that lies ahead. At the root of the Strategic Planning Day, and indeed, of the church’s mission is to develop the means and to seek the empowering from God to reach out to others who have yet to know the promise that has been realized in Jesus Christ. One of the things which should have been obvious yesterday was that while we challenge the structures which deny the Lordship of Christ, we must, at the same time, make every effort to make it possible for people to come to faith in Jesus. And that starts with us. Our attitude needs to be positive and faith-oriented, our integrity must be of the highest standard and our compassion must be from the very depth of our heart. The world is cynical about the church. To a significant extent they have every right to be, our tendency is to become puffed-up, proud and exclusive. We must constantly guard against that – all the harsh words of Jesus are directed against the so-called religious people of His day. On the other hand He showed deep compassion, concern and love for those who came humbly to Him seeking help and guidance.

Some years ago I created this chart to show how the path which people have to take today in order to find Jesus. (I got the idea from a book but I forget which one).

Although people are cynical, everyone has a longing to know God. In fact, the primary life search for most people is to find meaning for their existence and they know that this search must take them into the spiritual realm. In the past, the issue was relatively simple. The issue was sin, and sin alone. We are separated from God by the sin of Adam and our continued transgression. This crisis was solved in the death of Jesus who, in His death, atoned for our sin and made it possible to cross over the “gap” between ourselves and Him. This is depicted on the right of the picture. The Cross is the bridge that allows us to cross over the “sin gap”.

But in the season of the church, ie from the first Christian Pentecost onwards, other barriers have needed to be dealt with by the church. This was the basis and reason for the empowering of believers which came by the Holy Spirit. These barriers are the “Life Barriers” – basically the burden of lives filled with other priorities; and “Cultural Issues” – the difference between people which make up our social structures. These have become more and more exaggerated as time has gone on, as technology has advanced and as the world has become smaller. Today, we have to first help people to climb over their Life Barriers and cross over the Cultural Issues before we can begin to speak to them about sin (which the world now defines in terms of life priorities and cultural differences). So when we say that people are “far from God” what we mean is that their Life Barriers and their Cultural Issues have pushed them further back. So how does the church help? (It would really help you to understand this if you were to read John Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress”. There is an Aussie version by Kel Richards which is an excellent read.)

The church needs to handle all three barriers (Life, Culture and Sin) simultaneously understanding that the third cannot really be confronted until the first two are part of the approach. So, we need to help people to understand their life priorities. The top priorities are not fame, fortune or the ‘good life’. It’s God, family, community. The best way for people to understand this is to see it in you – ‘you’ve got something which I want – peace, contentment grace’. Jesus taught us a lot about this and summed it in the two great commandments – Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind; and love your neighbour as you love yourself. Go and read the gospels, put yourself beside Jesus as He talks with people and you will see that He was teaching us right priorities in His words and actions. He shows us how to climb over these barriers.

And we need to help people overcome their cultural issues. We do things in our culture because that is how we were framed. It used to be easier but in today’s world of instant communication and super stars, culture differences have become even more confusing. Now its not just language and food (the issues they had to deal with in the early church) but music, clothing, make-up, hairstyles (well, I suppose Paul had to deal with that too), attitude and behaviour. And it almost changes from week to week. So what does the church do? We need to realize that cultural issues should not separate us. We should embrace different cultures, realizing that we can step over them (using them as ‘stepping stones’) to cross the cultural divide. If the people of the church insist on dressing differently on Sundays from the rest of the week and stick to 17^th century hymns, we will not touch the culture of today – indeed, it’s often not even our culture.

God has a grand vision for His people. He called Abraham to lead a people to the Land of Promise, He used Moses when they strayed off to Egypt, Ezra and Nehemiah when their sin had exiled them in Babylon and Jesus when the whole world had gone astray. God’s vision has not changed. But now He wants to use you and I to accomplish His work. He has come in Jesus, He has fulfilled the Scriptures and given us Good News. And best of all, He has poured our His Spirit on us – God accompanies us as we go forth in His name to accomplish His purpose. This is not a “job” He has given us to do, it is the very joy and love of life that motivates us.

God bless and have a great week.

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