Prayer for the Church

I was listening to a song earlier in the week by Vineyard songwriter Jeremy Riddle entitle Prayer for the Church, in which he sings of the different states the church often finds itself in (such as times of strength, weakness etc) and asks God for the appropriate response through prayer. As I listened to it I became painfully aware of how little time I spend praying for my church. God has blessed me greatly with the people that surround me every Sunday and yet I devote almost none of my quiet times or moments spent in prayer meetings to that body of people. Don't get me wrong, I will pray for a friend going through a hard time or a group in the church that's struggling, but I can't remember the last time I prayed for the congregation of Orangefield Presbyterian as a whole.

I am of the opinion that Christians who don't go to church because they believe they can serve God anywhere and don't have to confine they're experience to a building on one morning of the week are fooling themselves. I don't doubt that everyone (if there is anyone!) reading this is fully aware of the meaning of and reasoning behind a church: it is meant to be more than simply a place where we can meet to worship a God we individually serve, but a family of people, bound together by the blood that was shed for them. It is a communal thing. People are very much aware of this, because they have been told it over and over again. This, in itself, is dangerous. The more we hear something, especially it would seem, something that is about our Christian life, the less important it seems to us. Let's face it, with each Easter service it gets harder and harder to experience the same joy about the resurrection. Each Christmas we get more complacent with the importance of the birth of a Saviour. We know these things inside out, and therefore we think about them less.

The result is of course that we are quick to notice the personal gain in the idea of a church, but we overlook the challenge. Group worship to give us a sense of family? Check. People to go to if I'm in trouble and need a chat or a prayer? Check. A multitude of groups to keep me focused? Check. The list goes on and on, and never let it be said that the church is not a blessing for all these reasons and more. But how often do we see the challenge in being a part of a church?

Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. Be shepherds of the church of God, which he bought with his own blood. Acts 20:28

Sometimes we are not to be the one in need of prayer but the one praying for others. Sometimes we have to offer something in a group rather than only take. Personally if I look at my own church life I'm very rarely a shepherd, and I suspect I'm not the only one.

I'm currently trying to pray more for my church, and for those who have not heard the song I mentioned earlier, the lyrics of the bridge say of the church,


Now she's shining
Her light is blinding as she sings Your name
Now she's beauty
Up from the ashes, Your love is on her face 

I guess it's plain and simple: If this doesn't sound like the church you're currently a part of, then prayer is desperately needed. I say desperately because desperation is something we so rarely feel about our calling. The song speaks of small divisions, moral crises and things which nibble away at churches; things which need to be prayed against, until His love is on the face of our churches.

When I Survey

I wonder if you ever have a moment during worship music when you suddenly become aware of what you're singing and what it actually means. I often have these moments and it makes me realise how much of my time spent in worship at church or college is wasted due to simply not coming with the proper attitude. How many church services do we stand and sit without actually meditating on the words we sing?

The most recent instance I speak of was when our church was singing When I Survey. I have led this song in various places many times as well as singing it in church all my life, and as such I have become completely complacent when singing it. This time I didn't particularly pay attention to it until it was almost over. The final two lines of the song suddenly jumped out at me.

Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all.

There was so much power and meaning in those two lines that I'm not even convinced I would make it that far if I had been singing the song in total honesty. What a declaration! How can we possibly be half-hearted or bored when we sing about the amazing nature of God? David danced before the city about it, Paul and Silas sang in prison chains about it, what has happened that we stand in what we insist is a family unit together and sing these words with a lack of enthusiasm. Surely this is something that has to be addressed?

These words list things which we must hand over if we wish to be a part of thise amazing love (demand; not just something that is recommended or that might help, but essential), our soul, our life, everything about us. When we become a Christian, is it unfair to say that we get as far as the first one and then stop? We happily offer our soul to Him so that He can save us and ensure the blissful reunion we are promised, but after this we struggle to hold up our end of the bargain. Can any of us really say that we happily give our whole life to Him? That everytrhing about us starts and ends with God? I mean it can't just be me that notices how all modern worship songs seem to sing of how glorious and wonderful God is, draining our vocabulary of superlatives to use for Him. It's almost as if we fear to sing about ourselves or our part in these songs because that will highlight how far short we fall.

The next time you stand in church, try and focus on each word you sing and hopefully this will shine a light over your life revealing the work that needs to be done. Otherwise we just carry on with blinders on our eyes.

Annihilationism & Universalism

So we were recently learning in College about these two beliefs that exist within the Christian church, and they've been going back and forth in my head. Now universalism seems easy to dispute, because if everyone does in fact end up at heaven in the end whether they come to Christ in this lifetime or not, then surely it makes Jesus an immoral liar, bluffing people into the Kingdom of God with scary stories of torment in hell. It also renders our evangelism and outreach useless, as living a salvation lifestyle for the benefit of others doesn't make a difference: they are already saved. Annihilationism is slightly harder to combat. In fact it is far preferable for those who have had friends and family pass away without salvation to think that in Hell they are destroyed rather than punished. But again this belief conflicts with scriptural text (Mark 9:46-48, 12:38-40 etc). Now I do not think that the images we are given in the Bible of hell are to be taken literally; they are offered in such a way that humans can apply understanding to something that is outside our own world. But it still seems clear that these views are not how Christians are meant to percieve salvation and life after death.

The point where it becomes difficult however is when we think about why these beliefs originated in the first place. The problem people of these faiths have is that to our eyes it is morally unfair to punish someone infinitely on the grounds of finite sins that occured in this lifetime. It doesn't seem to measure up. Furthermore it seems strange that when God has conquered evil and has emerged victorious after the final chapters of the story, that He will install a place of torture and suffering in the new ordered Kingdom. It seems incompatible with the God of Love.

I have thought about this problem at some length over the last while, and I am still no closer to a conclusion.

While it seems sometimes to be the Christian's cop-out answer, I guess I have to lay my faith in the fact that God's sense of love and justice is far greater than my own. My love is based on personal relationship, trust and such human concepts as these, while the love we talk about with God is a totally different thing, something far beyond my own understanding. Perhaps a place of infinite punishment clashes with my idea of justice purely because my idea of justice is plagued by human emotion.

For example, if a close friend of mine is killed, I would see justice being done in the killer paying for his action. Now, does that justice have to be wrought upon the killer himself? If someone else paid the life sentence in prison (as Christ paid our sentence) would I see justice as being done? Of course not! I would want the one resposible to be held accountable. But God does not see the world in this way. While I may not understand it, if God is willing to account for mankinds sin by allowing someone else to suffer for it, then His sense of judgement and righteous suffering is far different from my own. And if I truly accept that God is Lord of earth and has saved me by His grace, then I must be willing to accept that His view is to be trusted, not my own.

Musings on Bart Campolo's "heresy"

So this is my first time writing on one of these things, and I'm not even sure if I'm hoping people respond, just kind of thinking and putting my thoughts down on the computer. So this article surfaced a few years ago now, but I only read it for the first time a couple of months ago, Bart Campolo's "The Limits Of God's Grace." It was published in a Youth Journal but was pulled after people claimed it was heretical.

I've been a big fan of Bart's ever since he spoke at Summer Madness a few years back (check out "Jesus vs. the American Dream" on iTunes), and was intrigued to read it. I've linked it at the bottom in case you have trouble finding it online.

The problem I'm having with it at the minute is that it definitely seems to have flaws and I struggle to see how his basis for it is upon scripture (and therefore God), yet I can't help agreeing with him on an awful lot of what he says! My main issue would be the point where he openly says that he will dismiss or rationalise any scripture which combats his chosen idea of God. Obviously it's easy to say that you cannot ignore scripture just to fit your own ideas, but when I think of it how often do we do this ourselves? How much of scripture do we twist and distort to suit us? I would never dream of saying that I have it all sorted out, but I would say that certain things are scripturally wrong, like excessive drinking and promiscuous sex, yet I know Christians who engage in these things and who I have argued over the Bible with in terms of how they interpret it. Or the huge debate over homosexuality, which, while 50 years ago was adamantly opposed in Christian culture, many churches are now becoming increasingly acceptive of. So is Bart merely saying out loud what many of us either keep hidden or don't even realise we're doing? Not that I'm standing behind his approach, where he openly says it and doesn't seem to see that it's wrong.

I'm a long way off knowing where I stand with regards to this, just figured I'd throw it out there.

Bart Campolo's 'The Limits of God's Grace'