My every sacred moment spend, In publishing the sinner’s Friend – Charles Wesley

Go down and prepare the people for my arrival. Consecrate them today and tomorrow, and have them wash their clothing – God, Exodus 19

Creature comfort goals, they only numb my soul,  And make it hard for me to see – The Monkees

Charles Colson, President Nixon’s right-hand man who was indicted with him over Watergate, wrote a book, “How Now Shall We Live” shortly after he turned to Christ. In it, Colson questions the lifestyles of modern Christendom, and challenges us to live a life more in line with that adopted by Jesus. Colson, who went on to found Prison Fellowship, made a point of downgrading his lifestyle so that he could live out his faith without criticism, and identify more with his audience. He consecrated his life to Jesus.

The word consecrate is used extensively in both Testaments and it means to be made sacred in order that we can stand in God’s presence. It also has another meaning though, and that is to be devoted to God. We can consecrate our lives to Him, by devoting ourselves to him.

Recently I spent time with a man – a believer and a leader in a well-known church near me, who provided me some insights into how he lived; to be fair, this is not just him, but many others who call themselves believers. This person’s life was leveraged to the hilt. He needed an enormous income to maintain a precarious lifestyle built around debt and over extension. The total dependence on this income was just to live – in his own words, he was handcuffed to a ‘system’ with little room for anything else. He is not unique by any means.

I thought a great deal about this after and it troubled me deeply. It is the root cause of our failure to ever be effective witnesses for Christ. We have identified with the world so much, that our lives are indistinguishable to theirs in every way. How can we talk about Jesus when we are so dependent on the things of this world? Friends, we cannot. Our riches that we think are a blessing, have become a curse.

If you think I stand in judgement, let me assure you I have been in this place before myself, and one thing I can say for certain, God will not use us while we live like this. This man may have been recognised in his church, but he will not be an effective witness for Christ outside it.

God is looking, constantly, for those who are willing to consecrate their lives to him, as Wesley did. That means we must shed the world off our backs, enabling us to be nimble, flexible for God.

As we go out into the streets, it is rarely the white middle class that embraces our message, no, it is the poor and the downcast as it was in Jesus day. Further, we find it exceedingly difficult to attract the middle class, wealthy, church goer to the cause of disciple making. Such a task can be difficult, tiresome and mark us out as a “radical” or antagonist. So often their interests lie elsewhere, sadly.

We should travel lightly through this world or we will never be effective. Imagine standing before Him, knowing that even though he loves us and will still have us, we were by and large useless to him on this earth.

On the other side though, as we dedicate our lives to him each of us, he gives us opportunity time and again to proclaim his name as “the sinners friend.”

Last week, we sold a surfboard to Rob. Rob is 50, ginger and came to our house to pick it up. My wife asked him, “why surfing now”, to which he replied, “I’m trying to get spiritual”. She quipped with a wry smile, “you’ve come to the right place.” Forget all the psychologists, Buddhists, herbalists or sorcerers, come and taste Jesus and he will lighten your load. We talked and prayed with Rob as he told us of his high anxiety and brokenness, and I’ve agreed to take him surfing and will meet weekly to do a Discovery Bible Study.

Rob was the third person that week I had managed to share Jesus with, one was an Afghanistan refugee in Melbourne, now an Uber rider who is moving to Sydney. We will stay in touch.

Our mission and that of those around us, is to see people saved into Jesus Christ and go on to make disciples themselves, to see the church grow and spread. We have learned along the way, that the more we consecrate ourselves to doing that for him, the more purposeful we are about it, the more he keeps sending opportunities our way. Our conversations at home more and more focus around how we do more of this, and less of everything else.

We write this, never to criticise or lay guilt on anyone, neither to brag, but to exhort, to encourage – yes, perhaps to prod a little. We have tasted the ups and downs of life, but sharing life with Christ, and in turn sharing him with others is at the very top of the highest mountain. Nothing comes close.

Come, let us each, consecrate ourselves to him. No regrets, ever.

And when they saw it, they made known the saying that had been told them concerning this child – Luke 2:17

What is truth? – Pilate

[seems I missed posting this just before Christmas – Happy New Year everyone!]

This year I wrote a Christmas letter to everyone engaged in our business, now numbering some 40 and told them of how good the year has been for us. After some contemplation, I decided to try and bring my faith in Jesus Christ into it. After I wondered, why do we ever shrink back from such a task?

Then today I had lunch with someone who works for us, who I haven’t caught up with for an age. He was eager to talk to me about…my letter, and especially about my faith.  He didn’t know I had one.   This was a man who recalled a faith he had many years ago, and so we spent an entire Christmas lunch discussing what is only appropriate for such an occasion – the reality of Jesus Christ. My friend, like most of the universe, is dying to know the Truth. There was a spark rekindled after decades of dormancy and I can’t tell you how elated I felt.

It reminded me that I must never, ever stop sharing the person of Jesus Christ with people. So often we hold back for whatever reason, yet we never know when a difference will be made.

So, let us together make it our mission that this New Year coming, we will not shrink from sharing the Gospel with whomever we meet. At our doorstep lies a world that is dying to know the truth, and searching everywhere they can, but ending up with nothing.

Does it ever occur to you or me that God is dying for us, those of us who have been shown the truth, to share it with those who have never known – the truth of his Son who is life itself?

All of us, let us be joined in our assignment to share Jesus, even when we least feel like it or think it will make a difference. It is not us that makes the difference, but him.

Christ, God’s Word and Truth, the privilege for us to know and to share.

Happy Christmas. May you know his peace this Christmas and be able to tell someone what that means to you personally.

“They know the truth about God because he has made it known to them. For ever since the world was created people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can see clearly see his invisible qualities, his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God.” – Romans 1

There’s a dangerous doctrine floating around Christendom, and it goes something like this. If the wild man of Borneo has never heard of Jesus Christ, then God will not judge him guilty in the final count. He will be saved. Of course, it goes further then as well; if the wild man of Borneo is not guilty before God, then neither are those in our own community who haven’t been able to grasp the significance of what God has done through Christ. How can a loving God condemn such people?

Where has such thinking come from – the Bible perhaps? Clearly not. As we see in Romans, God tells us that everyone can see the evidence of God before them. Further on, God tells us something else as well, that all men have rejected Him, and rebelled against Him. We are all guilty, and our conscience and the law tell us we are. As an entire race, we will have no excuse before God.

Such thinking is prevalent in the world today, but also it seems, prevalent in the church now as well. We say, how dare you, or God for that matter, tell us we are guilty. We buy it hook line and sinker. It comes about partly because of our disobedience to the commands of Christ. Many who call themselves Christians today, have become ashamed of the Gospel which saves us.

At the beginning of a New Year, we will do well, all of us, to take stock of what the Bible really says on this matter. That mankind will have no excuse before God, outside of faith in Jesus Christ. That without faith, God will condemn us to hell. He will do so, because we are guilty and He is just. He has provided an alternative in Jesus Christ, but we reject that as well.

I read this week that there are some one billion people in the world who have never heard of Christ and around 4 billion who do not call him Lord. Clearly then, a lot of lives are at stake.

Want to know what God’s solution to this problem is? Well, a little further on in Romans, chapter 10 in fact, he tells us about the importance of those who bring good news to those who don’t know. It seems that God put a great deal of store on our bringing the good news to those who either have never heard, or haven’t yet decided about his Christ. On the whole, we are God’s agents for bringing the good news to a lost world, and Christ commands us to go into the world and proclaim him.

Perhaps we have allowed the world’s viewpoint to override what the Bible says, because we have by and large, failed in our duty. Clearly there is a mismatch between God’s expectation of our doing the task of making disciples, and our willingness to carry out that task, and so we have put the onus back on God to be lenient when it comes to the crunch. Not our problem we say, you deal with it.

All of us have much to learn about ‘dying to self’.

This week I read of a missionary couple who decided to leave everything they had behind, and go to a remote part of Sumatra in Indonesia. There, they met groups of people who had never heard of the name, Jesus Christ. When the villagers were asked, ‘do you know who made the world?’ they replied no, but had been wondering. What about who brings the rain or the sun? Nope. What happens when you die? Don’t know that one either, but we were really wondering about that question. So, the missionaries were able to explain who Jesus was as part of God’s plan, to a people group who had never even heard his names before. Soon, entire villages were saved and baptised into Christ.

Such a delight to read, their willingness to die to self enabled God to bring such blessing to those otherwise condemned.

At the beginning of a New Year, you and I must ensure that our priorities align completely with God’s purpose and will, nothing else must interfere. Unless they do, we will soon adopt any philosophy to cover our tracks. God will not change his view to fit in with our human thinking, and we simply cannot turn away from those around us who face hell.

Let us make it our primary goal this year, that whatever the cost, we will speak up. Others must hear the Good News.