HOW TO OPEN LIFE'S LOCKED DOORS (EASILY)

 

When I turned 50, I decided to do something really difficult. I enrolled in a university course to learn Biblical Greek. And, trust me when I say, this in no way is a brag – because I struggled through it and took far far longer than the average Biblical Greek student ordinarily takes to complete this course. I had to do twenty translation tests and then two major translations exams of the New Testament’s Greek text into English. I scraped through the course and somehow managed to pass it. I can testify that learning another language later in life is really hard! This is why I have the utmost respect for non-English-speaking migrants who come to our country and manage to learn English. Learning languages is not the only thing I find difficult. I envy those people who do the things easily that I find difficult to do or understand (like quadratic mathematic equations for example). Over the years I have pondered why it is that different people doing the same task can result in a person finding it incredibly easy who then gets it done quickly, and why another other person finds it next-to-impossible and as a result gives up trying to do it. I have discovered the answer to this conundrum lies in the “mat” principle.  

I was pushed hard, so that I was falling,
but the LORD helped me.
Psalm 118:13

THE MAT PRINCIPLE

Imagine coming to an impressive holiday home that someone has lent you for your holiday. It has a large imposing door with a very sophisticated locking system. The owner of the holiday house has told you that when you arrive, you can just unlock the door and go on in and make yourself at home. Somehow in this conversation you forgot to ask for a key and the owner never mentioned it. You arrive. You turn the handle on the front door but it is clearly locked. You remember what the owner said and try all sorts of ways to open the locked door. You punch in a set of random numbers into the keypad, your press your hand on the finger-print sensor, you look into the retinal scanner – but the locked door remains unlocked even after hours of trying everything conceivable to open it. Eventually the owner turns up to see how you have settled in to his holiday home. Before you can retell him about all your vain efforts to unlock the door (and he is assuming that you have only just arrived), he walks up the door, lifts the door mat, picks up the key, hands it to you, you put it in the lock and without even turning it your hear each of the locking mechanisms of door undo their bolts and the door opens!

The ‘mat principle’ of accomplishing difficult things is simply this: it’s easy when you know how. Without knowing how to do something, doing that something is very difficult! A few months ago Kim and I had to go to Victoria. I had booked a car with my usual rent-a-car business. When I walked into their office the lady asked me, “Would you like an up-grade?” I excitedly allowed them to upgrade us into a brand new X5 Hybrid BMW SUV. I was given a thingy and told where I would find the car. As long as I had the thingy, the car would start and would be able to drive it they assured me. I got the car, wiped the drool from the corners of my mouth and sat in the car. It had 27kms on the odometer! I pushed what I thought was the start button, dash lights turned on but the car didn’t start! Maybe you have to push it twice I thought. So I pushed the start button again and dash lights turned off. Oh, maybe this is just the dash lights start button? But where’s the engine start button. Unable to see any other start button, I pushed the one and only start button again. This procedure went on for some time as Kim and I sat in the undercover airport rental car park. Then a thought occurred to me: Hybrid. What if the car had actually started each time I have pressed the start button. This time, after pressing the start button I eased my foot of the brake pedal to see what would happen. The car moved! But it moved absolutely silently. It was a hybrid car and it was running on its electric motors rather than its petrol motor! I wish I had known this before I got in this new car. It’s amazing how easy things are when you have been shown how to do it or to understand it. 

¶ “For this commandment that I command you today is not too hard for you, neither is it far off.
Deuteronomy 30:11

THE MOST DIFFICULT THING NOW MADE EASY

The most impossibly difficult thing that any person could do is to make themselves sinless and therefore righteous in the eyes of God. In ancient times men like Job pondered this question (Job 9:2). These ancients were aware of how holy, just, good, and righteous God was. They also knew that compared with God they were unclean, sinful, selfish, sinners. Even though God instigated the temporary practice of animal sacrifices to remind these ancients of their true spiritual condition before Him, these bloody sacrifices never cleansed anyone’s consciences of the guilt and shame brought about by their sins (Heb. 9:9). This problem remained unsolved until God Himself took on human flesh and became one of us. He lived a sinless life and then laid down His life as the perfect sacrifice for sins of all mankind who turn to Him and receive His pardon. His sacrifice of His life now cleanses the repentant human heart from the guilt and shame of our sins (Heb. 9:14). The key to unlock this previously unlockable door — that so many people have tried to open with religion, good works, church attendance, better education, or Eastern mysticism, but have failed — is found “under the mat” and is called faith. It is our faith (our trust) in what Christ has done for us that opens the most important of Life’s Doors: the door that leads to eternal life in God’s presence. This is why Christ said that He was the Door.

¶ So Jesus again said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep.
I am the door. If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture.
John 10:7, 9

Under the mat God has put “the key” to unlock the previously unlockable door: even this is a gift from God: faith.

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing;
it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
Ephesians 2:8-9

Even finding the key under the mat is the result of us crying out to God for mercy and forgiveness. These kinds of prayers often sound like, “God help me!” “God, please forgive me.” “God, I need You.”

“God, I acknowledge that I am a sinner. I thank You that You have sent Your Son to be my sacrifice for my sins. Please cleanse me from my sin. I receive Your offer of forgiveness and I want to live a new life with Your help. Amen.”

Amen indeed. I hope that each of us can help someone ‘find the key under the mat’ that can open the door to peace with God which results in them finding the purpose for their life and the meaning behind every setback in life. The principle of God enabling us to do previously difficult things also carries over into many of things that He will enable us to do once we have opened the Door of Salvation. This is the testimony of every person who came to faith in Christ and then helped to change the world in some amazing way. As you walk with Christ and He leads you to a locked door, you might want to start your quest to unlock it by checking to see if there’s a mat at the foot of the door and whether God has placed the next key of faith there for you.

Your pastor,

Andrew

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JESUS ATE with SINNERS

¶ Then Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, “Why do Your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat.”
Matthew 15:1-2

When Jesus the Christ bid farewell to Nazareth, He was on a mission. There was no time to waste. He had just forty-two months to undo thousands and thousands of years of malicious treachery and damage in order to save the world from the deception of the Evil One and his sugar-coated lies about sin. The clock was ticking down. The Evil One knew that the Christ had entered into the realm of humans; But, he was smugly confident that there was nothing that the Incarnated One could do to break his death-grip over the gullible humans pawns whom he had been easily manipulating. After all, even the most powerful among the humans – Emperors, Kings, Governors, and Chief Priests –  readily did his bidding. They carried out wars, invasions, executions, enslavement – all in the name of “peace” and “progress”. The Evil One, the Dragon, cared little what they called it—so long as it was an act of hatred toward the despised Eternal One.

These attacks against women and children by these puppet-rulers particularly delighted the Dragon –  especially since he knew how much it hurt the Eternal One who dearly loved them. There were innocent casualties of course. But he didn’t care. Women who had been raped were shunned by their families; widows whose husbands had been executed were left in desperate poverty and often resorted to desperate means to support their fatherless families; young girls were taken by force to satisfy an urge of a passing soldier; and, if a baby should be born a girl … she would more than likely be immediately rejected by her parents and left exposed to the night elements or the wild animals who roamed the nearby forest. The occupation by the Romans acutely humiliated the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Judah. They cried out day and night for the Eternal One to send the Promised One, the Messiah, the Christ, to rescue them. And now He was on His way from Nazareth to fulfil His mission. But it would be the ‘supposed’ enemy that He would deal with. It would be the true Enemy, the father of lies, that He confront. But first, He must go down into the Jordan waters.

¶ Then Jesus came from Galilee [Nazareth] to the Jordan to John, to be baptized by him.
Matthew 3:13

After being baptised, Jesus went directly to confront the Evil One face-to-face after He had fasted the entire forty-day trek into the wilderness. He was tired, hungry, and alone. The Evil One loved it when these pathetic earthlings made themselves even more vulnerable to his sugar-coated temptations.

¶ Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And after fasting forty days and forty nights, He was hungry. And the tempter came and said to Him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.”
But He answered, “It is written,“ ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”
Matthew 4:1-4

This confrontation of the All-Good meeting face-to-face with Serpent-breath didn’t go the way the Dragon had become accustomed to. Even more baffling to him was what the Eternal Son did next. Rather than going to the supposed ‘rulers of this world’ He went to the despised and inconsequential: the people of His hometown, Nazareth and those in the socio-economically challenged region of Galilee. 

¶ And He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up. And as was His custom, He went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and He stood up to read…When they heard these things, all in the synagogue were filled with wrath. And they rose up and drove him out of the town and brought him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they could throw him down the cliff. But passing through their midst, he went away.
¶ Now when the sun was setting, all those who had any who were sick with various diseases brought them to Him, and He laid His hands on every one of them and healed them. And demons also came out of many, crying, “You are the Son of God!” But He rebuked them and would not allow them to speak, because they knew that He was the Christ.
Luke 4:16, 28-29, 40-41

Even more baffling to the Satan was that instead whipping up the mobs and leading a rebellion, the Christ went to the shunned, the despised, the broken, the humiliated, as their dinner Guest! It seemed like an odd strategy, especially to those who had been longing for so long for the arrival of the Promised One.

¶ After this he went out and saw a tax collector named Levi, sitting at the tax booth. And he said to him, “Follow me.” And leaving everything, he rose and followed him. ¶ And Levi made him a great feast in his house, and there was a large company of tax collectors and others reclining at table with them. And the Pharisees and their scribes grumbled at his disciples, saying, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?”
Luke 5:27-30

I. CHRIST‘S REASON FOR SPENDING TIME WITH SINNERS

The Pharisees had started as a movement probably founded by Ezra. Ezra the priest had recognised that the reason they had been exiled to Babylon was because the previous generations of Jews had neglected the Law of God. He was determined that this should never happen again. His followers joined him in their devotion to the Law of God (“the Torah”) and some became the copiers of the Law, the scribes, and some became the teachers of the Law, the Pharisees. But over time they added laws to the Law to ensure that no-one broke the Law in much the same way as a fence is erected well before the edge of a dangerous cliff.  However, the result was that the heart of the Law (summed up by Christ in just two commandments, which both include the word love – Matt. 22:37-40) was completely neglected. Instead being set free by the Law, they were being condemned by it. The Law, which Ezra the Psalmist wrote in Psalm 119, was meant to be a good and life-giving guide had become an bearable burden of additional man-made laws that led to people more often than not feeling condemned, unclean, and unacceptable to God.

Jesus went to those most effected by this distortion of the Law of God – which ultimately was a distortion of who God really is. Tax collectors, prostitutes, and lepers were each ostracised by society and often considered by religious leaders to beyond redemption. Little wonder then that they would have felt that God could not love them. But then, at a dinner with Jesus, they not only heard Christ explain to them that God did love them, they experienced the love of God through being with Jesus. Reading through the Gospels we might assume that everything Jesus taught, He only said once. This is almost certainly not the case. Thus, the the teachings of Christ recorded in the Gospels are almost certainly a concise summary of what Christ taught, including these truths about God, that He was loving, merciful (Matt. 9:13), and gracious –

Whoever has My commandments and keeps them,
he it is who loves Me.And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father,
and I will love him and manifest Myself to him.”
John 14:21

Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.
Luke 6:36

It wasn’t just the outcasts who needed to know who God really was and what He was really like, it was also the religious. Again, a reading of the Gospels might lead the reader to assume that Jesus had little time for the religious, but this was not the case. Not only did Jesus dine with the despised, He also dined with Pharisees. He often told parables at these dinner events which must have had a powerful effect upon many of the Pharisees because it revealed that God was loving, merciful, and gracious. There were even dinners that Jesus attended where people from these two groups (the outcasts and religious) intersected, such as the time when Christ was invited to the home of Simon that Pharisee and “a woman who was a sinner” entered. She obviously had already heard Jesus describing God as a loving, merciful, gracious heavenly Father and deeply, deeply touched to the core of her soul.

¶ One of the Pharisees asked Him to eat with Him, and He went into the Pharisee’s house and reclined at table. And behold, a woman of the city, who was a sinner, when she learned that He was reclining at table in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster flask of ointment, and standing behind Him at his feet, weeping, she began to wet His feet with her tears and wiped them with the hair of her head and kissed His feet and anointed them with the ointment. Now when the Pharisee who had invited Him saw this, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him, for she is a sinner.” And Jesus answering said to him, “Simon, I have something to say to you.” And he answered, “Say it, Teacher.”
¶ “A certain moneylender had two debtors. One owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. When they could not pay, he cancelled the debt of both. Now which of them will love him more?” Simon answered, “The one, I suppose, for whom he cancelled the larger debt.” And He said to him, “You have judged rightly.” Then turning toward the woman he said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she has wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not ceased to kiss my feet. You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment. Therefore I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven—for she loved much. But he who is forgiven little, loves little.” And He said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.”
Luke 7:36-48

II.  HOW CHRIST RECEIVED SINNERS

Jesus was on a mission. His time was precious and it was running out. Not a minute could be wasted, and none was. This is why He ate with sinners. He modelled to His disciples that every person mattered. Eating food is not just about gaining nutrition. It is also about time with others. (This is why every family should have a regular dinner time at a dinner table without the distraction of a TV or their mobile phones.)  A meal shared with others is not just about eating it’s also about sharing life, stories, highs-and-lows, and asking questions.

This is what Jesus did when He ate with sinners (both the outcast and the religious). We note in the Luke 7:36-48 account that Jesus listened, asked questions, spoke, and taught at the dinner He attended. 

And as Jesus reclined at table in the house, behold, many tax collectors
and sinners came and were reclining with Jesus and His disciples.
And when the Pharisees saw this, they said to His disciples,
“Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”
Matthew 9:10-11

Despite how some progressive Christians have reinvented Jesus in their own image, the actual Jesus did not accept people’s sin as their “identity” to be celebrated. He received sinners into His fellowship and always called them to repentance and to turn away from their sin (Matt. 4:17; Luke 13:3;Jn. 5:14; 8:11). 

 

III.  HOW CHRIST DEFINED SINNERS

Jesus referred to some people as sinners (Matt. 11:19; 28:45; Mark 2:17; Luke 5:32). He stated plainly why He spent so much time with them, especially over meals together –

Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner
who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance…
Just so, I tell you, there is joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”
Luke 15:7, 10

For Christ, every person was a sinner because every person is born a sinful nature; and, every person sins (Rom. 3:10, 23). Are their worse sinners? Yes (Mk. 3:29; Luke 7:47). It is not true that the sin of gossip is the same as the sin of murder or sexual perversion. Sin can be the result of either a deed done that break God’s commands, or, deeds not done that ignore God’s commands. The greatest sin a person can commit is to reject God and His offer of forgiveness through His Son (Matt. 12:31). All sin will incur the just judgment of God. God keeps a record of every person’s deeds and words, and even the intents of our hearts. This is why we know that sin can either be visible and obvious, or invisible and hidden from others. This is why our attitudes must also be surrendered to Christ (Matt. 5:22).

 

 

IV.  NOT JUST ‘SINNERS’

Society looked down at those they called sinners. These were the dirty people. They were unclean. But to Jesus, these were people – each one created in the image of God. Some were educated, Some were not. Some were wealthy. Some were not. Some were nice. Some were not. But each of them were broken. Many of them had been abused, and some had been corrupted. Even before they told Him their stories, He already knew it. The One who loves us best knows us most. Remarkably, Jesus offered each person a new chapter – a new story, one that would set them free from their past and the lie that they could never change or that their life could never become better. He taught them from God’s Word that God the Father had the power to transform all who turn to Him in humble repentance. He gave each one hope – a reason for a brighter and better future – and that reason was Him.

We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul,
a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain
Hebrews 6:19

This message of the hope of a new life – a new identity – was not just for the outcast. The mission that Christ was on was for all people. This included the religious. His sharp rebukes of their heartless religion which was full of outward show was condemned by Christ (Matt. 23). While He did it passionate anger, it was also done with loving tenderness. Perhaps this was why on the Day of Pentecost, described in Acts 2, there were so many Pharisees who turned to Christ as their Saviour. They discovered on that day what the many outcasts with whom Jesus had dined had earlier discovered, that Jesus offered them a new identity. They went from being either an outcast sinner or religious sinner, to: a son or daughter of God.

 

WHAT THIS MEANS FOR US SINNERS

The Dragon’s deception still attempts to destroy God’s image bearers today (Jn. 10:10). But Christ has made it a lot more difficult for him to do it as he once did. He no longer has the same kind of free rein over people as he once did. Christ has conquered him (Heb. 2:14; 1Jn. 3:8). When Christ ascended, He and the Father sent the Holy Spirit into our world to empower every believer to be able withstand the lures and temptations of the devil’s minions. Christ’s urgent mission to redeem the lost is now our urgent mission. Just as Christ did not affirm the deceptive and false identity that the Dragon tricked people into accepting — that their brokenness was who they were and they could never be anything different, in fact they should embrace their pain with pride! : “unclean”, “prostitute”, “orphan”, “worthless”, “leper”, “traitor”, “adulterer”, “fornicator” — we also proclaim the truth to those in our world who have been harmed by the sugar-coated deadly lies of their Enemy. Like Christ, we call all sinners to repentance. And like Christ we are prepared to do it over a meal, in their home, on their turf. Just as Christ could look a woman in the eye and declare her forgiven, we also announce that there is forgiveness in no-one other than Jesus the Christ. As Jesus did, we renounce the imposed and false identity labels that the Dragon tricked people into accepting. Instead, we announce that they have a true identity that God is prepared to reinstate to them – not because of what they’ve done or could ever do – but because of what Christ the Holy One has done for them. This announcement was so important that God sent His Son into the world He created to declare it. It was so important that the right people were to hear it, and to hear it well, that Jesus chose to share it directly with broken, hurting, lonely people in their own homes and across their own dinner tables. This is why Jesus ate with sinners. And this is why this sinner has accepted and embrace his God given identity rather than the Enemy’s old and false, ill-fitting, one.  

CHRISTIANITY IS A PROPOSAL NOT AN IMPOSAL

 

Chuck Colson’s Speech to Seminarians  |  Why Christianity is a rational and reasonable proposition  |  Why Christianity is not an imposition  |  How Christianity is not just a proposition

Chuck Colson, the founder of Prison Fellowship, a ministry to inmates.

Christianity is a proposal not an “imposal”. That is, Christianity is grounded is certain propositions that are rational, reasonable and evidential. Its propositions can then be either accepted or rejected. The notion that each person has the freedom to choose their response to a proposition is a biblical concept grounded in the teaching that every person has been created in the image of God with the God-given freedom to make their own choices and decisions. In one of Chuck Colson’s last speeches, he spoke to a group seminarians (theology students in training to become pastors) and reinforced this point to them. When you take up your pastorates, he told them, remember that Christianity is a proposition not an imposition. We cannot impose Christianity on anyone. Instead, he went on, we must give well reasoned propositions. This requires having the correct starting point for Christianity, Colson stated, and that starting point is the Bible and your unshakeable conviction that it is the very Word of God. Without this foundation we cannot offer the propositions that lead a person to meet with God and experience His forgiveness.

The sum of Your Word is truth,
and every one of your righteous rules endures forever.
I rejoice at Your Word like one who finds great spoil.
Psalm 119:160, 162

 

THE PROPOSITIONS OF CHRISTIANITY ARE TRUE, RATIONAL, & REASONABLE 

All Scripture is God-breathed, Paul reminded Timothy, and is profitable for teaching (2Tim. 3:16-17). This is because it is true. It doesn’t just contain truths, it is truth. When Christian leaders stray from the truth of God’s Word regarding matters of human exceptionalism, gender distinction, or sexuality, they will invariably attempt to impose their views rather than offer testable, verifiable propositions. Sometimes this involves twisting Scriptures to impose distortions of the truth into the Scriptures. For example, in Jude 9, the apostle Jude compares the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah (homosexuality) with the sin of the fallen watcher angels who took on human form and fornicated with human women (Gen. 6:2-5). In both instances, Jude declares, both the fallen angels who sexually sinned and the men of Sodom and Gomorrah who sexually sinned, did what was “unnatural” after “desiring different flesh” than what God had designed. In the case of those Watcher angels they were not designed to misuse their ability to materialise into human form, and the men of Sodom and Gomorrah were not designed to commit fornication at all – let alone with those of the same gender. The Creator has created a design for all of His creatures – which includes men, women, and angels. God’s Word is consistent from cover to cover that sexuality is sacred and spiritual and is gifted to humankind as an expression of the image of God that men and women each bear which intrinsically involves and includes procreation (Matt. 15:19-20; 19:4-6).

Chuck Colson warned these seminarians over 12 years ago that the issue of human gender and sexuality was going to be an issue that culture would oppose Christianity on – and it seems that he was rather prophetic. 

The Bible invites testing and examination of its claims. Because the Bible asserts to be true, we can have great confidence that it can stand up to scrutiny and investigation. Often times the objections that people have with the Bible are because they do not like what it says – not because they are disputing that it actually says it.  

¶ This is the disciple who is bearing witness about these things,
and who has written these things, and we know that his testimony is true.
John 21:24

The central claim of Christianity is the central claim of the Bible: The Creator became the Redeemer by becoming one of us and laying down His life as our substitute. He taught about God and God’s will for all people and this has been accurately and sufficiently recorded in the Scriptures. He then died an atoning death for the sins of mankind and was resurrected physically from the dead to be declared as Lord of all. He triumphed over the forces of darkness and ascended back to His Father where He was declared to be worthy of all creation’s worship. To live according to what He taught is to love God and others in word and deed. The historical impact of Christ’s atoning life has been well documented by J.Warner Wallace in his book, Person of Interest, where Wallace shows that all of the great social improvements in the world can be traced back to arrival of Christ. These are some of the reasons why we claim that the propositions of Christianity are not only reasonable, true, and evidentially verifiable, but are also good for the world and for each person. Living life the way Christ taught people to live can be shown to be beneficially physically, intellectually, spiritually, and mentally.

Because Christianity involves the acceptance of certain propositions such as the divine inspiration of the Bible, the Creator’s right to decree laws for our conduct, and foundation for true beliefs, Christianity has always been creedal. There are short creeds found in the Bible. These are statements of true beliefs. The word creed comes from the Latin word credo which means I believe. People who reject the Bible but still claim to be Christian sometimes spout, Christianity is about deeds not creeds! which itself sounds awful like a creed to me. Thus, Christianity is a set of propositions that are often presented as doctrines (“beliefs”), and theology (“how we understand God and is will”). In the apostle Paul’s last epistles, written to Timothy, his major themes in both epistles concerns sound doctrine. The basis of sound Christian doctrine is good theology!  

And He said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbour as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
Matthew 22:27-40

 

WHY CHRISTIANITY IS NOT AN IMPOSITION 

“You can’t legislate morality” is a false claim because you can only legislate morality – the question is, Whose? But it is true that you can’t legislate for anyone to become a Christian. Christianity cannot be imposed. This is why we make ‘a case’ in the public square about how all people, Christians or otherwise, should treat people — especially the poor, the marginalised, and the vulnerable. We are not arguing for governments to impose legislation to Christianise our society. Rather, we have good reasons for believing that the teachings of Christ are beneficial for all of society. That’s why we argue that marriage is sacred and designed by God for human flourishing. It’s why we argue that a pre-born baby has been given a sacred life and should not be murdered. It’s why we argue that men and women are equal and that men should use their strength to protect, provide, and pastor those in their care not harm or intimidate them. It’s why we argue that Physician Assisted Suicide (PAS, or a host of other euphemisms) should not supplant palliative care which coincides with a dying person’s natural end. We argue we do not impose.

Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making His appeal through us.
We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.
Second Corinthians 5:20

 

WHY CHRISTIANITY IS NOT JUST A PROPOSITION

I do not want to give anyone the impression that Christian is just a set of intellectually propositions. It is much more but it is certainly not less. One of the propositions that we Christians make is that Christianity is a spiritual transformation of a soul. While its propositions are true, they are not just true, they invoke a miraculous transformation in a human being. Jesus described this as being “born again” (John 3:3). The New Testament describes the moment this happens as being a transaction with God where we surrender our life and our sin to Him and He gives us His life and His pardon (1Jn. 1:8-9)! This transaction includes a hope that goes beyond the grave. God the Father adopts all those who turn to Him. It results a new way of seeing life and the world. The things that once troubled us no longer do, because we have a growing confidence that God has a plan and is currently outworking that plan. If you have never surrendered your life in a transaction with God, you can now. You are just one prayer away from peace with God and purpose for your life – both now and beyond the grave! The choice is yours. We can’t impose this offer from God on you, but I do have a proposition for you.

Your pastor,

Andrew

Let me know what you think below in the comment section and feel free to share this someone who might benefit from this Pastor’s Desk.