BUILDING A MOODY CHURCH

 

The three things that make the Christian life exciting and enthralling are the same three things that enable a believer to develop a closer relationship with God. The combination of these supernatural gifts gives the child of God an awareness that there is more, much more, to this world than we can see, touch, taste or feel. When the Christian’s faith is grounded and buttressed in God’s Word, godly prayer, and God’s house he or she flourishes. But there are forces at play that are determined to stop the believer from reaching their spiritual destiny. While we might think these enemy forces only use the fiery darts of doubt to hinder the believer’s journey to glory, there is something that they successfully use far more often: our mood. This is why, for any church to be successful, it must discover how to build a moody church.

¶ Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.
Philippians 2:12-13

 There are three things essential for any Christian to have in their spiritual foundation with Christ as their cornerstone (Acts 4:11; Eph. 2:20). Firstly, a devotion to know, understand, and apply God’s Word. Secondly, a devotion to prayer – to know, obey, and love God. Thirdly, a devotion to a Christ-centred, Spirit-filled, Word-based, church. The enemy of our soul continually seeks to undermine each of these foundational sources of our spiritual strength. This undermining is nearly always done subtly and barely without the believer even noticing what is happening.

Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith.
First Peter 5:8-9a

THE ROLE OF FAITH FOR A CHRISTIAN

The Apostle Peter told the young Christians of Bithynia to “stand firm in your faith” (1Pet. 5:9a). Some critics of Christianity assert that faith is “believing things that are not true.” You either have facts or you must have faith, they claim. But this is not true. Faith, including the Christian faith, is not mere wishful or fanciful thinking. As if J.M. Barry’s famous line from Peter Pan – “I do believe in fairies” – could ever make the existence of fairies reasonable.
Faith is always grounded in reasonable evidence. Faith is trusting that evidence. Life is therefore not possible without faith. We have faith that the road we have driven over hundreds of times – or on the road we have never driven over but others have driven over hundreds of times – will not collapse under us as we drive over it. We have faith that when we sit on our favourite chair it will hold us. This functional faith is grounded in good reasons and so is Christian faith.
The Apostle Paul described Christian faith as being based on facts and good evidence – particularly for the physical resurrection of Jesus the Christ. If Christ was not raised from the dead then there is no salvation from sin for anyone. If this was the case, then life itself would be meaningless (“vain”). This is how he stated it:

But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.
First Corinthians 15:13-17

C.S. Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity, that if someone was not persuaded by the evidence for Christ and His resurrection, then they should not accept Christianity:

“Now just the same thing happens about Christianity. I am not asking anyone to accept Christianity if his best reasoning tells him that the weight of the evidence is against it. That is not the point at which Faith comes in.”
Mere Christianity 2017 (1942), pg. 140

Perhaps surprisingly, C.S. Lewis states that even the person who has become convinced by the evidence for the truthfulness of the Christian message is still susceptible to fall away if something separates them from the three essential faith-sustainers. You would be forgiven for thinking that he is referring to the devil. After all, Lewis was very aware of the devil and his schemes to undermine the believer’s faith because he wrote a book about it, The Screwtape Letters. But he is not talking about the devil’s direct attacks as the most dangerous peril to be faced. Rather, Lewis describes our moods as our greatest peril to being established and flourishing in our faith in Christ.

But supposing a man’s reason once decides that the weight of the evidence is for it. I can tell that man what is going to happen to him in the next few weeks. There will come a moment when there is bad news, or he is in trouble, or is living among a lot of other people who do not believe it, and all at once his emotions will rise up and carry out a sort of blitz on his belief. Or else there will come a moment when he wants a woman, or wants to tell a lie, or feels very pleased with himself, or sees a chance of making a little money in some way that is not perfectly fair: some moment, in fact, at which it would be very convenient if Christianity were not true.

Lewis was not dismissing the inevitable doubts that creep into a believer’s mind. He wrote, “Those have to be faced and that is a different matter. I am talking about moments when a mere mood rises up against it ” (140). He goes on to say that the way to tame our moods so that the enemy can not exploit them, is to tame them by disciplining them in the three essentials for the Christian journey: God’s Word, godly praying, and commitment to God’s House.

Now Faith, in the sense in which I am here using the word, is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted in spite of your changing moods. For moods will change, whatever view your reason takes…That is why Faith is such a necessary virtue unless you teach your moods ‘where they get off,’ you can never be either a sound Christian or even a sound atheist, but just a creature dithering to and fro, with its beliefs really dependent on the weather and the state of its digestion. Consequently one must train the habit of Faith.

This is why a commitment to attending church is essential for maintaining a vibrant faith in Christ. Is it necessary for a Christian to attend church? When we understand just how influential our moods are to our walk with Christ, we might phrase this question differently. How does neglecting church effect our mood to continue in the three essentials for Christian growth? Lewis states:

“The first step is to recognise the fact that your moods change. The next is to make sure that, if you have once accepted Christianity, then some of its main doctrines shall be deliberately held before your mind for some time every day. That is why daily prayers and religious readings and churchgoing are necessary parts of the Christian life.”
Pg. 141

For any church to grow and be healthy, it needs members who have learned to tame their moods, which Lewis describes as telling them “where to get off”! He states in very straightforward language why the believer needs to tell their mood to get used to the idea that they would now be going to church, rain, hail, or shine. “We have to be continually reminded of what we believe. Neither this belief nor any other will automatically remain alive in the mind. It must be fed” (141). 

A MOODY CHURCH

A church is comprised of those believers who have tamed their moods to delight in the things that Christ says are good for their souls. It is in the regular devotion to God’s Word that we are reminded of the truth. It is in regular devotion to praying that we are reminded of God’s presence. It is in regular devotion to church that we, encouraged by our worship, the ordinances of communion and baptism, and the ministry of God’s preached word that we are taught and encouraged in our understanding of and walk with Christ. This is what I mean by building a moody church. (And I apologise to all my brothers and sisters in Chicago who already attend “Moody Church” in honour of the great evangelist D.L. Moody.)

¶ Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, He asked His disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” And they said, “Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
Matthew 16:13-18

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.

WHO CARES?

 WHO CARES?

The world into which the Saviour of mankind entered as a baby was a very harsh place. Life was cheap. Might was right. The oppressed were abused and often mistreated by the Roman conquerors. Those expected to speak up for, and defend, the voiceless vulnerable — their religious leaders of the day — had become too easily corrupted in their pathetic attempts to win a crumb of their conqueror’s power. This corruption in the pursuit of financial gain and political leverage had blinded these supposed-to-be-shepherds to the true plight of those they should have served as guardians. Why on earth would God send His Son into our world at such a dark time?

¶ But when the time arrived that was set by God the Father, God sent His Son, born among us of a woman, born under the conditions of the law so that He might redeem those of us who have been kidnapped by the law.
Galatians 4:4 THE MESSAGE

WHERE IS THE GOD WHO CARES?

In what would have to be the greatest reply to the oft asked question – what has the all-powerful, all-good God done about evil and suffering in the world? – God the Eternal Father sent His Eternal Son into this world of evil and suffering as a zygote (the earliest stage of human development) as His answer. In one of Dr. F.W. Boreham’s essays on this topic he pointed out how often it has been throughout history that just at the darkest hours in human history, a baby has been sovereignly born who would grow into a courageous leader who would be a further divine reply to the question about what has done about evil and suffering in the world. The greatest example of this of course is the Christmas Child. At just the precise time of one of earth’s darkest hours, the Christ was born. Little wonder then that Dr. Boreham could say that God’s answer to the world’s problems is always a baby. And the baby that God the Father sent to the world was the One who created it and everything in it (Col. 1:17-18). Did He come reluctantly? Did He come in the same way that the mythological Greco-Roman members of the pantheon of gods would come feeling rather indifferent to the injustices besetting the world? Let the written Word of God be our answer-

When He saw the crowds, He had compassion for them,
because they were harassed and helpless,
like sheep without a shepherd.
Matthew 9:36

DOES JESUS?

Christ was moved with compassion for people. He felt their pain and saw their suffering. Did Jesus care? Asking this question sound utterly ridiculous even before I get the question mark! There is no doubt that Jesus cared. He demonstrated care for outcasts — such as lepers who shunned by society — but He didn’t care for them because they were a marginalised group or even because they were lepers. He cared for them because they were people created in the image of God. Jesus cared for the poor – but not because they were poor – but because they were people created in the image of God. Jesus cared for women – but not because they were women – but because they were people created in the image of God. And the same can be said of His care for those people with a different skin colour to His (which almost certainly was not ‘white’), or for those people of different ethnicity who could barely speak the language of the Hebrews without a tell-tale accent that brought scorn and even hatred among Israelites. He cared for these people despite these things because they too were created in the image of God. This reveals that Christ treated all people as sharing a common and unique bond: all people are created in the image of God and this common bond and shared privilege binds us each together as the ‘human race’ thus making all alternate adjectives of the word “race” superfluous and counter-productive to a biblical understanding of what it means to be human. Our initial question, who cares? is now forced to be adjusted to: Who should care? And the answer is immediately obvious. We should because we are the family of the divine image bearers. We are family.

For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,”
has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge
of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
Second Corinthians 4:6

 

BUT WHO CARES?

Those who know Christ! To worship is to adore, to behold, to praise, to reflect upon and reflect. Thus, we become like whatever we worship. When we reflect on Christ we marvel at His care for each individual in a crowd where each one probably thought that no-one saw them in the midst of a sea of faces – but Jesus did. They may have thought that when Jesus looked at the crowd He couldn’t have noticed them but He did. As they blended into the masses of people that often flocked to Christ they may have felt that non-one cared for them – but Jesus did. Consider how often Jesus spent time with one person: the woman at the well (John 4); Nicodemus the Scribe (John 3); the man at the Pool of Bethesda (John 5); the women condemned as an adulteress (John 8); the man born blind (John 9); Lazarus (John 11); and Pilate (John 19).  

And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord,
are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.
For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.
Second Corinthians 3:18`

Time and time again throughout the gospels we see Jesus taking time out for the individual – a woman with the issue of blood, the Syrophoenician woman with a demonise daughter, a blind man on the side of the road. Jesus’ care for people is a remarkable insight into the Father’s care for each member of His earthly family of divine image bearers. And just as Jesus conveyed the Father’s heart of care for each person, we too are called to also convey it (Luke 10:25-37).
 

 

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.

A FICTIVE FAMILY

 A FICTIVE FAMILY

Jesus taught that a fictive family is closer and more important than belonging to a natural family. Dr. David de Silva, in his book Honor, Patronage, Kinship & Purity: Unlocking New Testament Culture (2000 IVP) argues that it is impossible to fully appreciate the New Testament unless one also understands the central importance of the fictive family. A natural family is ideally where we are all meant to belong and find unconditional acceptance and provision. A natural family is where we are meant to learn to love, share and show care. A natural family comprised of a father, mother, brother/s and sister/s is where are introduced and orientated to the natural differences between men and women which then enables us relate in healthy ways with members of the opposite sex. These are all vital aspects that contribute to a person’s social, emotional, and psychological development. A natural family is where we begin to learn loyalty, cooperation, and how to celebrate the achievements of others. It was always a very important institution to God as well which is why two of the Ten Commandments exist to strengthen it. So when Jesus declared that belonging to His fictive family was more important than just this long-standing God-ordained natural family, it must be something we need to understand.

¶ While He was still speaking to the people, behold, His mother and His brothers stood outside, asking to speak to Him. But He replied to the man who told him, “Who is My mother, and who are My brothers?” And stretching out His hand toward His disciples, He said, “Here are My mother and My brothers! For whoever does the will of My Father in heaven is My brother and sister and mother.”
Matthew 12:46-50

Your dictionary might define ‘fictive’ as imaginary but that is not what New Testament scholars refer to when they use the word in describing the cultural landscape and backdrop to the New Testament. Professor of New Testament Theology, Dr. Randy Hedlun, describes the fictive family (kin) as, “[extending] beyond those sharing a common ancestry), which included slaves…distant relatives who may need support and would join the kin group, in-laws, and any others the kin group chose to embrace into its care” (The New Testament As Literature, 2017, p. 49). Belonging to Christ’s kingdom admitted you into His fictive family (kin). Christ expected that those who were accepted into this fictive family would bring the minimum standards of what it meant to belong to a natural family but then realise your relationship to other members of your fictive family was now stronger than blood. This is why, de Silva points out, the most common way of referring to another member of Christ’s fictive family was as a ‘brother’ or ‘sister’.

¶ By this we know love, that He laid down His life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.
First John 3:16

In many families (if not most) there is sibling rivalries. But in Christ’s fictive family there must not be rivalry. This kind of petty competitiveness leading to envy was to considered as shameful and a mark of immaturity.

I say this to your shame. Can it be that there is no one among you wise enough to settle a dispute between the brothers, but brother goes to law against brother, and that before unbelievers? To have lawsuits at all with one another is already a defeat for you. Why not rather suffer wrong? Why not rather be defrauded?
First Corinthians 6:5-7

In a natural family only those who are connected by a bloodline are considered kin (“family”). But in Christ’s Kingdom His family is connected by adoption by the Father and evidenced by acts of goodness and kindness.

For whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother.”
Mark 3:35 

As brothers and sisters in Christ’s fictive family we cheer each other on and rejoice with those who rejoice (Rom. 12:15). There is to be no competing against another brother or sister for the acclaim of others. This kind of behaviour within the fictive family of Christ is disgraceful and worse behaviour than would be tolerated in a natural family. This is powerfully illustrated by Christ’s parable of the father who had two sons which Jesus told to shame the scribes and pharisees’ behaviour.

¶ Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear Him. And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, “This man receives sinners and eats with them.” ¶ So He told them this parable: … ¶ And He said, “There was a man who had two sons.”
Luke 15:1-3, 11

When two of Christ’s disciples came to Jesus and to sit either side of Him in His kingdom, it was, Dr. de Silva points out, a thoughtful act of one brother toward another, but it was a misunderstanding of what Christ’s kingdom was meant to be among the disciples – and something that caused a dissension between them. Jesus wanted all of His disciples to recognise that they were all brothers by a bond stronger than blood.

And they said to Him, “Grant us to sit, one at Your right hand and one at Your left, in your glory.” Jesus said to them, “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or to be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?” And they said to Him, “We are able.” And Jesus said to them, “The cup that I drink you will drink, and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized, but to sit at my right hand or at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared.” And when the ten heard it, they began to be indignant at James and John.
Mark 10:37-41

Jesus healing the lame man and welcoming him into His family.

Christ’s family is open to anyone. He invited (and still invites) the outcast, the unpopular, the despised, the weak, the vulnerable, the apparently ‘got-it-all-together-but-haven’t-really’ to belong in His family. We are His hands, His feet, and His mouth-pieces, to reveal to an orphaned world that there is a seat at the table of Christ’s feast waiting for them. You may not have a natural family that you are connected with. But, your church family is also your fictive family where the bonds between brother and sister are stronger than blood ties! 

That according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
Ephesians 3:16-19

 

Your pastor,

Andrew