What is God doing in 2008 through you?
Welcome, welcome into a very big family
You may sometimes feel that you are in a minority and feel odd and different from the many people milling around your life who seem to cope without knowing Jesus – or do they? But did you know?
o 171,000 Christians worldwide are martyred for their faith each year.
o But if you follow Jesus you are part of a very big family.
o Some £2 billion around the world.
o 1/3rd of the world’s population. The largest faith group by a long way.
o Around half are Roman Catholic (in the UK and worldwide)
o About half of the balance are protestants (which is the category we fall into).
o Something like 75,000 people become Christians every day, day in, day out, 365 days a year.
o 103 million Christians, to date and 75 million communists in China
o More Alpha courses running in China than in the UK
o About 72 million bibles distributed every year
o BBC 6.00pm news on Christmas Eve: the largest bible printing factory in the world is to be opened in China and will print 1,000,000 bibles per month.
Even with all the Christ followers in America and UK, the majority are elsewhere in the world. In fact the average follower of Jesus is Hispanic, black or Asian, poor and lives in the developing world. We, being mainly white, wealthy and living in the West are in a minority.
So if you follow Jesus you are, one the one hand part of a massively successful and popular worldwide movement of faith. Yet, on the other hand, in our society, you are living a counter cultural life.
This is why this whole thing of telling and showing others that Jesus loves them is relatively hard. Those of you who find it easier tend to be the counter cultural types. Because sharing a spiritual faith is counter cultural and needs a risk-taking step .
2008 – a future of risk taking
200 X 3 X 12 = 7,200
200 of us, each with 3 people we can show Jesus' love to.
We do that once a month and end up with 7,200 occasions - lets call it 7,200 STEPS.
What would it have to look like if were to have baptised 100 people by the end of the year? Unless God providentially dumps 100 unbaptised people on our doorstep, what would it look like? What would we need to be doing week by week?
This is not about growing the Vineyard. It is not an empire building exercise. The reason we are good friends, share our faith, feed the poor, pray for the sick, smile at the lonely, is fuelled by compassion – often kick-started by obedience to Jesus’ command.
This is who we are not what we do
We don’t do mission, we don’t just go on a mission. Mission is not an optional activity for this community. Mission describes who we are. A missional community. We are missionaries. Another word is witnesses.
Acts 1:8 – You shall receive power and you shall BE my witnesses ...
We have been exposed to and experienced GRACE – the undeserved favour of the living God, the sovereign King of the universe. We don’t walk this journey of life alone – we have the living God to guide us and comfort us and accompany us. We have the knowledge that our forever is sorted.
That is wonderful good news to share with everyone – not with the intention of bringing them to the Vineyard or even notching up a convert – but with the intention that they may share something of his grace somehow, someway.
I don’t mind at all if you pray for someone on the train and as a result they wander along to their local Anglican church to find out more about Jesus.
But God does have a purpose for this community of faith and there are people out there, networked with you, whom he wants to be part of the Vineyard, just like he brought you here. The Vineyard is his idea not ours.
Living things grow and we expect and want to see growth in this community. That growth will only come about if we are missional, if we are witnesses – not for the Vineyard but for Jesus.
On the other hand if the Vineyard here doesn’t grow it will almost certainly mean that we aren’t out there sharing the good news.
But this isn’t a sales convention, I am not trying to motivate you to do anything. Either you have known the love and grace of Jesus and would just love to share that with everyone. Or you haven’t and you wouldn’t.
Having said all that I am fully aware that it is easily said and much harder to put into action. But as we saw last week, in the book of James he comes down pretty hard on this – if you try and separate words and actions you are left with a corpse (Message).
In a funny sort of way it is really easy. It is part of who we are. We don’t have to do anything more than be a person who has been touched by the love of the Father. By repeated time in the presence of Jesus we will just be witnesses in the way we live, who we are. He will ooze out of us under a sort of spiritual osmosis.
But when it comes to the opportunity for some oozing. When it comes to the opportunity to be, show, demonstrate the love of Jesus many obstacles all of a sudden jump into the way. Because it is counter cultural.
A few months ago in our series on Creating Sanctuary Alison spoke about the way that we struggle to trust God and obey. We hear him speak to us, guide us and direct us but when it comes to obeying what he says find it hard because we can’t see the outcome, we can’t control the outcome, it doesn’t look as though God knows what he is doing. So we take matters into our own hands, try and regain control – even though we are not God and he is.
Abraham and Sarah: God promised both of them through divine revelation that though old and childless they would have a son and countless heirs. They couldn’t see how God could possible make that work so what did they do? They took control and produced a child by Sarah’s servant girl Hagar (Genesis 16). Not only did that not produce the son God had planned, it caused great pain and misery to Sarah, Hagar and to Ishmael the son and Abraham.
Adam and Eve were given clear instuctions but the voice they heard of the enemy whispered doubt and uncertainty into their minds. “Did God really say that?” Genesis 3:1
We do the same thing. We are clearly instructed by God to be good friends, to pray for the sick, to share our faith, to feed the poor and so on. God does not promise that friendship will always be honoured, that he will always heal, that people will always come to believe when you share your testimony, that the food we give to the poor will be enough to save them from hunger. He just says, do it and leave the results and consequences to me.
We may never know what happens as a result of what we do or say. That does not mean it is not what you are meant to do or say or that it has no value. It just means that you didn’t get to see it – faith.
(When I talk about friendship – I don’t mean that we pursue friendship because it may result in a kingdom statistic. We pursue friendship because we want to share ourselves with another, perhaps another who has not had the privilege of knowing their creator, someone who has not the security of knowing that their forever is sorted).
But the little voice in our head speaks continually of, did God really say that? Won’t it all go wrong? Won’t you look stupid? Surely you can give some good advice? There isn’t any point really it is very inconvenient.
Mainly the obstacle is how we view God and how we perceive ourselves.
I run into an opportunity to share something of Jesus with someone. My mind is immediatley full of, you haven't got time, they will think you are a crank, what if nothing happens. Instead of hearing God say, I love them, I have a great plan for their life. Now your job is just to do thus and so.
Entering into this area creates the Margin of Uncertainty or what Bill Hybels calls the Zone of the unknown. Where we are out of our depth, uncomfortable, uncertain.
And this is where God can do his stuff. He can’t when you are in control – because that is you getting results. He can only be glorified in his activity and power when you are not in control, when you are operating in the scary, unknown, uncertain realm.
The option of not doing it is the easy way to deal with all our uncertainties and fears. But that takes us nowhere.
We need to know our fears and face them, work through them, grow through them – this is where the housegroup helps, to support, encourage and console you. Take the risk, take a step and do it. You will then find yourself growing as you deal with it.
If we can take 7,200 steps in 2008 and if God in his mercy has guided us so that we are in taking these steps where he is at work, then we can safely assume something will happen. In fact I guarantee it.
Last year the step of faith was to take a risk with money
- Giving beyond what you could easily see
- Trusting to what you felt God said he would do
- Having to push faith past words into risk taking action
- Depending on God to deliver
- Trusting him when it didn’t turn out as you thought it would
- Built a history with God of risk taking
This year, the step of faith is not just giving money but to turn our faith into words and actions with those who don’t know Jesus.
What is God doing in 2008 – through you?
Ask the Lord to prompt in your heart those people with whom you interact, those situations in which you find yourself, those opportunities within the Reach Out programme in which you should be involved (OtS, Browning House, Mission trips etc)
Write them down, take them away, pray over them, stick them on your mirror/fridge.
Record keeping
Not to pat ourselves on the back and say aren’t we doing well but to encourage each other. Let’s note down what we are doing and feed it back in story, testimony and celebration – a bit like we did with the finances last year.
Use the web site record - forums
Housegroups can keep a record – on the forum and a less personal record
housegroup leaders could put anonymised updates on the website like "This week two people in our group bought chocolate in queues, three prayed for people outside of a church context, two pastoral conversations in the workplace and one tried to explain hell to a Hindu".
David Flowers
13 January 2008
David Flowers, 13/01/2008