Defining Disaster

Right now I'm putting the service together for Sunday morning and our music leader for this service, Hilary Kisler, has suggested a Tim Dudley Smith hymn that I'd never come across before. I looked it up (it's a great choice) and saw it was based on Psalm 91. Reading through the Psalm I come to an abrupt halt at verse 9:

If you make the Most High your dwelling -
even the Lord, who is my refuge-
then no harm will befall you, no disaster will come near your tent.

To be perfectly honest, pastorally, I tend to get really embarrassed by these kinds of verses particularly when they're used in public worship. I know that on Sunday morning when we read the text and then sing the hymn that's based on it then this verse is going to stick in the throat of a good number of people who have had some pretty bad stuff happen to them. ""No disaster will come near your tent", is that a fact!".

And, if it doesn't cause a problem then I'm going to feel equally as bad as it probably means that the Scripture is not being taken seriously ("I know it says that but it must mean something else....it's just one of those odd bits - the Bible's got quite a few of them!").

But as I reflected on it, not ten minutes ago now, concerned about the stuck in the throat thing, I was really struck by the way the gospel redefines our terms. The verse is either true or it's not true - it can't be true and false simultaneously - we have to chose. If we assume that it must be true for we know that God isn't in the business of telling us lies we have to ask "how is it true?".

It surely must mean that when we lose our car keys/a promotion/an entire career/ a loved one then despite the evidence to the contrary.... it's not a disaster. It might look like one, it might taste and smell like one but the Lord says that "no disaster" will come near us so it can't be one. The text also says that "no harm" will befall us and, again, it must surely mean that the loss we face is not something that will, actually, do us harm. Again despite what we're conditioned to think.

This is more than just playing with words and putting a positive spin on terrible stuff. Rather it's choosing to view our lives through the lens of the gospel, using God's definitions to understand what happens and not our definitions.

Biopsy Blows and the Helmet of Hope

Read this from John Piper's blog (http://www.desiringgod.org/) this morning and thought it was great....let me share it with you:

The helmets referred to in the Bible are for protection in mortal battle. A blow to the head with a mace or a bludgeon would crush your skull and kill you.
So when Paul says that we should put on "for a helmet the hope of salvation" he means that there are blows that come to our spiritual life that could destroy us, if we were not protected by the hope of salvation.
The hope of salvation — that we will not perish but obtain eternal life in the presence of Christ — absorbs the blow and keeps it from killing us. Blows still come in war and in life. Helmets don't prevent blows. They just prevent them from destroying us.
One of my clearest experiences of how this works was in December, 2005. The urologist said there was an irregularity in the prostate. He would like to do a biopsy. When? Right now. I'll be back in a few minutes with the instrument. You can wait on that table.
In those ten minutes of his absence I felt a blow. He thinks I have cancer. He wants to do the biopsy instantly. As the blow descended on my head, the Lord positioned my helmet with loving firmness so that it wouldn't fly off.
This is the "hope of salvation" that he gave me: "For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep we might live with him" (1 Thessalonians 5:9-10).
He brought this text to my mind as I sat on the table awaiting the biopsy. It did its work. It fixed hope on my head. It put brass between me and the blow.
I didn't notice till later that the "for" at the beginning of the promise in 1 Thessalonians 5:9 ("For God has not destined us for wrath..."), was connected to the helmet of 1 Thessalonians 5:8: "...having put on for a helmet the hope of salvation. For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation."
In retrospect, God covered my head with the promise that this blow was not his wrath. He positioned the helmet of hope perfectly without my even thinking of helmets. I simply thought: This is not wrath; and if I live, I live with Christ, and if I die, I also live with Christ. With that he covered my head.
So go to the arsenal of God's word and get your armor. The blows are going to come. Without a helmet they will crush your skull. God has a helmet of hope fitted for your head. Put it on.

Let that truth infect your imagination today!

"It's Just The Next Passage"

Tomorrow I'm preaching the final part of a year long series on Hebrews and I'm reminded of one of the great reasons for undertaking systematic bible exposition. My text includes 13:17:

Obey your leaders and submit to their authority. They keep watch over you as men who must give an account. Obey them so that their work will be a joy, not a burden, for that would be of no advantage to you.

Not the most comfortable text to preach on as the Pastor but given it's just the next passage in the series and I didn't put it there or choose the timing (to fit in with that oh so difficult and controversial issue!) my life is made slightly easier. It's the same with some of the other tricky passages in Scripture....we're not generally inclined to preach on them and if we do then, understandably, questions might be asked about our motivation ("I wonder whether DG has such and such a situation/person in view...hmmm"!)

There are, of course, plenty of other reasons to have systematic exposition as the staple preaching pattern in the life of a church but just having to preach the next passage, whatever it is, ranks high for me.

Need Encouragement to Pray?

If you're anything like me then from time to time you need to be reminded of just how important it is to pray and just how willing God is to respond to our prayer. How easily we can become distracted and discouraged from this most urgent and precious of opportunities. Do take some time to watch Terry Virgo (leader of the New Frontiers network of some 600 churches in 50 countries)preach on prayer from the life of Elijah and be freshly challenged and encouraged.

The video is in two parts:

Part One

Elijah Prays For Rain from Adrian Warnock on Vimeo.

Part Two

Elijah Prays Part Two from Adrian Warnock on Vimeo.

Required Reading!

Not two minutes ago I finished reading CJ Mahaney's little book "Living the Cross Centered Life". What an absolute joy and inspiration it has been. It's ministered to my soul, strenghtened my heart and energised me for Christ centered living. It was Tim Keller who really helped me to grasp that the gospel is not just the "ABC" but the "A to Z", not just the way in to the Christian life but the way on and CJ Mahaney has done a similar job in helping me to understand the centrality of the work of Christ on the Cross. I'm ordering loads of copies for LBC because I so want everyone to read it before the start of the new ministry year in September. What a great thing it would be if we could all read it over the summer and get excited again (and perhaps for the first time) about Jesus. How we need Him to be central in the distracted times in which we live.

Missiology from Moyles

This morning's E4 at LBC was somewhat different. Two of our guys, Richard and Martin, got us to reflect on an approach to mission that had well and truly been blown out of the water by Radio 1's controversial and outspoken dj Chris Moyles. They profiled him a bit so we all knew who we were talking about and then played a 7 minute extract from his breakfast show on Monday 1 June. He spent the time telling his 7million listeners how "amazing" (if he used that word once he used it a dozen times) he found the previous morning's BBC 1 live service from a church in Peterborough. He described how captivating he found the music and also the baptisms that took place. The guy was struggling to find words to express, well, how amazing he found it all - hence the almost constant use of the word! Search YouTube under "moyles church" and you'll see what I mean. He clearly didn't understand what he was seeing but he loved it and he took 7 minutes on a Monday morning to talk about it.

Richard and Martin played Moyles and then showed the service he was talking about and it was.....amazing. They then got us to reflect on what this all tells us about mission.

What struck me most was the simple fact that never in a million years would I have thought that a charismatic church service would have been appealing to a guy like Moyles and yet......and yet he raved about it.

I was brought up on the philosophy that if you want to reach the unchurched then you'd better make sure you were seeker sensitive; which basically meant not doing anything that would appear to be weird to non christians. But it was the weirdness of this church service that got Moyles attention. It was a good weird...... an attractive weird that drew you in because, although you didn't understand it and it didn't really make a lot of sense you knew, just knew that it was real.

Make no mistake it was the authentic worship of the Father by Christ followers filled with the Spirit that had the impact. Maybe we need to focus more on the level of our desire for the Father's presence and the Son's glory than on trying to make it all "acceptable" to people crying out for an authentic experience of something - anything - so long as it's real.

Happy Birthday Calvin

It was John Calvin's 500th birthday on Friday.... I know he's dead but you know what I mean....If we know anything about Calvin it's likely to have something to do with five points, tulips and predestination (which, actually, isn't a bad start) but I discovered something else about twenty minutes ago whilst catching up on LICC's Connecting with Culture. He really helped us to see the dignity and value of ordinary hard graft. Allow me to quote Graham Tomlin's article:

John Calvin, the famous Genevan Reformer, was born 500 years ago (on Friday). To be frank, the contemporary world finds him a bit of an embarrassment, with his reputation as a serious party-pooper, prosecuting people for dancing at weddings and laughing in church. Under his influence, Geneva was a valiant, yet perhaps unsuccessful, attempt at creating a Christian city – a place where church and state worked together to make holiness of life a real possibility. Nonetheless, his influence looms large over Western society in several key areas.

First, he gave a new dignity to ordinary life and work. Until the Reformation, really serious Christians became either monks or priests. Calvin, on the other hand, argued that the primary way we show love for one another is by working for the good of other people through useful work that contributes to society, which is a the good gift of God. Ordinary secular work was not an unfortunate necessity, a drudgery that all sensible people should try to avoid, but was dignified by becoming the main means of showing our practical concern for others.

Whatever work we do, whether as doctors, bus drivers or teachers, should be seen through the lens of the contribution it makes to the running of a healthy and well-functioning society. As Alistair McGrath put it, 'The Calvinist was encouraged to engage directly with the world rather than to retreat from it.' Calvinists, though sometimes a little dour and serious, certainly were hard-working, dedicated to the good of the common life, rather than purely interested in their own salvation from this world.

Thanks John - and a belated happy birthday!

Growth Through Loss

I was reflecting last night on something I'd recently read about John Owen. Owen, an Englishman, was born in 1616 and is generally regarded as one of the greatest bible teachers and theologians since records began. One of things that made him great was that his intellect was channeled into his ministry as a pastor. His writing is deeply practical and contains a huge passion to see people walk in holiness and thereby know intimacy with Jesus.

Not much is known about his life. But we do know this. He had eleven children and all of them, except one, died in childhood. The other died as a young adult. Owen's wife also died, when he was 59 and after 31 years of marriage. Since his marriage, and until the time of his death, he experienced the birth of a child or the loss of a child every three years.

"How great the pain of searing loss".

Unbelievable pain and brokenness. You just can't get your head round it. But what intrigues and challenges me is the link between his profound experience of loss and and his profound experience of God. What causes one man to run from God in the face of suffering and another to run to him? To what extent did God allow his suffering in order to shape the man for his purpose of writing great theology that would strengthen the Church for hundreds of years to come? I can't escape the truth of Hebrews 12 that tells us that if God is our Father then he will train and discipline us in what ever ways he deems neccesary for his sovereign and glorious purpose. As I said, hard to get your head round.

A Theology of Sleep

In my Quiet Time this morning ("QT", to be honest, is probably too strong a term given the rich heritage of this evangelical practice.....I could barely keep my eyes open I was so tired. Nonetheless I was able to do a bit of speaking and listening that gave some acknowledgement, at the front end of the day, that He is the Potter and I am the clay....how easily and quickly I get that the wrong way round...) I was in Psalm 1-5. Through heavy eyelids I was moved by the power (and irony given my state) of Psalm 3:5:

I lie down to sleep;
I wake again, becasue the Lord sustains me.

"I wake again, becasue the Lord sustains me".... so.... everytime I wake up it's testimony to the grace of God. It's only because He is good, merciful and faithful that I wake up every morning. It means that even whilst I'm asleep God is still at work sustaining all He has made, which includes me! Maybe, if I grasp this truth in my spirit, then the simple act of waking up in the morning will become a means of grace for me (an instrument by which God imparts his blessing).....it would be great if it did.

Perhaps John Baillie in his book Christian Devotion really is on to something when he writes:

I think we hear far too few sermons about sleep. After all, we spend a very large share of our lives sleeping. I suppose that on average I've slept for eight hours out of every twenty-four during the whole of my life, and that means I've slept for well over twenty years. Don’t you agree then that the Christian gospel should have something to say about the sleeping third of our lives as well as the waking two-thirds of them?