Gossip is the Ash Cloud of the Christian Airforce

“Without wood a fire goes out; without gossip a quarrel dies down. As charcoal to embers and as wood to fire, so is a quarrelsome man for kindling strife. The words of a gossip are like choice morsels; they go down to a man’s inmost parts. Like a coating of glaze over earthenware are fervent lips with an evil heart. A malicious man disguises himself with his lips, but in his heart he harbors deceit. Though his speech is charming, do not believe him, for seven abominations fill his heart. His malice may be concealed by deception, but his wickedness will be exposed in the assembly.” Proverbs 26:20-26 NIV

I was struck by this verse in my readings this morning. Imagine lobbing wood onto a fire that is burning real people? None of us have been “telios” as James describes it - someone who is “never at fault in what he says”. But I believe a first sign of revival is the fear of God falling onto our tongues.

To be true, in recent times of change I was sore tempted many times to defend myself. But isn't this where outright gossip starts? With an overdeveloped sense of inner violation fuelled by self-awareness and the perceived need to defend one’s own virtue. But that fire kills people.

The devil himself started his ministry to humans by gossiping to Eve about God. Gossip mixes truth with facts, and facts with fiction. It is like the wicked banking system – the fronts and facades all look so pristine and pure, but they only amount to a smiling mask of the global Highwayman. Maybe that’s a further point – too often in our carnality we feel the right to criticize or slander those who are somehow “less righteous” than we, in our own eyes.

A church can only experience habitual gossip because the sword has not finished its work in certain quarters of our hearts or congregation. Like clay, some parts are more hardy and stubborn than others. But when the core culture swings to fair speech, open rebuke and brotherly love (i.e. plain-sighted relationships - nothing hidden; no minefields left), then the stubborn parts cling more firmly together, but eventually either are broken or removed by the hand of God. The call of God is at stake for proud people, so now is a fine time to walk humbly, love God, honor all and speak the truth plainly and in love.

May we, a sort of first-fruits of the new breeze, bring life not death with our tongues. May our speech “be seasoned with salt”, the salt of grace. Grace opens our eyes to the depths of our own plight and then the heights of God’s love and mercy. We cannot go easily from that place into a blitzkrieg of prickliness.

I also feel that gossip erupts through times of fear. Some have did not like the church of old, but somehow they had their identities shaped in their own Underground Resistance movement. When the war is over, soldiers who fought struggle to normalize to civvy street. But we must take a firm and prayerful stance so that “war talk” dies before resistors become transistors broadcasting propaganda that alienates the weak and erodes the presence of God in their lives and within their friendship spheres.

The sanity factor is that those hungry for God, for holiness and for nobility will beat their swords into plowshares (Isa 2:4) and begin farm-work in team. The truth is that God is also teaching us to beat our plowshares into swords (Joel 3:10), for the weak to say, “I am strong”; for us to stand and fight shoulder to shoulder against the real enemy and for the multitudes in captivity to his will. Now that is a noble purpose.

Beating plowshares into swords implies that somewhere beforehand, weapons of warfare were turned into tools for personal benefit. God is reversing this. I refuse to spend my remaining years being an arbiter of the petty and a doctor to the self-afflicted. Let’s agree on this. Let’s set a standard of holiness “by accident” as we consider the opposition suffered by the Lord Himself. Let’s refuse to be a party to any camp of mice and men. Let us rather go outside the camp and suffer with Jesus, for righteousness’, not unrighteousness’, sake.

I believe a new wind is blowing. I believe God has not grounded the fleet of warplanes simply because one man’s volcanic emotions and heated memories try to spew ash over our airspace. We are not wimps. I would rather risk some air accidents than back away from the noble mission of the gospel. I would rather die flying than wither away on the ground, overshadowed by the ashy insecurities of small people. We are called to love all, but God-love is robust, masculine, directional and un-manipulatable. We are called to serve all, but as servants of God not men. We are called to be kind to all, but kindness must flow from the fount of the fear of God, not the fear of consequences.

Amen to that. May God seal our tongues today, with salty grace and sweet explosiveness.

Nick

The Bible's Role in Sacrifice or Self-Enrichment

I thought for a moment the other day - a flash moment - of those now famous words of the RAF pilot-martyr (enshrined in his final diary entry)... "the universe is so vast and ageless that a man's worth can only be justified by the measure of his sacrifice". I memorized them then, somehow feeling deep inside that he was more accurately reflecting the gospel than thousands of prosperity-addicted preachers. We are truly the first generation of the church to be shocked by suffering. Surprised, not by hope, but by hardship. not that we have too much of either really, compared to burning saints on Nero's lampposts.

The poor are blessed with rich faith, but the rich point their faith towards the blessings. Suffering produces sweetness, but saccharine alternatives now abound, all proffering saltless options for suffering-free lifestyles.

Trading Life for a safer lifestyle truly is as a foolish as tearing down our barns to build bigger ones.

Helen Keller, that deaf and blind author and activist, once said, "Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing”.

My final thought is the huge need for the pure gospel of Christ, rooted in the final hope of the resurrection, to be preached nakedly as never before. Without revelation, we are left with lesser inspirations. Here is a four quadrant grid of possibility. Where do you fit?

• Compulsive Enrichment. We are all born this way - with the desire to know, to have power, to be safe and prosper at any cost. Let's call this "The Banker's Syndrome"
• Inspired Enrichment. The Bible has been abused and flogged and squeezed to bring forth promises of health, happiness and high ground for the lowly. Suffering is now banished "via scriptura". Let's call this "The False Gospel of the Middle Class"
• Compulsive Sacrifice. We see the significance that suffering and martyrdom releases, and with it we see the chance of fame and remembrance. We are driven to a poverty-minded celebration of self-denial. Let's call this "The Hair-Shirt Gospel"
• Inspired Sacrifice. Could it be that the gospel could reveal a higher hope and glory than all our earthly goals combined? Could we again see preachers so inspired by this message that they themselves align their lives and futures around it, thus making their messages totally compelling...? Dare we call this..."The Fertile Gospel"?

love

Nick

Trials, Files and Furnaces

“Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him.” (James 1:2-5 NIV)

Who of us have not asked the Father to help us grow far more fruit of the Spirit in our lives? How many of us have not wrestled with the notion of "abiding in the Vine" and "waiting for God"? Too often we spout the theory while it is only half-formed in us. Doctrines of life are not life. Ways are not the goal; only the means to the Goal.

God forgive us, and He does. But now, apprehend afresh the reality that the fruit comes by God creating the circumstances conducive to the growth of the fruit. Stop running from these things. if in the end our suffering produces life, peace and a rich eternity, learn to make it your friend.

How can I learn to grow patience unless through delays?

How can I be taught the gentleness of the Spirit unless through hard men?

How can I grow joy unless through lesser joys being stripped away?

How can I learn to abide in heavenly peace unless in war and times of strife?

How can I become loving with God-love unless I am hated and have enemies?

How can I be kind as Christ is kind, unless I am exposed to unkindness?

How can I find goodness abiding in my heart, unless I dwell amongst badness?

How can I be faithful, unless I face fickleness and difficulties that oblige me to walk by faith, not by sight?

How can I control myself by the Spirit’s power unless I face trials and temptations? Unless I see and take the way out God has promised always to provide?

So often we cry out to God for deliverance, when we should be asking Him for wisdom. This is what James tells us – when facing many and diverse trials and temptations, ask God for wisdom in those trials. And know that you are blessed when you face them, because “the testing of your faith develops perseverance, and perseverance must finish its work so that “you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything”!

Romans 5:3-4 tells us that “suffering produces perseverance; perseverance character; and character, hope”.

Jesus, forgive us for asking You to remove all the nasty things, which are the very things You are using to develop the fruit of the Spirit in us. And it is only this fruit that will grant to us eternal rewards forever and ever. Amen.

Midnight Plight of the Middle-Class Brass

Not quite plastic tough elastic

Makes me spastic this
Middle class brass bubble
That keeps me calm in

An ocean of trouble

Above pathetic but

Unsympathetic anaesthetic this
Middle class mask that doubles
My deceit as a priceless antique

In the rubble.

Oh Hollywood have a heart and fall silent

For one moment as I glimpse a

Flash of your dirty knickers.

I thought I saw the quite absurd -

It could have been a tweetie bird.
Something flickered.

I'm not sure any more because the

Bubble burst for only a brief moment.

What price!? What price!? What price

I pay for a lifelong stay in the

Semi-Penthouse suite. Sweet and sour.

Cometh the hour cometh the bubble man;

Here's trouble man,

It's double-or-nothing-man.

That's something, surely?

Oh so rich but so poorly this surly soul

Surrounded by such cool gadgets -

Gosh I'm posh-underspiced, overrated and

Extra-bored. Lord, get me outta here.

Gottagetouttahere. Gottagetouttahere!

Slow train comin' down the track, it's

Bare and burnt and a bad sight for

RayBan eyes. The seats are worn, torn, forlorn from

Years of being sat on and spat on by riders

Who longed for the liFe chained to Me.

How ironic, this sad sardonic

Double-edged sword signed 'Jealousy'..

Everyone is grasping upwards;

No-one knows contentment except in flash

Moments of secret ecstasy. Why me?

Why me Lord? Why not leave me to my

Unerring inertia of middle-class meaningless

Momentum? Why not leave me as a...

As a…silver-plated parody of perpetual momentum

On the desk of the gods?

It was not my lot. It was not even a little bit.

It was a nothing. Now that bare burnt

Train is going….somewhere, at least.

Could a different destiny

Rest in me Somehow?

Blessed are the poor in faith - but

Blessings are the faith of those terrified of Poverty.

No chance of a cuppa tea from enamel again?

My clumsy refrain in a Train.

Happy with nothing, for there I can possess..

Everything.

It's easier to sing but let it chug.

I have my mug of char and somewhere,

Somewhere far I know, somewhere

Under the rainbow (way out of sight)

I will find a place to grow out of my diminution -

Out of this awful middle-class

Morph-dwarf attrition that forced me

To view the world through

The big end of a telescope.

Hope. Hope. Hope again.

My refrain on a train.

Let me smell it, glimpse it, brush it briefly

As it's promise passes by my

Middle-Class Bubble

Stretched tight with my craning.

Without it, without it's touch,

I feel Life draining out.

I'm near the end of my rope.

With one touch I can go on in the hope of....

Significance

ND

My Changing View of Mission

Well, here we are at Easter 2010, the time to celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. God loved the whole world that He sent His only Son on a Mission to rescue us all from our own sins. For many centuries, "mission" was a term aimed at God and his self-revelation to the world through Jesus Christ. It is His mission! He is the One Who so loves the world that He gave His only Son. It is true though that His church is missional. Since Christ's resurrection almost 2000 years ago, the church is "in-mission". We carry God's message of reconciliation in Jesus to the world. To remain here on earth means God still has good works for us. He still wants Jesus to shine through His church as light in the darkness that is over nations.

But the church is not the light, nor the fulness of the Kingdom of Jesus. She is, in the words of David Bosch, "God's experimental garden on earth, a fragment of the reign of God, having 'the first-fruits of the Spirit' as a pledge of what is to come".

Before moving to England, with all its mixed heritage and maladies, my definition of mission was too narrow. I spent some years in a missional organization which espoused "church planting" as the means by which the gospel was to be propagated amongst the nations. This was done in good faith. Nevertheless, as a result, I was tempted subconsciously to view the church and her leaders more as the custodians of mission than God Himself. In this area I fear I became a little humanistic in my orthopraxy (although never holding Arminianism as orthodox!).

This narrow view of mission leaned me oftentimes towards an emphasis on responsibility in my preaching, at the expense of God's virtues in Christ. That is an embarrassing confession actually. It tipped me in subtle ways towards seeking out leaders and missionaries, rather than preaching, prayer and pastoring all people. What should have happened accidently crept into the realm of the deliberate - what I mean is that leaders and missionaries (all ministries, for that matter) emerge "accidently" as we preach the Word of God deliberately...

Even though God is sovereign in all matters human looking backwards, to this day I carry regret in the many who were hastened through spiritual adolescence because their own zeal, ambitions and giftedness reacted chemically with my perceptions of a dying and needy world.

There are much more horrible consequences to "missionalism" in full flight though. Christopher Wright speaks of the faulty logic of "looking for a biblical basis for mission rather than seeing the missional heart of God in the Bible". Of course, in many ways narrowly-defined missionalism introduces both discontent and potential disqualification into the wider ranks of the saints - if 'normal' husbands and wives and office workers are not somehow "engaged in the dramatic", then they could well conclude that they had surrendered themselves to a "lesser life". How tragic this is, and all the more when you see the sweeping "mission-mandate" in the word of God is not geographic nor gift-orientated, but local, normal, mundane, day-to-day. The Word commends every saint to "remain in the situation he was in when God called him" (1 Cor 7:20). We also see that both Paul and Jesus commended various churches for faithfulness in the local house; for abiding with each other; for holding onto truth in testing that comes to their city; in assembling together; in being salt and light; in being ready to give reason for the hope they have; in washing their wives with the Word; in hard work; in.....abiding! And for a few men and women, filled with and directed by the Spirit, they are moved to move beyond. The non-geographic outworks geographically.

In 1978, Johannes Verkuyl identified 4 impure mission motives that have beset the Christian church in her zeal to "go"... "(a) the imperialist motive - turning natives into docile subjects of colonial authorities; (b) the cultural motive - mission as the transfer of the missionary's "superior" culture; (c) the romantic motive - the desire to go to far-away and exotic countries and people's; (d) the motive of ecclesiastical colonialism - the urge to export one's own confession and church order to other territories".

The genius David Bosch expanded this further in his book, Transforming Mission, to include more adequate but still incomplete motives for mission: "(a) the conversion motive - emphasizing personal decision and commitment, but narrowing down the reign of God to the sum total of saved souls; (b) the eschatalogical motive - the eagerness to see the return of Christ which ignores the realities of life and its living in the here and now; (c) the "plantatio ecclesiae" (church planting) motive - prioritizing the gathering of communities of the committed but identifying the church with the Kingdom of God (they are not the same thing); and (d) the philanthropic motive - challenging the church to seek justice in the world but equating God's reign with an improved society".

In the face of these impure and inadequate motives, the best definition I have ever come across in my life to date is that of Bartholomew and Goheen, in their book The Drama of Scripture: "God’s mission is this: to restore the creation. Israel’s mission flows from this: God chose a people to again embody God’s creational purposes for humanity and so be a light to the nations, and the Old Testament narrates the history of Israel’s response to their divine calling. Jesus' mission: When Jesus comes on the scene, He takes upon Himself the missionary vocation which had been Israel's. He embodies God's purpose for humanity and accomplishes the victory over sin, opening the way to a new world. When His earthly ministry is over, He leaves His Church with the mandate to continue in that same mission. And so the Church's mission: in our time, standing as we do between Pentecost and the return of Jesus, our central task as the people of God is to witness to the rule of Jesus Christ over all of life".

God's mission - His unfinished work - is the reconciliation of the world to Himself in the self-revelation of Jesus Christ. In His mission we find the meaningful life mandate for every single Christian. While it requires preachers, it is not all about preaching. While God moves through His church, it is not all about church planting. While he commends us assembling together, it cannot only be about meetings. While His rule can change society, it is not firstly about social justice. While Jesus is coming back soon, it is not merely about speeding His return.

It about nations being discipled into Christ, one person and family at a time. It is about incarnational belief - the Holy Spirit finding hearts to abide in, and in so doing, the salt becoming salty wherever it may fall. It is about healed marriages and healthy divorcees; it is about both blessings and tribulations suffered well; it is about both joy and perseverance; spiritual gifts and public politics; teaching and miracles; quiet times and shouting from the rooftops. It is God's mission where every saint has a place, and a profound one. We all so quickly look to this event or that outpouring, even though Christ warned us that "the Kingdom of God comes without our observation". One thing I do know, is that wherever mission truly brings in the Kingdom it is always a miracle of God - the unfathomable working of the Holy Ghost in impossible ways, deep within the people He inhabits. Possibly the two most haunting legacies of all from secularizing the Mission of God are the Holy Ghost becoming more a lever than the Lover; and the Word being more principles than the Person.

I trust this piece brings you peace. I trust you engage your mind on this matter. May God show you how small you are, and how much you matter to Him. May you find your place in obscurity; and in your success may God get the publicity. May we see churches arise where godly mums are championed as much as powerful evangelists; where Kingdom-minded businessmen are as much heroes as charity workers; where preachers are sacramental but not sacred cows; where every means of grace has meaning beyond its visible appearance and applause.

Hallelujah!

N