The Unquenchable Flame

Last week I read The Unquenchable Flame by Mike Reeves which, as stated in the sub-heading, is an introduction to the reformation.

At New Word Alive this year Mike Reeves led the seminar on Justification in which he used most of the material of this book.

It was just amazing to learn about how all of 500 years ago some people started reading the Bible without the Pope’s interpretation and how there eyes were opened to the reality of what the Bible really says! This is the faith that we now hold to and truly say that we are justified by faith alone, not by our works!

My favourite person to learn about has to be Martin Luther, ‘God’s Volcano’ as entitled in the book, a fitting description. Here is a great quote from the book that Luther said after he understood that his justification lay in God’s hands and not his own:

‘At last, by the mercy of God, meditating day and night, I gave heed to the context of the words, namely, ‘In it the righteousness of God is revealed, as it is written, “He through faith is righteous shall live.”‘ There I began to understand that the righteousness of God is that by which the righteous lives by a gift of God, namely by faith. And this is the meaning: the righteousness of God is revealed by the gospel, namely, the passive righteousness with which merciful God justifies us by faith, as it is written, ‘He who through faith is righteous shall live.’ Here I felt that I was altogether born again and had entered through paradise itself through open gates.’

It is so amazing to learn about how this great doctrine turned the Church and most of Europe upside down. If you want to download the talks on it they are on the NWA website.

This book not only was so interesting, but also really encouraged me in my faith!

Lost for Words

I have just come back from a really great evening at my Church called ‘Lost for Words’. The aim of the evening was to help give people some great ways in which they can respond to arguments that they may come up against, it was essentially apologetics training.

We looked at both the offense and the defense, basically how we can defend the Christian faith and how we can go on the offensive against what others believe.

On the defense side we looked at the question of suffering. The most helpful point for me was looking at John 11 and seeing Jesus’ two different responses to the one statement posed by Mary and Martha, that being ‘Lord if you had been here my brother would not have died.’ Jesus responds to Martha saying the great words of verse 25-26, that He is the resurrection and the life. Jesus responds to Mary by weeping with her (32-35). In this Jesus’ gives us a solution to the problem of death: Himself! But He is also able to sympathise with our struggles, as He shows with Mary, because He is the most human person to have ever lived, because He is the only sinless one to have ever lived.

On the offense we looked mainly at asking the question ‘Why do you believe that?’ In this you essentially just ask people why they believe what they believe and see if they don’t really know why, or if their beliefs are contradictory with what they say. This was similar to some material we got from Dan Strange at New Word Alive about always taking people back to the beginning, keep asking why until you get to the beginning of all things. This is where the Christian can stand as we have Genesis 1 that tells us God was before anything else, but no atheist can claim to know what occurred at the start of all things.

I feel this night was a very useful way of practically thinking of how to speak to people, I hope I, and you now you have read this, can put these things into practice!

What is Idolatry?

Recently I have been thinking a lot about Idolatry. This is mainly because I was giving a talk on Ephesians 5:1-21 at our youth groups in which Paul talks about imitating God, and not anything or anyone else, which is essentially idolatry.

I had some really useful material from a seminar track at New Word Alive 2009 by Dr Dan Strange. Here are some really useful thoughts on idolatry.

‘Idolatry is radical self-harm. It is also radically, terribly ironic. In trying to be as God, we have ended up less human. The principle affirmed in several places in the Bible is that you become like the object of your worship (e.g., Ps 115:8; Is 41:24; 44:9) is very apparent. If you worship that which is not God, you reduce the image of God in yourself. If you worship that which is not even human, you reduce your humanity still further.’ The Mission of God by Chris Wright

We never learn that false gods never fail to fail. This is the only thing about a false god you can depend on.

Sin isn’t only doing bad things, it is more fundamentally making good things into ultimate things. Sin is building your life and meaning on anything, even a very good thing, more than God. Whatever we build our life on will drive us and enslave us. Sin is primarily idolatry. Tim Keller

Here is what I think is a prominent example of these points, in a very sad situation. The quote is From Johnathan Edwards, the Gold Medalist who once professed a real love for Jesus.

“I never doubted my belief in God for a single moment until I retired from sport. Faith was the reason that I decided to become a professional athlete, in the same way that it was fundamental to every decision I made. It was the foundation of my existence, the thing that made everything else make sense. It was not a sacrifice to refuse to compete on Sundays during my early career because that would imply that athletics was important in and of itself. It was not. It was always a means to an end: glorifying God.

But when I retired, something happened that took me by complete surprise. I quickly realised that athletics was more important to my identity than I believed possible. I was the best in the world at what I did and suddenly that was not true any more. With one facet of my identity stripped away, I began to question the others and, from there, there was no stopping. The foundations of my world were slowly crumbling.

When you think about it rationally, it does seem incredibly improbable that there is a God.” (Taken from The Times Online – read full article here, an interview of Johnathan Edwards with Matthew Syed on June 27th 2007)

When the object of your worship is taken from you, your world will begin to fall apart. Unfortunately, this was Athletics for Johnathan Edwards. I hope you don’t feel I’m personally attacking him, I’m not, I just think his situation is a very real and scary example of how, without knowing it, we can build our lives upon idols.