They say we go too fast! This accusation comes from all directions. Our enemies do not like our speed and our friends are afraid of it. What do they mean? If they had complained that we did not go fast enough, I could understand them. If our enemies had argued that after all we say about the evils of sin, the terrors of the Judgment Day, and the damnation of hell, we do not believe in these things ourselves, I could understand that, and would feel humbled under their indictment.

If our friends came together and said, “Why don’t you increase the speed? Look at the dying millions at home and abroad. You have evidently got a wonderful way of reaching the masses. You can adapt yourselves to all peoples and countries and climates. Why don’t you push on faster? Why don’t you train more evangelists – send out more workers – hunt up more criminals, drunkards and fallen women? Go faster; get up more steam!” Now, this seems to me would be the natural way of talking for both foes and friends. But no! The cry is not “Go faster” but “You go too fast!” What do they mean?

My comrades, the General issues the command to every country, and to every division, and to every corps, and to every soldier – to advance. The pace of the past is to be no standard for the future. We must go faster. Obstacles, difficulties, and enemies shall be swept before us, and the mouths of those who condemn us shall be forever stopped before the Lord.

read on

Jesus is the true and better Adam who passed the test in the garden and whose obedience is imputed to us.

Jesus is the true and better Abel who, though innocently slain, has blood now that cries out, not for our condemnation, but for acquittal.

Jesus is the true and better Abraham who answered the call of God to leave all the comfortable and familiar and go out into the void not knowing wither he went to create a new people of God.

Jesus is the true and better Isaac who was not just offered up by his father on the mount but was truly sacrificed for us. And when God said to Abraham, “Now I know you love me because you did not withhold your son, your only son whom you love from me,” now we can look at God taking his son up the mountain and sacrificing him and say, “Now we know that you love us because you did not withhold your son, your only son, whom you love from us.”

Jesus is the true and better Jacob who wrestled and took the blow of justice we deserved, so we, like Jacob, only receive the wounds of grace to wake us up and discipline us.

Jesus is the true and better Joseph who, at the right hand of the king, forgives those who betrayed and sold him and uses his new power to save them.

Jesus is the true and better Moses who stands in the gap between the people and the Lord and who mediates a new covenant.

Jesus is the true and better Rock of Moses who, struck with the rod of God’s justice, now gives us water in the desert.

Jesus is the true and better Job, the truly innocent sufferer, who then intercedes for and saves his stupid friends.

Jesus is the true and better David whose victory becomes his people’s victory, though they never lifted a stone to accomplish it themselves.

Jesus is the true and better Esther who didn’t just risk leaving an earthly palace but lost the ultimate and heavenly one, who didn’t just risk his life, but gave his life to save his people.

Jesus is the true and better Jonah who was cast out into the storm so that we could be brought in.

Jesus is the real Rock of Moses, the real Passover Lamb, innocent, perfect, helpless, slain so the angel of death will pass over us. He’s the true temple, the true prophet, the true priest, the true king, the true sacrifice, the true lamb, the true light, the true bread.

The Bible’s really not about you—it’s about him.

HT: Justin Taylor

HI Steve

Thought provoking!

So we need suffering to see a movement happen in Western Australia? What kind do you think we should expect?

Glenn

Here’s my response:

Hi Glenn

I think the best answer is don’t think about it. Suffering and persecution will find us if we are pursuing God’s will to redeem a lost world.

But do pray for boldness. The people who know tell me boldness in proclamation is a key characteristic of church planting movements.

It’s the story of the early church and the story of Christianity in the global south.

Trust that whatever hardships come your way, God will turn them around for his purposes. We follow a crucified and risen Lord.

Steve

Acts has no purpose, no plot, no structure, and no history without suffering.
Paul House

I was in Singapore having just left a restricted field somewhere in Asia. I had sought out someone with a lot of experience in church planting movements who could help me make sense of what I was learning.

There’s one line I will never forget—”We’ve never seen a church planting movement without persecution.”

Suffering and persecution go hand in hand with the expansion of the Christian faith.

They are the unifying theme of the book of Acts. Without them the command to take the gospel to the ends of the world would never have been fulfilled.

Want to learn more? Here’s the article by Paul House entitled Suffering and the Purpose of Acts

Here’s my summary: Suffering Persecution Acts – House.pdf

Jay: The first characteristic was white-hot faith. What’s next?

Steve: The second one is commitment to a cause. Movements aren’t just about my experience of God; they’re about changing the world.

Every movement has a unique gift that God has given them. In the Catholic religious orders refer to their founding charism. Each order has call that members commit themselves to.

Obviously every Christian movement should share in what unties us all together as believers in Christ, but alongside of that would be a particular cause that God gives a movement and there are high levels of commitment and its not just an institution that’s demanding commitment, its the cause that draws people.

If we could just be half as committed as the average professional sporting team, we’d probably win the world to Christ in a very short period of time. By why are these people in that team committed? Sure they’re getting paid well probably, but they also love the game, and there’s an energy within them that drives the. So movements have high levels of commitment.

John Wesley rides into Bristol, there’s 900 on the books in the Methodist society there. When he left he had removed 143 of them, because he’s brought discipline, he removed the wife beaters, the smugglers, the drunkards. They’re a mission field, but they are not to be in the heart of his movements.

Movements make high levels of demand on one another and maintain that will. What I call commitment mechanisms, such as accountability groups. They know where they’re going and they expect that of each other.

Look at the heart of Jesus’ movement – high commitment, plenty of avenues of access and connect with the world around, but if you want to be a part of the twelve or the seventy then he is going to expect a lot.

There are striking parallels in the story of the Episcopalian demise in the US and Canada and the woes of the Uniting Church in Australia.

The heart of the problem is a failure of nerve in confronting a culture that is hostile to the Christian faith. Hitchcock quotes TS Eliot who said of liberalism that,

[It] tends to release energy rather than accumulate it, to relax rather than to fortify. It is a movement not so much defined by its end, as by its starting point; away from, rather than towards, something definite.

In religion, Liberalism may be characterized by a progressive discarding of elements in historical Christianity which appear superfluous or obsolete, confounded with practices and abuses which are legitimate objects of attack. But as its movement is controlled rather by its origin than by any goal, it loses force after a series of rejections, and with nothing to destroy is left with nothing to uphold and nowhere to go.

Unfortunately, this history will be repeated in the postmodern world by the stream of the emerging church described by Ed Stetzer as “Revisionists“. The scenery has changed but not the story.

Dynamic movements are committed to a cause. But what if you’re not sure what that cause is any more?

Tim Keller writes:

A generation ago, it would have been hard to imagine evangelicals unable to agree on what the simple gospel is: 1) God made you and you must have a relationship with him, 2) but your sin separates you from God. 3) Jesus, God’s Son took the punishment your sins deserved. 4)If you repent for your sins and trust in his work for your salvation, you will be forgiven, justified and accepted freely by grace, and indwelled with his Spirit until you die and go to heaven.

But many today challenge this way of expressing the gospel.

In A New Kind of Christian Brian McLaren’s character Neo says he doesn’t “think most Christians have any idea of what the gospel really is.” When his interlocutor responds that he thought the gospel was “accepting Christ as your personal savior and justification by faith not works based on the finished work of Christ on the cross” Neo responds, “Yes, that’s exactly what most modern Christians would say…. reduc[ing] the gospel to modern dimensions—laws, steps, simple diagrams, complete with a sales close.” When pressed on what the gospel is, Neo insists that it can’t be reduced to a formula, other than the one Jesus used, “The Kingdom of God is at hand.” He then quickly adds that we shouldn’t use that short-hand either, since ‘everything is contextual’ and the term ‘kingdom’ would be opaque to many people today.

Read Tim Keller’s response to this postmodern confusion regarding the gospel.

Heroism is the lost chord, the missing note of present day Christianity!

Every true soldier is a hero! A Soldier without heroism is a Chocolate Soldier! Who has not been stirred to scorn and mirth at the very thought of a Chocolate Soldier? In peace true soldiers are captive lions, fretting in their cages. War gives them their liberty and sends them, like boys bounding out of school, to obtain their hearts desire or perish in the attempt. Battle is the soldiers vital breath! Peace turns him into a stooping asthmatic. War makes a whole man again, and gives him the heart, strength and vigor of a hero.

Every true Christian is a soldier of Christ a hero par excellence! Braver than the bravest, scorning the soft seductions of peace and her oft-repeated warnings against hardship, disease, danger and death, whom he counts among his bosom friends.

The otherwise Christian is a chocolate Christian! Dissolving in water and melting at the smell of fire. Sweet they are! Bonbons, lollipops! Living their lives on a glass dish or in a cardboard box, each clad in his soft clothing, a little frilled white paper to preserve his dear little delicate constitution.

CT Studd
Chocolate Soldier

CT Studd gave up fame, fortune and family to take the gospel to China, India and Africa. With his wife he founded World Evangelistic Crusade.

I did a great job of messing up my faith and my life as a young adult. Until I met a guy back in Australia who had come to faith on the hippie trail in India through Dilaram House—a ministry pioneered by Floyd and Sally McClung.

Six months later I ended up half way around the world in Holland with Dilaram. The next two years, mostly in Amsterdam on the Ark, changed my life.

Floyd and Sally are still going strong. I hear they are moving to South Africa to train church planters.

Here’s an article by Floyd on Apostolic Passion. Let it stir you.

HT: Under the Iceberg.

“Living on the Devil’s Doorstep: From Kabul to Amsterdam” (Floyd McClung)

He can only get away from death by continually stepping within an inch of it. A soldier surrounded by enemies, if he is to cut his way out, needs to combine a strong desire for living with a strange carelessness about dying. He must not merely cling to life, for then he will be a coward, and will not escape. He must not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide, and will not escape. He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it; he must desire life like water and yet drink death like wine.

“Orthodoxy” (G. K. Chesterton), 91-92