SOME HELPFUL THOUGHTS FROM CHRISTIAN LEADERS

SOME HELPFUL THOUGHTS FROM CHRISTIAN LEADERS

THE TRUE CHRISTIAN FAITH

This was written to counter liberation theology and false ideologies; it is especially helpful in these last days when we, as believers, do not see and understand clearly what we believe and why we believe:

“Christianitiy is a religion of revelation received. It is a religion of faith in a special revelation, given through specific historical events, of salvation for sinners. The object of Christian faith is the Creator’s disclosure of himself as triune Saviour of his guilty creatures through the mediation of Jesus Christ, the Father’s Word and Son. This is a disclosure authoritatively reported and interpreted in the God-inspired pages of Holy Scripture. Faith is trust in the Christ of history who is the Christ of the Bible. The revelation which the Gospel declares and faith receives is God’s gracious answer to the question of human sin. Its purpose is to restore guilty rebels to fellowship with their Maker. Faith in Christ is no less God’s gift than is the Christ of faith; the faith which receives Christ is created in fallen men by the sovereign work of the Spirit, restoring spiritual sight to their blind minds. Thus true Christian faith is an adoring acknowledgement of the omnipotent mercy of God both in providing a perfect Saviour for hopeless, helpless sinners and in drawing them to him.” (J.I. Packer)

Notice the concise, yet accurate statements, punctuated by important qualifying adjectives and phrases which seek to dispel wrong and inaccurate teachings over the years, and the consequences of these wrong teachings have been disastrous among God’s people and the church.
For instance, we need to acknowledge our faith is due to a special revelation from God, who reveals himself in the Scripture, in creation, and in our conscience; it is God’s gracious answer to the plight of fallen humanity – God need not disclose himself to guilty creatures like us – and we cannot reach God through our own efforts, because we are spiritually blind and spiritually dead. Hence all the arguments to justify ourselves and to blame God for all our own negativity spring from these vain efforts to excuse ourselves and to seek to be our own god. It is only as the Spirit draws man to himself and ‘open their blind eyes’ to see that man is led to conviction of sin, repentance, and to a stance of asking mercy from God. Only then, in his mercy and grace, God responds to him and makes him spiritually alive (regenerated) and plants the seed of his life into this wretched being.

God condescends to speak in our own language, recorded in the Scripture; he sends his Son to be the Mediator, the Word, and the Redeemer – the Son is the Christ of history, the Christ of the Gospels – he is not the Christ invented by men with political agenda, nationalistic agenda, and so on – hence he clearly declares that he is the way, the truth and the life; they who have the Son have life (eternal life). The Son enters into human history in the incarnation – God took on ‘flesh’, became human in order to redeem humanity – he took on our punishment for our sin, he, who is sinless, bore the penalty of sin and the wrath of God in order to effect the plan of salvation for those who believe.

Man is a worshipping being who has refused in his pride to worship his Maker; so he turns the light of divine revelation into the darkness of man-made religion, and enslaves himself to unworthy deities of his own devising, made in his own image or that of creatures inferior to himself.

SOME HELPFUL SHARINGS FROM CHRISTIAN TEACHERS (B)

Oswald Chambers (well known for “My utmost for His highest’) and C.S. Lewis (Apologist and writer of many books including ‘The Screwtape letters’ and ‘The Narnia Chronicles’) were both well known Christian teachers.
Both of them believed that informed thought is integral to the process of discipleship; to them thinking was vital for spiritual growth and maturity.
Both teachers agreed that:
* God gives us life to live for his glory.
* Since the Fall, tragedy, distortions, frustration, and waste have been
the regular marks of life in this world.
* Reason cannot save us, as its secular worshipers thought it could.
* Knowing and serving Jesus Christ the Redeemer and his Father, who
through Christ is now our Father, is the only thing that gives life
meaning.
* Human life has always been lived on the edge of a precipice,
sometimes with danger to this body and always with danger to the
spirit.
* Death is inescapable and wisdom requires us to remember this and
live our lives accordingly.
* While God protects his people against spiritual shipwreck, he often
puts them through pain for their spiritual progress and sometimes
permits and uses war to that end.
* Christians are called not to understand everything God is doing but
to be faithful to him.

In the light of war and death, both Chambers and Lewis were at one in stressing the above.
Chambers on war: “Because God overrules a thing and brings good out of it does not mean that the thing is a good thing…However, if war has made me reconcile myself with the fact that there is sin in human beings, I shall no longer go with my head in the clouds, or buried in the sand like an ostrich, but I shall be wishing to face facts as they are. And that will be a good thing for it is not being reconciled to the fact of sin that produces all the disasters in life.
Lewis’s Screwtape (the senior devil) knows that this to be true. He tells Wormwood (his junior) not to hope for too much from the war, for it will not destroy the faith of real believers and will under God produce a measure of realism about life, death, and the issues of eternity that was not there before. Screwtape said to his junior, “One of our best weapons, contented worldliness is rendered useless. In wartimes not even a human can believe that he is going to live forever.
“War,” said Lewis the preacher, “makes death real to us and that would have been regarded as one of its blessings by most of the great Christians of the past.” He told his audience of undergraduates at Oxford that trusting God for the future, and attending to present daily duties and tasks, is the way to honour God in wartime, as at all other times.
He continued – ‘It is the most natural thing in the world to be scared, and the clearest evidence that God’s grace is at work in our hearts is when we do not get into panics…The remarkable thing about fearing God is that when you fear God you fear nothing else, whereas if you do not fear God you fear everything else.

Today, wars are being fought in many countries; conflicts, deaths are occurring all over the world. Some believers I talked to are very scared of the ‘great tribulation’ as they studied the book of Revelation. The comments by Chambers and Lewis in this regard are certainly helpful.
In contexts of wars and conflicts (even spiritual ones), we can take all precautions that are responsibly certified as reasonable and desirable. While keeping watch and being careful, always remember that God is in charge and Romans 8:28 is true – he is working for the good of all those who love him. And finally, pray for courage to cope with whatever comes, in the confidence that Isaac Watts was right when he wrote:

Should all the host of death
And powers of hell unknown
Put their most dreadful forms
Of rage and malice on,
I shall be safe, for Christ displays
Superior power and guardian gracae.
Here, surely, is the wisdom and comfort we all need today in the face of conflicts and possible wars and tribulation.

MORE ‘PEARLS’ FROM J.C.RYLE

‘”The dullness of memory is a common spiritual disease among believers. It prevails as widely now as it did in the days of the first disciples: it is one thing among many proofs of our fallen and corrupt condition. Even after men have been renewed by the Holy Spirit, their readiness to forget the promises and precepts of the gospel is continually bringing them into trouble. They hear many things which they ought to store up in their hearts, but seem to forget as fast as they hear; and then, perhaps after many days, affliction brings them up before their recollection, and at once it flashes across their minds that they heard them long ago! They find that they had heard, but heard in vain.
The true cure for a dull memory in religion, is to get deeper love toward Christ, and affections more thoroughly set on things above. We do not really forget the things we love, and the objects which we keep continually under our eves: the names of our parents and children are always remembered; the face of the husband or wife we love is graven on the tablets of our hearts. The more our affection are engaged in Christ’s service, the more easy shall we find it to remember Christ’s words.”

The thoughts here are so very poignant: it is no wonder that Jesus, in writing to the church in Ephesus, in the book of Revelation, rebuked them for losing their first love, despite many ‘happenings’ in that church which seemed to indicate that the church was doing very well. God sees the heart and notes the affections, the desires, the motives within us. The Lord reminded Samuel, in the choice of David as king, that God looks at the heart and not at the external appearance (whether it be looks, mannerism, or apparent spirituality). The Lord bypassed all the brothers of David, even though they appeared impressive externally, in his choice of a king to succeed Saul.
Although David was not without fault and sin, yet the Bible termed him as a man “after God’s heart”. Are our hearts full of love for God and our neighbours? Do we love because He first loved us? Are we indeed suffering from spiritual dementia?