The Stop at the end of the Never Ending Rollercoaster

Some days everything just seems overwhelming. Whether it’s been an exhausting workday or I’m feeling overcome by my sin, whether I’m agonising over some social screwup or just woke up feeling crap, sometimes it just feels too much. On these days and in all honesty on many of my good days as well, life feels like it’s just one massive never ending rollercoaster. Full of ups and downs and random twists and turns and arbitrary rolls. Often it feels like I’ve been riding this rollercoaster since forever with forever more to go.

The metaphor seems pretty dark and hopeless. But rollercoasters aren’t all lows, there are plenty of highs and life has plenty of fun and laughter and joy. 
And then there’s  the stop at the end, see this rollercoaster is an inadequate metaphor for life and life doesn’t end where it started. It ends somewhere else altogether. In the end it is the knowledge and hope of the stop at the end of the rollercoaster that keeps the highs in perspective, puts the lows in their place and propels me through the nebulous depths. The thing about this journey is that I’m not riding blind. I know exactly where I’m going. This metaphorical rollercoaster was the most expensive in all of metaphor land but has the most amazing destination.

And I will know that every single bit of the rollercoaster journey to get here was worth it because this place is where I was always supposed to be.

At the end of the journey, after the tears and joy, pain and ecstasy, hope and despair, there is a destination where there is none of that. No more weeping or mourning or crying or pain or death or stomach turning twists. And there, waiting on the platform as the rollercoaster pulls in is this guy, but he’s not waiting. He’s been there every step of the way, even the parts of the rollercoaster I rode alone he has been there. Waiting is maybe the wrong word, it’s more like here at the end of this neverending rollercoaster this constant companion throughout the journey has finally been fully revealed.

Up to this point I have been aware of this guy. Now though, tears flooding down my face in a torrent of shameless emotion I get to run to his arms, like a husband seeing his wife for the first time after a long time apart or a child seeing their parent for the first time in ages...but a thousand times better... Finally I understand all of who he is and what I mean to him. And that guy standing there on this platform will hold me at arms length and look me in the eyes. He will take his thumb and wipe the tears from my face and softly he will say “well done, my good and faithful servant”. 

And it will be well with my soul.

The Foreignness of Forgiveness

I often get asked what the hardest thing is about being a Christian. It's a pretty common question and there are no shortage of “typical” answers. Over the years I have been asked this question numerous times and have asked it of others twice as many. I have heard answers relating to doubt and predestination and science and self control and sexuality. I have read selections from the libraries of books on the topics of suffering and love and historicity. I have heard countless sermons on the nature of God and grace. A lot of the time these things are raised by people as the things they wrestle with as Christians. I have a confession, these things are not the top of my list of struggles as a Christian, they are certainly not the hardest part of Christianity for me.

For me the single most challenging thing about walking with Jesus is forgiveness. This is a massive concept that challenges me on multiple fronts. First of all I constantly wrestle with the idea that after everything I have done that I could even be forgiven. I am fully aware of my sin and my unworthiness of such forgiveness. The second area I struggle with is possibly even more challenging, and that is the call to forgive others. I’m not great at this, just ask my friends. I’m prone to being petty and vindictive, I’ve been known to hold grudges and nurse my resentment or frustration until it becomes a torrent of wrath and anger. Obviously this isn’t a particularly good thing.

Let me break this down and address these two things separately because while they have some crossover they have distinct nuances which make the whole topic of forgiveness confusing to discuss as a whole. The ordering is deliberate, it is damn near impossible for a Christian to cultivate a forgiving nature without first comprehending their own forgiveness. The more judged someone feels the more they tend to judge, we all fall into that trap from time to time. We so often respond to judgment with judgement, human nature, it’s funny that way.

Problem the First: Personal Forgiveness.

I am not a good person. I know this, you know this. Don’t get me wrong I don’t think I’m a terrible person, but I’m not great. I don’t need to list all the various and creative ways I have been a jerk or done the wrong thing over the years, we all already know that human beings have a tendency towards immoral or unwise actions. We know what we should do and yet somehow we always seem to prefer to not do what we’re told. 

Now, I fervently hope that after 21 years I would know myself better than anyone reading this post. For me it is this inside knowledge that makes it so difficult to wrap my head around the idea that God would forgive me at all, let alone by dying for me. I’m prone to being my own harshest critic, I look at my life and my history and know what goes on inside my head and I wonder “how could God who is perfect and righteous ever be able to forgive this…?”.

Turns out the idea of grace is also something I struggle with.

What a question to ask though!! I can confidently stand up in a room full of people and declare to them that their sins can be forgiven, just like that, and yet I struggle to comprehend my own forgiveness.

In the end there’s one verse I always come back to and that’s Romans 8:38-39 “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor principalities, nor things impending and threatening nor things to come, nor powers, Nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord”. It reminds me that in spite of all that I am and all that I have done there is absolutely nothing that can separate a Christian from our God, and if nothing can separate us from Him then we can be assured that nothing can separate us from the forgiveness He gave at such great cost either. I know this, I cling to it dearly, and yet my mind is fickle. The words of the song, Come Thou Fount, “Prone to wander, Lord I feel it” often come to mind, these words ring so true for so many of us and so even as my heart stands confident my mind plagues me with doubts. Just as Satan asks Eve in the Garden of Eden “Did God really say…” so too my mind asks my heart “Did God who is good and righteous and perfect really say he would forgive even that?”.

As Christians we are assured that through His death on the cross Jesus Christ paid the penalty for our sins, that when God looks on us on that last day He will see us as holy and blameless, forgiven through Christ. It defies human reason for Him to do so. Lucky for us God isn’t human. Given the price paid to open the doors of Heaven and make forgiveness possible, who are we to presume to tell God that we aren’t forgivable

Honestly though, we all get to that point at some stage don’t we? We all hit a point where we are confronted by our sin and we go to pray and seek forgiveness and our internal monologue starts scoffing at us, laughing at our knowledge that after acting so thoroughly against God we would get any benefit from prayer.

This is a serious problem!! When we are confronted with our sin and the need for forgiveness is when we most need to draw near to our forgiver. When we allow ourselves to believe that God has or could give up on us we open the doors for the deceiver to slip in and chip away at our faith. Left unchecked this attitude destroys faith. Just ask anyone in ministry, they see it happen all the time. I have been caught in this snare several times and it’s not until someone confronts me and blatantly tells me to tell Satan to get out of my head that I even realise how far I’ve allowed myself to drift. This isn’t to say that Satan has the power to take away our faith, he can use our sinfulness to draw us to despair but he cannot in and of himself destroy his faith. The first step in a Christian’s descent to spiritual despair is allowing him to deceive us into thinking that our sinfulness is somehow unforgivable or more deserving of divine punishment than it actually is.

The other challenge I find in accepting that I have been forgiven is simple. Arrogance. I screw up and decide I’m not good worthy of God. As though I somehow have the power, right or authority to tell God who is and isn’t worthy of His forgiveness. Jesus died on the cross for me and here I am telling God “I made a boo boo, Jesus blood can’t cover this, thanks for sending him, you tried, points for effort, better luck making me forgiven next time you send a saviour”. I mean seriously firstly it’s petulant and secondly I am patently not God. This is a good thing! How arrogant and prideful mankind is to presume that our forgiveness or relationship with God is hinged on how we think we’re going. The ENTIRE Old Testament is one long example of God’s persistence and a wonderful illustration that on our own we have absolutely no chance of being “good enough” for God. Somehow in spite of this we still seem to end up thinking that how we feel about ourselves or what we’ve done matters more to God than what He has done.

Problem the Second: Other People

The Bible and therefore God is pretty big on the whole forgiveness thing. Not just forgiveness for us but forgiveness of others by us. Examples of this include Matthew 6:14, Ephesians 4:31-32 and Colossians 13:3 which all speak of the need for Christians to forgive both each other and those outside the faith. Many of the statements on forgiveness are pretty blanket in their application.

Again and again Scripture commands us to forgive, The Lord’s Prayer specifically speaks about not just our forgiveness and need for forgiveness by God but our need to be forgiving of each other. In fact it draws some pretty tight links between the two. We tend to overlook this in our eagerness to hold grudges and find fault but it’s SO important.

For Christians, a driving factor in our forgiveness of wrongs against us is the knowledge and understanding that we have done just as bad if not worse things, that we deserve a worse fate than we are busily wishing on those we feel wronged by and yet are spared and forgiven by God. The more we understand this the easier it is to develop a forgiving nature. The more insecure about our forgiveness the harder it is for us to be forgiving. The more judged we feel the more judging we are.

Forgiveness is hard. Our pride, anger sense of moral superiority and ego all get in the way, as does our tendency to overreact to situations. So many factors make forgiving people hard and yet that’s what God calls us to do. Jesus goes so far as to say in the famous Sermon on the Mount “You have heard it said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. But I say to you, Do not resist the evil man [who injures you]; but if anyone strikes you on the right jaw or cheek, turn to him the other on too. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your undershirt (tunic), let him have your coat also. And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two [miles]” (Matthew 5:38-41)

This clearly goes beyond mere grudging acceptance of an apology. Jesus commands us to be gracious and generous to those who wrong us, not to merely forgive but to show them love. This is so important that Jesus commands elsewhere in the New Testament that if someone comes before God to make an offering and has resentment or anger towards a brother they should leave their offering and go seek reconciliation then make their offering. Jesus seems to be saying that being forgiving is more important than the offering.

Rather than responding to ill will or wrong actions against us with resistance and violence jesus commands us to peacefully submit to those who would do us wrong. Why? Because in doing so we show people the reality of the God whose servants would act in such a way. The clearest example of this is Christ himself praying for God’s forgiveness of his crucifiers as they jeer, mock, abuse and kill him on the Cross.

What does this all mean?

It means that as much as we might want to hold a grudge against someone, we are called to surrender our pride, anger and hurt to God. As much as we might want to hold a grudge against ourselves we are called to hand our self pity and arrogance over to God. We are called to forgive those who have wronged us even if they do not ask for it. We are called to accept our own forgiveness even when we feel undeserving.

It’s a hard thing to so. It’s a hard thing for me to do.

It’s the hardest part about being a Christian for me, my biggest struggle.

But...Far out it’s important

Love as you have been loved.

Forgive as you have been forgiven.

“Never return evil for evil or insult for insult (scolding, tongue-lashing, berating), but on the contrary blessing [praying for their welfare, happiness and protection, and truly pitying and loving them]. For know that to this you have been called, that you may yourselves inherit a blessing [from God- that you may obtain a blessing as heirs, bringing welfare and happiness and protection].”
1 Peter 3:9

The Pews are Alive with the Sound of...Indifference?

When talking about worship, it's easy to fall into the trap of seeing singing in church on a Sunday night as “worship”. This is a problematic attitude because when we reduce worship to merely the 15 minutes of singing we do on a Sunday night we give ourselves permission to treat the rest of our week like it isn't time to be spent in worship of God. I could write at length about this point, but frankly it's been pretty thoroughly covered by, well, pretty much everyone else with a Christian blog, and there's another issue with our Sunday singing I want to tackle.

We, in our Sydney churches (singled out because I do not have much experience outside of Sydney), do not in my experience grasp the extent of the power and weightiness of our singing. We tend to sing because, as Christians, that's just what we do. Or because the band is playing music and everyone else is doing it and we feel like that's what is expected of us. We sing because to not sing is to be marked as different in a congregation full of people who are singing. While the enthusiasm seems to vary, the majority of people are singing so we feel obliged to join in.

Now don't get me wrong. I love singing. I can't sing well, but make up for it with volume and enthusiasm. More importantly, I would love to see the significance of praise through music and song recognised, as well as utilised for all it offers in our services. This is not a post in any way opposed to singing in church.

That said, I do think we have two very serious problems when it comes to our congregational singing. The first is that we don't seem to give enough consideration to Whom we are singing, and the second is that we rarely put any thought at all into what exactly we are saying to the Whom we are singing to.

We make some pretty hefty declarations when we sing in church, we make massive promises and some pretty serious requests. I often wonder, particularly at conferences and evangelistic events, how many of those belting out their favourite worship song actually stop to think about what they are saying. Or, more importantly, if they believe what it means. In other words, would we pray the same words we are singing with a sincere and contrite heart? I just wonder how much quieter our Sunday singing might be if the full weight of the words being sung were consciously acknowledged outside the melodies that accompany them.

Really simple example. The song “Ancient of Days”. I love this song, it's easy to get enthusiastic and there's even the opportunity to clap at points which is pretty fun. One day on beach mission I was chatting with a fellow leader who expressed his distaste for the song. I was understandably a little put out that anyone could dislike such a great song and asked him why he opposed it so much. “What is the Ancient of Days?” was his response. This was awkward because I had no idea... I loved this song and sang it regularly, and it turned out this guy actually liked the song too, the problem he had and the problem I am attempting to raise are the same. I didn't know that the term “Ancient of Days” is in fact used to describe God. I was singing “Blessing and honour, glory and power be unto...” without ever stopping to wonder exactly who or what I was ascribing blessing, honour, glory and power to.

Which brings me back to my two concerns.

1. We don't give enough consideration to Whom we are singing.

Do we understand to Whom we are directing our voices when we sing? Do we stop to think that we are singing to God? He breathed the stars into existence. He appeared to Moses through a burning bush. He sent plagues upon Egypt when Pharaoh wouldn't let His people go. He parted the Red Sea. He broke the walls of Jericho. He raised up King David and, after he sinned, He humbled him. He humbled Himself and took on the form of a man, Jesus. He performed miracles, healed the sick, restored the sight of the blind and raised the dead. He died on a cross so that we could be in restored relationship with Him. He defeated death forever. He appeared to and blinded the Apostle Paul on the road to Damascus and turned him from murderer to martyr. He causes the sun to rise and rain to fall. THIS is to whom we are singing brothers and sisters.

Our God is living and active. We believe this — why else would we pray? He hears our prayers and petitions. He answers. When we consider this in the context of our singing this should terrify us! When we sing empty words, halfhearted praises and meaningless promises He hears us.

Our songs to Him are a form of prayer. They are words we speak to God, they may not start with “Our Father in Heaven” and we may not end with “Amen” but they nevertheless constitute communication with the God who formed our lips and our hearts. When we sing songs of praise, we aren't just singing songs about how good things are, we are praising Him—for who He is and what He has done. We are praising God, the King of the universe. How hypocritical, therefore, for us to sing such songs insincerely. How appalling it should be to stand up and loudly sing “How great thou art” or “Our God is an Awesome God” in skepticism or indifference. How empty our words when we sing of “Amazing Grace” in unbelief. How dare we! We would be better to remain silent.

We don't think about what we are saying.

When we consider to Whom we are singing, the actual words we sing suddenly become a whole lot more important. When we ask God to “Take it all” we are literally asking God to take everything we are and everything we have and to use it for His glory. If you want to know what that looks like, read the book of Job—that's what you are asking God to do. When we sing that “There is no other name” we are declaring the belief that there is no other way to be saved except through Jesus Christ. When we sing “Lead me to the Cross” we are asking God to humble us before the foot of the cross, to bring us to our knees in humble recognition of the cost of our salvation, we are asking Him once again to take us and use us however He pleases. We are declaring our confidence in His will, in His plan. We are asking the God of the universe to humble and challenge and use us to declare His gospel. When we sing we are declaring ourselves God's, we are promising Him that we will bow to Him alone, acknowledging that His will is of utmost importance to us, and we are willing to cop whatever comes at us in doing so.

This is huge! It flows far beyond our 15 or so minutes of singing on Sunday. God doesn't only act on our words during Church. I wonder how often we sing those words expecting God to act. I wonder how many of us would be comfortable singing those words if we were confident that He would do as we asked.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German evangelist, pastor and martyr at the beginning of the 20th Century. He dedicated an entire book to the Psalms—the song book of The Bible. He was convinced that the Psalms had value beyond merely helping us understand that the Israelites sang to God and that they could sing to God about the realities of their situation whatever it was at the time of writing. Bonhoeffer saw the Psalms as having value beyond even showing us examples of repentance and trusting in God and relying on God when things go bad. Bonhoeffer believed that there was immense value in Christians taking these songs and praying them. Not merely reflecting on them but taking the songbook of the Bible and making it the prayerbook as well.

The challenge for us as Christians is this: Would you pray the words you sing in church on a Sunday? If not, why are you singing at all? Are our pews alive with the sound of sincere praise, petition and humility before God or are they alive with the dead sounds of our echoing hypocrisy, insincerity and closed hearts?

Counting the cost of Ministry

“He said, Look, I’m not asking you to spend an hour with me

A quick salvation sandwich and a cup of sanctity,

The cost is you, not half of you, but every single bit,

Now tell me, will you follow me? I said Amen — I quit.”

-When I Became a Christian, Adrian Plass

That quote is taken from what is quite possibly my favourite pieces of poetry... ever. It is a fictional dialogue between the author and God as seen from the perspective of the author. It resonates greatly with me for its unique way of expressing the emotions and the confusion that I felt at my own conversion to Christianity. I personally find the quote above to be the most poignant part of the whole thing.

The challenge God lays down to Adrian and to us is this: Following God is more than a mere pit-stop at salvation then skipping off into the heavenly sunset.

This resonates not just with me but also with so many other Christians for whom life as a Christian has been no easy walk in the park. It reminds us that there is much more to being a Christian than just believing in Jesus died for our sins, fundamental though that is. I think that it also highlights a problem so many Christians face: we love the prize of Christianity but are vastly less keen on the cost. We love the hope of Heaven and the eternal joy there where Revelation 21:4 tells us there will be “no more weeping or mourning or crying or pain”. We love the family that we get to have in Christ, we love the unity and the singing and the confidence that God is in control. But when we are confronted with the cost of the journey, when we discover the road to heaven isn't a quick ride through this fallen world in the first class carriage of the heavenly bullet train, well it's easy to find ourselves disappointed and hurt isn't it? Unfortunately the Christian life has much more in common with the long and difficult trek to Mordor of JRR Tolkien's Lord of The Rings trilogy, complete with the ups and downs along the way than we would like... albeit the destination of our journey is much nicer.

Walking with God is a lot like marriage, which would be really profound of me to write about if it wasn't so unoriginal that the Bible itself uses the simile, calling Jesus the "Bridegroom" and the church the "Bride". I hear couples at weddings vow to endure together “for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, to love, cherish and obey until death” and can't help but be reminded that God calls us to make that exact vow to Him. This is not the vow of someone expecting a nice easy life, and like the protagonist of the poem we so often find ourselves quitting or at the very least capitulating to the siren call of a road we perceive to be easier.

Salvation may be freely offered but it was very costly to God, Father, Son and Spirit. And in that costliness He has set us the example we are expected to follow. We aren't called to be faithful examples of idyllic Christian living but rather to demonstrate what it looks like to joyfully count the cost of following Christ. More so even, much like Job in the Old Testament as he praises God (“The Lord gives and The Lord has taken away. The name of the Lord be praised” Job 1:21), we too are called to praise God even as we take up our heavy wooden cross each day.

Herein lies the problem. Being in ministry doesn't make us any less human than anyone else. We in ministry tend to be about as happy and content counting the cost as anyone else. Sacrifices are hard to make irrespective of what you do, especially when we really want something we know we can't or shouldn't have. It's not all gloom, what we have now and what we will have in the future are incalculably more valuable and wonderful than we can imagine. It's just often hard to put that value into perspective when the things we want but can't have are right in front of us, tempting us.

Ministry isn't a job. It's not a hobby. It's a calling. One that has a habit of getting in the way of what we want. We can't just do things our way. Why? Firstly because as part of a team we cannot be exclusively autonomous, the needs of the team must come before our own desires. God commands us to consider the needs of others a higher priority than what we want in Philippians 2:3 where we are commanded “Do nothing out of rivalry or conceit, but in humility consider others more important than yourselves”. To strike out alone is to abandon the family that God has raised up as our ministry team. It is to selfishly put ourselves before those we serve and those we serve with. It is to go against God as creator and ruler of everything, it is to take His authority in our lives and give it to ourselves. This is sin in a nutshell isn’t it? Telling God to take the back seat so we can do what we want even though we know what His will is.

Secondly, we cannot act our own way because God calls for integrity in leaders above and beyond all others. We are to be more aware of our own sinfulness, more self controlled and more accountable. Indeed, James instructs in Chapter 3 of his letter, “not many [of you] should become teachers (self-constituted censors and reprovers of others), my brethren, for you know that we [teachers] will be judged by a higher standard and with greater severity [than other people; thus we assume the greater accountability and the more condemnation].” Not big on pulling punches, is he?

Why does it even matter what those in ministry do? It matters because as leaders of God's people we are called to care for God’s people. . When leaders fail, we are guilty of creating a barrier between someone and God, and our task is to help engage them with God, not disconnect them further.. To create such a barrier  is to push people away from God, to do the very opposite of what we’re called to do, the consequence of which is a heavy burden indeed. With that in mind it is no wonder we have such high standards to abide by.

This means that whilst all Christians are  is still called to make sacrifices and to take up their cross and follow Jesus, those who serve  in ministry whether as children's workers, SRE volunteers or paid church staff can and should expect to be held to a higher and stricter standard. They are called to give up more to meet that standard, not because they are better, holier or more worthy but because as shepherds of God’s beloved people, He calls those who lead them to account for their life and doctrine. . Ultimately,they will also reap the reward in Heaven for obeying God’s call and leading and serving well. Unfortunately, that high standard doesn't come with an easier life. Christ himself was called to the highest standard (to be utterly sinless) yet he still faced trial, temptation, pain, suffering and ultimately the cross, and it is Christ that we follow. It is Christ that we serve.

Those marriage vows I mentioned earlier? They don't say “for as long as it's convenient” or “for as long as things are going in my favour”. They say “for richer or poorer, for better or for worse, in sickness and in health until death”.

I think that this is perfectly captures in the final part of the Adrian Plass poem.

“Are you man enough to see the need, and man enough to go,

Man enough to care for those whom no one wants to know,

Man enough to say the thing that people hate to hear,

To battle through Gethsemane in loneliness and fear.

And listen! Are you man enough to stand it at the end,

The moment of betrayal by the kisses of a friend,

Are you man enough to hold your tongue, and man enough to cry?

When nails break your body-are you man enough to die?

Man enough to take the pain, and wear it like a crown,

Man enough to love the world and turn it upside down,

Are you man enough to follow me, I ask you once again?

I said, Oh Lord, I’m frightened, but I also said Amen.

Amen, Amen, Amen, Amen; Amen, Amen, Amen,

I said, Oh Lord, I’m frightened, but I also said, Amen.”

This is what we as Christian leaders are called to. This is the cost. Is it worth it? Absolutely! Is it easy? No. But we have God, we have a personal relationship with the dude who made the universe, we have His Holy Spirit to strengthen us for the good works He prepared for us in advance, we have His armour against the attacks of the evil one and we have the promise of that day when the old order will pass away and Heaven will break through to earth and on that day, no one who counted the cost will say that they didn't think it was worth it. And they will receive their reward in full.