Category Archives: Faith

Some post-Christmas questions

Faith, Questions, ,

And so Christmas is over for another year. What are we left with? Do the joy and wonder continue? Do we have greater peace and gladness than we had three days ago?

Or are there some feelings of disappointment, that after all the build up it was over so quickly, or that it didn’t quite go as we had hoped and planned? Or perhaps there’s just sheer relief that the craziness of the past few days is finally over and we can sit down and relax! Maybe we’ve already moved on to thinking about New Year’s Eve and the next celebration to plan and prepare for and the seemingly endless cycle starts again.

I love celebrating Christmas but many years I am left with these kinds of questions afterwards. What difference does it make to today and tomorrow and the next day? Is it really all just about one day?

I knew that the word “Christmas” itself is a contraction of “Christ’s Mass,” but what I didn’t know before is that the word “mass” comes from the Latin missa which is in the concluding words of the liturgical celebration. These are the words of dismissal, the words of sending out, the words of mission. That has got me thinking today. Christmas is not just about one day, but a sending out into what comes next.

Of course that is also true of the original Christmas story. It is the celebration of a birth, which is not an end itself, only the starting point for the life that follows.

This Christmas I am struck with the message the angels had for the shepherds – words which also point forward and have a sense of dismissal or commissioning to them.

 “On earth, peace to humanity, for whom God has goodwill.”

(Luke 2:14, my own translation)

What does it mean to go forward knowing that God has goodwill toward us? That He is pleased with us? That He favours us and is for us? What does it mean in a world where so many people think God is against them, just waiting to smite them? Where His church has too often given them the impression that God is displeased with them?

These are the questions I am asking today, as I move forward into a new year and all that it holds. How do I take the mission of Christmas with me? How am I making it known that God loves this world – every broken, hurting, vulnerable corner of it? How does that make a difference to my every interaction and thought, my every word and deed?

The Sacredness of Questioning Everything

Faith, Questions, ,

The title of this post is the name of a book by David Dark which someone gave me a few years ago. It’s quite a good book but I like the title even more so. Because I love asking questions. Not because I’m constantly seeking to challenge or undermine others, but because it helps me think about things in new ways. Questions open possibilities and ideas. Questions make me reconsider my assumptions. Questions invite people to join me in exploring and wondering and imagining.

One of the guys I used to work with would sometimes get frustrated when he felt like all I had were questions without any answers. And I can understand that frustration. I don’t want to come across as a Negative Nellie or a Doubting Debbie! I know I need to keep learning the difference between questions which are critical in the sense of expressing disapproval and questions which are critiquing in the sense of analysing options and possibilities. I want to ask questions that inspire rather than judge.

But I also know that too often Christians can seem to present themselves as people who have all the answers, as if when you choose to follow Jesus suddenly life gets all wrapped in a nice big bow and everything becomes simple. That hasn’t been my experience. For me part of the journey of discipleship has been learning to ask more and better questions.

Jesus asked questions a lot. Seriously, have a look at the Gospels. He asked questions all the time! It was a key way He taught, it was usually the way He engaged with people who came to Him with questions, and it was often the way He got His disciples to imagine what life in the kingdom of God might look like.

I find some of the best questions I ask are the ones I ask of myself. Questions like: What am I afraid of? What do I really want? What am I really trying to say? What is stopping me from doing what I know is right? What if I believed I could make a difference here? Why do I think that way?

And other times the really good questions are the ones God asks me. Who do you say that I am? (Luke 9:20)  What do you want me to do for you? (Matt 20:32) Will you really lay down your life for me? (John 13:38) Those are the ones I’m really trying to work on answering well.

Don’t Assume That Where You Are Now Is Where God Wants You To Stay

Bible, Faith,

My church has been preaching through the book of Acts this year, and I was rostered on to preach a couple of weeks ago. The passage for the week was Acts 18:18-28. My first thought when I looked at it was, “What on earth am I going to get out of that?!”

It’s one of those parts of the Bible that I think many people would skim read or even skip completely: it’s a list of names and places that don’t mean much to most of us today. Paul travels a great deal throughout the book of Acts, but this passage is mostly a summary without many details about what happens. It also mentions Priscilla & Aquila and Apollos and where they came from and went to.

As I was praying and thinking about what I could speak on, this phrase came to me very clearly: “Don’t assume that where you are now is where God wants you to stay.” It’s a truth I’ve seen work out in my own life, but it is also something I see consistently reflected in the stories of the Bible. God is in the business of moving people. Whether physically or spiritually, He has places to take us that we have not yet been to.

These biblical stories are more than geography lessons; even though I do personally find the historical geography fascinating 🙂 Geography is here a reflection of mission. When these people became followers of Jesus they didn’t settle down to live comfortable and well-established lives. For them, it meant just the opposite! They were constantly moving, learning, growing, sharing, seeking, listening and travelling.

In our modern western culture it can often seem like the goal is to settle down and make our lives as comfortable as possible. But the basic call of discipleship is Jesus saying, “Follow me.” It seems pretty clear to me that this means a journey, an adventure, a risk. It means stepping out in faith into new places, unknown places, unfamiliar places, even uncomfortable places.

I’ve met with believers in Africa and Asia who seem to get this far better than I do. People for whom becoming a follower of Jesus automatically means a huge shift, whether that literally means packing up their few belongings and moving to the other side of the their country or it means changing their whole outlook and perspective on relationships, economics, power and society. I’ve been so challenged by people I’ve met who come from cultures who see the world so differently to me, and so who don’t automatically assume that being a Christian means living a boring, safe and risk-free life. I don’t want to be comfortable. I want to be willing to go wherever following Jesus takes me. I don’t want to assume that where I am right now is where God wants me to stay.

I finished my sermon with one of my favourite illustrations from Francis Chan. If you’re a follower of Jesus and you want to be challenged and inspired about what that might look like, have a look at this: