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Wednesday 30 January 2019

Christian Knowledge is different from Worldly Knowledge

Christian Knowledge
Christians grow as their knowledge - and their grace - grows.

Knowledge is an important part of the growing process.

But all too often the church has taken their understanding of  "knowledge" straight out of the secular Academy - knowledge is "a body of facts" -  when in fact Christian knowledge is a unique, unsual and most beautiful thing.

Here are some big differences between secular knowledge and Christian knowledge:

Christian knowledge is the personal knowledge of a Person, not of facts about a person
Peter says that we are to grow in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour. That's a personal kind of knowledge. I can know lots about the Queen but not know her. So too, sadly, I can know lots of facts and doctrines about Jesus but not know him personally.

Christian knowledge is acquired spiritually, not through mental capacity alone
Jesus once told someone that they had come to understand that He was the Son of God, not through a human teacher but directly from His Father in heaven (Matt 16:17). There is a supernatural quality about the learning process itself, God speaking and teaching us himself, by his Spirit. Nothing like this happens in the Academy.

Christian Knowledge advances through obedience
"I know more than all my teachers because I obey your law." (Psalm 119:100) God revealed to Abraham His will in step with his obedience. Until he had obeyed the first command, God did not reveal the second step. It is therefore impossible to grow in true knowledge unless one is growing in obedience. In the Academy, however, you can know more and more, irrespective of your lifestyle.

Christian Knowledge is much more like apprenticeship skill
An apprentice learns a "knowledge-&-practise skill", rather than a set of facts. Life and faith-knowledge are so inter-related that it is impossible to divide the one from the other. In the Academy you can attain a complete body of knowledge without it affecting - in the least - your life.

Christian knowledge is learnt from a person(s) life
"Follow me as I follow Christ" (1 Cor 11:1). We do not learn about Christ by sitting in a classroom - we learn about Christ by watching mature believers live, and listening both their words and watching their lives. This was the pattern of Christ and his apostles. By contrast you could learn a whole body of knowledge in the Academy without any reference whatsoever to the teacher's life.

Christian knowledge is learnt in community
In theory you could become an expert in some field of human knowledge on your own, with nothing to aid you but a text book, but Christian knowledge is learnt in community. The whole body is built up in maturity as each part plays its role (Ephesians 4). It is impossible to grow in any meaningful way as a believer without community.

Christian knowledge must be edifying
In the academy whether knowledge is helpful, useful, life-changing, gracious does not matter one half-hoot. But Christians have a rule of speech and hence a rule of knowledge: "Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification." (Romans 14:19) So knowledge is completely useless unless the person with whom it is shared is built up, encouraged, edified.

Christian knowledge stands apart from all other forms of knowledge. It has a few aspects in common with worldly knowledge, but in other respects it is in a class of it's own. 

The implications of these differences are significant...

Bible College?
Is Bible College the best place to learn and prepare yourself for ministry?  Sadly, because local churches have failed to establish Biblical and relational means by which they can impart Christian knowledge, these para-church organisations have grown up. But the church ought to be the only place where we train the next generation of evangelists and pastors and leaders.  To question Bible Colleges is of course to find yourself like Luther questioning the Mass - so entrenched are Bible Colleges in our present day church life. But they should be questioned and must be questioned.  Some Bible colleges have adopted learning methods that are as worldly as secular institutions.

Online learning courses?
Is it possible to truly grow in knowledge of Christ doing an on-line or distance-learning course? We might be able to pick up a few facts, but that is a million miles away from the full idea of "learning" in the Biblical sense of the word. 

Books?
We learn far better from people than from books. Through God's people, knowledge is mediated in its fullest sense. Our first instinct is all too often "I'll get you a book", whereas it ought to be "let's have a chat."

Discipleship
The kind of knowledge which causes us to grow is to be found in living and loving relationships in our local churches, in the same way that Jesus imparted knowledge.

"When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realised that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus" (Acts 4:13)


Sunday 27 January 2019

How to find Joy in the middle of Trials

One Incredible Verse
The little letter of James is filled with remarkable instructions, but none so striking as:

"Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds..." (1:2)

If it wasn't in the Bible, one could scarce believe it was from the mouth of God, for it contains an apparent contradiction. Our first response to trials is almost always tears and sadness. But here we are being asked - no commanded - to consider them the opposite - Joy!

What's the answer to this apparent conundrum?

First, James is not condemning us for our tears. We should not experience trials of many kinds. Trials are the result of the fall, the curse, the spoiling work of Satan in God's perfect world. It is natural to weep over sad events, difficult circumstances, sorrowful happenings. James is not condemning our natural "first reaction" to trials.

Second, James uses a word translated "consider" taken from the world of accounting. Translators who translate the word "count" do well; "Count it all joy". Just a you might sit at a table filled with money and using your mind start counting this pile, then the next, so he wants us to pause and count up certain things. He wants to think about our trials in a certain way. And if we count them up in this particular way, then they will lead to joy.

The Reasons for Joy
He then tells us why, after the tears, now using our minds, we should reckon trials to be "pure joy".

Reason for Joy #1 - Trials make your faith stronger. He calls trials "tests of faith" and all tests of faith result in stronger faith. Now of course, we may not feel that a particular trial has made us stronger believers. I know one Christian who tells me that after a series of trials with her eldest daughter she felt her faith was weaker, not stronger. Until she realised that - no! - before the trials what she called "faith" was a big mixture of faith in God plus faith in husband, faith in intellect, faith in doctors, faith in money, faith in family and faith in church friends (Oh yes, and a little bit of faith in God too!) The trials had stripped away all this fake "faith" leaving her with what looked like smaller faith, but what was now, in fact, purer faith.

Why be joyful in trials? Because these trials WILL make your faith purer and stronger.

Reason for Joy #2 - Trials develop the precious gift of perseverance. Odd one this. "The testing of your faith develops perseverance." Thinking naturalistically you might have thought that hardships would make you want to give up! But no, God uses hardships to build perseverance, patience, endurance, longsuffering. And perseverance is an essential Christian virtue - because the Christian life is hard.

Why be joyful in trials? Because trials WILL build perseverance.

Reason for Joy #3 - Trials make you a mature believer. "Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything..." Trials and Testing and Perseverance do something very deep in the human soul, something which results in spiritual maturity. There are no short cuts to spiritual maturity - all of them lead through the valley of suffering.

Why be joyful in trials? Because trials ARE growing us up.

Now can we see why trials - not that immediate tearful response, but that slow, considered, rational reflection upon them - can result even in joy: and not any kind of joy, but pure joy, or all joy? Because, bottom line they are doing us good. The trials may not be good. But they are working within us something good.

Something we cannot see
The problem with all of this is that we cannot often see the fruits of trials in our lives. We cannot see the purer faith, the surer perseverance or the greater maturity. (Often others can, but we can't!). It's here that we must believe the word of God. These things are happening!

May the Lord increase our faith - and thus increase our joy.









Monday 21 January 2019

The Great Blessings of Giving!



Giving: A Burden or A Blessing?
A natural - and almost gut - reaction to the prospect of giving away anything is the feeling of "loss": giving away means not having anymore! Giving means losing out. Giving means depreciation, reduction, lack, deflation.

After all, if I give away an evening of my time - I have an evening less to myself.

And if I give away £100 - I have less money to spend on what I want to buy.

But, like almost everything else in the supernatural world of Christian faith, giving turns our to be a blessing, not a burden. The Lord turns upside down the idea of giving from something that is a burden to something that is a blessing.

Giving away our money results in blessing!
Take, for example, our money. Natural logic leads to the idea that if I give it away I will be lacking. But the Lord says that "it is more blessed to give than to receive." How come? Because of promises God makes to us.
  • God promises that as we give we sow seeds that will bear a harvest (2 Cor 9:6)! What a wonderful thing - as we give we sow seeds that grow into Gospel fruit.
  • God promises that as we give he will give back to us! He promises to "increase our store of seed." (2 Cor 9:10).  
  • God promises that as we give our money, we will be blessed in many other ways! "you will be made rich in every way.. you will abound in every good work." (2 Cor 9:8,11)
  • God promises that our giving will result in his great name being glorified!  It will "overflow in many expressions of thanks to God." (2 Cor 9:12).
We need to proclaim on the mountain tops that "Giving yields Blessing!"

Giving away our lives in sacrificial service leads to blessing!
When Peter complained to Jesus about the cost of following him, he replied in these unbelievable words:

"Truly I tell you,” Jesus replied, “no one who has left home or wife or brothers or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God will fail to receive many times more in this age—and in the age to come, eternal life.”(Luke 18)

No-one who has ever served Jesus Christ until it hurt has ever failed to experience the blessings of God. This is what David Livingstone said about the hard trials of missionary life:

"For my own part, I have never ceased to rejoice that God has appointed me to such an office... It is emphatically no sacrifice. Say rather it is a privilege. Anxiety, sickness, suffering, or danger, now and then, with a foregoing of the common conveniences and charities of this life, may make us pause, and cause the spirit to waver, and the soul to sink; but let this only be for a moment. All these are nothing when compared with the glory which shall be revealed in and for us. I never made a sacrifice."

Giving away our lives leads to eternal life
Most significantly of all, if we give away our lives we will gain heaven. If we want to live our own lives, do our own thing, walk our own walk, we will end up in hell. But if we give away our life to Christ, follow his trail and obey him, then we will experience eternal life:

"For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it." (Matthew 16:25)

The world is too full of people who want to save their lives - do their own thing - but in the end lose their lives in hell. God calls them to lose their life for his sake, and thereby find real life in this world and the world to come. 

Out there in the world, giving is always a loss word, a burden, but in the Kingdom of Jesus Christ, giving is always a blessing, a tremendous blessing.