Lost?

We've seen a lot lately, in Luke especially, about people being lost. A few things have struck me about the way in which this impacts us.

If you've ever been lost, you'll know it's not great. Recently I foolishly trusted my brother's navigational skills around Blackburn town centre - it didn't go well. I was happy to let him drive on - up until the point he turned to me and asked "do you know where we are?". Ah. Oh dear.

It's only when we realised that neither of us knew what way we were heading that we got the map out and were able to navigate our way to where we were supposed to be going. With the aid of a map, there was no problem - we arrived at the right place, albeit at the wrong time.

It's a bit like that with the people we've looked at in Luke. Whilst Dan and I assumed we knew where we were going there was no need for the map. Various people Jesus encounters are showing all the signs of being lost, but plenty of them don't realise how much they need to be shown the way.

It's only when we realise we're lost that we look for help, and in Luke's gospel the people we've seen Jesus save are those who have recognised the error of their ways, and know they need someone to offer them a way out. It's only when we realise we're lost that we can be found - found by a God who "came to seek and save what was lost".

There's another beautiful aspect to this. The word "lost" implies that the thing which has gone missing belonged to someone in the first place. When we lose something, we go looking for it - because it's ours, and because we quite like having it in our lives. God seeks us for much the same reasons. Our amazing God dies for his runaway children at the time they are most lost, all because he longs to make them found, and bring them home. 

Lock-in

On Friday night, Wolves CU spent the night in a local church building - the Church on Broad Street, and what a great time we had! Our purpose was for "fun and fellowship", or, in more accessible terms, we played games, chatted, prayed, and thought about God. A fantastic balance.

Overall we spent 18 hours there - arriving at 6 on Friday evening armed with sleeping bags (some of which would be rendered redundant), teabags, nerf guns, and Bibles. The lock-in kicked off with what we could call a service, for want of a better word, led brilliantly by our friends Jake, Nathanael, and Catherine. We sang, listened to God's word, and reflected on what it meant to be truly "free".


The challenge of being "free" is what we make of it. What good is it to be set free from prison, but still hang around in your cell? Equally what good is it to be set free from prison, and spend time being indifferent about it, or moping about. Jesus saved us from certain death - celebrate! Where Christians gather there should always be smiles and laughter.

God certainly spoke to people through this time of listening to him - proved by chats with each other, tears, smiles, dances, and the fact that the pizza we'd ordered sat there for at least 45 minutes before we actually got around to eating it!

Through the rest of the night we further bonded friendships which are becoming more and more precious with every week. We played ridiculously childish games, ate sweets, and acted half our age. We then slept for about 3 hours each. The morning after, we sleepily slumped into sofas and chatted about things going on at the time which need prayer - spending more time chatting to God, and ear-bashing him with our requests. 


It struck me that not only was our lock-in great for fun and fellowship purposes, but it was practice for heaven! If heaven is anything like that, then I'm sure that will help us all get excited about what we've been freed for. Roll on the next lock-in!

A closer Luke

"Two men were in debt to a banker. One owed five hundred silver pieces, the other fifty. Neither of them could pay up, and so the banker canceled both debts. Which of the two would be more grateful?"


The above is taken from Luke 7, and the passage we studied last night. But what exactly is Jesus saying here? The obvious answer to his question is the man who owed more, but we can take more from this with a closer look.

Our Uncover notes say this:
"Jesus often taught in parables - stories cleverly designed to uncover a truth. In this parable, he is trying to help Simon see that the woman has been forgiven because she recognised her sin and received God's message of grace. But Simon's self-righteousness and spiritual pride makes him blind to his own sin. Simon doesn't grasp that God loves sinners (himself included!), and that forgiveness is offered to all who sincerely repent."


In the story, the difference between Simon and the sinful woman isn't that one is more sinful than the other - both have rejected God's rule, just as every other person who's ever lived has. The difference between the two is that only the sinful woman has grasped how serious her sin problem is.


Simon thinks he's sorted. As a Pharisee, he would have made use of rituals and practices which enabled God's people to become right with him. The problem with the Pharisees was that whilst their attention to detail was brilliant, they'd lost sight of the reason behind their religious practices - God, and his promise of deliverance. They'd replaced God's promise with their own practice.


The sinful woman? She throws herself on Jesus' mercy and gives him the most expensive thing she owns. What a picture! She is more grateful for Jesus' forgiveness because she knows what it means to have the slate wiped clean. Simon cannot be as grateful because he cannot see past his pride to see that his own sinful heart needs cleaning.


My living for Jesus needs to be motivated by what he's done, rather than by what I fail to do. Getting this wrong turns the gospel on its head - it becomes all about us working our way up. His sacrifice is of far greater significance than any sin we could ever commit - and thank God for that!


So the challenge to us is two-fold: Firstly we need to be aware of how sinful we are, and secondly we need to be aware of how far Jesus' forgiveness stretches. Once we grasp these two, the message of the cross looks all the more awesome.

Halloween: a challenge and an encouragement

It's a really Halloween-y night out there isn't it? Just the right amount of gloom, purple-tinted clouds, and long shadows, to create an atmosphere of dark creepiness...


This isn't an opinionated piece on the rights and wrongs of Halloween, more so a couple of things which I've felt God showing me over the last few days. Specifically - how we should be challenged by this festival, and how we should be encouraged by it too.

Halloween offers us the chance to study exactly how we as Christians can relate to ideas of "light" and "dark" in the world. These verses from the Message translation of John's gospel sum up brilliantly  - "This is the crisis we're in: God-light streamed into the world, but men and women everywhere ran for the darkness. They went for the darkness because they were not really interested in pleasing God." (Read more).


It's an idea most of us will be fairly familiar with - in the Bible, dark represents evil, stuff God hates, the place we are found in when Jesus reaches out to rescue us. Light, on the other hand, is stuff God craves from us, the good ways in which we obey God. 
Jesus is our perfect picture of light, as he came into a dark world, and lit up the way for us to escape the darkness and enter the brightness of our Father's kingdom.


So how does Halloween challenge us? We are called to be like Jesus - and that means to shine in dark places. Regardless of our practical stance on Halloween we can do this. For those who boycott - what an opportunity to share our views on Jesus' light! For those involved in Halloween activities, the challenge to shine is the same. In the darkness of a festival which primarily celebrates darkness, we as Christians must light up the room with our words and actions.


And how does Halloween encourage us? Whilst the actual celebration of All Saints' Day is largely forgotten it is a day on which we traditionally remember all those Christians who have died. All Saint's Day, then, is a celebration of the promise of heaven.

How brilliant that this comes after the celebration of darkness. Halloween offers Christians the chance to look forward to Jesus coming again, when darkness will be defeated once and for all in triumphant light.


I have certainly felt challenged and encouraged in equal measures this Halloween. Not only does God call us to action in terms of us being lights in the darkness, he gently reminds us that day follows night. Though tonight is dark, scary, and full of all kinds of darkness - Jesus' death allows us to look forward to the morning, when our deliverance from darkness to light will be completed.

The stage is set

"Finding Jesus at the bottom of your pint" was a possible title discussed for this post on our way home after CU last night. We'd moved onto Free For All two, and after looking at our God last time, we were this time looking at "The Arena of the Gospel".

It's a no-brainer to say that our "arena", or the place the gospel happens - so to speak - is the world on which we stand. The place we live, breath, eat, drink, work, play - God's created world. But on closer inspection, this piece of information demands more investigation.


Colossians 1:16 says this: "For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him." The "him"? Jesus.


Jesus is everything our beliefs hinge on - he's the focal point of the Bible, and the only way we can be brought back into a perfect relationship with our creator. Interesting then, that another aspect of what we need to know about Jesus is that creation is not only down to him (in Genesis we see God addressing himself as "we", in reference to the Trinity), but FOR him.


What does this mean? It means the stage we've been given for our lives is the perfect setting for us to live and speak for Jesus. God meticulously arranged our world so it was just right for us to inhabit. He placed us in perfect harmony with himself, and when we messed this up he sent his Son INTO THE WORLD to die for us. He isn't an aloof God, who does these kind of things in the private confines of heaven - this is a God who loves his creation, and yearns for his created beings to make the most of the creation we've been given.


Nothing we see in this world started from outside God's power. And so, when we do anything, the challenge for us is to do it in a way where we remember God's hand in it. Practically, that means me praising God for the tasty caramel latte I've enjoyed whilst writing this post!


And so we come to the proposed title mentioned earlier. Once we begin to live in this world with eyes keen to see God at work, we'll be more in tune to share our worldview with others, so that they might be able to see things a little as we do. That's not to say we should be cheesy Christians and start conversations with "Isn't it wonderful that God created pizza?", but as we enjoy God-made things with our Christian friends, the more we remember God, the more ready we'll be to talk about our creator when times are appropriate.

Small Groups (Take 1)

The wait was finally over, and my favourite meetings at CU started last night: small groups. It's a pretty self-explanatory term - we split off into three different groups in order to support one another more thoroughly, and to enjoy a deeper, more application-based look at the Bible. Both of those aims were certainly met in the small group I was a part of last night.


Last year's small groups were fantastic for us freshers to grow close together alongside second- and third-years with slightly more experience of being a Christian on campus. Hopefully the same will be true this year - with a CU which is looking significantly larger than last year's it will be important for us to grow in groups where we can pray for one anothers' individual needs, and discuss personal ways in which we can apply the parts of the Bible we read together.


Not that small group is a forum for discussing people's problems of course, but getting to know a small bunch of Christians well gives you the option of other believers being able to help you out. It's also a chance to hang out and have fun together - we met in a house, ate Pringles, and played PlayStation too.


Last night's study was an introduction to the gospel of Luke. Luke's account of Jesus take a different tack to the other gospels - his scientific approach allows us to look at Jesus' life by examining facts and deducing conclusions. We can be sure of Luke's diligence in bringing us the facts - he tell the brilliantly named and "most excellent" Theophilus that the facts he brings us have been "carefully investigated" - this certainly holds up when comparing his writings to the writing from Jesus' eyewitnesses.


We then looked at Luke 2:22-38.


Jesus certainly caused quite a stir for an 8-day-old! One thing which can cause us to look forward to studying the rest of Luke is considering this: if he causes that much of a stir when he was a newborn, imagine how much of a stir he must've caused as a grown man. We don't have to imagine, of course - God reveals this to us in the rest of the gospel, and I've got a feeling that the rest of what we discover will be more than worthy to be blogged.

Free For All

Last night saw the first in a new programme we're running at CU - UCCF's "Free For All" programme. It's a series of talks/discussions/activities aimed at mobilising CUs into evangelism; not through tips, or dos and don'ts, but through teaching us the fundamentals of the gospel we believe in.

It's like in anything in life - the more we know about something, the better we can share it. Except this is different from other things in life, because the more we know about it, the more we'll want to share it.

We kicked off last night with a look at our God. We eavesdropped on Jesus' prayer in John 17, and were able to have a closer look at the way our triune God operates. Many suggestions of illustrations for the trinity have been offered in the past - sheep and wool, water, steam and ice (I even attempted one last night using the idea of a mobius strip), and yet all of these ideas are very limited. 

To steal the words of our speaker, Pete - none of the these illustrations communicate the immense love which is present in our God. Ice can't love steam, but God the Father loved his Son "before the foundations of the earth"! The challenge for us is to model this love - Jesus prays for Christians in the prayer that we might reflect the oneness of him and his Father.

I think if we were to ever properly understand the trinity then this would detract from the awesomeness of God. If God were able to be fully understood in our human terms then wouldn't that humanise him? 


Mercifully God allows us enough knowledge of him in order for us to come into relationship with him - knowledge revealed to us in the Bible. We aren't given too little, or too much information for anything - we're given exactly what we need. In this case, we are given knowledge that God loves, and so we must love.


Showing God's love in our relationships with others will show that the good news of Jesus really is "Free For All".