Askig Difficult Questions

A few weeks ago I was asked to preach at my church on January 2nd. Not a difficult proposition as there won't be that many people there and it's only for 20mins. That was before the devastating earthquake and tsunami in South East Asia! Now the prospect looks somewhat more difficult and I've been wrestling for days now over what to speak on. I had planned to speak on the subject of Hope but it seems like this may be inappropriate now - or does it? Allow me the liberty of using this post as a sort of notepad to jot down some random thoughts which might make it to the final preach! Comments would be appreciated and are invited (don't worry if they're too late to be included on sunday, I don't think this subject is going to be off the agenda for a while!)

So then, where to begin?

In chapter 10 of the book of Hebrews the writer exhorts us to draw near to God with sincere hearts, hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, and provoke one another tolove and good deeds (v19-25 is the whole text here and is all one sentence in the Greek). The writer has already explained the basis on which we can draw near to God and he now exhorts us to do it with sincere hearts. Here the writer is challenging the motivation of the readers, it's no good coming before God with all the right words when our hearts are troubled with all kinds of questions and worries! Neither is it any use our singing our songs of praise when in reality we are hoping for answers to our prayers - if this is our approach we are simply treating God like some kind of divine supermarket in which we pay for the goods by singing nice songs about God and go away having got what we came for!! In these troubling days maybe our approach should be more like the psalmists or the prophet Habakkuk who was very concerned about the things going on in his day and was not afraid to ask difficult questions of God!

Of course coming to God in such an honest way - which, by the way, God is not at all discouraging of - has its risks, we may not get an answer (at least not straight away) or we may get an answer but not the one we wanted! Both of these eventualities can cause problems, which is why many of us simply don't bother to pray these kind of prayers. This has serious implications for our ability to show the love of God at this time. Firstly, it means we definitely don't have any understanding of God's perspective on a situation - this means his heart and mind not just a list of proof texts! Secondly it means we are not changed by the process of wrestling with God in these situations which, in turn, means we are unlikely to have the compassion of Jesus for the helpless victims of disasters such as we have witnessed recently. Therefore any response we make will probably be harsh and ill-conceived.

Hope is a vital component of the Christian life but what is it?

Hebrews mentions hope a number of times, important because those the letter was written to lived in a volatile and dangerous world where life was cheap, especialy if you were different to the majority of people around you. The writer portrays hope as something tangible, something which can be held onto, even as an anchor in one place. It is not the wishful thinking or last-gasp optimism of today's use of the word. Neither is hope what we want it to be, we are not holding unswervingly to the hope of something we would like to see happen but rather that which has been promised. Our hope is not based on anything other than what God has promised through Jesus Christ, for he himself is our hope! The promise which the writer refers to is the promise of Jesus return at which point all things will be made new and we shall receive the fulness of our salvation as guarenteed by Jesus death and resurrection - death is not the end! Obviously this was very encouraging for a people who could face death at any time but what of us now?

Having a hope in the return of Jesus can lead to some errors if that hope is not worked out properly in everyday life. Some have the approach that since our salvation is secure and Jesus is going to wrap up this world anyway why bother to do anything since this life is not important? This is clearly a wrong approach and one for which the church at Thessalonica was rebuked by Paul - we are not just called to wait around for the end of the world and do nothing to help those in need! Ohtersa have said that all that is important is to 'save souls' and what we need to do is preach the gospel leaving humanitarian works to governments and charities. Once again this position misses the point - we are not just called to talk about Jesus and hope people understand what we mean and that our time is far too precious to spend on actualy caring for them. Acts 10:38, a verse loved by 'evangelists', says that Jesus went around doing good aswell as healing people. once again our motives in 'doing good' have to be sincere, the world is sick of Christians trying to win their loyalty through social action only to discover the 'hidden agenda' of soul winning behind it all. Also, I'm fairly certain that Christian releif organisations are sick of their work being judged on the basis of numbers of people 'coming to Christ' rather than on the number of lives saved from famine or disease!

Don't get me wrong, I'm not against evangelism, I just think it's about time we realised we need to be something before we ever have the right to talk about it or make demands of our hearers - raise your hand now if you agree with me, thank you, I see that hand.........

So, the concluding exhortation of the three I mentioned way back at the start is what I've just been talking about - provoking one another towards love and good deeds. This should be the natural outworking of our drawing near to God and holding on to hope in the face of doubt and opposition. At this time many will be looking for a response from Christians or will have difficult questions to which we can rightly say "I don't have all the answers right now but in the meantime lets work together to help who we can". And we don't have all the answers but we do have a God who is full of wisdom and love for the world, maybe if we will draw near to him with our honest questions he will share it with us so we can be more effective in our giving, prayhing and actions .

Thanks for reading if you got this far, I hope to blog more regularly in the New Year :)

Happy New Year to all my readers!