Master of the Slow Reveal

I often struggle with the concept of salvation... what is it really? - have we relativised it in our western context to make it fit into our mediocre middle class lifestyles? Is it really just a simple decision that can be made when we walk to the front of a church, or does it go deeper? and if it does how deep... it is called the narrow path in scripture - the path seldom traveled- it must be harder than all that, but how hard? I pray it is not too hard, or if it is that Jesus will wake up his church in the west to realise their slumber before it is too late... or are we the 5 virgins without oil for our lamps? I hope and pray that we are not...

there is a classic bible verse that is splashed around in tracts and evangelistic crusades and stuff that says...

That if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. (Rom 10:9)

That sounds very simple & that's probably why evangelists love it so much... but have you ever thought about the term "Jesus is Lord"? I think that this phrase is the key to it all. We have no concept today what the word Lord entails. Even if it is explained, there is nothing in our experience that we can really relate it to, and as a result I think we just ignore it's significance - using it as a simple placard, that sounds good.

When we think of the term Lord, I think we could probably think of something like a Master/slave relationship, where the slave is the property of the master, he has no rights, he lives to do the will of the Master. In medieval times there was the concept of a serf, that was the subject of their Lord, and owned by them, the serf lived on the Lord's land and farmed or toiled for basically enough to get by in a subsistence type lifestyle. They were very much regarded as sub-human...

Of course, following a loving God, our relationship to him will never be like that, but the concept of our rights to live our own life in relationship to our Lord & Master, must be remembered - WE HAVE NONE!!! ...

Does this mean that we are saved only when we learn to surrender our entire life over to his will????

I don't think so & I think that this is where the title of this blog entry comes in... God is the Master of the Slow Reveal... Think about it... what does the entire bible show us? It shows us that God had a plan, a plan that took thousands of years to come about and we have been waiting about 2000 years more to see its completion. Throughout the bible, we see the nature and person of God develop into the God of the New Testament, a God of love and forgiveness. I am not suggesting that God has changed over time, that would stand in direct opposition to what the scripture itself says. but what we do have is a God that took his time to reveal himself in his fullness... Why? maybe if he revealed himself in one hit (and lets face it he still hasn't revealed himself entirely), our brains would turn to mush, or we would run away and hide screaming "There's no place like home, there's no place like home" or something like that.

I think that our private walk with God works in very much the same way, it takes time for God to reveal himself to us, & it takes time for us to submit to him as Lord of our lives. This is why salvation (or Christianity if you prefer) is a journey, not a decision. We are constantly being called to go deeper, to surrender more... some times we go through cruisy times, but then He tightens the screws, and reminds us that He is there, if we don't respond to this call, to this challenge to step up and continue the journey, then he is not Lord of our lives, because if he is Lord, we have no right to say no...

Having said that, can we say that comfortable, Sunday Christianity is Christianity at all?
........ if we cruise around praying for car parks and not a whole lot more;
............. if we pray that the Lord returns soon but do not get out there and help
..............see his Kingdom come;
....................if we perceive that Jesus is there only to bless us and fulfill our needs;

can we really confess that Jesus is Lord??? And if you cannot confess that, then are you really saved???

Thankyou

Hi Everyone,

I wanted to get this message done a couple of weeks ago, but I have not taken my wife's own advice about busy-ness and so have not had a chance...

I want to thank everyone out there, all our regular readers and supporters, the support we are getting is phenomenal, and really means a lot to us.

A few weeks ago we had a commissioning service at our sending church, it was a great opportunity to catch up with old friends, a lot of our new friends (both UNOH workers & community people) also turned up, as well as family. It was great to get the feeling of support from everyone, it is easy to feel alone when you are doing these things, especially when you are so busy working within the community that you don't have the time you would like to catch up with those outside who care about you.

Many of you who are family and friends will have received (or will soon) an invite to a special information afternoon we are holding, already from those invites, we are getting some great feedback from people, and again it lets us know that we are not alone, it is great to have such prayer and moral support behind us as we do the work we are doing.

Please continue to keep us in your prayers, and don't hesitate to drop us a line (either on the blog here or over e-mail) if you would like to get together... we have started on our support raising, and if you would like to support us, and wanted to chat about it or wanted us to speak in your church or small group or something, don't hesitate to ask, we strongly believe that one of our callings in working in UNOH is to bring the message of Jesus' heart for the poor and marginalised to the wider Church body...

Anyway - thank you again, you are all really appreciated...

Peter

I am excited by what I am reading

Hey everyone,

I know you don't hear from me much..........I don't get to the computer as often as Peter.

As part of my UNOH apprenticeship I am doing a full time course which will give me a certificate IV in Ministry at the end of this year. At the start of this course I was pretty anti the idea of studying, I am such a practical person and the idea of sitting in a classroom and reading endless books and then writing about it does not appeal to me..........

so yesterday I was struggling to get through all the reading and writing that I had to get done before tonight's class, and I tried to read the same thing about 4 times and realised I was reading the same paragraph over and over, when finally I really cleared my head and decided to make a go of it, and what I read blew me away. The reading was basically about the idea of Shalom......something I had heard before but didn't think about much. The usual English translation of shalom is peace.......but it was described as so much more in my reading.......it was described as "wholeness" or "completeness" and the text read as follows "in essence Shalom embraces Gods' desire to restore all things to the wholeness and harmony of relationship in which they were originally created"

This really excited me.......there was a lot more to the reading but I don't know if it's plagiarism if I keep copying bits into my blog........so anyway....if you wanna know more read : Living on purpose by Tom & Christine Sine.

I am again feeling very inspired by the idea of an all encompassing faith that is lived out in my whole life. Even living in the context I live in, I can sometimes forget that I am here because of God and because of my strong desire to live what I believe and to NOT have my faith and the rest of my life compartmentalised and separate. I am grateful that God reminds us of these things again and again.

Naomi

Riots & Stabbings & Murders.... OH MY!!!

Hi everyone, forgive me for being so slack...

Things have really rev'ed up since the apprenticeship started 2 weeks ago - there has been a lot of training and meetings to get through to get us up to speed, and when those things happen, it seems that you need to play catch-up with everything else...

having said that, things are slowly starting to normalise... so hopefully I'll start to blog again soon.

I read a local newspaper yesterday that had a front page story about how Noble Park is in the grip of fear, after the riots, a local stabbing murder, and various other unrelated acts of violence... Now, I would not say that Noble Park is the safest, nicest place to live in the world - if it was there would be no need for the presence of a group like UNOH, but what purpose does an article like this serve?? There are enough people in this neighbourhood hiding behind massive security fences and roller shutters, people are already living in fear of the random attackers out there... I just wish that the newspapers would actually care to mention that in the vast majority of attacks and murders, there is some sort of a reason for it - the murder that happened a few days ago here was drug related, it was not just some random attacker breaking into someones house to murder them for the fun of it...

maybe our "entertainment" has a lot to answer for all of this as well, I have to admit, when it came out "silence of the lambs" was a bit of a hit with me, but as time has gone on, we have begun to swallow more and more crap that deals with death, rape, murder, so much so that they now serialise such things, with CSI, SVU, NCIS, Medium etc... they even advertise episodes of SVU dealing with paedophilia along the lines of "an episode no parent will want to miss..." WHAT IS THAT ABOUT!!!!!!! - have we gotten so thick in the head that feeding fears is now seen as educational, or at least being aware of what is going on in the world.

Little wonder community in general is dying out, little wonder people lock themselves up in their palace like prisons they call home, never having any sort of relationship with neighbours, and I guess, if we are to believe the increase of violence in the streets and unruly bands of teenagers causing terror in neighbourhoods this is the reason for that too...

here are some thoughts...

Who is going to harm you if you are eager to do good? But even if you should suffer for what is right, you are blessed. "Do not fear what they fear; do not be frightened." But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. (1 Peter 3:13-15ish)

And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. In this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment, because in this world we are like him. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. (1 John 4:16-18)

There are plenty of other scriptures that deal with fear and how we should not be a slave to it, but I keep being told to keep my blog entries short, so I wont go into them all...

We as the Kingdom of God, are the answer to this problem, I am certain of it, but how can we solve this problem, when we are a slave to it ourselves???

a bit of a challenge from Naomi

I know it's not often that you get to hear from me, and as usual it's bed time and I can't sleep due to a racing mind........so my hope is that once I unload onto the the blog, sleep will come for me!!!

So I recently had this thing on my mind about how everyone is always busy these days, and not just busy but obsessed with being busy, like it is some sort of status symol......."I am so busy that I didn't even get time to sit down for a meal this week" "What you think that's something, I am so busy I never sit down for a meal, I never even saw my husband this week" "what, you two have nothing on me, I haven't seen my family in a month, I don't ever get time to eat and I can't remember the last time I had a proper sit on the toilet"!!!!

OK.....so these three people don't really exist......but they may as well, we are all caught up in the competition and ego surrounding how busy we are. It's like if we aren't constantly doing something (even if it's really nothing, but we can present it to others as something) then we must be worthless, and we are so afraid that someone out there might actually find out the truth of it all, that we have to present ourselves as busy to keep hiding the truth.

I think (note, this is just my theory) that the reason for all of this feigned busyness, and need to fill our lives constantly is there for the sole reason that we don't want to really face what might be going on inside us...........if we are always full of stuff then we never have time to sit in Gods presence and wait , that's scary......imagine emptying your schedule and your mind for a little bit each day......and waiting on God, you might end up having to face fears that you pretend you don't have, you might have to be reminded of people you need to forgive, you might be confronted about the way you live your life and you might even find that without God at the centre of your existence you are nothing, worthless and scummy!!!!!!

My challenge is to stop saying you're busy all the time, do what you need to do and at some point in your day STOP, turn off the T.V, home and away is not that important.........put away the vacuum cleaner, put down that trashy novel (or that good novel) , get up a little earlier, spend a bit less time at the gym, actually take your lunch break at work and find somewhere quiet to spend some time in solitude............do what ever it takes to put an end to this infectious disease called busyness!!!!!!!

And just so you know, I am blogging this because it is an issue for me, of course I feel special and important when I can tell others how busy I am (we all do) so don't feel like I am pointing fingers and missing the plank in my own eye, I feel really challenged about this at the moment and want to share the challenge with others........please keep me accountable if you know me personally. And if you want to know more about where this all came from for me then read "Reaching Out" by "Henri Nouwen"

I would love to hear back, even if you hate my ideas and think I am the only person in the world who thinks this way!!!!!!!


Goodnight

Naomi

The Next Step Begins

Well, as of today, Naomi & I are officially UNOH Apprentices!!!!

It has been a long time in coming, but finally it is here. For me, it has been a ten year (or probably more) journey since I first got my love for missions & wanted to enter the mission field. Back then , I was introduced to missions more or less accidentally, I was forced to choose an elective at bible college, the choice was between Missions & Creative Ministry, and as I am not really into drama or messianic dance or anything I chose Missions as the better of 2 evils. My perspective of Christianity and Theology was turned up-side-down during that course. So much so that I changed my course to be a missions based course. The following years saw my passion for mission grow and mature from a purely Evangelistic view to a more holistic view seeing the importance and value in social action.

During that time, Jesus was also working on Naomi. I had expected to go to the mission field straight after Bible College, but God had other plans, Naomi was not ready, and I had learnt through my experiences at BC the importance of a married couple being a team on the mission field. Too many men have dragged their wives onto the mission field, where their wives have learnt to resent them, and this often harms the work & ministry of the mission. I did not want this, so I had to wait.

I would like to say that I did not put any pressure on Naomi over this time, but I did put out my feelers every now and then. I guess Naomi was aware of this and felt that I was putting pressure on her, so much so that she would explode in anger towards me. Little did I know that this was because God was working on her and she was resisting it out of the fear of putting her trust completely in Him.

Finally the crunch came for Naomi at the Surrender conference in 05, and since then Naomi has been running towards missions and I have been holding on tight in an attempt to keep up. The last 7 months have been about us getting used to life in Noble Park, settling ourselves and our kids in here, getting to know the people in the community and Rainbow Church, but now the aim of all that waiting is here and we begin the apprenticeship...

Please continue to pray for us as we begin this time, that God will be with us, that we learn to balance our commitments of study and practice, and that we will get a lot out of this time and grow in the Lord & what he has in store for our lives