On this day... Amy Carmichael

On this day in 1901 Amy Carmichael came into contact for the first time with Preena, the child who alerted her to the temple prostitution which was then rife in India. That contact grew into a large-scale ministry, reaching many hundreds of children.

For more information, look here or, better, look for this book.

On this day... George Muller and the Scriptural Knowledge Institution

On this day in 1834, George Muller, one of the greatest and most eccentric Christians of the 19th century, founded The Scriptural Knowledge Institution for Home and Abroad. He was a godly man who was also somehow very real, flesh and blood. His commitment to a distinctive approach to funding his work was in striking contrast to William Booth, with whom in other ways he had much in common. For a phenomenal biographical sketch, see John Piper's article here.

Prayer changes things

I am not sure how prayer works. 

I have no doubt that it does - I have seen and experienced too many things in my own life which I have had to see as answers to prayer. But I don't know how it works. 

When Abraham intercedes for Sodom, how does it work? The conversation wrestles back and forth, the numbers game is played, but I for one am none the wiser as to whether the outcome for the city and for Lot is one iota different as a result of the conversation. What I do know is that, through that conversation, God was choosing not to hide but to reveal his plan and purpose and so to share more of himself with his Covenant Man. Who instigates and who responds in the conversation is by no means as simple as we may think at first sight. 

When Elijah prayed for fire from heaven to come on the sacrifice in his battle with Baal, that worked, for sure. But when he prayed for drought, or for rain after the drought, wasn't he simply moulding his words into what God had already said he would do in cursing and blessing his covenant people as they worked out their cycles of disobedience and repentance? What came first, the Prayer or the Word?

When Jesus prayed that the cup might pass from him in the garden, wasn't he expressing the agony of his heart in honesty before God, while knowing that the prayer would not be "answered" in the simplistic sense of the word? He knew that he was walking into a dark valley where it would "please the Lord to bruise him". Nevertheless, he told it like it was, and his prayer was heard, not by the removal of "the cup" but by strengthening in his sufferings. 

In what we call the Lord's Prayer, we are taught to pray along the lines of a range of things where we know what God's ultimate will and purpose will be. His will will be done. His name will be honoured. His kingdom will come. He does forgive our sins. He does provide our bread. The relationship between our asking for these things and the answer is not a simple one. We are praying for what God wants to give - and it is God himself who is teaching us to pray in that way.

The point is that prayer surely changes things, but how that happens is by no means straightforward. God is not a slot machine - pop your prayer in and get your product out. In fact, as one good friend once said, of her own beginnings of God-consciousness, "the only God I could possibly believe in was one who could say 'No' to me."  Even in striking biblical accounts of answered prayer, like Elijah, the content of the prayer and God's answer are all pre-shaped by the prior revelation of his will.  

When we pray, or see someone praying, we are seeing evidence of God at work already. No one truly prays who doesn't know grace, who doesn't have the Spirit. When we pray in conscious awareness of the character and will of God as revealed in scripture, we are orienting our thoughts, like filings near a magnet, to his person and purpose. Or, to put it another way, he is orienting us. 

Because that is how prayer always changes things. Sometimes answers are striking ones - fire on sacrifices, healings, provision for Kingdom projects. Sometimes they are by no means so obvious. But what always happens when we pray is that we become reorientated. We loosen our grip on the value systems and ways of thinking of the world around us, the constantly pressuring mindset of World, Flesh and Devil, and realign, retune to the melody and harmony of our Father and his purposes in Jesus. And that does us more good than words can express. 

Prayer changes things. 

Starting with me. 

On this day... John Wesley´s death

A rich relative come to stay...

Colossians 3:16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly...

The church in Colossae was being perturbed. Upset. Thrown about a bit. We have to deduce exactly how by reading between the lines of Paul's letter - we have no other data to go on. It seems that teaching had crept in which had a legalistic streak, taking some Old Testament requirements and imposing them on Christians, perhaps not as a basis of salvation but certainly as a basis of spiritual one-upmanship, of graduation into the premier league of those who enjoyed "fullness". The language was impressive, and, as these things so often do, invited ordinary believers into an apparently higher experience, while in the process being rather dismissive of the "basics" of the Christian life. Deeper knowledge, perhaps contact with angels, a more erudite view of Jesus - who wouldn't be tempted?! Not least when the mystical, even magical, elements to these views seemed more in tune with many of the currents in wider society. The promise of a Higher Life while simultaneously being less counter-cultural will always appeal! 

Paul's answer to all of this is, as ever, to see more of Jesus. To appreciate his greatness, his grace, his glory, his sufficiency, his excellence. He knows that there is nothing these believers need more than a fuller appreciation of what they already have in Christ.  And that solution is always the answer whenever exclusive, gnostic, esoteric, ascetic or other promises of "something special" infect the church and rob it of its fundamental joy in the gospel. When the church loses its gospel joy it ALWAYS becomes less effective in serving the world by getting the message out. 

In our readings this morning we came to the verse above. In a sense it is just a part of the overall solution that Paul is putting to the Colossians. But it is a very interesting part, and I love the way he puts it. 

It is parallel with a very similar passage in the letter to the Ephesians which stresses being filled with the Spirit, and therefore teaching one another scripture through our singing. The Ephesians faced some similar but distinctive challenges, and I don't doubt that the wording is carefully nuanced in each case.  

The Colossians needed to recalibrate their attitude to the Bible. By "the word of Christ" Paul means the gospel, certainly, the message of scripture, not simple the Bible as a book. But as the following words make clear, that message cannot be divorced from scripture itself, if (at the least) the inclusion of the Psalms is anything to go by. Paul is against a wrong, unChristly use of scripture. The false teachers were using the Book as the source for their various Jewish emphases; the believers were inclined  to judge one another over fasts and feast days. They were not reading the scriptures and finding the supreme and sufficient Christ in them. Over against such wrong use Paul wanted to encourage right use. The Bible is read right when we find "the Word of Christ" in it.  

Not for the last time in church history, someone was pushing these Christians towards an attitude which took Christ out of the scriptures. For the Colossians, the OT was a source book for the imposed rules of new prophets who Really Knew God. At other times a critical attitude has denied the essential unity of scripture as Word of Christ - it becomes a book of ancient curiosities. When scripture is at best a blast from the past,  the Now Experience or the New Scholarship is so much more attractive! Such an influence rarely damns the Bible as such - it just sidelines it. And so the Christ of scripture gets sidelined too. 

Against that backdrop, Paul wants the church to revel in talking - and singing - scripture, and to do so in the understanding that the word of scripture is Christ's. It comes from the great Christ he has been talking about, and it speaks of the great Christ he has been talking about. 

He uses the phrase "dwell richly". He says, "Let the Word, the message of the Scriptures, the Book of Jesus, be to you like having a rich relative come to stay. Think of the special treats, the outings, the great restaurant meals, the generally better lifestyle when Uncle Bartholomew stays over - let the Bible be like that among you! Don't look for your fullness elsewhere - let the scripture, let the gospel raise your standard of living!"

In our day too, we are offered attractive versions of the Christian life which claim to be holy and to reach greater heights of love and intimacy with God, while simultaneously downplaying scripture and cosying up to the prevailing culture. The Word of the Bible is not viewed as a rich and generous relative. It is viewed as a rather fusty, musty, picky and embarrassing old person. We wouldn't want to enter into dialogue with postmoderns while we've got her in tow! She's all very well in her place, but we've moved on!

If we've moved on from scripture, we've moved on from Jesus. The language used around us may still press lots of nice buttons - there is much talk of love, of God, of openness, of transformation - but unless it is focussed on the Christ of the Bible in his once-and-for-all work for us, we have come adrift. 

Initiatives like the "Boundless... Whole world reading" programme are good, but there is a way to go before the trend towards a contemporary Colossian heresy is driven back in the SA by the pressure of Christ's rich Word. Let's welcome the rich relative back, big time! 

(The rich relative illustration, possibly implied in the text itself, has come to me from somewhere, and I don't now know where. If anyone can help with a possible source...? Richard Chester? John Stott?)

The quiet bloke at the back

He came most weeks for about a year. About 2 out of 3, anyway. Mornings only. Used to arrive pretty tight for time, sometimes during the first hymn, and would slip away pretty quickly afterwards. Smiled and seemed friendly enough, but made no effort to involve himself in church life. Seemed to know the songs though, or most of them, and how to find his place in the Bible. But no one asked him about himself; I guess they sensed that it wasn't wanted. Then, quite suddenly, he stopped coming, and has never been back. 

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 

I went to Longmeadow Evangelical Church most Sunday mornings for about a year. I was spending weekends with a lady in the area; it was she who made me go back to church in the first place - "You won't be sorted until you get the God thing sorted" - and took me to the CofE in her village. It wasn't really my scene, but we went together for a while. Then, one Sunday, she had to work, and I was late for the Anglicans, so I went to Longmeadow. I knew that this was what I needed, but sadly for her it was a bridge too far. She never went once, but still pushed me to go. 

I was at home because the Bible was central. Most of the songs were equally familiar at the CofE, and the liturgical stuff there went deep, but the preaching did not. Suddenly I was back listening to scripture being expounded. I sat through a lot of Genesis with David Power. Ministry that was faithful, relevant and challenging. 

When I was in pastoral ministry, I remember the phenomenon of the quiet bloke at the back. The people (mainly men) who came regularly but not constantly, who shot off quickly after the service, who didn't seem to want to talk much, and, to be honest, to whom I never knew quite what to say. 

I discovered I had become one of those blokes. I was an anonymous, uninvolved, uncommitted but attentive churchgoer. I had a backstory, but nobody ever asked, and I didn't really want to talk about it. There was even one guy there who I thought I recognised from university CU, but I avoided him especially and I'm not sure he was who I thought he was anyway. Sometimes I was shocked or disappointed that people didn't speak to me more, but then I remembered those other quiet blokes at the back, and remembered the aura of "ask me nothing" and I understood. 

Gradually the drip drip drip of the Word and the Spirit started to erode the stony cladding my sin had put up around what was in reality a heart of flesh. I was a backslider, a prodigal who had travelled miles away, and God would not and did not let me be. He used my year as a quiet bloke at the back to bring me home. I finished seeing the lady, and Longmeadow has not seen me since. 

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 

The reason I write is that in your meetings you too may have a quiet bloke at the back. He won't have the same backstory as I did, but he is there for a reason. Not least, he is there because he wants to be. Be friendly, but don't push him too hard. Pray for him and let the Word do the work. 

You never know what God is doing. 

A brief thought from the Founder...

“We believe in the old-fashioned salvation. We have not developed and improved into Universalism, Unitarianism, or Nothingarianism, or any other form of infidelity, and we don’t expect to. Ours is just the same salvation taught in the Bible, proclaimed by prophets and apostles, preached by Luther and Wesley and Whitfield, sealed by the blood of martyrs – the very same salvation which was purchased by the sufferings and agony and Blood of the Son of God.”


William Booth, The Founder Speaks Again: A Selection of the Writings of William Booth ed. Cyril J. Barnes (London: Salvationist Publishing and Supplies, 1960), 45 – 6.