Advertising for God
Among the usual junk mail that pours through the letter box every week the following advert appeared:-
IS THIS YOU?
- lost your zest for life?
- failed to do the things you always really wanted to do?
- has life carried you along?
- do you feel trapped by circumstance?
It was advertising a Dianetics foundation run by the Church of Scientology (which I presume is linked to the Church of Christ Scientist, a rather misinformed group whose foundation are extremely shaky!) On the first reading this worried me, and then I saw the potential for the Christian Church in what it said, because we have all the answers if only people knew it!
To start at the top, a lot of zest smacks of no direction. If you don’t know where you are going or where you want to go, you have no motivation to get there! The basis for motivation is hope; a looking forward. So where do we buy hope?
“Praise be to the God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.”
(1 Peter 1 v 3 NIV)
He provides us with a hope of a better future and utilizes us to attain it for by turning to Christ we put to death:
“Sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed”
(Colossians 3 v 5 NIV)
All the things that can overpower our will to live by making the world so black and negative. Monotony also leads us to give up; it’s all the same, what’s the point?
“What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again. There is nothing new under the Sun”
(Ecclesiastes 1 v 9 NIV)
Wrong! Just take the experience of the first disciples. There they were quietly fishing when along comes this man, provides them with the biggest bumper catch of fish they’ve ever seen and says,
“come follow me… and I will make you fishers of men”
(Matthew 4 v 18–19 NIV)
And then what happens? They see him healing, this man walking on water, five thousand fed with two fishes and five loaves, demons cast out… boring? — With God around? — Not likely!
So God is hope and God is exciting but what about this failure to do what we really want to do? The answer here lies in looking at what we are wanting to do. In a materialistic, pagan world what we want tends to be well-paid, prestigious jobs, large, flashy, turbo boosted dream machines, twelve bedroomed mansions complete with double garage, swimming pool… well ok, so perhaps I’m getting a little carried away, but lets face it, scale down the descriptions a little and I’m not far wrong. Right, I know what I want, how do I get it?
“You do not have, because you do not ask God. When you ask you do not receive because you ask with wrong motives”
(James 4 v 2–3 NIV)
God has promised to provide us with everything we need both physically and spiritually,
“So do not worry saying `when shall we eat?’ or `what shall we drink?’ or `what shall we wear?’… Your heavenly father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness and all these things will be given to you as well”
(Matthew 6 v 31–33 NIV)
“The one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world”
(1 John 4 v 4 NIV)
through this promise:
“Ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks the door will be opened”
(Matthew 7 v 7 NIV)
So we may not get everything in physical terms, that we want, but we will get what we need however God still has greater things in mind for us:
“And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realm in Christ Jesus in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus”
(Ephesians 2 v 4 NIV)
When you start to follow Jesus, God bestows blessings, things we have asked him for and things we haven’t, but rest assured, these are more wonderful and precious than any fuel-injected envy creator you care to imagine. How do we lay claim to these blessings? As expressed earlier, by following Christ.
“For we are God’s workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do”
(Ephesians 2 v 10 NIV)
When you really follow Christ you achieve everything you want to do because by following closely, what God wants us to do and what we want to do should coincide, and as illustrated earlier God will provide you with everything you need.
Doing well so far. “Has life carried you along?” If so why? If life pushes you at will from one thing to another it’s because you have no idea which way you want to go. Jesus says:
“I am the light of the world, whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life”
(John 8 v 12 NIV)
In this passage the metaphor of light and dark is vital. Before Jesus came, the world was in darkness (sin), the right path was there but man on the whole couldn’t see it. With Jesus came light, all the street lamps blaze along the road of life so that, in theory, everyone can see where it is, and once on this road the direction is clear so long as we keep ‘our eyes fixed on Jesus’ (Hebrews 12 v 2 NEB) No more fumbling about getting lost!
Three down one, one to go! “Do you feel trapped by circumstance?”
Christ offers freedom to those who feel trapped, for it is only the world that demands conformity, demands you to keep up, keep this, do that, buy this. From a Christian perspective:
“Since you died with Christ to the basic principles of this world why as though you still belong to it do you submit to the rules”
(Colossians 2 v 20)
The world isn’t the rule, Christ is the rule, but He is also the freedom, the freedom to be the best you, you could possibly be and He provides the scissors to cut through all this other rubbish that ties you up, they’re called truth:
“The truth will get you free”
(John 8 v 23 NIV)
We therefore have all the answers; Jesus provides the zest, achievement, direction and freedom. So why aren’t people queuing up outside our churches to get in? Why do Bibles sit unsold on shelves, and why does this organisation put leaflets through the door claiming to know the answers when the only answer is Christ?
There appears a massive communication problem. The feasibility of the church as an alternative to meditation, finding your inner self… seems to be missing. It’s about time the church went into overdrive, no more one-off missions, — hey folks, let’s tell people about Christ. What a novel idea!!!! We should be perpetually telling people about Christ, not just verbally, but in actions as well. Dave Bastone (Greenbelt ’91) said something along the lines — salvation should be presented to people where they’re at — if people are hungry feed them, if they have no homes house them, (Shaftesbury Housing Scheme!)… this should not be left to the odd organisation, secular or Christian, this is what the Church should be doing. The church should be an Industry not a Sunday guest house. We should be finding out who we have in our community, and serving that community, and by doing this we show people Christ. By showing them Christ we provide them with the first steps to finding these other answers and only then will we see the church grow!