I saw this skit earlier this year at a Promise Keeper’s conference and it really had an impact on me. I found it the other day on YouTube and thought I would share it. It’s very powerful, and very true. God doesn’t make junk! And He wants to turn us into His masterpiece. The Bible calls God the Potter, and we are the clay (Jeremiah 18:1-6). That means that if we submit to Him, to His working in and on our lives, He can transform us from a shapeless lump of clay into an exquisite vessel that He can then pour into, and in turn pour us out to those around us. As He blesses us, we can bless others.
That is the real question isn’t it? What is a Christian? And am I (or you) one?
The term Christian is thrown about quite loosely and I think a lot of people call themselves a Christian because they believe in God. Or they (mostly) do nice things for people. Or they go to church for Christmas… and maybe Easter if they feel like it. Maybe they think they are Christian because they were baptized as a baby. Or maybe they asked Jesus into their heart as a child.
Do any of these things make you a Christian? In and of themselves, no. Being baptized doesn’t make you a Christian. Asking Jesus into your heart once, or twice, or a whole bunch of times even, doesn’t make you a Christian. These are stepping stones on the way to becoming a Christian, sure. But making you a Christian? No way.
Let’s put it this way. Do your friends and family and co-workers know that you are a Christian? If not, then you need to do some serious soul-searching and figure out why that is. I’m not saying you need to evangelize to them all (but if you are at all concerned about their eternal souls, which you should be, then you should be talking to them about the hope within you, right?), but you need to live a lifestyle that, without a doubt, reflects that you are a Christian. Does this mean you need to be perfect? Nope. I’m far from perfect. And I am pretty much scared spitless to evangelize to people — I am more than willing to talk about Jesus and my hope and faith and love for Christ if it is brought up, but to just out of the blue talk to someone about it? I have a real hard time with that, and it really takes some prayer and dependency on the Holy Spirit to move me beyond my natural tendency to clam up. More
“For He will deliver the needy when He cries,
The poor also, and him who has no helper.
He will spare the poor and needy,
And will save the souls of the needy.
He will redeem their life from oppression and violence;
And precious shall be their blood in His sight.” (Ps 72:12-14, NKJV)
The above was part of my Bible reading guide this morning and it spoke volumes due to what we had done yesterday. Yesterday, we had put on a BBQ in probably the roughest neighbourhood in our inner city, a free BBQ to feed the homeless, helpless, and the less fortunate. Why did we do this? Because we love God, and we know He loves these people and street people are of value as well (which the above verse definitely indicates!), and they deserve to be shown the same dignity and respect that we are all accustomed to.
This is the third year this event has been put on, and preparation for it began months ago. There were preparations in the natural, of course, soliciting donations for the event, but there were also preparations in the spiritual realm. Twice we had done prayer walks around the field, just praying that God would do what He does best: meet with people, transform people, that His Spirit would be there in a very real way. As organizers, we had prayed together and individually for this thing for weeks beforehand.
Yesterday morning I was up at six in the morning, preparing to be down at the site for eight in the morning to begin setup. That morning I was reading from the book of Acts, and the works of the early church inspired me for the day. What powerful things the early church had done! What beautiful adoration to God, to His Word, to His divine purpose! What a humbling thing to try and recreate by the work we were doing!
The BBQ was an absolute success. Despite little technical setbacks early on that, in the grand scheme of things, really amounted to nothing, we had an opportunity to feed at least 500-700 people. Local media was out, so we got a few seconds of exposure on the local TV stations (keep reading to see the clips) and there should be an article in the local newspaper regarding it as well. It was a hot day, up to 24C and many of us got sun burnt. We gave away so much, a thousand hot dogs and a thousand hamburgers, brand-new clothes that were donated, pillows, donuts, fruit, chips, pop, bottles of water. Thank you to the many companies that supported us and gave freely to the event, and thank you to the many volunteers that helped. God bless you all!
Now that the natural results have been described, I need to describe the spiritual. And this is what made this day so exciting, so powerful, and so exhausting. As I said, we were praying for weeks before the event and even driving down, the music in the car was off, and I was praying for the BBQ, for the volunteers, for the food, for the people that were coming to the event. And God moved in an absolutely powerful way! Thank You God that You listen to the heart-felt prayers of Your people who are striving to be obedient and do Your will! There is so much to describe, so it may be a bit disjointed — please bear with me.
First and foremost, there was such a sense of joy among the volunteers. There were no arguments, no one complained about having to do more than others, or do something they didn’t like. We were united in one purpose. There were smiles everywhere, people were so welcoming to those coming through the line to be fed, there was a genuine servanthood evident. There was such complete _peace_ in that place. You need to understand that these are people who are accustomed to a life of strife and fighting, that literally fight over scraps of food. Yet it was so peaceful in the field. There was no striving for places in line. They were patient, despite the heat, and they were grateful for the food. They were polite, thankful. To put this in perspective, I drove off-site around 2:30 in order to get some coffee. Not even a block away I saw two men yelling at each other and fighting. When we were loading the left over supplies into the church at 6:00 there were young men and women, right before the doors of the church (which is also right in the middle of downtown) fighting and swearing and arguing. But in that place, at that time, there was complete and utter peace. No fighting, no arguing, no dissension. More
I recently watched the most amazing sermon by a man named Paul Washer, given to a youth conference in 2002.
This is a powerful message, and it is one that many will find offensive or “dated”, and the only reason you would think that is if you have bought into the “contemporary Christian” or “carnal Christian” mentality that is so prevalent in western churches today.
I don’t want to reiterate what Paul Washer said — if you know you are a Christian, you need to watch this. If you think you are a Christian, you really need to watch this. If you are not a Christian, you should watch this as well. The guts it took for this man to stand before an audience of 5,000 people (most of them youth), and preach this message, is astounding.
What I would like to do is focus on one thing he says because it really resonates with other things that I have really been feeling in the last few weeks, particularly in the areas of righteousness and holiness.
“‘Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way the leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.’” (Matt 7:13-14, NKJV)
Many Christians today think that righteousness and holiness is a lifestyle choice, like choosing to eat Subway over McDonalds, or drinking water over soda pop. Unfortunately, the Bible never taught that (as Bible-believing Christians) we had any choice on how we live as Christians. We were called to be holy and righteous — not as a lifestyle choice, but as a mandate. We were called to examine ourselves, line ourselves up to the Word, to be like Jesus as much as we can in this fallen earthly flesh. When did we get the idea that we ever had a choice?
Sadly, society and the idea of being un-offensive to people have told us the lie that we do have a choice, and when we read that verse we think of only the narrow gate, and think only that when we accept Jesus as our personal Lord and Saviour, then that’s it. Done deal. I’m going to heaven now. And we never change how we live our lives. Nothing changes! We continue to be of the world, rather than in the world. Two very different things! More
The last five months have been… interesting, exciting, wild, stretching, and growing. God has been moving in amazing ways and I believe it all turned around because we were obedient to Him and did what He asked of my wife and I. This is a bit of a long story, but to give some background, my wife and I had gone through presbytery four years ago and had an amazing and somewhat frightening/exciting Word spoken over us. For those that don’t know what presbytery is, it’s when you fast and pray and seek God and have prophets speak God’s Word over you. For some, it provides life direction, for some it gives insight into the future that God has planned for you, for some it’s just plain old encouragement. If you’ve never been to a prophetic meeting like this, it really is something to behold. The Holy Spirit moves in ways that can’t even be described. Re-reading the word spoken over us still brings tears to my eyes and chills down my spine.
Without getting into it overly much (because there is a lot), the main thrust of the word was that we were going to be deeply rooted in the House of God, and that we would be involved with people. We would have a heart of evangelism, and a hunger in our spirit to see God’s Will done in the earth. That we would go up against the enemy and not be afraid and, just as importantly, have a God-given power over the enemy. That our home would be open, that we would get involved in discipleship and mentoring and getting involved in people’s lives. That we would have a spirit of outreach.
These are beautiful things to hear, but for someone who doesn’t really like people, this wasn’t really what I wanted to hear. I’m not really a people person, and I’m also very cynical and critical of people; part of that has to do with my personality, and part of that is due to my job and its lack of social interactions. My passion for God was most definitely there, but my passion for people was… pretty lacking. My wife is the complete opposite. She loves people, but being told we would be coming up against dark kingdoms really concerned her. I’ve had a past that dealt with spiritual warfare, so I can’t say I was comfortable with it, but it wasn’t scary because I know how powerful God can be in those situations.
So for four years this prophetic word has been remembered and forgotten, ignored and cried out for… but all things are in His timing. And just before last Christmas, He brought us to a whole new level of faith, passion, worship… and looking back now, we can pin-point to exactly when He started unfolding His plan for us. More
I just felt like I needed to share how God is opening my eyes and growing me. I am most definitely an unfinished work, more coal than diamond, but the Lord is revealing things to me and impressing things upon my heart — particularly the other night. My wife and I are part of a Bible study that for three weeks does a regular Bible study, then on the fourth week go out and do what we’ve been reading about. So we’ve been in Matthew, and as a result we pooled some money and put together some small bags of items for homeless people with the idea that we would wander around downtown and hand them out, witnessing to people.
The bags were quite modest: toothpaste, toothbrush, soap, a comb, shampoo, a pair of socks, some candies and a few other assorted hygiene things, and a business card sized print out of Jeremiah 29:11-13. We chose this because people on the streets need hope (well, we all need hope, but I think they need it in particular), and we wanted to share the fact that God does have good thoughts towards us, and that He wants us to have a future, and hope.
Now, I have to be honest here. I’m not a people person. I’m about as close to an anti-social hermit as you can get while having a family and going to church three times a week. I’m not generally a fan of people — I’m not outgoing, I don’t talk a lot, and I’m quite shy. My appearance probably doesn’t help matters much because I tend to intimidate people (or so I’m told), and my “style” of dress and skin adornments probably doesn’t help either. My wife, on the other hand, is the complete opposite — she talks a lot, she’s bubbly and outgoing, very animated and excited. As you can imagine, this is where God is growing me. Witnessing to street people sounds great, until you actually do it. And, if you’re like me, you’re fervently praying for strength and courage before heading out because this is _WAY_ out of my comfort zone. More
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