Tag Archives: end times

Living in community and opening our lives to others

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The other night we were discussing with friends how the bible clearly indicates there will come a time when it will be hard to publicly worship God and learn from his true Word. Sometimes it’s hard for people to even step in the doors of a church in a free land. We call these “hard places.”  It seems likely to me that as religious persecution advances, worship services and bible studies won’t occur so freely in large public buildings, but in smaller “house churches” and “church plants” where a few families gather to worship and share life together.

GLOW supports a number of small churches and church plants that once started as little more than a house church. One of these is in Barlanark, Scotland. Their mission is to reach people in hard places:

  • by making Jesus known in the inner city and beyond
  • by proclaiming the Gospel
  • by making disciples
  • by living in community

Pete Stewart and Pete Bell and their families work together with others whose lives have been beaten and bruised by life’s hard ways including abuse, violence, drugs, and prison.  How they describe their ministry challenges and encourages me as I seek to live a meaningful life:

“As a group we have been challenged to live as a living community of Christians by opening our lives more to each other and others in the scheme (housing project). Over the past few months we have been rallying around our vision statement and this has brought a real focus to what we are trying to do. Key to this has been meeting every morning Monday to Friday to have a short bible devotion and then prayer time for 30 minutes. We have been working through our 7 ‘p’s’:  Praise, Purpose, Practical, Present, Partners, Personal, People and spending concentrated time each day praying for specific people in the scheme, that they may come to know Jesus.

“There have been 14 or 15 adults meeting as part of our launch team over the past 2 months. We have been looking at ‘What is the Church’ and ‘What is a Healthy Church’ which has been challenging and inspiring. 3 people have asked to be baptised. 17 adults and 9 children participated in a weekender in Niddrie at the end of February where we looked at Evangelism,
Discipleship, Discipline, Youth Work and Addiction in the schemes. This was a formative time for us as a growing church plant.”

I wonder, do you think of the church as a living community of Christians by opening our lives more to each other and others? It’s difficult to share the vulnerable parts of our lives with others. But that’s what Jesus intended and modeled by growing close to a dozen men and becoming closely involved in the celebrations and hurts of others. He taught his disciples to disciple others, saying, “By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you love one another.” John 13:35

We aren’t followers of Jesus just because we go to church once a week or even read the bible daily. The evidence of our discipleship is that we love one another as he did… living in community with others and opening our lives to each other.

Would you pray for Pete Stewart and Pete Bell as they minister to people in hard places? And as you do, take time to consider how you might open your life to others around you, sharing the good news of the one who changed your life – forever.

What if salvation was all you had?

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We ask God for so many things: safe travel, a happy day, a secure job, good health, more of nearly everything, and so much more. And it’s well we do come before Him with our petitions for He encourages us to depend on Him for all our needs. He wants us to ask for everything in the name of Jesus, according to His will, not ours. IF we desire Him more than anything else, He will give us the desires of our heart.

 

If you have ever been to a land where believers have no access to clean water, safe food, or barely sufficient shelter, you’d realize we live in a land of plenty. We say we walk by faith and yet we all depend so much on our own resources as much – perhaps more – than we sometimes depend on God. And I wondered:

 

If all we had was our salvation would that be enough?

 

What if the job goes south (perhaps literally) and leaves you behind? What if you lose your prized home? What if suddenly and unexpectedly your healthy life is turned upside down by cancer, Alzheimer’s, or some other chronic condition? What if you lost your family and fortune? Job experienced all this and he remained faithful to His God. Would we? Or would we be like His friends saying, “Curse God and die.”

 

It won’t always be prosperous times for us. The bible is clear that times are coming when it will be very hard to even survive. It’s likely that in a single day, money will lose all its value. Your lifetime savings will be worthless. Standing firm in the faith will come only at a very high cost, even your life. And then there are the bowl judgments that will pour over the earth with unimaginable destruction.

 

Maybe real believers will have been raptured to heaven by then. But maybe we’ll have to endure a much stronger testing of our faith than we’d like to think. It doesn’t have to be the end times to test our faith. All sorts of trials come into our lives with no invitation. And the question is:

 

What if salvation was all I had?
Will God be enough if I have nothing else?

 

What if your rights were curtailed and you couldn’t go to a public church that worshipped Jesus? What if your means of earning an income or even enjoying basic comforts were taken away by a wretched disease? What if inconsolable sorrow came upon you at the loss of a child? What if your friends abandoned you? Would dwelling in the presence of God be enough for your soul? Would His grace be sufficient and His strength manifest in your weakness? Could you praise Him in the storm? Could you find His goodness and beauty in the smallest places around and within you? Could you see His spark of goodness in others you meet, even those you don’t particularly like?

 

The tragic slaughter of Christian students in Kenya might make us wonder, “Would I take a bullet for Christ?” But the real question isn’t, “Am I willing to die for Christ?” Perhaps the most important and relevant question is, “Am I willing to LIVE for Christ?” If salvation was all I had (and that is so very much!) would that be enough for me? And if so, should I not be completely satisfied in God today since he has blessed me with so much more?!