Indispensable by David P Cassidy

 My latest read is a book I bought at Keswick Portstewart. David was the main evening speaker. I am attempting to read this book and I mean that word as it is very deep and I have already read the first chapter half a dozen times to get what he is saying! He loves C S Lewis and gives credit to his dad for teaching him to read his writings. I love this quote: "Christianity ... if false is of no importance and if true of infinite importance. The one thing it cannot be is moderately important." 

David starts off his book by telling the story of Alexander Ogorodnikov, a Russian Christian and a dissident during the years of the persecution that was inflicted on Christians by the Soviet Communist state. He had been imprisoned for his faith. One night in prison the guards isolated him, stripped him, broke the windows of his cell and turned off all heat. They expected him to freeze to death - he was in Siberia. Alexander was freezing and alone but he felt the prayers of other Christians come over the walls and down the hall to the cell where the guards had left him. "These prayers surrounded me and warmed me" he said. In the morning, expecting him to be dead, the guards found him not only alive but well and warm. God was with him through the prayers of his people. Is this possible - for God to be with us? 

David goes on to describe periods in his own life when he has faced nightmares and suffering - suicides, death, sicknesses - more than any joy he could honestly say he has known. David then goes on to say: "We appear to be immersed in a culture that loves death, worships mere celebrity, seeks power at all costs and will stoop to everything from torturing animals to honouring animal instincts with the status of virtue." Is God really with us? "If I am to have faith at all, it will never be in some absentee God or some pitiable weak cosmic "invisible friend" - not in some impersonal force or fate but in a God who knows our suffering because he made it his own." That is the God I have faith in today. Because I have proven him to be true in all circumstances of my life, none probably more so than right now. Do you have faith in God?

 

For me a book is worth it's weight in goal when it speaks to me personally. These words did that just now: "We see our children abandoning the faith that prayerful parents sought to nurture in their souls. We see marriages of many years unexpectedly dissolving and once-full churches emptying out. We see charlatan preachers offering magic cures and quick fixes that seduce the unguarded and produce in many others a jaundiced cynicism about the church. We see the places that we expected to be shelters in the storm turned into harbours where dangerous men with dark hearts prey on vulnerable children." This could have been written for such a time as we are living in today. Can you not see how this is so relevant to what we are seeing happen even in our land today? How do we live in such a time as this? But you know what ... the situation is no different than it has ever been. "Really we need a living awareness of the nearness of Jesus in our deepest trial and sorrow, of his grace for us in our great need, of his strength that matches our well known weakness. It means that we live with the awareness that he is with us in all places and at all times." This is so similar to what was said at New Horizon last night. How do we view our daily work? As a means to an end? Or do we take Christ with us and live him out in our daily lives wherever that may take us? As David quotes - the Lord was with Joseph despite all his brothers put him through and Daniel when he walked through the flames of the furnace. So why is God not with us too? We will have difficult questions to answer in this life. Disease will make its presence felt. Doubts will crowd in. Death will lurk close at hand. Life as we know it now depends on whether we build on the truth of God's word and commit our lives to his word as we walk each day. And David quotes the passage which Jason Cruise preached on Sunday night - Matthew 7. How do we start to make this faith our own? By turning our gaze on the wonder of the one who promises to be Immanuel, God with us.

 

In his opening chapter David quotes from Philip Schaff's The Person of Christ: the miracle of history and I think it is good to put this out there as not many would think of Jesus in this way: "Without money and arms, he conquered more millions than Alexander, Caesar, Muhammed and Napoleon; without science and learning he shed more light on things human and divine than all philosophers and scholars combined; without eloquence of schools, he spoke such words of life as were never spoken before or since, and produced effects which lie beyond the reach of any orator or poet; without writing a single line, he set more pens in motion, and furnished themes for more sermons, orations, discussions, learned volumes, works of art and sweet songs of praise than the whole army of great men of ancient and modern times." What is your opinion on Jesus?

 

I never thought of this before ...

"From Jesus' first moments he was identified with food for the hungry. Born in a stable in Bethlehem, a name that means "House of Bread", Jesus was laid in a food trough, identified from his first moments among us with food - a hint of what was to come when he would one day say he is the Bread that comes down from heaven and that his flesh is true God."

 

David shows how the scriptures are so very important. He points to Paul's instructions to Timothy "study so that you can handle with accuracy the word of truth." He knew his spiritual health and the wellbeing of the church in his day depended on Timothy's study and subsequent teaching of scripture. Throughout scripture God's voice resounds in every generation. Paul goes on to say "all scripture is breathed out by God." David shows that the Spirit of God, the breath of God, breathed those words into the hearts and minds of the writers who penned them and sent then to God's people for all time. When we read the bible we read words that are written by human beings - but that find their origin in God's heart rather then in man's mind.

David goes on to tell the difference the bible makes to people's lives and uses some real life examples.

This is why I love studying the bible. I love seeing the change in my own life as I read and I want others to experience the same. But too often people are put off reading because of perceptions - how it should be done and who should help when doing it. Many have grown up with this idea that you have to be specially trained ie only a pastor can really unlock the secrets of scripture and it is not our place to dabble in it. Also they limit studying scripture to within a church building. So very sad! I love hearing God's word proclaimed each week in church and will take notes when I am in attendance but I find it becomes very personal when I open it up daily and allow God's Holy Spirit to use it to speak directly into my situation.

 

In his chapter on eternal life David quotes these beautiful words from his mother's favourite hymn This is my Fathers world

This is my Father"s world
Oh, let me ne'er forget
That though the wrong seems oft so strong,
God is the ruler yet
This is my Father's world,
The battle is not done:
Jesus who died shall be satisfied,
And earth and Heav'n be one

 

In his chapter on Love, David tells the following story ...

In March of 1995 a 93 year old man died in a small town in Poland. His name was Franciszek Gajowniczek. The death of an elderly man might not strike us as significant but his long life was due to the death of another man in his place. At the outbreak of WW2 in 1939 Gajowniczek then a soldier in the Polish army, had been captured by advancing Nazi troops. He was sent to Auschwitz, where he was prisoner 5659. That's when prisoner 16670 steps into the story. While at least 1.5 million Jews perished in Auschwitz and its neighbouring camp Birkenau evidence indicates that hundred of thousands of non-Jews were also murdered. Among these were Polish intellectuals who were feared by the ascendant Nazi regime, including the Catholic Franciscan leader Fr Maximilian Kolbe. This man - prisoner 16670 - was standing with the other prisoners in roll call when the camp commander demanded that ten men be starved to death as punishment for the disappearance of 3 prisoners from the camp. One of those selected for death was Gajowniczek. When chosen, he cried out for mercy, speaking of his wife and children and pleading to be spared. Hearing his cries, Fr Kolbe stepped forward and offered to take Gajowniczek's place among the condemned; his offer was accepted. Kolbe wasted away without food and water before finally being put to death by lethal injection. Kolbe's willingness to sacrifice his life for another prisoner made him in Pope John Paul II's words, a "martyr of charity".

 

“The sum of Christian discipleship is not theological precision, or the ability to recite vast amounts of Scripture or even the dutiful embrace of various spiritual disciplines; it is instead the formation of a life that is characterised by God's love flowing from a heart that has been made pure by mercy."

Now think about that! You can read and study God's word from now until you die, you can attend and hear all the best sermons and preachers in the world, pray very sincerely, do all of that but if you haven't love, God's love deep in your heart it's worthless.

Jesus said it is by our love for one another that people will know we are his disciples - John 13 verses 34 and 35. But do we truly believe that?

David goes on to list several things that we as Christians might do - such as neglecting the poor, orphans and other children, treat human beings less than they should - then people should question the validity of our claims. He goes on and this is what hit me the most - refuse to forgive one another, not work to heal the many divisions in the body of Christ. He asks the question

"Should we really be shocked that our cold indifference to the unity for which Jesus prayed leaves the world convinced that we have little to offer them in terms of hope and kindness?"

Wow how convicting this morning!

 

It is amazing when you take scripture out of context and then really see it as it should be how much more it means to you. We all know 1 Corinthians 13 the great love chapter of the bible. I have heard it read at many wedding ceremonies as I am sure you have too. It describes in great detail what love is but have you thought about who this was originally written to?

A group of people, a church which were being rebuked and corrected. They were perhaps the single most disjointed and problematic congregation that anyone can imagine. Filled with pride over various gifts of the Spirit and badly divided over everything from economic status and preferred preachers to ethnicity, they got drunk at communion, neglected basic standards of holiness and squabbled over who among them was more spiritual rather than tackling the tough issues. They had forgotten Christianity's most basic truth: we are the beloved of God and so we love one another. They might have been known for their spirituality but that was an empty boast. Their lack of love showed and that lack undermined everything that they claimed for themselves.

Love is the authenticating mark of the believer and its lack the warning light that a faith professed is not a faith possessed.

 

"The church is to be a loving church in a dying culture ... in the midst of the word ... Jesus is giving a right to the world. Upon his authority he gives the world the right to judge whether you and I are born again Christians on the basis of our observable love toward all Christians."

Francis Schaeffer

 

David sets out clearly the facts of the second coming of Christ, what I actually believe. This is not something talked about enough because of the fear surrounding death and what happens next. Here is what he says:

"The second coming would happen in stages: first the secret removal (rapture) of true believers from the earth; second the horrors of the seven-year "great tribulation", when the earth would be ruled by the antichrist; finally the return of Jesus who would come back with all the raptured whack the Antichrist and retrieve anyone left on earth who had bravely refused the "mark of the beast" (the dreaded 666) and were counted faithful. (In all likelihood this would be a small group, since most everyone who didn't bow to the powers during the great tribulation would have already suffered a brutal martyrs death) "

 

Remember me as you pass by
As you are now so once was I
As I am now so you shall be
Prepare for death, you follow me

A memorial market in St Giles Street Oxford

Someone added these words in graffiti under it

To follow you I'm not content
Until I know which way you went!

 

Martin Luther often said that, next to scripture itself, the best weapon against the devil is good music - that the enemy hates music because he despises our joy. We don't ignore the reality of spiritual warfare, but neither do we doubt the strength of the forces that are lined up on the side of faith, hope and love. This is why, in one sermon, Luther wrote "when sadness comes to you and threatens to gain the upper hand, then say "come I must play our Lord Jesus a song ... for scripture teaches me that he loves to hear joyful song and stringed instruments." Strike the keys with a will and sing out until those thoughts disappear as David and Elisha did. If the devil returns... defend yourself and say "Get out devil, I must now sing and play unto my Lord Jesus!"

 

If Christians believe that they can actually live up to God's standard and should be achieving that goal better and better each day then one of two things will happen in the face of the stubborn reality of our hearts. Either we must rewrite God's standards downward into something more achievable ... or if we retain the searching intensity of biblical truth, we assume that God is very disappointed in us."

Barbara Duguid Extravagant Grace