Peace Restored

This weekend I was at a Porterbrook conference, and wanted to briefly share what I'd gained from it. The time we spent together was fabulous, and I found the Bible came to life as we studied it together in small groups. Reflecting on the gospel, and thinking through what God has to say about families, and how we are a family in Christ if we are trusting him, was really encouraging.

I appreciated people's candour as far as the reality of church life is concerned, that people from all church backgrounds find being a community on God's mission hard and failures are plentiful. I think I found peace in the fact that we do things differnetly to others, and yet in fact we face the same problem - it just manifests itself differently to different groups. So, we may not be the champions of reaching the poor and needy, (although I dont want to imply we don't care about the poor both locally and abroad - we really do!) but we are confident to talk about Jesus in the company of our more middle-class friends and colleagues. Other groups target the poor, but pass up opportunities to speak for Jesus because they are worried they'll lose credibility...

The heart of the problem is a misunderstanding of Grace. Perhaps the one reflects a misunderstanding of God's value for all people regardless of background and his proactivity in reaching them. The other reflects a lack of joy in our salvation...our hearts aren't full of Jesus, so we don't talk about him, because it's out of the overflow of our hearts that words are formed. We talk about what we love...I talk about Mike(my husband) and knitting and animals. It's only natural that Jesus should be on my lips too, as I love him most of all.

There are so many different examples of this, I'm not trying to be exhaustive. But I am encouraged that the problem and the solution are the same for all Christians in a big sense...we don't belive the gospel! We under-estimate it's beauty, it's power, it's attractiveness. I am reminded that I need to be humble before God, to ask him to reveal more of his amazing love through his Spirit, to beg that he change my heart and that my desires change to his desires in turn. How I long for that change to come...And how great it is to see that happening, to feel God's Spirit at work in me and witness the changes in those around me too.