3am thoughts

Since arriving back in Hong Kong on Friday I've been wide awake from about 3am each morning. As my mind is in overdrive I've found myself listening to sermons or surfing the web to pass the time (although this morning I've almost finished my final newsletter which was quite productive).

In my late night web browsing I've found myself once more disheartened by disillusionment as I've read articles and news sites on all manner of topics, but primarily current events and Hillsong. I was reminded by Uncle Phil's blog though as he quoted Bonhoeffer that we are all sinners, and so to judge anyone is not only wrong (after all God should be the only judge) but often hypocritical.

So... with that in mind, and the thought that I stand on the knife edge of hypocrisy, I share with the www that I don't like main stream happy clappy Christianity. I identify with the words of Geoff Bullock where he says:

I’d like the word worship to go out of our vernacular and that (instead) we would enjoy our musical arts as an expression of faith, an expression of celebration, a creative expression of grace but when we thought of (God’s) outworking in our lives, we thought of rolling our sleeves up and getting committed to physically meeting needs and to loving people and accepting people and allowing God to reveal Himself to them...I’d love to see an inclusiveness where this whole culture was broken down. I’d love to hear people sing but not striving to have a spiritual experience in it

I love to sing and praise God in that, but I'm not a fan of worship per say any more in the P&W sense. I don't like being judged on my performance in Christianity, I don't think we should be, although it's all to easy to fall into this trap. How loud we sing, if we pray out loud, outward indications of an inward relationship to which only God can really see.

In reading through many articles, I've paralleled the time with listening to some sermons by Malcolm Smith on Christ's grace and acceptance (the specific series I'm listening to is entitled "spiritual burnout - the road to recovery"). In this series he states that we must take a serious look at our belief system, and that the promises of the Gospel are incapable of burnout. Looking through the Epistles of Paul, he speaks of a key phrase that runs throughout and that if you were to take those phrases out, there would be very little left in Paul's exposition of the Gospel, with the one that puts it most succinctly being Ephesians 2: 4-7 (I've included a bit more):

But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms 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. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.

He speaks on how our relationship with Christ should be founded on these words. Never in what we do, but always coming back to how we are in Christ Jesus, and the blood covenant he made for us. He goes on to expound on these words and how there is nothing that we have as a believer, except in Christ, and from that outworks our Christianity.

I guess listening to him I feel fairly overwhelmed, reasonably confronted, and in some ways simply angry. I know I'm in the process and have been for some months of experiencing the wonder of Grace, but it's a scary thing to know that there is NOTHING that I can do myself. That we must Trust and Obey, and there really is no other way.

I find myself confronted as I know I haven't been living in Christ's mercy and grace nor outworking that in a true sense (although thankfully Christ has still worked through me regardless of my motives or inner fears). I find myself overwhelmed by the attitude shift and change I want to go through, but scared because it becomes much more about trust then works, and fear has become a friend that I need to say goodbye to. I find myself angry because of teaching which is and has been so prevalent that many of us who have been in the faith for so long might not even have the basics right.

A couple of months ago I came across this verse in John 6 and have been really encouraged by it
on many occasions, I find it once again applicable to my thoughts:

28 Then they asked him, "What must we do to do the works God requires?"

29 Jesus answered, "The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent."

I think that verse just about sums up my pondering this morning.