Thought for the Month - November 2014

"My God says 'go and do'" by Nathan Donnell

'Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, the Son and of the Holy Spirit' Matthew 28:19

'Just as the Father sent me, I send you' John 20:21

So I've been thinking through the great commission over summer and looking at how this distracted generation gives these words a back seat role in their perception of faith. I've seen how this young Instagram generation don't realise the importance of their daily actions. It seems many people believe that the Bible is only for learning unless you are on a team or outreach attempt. You can see in this new generation of Christians that we have plenty of people learning the Word but we just don't have people living the Word. So many of this generation just want to go to church on a Sunday, keeping themselves to themselves, maybe giving 2% and clinging on to their safety ropes.

I am by no means saying that reading and studying the Bible is unimportant for us as Christians, because it is pivotal for us to have biblical answers when we are tested, but what is the purpose of reading our Bibles if we won't put the words we read into practice. A key problem in this generation of consumers is, as Max Lucado puts it 'we forget that God gave us people to love and things to use, not things to love and people to use.'

'What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, "Go in peace, be warmed and filled," without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.' James 2:14-17

James sums up perfectly how the modern churches (and early church) can have a dead faith, a faith in which nothing was required of them in society. God however, gives us a much higher calling, He calls us to be those who leave their pride to one side, those who forget their arrogance and those who remember that they themselves were once lost without Christ until someone stepped up to reach out to them.

We, the children of Babel, the children of the kingdom, are each given this calling. And it is because of this calling that we don't have to fear. God calls but doesn't leave us to do it all ourselves. When we trust the Spirit to move through our everyday actions and when we, in everything, strive for Christ, that is when God has the freedom to move and to mould. We are given this opportunity because you don't need a pulpit to preach, your everyday actions are your sermon.

It was considering this idea of going and doing at the start of summer and put them together in this poem which I have called 'My God says go'…

I know this God, this God who I see in every morning,
I see Him in the sun-kissed trees and when the day is dawning,
I see him in all His works and His intricately made people,
But most of these people, they believe He should be kept under a steeple.

They're missing out on the point of their God and their faith
You see when God said it is done He meant it,
And when He said make disciples He said it for us to do
Not to learn.

I find this new generation of Christianity so caught up in their little circles,
Yet they still expect to see a God who can, through them, perform miracles,
They are so tarnished by an image in the mirror which must be maintained,
That the God of the universe, the earth and the skies is barely retained within them.

But they forget, they forget that this God that they pretend to serve on a Sunday,
He took the nails and thorns, He laid himself down for our sake for when mankind was dead and worn,
Because we could never do it on our own… we needed someone to step in,
Jesus was that someone, He took the wrath of God and the burden of sin.

So when God says go into the world and tell them about Me,
Let us reach out to lives to make them clean,
In the thundering storms and in the triumphs remember that He is here,
And that He is the reason we must not fear.

We now have our great commission as it is written in Matthew 28,
Be intentional with people, because God isn't a God of accidental fate,
God will use you as you come before Him now, at any time, at any place,
Now go and show the world the beauty of His grace.

In all this remember that your actions are your sermon, preach well!

Are you SURE that you have your place booked in Heaven? Read this if you're not!