[Faith-talk] Daily Thought for Tuesday, May 21, 2013

[Paul]

Good morning, afternoon or evening to you all, wherever in this world you happen to reside.  I hope that your day is going well or went well, by God's matchless grace and His providential care.

Just a reminder that this will be the last Daily Thought message until May 30 as I'll be away for a while visiting the love of my life, Carol Taylor.  Now I'd like to qualify that by stating that the Lord is number one in my life, but Carol is number two.  So, if you don't see any daily thought messages or for some wisdom pearls or gems, that's the reason.

In today's postal mail I received a magazine called "Torch Times," the quarterly digest of Christian articles published by Torch Trust for the Blind located in Market Harborough, Leicestershire, UK.  Why don't some of you outside that country take a look at their website? I think you'll like it.  Info about that will follow the article selected for you today.

The article in question is "Notes to Growing Christians" by David Jackman who is the past president of the Proclamation Trust, rendered as follows:

Put like that, it may sound rather stark.  Our hackles may be raised by the word "holiness," with its unfortunate undertones of sanctimonious piety and being "holier than thou." But try it this way.  Being like Jesus is the greatest contribution you can make in your life on planet Earth.  And we could well add that it's the only investment you can make which has eternal currency.

Greatful Christ-likeness
It matters because it is the deepest and most honest expression of our gratitude to Christ for all the love and grace which He has showered upon us in His atoning death and His life-giving resurrection.  If we have any real glimmering of what we have been rescued from and what His glorious purposes for us in eternity truly are, then the supreme way in which we demonstrate our faith is by our obedience, and the greatest way in which to show our gratitude is by a desire to be changed into His likeness.  But it also matters because changed lives are the currency of heaven here on earth.

The progress of the Gospel, in any culture or community, is usually proportional to the Christ-likeness, or otherwise, of the people who profess to believe it, which helps to explain why the church is so often on the back foot today.

We all long to see God's kingdom advance, especially in terms of our family and friends coming to know Christ personally and to trust Him as their Savior and Lord.  But the message we proclaim is so often contradicted, or even denied, by the lives of those who say they believe it.  The staggering reality is that we are witnesses about Christ every day we live, just by virtue of all our human relationships and interaction with others.

Help Or Hindrance
Do we witness for Him, or against Him? Every time a Christian flies off the handle at work, or our family life disintegrates into bitterness, accusations and acrimony, or a local church breaks up into hostile factions and disintegrates under the pressure, the watching world is simply confirmed in its cosy dogmatism that "religion" is hypocritical nonsense, or smug self-congratulation.  If there is no demonstrable power to deal with the evil of our human hearts in a transforming way, then, as the atheistic philosopher Nietzsche put it:  "The Christians will have to look a lot more like Jesus before I can become one of them." Or, in the famous words of William Temple, a former archbishop of Canterbury:  "The biggest hindrance to the spread of the Christian church is the Christian church".

Our holiness matters! Just think of the potential of all the negatives of the last few sentences being reversed by a workforce of Jesus "look-alikes" being deployed across our country and its cultures, on a daily basis.  And then think about the potential of it starting with me.  There is no reason why it should not happen.  The moment you came in repentance and faith to the foot of the cross, to receive the forgiveness and new birth which He secured, the Holy Spirit (the other Jesus) came within your human spirit, or psyche, to change you from the inside out.  It is the experience of every believer that we have "passed from death to life" (John 5:24).  And the life-sphere in which we now live is that of God's eternal life, the very life of Christ Himself, brought to us in all its fullness by the indwelling Spirit.  "For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death" (Romans 8:2, ESV).  It has already happened.  The dynamic is already within us, ready to be experienced in practice, in increasing measure.

In a book written 50 years ago entitled "The Mystery of Godliness," Ian Thomas, the founder of Capernway Ministries, expressed it like this:  "The life that the Lord Jesus Christ lived for you 1900 years ago--condemns you, but the life that He now lives in you--saves you!" He goes on to sketch an outline of what that may mean.  "Your mind placed at His disposal through the indwelling Holy Spirit; your emotions, your will, all that you are and have, make available to the Lord Jesus Christ as a living member of His new corporate body on earth, which is called the church" (p.109).

And there you have it for today.  I hope that this article gave you food for thought.

And now about Torch Trust for the Blind, visit http://www.torchtrust.org.  Among other things, you will find a direct link to Premier Christian Radio which has been sending out the Gospel since at least 1950.  It is located in London.

And now may the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob just keep us safe, individually and collectively, throughout this night or day and especially in these last days in which we live.  Your Christian friend and brother, Paul