Today is the 200th anniversary of Charles Dickens' birth, and the screen and airwaves are alive with the characters and stories from his fertile imagination.
Dickens' portrayal of the brutality, fragility and hilarity of life in Victorian England is remarkable for its influence in social and political reform. For example, Marx and Engels were heavily influenced in their critique of the capitalist political system by their reading of Dickens. But it is probably his characters that most endure in our minds and culture - from the helpless victims of Oliver Twist, Pip and David Copperfield to the vicious perpetrators of cruelty like Wackford Squeers, Billy Sykes and Fagin.
While rarely explicit in Christian comment, Dickens' works contain many themes and illustrations that can be raided to illustrate and apply the Gospel. These themes from A Christmas Carol are worth exploring, while this story is helpful for explaining substitutionary atonement.
But how about this for a commemorative timely sermon outline that picks up on the themes of the week:
Our world is A Tale of Two Cities. Because, while we were created to know God, and enjoy him forever, we chose to reject God and so live in a Bleak House of our own making. All we can expect are Hard Times as we face the judgement of God. But God loves us and A Christmas Carol was sung when Jesus was born to rescue us. Because of Jesus' death and Resurrection (now there's an Oliver Twist), we can be born again into a living hope. The church may appear to be an Old Curiosity Shop, but it is filled with forgiven people with Great Expectations - eternal life with Christ.
Yes, it's cheesy, but a groan is worth a dozen laughs from the pulpit, as someone once said—though I'm pretty sure it wasn't Dickens.
I was looking at a verse of scripture with some friends at church recently that nailed an issue that I have struggled with for many years. It's an issue that lies at the very heart of our Christian lives, and something that is core to how you think about and run a home group. Are we tumblers (the thing for drinking out of that's often made from glass) - or are we tadpoles (the slightly icky things you find in the pond in spring that eventually turn into big icky things that you find in a pond). Or to put it less mysteriously more helpfully - How does God speak to us?
Here's the verse:
Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything (2 Timothy 2:7)
Here is the apostle Paul, writing to his young disciple Timothy, giving a simple instruction about how to read what he has just written. He says two things:
The meaning, and it's implications for us may not be immediately obvious. The Bible isn't like Cooking for Idiots - where we just have to slavishly follow every detail of the recipe to get a fragrant and edible end result. To do it's work in our minds and hearts, and from there into our lives, the words of scripture need to have the active engagement of our minds. We need to think about them. We need to meditate or ruminate on them. And in the context of our home groups, share our thoughts with each other on them.
Notice that this understanding is a gift. It is something that God gives us in his love and mercy. The Bible may be difficult in places and need thinking about, but that's not because God is trying to hide the truth from us. He wants to give us understanding. But notice also, that understanding is a promise. God promises to give us understanding when we engage with what he has said. The Lord will give you understanding.
So what's the stuff about the tableware and juvenile amphibians? Simply this. We need to hold the two halves of this verse together.
If it was all about point 1 - thinking about it - then we end up like tadpoles with massive heads and little bodies. It's all down to how clever and hard working you are. Put in the hours, learn the Greek, study the commentaries, scribble your mindmaps and eventually you gain understanding. But Paul tells us that this can never be the route to hearing God speak. Only to pride and false religion.
If it was all about point 2 - God giving us understanding - then all we would do is sit around like glass tumblers, doing nothing and waiting for God to fill the glass with his good things. It all seems terribly "spiritual" and humble, but it is just as bad a mistake as being a tadpole. In my experience, this approach leads to exactly the same place as the tadpoles - pride and false religion.
But as we hold them together we see the truth about how God speaks to us today. We listen to the authoritative, God-given teaching of the apostles in the Bible. We think about it. We discuss it, we study it, we get what help we need to from the clever people who write deep books. But we do our thinking humbly and prayerfully, knowing that only God himself can take these words on the page, and make them live in our minds and hearts, and show us how to live for Christ as a result.
Not tadpoles or tumblers, but people to whom God has given minds and Bibles and His Spirit, so that we can grow in our relationship with Him.
Welcome to the Homegroup leader's week on the Good Book Blog.
Over the next 6 days, we'll be posting something encouraging, stimulating, thought-provoking and (hopefully) insightful for helping you set your sights more clearly in home group leadership. But first of all, let's get back to basics: What is a home group actually for?
When you ask a random selection of small group leaders (which I did!), you get a huge range of responses:
But when you quiz people to find out how they actually spend their time in the small group, you often discover that many groups are given over to what we might call the human needs of the group, rather than on listening to God's word together. They eat, they talk they laugh (a lot!), they share needs, they enjoy each other's company, they feel supported, loved, affirmed, prayed for.
I try to point out (as gently as I'm able) that this surely has to be the tail wagging the dog. In Acts 2:42, we read a familiar description of what the first Christian community did when they met together: And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.
They did a whole lot of stuff - but the first thing they did was devote themselves to the Apostles' teaching. All the other stuff they did sprang out of this fundamental activity - they listened to the authoritative word of God, delivered to them through his chosen representatives. And this is a pattern that persisted: In Colossians 3:16 we read: Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.
The first Christians did many things when they met together, but the thing that was at the heart of each of them was that the Word of Christ was there - giving shape to their songs, their prayers - even the way the told each other off! People come to homegroups for many reasons. They may be lonely and need company; they may be hungry and need feeding; they may be discouraged or struggling in their lives, and need support.
But if you are the leader of a homegroup, you need to have firmly fixed in your mind that the way you will really meet their real needs is to let the Word of Christ from the Bible take centre stage in your time together. Bacon sandwiches help with the physical hunger, but the hunger in our hearts will only be fed by allowing the words of Jesus, and the Bible's witness to Jesus, to be the menu for the evening.
"Be holy, for I am holy," commands God to His people. You're probably thinking easier said than done!
This excellent book gives practical principles and guidelines for holy living. With over 1.4 million copies sold this is a must read for those seeking to obey God's command of holiness.
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Few of us would admit it. But most of us have them. Doubts are a normal part of the Christian life.
But what are doubts? Are they helpful or harmful? And how should we respond when they hit?
If you've ever asked yourself any of these questions, why not check out the great seminar that Trevor Archer gave at the recent Bible-centred youthworker conference? Click here for the audio and here for the handout.
I've been enjoying more than my fair share of 50th birthday parties, and a common theme of discussion is the desire to just "slow down a little." It's notable that I need just a bit more sleep, and that I can't pull the long hours that I used to do even in my late 40s. I'm tempted to think that I deserve an easier life now, "because I've earned it."
John Wesley felt the same, but I was shamed to see at what age!
Just reading the list exhausts me! Of course, such frenetic activity can be motivated by fear, but in this case, Wesley was motivated by God's grace to him, and the understanding that every waking moment must be spent in the saviour's service. Of course we need to be sensible with rest, and make sure we are "working for the Lord" for the right reasons, but this remarkable example encourages me to seek productive activity for the sake of Christ, not self indulgent sloth, because he's earned my rest, not me.
However we suffer now, these things are just momentary compared to the wonders of eternal life that are coming in Christ. As Christians we need to live in the present, but in the light of the future. What we see is not all there is. And what we can't see, but know is on its way, is eternal and glorious — brilliiant news!
