8^th January 2010

Beyond religious ritual and tradition here we have key insights of the Christian message put simply and suited to the seeking unchurched person.

The De-cluttered Message

When a person comes, perhaps for the first time to seriously consider the Christian faith, it can understandably be confusing, even overwhelming to know where to start. There are so many different churches, traditions, rituals, and words.
Over the years, through the history and growth of many institutions, churches have cluttered the simplicity and power of the Christian message. When we strip the clutter and the extras away to look at the core principles of a Christian perspective in its simplest form, then we encounter a number of unique insights that address the real issues of life. How does a Christian message do that? Firstly it says ....

"There is a source and reason for life".
When the Apostle Paul addressed the great thinkers and philosophers in Athens he used the words of one of their poets to say, "In Him we live and move and have our being." Paul was making it clear that behind life, behind the profound power or awesome beauty of nature, behind all things there is a personal presence, a Living God. Our living and existence is sustained and never apart from His presence.
A Christian view deals with the central issues of life because in our material world not only does it identify a spiritual dimension behind life, but it says...

"As People we are structured to experience that personal presence."
Whether we recognise or understand it or not, as people we are more than highly developed animals or machines created to consume or to accumulate wealth. As part of what we are, part of our essential DNA, we are intended not simply to know about God but to actually experience Him, to know and live in a relationship with Him.

Our strong independence and self-focus separates us from experiencing God's presence.
The Christian message is central to understanding life because it realistically recognises that every person by the very nature of their own humanness has a bias and bent away from God that renders them unable to know or experience His love or presence. This moral weakness expresses itself whenever we attempt to hide or to cover our inner inadequacy, (often our guilt or fear) by insisting on asserting our own independence. As a result we end up lost to ourselves, lost to a sad broken world and to our own efforts in a never ending search to find real fulfilment. The Christian faith addresses our deepest human need because it says that finally....

"Our relationship with God, and our well being can only come to us as an incredible gift".
The answer to our human predicament comes from outside of ourselves and our own resources. The good news is that it can never depend on us. God has done something for us in history that we can never do for ourselves through the unique person of Jesus Christ. The Old Testament prophet Isaiah said, "The Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all, so that by his stripes we are healed." Isaiah was pointing to the amazing mystery of the coming of Jesus Christ and how his death was for us. No one else has ever claimed to be the source of life and then shown it to be true by breaking through the final hold of death but the New Testament record clearly confirms this.

To really believe in Jesus means seriously looking at the evidence and then making the choice to hand over the control of your life to Him. This leads to a personal new beginning, the gift of actually sharing in Jesus life. Jesus himself described it by saying, "Those who believe in me though they die yet shall they live". This amazing revelation led the Apostle Paul to exclaim, "Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ".
This opens up a whole new way of looking at things, a different way of understanding ourselves and the world around us. The Christian message and experience of new life empowers people with hope and offers....

A new direction with a certain future
We continue to share the pain and injustice of a broken world. We don't escape the grief of death that comes with being parted from those we have shared life with, yet the experience of death and the things we struggle with can now be faced with a quiet confidence and a deep assurance that stems from Jesus own resurrection. Jesus also gave deliberate promises about the future to reassure his followers that the best was yet to come.
A Christian view of life offers hope because it recognizes that as God has broken into history and time in the past in the person of Jesus Christ, so world history moves towards a future climax. Under God's direction Christian's serve other people even when the odds are against them. They always work towards a positive future because while they don't understand how it will happen they anticipate a time when again God's Kingdom will break into time and history. This is a time when all wrong shall be put right and when God's will, will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.

Opening the door to the gift of life
In the closing pages of the New Testament Jesus is depicted standing at a door knocking. We could call it the door of every person's life. He says, "Listen I am standing knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me." This is the promise, of a new relationship that through history has changed the lives of countless people.
Jesus Christ still speaks through the corridors of time inviting us to open our lives to Him, and it is to this person that He still speaks when He says, "...and because I live you will live also".

Rev Ted (E.A.) Curnow

January 2010