i need to be stronger.

i don’t feel very strong right now.

i feel wronged. badly done by. hurt. betrayed. disappointed.

and yet again and again it comes back to me that the call is on me to forgive.

pride. ego. self-righteousness. my idea of “justice”. all these things rally against me, trying to convince me that i am in the right [maybe i am] and that the other should approach me [maybe they should] and seek peace and restoration. and maybe in the ideal world that is what should happen.

but i come from a far greater than ideal world. i come from a kingdom. and in this kingdom it often appears as if everything is upside down. and yet when you tilt your head, change your perspective, and open your eyes to really see how the upsidedowness really takes shape, it is quickly obvious to see how this new way is so much better. this new way is right. this kingdom brings life.

it doesn’t demand love, it earns it. it showers it indiscriminantly on whoever is in arms reach. and those beyond. it seeks out people to Love who may not be the likeliest of candidates or people who i might feel are all that deserving.

am i? am i deserving.
if ‘forgiveness is the attribute of the strong’ then i don’t feel so strong right now.
i feel tired from having walked that road before. so many times.
always the one to seek peace, to chase with repentance, to humble myself [that's probably not true, but it's certainly what i like to think]

forgive those who deserve it? easy. i can do that. i have. again and again.
but those who don’t? sure, but can i at least make them feel bad? can i at least see them ask for it or at the very least even seek it?
because often they don’t. often it has to be me who has to set out on that same journey again [my shoes feel worn down, and in the absence of shoes, my feet]

i think of my buddy Dunc. how is he still my friend? i honestly sometimes don’t know. oh i get why we are friends and what we share in common and how we can laugh and enjoy life to the full together. i get how we can be friends. and are.

but i have given that boy some crap. man, he has experienced some of the depths of my bad moods and hockey-related tantrums and unfairness accusations and passive aggressive looks [that if they could kill i'd have been put away for life]. and yet he has still stayed around. and loved me. and been so incredibly generous to me and Val just again and again and again.

and so thankx Dunc. maybe in you i will discover some hope for myself.

and in Jesus! cos He sticks with me. and i know i’ve let Him down again and again.
and yet He keeps welcoming me back. and He keeps being incredibly generous. and He keeps putting amazing opportunities in front of me

and more importantly, when i don’t seem to possess enough of this particular attribute of the strong
and when i arrive once more at a place where i feel wronged. badly done by. hurt. betrayed. disappointed.
He refuses to let me stay there. He refuses to let me wallow.
or wait [fruitlessly perhaps] for the other person to set out on my path.

the nudge comes. the Spirit speaks. the call is made.
you put this right. you Love. you forgive. and I will give you everything you need to be able to do it.
seventy times seven – My kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.

[to all those friends and family of mine who have never given up on me - despite quite possibly having cause - i thank you so much - it means the world to me - despite how completely wrong i can get it from time to time, i really do try.]

the day i freed Jesus from my heart…

and let Him loose in my life…

was end of grade 10 or 11 [or standard 8/9 as we used to call it in the days when we had to trudge 50 miles barefoot in the snow just to get a glass bottle of milk!] when that happened, but let me back track.

i was five years old when i asked Jesus into my heart – looking back now i may have not understood the metaphor – at least i’m hoping not, cos i’m not sure at 38 that i get it now – but i am convinced that i knew enough about what i was doing for it to matter – my parents had taught me well about the love of God and how that was demonstrated through Jesus and more importantly lived that out in loving ‘the least of these’ who constantly seemed to be in and around or near our lives… and so it doesn’t really matter that the terminology may have been a bit off, what happened was important – i believed in God and i did something [asked Jesus into my heart] to demonstrate that belief.

when i was nearing the end of school though i had some youth leaders pray for me to be filled with the Spirit – again, terminology a lot of people may not be happy with or fully get, and again i don’t think it matters… what changed pretty dramatically in me at that time was that i moved from believing in Jesus to following Jesus – instead of just my heart, i invited Jesus to be a part of every part of my life… and my life changed.

i have never looked back. it has gotten bumpier for sure and there were many moments of struggle and wrestling with doubt and confusion and there was a near death moment which coincided with a crisis of faith ‘well do i really believe this stuff or not?’ moment [Malawi, 2000 - nothing like a near death moment to help you figure out the answer to the do you believe this or not? question, by the way] and there have been times of experiencing the Presence of God and seeing Him work in powerful ways and other less fun times of feeling so far away from God and wondering if He really cares cos it doesn’t feel like it so much right now… and yet through it all i have continued because i know that i know [deep, deep inside of me the Truth lives and is real and burning and nothing will put it out]

following is way different to believing
while Jesus was locked in my heart, i was safe to live life as i wanted to, pretty much
but He is not content with that – He wants everything and i needed to give it to Him
and that is a decision i have not regretted no matter how hard it has been at times

i just think it might be helpful for anyone still using the ‘invite Jesus into your heart’ language to consider moving to a more Biblical ‘invitation to follow Jesus’ especially where children are concerned. i think it might be a lot easier to understand. and a lot harder to be unaware that you’re not living it.

the beep beep machine revisited

i haven’t shared this one for a while so i thort i’d repost it cos it really helps explain the concept really well for me:

So i often hear the question ‘how good do i need to be to get to heaven’ or else the question can be phrased in a different way – ‘how is it that you (followers of Jesus) say that if a serial killer repents and becomes a follower of Christ on his deathbed that he will go to heaven, but that my gran who has never hurt anyone in her life and in fact has been a really good person, but is not a follower of Jesus, is doomed to hell and eternal destruction?’ That doesn’t seem fair…

Well an analogy i heard or made up (can’t remember actually cos have used it so much last few years, think God gave it to me actually) is the one of the beep beep machine which for me explains it well in terms of how the Bible (which i see as the Word of God to man) sees it.

Two Scenes:

In the first you are fast asleep in bed, your alarm goes off and you wake up and get dressed in your suit of armour, put in all thirty eight of your piercings (ears, eyes, nose, throat etc), grab R200 in R5 and R2 and R1 coins, your eleven bunches of keys (house, car, locker, post box etc) and your friend arrives in a van and somehow manages to get you outside and into it. She drives you to the airport and pushes you into a trolley and gets you all the way to the beep beep machine (could never remember what it was called, think it’s metal detector but prefer beep beep machine) and you stumble through it – What happens? BEEP BEEP (or maybe the machine explodes)

In the second scene, you are fast asleep in bed, your alarm goes off and you wake up and put on your satin dressing gown and your fluffy bunny slippers, you remove all of your piercings, leave your money on the desk and with just your air ticket you climb into your friend’s car and she drives you to the airport and you walk to the beep beep machine and walk through. [only thing i forgot to tell you is that when you were 3 you had a tragic tricycling accident and you had to have a 1cm by 1cm metal pin inserted into your left pinkie] What happens? BEEP BEEP

You see the Beep Beep machine is built to recognise the presence of metal – and it doesn’t matter if you have 100kg or 1cm of metal – the machine goes off.

Now for me as i understand the Bible, that is the story of Jesus. One day each of us will stand before God on judgement day (not the Terminator one) and He will examine us to see if we have sin in our lives (anything we do that goes against God and who He is, or anything we fail to do that He would have wanted us to do like look after the sick and poor and needy for example – the least of these) – and whether there is 100kg of sin or 1cm of sin, the Bible says it is enough to keep us out of heaven. So the question is not ‘how much good are you?’ – the question is ‘has your sin been dealt with?’

What happens in the airport scenario for you to walk through the beep beep machine without it going off? You take your metal and you give it to the guard and he puts it in the plastic container, in short he deals with your metal for you so that you can go through without problem.

And that’s Jesus. Through Him dying on the cross for our sins, He was a replacement sacrifice (reminiscent of the Old Testament and Jewish culture) – He dealt with our sin and the penalty for sin (death) so that we would not have to and so that we can walk straight through into heaven/eternity with God/paradise – when God looks at us He doesn’t see our sin (if we have confessed and repented and accepted the free gift of Jesus carrying it for us) but the sacrifice and the blood of His Son which made access to Him possible.

So not how good do i need to be to make it, but has my sin been dealt with?
Mine has – how about yours?

John 3.16 “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son so that whoever believes in Him will not die but have everlasting life.”

a good old fashioned game of sardi’s…

there is a verse from revelations which has been running thru my head – it’s the one where john has the vision of the messages given to the seven churches and is found in rev 3.1-3 and says, “i know your deeds; you have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead. wake up! strengthen what remains and is about to die, for i have not found your deeds complete in the sight of my God. remember, therefore, what you have received and heard; obey it, and repent. but if you do not wake up, i will come like a thief, and you will not know at what time i will come to you.’

and just been thinking lots about the difference between head and maybe even heart christianity and actual real life flesh and blood Christ following and how much of that disparity exists in my life as well – in terms of my head and heart i am absolutely 100% passionate about God and kingdom growth and world transformation, absolutely…

but how much am i actually living this thing? loving God, loving people? like really? actually? in 3D?

i know there’s bits of it, for sure, but i’m pretty sure there’s not nearly enuff, and if i’m absolutely honest, i am terrified that i am not even coming close to really living it out – one of the things which excites me about next year’s doing something different (and still waiting on God to see what that is) cos i don’t think it can continue…

and right now that seems to be the difference between me and guys like shane claiborne and keith green and so on – in heart and passion and mind i would imagine we are d.n.a. twins (or triplets?) but they lived it out – out on the streets – in peoples faces

and even huger than that is the difference between me and Jesus. and that is really not cool for someone who claims to be an ardent Christ follower as i do – Christ loving (absolutely) Christ believing (no doubt) Christ awe-ing (full on)

but Christ following? hm.

there must be more than this… in my life.

this is not good enuff.

he spoke, i ran [stories from a muslim, part iv]

for two weeks after the previous encounter, Afshin asks God to reveal Himself and explain what happened and he gets nothing and so eventually he has a bit of a temper tantrum and tells God he doesn’t believe in Him because he waited and nothing happened and this is the second encounter where he feels the presence of God enter the room and so collapses in a corner crying “forgive me forgive me forgive me” because he had committed the unforgiveable sin of saying God doesn’t exist:

‘As I continued to plead for mercy, in a state of peril and desperation at the bottom of the darkest spiral of hopelessness, I felt the touch of a hand on my left shoulder. In common Farsi, a man gently spoke these words to me: “I forgive you.” The moment he said these words, it was as if someone had reached into my soul and pulled out all of my guilt, all of my sin, all of my shame, all of my despair. It was all gone. I felt so light! I literally, physically, felt forgiven!

“Wait a minute. How can this be? How can this be?”

In Islam, we often use the expression, “In the name of Allah, who is merciful and gracious,” but we have no certainty of forgiveness in this life. We have to die before we find out if we will be forgiven. The Koran is clear that there can be no assurance for the forgiveness of sin. Not until the Day of Judgement, when our sins are weighed against our good deeds, could we know that we are forgiven. If our good deeds outweighed our sins, then we might enter heaven if Allah willed it to be so. In our belief, not even the prophet Mohammad was certain of his fate before Allah.

I looked up into the face of the man who had so lovingly touched me and asked him the question I was asking myself: “Who are you who says, “I forgive you,” and I feel forgiven…today?”

“Rah, rasti va zendegi,” he said in my own language, meaning, “I am the way, the truth and the life.”

This phrase resonated deep within my heart. These words were so profound, so beautiful, and so full of power, but I did not understand what they meant. I had never heard this before.

“I do not understand what that means,” I said. “What is your name?”

“Jesus Christ.”

With the very mention of his name, I collapsed in a heap at his feet. As I lay there, I suddenly understood all the richness, profundity, beauty, and nuance of his name. It was as if each wonderful word he spoke exploded with meaning in my mind and heart. The two words “Jesus Christ” reverberated within me, and as clear as day I could hear the phrase “the Living God” echoing in my mind. When God speaks to you, every related idea he intends for you to understand is revealed at the instant the word is spoken. With this I finally understood: Jesus Christ is the Living God!

I lay at his feet and wept. I had no strength. I wept and wept and wept. I felt a mixture of emotions. On the one hand, I was full of joy and thankfulness for the assurance I had been forgiven of all the sins I had ever committed. But at the same time, I was angry because I had devoted so much of my life to the passion-filled pursuit of a lie! I had been deceived. Allah is not God at all! With each cry of remorse, wave after wave of peace washed over me. I felt like I had arrived home after a long journey from a far-off country. This was where I belonged. But at the same time I was sad I had been gone for so long and had spent so much time away from the presence of God. I was inundated with all of these emotions. My heart was filled with thankfulness yet ached with remorse and disappointment for all the time I had wasted.

All this time, Jesus stood patiently in front of me, his love and forgiveness washing over me again and again. after what seemed like about two hours, Jesus spoke again.

“Afshin, look up.”

I looked up. Suspended in the air was something like a gigantic flat screen television, but without any thickness. On the screen was a moving image depicting people of all nations, generations, and ages. They were from all walks of life and all language groups. The peculiar thing about this image was that as I looked at the people, even though I had never met them, I could see their sins as easily as I could see what they were wearing. It was as if I was temporarily given the ability to see every dark thing that was hidden from other men.

I was completely overwhelmed by this and I cried out to Jesus with a gasp, “Oh, I live among all these sinners!” All I could see was the filth. I was focused on my disgust and feelings of revulsion for these people, but I was still thinking from my old perspective. I thought that there was nothing that could be done: these people seemed so completely beyond hope. They could not be forgiven.

Jesus wanted to teach me something different. He wanted me to know that, although he could see the same terrible things that I could, he was looking past all the sin and was looking at the person. He was looking at his creation into which he had breathed life – the apple of his eye. He wanted to redeem them, and he wanted me to understand his love and compassion for them. So he spoke again.

“Afshin, how easily did I forgive you?”

“Very easily. As easy as drinking water!” I said, using a common Farsi expression. I paused for a moment and then I corrected myself. “No, no, no, no, no! Even easier than drinking water!”

“As easily as I have forgiven you, I can forgive them. Who is going to tell them?”

“I will, Lord!”

“Good. Go, tell them, and I will be with you!”

I got up and ran out of the room, full of excitement. I was so elated and so on fire about this new commission I had been given that I forgot that Jesus Christ, the Living God himself, was standing there talking to me. I didn’t stay long enough to see if he had anything else to say, and I didn’t even say good-bye. But saying good-bye would have made no sense at all. From that moment onward, Jesus would be with me wherever I went.’

[from chapter 4 of 'As easy as drinking water: a muslim forgiven' by Afshin Javid]

lausanne reflections: the ten minute standing ovation

the beautiful val told me of a testimony that was shared the other night at the lausanne congress where the girl sharing it quickly left the stage after speaking and disappeared behind the curtain but the crowd of 4000 plus people stood and applauded and cheered and continued for ten minutes and so they brought her back on to stage while people continued to respond to her powerful testimony – i was hoping to be able to watch the video footage to share in the testimony but i think for safety reasons it was not recorded but i came upon my friend michael oh’s account of it – what excited me was that a ten minute standing ovation occured not for some big name speaker (that people across cape town have been buying tickets to hear speak – various big names at different places outside of the congress) but that it was for the powerful work of God in and thru this girl’s life – God is the only one worth that much attention…

you can read a summarised version of her story here

lausanne reflections: christians and bad movies

we watched a multiplex (workshop session) yesterday on Christians and the media and then we had a bunch of small group discussion on the topic – as i was mc’ing the meeting and made some statements about bad christian movies there were too many heads nodding in agreement for me to think this is just my particular cynicised view

the bottom line for me is that the church has some great stories – from the bible which really has some x-rated hollywood blockbuster stuff in it [tent pegs through the head, incest, adultery followed by murder of a high-ranking general to try and cover the fact, bears being called from the forest to maul a bunch of youth for daring to call the prophet a baldhead, the fire from heaven altar challenge between elijah and the prophets of baal, stonings, crucifixion] to true life dramas [bible smuggling into china, the mother teresa story, the missionaries who were killed by the aucas in south america - which became a movie 'the end of the spear' which i haven't had the chance to see but the book is amazing] to fiction [writings of ted dekker, robert liparulo, frank peretti who i would all describe as stephen king if he was a christian - some great science fiction/fantasy/horror/supernatural writing] – and so the stories are definitely there, but i think we have quite a long way to go before we can tell them well on film

i, as a Christ follower, cringe when i hear that something is a “christian movie” so i can’t imagine what an unbeliever must think and feel (maybe they’re less critical than me, who knows?) but the majority of christian films down the ages have been cringeworthy, cheese-filled and generally with bad camerawork and production, useless acting and trite storylines

the one question i posed was this – is it good enough for us as Christ followers in the media to be making bad movies, so that perhaps one day we can make good movies, or would it sometimes be better to be making no movies at all?

another question posed by the group was on the sacred/secular split – the tendency we as christians have to divide life into what we call spiritual and what we call secular when, as one guy pointed out in my group, Jesus would probably be confused if i told Him about “my spiritual life” because to Him everything was spiritual – and so can’t we as Christ followers just start making good movies – when i look at a movie like ‘the blind Side’ with Sandra Bullock in, it was a really strong movie and received critical acclaim in many quarters but was not produced as a ‘christian movie’ – we have the stories, we just need to do better at getting them across

i think personally that we do a lot better in the area of music whereas in the 80′s there were maybe the big 5 of mainstream christian musicians in amy grant, steve curtis chapman, michael w smith, carman and then if you were really hardcore maybe dc talk and they were all ‘good for a christian band’ music types [let the hating begin, ha!] but i think today Christ-following musicians and bands have gained a lot more street cred and in many cases are as good if not sometimes even better than their non-Christ-following counterparts… so there is hope

personally i don’t think it’s good enough that we create bad christian movies (or music or books) and i really wish the people making them would have better filters or just go hang out in the world a little bit to get a clue as to the kind of quality we should be producing. i imagine some people might see this post as a little harsh and unloving, but i think the reality is that when we are representing Christ, there is a strong case for us doing it well and effectively and in a way that impacts society rather than causing it to withdraw

i long for the day we can say ‘that was a great movie’ and not feel the need to simply compare it to other worse ‘christian movies’ as a means of greatifying it