Jesus' love gets under our skin
“WE’RE 50/50 black and white in our church and look like dominoes on a Sunday” said Matthew Guest, leader of King’s Church, Chatham.
He was speaking at a leaders’ conference for Multiply – a network, started by the Jesus Army, for Christian churches of many different types.
“Church shouldn’t be selective, but reflective of the society around” added Matthew.
And his words were backed up by the multi-coloured mix of races at the conference. Delegates from across the UK had a wide-variety of racial and national backgrounds: from African to Bangladeshi – to white British!
For more on Multiply visit: multiply.org.uk
Street level: prayer changes lives
“GOD TOLD us we were going to meet a gang member on his way to commit a crime” says Jesus Army team leader, David Meakin, 26.
The Jesus Army had parked its double-decker bus, equipped with on-deck “café” in Central London. The Jesus Army team were there until the small hours, giving out food and drink, and talking and praying with passers-by.
But it was earlier in the evening that one of the team sensed God saying they would meet the gang member.
“Later that night we did meet a lad who confessed he was in a gang” says David “and he was on his way to get into crime. We prayed with him and he went home instead.”
Cross bros: passion for God
BROTHERS Gideon and Jake Clark have both had a life-changing experience. They tell the mJa blog their story.
“My friend prayed for me and I started crying – really crying and crying and crying. And he hugged me and I started crying again and he was crying too.” For 22-year-old Gideon Clark it was a break-through moment. Gideon – and his 20-year-old brother, Jake – were brought up in a Christian family. But now Gideon had experienced God for himself.
The brothers’ parents are in the Jesus Army, and they grew up in a large shared house with many different kinds of people. But their childhood memories are much like many other happy, average kids – and mixed with a lot of laughter.
“Apparently I weed in a Noah’s Ark my dad made me” confesses Gideon. “Things like that have affected me” he adds, mock serious. He describes his experience of God: “It was deep and – unlike me. Tears and snotty nose just aren’t me! I wasn’t expecting to cry. I’d seen people have ‘shaky-shaky, laughy-laughy, bouncy-bouncy’ experiences. That isn’t very ‘me’ either, but I guess I was open to something like that. But this was different. It was uncontrollable.
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FATHER Tim Jones, a York vicar, recently told his congregation “My advice, as a Christian priest, is to shoplift.”
He claimed that shoplifting from national chains was sometimes “the best option for the vulnerable”. UK society had failed many needy people, making it “far better that they shoplift than turn to more degrading or violent options such as prostitution, mugging or burglary”.
Father Tim denied that stealing is a good thing, or harmless. But he said “shoplifting is the best option that some people are left with,” describing this as “a grim indictment” of “a situation which leaves some people little option but crime.”
Chain: poverty trap?
His comments were not endorsed by the Church of England, who recommended the “many organisations and charities working with people in need, and the Citizens Advice Bureau” as a more positive approach for those trapped in poverty. But it was acknowledged that there are “important issues about the difficulties people face when benefits are not forthcoming.”
The Jesus Army sees itself as a “church of the poor”. Not just “for the poor” in a patronising way; the Jesus Army seeks to include everyone in God’s great alternative society, His church.
Eye-opener: Jesus brings a new reality
MAN BECOMES alien, identifies with the aliens, fights for them, saves them, lives with them forever.
Sound familiar? But it’s not only the plot of blockbuster film Avatar.
It’s a much older story. God became one of us, became a human being: Jesus. He identifies with us, fights for us. He died for us and beat death. He’s one of us – forever.
So many of us try to escape from the reality of life’s struggles and pain. It’s not surprising we fantasize about different worlds – like a world you can only see through 3D glasses at the cinema.
There’s a hero in all of us. We all want to make a difference with our lives – and we can do that as we open our lives to Jesus Christ. He changes us and heals us.
When we’re filled with God’s love, through Jesus, life really does gain a new dimension. Don’t miss out!
This is taken from the latest issue of the modern Jesus army Streetpaper. Sign up for the monthly email version “mJa e-Streetpaper”.
Having spiritual children makes us human
HAVING CHILDREN makes us human.
Is this insensitive, even shocking? What about single people or childless couples? Read on – there’s more to this than meets the eye.
Start at the beginning: God created human beings “in His own image” and blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful!” (Genesis 1:27-28). Humans reflect God. Key to this is the drive to have children in their own “image and likeness” (see Genesis 5:3).
In the Old Testament barrenness was seen as a terrible evil. Think of the agony of a Sarah, or a Hannah. Having children was seen as God-given, human blessing; children are “from the Lord,” as the psalmist sang (Psalm 127:3).
Real and Wild: worship
You: don't miss RAW 2010
So…What’s the vision? What’s the big idea? The vision is holiness that hurts the eyes. It makes children laugh and adults angry. It gave up the game of minimum integrity long ago to reach for the stars. It scorns the good and strains for the best. It is dangerously pure.
I’m borrowing the words there straight out of Pete Greig’s inspirational poem: The Vision. But there we go!
There’s also a bit in that about this vision being the longing of nature itself… Well, this summer RAW is heading out to somewhere a bit more elementary…
Oscar Wilde said “A New Year’s resolution is something that goes in one year and out the other.” Statistics confirm that about 97 percent of New Year’s resolutions are never fulfilled.
But here’s one you might keep – the Jesus Army have recently brought out a “New Year’s Revolution” page-a-day desktop calendar. We have come up with 365 challenges for every day of this year, ranging from the fun – “Buy a bag of lollipops and give them out during the day” – to the more serious “Write a letter to God, telling Him how you feel about life today.”
You can order it now from the Jesus Army website: jesuspeople.biz/revolution.html or buy it at one of the Jesus Army’s national events. Let the revolution begin!
HORRIFIED Sunitha Ramakrishna watched as her mother burst into flames before her eyes, while cooking breakfast at their home in Bangalore. “It was a real nightmare” says Sunitha, then 12, now 26. “But I’d learned at school that ‘Jesus is the healer’, so I prayed for Jesus to heal her.
Jesus’s answer came in an unexpected way.
The example of a Christian’s love for her mother at this time affected Sunitha deeply: “There were five unhealed wounds on her leg, and every time she’d walk she’d bleed” explains Sunitha. “This friend would cry for my mum, serve her, pray for her; her other friends wouldn’t.”
Sunitha: horrific accident revealed true healer to her
Sunitha found faith in Jesus, and her mum followed. A year later she was healed.
“All the top doctors in Bangalore gave up hope; mum’s only hope was Jesus – He spoke to her in a vision” says Sunitha.
It was Jesus’s sacrificial love that won Sunitha: “God loved me enough to die for me – that just blew my mind. I didn’t find that in the Indian gods.”
But for Sunitha and her mum, becoming Christians was a huge and difficult decision. Their religious family had 10 gods in the house, gave food to idols, even gave idols to the temple. So, their baptism had to be secret.
Young Sunitha had always cherished two dreams: to have a cause to fight for and to have big family. “I wanted to be a warrior princess,” she says. “While I was at college, I was a Lance Corporal in the National Cadet Corps, I was trained in the forest and mountain to fight and my secret desire was to fight and win battles.”
God was to use her fighting spirit to lead her to her second dream. When Sunitha was secretly baptised as a Christian in 2002, she remembers saying to her mum “You know why we have such a big house? ’Cause one day we’re going to live in massive house with lots of Christians!”
Commitment: pair swear
Marriage is off today’s agenda. “Why take the risk?” is the growing attitude.
But recently married Fabio and Iysha are determined to be different.
“The vows we’ve taken mean that whatever the circumstance, we’ll be there for each other” they say. They reckon their marriage will make it because “we’re both committed to making God the centre of our marriage, which means that it is built on a firm foundation.”
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