It all starts in your heart

I love a good revolution – big groups of people full of passion and purpose.

Have you heard about any of the crazy youth movements that have happened over the years? There was a Jesus movement that started in the 70’s in America where thousands of young people turned to Jesus and started up new churches all over the country. It got on the front cover of Time magazine which showed thousands of youth going down to the river at a festival to be baptised.

I’ve always wanted to be part of a Jesus revolution that starts with a small group of young people but grows to impact a whole city. How insane would it be to see so many people turning to Jesus on the coast that our churches had to meet at Blue Tongue stadium every-week just to fit everyone in.

Bring it on I say!

But how could we start a revolution like this?

Guess what – It starts with you!
First you need to let Jesus start the revolution in your heart.
But don’t worry he’s had some experience.
God said to his people back in the olden days “I will give you a new heart” (Ez 36:26) His plan was to change them by taking out their old, cold, stoney hearts and replacing them with hearts that went after him.
God is still in the business of changing hearts – he loves a good heart transplant!
I’m old enough to remember the first person to ever have a heart transplant that worked. She was a 14yr old girl named Fiona Coote and my Dad explained to me how it all worked.
“well son…they basically just rip your chest open – take your heart out and put someone else’s heart back in”.

I remember thinking – “gee – radical operation – you’d wanna make sure you really needed it hey”.

Likewise – God wouldn’t be offering us a spiritual heart transplant if we didn’t really need one. But the truth is – all our hearts are diseased and cold towards God – we were born like this and the disease is called sin. These sinful hearts of ours will drag us all the way to hell if we don’t have them removed and replaced with new hearts – the spirit of Jesus.

This transplant is a very costly process for God – Jesus had to go to the cross and die to allow this heart exchange to happen. But it’s gotta be the best deal you’ll ever hear about – we get to exchange our sinful, cold, hard, diseased hearts for perfectly righteous, warm, healthy hearts – free of charge.
Sounds too good to be true doesn’t it? – there must be fine print somewhere!
No fine print – just a radical new life!

Here’s what to expect if you get a Jesus heart transplant;
It totally changes the way you see everything!

You’ll see God differently
No longer will you see God as a grumpy old man in the sky with a beard and a long white dress who spends all his time trying to stop us having fun.
No, instead you’ll see he’s the God who knows us a loves us enough to get off his throne and come to us in the person the son – becoming the fearless man Jesus to live, die and rise and give us a way back to him with brand new hearts.

You’ll see the central coast differently
No longer will you see a cool place full of cool people living cool lives partying hard.
No, instead you’ll see hundreds of thousands of people, young and old, despritely bored and searching for more meaning in their lives. There are so many different forms of spiritually, sports and social clubs but what people really need is Jesus. The truth is – there are only two types of people on the central coast – those who have new hearts and those who don’t – and it makes all the difference where you spend eternity.

You’ll see yourself differently
No longer will you think that world revolves around you. You will realise that you are not the centre of the universe and that your dreams, your desires and your happiness are not what makes the world go round.
No, instead you’ll see that this world revolves around Jesus. He is at the centre of the universe and rules over the whole world and everything in it – including the central coast and YOU!
It’s all about Jesus  – he made you, he sustains you and you exist for him and his fame alone.

Live for Jesus today – let him start a revolution in your heart!

Cheers
Tim Baldwin

Tim spoke at our wild and wet COASTYOUTH REVOLUTION during term 2. Go listen to the POCAST of his talk at: cyREVOLUTION.com

Tim has just started a fresh style of church with CCEC. Pray for him and his family and their new community. Check them at www.saturdayEV.com

Transformers
Released 28th June 2007
Shia LaBeouf
Megan Fox
Josh Duhamel

In the simplest of terms the best part about transformers is the huge robots that fight each other and end up destroying loads of stuff. For the most part everyone is aware of the basic story of Transformers. In short it’s a film about two races of robots the Autobots and the Decepticons who come to earth and end up in battle over its ultimate fate.

Derived from the famous 80’s cartoon series it was the dream of many young child to befriend a real transformer, or even be one themselves. Yet the closest fulfilment of this dream most likely resulted in laying on the ground pretending to be a carpet or having someone sit on us while we pretended to be a chair. While there isn’t much depth in the actual story, robots come, robots fight, robots win it’s not the story which audiences are there for. Rather it’s the culture which comes along which the Transformers ethos.

Director Michael Bay, who previously worked on films such as Armageddon and Bad Boys isn’t particularly recognised for his meaningful story lines so much as action sequences don’t let this be a deterrent. There is just the right amount of action coupled within the original cheesy dialogue, of Optimus Prime in particular, which makes this movie a worthwhile activity.

It is the typical battle for the fate of humanity we see so often, but looking more closely we can draw similarities to our own Christian lives. Like in Transformers the humans were helpless to the Decepticons weapons and tactics. Without the help of the Autobots it is likely they would have been ruled or ultimately destroyed by the Decpticons. We too are helpless without a relationship with God, yet this has been possible through Jesus death on the cross. We too would be living a life apart from God without this sacrifice, one which because of our sinful nature would lead us to eternal death. It is important in our Christian walk not to become apathetic and take Jesus death on the cross for granted. The grace we receive through the cross is something which we should be thankful for and reflect upon daily, as without it we would be spiritually dead.

I take long strides to walk quickly through the entrance of Hoyts at Erina. There are so many dangers standing out the front, particularly the people who like to congregate and discuss loudly and with little regard for those around them about the movie I am there to see that they have just seen (the truth is in two hours I will be that person). It also seems to be the chosen place of public break-ups- why be subtle when you can scream your 14yr old lungs out at your 14yr old ex-boyfriend in front of at least 15 complete strangers?

I scan the carpet to avoid chewing gum as I walk to the ticket register (which is now the candy bar because someone has finally figured out that they can halve their wage cost by doing this)

I wait in line for about 3.6 minutes. Not the longest line I’ve had to wait in but it’s not the shortest.

I request my purchase of a movie ticket- “adult for transformers please”

I decline the offer for a popcorn and coke combo for $11.95 (because of course I have been here before and I know not to get ripped off from the cinema)

I make the mistake of indicating that maaaybeee a small drink would be nice.

I agree to a medium coke for an extra 60 cents (whats 60 cents?)

I agree to a small popcorn which isn’t too much.

I then agree to a further upsizing to a large coke

I am then told that for an extra $1 I can get my coke in a limited edition bottle which looks like and oversized lamp thingy that genie’s pop out of.

I agree to this.

I am then told that what I have agreed to costs more than the original $11.95 combo I was offered and if I would like to change my mind but still get the novelty bottle.

I say yes.

I swipe my card through eftpos, take my ticket and goods , hang my head in shame and walk away- grateful that the wonder of eftpos spares me the distress of physically seeing how much money I have just spent.

I realise I need to use the toilet and yet have nowhere to place my popcorn and coke. Luckily within the men’s bathroom, there is a convenient shelf above the basins for me to place my food. I try to avoid the wet patches and assorted hairs that adorn this shelf.

I hand over my ticket to be ripped in half and am told by the ticket girl that she hopes I enjoy the movie. My enlightened spirits are soon crushed when she says this to the next person and I realise that instead of taking an interest in my life, she is simply doing her job.

As I walk out of the movie after its finished I am upset because it wasn’t as good as the book, or it wasn’t as good as I was told, or it wasn’t as good as the first one, or the cartoon series was better or Johnny Depp just wasn’t as funny.

I realise with annoyance I have left my $1 novelty bottle behind.  Its too late to go back now…isn’t it?

I walk past the giant Harry Potter rectangular prisms that advertise the upcoming movie. I look around and realise I could easily take one of them with me  straight out of the cinema and into the car. But I can’t- Christians don’t steal, not even large cardboard replica’s of Daniel Radcliffe.

I walk outside into the frosty 11.30pm air and witness another public break-up. Different faces- same words.

I get into my car and drive home, wondering as I drive through an empty Erina Fair carpack if a man in a black coat with a fishing hook will appear from behind one of the pylons.

I’ve been to the movies five times in the past week. In fact, I’ve been 10 times in the past month.

I have spent at least $150 on Blades of Glory (3 times), Harry Potter (2 times), Transformers, Knocked Up, Shrek 3, Pirates of the Caribbean and goodness knows what else.

And I’ve become a bit tired of it. In fact I’ve decided that the movies is an unhealthy place to go. If nothing else it smells. Read a book instead. Read the bible. Talk with your friends.

That’s what I’m going to do anyway.

On the Prosperity Gospel

In some Christian circles at the moment another gospel is making itself known. It looks a lot like the gospel that we received—the gospel of Jesus Christ who died and rose again to bring us reconciliation with God—but it has an emphasis upon physical healing, material blessing and success that is very different from traditional evangelicalism. The difference doesn’t lie in the conviction that God can and does bless his people with physical healing or material prosperity as this has always been accepted as biblical; the difference lies in the conviction that Christians ought to expect God to bless them physically and materially here and now.

This is what many now call the prosperity gospel. It teaches that Christ’s death has not only overcome the curse laid upon us at the Fall (Gal 3:10-13), it has also overcome the effects of this curse—for example, sickness and poverty (cf. Deut 28:15-68) in this age. So Christians ought to expect, in this age, not only forgiveness of their sins but also—in equal measure and with the same certainty—health and wealth. If they live in sickness and poverty, they have failed to exercise true faith in God. For proponents of the prosperity gospel, this would be as offensive as a Christian continuing to live in sin: it dishonours the Christ who died that we might be healthy and rich.

It is not difficult to find these convictions expressed by prominent teachers today. Passages such as Joshua 1:8, Psalms 34:10, 35:27 and 37:25, Job 36:11, Mark 10:29-30, 2 Corinthians 8:9 and 3 John 2 are regularly used to support these views—usually without much regard for context. An older example is seen in the writings of Kenneth Copeland: “You are an heir to the blessing which God gave to Abraham. This blessing, found in the 28th chapter of Deuteronomy, covers every area of your existence: spirit, soul, body, financially, and socially.” Elsewhere he says, “[H]ealing is just as much a part of the plan of redemption as salvation, the Holy Spirit and heaven as your eternal home”. Jerry Savelle, an American televangelist once associated with Copeland, agrees: “Not only is it God’s will to heal, it is God’s will to heal all! Satan is the author of sickness and disease. By the authority of His Word, God has made provision for our healing. It is not the will of God that anyone be sick with any sickness or disease or pain whatsoever—from hangnails to tuberculosis!”

The prosperity gospel has also been taught in Australia. Brian Houston, senior pastor of Hillsong Church in Sydney, has written, “the Scriptures … [are] full of promises of prosperity … Is it God’s will for you to prosper? … the answer is undoubtedly YES”

There is no doubt he meant material prosperity, given the book’s premise:

If you and I can change our thinking and develop a healthy attitude toward money, I believe we can all walk in the blessing and prosperity that God intends for us. We will never have a problem with money again.

Brian’s words highlight another aspect of the thinking that drives the prosperity gospel. Many of its teachers believe that Christians don’t walk in the prosperity that has been promised because they fail to step out in faith, and name and claim what is theirs by right, or they fail to live according to the ‘rules’ of prosperity found in Scripture. When Christians pray, they must pray believing that what they are asking for is theirs. Prayers that include the words “If it is your will” are faithless prayers and can’t expect blessing. After praying for blessing, Christians must then follow this up with ‘positive confession’, thanking God for all that he has given them. Even if sickness or financial stress remain, the believer must transcend these things and rest secure in the promises of God and his word. Giving is also essential: on the basis of passages like Mark 10, Kenneth Copeland preaches, “Do you want a hundredfold return on your money? Give and let God multiply it back to you.”

This is not to say that preachers of the prosperity gospel are seeking to promote crass selfishness (although some of them do). Houston and others rightly emphasize the need to be generous with our prosperity. They insist that God prospers us so that we might be generous. Gloria Copeland, for example, writes, “Don’t just believe God to meet your needs. Believe Him for a surplus of prosperity so that you can help others”, and Houston has said, “When a person understands that the resource that’s in our lives is about the purpose of God, it releases you to believe God to resource your life”.

As commendable as this is (and in its best expressions it is very commendable), the foundation it is built on—false expectations of God’s promises for prosperity—make the entire package wrong. The prosperity gospel not only misuses the Bible, it serious misrepresents Christ. This is why a number of leading Bible scholars and pastors, including John Stott, have declared it to be a ‘different gospel’—not because it denies fundamental biblical teachings but because it adds false and misleading doctrines to them.

There are a number of approaches I could take to demonstrate this point. One way would be to examine each of the proof texts to determine whether they have been exegeted correctly. Another approach would be to consider the pastoral impact of this theology and the damage it does. But none of these take us to the core problem—the problem that makes the error so serious. We need to consider this gospel in light of the cross, and one good place to do this is Paul’s correspondence with the Corinthians.

The Corinthian church was full of problems—not the least of which was immaturity (1 Cor 3:1) which led them to cling to worldly ways and ideals, despite the blessings they had received in Christ. Paul’s deep concern for this church led him to write at least four letters, the second and fourth of which are our 1 and 2 Corinthians. In these letters, it is possible to discern a progression: in his first letter, he writes with great warmth and tenderness, naming them as “saints” of the “church of God” (1 Cor 1:2). But by his fourth letter (2 Corinthians), the problems have grown so serious, he finishes his letter by urging them to “[e]xamine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith” (2 Cor 13:5). What has given rise to this concern? They appear to be on the path of accepting “another Jesus than the one [Paul] proclaimed” and therefore “a different gospel” to the one they had originally accepted (2 Cor 11:4).

In context, it seems that new teachers or “super-apostles” (2 Cor 11:5, 12:11) were now ministering in the church, and their style was very different to Paul’s. He describes them as “false apostles, deceitful workmen, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ” (2 Cor 11:13) because they brought a different gospel and a different Jesus.

How was their gospel different? Some have suggested it was a heresy similar to that of the Galatians. However evidence for a works theology is slight and subtle. The visible and dominant issue is what has been called ‘triumphalism’: these new teachers brought a ‘gospel’ and a ‘Jesus’ of power and glory (triumph) without weakness and shame, and they had brought them to a congregation already enamoured of such things (cf. 1 Cor 4:8-10).

It wasn’t long before the Corinthians were led to believe that being in touch with Jesus would lead to victory, power and success (all defined in worldly terms). The new teachers showed evidence of this themselves: they came with letters of recommendation (2 Cor 3:1), they had the right background, they were impressive speakers, and they performed signs and wonders to support their teachings (cf. Paul’s critique in 2 Corinthians 12:11-13).

By comparison, Paul was regarded as second-rate. He didn’t march into town and start mega churches; on the contrary, he was run out of most of them. He wrote decent letters but he wasn’t a trained speaker, and he wasn’t very impressive in person (2 Cor 10:10). He got sick and he suffered (2 Cor 11:24-12:10). The Corinthian attitude towards Paul began to cool, and the church became in danger of not only leaving Paul behind but also leaving the one he pointed to behind.

How did Paul combat this problem? He taught the Corinthians about the true Jesus, the ministry of the cross and his own ministry. Jesus didn’t walk in triumph according to the standards of the world. He suffered and was crucified. Therefore a true apostle doesn’t live triumphantly (according to worldly standards). Instead, true power and true wisdom are found in weakness. This is why Paul reminds them of the very beginning of his ministry among them when he focused on the cross (1 Cor 2:2). He wanted the Corinthians to know that God’s ways are not man’s ways, and that God’s power is seen in weakness—particularly in the humiliation of the cross (1 Cor 1:18). Jews thought that miraculous signs were evidence that a person was in touch with the powerful God, and Greeks thought sophisticated rhetoric was proof of the divine, but Paul preached Christ crucified, “a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles” (1 Cor 1:22-24). But for those who have the Spirit, it becomes miraculously clear that this is where true power and true wisdom are found (1 Cor 1:24 cf. 2:9-13).

Paul was once no different from the Corinthians. Before his conversion, he judged Christ by worldly standards—“according to the flesh” (2 Cor 5:16). Like other first-century Jews, Paul thought that Jesus was an imposter because he didn’t come at the head of a great army—the triumphant Messiah (cf. Psalm 2). But when Paul’s eyes were opened by the Spirit, he saw Jesus in all his glory. He saw that Christ’s weakness was actually his strength and wisdom (1 Cor 1:25). He saw too that following Christ would also mean suffering (Acts 9:16). For Paul, true spiritual power is found in what the world regards as weakness. So he says,

Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Cor 12:9-10)

This was a great rebuke to the Corinthians and the false apostles. Paul was saying that in the ministry of the weak, God shows his true power. Conversion, maturity and church growth all demonstrate the true power of God because nothing in the clay vessels God uses can explain the outcomes (2 Cor 4:7ff). The growth of the Corinthian church, for example, was clear testimony to the power of God because it began from news about a crucified Messiah, declared through a minister as weak and nervous as Paul (1 Cor 2:3-5). Paul was so confident that God would bless his ‘weak’ words that he was never tempted to spice them up or play games; he proclaimed them without adornment (2 Cor 4:2).

At this point the seriousness of the error Paul was combating needs to be highlighted. The Corinthians were in danger of making exactly the same mistake Paul and his Jewish contemporaries made about Jesus. By focusing on the triumphalistic messiah the Jews were completely uninterested in the true messiah when he came – the suffering one. The Corinthians, in embracing a triumphalistic Christian life, were in danger of recasting Jesus as a triumphalistic messiah and so effectively following a new Jesus (2 Cor 11:3, 4). This was concretely evidence in that they were growing cold towards the true messiah’s apostle (2 Cor 1:1).

This highlights a very important principle: we are what we follow. The life of Christ and the shape of Christian ministry are intimately tied together. This is just what Jesus taught in Mark 8:34: “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me”. If you follow the crucified Messiah, you must be prepared to go the way the Messiah went—along the road of rejection, suffering and death. In fact, we are only “fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him” (Rom 8:17).

As noted at the outset, the problems at Corinth weren’t identical to the modern prosperity gospel. But in many modern manifestations of it, it’s clear this gospel has sprung from the same root. It isn’t just that future blessing has been mistakenly assumed to be ours now; it’s that the nature of the Christian life and the nature of Christ himself have been profoundly skewed. For prosperity gospel teachers, Christian suffering is out; triumph and worldly success are in. We ought to expect victory in our finances, victory over sickness, and power to march through life successfully. We are encouraged not to pray like older faithless Christians but instead to pray with power and claim our requests now. Triumph, success and prosperity will be the evidence that we are in touch with the ‘powerful’ Jesus. Our churches ought to demonstrate this same power: if we build ‘successful’ churches (large and prosperous ones), the world will be won over by how impressive they (and therefore we) are. Our ministers should be powerful and influential. If we dress like we are a success, success will follow. None of this is very different from the ‘theology of glory’ Luther railed against in the medieval church; it has just reasserted itself in a modern guise.

Some of the leaders who teach the prosperity gospel have actually explicitly reshaped Jesus. We are now told that he was, in fact, wealthy (we are told this is evidenced by the fact that his robe was seamless). We are therefore to live like he lived—in wealth. But other teachers aren’t so obvious in their reshaping of Jesus. They make little mention of him. Even so, the life and ministry they promise Jesus’ followers is so at odds with the life and ministry of the true Jesus, it will inevitably cause many to imagine a different Jesus to the Jesus revealed to us in the Bible.

Certainly the prosperity gospel is teaching a whole generation of young Christians to measure their leaders by the same standards the super-apostles measured Paul. As a result, like the Corinthians, many modern church-goers are rejecting humble, faithful, godly servants of Christ for the super version of the gospel which is really no gospel at all.

But the key to spiritual success will not be found in following a different Jesus. The key to spiritual success is utter dependence on the God the Apostle Paul followed. We don’t need more positivism. More and more the church is depending on lighting, amplification, looks, emotionalism, reward, hype and appeals to selfishness to increase in number and influence. But we must not be blinded by such worldly ways of thinking. These churches may look like they are in touch with the power of God, but their unreadiness to proclaim the offensive message of the cross, to condemn materialism and greed, and to call people to stand with the crucified one (even if it won’t bring any earthly rewards) is really spiritual faithlessness to the true gospel.

Our lives and ministries should be shaped by the saviour we follow: we are to walk the way he walked. This doesn’t mean delighting in poor lighting, bad music, boring preaching and lack of emotion; rather we should place our confidence where it ought to be—in the power of the cross and the glory of the crucified one. If we get the Christian life wrong, it’s because we have a wrong understanding of the true gospel of the true Jesus. We need more leaders who truly believe that God is powerful to save through the foolishness of the cross—leaders who won’t be shaped by modern skepticism and led to despair—leaders who will faithfully, urgently and persistently and unashamedly preach his powerful gospel. The irony here is that preachers like this will be confident, courageous and spiritually powerful, even though they may not look this way in the eyes of the world.

Andrew Heard is the Senior Pastor of CCEC.

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The I agree with Dale issue

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Guest Authors include: John Piper, Andrew Heard and Tim Baldwin.