Off to Adelaide for a meeting with my new missions job todnight, be back Friday. I think I am looking forward to it, not sure if these meeying are actually fun!
Been reading a bit from lots of different books lately, you know how you go through those stages in which you pick up and start multiple reads?
I finished Finding Sanctuary the other day, good morning read/devotional style.
I have begun The Practice of the Presence of God (Brother Lawrence) in the last few days.
It is an interesting read and it has made me think a bit about the “Victorious life theology”. You know that one that says that if you do XYZ then everything will work out. Therefore if things are not working then you have not got your x’s and y’s in the right places. Brother Lawrence mentioned that “he was not affraide of anything”, that he lived in “complete and permanant joy”. This all sounds nice…a bit too nice. What about when a friend dies…ok, what about when a friend dies that hates God?
What about when you stub your flippin’ toe?
At dinner every night we share our highs and lows of our day. It is interesting that my mother-in-law (God bless her, she lives with us and it it is a total joy!!) but she was at Victory Life for a while and is now at a ‘softer’ penicostal church, but she NEVER has a low point in her day…so she says. And it seems like a ‘thing’ you know what I mean? “Oh no I don’t have a low!” I can see the kids processing this amazing person with no lows, yet we all know she does.
I wonder if we have this theology that says when we are walking with God all is well and when we are not all sucks.
So I guess then when something bad happens we need to cover it up quick or deny it so it does not away the awful secret that I may not be walkng well with God, if indeed we operate with this squewed theology.
Disclaimer – this is not a go at my mother-in-law, she was just a handy example! I do love her dearly, I do, no seriously!
No Guarantees 
Hey heard a sermon sort of on this topic last sunday.
Actually the pastor was speaking from 1 Peter 1 – and he’d done the whole be aliens in the world bit but was moving into the be in the world but not of the world.
He spent some time on the bad things happening to good people, and sort of blew away the myth that all our troubles are solved when we become Christians – our ultimate problem is solved, but that does not mean we’ll live happy and smooth lives for the rest of our time on earth.
So yeah funny how we seem to learn the same thing at the same time – even on opposite sides of the country.
Yeah, agreeing there. Had to deal with that, esp in the topic of “If you’re physically sick, something’s wrong with your walk.” Talking with a youth from another church who has the same theology, their view point seemed to be that in admitting you had low points(or feeling sick for eg) you were giving in to the devil…i.e: the importance of the power of your words. That doesn’t sit too well with me. Is that theology encouraging people to be afraid?
what it does is create more and more pain.
Someone get’s sick, so they ask God what they’re doing wrong, they don’t get better for a while so they get more and more worried that God’s not happy with them, in the end the worry makes them sicker and they get depressed because God must be really angry…
and so on…
I met a young girl who was dealing with all this from another church – she came to our youth group through the local school chaplaincy work we’re doing… she seems so much freer now she’s realising that God allows us to feel pain, that it’s ok, he loves us all the time.
i get angry when i see young people effected like this because of crap teaching given by people who claim God’s called them to youth work….
i don’t know if it’s righteous angre or just personal selfish vindictive angre though.
hmmmmmmmmmmmm
“So yeah funny how we seem to learn the same thing at the same time – even on opposite sides of the country”
.. or even opposite side of the world!… well, techically, Africa is really only about a quarter of the way around.. or 3/4 if you go the other way… anyway, that’s off the point
Funny, I’m in the middle of reading that book right now too. My friend gave it to me as she was leaving for America because she loved it. I’m about halfway through but I’m finding it hard. Resistant reading is what they call it I think. Perhaps this nirvana-like state can be achieved after much surrender and walking with the Lord, but honestly, I think there is a bit of self-deception involved.
I would love to see people who live like that in the Garden of Gethsemane when Jesus gave it a vist…”Say Jesus, you’re looking mighty worried, just believe that God’s got it all worked out and live in Joy…”
Yes, God DOES have it worked out, and Jesus worked through his struggle to eventually resign to this fact. But it doesn’t mean that in the process of resignation, he didn’t plead and anguish for God to change his course.
Anyway, I think the main point is even if we ascribe to this happy-happy theology, it’s not our place to condemn people who aren’t ‘there yet’. Grace is more important that being right. Whatever we perceive ‘right’ to be…