What are the three most important characteristics of being a Christian?

There are three that are highlighted in the New Testament as they occur together time and time again. What would you put in your top three?

The Apostle Paul says, “and now faith, hope, and love remain, these three; but the greatest of these is love“. (1 Corinthians 13:13)

Faith looks back to the past looking to what Jesus has done; love has eyes on the present, our response everyday for what Jesus has done; hope looks forward.

While love may be the greatest, I wonder if it is hope that we are most in need of being reminded of?

Hope is often used today to mean something along the lines of wishful thinking, the kind of characteristic you would find among optimistic people.

But hope is a characteristic for all Christians. Our hope is not in some vague picture of the future, but in the solid truth of the resurrection.

Jesus’ resurrection is the first fruit of that day when he will return and raise us up to the new creation, our glorious inheritance.

So Paul prays: “that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance.”  (Ephesians 1:18.)

Why is it that our hope grows dim?

Perhaps our love for this world is too big? We don’t long for the new creation because we are so captivated by this one?

Perhaps our longing for justice is not big enough? We can become skeptical that nothing will ever change, forgetting that Jesus’ resurrection assures justice for all.

Perhaps our imaginations are too weak? We can’t imagine what it will be like because these promises are extraordinary and completely beyond our experience, and so doubt creeps in.

Our world wants us to doubt, but hope is the antidote.

Don’t let it grow dim, for in Jesus the resurrection has already begun, and so your hope is secure.

Simon Chaplin.

Leaving the comfort of Australia, I arrived in the unfamiliar, foreign land of Fiji… a different place, climate, and people, but the same God.

Along with the 75 other students in the Youthworks Year 13 Gap Year program, we were given opportunities to learn how the Fijians live, eat, work and function as a society. We then learnt to apply this to our teaching, ministry, and relationships. 

From organised ministry at youth groups, churches and schools, to unplanned opportunities with workers, and shopkeepers, we shared the gospel with many people.

I quickly learnt that the mission was God’s, not ours, which meant that things often did not go as planned. Sometimes we were disappointed or confused, like when our homestay visit with a family was suddenly cancelled.

Other times we were overjoyed with surprise opportunities, like when we turned up to a local primary school in Suva, prepared for a single 15-minute assembly, only to leave having done 17, simultaneous classes.

My highlight was the ten days spent in the small village of Nakavu, where I was welcomed into the home of a beautiful family from the Methodist Church. We were totally immersed into the village life, living with the people and learning from them.

So much of the mission was unstructured, playing with the children at the stunning Navua River, forming friendships which provided many amazing chats. This has made me realise the importance of investing in children outside set hours of ministry events.

Most of all, I was challenged to be totally reliant on prayer, not only when things go wrong, or as a backup, but as the most important thing for effective ministry. 

I am so thankful for each and every one of you, for your generosity in prayer and financial support. Lives were changed in Fiji, and my life was certainly one of them.

Jemimah McNeill – Year 13 student

Whilst it is true and powerful that children are our future, the problem is that society doesn’t quite know what to do.

We look at the current problems of our world and then look to the next generation to solve them… problems like violence, alcohol, crime, poverty and the environment.

The cause of each of these problems, so the reasoning goes, is a lack of information about the impacts that each of these problems may result in.

So to help our children overcome the issues we introduce educational programs at the earliest appropriate age to arm the next generation with the knowledge and skills to overcome them.

Now all this is well intentioned and not without benefit, but this strategy has always and will aways ultimately fail.

This is obvious when you realise that some of these programs have been going on for generations.

Issues to do with alcohol are a tragic example: we are now trying to teach our kids the very same things that we were taught but have ignored.

And the reason why these educational reforms have failed is that the problem is misdiagnosed.

The problem is not lack of information: the problem is sin, and so our children carry within them the problem itself.

Our children need saving.

While this is profoundly politically incorrect to say unless we understand the problem we will never be able to offer children the answer.

Jesus said “Let the children come to me; do not hinder them,  or the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.”  And he took the children in his arms, placed his hands on them and blessed them. Mark 10:14,16

Jesus is the answer because Jesus came to save us from our sins: he came to save children from their sins.

Simon Chaplin

When we think of support for missionaries, we most naturally think about finances.

After all, when we and our partner missionary organisation send someone to a distant location to preach Christ, we know that there are many costs that need to be met.

Our church loves to financially support missionaries, and we do so by allocating a proportion of your regular financial gifts. Yet, we must never forget that our support for missionaries extends also to our prayers.

When I sit down for my morning prayers, I use an app called ‘PrayerMate’, which helps me remember to pray for CMS, the Church Missionary Society. Alternatively, you might just like the paper version, which works just as well!

But the main point is that we need to keep remembering that God uses our prayers to do his will to share the saving message of Jesus to all the nations.

When we pray for our missionaries on our own each day, or together each weekend in church, we are providing critical support for those who work with us to share the great news of Jesus with the world.

This weekend, as we celebrate CMS Sunday, let’s make a commitment to personally pray for our mission partners, and for CMS as well, who encourage us to use these words:

God of love, whose will it is that everyone should be saved, bless the Church Missionary Society and all who have gone out in its fellowship to preach, to teach and to heal. Guard, guide and use them; raise up more people in your world wide church to pray and to work, to care and to understand, to give to you and to go for you, that your church may grow, you will be done, your kingdom come and your glory be revealed through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Jodie

It’s hard to imagine the pain of the parents of those Australian girls killed in the attack in London, from the terrible silence when they no longer answered their phones till that final awful moment when the news is confirmed.

There was a father named Jacob who knew of this terrible moment when his children return home with a coat stained with blood belonging to one of their brothers. They told him the news that Joseph, their brother was dead.

However after 20 inconsolable years he discovers that this was a lie and that his son was alive.

As for Joseph the good news for him was that he wasn’t dead, but there were times over the next 20 years that he may have wished he was. He had been sold by his brothers into slavery, falsely accused, thrown into jail and without hope. And yet he trusts in God, and as the story unfolds he rises from a prisoner to a decorated governor leading Egypt though a terrible famine, securing an abundant food supply.

Reunited with his brothers he has this to say

“You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives”

What does it mean that God can take evil and use it for good? It doesn’t mean that God simply re-labels something bad as good. It doesn’t mean that given enough time we can look back on a tragedy in a new light, as if all that is needed is time.

Evil remains evil.

But God’s goodness is so good that even through evil he can work. It’s terribly hard to see that in our experiences, and I can’t imagine the pain of a father losing a child. But God can because this is his story. What humanity meant as evil in the killing of his son, God planned for our good (Acts 2:23). 

The way through the evil in our lives, is not to minimise or redefine it away but to know the good which comes in Jesus – the good that came through evil to bring peace into our world and peace into our hearts.

Simon Chaplin