Give up your life

Issue 382-3: July, 2010 |

Are you one of those people who reads the fine print? Do you peruse your mobile phone contract, carefully scrutinize the updated Terms and Conditions of your credit card, and pore over the license agreement of your software before clicking ‘Agree’ during installation?

If so, you will no doubt have noticed that The Briefing has its own fine print over the page. There are copyright details and information about the team. But there's also a little statement about our mission—why we put The Briefing together each month. You'll see that one of our goals is to persuade all Christians to “abandon their lives to the honour and service of Christ in daily holiness and decision-making”—which, I guess, is another way of saying that we want to urge and encourage and persuade Christians to be Christians. After all, that's what it means to really be a Christian: saying ‘No’ to yourself and giving your life over totally to the Lord Jesus Christ. This is not part of the fine print in God's offer of salvation; it is the very essence of our response to what God has done for us in Christ—to give up our lives.

That's what we're focusing on in this bumper double issue of The Briefing. Rowan Kemp looks at the subject of ‘sacrifice’ and whether living a sacrificial life is something that modern Christians have forgotten how to do (p. 15). Peter Sholl talks about how ‘giving up his life’ led him to missionary service in Mexico (p. 14). And Karen Beilharz tells how giving up her life didn't lead into full-time ministry, but into a different avenue of service: working here at Matthias Media (p. 22).

But alas, this Briefing will be Karen's last as a member of our editorial team. By around the time you read this (God-willing), Karen and her husband Ben will be welcoming their first child. We are going to miss Karen's cheerful, enthusiastic presence in our office enormously—not to mention her omni-competence. Her considerable editorial and organizational skills have really held The Briefing together over the past few years. Please pray for Karen as she learns to give up her life in an entirely new way! TP

Each year thousands come to Christ through the humble medium of the tract. We invite you to submit your own evangelistic pamphlet as part of our tract writing competition.

Up front

Should we use vaccines derived from abortions?
Not all egalitarianism is equal
Motherhood and … what?
Mental toughness and the living God
The danger of overseas travel
The Bible and Britain

Jars of clay: Evangelizing Muslims—Samuel Green shares some tips on how to share the gospel with Muslim friends.
Give up your life: Step by step to Mexico—Peter Sholl talks about how God prepared his family for a good work in Latin America.

Features

Sacrifice: Have we given up?—Rowan Kemp investigates why we struggle so much with sacrifice and self-denial.
How to avoid persecution (according to Screwtape)—Andrew Lansdown takes notes from Screwtape on how to avoid persecution and suffering in your Christian life.
A layperson's guide to giving up your life—Karen Beilharz attempts to answer the question of what it means to do ministry, but not be in ministry.
Diary of a ministry apprentice: June-July 2008—Guan Un presents the fourth instalment in his series. (Read part 1 online.)

Departments

Pastor's brief

The pastor and the evangelical priority list—Simon Flinders explains why he disagrees with the thinking that puts God first, then wife, then children and then your church.
The unhelpful solitude of preaching—Mark Glanville discusses how to break the isolation of the preacher's life and ministry.

Bookshelf

The Ordinary Hero by Tim Chester—Jacky Hooper checks out a book that applies the cross and resurrection to our lives and challenges us to live them.
You are the Treasure that I Seek by Greg Dutcher—Ron Serje takes a closer look at his idols with a little help from this modest tome.

Resource talk

Thanks for everything—Tony Payne goes all warm and positive about Six Steps to Reading Your Bible.

Bible brief

Daily readings on Philippians—by Paul Grimmond. (Download the PDF of Philippians, formatted for manuscript discovery.)
Daily readings on 1 Corinthians 1-4—by Paul Grimmond. (Download the PDF of 1 Corinthians 1-4, formatted for manuscript discovery.)

Interchange

My wife and I have been receiving the Briefing for the past 8 years, and each month I slowly make my way through reading all the articles. Over the years there have been articles I have really enjoyed, and others that I have struggled through. However, this edition [July/Aug 2010] was the first that elicited a verbal response from me. I was reading the 'Jars of Clay: Evangelising Muslims'. As I read the opening paragraph I thought: "Wow. That's brave. But a great idea. Just go up and speak to someone on the train!" Then it started to get into the details of what Muslims believe about Jesus and the prophets, and how they have it wrong. And I was thinking: "This is helpful and true, but is not really challenging me to go and initiate a conversation". But then I got to the part that made me say "YES" out loud- a rare occurrence for me indeed. "Every Muslim person is the same: they need our prayer and love. If you hate Muslims, you need to repent. If you see a Muslim walking in your street and think it's time to leave your suburb, you need to repent and love your neighbour." Wow! What awesomely powerful and true words. So often we do the exactly that. We see the kind of person that we are either fearful of or look down upon, and think it’s time to get out of here- or make them get out. But Jesus’ way is to love them, and meet them [hard to love without meeting], and speak to them of Jesus. It was certainly a challenge to me, and I hope and pray to all of us who let our fear and prejudice guide us instead of God’s Word.

Matt Gorton of Yagoona, NSW, AUS (04/08/2010)

Please, please, please can we ban the word 'challenging' from The Briefing. It has crept into Christian speech and is being used more and more. The small and otherwise helpful book review on 'The Ordinary Hero' in the latest Briefing used it 6 times! 'Challenging' is not a Biblical word. The only time it occurs in the New Testament - Galatians 5:6 (NASB) - it is not a good word. It is also wrong theology. To challenge people is to appeal to the ego. It also means that we have room to exercise an option as to whether or not we want to take up that challenge and be a better Christian. I know Christians who use the word don't necessarily mean it in these senses, but the word does carry misleading freight. The Apostles never 'challenge' people. By the word of the Gospel they confront people. By the power of the Spirit people are convicted of the truth concerning God and His Kingdom. The hidden thoughts of the heart are exposed, and so on. If, for example, our own mode of living, is confronted with the truth of God through a speaker or a writer - if the implications of life in the Kingdom expose our own lifestyles - why not then speak of 'obeying', or 'conforming to godliness', and so on. That is Apostolic practice. Being 'challenged' is not.

Mark Crabb of Daylesford, VIC, AUS (04/08/2010)

To use Jean William's own metaphor, "looking through the wrong end of the telescope may enable you to pick up all kinds of things you wouldn't normally notice" but it can also lead to the drawing of distorted conclusions, for example the possibilty of confusing causation and agency. God is, as always, the cause: the source of salvation and the one who determines who is to be saved. Mothers are one of the means he uses - his agents. It would be foolish to downplay the importance of motherhood, but it is also possible to have unrealistic expectations of what we can achieve. Faith is not passed on, it is a gift of God. Wrong thinking here leads us to effectively encroach on God's territory which is unhelpful for all, extremely depressing for those of us who have failed to produce Christian children, and may put a heavy, false yoke of total responsibility on mothers with very young children.

Presumably Cain, Abel and Seth had the same teaching from their parents but the godly line is traced through Seth, what could the explanation be here? When we see families in our churches where none of the children have been converted or perhaps just one out of three, what are we to conclude? Jean's article implies an inevitability about the outcome of teaching our children that God has not promised. If the article was a blatant opinion to get us started, it has succeeded!

Esther Nevin of UK (25/08/2010)

Dear Esther,

Thank you for your response to my article “Motherhood and…what?”.

The article was an attempt to write for a particular group - mothers, about a particular theme in the Bible - how God uses mothers in his plan of salvation. I don’t think I’m imposing this theme on the text, or finding something that isn’t in the Bible: as I showed in my article, I think this is a theme running through the Bible.

If I implied that there is any inevitable connection between bringing up children as Christians and seeing them come to Christ, this was certainly not my intention! Whether my children become Christians or not is in God’s hands: that’s why I pray for it. But I do think that my responsibility as a mother includes teaching my children about God, and teaching them to work for the salvation of others. As you say, God is the cause; I am one of the agencies he may choose to use to bring about my children’s salvation.

I agree wholeheartedly with you that single and childless women have just as important a role to play in God’s kingdom as mothers, and that women whose children don’t become Christians may have been just as faithful - or more faithful! - than women whose children do become Christians. If I didn’t add these qualifications, it’s because the question of whether or not to include qualifications is always a difficult one, especially in a short article.

My goal in writing was to remind mothers that they have a vitally important role to play in God’s kingdom (one that is often devalued in our society) and to encourage them in their responsibility to teach their children the gospel and to train them to share the gospel with others. We often tend to see motherhood as limited to nappy-changing, housework, and running the family taxi service. But motherhood has a far greater goal: to pass on the message of God’s salvation. Whether this bears fruit in our children’s lives or the lives of others is in God’s hands.

Jean Williams of Melbourne, VIC, AUS (25/08/2010)

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