Issue 011
Do you feel that your behaviour often disqualifies you from being an
effective witness at work? Your mistakes and your failures create a
feeling of utter hypocrisy. If you started to be more up front about
your faith perhaps you feel you’d damage rather than advance the
cause of God. It’s a common problem which paralyses many,and it’s
a deception.
Abraham was a liar; Isaac and Jacob unjust parents. Moses was a
Murderer; David an adulterer and murderer. Rahab and Mary were
prostitutes, Peter was a liar, Paul a murderer, and following some
distance behind is a whole list of cowards.
Like marathon runners, walking war-wounded or post-operative
patients, they all kept going through the pain. These are the footsteps
in which we follow. This is the cloud of witnesses before whom we
run. We are failures and come from a long line of failures. We don’t
spread the Gospel in spite of our failures; that would be to miss the
point. We spread it because of our failures. The Gospel is good
news precisely because God loves people who mess up and has
provided a rescue strategy for us.
If the disciples had waited in Jerusalem until they had banished their failures,
we would not know about the Gospel at all. If you wait in your office
for perfection you will only add another mistake to your list. What
God is calling us to do is communicate a rescue plan for failures not a
marketing plan for perfectionists.
Hebrews 12:1-4
1 Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, 2 fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. 3 Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.
4 In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.
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Geoff Shattock
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