This week at Church the sermon was delivered by a guest speaker. He bravely tackled the potentially controversial subject of ‘The Fear of God’. While the message as a whole probably lacked a little balance he did raise one or two interesting points.

The basic thread of the sermon was that the Church has many ‘gods’ within it. All of them are actually the same God but as Christians we tend to focus on one aspect of Him and hold that up as God. For example, some might focus on the god of forgiveness while others the god of miracles. Of course both of these aspects are true but focusing on one will give us an inaccurate and distorted picture of God.

The particular ‘god’ that our guest felt to be the main problem in the Church today was the god of unconditional love. He suggested that the worship of this god was a major problem, not only because it has led to Christians being happy to live lives that fall short of the life which God expects from us; people are simply able to return to God, claim forgiveness, then carry on regardless, but also because this has led to the fear of the Lord is no longer being in the Church.

I think here is where he had a point. If you take a look at the people of God on the in Old Testament, as well as the early Church as talked about in the Acts of the Apostles, those who we successful and fruitful in their walks with God were characterised by their fear of God. This fear was encouraged as the correct, even the most helpful way to be in relation to God. But what does it mean to live and move in the fear of the Lord.

I think I would best describe it as a realization of who God is. God is the awesome creator of the universe. Think about that for a second. With a spoken word He created everything that is seen and unseen. All that our science has led us to understand, as well as all which we are yet to fathom. He has the power to do anything; whenever, wherever and to whomever He chooses.

When we come before God; especially to ask for his forgiveness, we need to understand that while His forgiveness comes for free, and while His love is completely unconditional, it pains Him when we go against His wishes for our lives. God doesn’t just love Christians, or even Christian who are ââ?¬Ë?goodââ?¬â?¢. He loves all mankind. It was for sinners that Christ came. He loved us before we met him. As Bono so eloquently puts it in a recent song; “Blessings not just for the ones who kneel, lucky!” But with this in mind, a reverent fear, a respect of God is necessary so that we don’t kid ourselves into thinking we can abuse Godââ?¬â?¢s grace, instead focusing on building the relationship with Him that He so desires.

If the Church as a whole grabbed hold of this then we would see a radical change in the way in which we do things, and in the fruit we produce. Of course all of these things start with us. So I encourage you all to move in the fear of the Lord.

At Cell Group last night we approached the subject of evangelism. It’s a subject that troubles cells pretty much everywhere that I have had some contact with. How, as a group, are we able to reach out?

I guess the first question that needs answering is; is this something that we need to do, ‘as a group’? The dynamic of cells is such that they are, generally speaking, made up of different types of people, in different places on their walk with Christ, and in different places in the big wide world. For example, in our particular group we have mix of people who are married and single. We have teachers, IT professionals, engineers, and those who work for the church. We have age groups from early 20′s to late 50′s. We are all involved in different areas of church life; youth work, working with the homeless, admin, part of the worship group and alpha leaders. Our group, like most others, is very diverse and moves in different circles outside the context of cell so as a group it is difficult to see what things we can actually do together to reach out.

As a result we have been thinking that maybe the way forward is to see how we can support each other in our circumstances. How can we aid each other in developing our attitudes towards others to be like that of Christ? To have the same love for people that He had when He walked the earth as a man.

Dallas Willard, a favored author of mine, talks in this article about how we as a church need to rethink what evangelism is. He even suggests that evangelism is not the primary function of the church but is something that should flow out of a growing community of Godââ?¬â?¢s people. I think that I would have to agree with this, at least in part. Having previously been involved in running large scale evangelistic events I know first hand that there ‘success’ was more down to ground work put in to the relationships of those who attending than any great presentation of the Gospel that we could do from the front. And I use the word success reservedly because as Willard points out, the point of evangelism is not to get people over the finish line. It is not to get people into Heaven. It is bring people into a life changing relationship with Jesus. To bring them into discipleship.

So it seems clear that we need to be in relationship with people to bring them to know Christ. And it seems obvious to me that we should be in relationship with those who we are already in contact with; colleges, friends, and family for example. But there is a danger that we can put too much pressure on ourselves.

Yes, Jesus had a love for everybody. And we should also share this love. We should not befriend people to ‘make Christians’, but we should because we love them and we want to spend time with them. However, we must realize that Jesus did not sow his life into everybody that he met. As far as we know, He did not ever turn people away in need, although he did not always give them what they had asked for, but he had only 12 friends who He sowed His life into. And of these 12 there were 3 that He was closest too. And even amongst these 3 there was the ‘one who Jesus loved’, His best mate.

As cell we are going to embark on the task of getting to know each other as well as we can. So our group has that love for each other; ‘…by your love for each other, all men will know that you are my disciples…’ As part of that process we are going to commit to supporting each other in prayer for our relationships outside of cell and pray that God will reveal those around us who we are to sow our lives into. Not to make Christians, although that may well be a side effect, but to love them.

This is obviously a developing, and difficult thought process which we are sure God will mold as we give it to him. Iââ?¬â?¢m sure this whole area of, ‘What is Evangelism?’ will return.