Sold out for the Gospel or Selling it?

When you become a Christian, you’ve been forgiven for all the things you’ve done wrong, you enter into a relationship with the living God, you’re loved and accepted, you’re destined for heaven. Amazing isn’t it? And I love sharing these truths with young people. I love giving them these gems of hope – telling them they’re loved when they feel like no-one cares about them. Telling them they’re accepted when they feel like they don’t fit in anywhere. Telling them they’re forgiven when they’re possessed by shame for the mistakes they’ve made. But that’s like showing someone half a photograph.

Do we tell them that when you become a Christian, you’re called to take up your cross and follow Jesus? To die to yourself. You’re called to serve others instead of yourself. You’re called to love the people who hate you. To forgive people who hurt you. My fear is we don’t. In making Christianity relevant to consumer culture, have we turned passion, love and community it into a cheap product?

And I find myself the head of this marketing committee. When asked how I changed when I met Jesus, my initial response was to say I became much more confident and happy in myself. I was no longer brought down by what girls said to me at school because I’d found love and acceptance in Jesus. But then I thought, when I met Jesus, I learnt to love the girls that bullied me at school, to try to think of others before myself, to be thankful for the good things in life – why weren’t these my first thoughts?

I fear that we’ve commercialised the gospel. That we’ve taken the radical out of history’s biggest movement. That we’ve religified an event that cut history in two. That instead of being sold out for the gospel, we’re trying to sell the gospel.

So what does it look like for you and me to take up our cross?

If any of you wants to be my follower, you must turn from your selfish ways, take up your cross, and follow me. If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake, you will save it.
Matthew 16: 24-25

Becci Raine

Love is in the air...

As Valentine’s Day has just passed, it got me thinking about love. At this time of year, you seemed to be surrounded by love hearts, roses and cheesy poetry… and it gets a bit sickening. Well, that could just be me being bitter, but I think love should be celebrated all year round, rather than a day being set aside as an excuse to tell someone how you feel about them. At home, Valentine’s Day is a pretty big deal. My mum goes to ‘Marks and Spencer’s’ (which only happens on special occasions) and checks out the Valentine’s day deals; my step dad writes cards for me and my sisters from “our secret admirer” even though at eighteen, you would have thought I had worked it out by now; and my younger sisters come home from school with stacks of cards from various boys. I guess it is quite exciting to know that someone thinks you’re special, but why not be made to feel like that all the time? There are so many verses in the Bible telling us how much God loves us…
“Know therefore that the LORD your God is God; he is the faithful God, keeping his covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his commands” – Deuteronomy 7: 9.
How awesome is that!? God promises us his love to a thousand generations and all he expects in return is to “keep his commands”. And even if we do mess up, he is still going to love us anyway! Proverbs 10: 12 says “love covers all wrongs” and I think this is so powerful, to know that no matter what we have done, God is going to love us just as much, and he will do all he can to get us back on the right path. He also teaches us to love each other, as the second commandment found in Matthew 22: 39 is “And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbour as you love yourself’.” It doesn’t specify as particular day on which we have to show each other that we love one another, we should do it all the time!
So today, and every day, think about the people that surround you. Think about how special they are to you, and tell them! God loves us and gave up everything he loves so that we could live and love each other.
“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, so that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” – John 3: 16.

Charli Wood

Do we give God the credit?

In quite a few Churches across the UK, over the last few years there has been a song that has been sung: ' you give and take away, you give and take away, but my heart will gladly say ' blessed be the name of the Lord, Blessed be His name'' . I don't know whether i find it easier to forget God when times are good or when times are bad.
There are times in our life when things are going really well. I am not talking about when you are taking steps of faith and God is obviously there. No, cause they are times i know i thank God for what he does. For example when i started Nottingham YfC, we were living by faith and every meeting every school we started partnerships, every bit of money we got in, was given credit to God. It was obvious.
What i am talking about is when things are going well, we start to take things for granted and we are comfortable with where we are. We seem to forget about past struggles and what God does for us to keep us in that place, day to day miracles, conversations etc.
So we would think that when bad times happen, then we would remember God and ask Him to help us, to guide us, to comfort us. But we don't do we? Our default tends to be to blame God. To tell Him it was all His fault. I have been continually reminded and challenged by a news article i saw 2 days after the Haiti disaster, it was a group of Christians that were just praising God, and as they were interviewed they said that whatever happens God is their father in heaven, and that they didn't understand why, but they knew that God would be there to comfort.
WOW what an interview, how can we forget about God? How can we blame Him for the bad stuff that happens? I know from my experience that a lot of the stuff that goes wrong in my life is my fault, then other things that are hard can be attributed to people around me making strange decisions, and then there is the unexplainable bad things. But to blame God is a bit of a cop out. How can i claim that God is love and then say it is His fault for things that are wrong?
Not just the things that don't go the way i want, but things that are fundamentally wrong. I would be a hypocrite then.
So yes, things don't always go well, I don't get things right, but whether life is good or bad, whether I have honoured God or dismissed Him in the past, i now choose to say 'Blessed be your name.'