Articles

A series of events took place as Jesus breathed his last breath. There was darkness over the earth; an earthquake struck, tombs of dead saints were opened, Jesus cried out and...“the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom” (Matthew 27:51; Mark 15:38; Luke 23:45).

The word ‘God’ has come to mean different things in different cultures. Even in cultures with a rich Christian heritage, people still view God as mythical and impersonal. It was A.W. Tozer who said, “No religion has ever been greater than its ideas of God. Worship is pure or base as the worshipper entertains high or low thoughts of God.”

When I became a Christian, I had only feelings of sadness and no feelings of joy. I remember my heart was always dark and heavy. I was looking for feelings of joy, but my first pastor kept telling me to build my faith on the Word, not on feelings and emotions.

It is a great and undeserved honour to be made an elder in GraceCity church. An office that I know I can never live up to or fulfil well, yet at the same time it is an office that is given by God’s grace and is upheld by grace. Believing and growing in my understanding of this truth is something that has driven me most of my Christian life and is one of the reasons I began pursuing leadership and now eldership in the church.

If something you don’t love is taken away from you, you’re not sad about it. If something you don’t love is given to you, you’re not particularly happy about it. Desire and joy, fear and sadness, are forms of love. When we talk about preaching to the heart, we are talking about knowing the forms of love which dwell in the hearts of our listeners—and how these ‘loves’ influence their actions. With this in mind Katay turns his attention to two practical suggestions by Timothy Keller, which help us preach so as to reach the heart.

Back in April, Andrew Katay, CEO of City to City Australia, spoke as part of a series called ‘Church in Outbreak’ produced by Redeemer City to City. This podcast provided some thoughtful techniques on how to preach in such a way as to reach people’s hearts, and serves as the main inspiration and resource behind this article.

As a pastor, I have been led to think about the prophet Elijah in recent weeks – exhausted after his confrontation with the prophets of Baal. Running for his life, he sits and asks God to take his life away. Sounds like #fatigue and disappointment to me (1 Kings 19:4). But the angel of the Lord comes – the one who speaks both for God and as God. I am particularly comforted by the way he comes:

When my husband, Damian, and I entered into church planting, we were too excited to consider any negative emotions or possible hardship. We were the kind of people who wanted to see every sickness and sin defeated but failed to see and trust God’s bigger story in the midst of suffering. With less than 1% of the Japanese population declaring themselves to be Christian, we praised God for each conversion and loved watching God move in people’s hearts.

Many believers speak catchphrases without knowing how the gospel applies to the everyday stuff of life. They have been given the truths of Jesus as the answer for going to heaven, but have little knowledge of how Jesus gives a better answer for what they do in this life. God wants us to be able to translate the world around us and the world inside of us through the lens of the gospel.

In recent years I have returned again and again to these words. I was one of those ‘enthusiastic Christians’ that Dan McCartney refers to. The kind of person who passionately wanted to see every sickness and sin defeated in this life, but who failed to see God’s sovereignty in his own suffering. When I lost control of my environment, or something interrupted even the godliest of plans, it was easier to blame myself or the devil. This left me either fighting external forces or burdened with an internal sense of failure. 

Life can sometimes feel like you’re living in the middle of a novel. In the middle of the story you don’t really understand the plot, the characters’ motivations, or how the story will end. Only in the final chapter do all the details make sense. I have a friend who reads the last chapter of a book first. Once she knows the ending she can sit back, relax, and enjoy the book no matter how crazy the plot becomes. God invites us to read the final chapter of the bible, so we can see how it all works out in the end.

We are naturally ‘glory-empty’ people. We might not call it glory, but we have a hole in our heart that we are desperately trying to fill with significance, honour, importance, and self-worth. We shine a spotlight on our achievements; ‘Look at what I’ve done.’ We look at the number of friends we have on Facebook and say to ourselves ‘Look how liked I am’. This works fine as long as we are popular and part of the crowd. But what happens when our popularity is threatened?