Barb Brans July 26th 2015 ~ Being Prepared for the King
A few weeks ago I attended the CMS Mission Awareness Conference held here at St Philips. The theme was ‘Ready for the King, Living in the Light of Christ’s Return’. I found it enlightening and REALLY challenging.Do you feel dressed for service? It can be embarrassing to be caught off-guard in life but to be caught unprepared to meet God will be devastating. The rich fool in Luke 12:13-21 was unprepared for death. The message from Jesus to Christians follows in Luke12:35-48. He is coming back but we do not know when. We must get on with this business of serving Jesus NOW; we must be engaged in active service. To seek His kingdom is an active thing, not passive. To love Jesus but live a passive life is like the rich fool. To want to be wealthy and serve God at the same time is impossible.The second talk was about the greatest invitation of all (Luke 14:15-24), a familiar story with an unfamiliar message of mission. The servant (missionary) was given three orders:
- The urgent “Go quickly”, for the meal of eternal life is set but the opportunity will end - the door will close.
- “Compel them”: we have no right to be at the feast; it is by God’s grace. Mission is persuading people that GRACE is for real.
- The servant is still out there for the task is unfinished. We must continue to invite people in: 2 billion people do not know Christ.
The last talk was about godly stewardship (Luke 16:1-15), the dishonest manager who acted resourcefully in a crisis. He was commended for his resourcefulness. There is a crisis in the world when 2 billion people are unlikely to hear the gospel of Jesus because there is no viable Christian witness amongst them. We are called to be more resourceful about the kingdom of Heaven. We are challenged to use our money now in such a way that people will be encouraged into lasting (eternal) friendships with God.I presume this is an Australian statistic but less than half of one percent of our money goes to the kingdom. We are people of the light. From the above parable Jesus says we know the secret of eternal life. One day the only currency available to us will be the currency of heaven - that is, our money will be useless to us when we die. Everything we have now is on loan but not so our heavenly wealth. We will be welcomed in heaven by those we have helped with our money and our prayers. Chapter 12 verse 48 warns us that much will be expected from we who have much.This is not my suggestion as to what we might do with the church money - we give to many good causes. But this challenged me to make sure I am investing in the kingdom of God. Secular people can give to secular charities. Of course I would hope that the church does at least give 10% away. There are many Christian groups like Christian Mission Society, Bush Church Aid, Christian Blind Mission, Barnabas Fund, Anglican Overseas Aid, Trinity Training, Shenton College Chaplaincy, Bible League, Open Doors and many more that we can support. So don’t be like the rich fool - only a fool would be. Give generously, for He has given extravagantly to us in Jesus.God bless, Barb Brans