Alpha talk: How can we be sure?
1. Has anyone got any idea of what this is showing? It's my Sunday. I got up, and I felt great - sun shining - John in a good mood.
Had a lovely breakfast, got my weekly kiss from my wife (that's the bump there)
- and went to church ready to praise God.
But then I went to Pathfinders, and for some reason it was
terrible. Immediately went into the
slough of despond. Stayed pretty low
for the rest of the day - although had a good afternoon playing with
friends. Then in the evening I got
another kiss and things improved from there...
By nature we are very up and down people, and our feelings can change in
the course of a few minutes. We are
permanently being affected by what other people think of us and what happens to
us. It's very hard for us to be
constant about anything. If you think
my ups and downs are bad, you should see Ruth's!!
2. Feelings of a typical
Christian change about relationship with God change throughout day. Similarly have a look at how this
typical Christian's day goes. He
projects what he is feeling throughout his day onto his relationship with
God. Therefore, when he got up the sun
was shining and he felt that all was well between him and God. He even had a time of prayer and read his
bible, and felt God was very keen on him.
But then on his way to work, some body cut across him and he swore at
them. Immediately he felt like he had
let God down, and all his work had been wasted. He manages to recover a bit by being nice to someone at work, but
it isn't until the evening when he has time to pray again, that he feels he has
really put himself right with God. We
could apply this to a wider context - someone goes to church when they are young,
and makes a Christian commitment etc.
If our faith depended on what we thought of ourselves, then we would
never be sure of anything to do with Christianity. But the reality is that God's love for us is a big fat line
which doesn't go up or down , but stays constant whatever we do.
Becoming a Christian isn't about becoming a good person, but it is about
the start of a new relationship, and God wants us to grow into understanding
that his opinion of us is like this line, rather than this one.
When you become a Christian, it is the beginning of something new - 2
Cor 5v.17. As far as God is
concerned, there is no going back on that.
You can't be unborn as a Christian!
People have different experiences of this conversion (e.g. Q of L
page58). One of the things that can
sometimes make us doubt our relationship with God, is that we haven't had these
experiences ourselves. Actually,
everyone's relationship with God is different - for some it is stunning, and
for others it is a gradual thing. Just
as all our relationships are different, so each person has a different
relationship with their Heavenly Father, and we shouldn't get hung up if we
don't think our relationship with God isn't the same as other people's. God treasures a unique individual relationship
with each person, and doesn't want Christians to become clones of each
other. But the one thing that he does
want is for us to become more sure of his love for us, and that is what being a
Christian is all about. So how can we
become more steady in our faith - what can we rely on?
The first thing to remember is that Christianity is not about what we
have done for God, but what he has done for us. As we saw last week, Jesus did everything on the cross that is
necessary for us to be forgiven. In
Romans 8 verse 1 it says "There is now no condemnation for those in Christ
Jesus". We can be confident before
God, not because of our own goodness, but because of Jesus' death. Someone has described it as when God looks
at us, he doesn't see us with all our sin and evil, but sees his son Jesus in our
place.
But it is hard for us to accept that we are completely forgiven by
God. This is because we judge God by
the same standards by which we judge other people. If I asked you to say what your picture of God was, you would
probably come up with anything from the
old man with a flowing white beard, to a floating mass of plasma
somewhere above space. But one thing is
for sure, that our feelings about God are very much conditioned by our feelings
about the way people work, and by the way the way we feel about ourselves. Have a listen to this excerpt from a book
by Henri Nouwen(Failure,p.26) God is
not like us If we want to grow more
sure of our relationship with him, we have got to see when we are expecting him
to act like a human father, rather than a divine one.
The main difference between the way we work and the way that God works
is that our relationships tend to be conditional - you do this for me and I'll
do this for you. You treat me right,
and I'll treat you right. As soon as
this breaks down, we find it difficult to operate. But God says, "My thoughts are not your thoughts, my ways
are not your ways" The main way in
which he is not like us is that his love is completely unconditional. It doesn't rely on fairness. Listen to Henri Nouwen again ( Forgiveness
p.26+7) We find the fact that God can
love us for who we are very hard to accept, but there is a lovely story in Qof
L where a man comes to realise how God loves him unconditionally.(p.66+7) That is what God wants each of us to realise.
The other thing that I've touched on already is that God is not like us
in the fact that he does not change.
Now, this is an important point to grasp hold of, because we are
changing all the time (I found my first grey hair last week) We form new relationships, we suffer
tragedies, we move around, we learn new things, we get new questions and
doubts. That's all part of the fabric
of human life - little can be relied on to remain the same. But God's promises never change. Isaiah 40 v.6-8 makes the point
best. Here are a few promises that will
remain the same throughout our lives, even if we don't feel like they will Psalm
103v8-14. That's the kind of God we
can be sure of!
So, to recap, we can be sure of God's love because it isn't what we have
done, but what God has done for us, because God's love is unconditional and his
promises are unchanging.
But, as I was preparing this, and explaining to Ruth what I was thinking
of saying to you, she, ever the supportive wife, said, "Well, if you know all
this, then why did you get so down after Pathfinders on Sunday?" Fair point.
The answer is that actually the journey towards being sure of God is a
lifetime struggle. Christians aren't
given super confidence. The important
thing is that we are gradually becoming more assured of our relationship with
God the longer we live. That's not to
say that we will be permanently happy, but that our fundamental trust in God
will move from being a wobbly mountain range to a constant line of security
which remains with us whether our circumstances are good or not. That's the purpose of being a Christian
disciple, and our hope in doing this Alpha course is that it will bring
everyone a step closer to that goal.
Alpha group time : How can we be
sure?
Aim: to explore what causes us to doubt that we
are God's children. To give reasons we
can be sure of our faith.
Warmer: Ask group members to write down on a slip of
paper what they think God thinks of them.
Tell them to be honest. Ask them to think about why they think
this. Ask group members to share what
their idea of God is like.
1. Discuss what it means to be a
"child of God"? Read Romans
8v. 14-17. What does God feel about us? What does Hosea 11 v. 1-4, 8-9 show us about
the way God feels for us?
2. Is it possible to be "good enough" to be a Christian? What would you say to someone who thought
they weren't good enough?
3. When do we feel we let God
down? What is our reaction:
a) to believe we have to earn his favour?
b) to give up and think of ourselves as useless?
c) to realise that we need him and rely on him a bit more than before?
4. How complete was the work of
Jesus on the cross? Have we any part to
play in our own forgiveness? Read the
parable of the Prodigal Son ( Luke 15v. 11-24)
What did the son have to do to be forgiven? What does the picture of the father tell us God is like?
5. Discuss how we can grow more
sure of our faith. What role do these
things have in enabling us to really live as if we are children of God?
- the Bible
- prayer
- the church
- our understanding of the Cross?
6. Suggest a plan of action
for a Christian who feels that God no longer loves him/her.