Brian's Blog

Why is this happening to ME?

Here is the gear from today’s ministry at Grace Canberra.  You can find the audio file as .mp3 that can be downloaded and there is a Power Point with the information about Galatians 3:1-5.

Some of the material will overlap a bit with last week’s teaching, but I hope it will reinforce what is important rather than be boringly repetitious.

The audio is in two parts.  When I saw how long it went for I was shocked.  It certainly didn’t feel that long from where I was standing.  Here are the  audio files for you to download (.mp3).

(files temporarily removed – edited version will be back soon)

And here are the Power Point slides to download (.pptx)

Supernatural Suffering

If you want to look at the video of today’s message you can catch it for a few days (from 111204) by connecting to the Justin TV which is where our live streaming is being posted these days.  I don’t know exactly how long those posts are available, but I think it will be there for a few days at least.

http://www.justin.tv/graceplace/b/301637295 

Hope they are helpful.

BY THE WAY:  The Sunday assignment (should you choose to accept it) is to read 2 Corinthians and Galatians to find out how to operate in the midst of supernatural suffering.  I will be giving my own summary on that next Sunday.

Brian

Here is the information from last Sunday at Grace. The Power Point can be downloaded by clicking on the title at the bottom.

It was terrific to be back from our holiday.

The gospel road is a danger road when it is the genuine gospel you receive and the genuine gospel you continue to live by

There is some stuff that I will try and work on a little more this week related to what I think is supernatural suffering.  One of the profound things about this part of the Bible is that it describes in specific detail what Paul considered as the core validating elements of the ministry of the gospel.

We ought to be really interested in this because most of us have grown up in a culture and society that has lost sight of the real gospel.  If Paul talked in another place about “not (being) ashamed” of the gospel (Romans 1) because the gospel he was preaching all around the Mediterranean was a demonstration of what Paul describes as “the power of God for salvation.”  While those of us with strong roots in the evangelical and reformed parts of the church would associate that “power” with a destiny change – which it is, if his description in Galatians is also talking about the ministry of the gospel he wasn’t JUST talking about the fact that the Galatians were now going to heaven rather than hell when they died.  It is possible the word “power” is referring to things that were happening in the ‘here and now” rather than “there and then.”

I have a sense of urgency to discover how EVERY believer can become a carrier of the message of the gospel.  For that reason I am looking hard to re-discover what the New Testament assumes as “the gospel” rather than a heritage that has become a power-denier when it comes to gospel proclamation.

In order to get the full sense of what Paul is referring to at the beginning of Galatians 3 I will record here the story of the Galatian letter as is unfoleded up to now.

a.  Paul and Barnabas went to the region of Galatia as part of their first missionary journey and established many Jew/Gentile churches through the preaching of the gospel and in the midst of trouble and controversy (44-46 AD).

b.  Sometime during the next three years or so Jewish believers (probably) from Jerusalem came and told the believers there that the full gospel required both Jews and Gentiles to adopt Jewish traditions (culture) in order to be accepted by God (before  c. 49 AD).

c.  When Paul heard that they were accepting this new idea of what the gospel was about he wrote the letter we call Galatians.

d.  He describes this new teaching as heresy in the strongest possible sense –  the idea of a gospel that is mixed with Jewish (or any other culture for that matter) as a false gospel that must be totally resisted.

e.  He tells them that the gospel he proclaimed to them was given to him directly by Jesus following the time of his first encounter with Jesus.

f.  He then tells them that the gospel message (ministry) that was revealed to him through his relationship with Jesus was confirmed as genuine by the apostles in Jerusalem seventeen years after he first encountered Jesus Christ.

g. He further testifies to the challenge of the real gospel by recounting how Peter and the Jews in Antioch were led into error when a group of the conservative Jewish believers came from Jerusalem.  They used to eat with Gentiles and then stopped eating with them because of the pressure of the presence of the group from Jerusalem.  Paul knew that it was a foundational issue and as a result he confronted Peter in the presence of all the whole church.

GALATIANS 3:1-5

“O foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you. It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified.  Let me ask you only this:  did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law or by the hearing of faith? Are you so foolish having begun by the Spirit are you now being perfected by the flesh? Did you suffer so many things in vain – if indeed it was in vain. Does he who supplied the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by the works of the law or by hearing with faith?”

The next thing he says is the reference for today’s message.  As if in a court of law he how calls a fourth witness.  This is the testimony of their experience in first receiving the gospel at the visit of Paul and Barnabas.  It needs to be noted that Paul calls all of the believers in all of the churches to agree assuming that this was common to all of their gospel encounters.  As such we must assume that this kind of experience is common to all of Paul’s missionary ministry.  If we can identify it as common for Paul we can compare our own experience in seeking to preach the gospel to all of the people in the spheres where we live and work.

Essentially he says that genuine gospel ministry can be defined by four common experiences:

1.  Receiving the empowering of the Holy Spirit  (v. 2)

2.  Continuing to be transformed by the same Holy Spirit power (v.3)

3.  Experiencing a unique kind of suffering (v.4)

4.  Seeing God work miracles in the lives of other people through the same Holy Spirit power (v.5)

Here is the Power Point:

THE ROAD AHEAD

A happy man of God

It was our last night at the Warwick Resort on Fiji’s Coral Coast.  Through our connections with a young Fijian woman who came to clean our room each day we had changed our travel arrangements to Nadi and were looking forward to going to a little village approximately twenty minutes from the resort on the main road to Suva.

We were just going to join with the people in the congregation and enjoy worship and fellowship with them.  During the night I woke I had two dreams.  In the first one I found myself in the middle of Garema Place in Canberra.  There was a crowd of people there and I thought it felt a bit hostile and I called out to the people and asked them what was wrong.  They simply replied – “Tell us the story, tell us the story.”  So I started telling them my own testimony.  As I did so people began to pray and some people were jumping around shouting that they had been healed. I remembered saying to myself (in the dream), “So this is what revival is like.  I’m doing almost nothing and the Spirit of God is doing everything.”  When I woke up I remember thinking about the dream and thinking of all the years I had spent in one way or another trying to preach the gospel to people in Canberra – in particular in Garema Place.  I began to pray that God would give me the opportunity to experience in reality what I had seen happen in my dream.

A command not an option

In the second dream God gave me a message.  I wasn’t sure exactly why or what for.  The message was one of strong encouragement, even warning, not to give way to fear.  I realized that in the Bible it comes in the form of a command: “Do not be afraid” (e.g. John 14:27). The Lord said that fear had created the divisions that existed and those divisions made the church weak. Only when fear was overcome would these divisions be broken down and the kingdom of God come.  The second part was related to how God overcomes fear. God said that in the kingdom of this world people overcome fear by the accumulation of power but that it was never so in the kingdom of God.  He said fear was only overcome by simple trust in Jesus.  The assurance coming from our relationship of trust in him was what overcame fear.  God said that the people should do nothing based on fear nor should they refrain from doing things because of fear.

I didn’t realize why I had received this message, but I was grateful for the insight and began to pray for a relationship with Jesus that would be greater than any of the things that gave rise to fear (especially the fear I tended to conceal so cleverly that I fooled myself).

When we got to the church and the pastor asked me to preach I began to realize that the message was given to me so that I could declare it to the little group of people who were gathered in the church in this small village. When I had finished declaring that we spent the last period of time just moving among the people and praying that they would know the coming of the kingdom of God that accompanied the abolition o fear.  As we did so, we were praying for ourselves as well.

Since this experience I have been thinking about the divisions that exist to see how fear contributes to them, sustains them and defends them.  Then I began to consider what kind of trust in Jesus was needed to see these fear-based walls despised as they should be and pulled down as they should be.  In all of the years I have worked for some kind of unity between believers I think what has been happening is that we have tried to form a unity that preserved our divisions.  We have labeled them more honorifically than that, but they have proved both strong and dangerous.  They act like rocky reefs below the surface.  When the “unity ship” starts to sail toward deep waters it ends up foundering on the reef of our personal preferences and tribal distincions.

When we were staying at the Warwick Fiji Resort we met up with all kinds of people. There were people staying there from just about every part of the world –  the idea crossed my mind that Nola and I might just keep staying here and start our world wide missionary ministry from here.  People usually stay from between four and six days, so that would mean we just have to get them to follow Christ and train them up in four days.  No worries.

This is lovely Atelaite, who we met at the hotel. She put beautiful flowers in our rooms and left little notes of blessing.

Among the special God appointments for us was a young Fijian woman called Atelaite Naiyaliatabula.  I’m glad  we didn’t have to remember her surname.  She was a very lovely young woman and we soon discovered that she was a follower of Jesus and worshipped in a little pentecostal church (Church of God in Fiji) in a village about twenty minutes away. We told her we would love to come and worship with them on the Sunday we would be here.  There was a couple of problems. One was that we were meant to be on a bus going back to Nadi at 10:00 am on Sunday and she was meant to be working at the hotel.

By a slight bit of manipulation and divine grace we both sorted out out problems.  A young guy called Ilai (named after the Biblical priest, Eli) arranged for us to get a bloke to drive us both to the church and up to Nadi afterwards and we were away.  It was such a great experience.  Although they were worshipping in Fijian we were able to join with them.  We met Atelaite’s beautiful children and just had the greatest time.  They asked me to preach.  Their main pastor was away in Sydney and so I had a go.  We ended up praying for many people including Bill, our driver and afterwards we took off for Nadi.

IMG_0519

One of Atelaite's children took a liking to Nola's knee

The building was a little wooded frame with corrugated iron covering that had let rain in the night before, so the worship leaders were standing in the water on the floor.  They are in the process of building a new church but they are paying for what they can do.  We were able to kick the tin a bit and Nola arranged with Atelaite to send over some Children’s Church materials for their kids. They are such beautiful kids.

A male and a female human with a male and a female iguana

On the way to Nadi we stopped off at this great Eco Park and made friends with a couple of Iguanas.  We learned something very interesting.  There are at least two ways of telling a male Iguana from a female.  The male has rings and the female doesn’t, but more interestingly you can tell a male because when you look into their ear, you can see right through to the other side of its head.  We made a lot of jokes about possible things in common between male Ignuanas and males of the human kind.

We are in Nadi now at this really plush resort on Denerau Island.  Its an island for rich people therefore it is built on satisfying self gratifying indulgences.  I can’t take more than few days of this.  The people who work here are from a bigger town and are not as open and friendly as those from the Coral Coast, but they are all God’s people and we want to try and find ways to love them. I don’t like the rich playground deal much at all.  That’s a fact.  Give me the chance to worship God with a little bunch of people in a scrappy tin shed any day of the week and twice on Sunday.

Brian and Nola

It's a hard life having to get up and look at this every morning!

We arrived in Fiji a week ago and after waiting forever to go through immigration we were trundled into a little bus to make the two hour trip down to the Coral Coast.  Our place was called Warwick Fiji Resort and is one of the older (but still good) resorts along that southern part of the island.

We have slept, walked along the beach, snorkeled and swam,eaten great food and read books.  The people are lovely. Anyone who has been to Fiji would know how beautiful and friendly Fijian people are.  All of the ones who work int he resort are from villages along the coast and they are beautiful. No one comes to Fiji without saying “Bula” about a thousand times a day (slightly exaggerated).

One Fijian bloke told me they use this (Parliament Building) for a pre-school at the moment. And another one added, "So nothing changed!"

This has been a wonderful restful time. We did go on a few short trips:  we took the only train that operates in Fiji – the cane train from Si(n)gatoka that wandered through the former cane growing areas – a bit of a political issue there as to why they don’t grow cane on these fields at present.  We took a bus into Suva and saw the Parliament – built like a huge bure (village meeting hut) but of course there are no meetings there with the current military government.  One would like to think that there is more to military coos in Fiji than power and money grabbing, but I fear it is just the same.  Most power hungry and greedy-for-money people use ideology to try and justify their personal lusts.  As usual it is the poor who get the worst part of the deal.

But we’re on holidays and having a great time being renovated –  I mean regenerated – I mean rejuvenated.  Well, something good is happening.

Brian and Nola

PARLIAMENT HOUSE CANBERRA

on the lawns in the front.

Camp Ashraf Rally

12:00 noon,   November 24^th

On the lawns in front of Parliament House, Canberra

Dear brothers and sisters,

I am writing in the hope that you would give favourable consideration to making this Rally known among your people.  I have been involved with Iranian refugees in Australia since 1991.

Please watch the video via the link here so that you can understand why more than 3,000 unarmed vulnerable and oppressed Iranian refugees are in danger of being wiped out and what you and I and the people from our congregations and communities can do to support them.

For more information go to these websites OR call  61030100

National Council of Resistance for Iran

http://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=vkP8mUkYRc4&oref=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fresults%3Fsearch_query%3Dcamp%2Bashraf%26aq%3Df&has_verified=1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IhxvKwowIc

Yours sincerely in Christ

Brian Medway

WATCH THE VIDEO

Ashraf Rally Nov 24 2011.mp4

Hi everyone,

The situation with the unarmed Iranian refugees suffering in Camp Ashraf has worsened these past few days.  At 11:00 pm at night Iraqi special forces entered the camp with an array of armed and other vehicles and took up positions there.  This is in addition to the daily harassment through 300 speakers on the perimeter of the camp.  It is in line with consistent threats from Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki to vacate the camp by the end of this year (2011).  With the American government now committed to withdraw troops by that same date the plight of these people becomes that much more precarious.

One encouraging sign is this congressional interview with Senator Hilary Clinton regarding the fact that the State Department in the US was asked to review the classification of the PMOI as a terrorist group –  and a lot of pressure has now been put by some very high ranking US political persons for more determined support.

If you would like more information about any aspect of this matter please email me (brian@gracecanberra.com.au) and I will pass on information to you.

Please pray for the people of Ashraf and those who support them –  especially pray for Ms Maryam Rajavi, the leader of the National Council of Resistance for Iran (NCRI – see    www.ncri.com )

Here is the video:

Clinton Congressional hearing-20111127    (this is .wmv)

Clinton Congressional hearing-20111127  (this is .mp4)

Brian

Here is an audio file of last Sunday’s message at Grace Canberra.  It registers as #4 in the series on ‘Redemptive Love.”

Hope it works for you.

Brian

Brian Medway 111023 Redemptive Love #4

How does the kingdom of God engage the kingdom of this world?  How did Jesus do it and how should we follow his example?

When Jesus spent three years proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom he described it as a "violent advance of the kingdom" Matthew 11:12

I am constantly trying to see how the operations of the kingdom of God intersect with the operations of the kingdom of this world.  Jesus provided us with the primary model for doing this.  He was fully human and spent thirty years living as such in a small Galilean village and nobody had a clue that he was God apart from the people who had received supernatural revelation of the fact.  That’s about as incarnational as it gets. When he began his ministry of preaching, teaching, healing and proclaiming the kingdom of God, we begin to see more of these nexus points.  At no time does Jesus align with any of the groups who represented expressions of the kingdom of this world:  political Rome; philosophical Greece; religious Israel in a variety of forms.  He lived, spoke and acted as an expression of a different kingdom.  That kingdom was the kingdom of God.

John Howard Yoder was a Mennonite theological of the second half of the twentieth century.  His most widely recognized work was entitled, “The Politics of Jesus.”  Apart from presenting an argument for pacifism, Yoder points out that Jesus’ engagement with the socio-political realities of the day demonstrate that Jesus was politically left wing on some issues and right wing on others.  His approach to other matters put him at odds with both and un-measurable on that scale. It was not so much Yoda’s conclusions that stirred me but his bold attempt to observe and report how the ministry of Jesus interacted with the community at large to produce overall influence.

How would you judge the results of Jesus ministry on earth?

1. What if you were a consulting company doing a review two days after the ascension?  Here is my suggestion as to a “brief” for the consultant:
2. The advance of the kingdom of God:  If one of the tasks of Jesus was to represent, explain and demonstrate the advance of the kingdom of God.  To what extent did the kingdom of God ‘advance’ during the three years of his ministry?[1]

The multiplying of that ministry following his ascension:  If this ministry was to be spread and multiplied following his ascension, how did he prepare for the succession and what was that succession depending on for effectiveness?

How about engaging with me on this.  Imagine you are the partner of a consultancy firm engaged to review and report.

Present your findings in a format that contains a review and recommendations for groups of followers of Jesus who desire to continue to see the ministry extend.

Make sure that your conclusions come from evidence in the gospels (and related wider Biblical sources) rather than representing a personal opinion or point of view.

Brian Medway

October 25^th  2011

Need any help Ethan ?

Hi all,

In our quest to find the best way to make the gospel known in the places where we have become indigenous on this earth I have been searching the pages of the gospels for the distinctives of the love modeled and represented by Jesus.

I reckon there are three main ones –  the power point should happen here, and you will be able to download the audio file in the a blog that should be here by tomorrow.

LOVE-MISSION-IMPOSSIBLE1