Is life all about answers or more about questions?

On every single website you come across, especially from businesses, you’ll see this section called FAQ’s, Frequently Asked Questions. We all have questions we want to know the answer to.

Today we all want answers, but what is more important? Is it the answers, or the questions? How do we learn? Do we learn by getting the answers, or do we learn by asking the questions? As a Christian we look and we think, ‘how did Jesus go about things?’ If you look in the Gospels you will see Jesus answering direct questions not with direct answers, but often with more questions. Jesus’ method of learning all the time was for the listener, the learner, to ask the question, to discover the answer…

I sometimes work with teenagers in high school, and I was asked to speak to a group of year 10 boys (aged 14-15). Academically these boys would struggle to write down answers to difficult questions; but these boys could think, and they were thinking. I went in there just to talk, on request, about death and afterlife, and all of those things, which was exciting as you can imagine. I began by asking questions, and they asked questions of me and we interacted. There were hardly any answers given, but an amazing thing happened in that lesson.

Is there an afterlife or not? Is there a God or not? If there is what does that mean for us? If there’s not what does that mean life is? What’s life worth if there’s nothing afterwards?

They were engaging with these questions and one young guy stuck his hand up and just said, ‘Why can’t God just come down and tell us? Why can’t he just come down and show us?’ and as he was asking the questions out loud to me, I simply stepped forward, looked him in the eyes and didn’t say a word, and as he was thinking out loud and asking the questions, he paused. He stopped. And then he said,‘Oh yes. He already has come down hasn’t He?’ I don’t know where that young man will go with that discovery, but that day I did not tell those boys any answers, I asked them more questions. But in doing so, I believe they discovered more than if anybody had lectured them.

To know the truth may take you a lifetime’s journey of asking questions…

…read more of this article in Core issue 1

Des Wadsworth is Youth & Teaching Pastor at Longton Community Church. He is married with four kids, and has an equal passion for the Chicago Bulls andLiverpool Football Club.

I think I’m beginning to realise that Christianity is not for me.

I say that, not as an atheist or agnostic, nor as someone who has become disheartened or let down by people within the church, but as someone who is struggling to square the institution with values that Jesus seemed to model within his movement.

For 22 years I have trod the well worn path from youth leader to Church minister, but it’s only in the last two years that I’ve begun to follow Jesus and therein lays the problem and also the solution to our ever changing world. It certainly has been a tipping point in my understanding of what this faith, which exploded onto our planet 2000 years ago, is all about.
When you realise that you’ve been a Christian for 20 years and a follower of Jesus for only 2, you begin to wonder how many others have assumed that what they have understood to be authentic faith is actually a cultural adaptation of it and one which at this moment in time is looking inappropriate and inflexible.

My personal tipping point took place over a conversation with my then 3 and a half year old daughter. That one conversation took me on a journey that admittedly has only begun, but nonetheless has transformed my understanding of what it means to be an authentic follower of Jesus in our 21st century world.

Two years ago I stumbled onto a principle as to how God creates and shapes our lives. It started as a request to do a bible study on the first two chapters in Genesis and within minutes of starting it I kind of got ambushed by God. I noticed that the words ‘formless’ (which can also mean shapelessness) and ‘empty’ seemed to lift off the page and I immediately recognised that someone was trying to teach me something here.

I read the first three days of creation and discovered a pattern emerging. On day one God ‘separates’ the ‘light’ from the ‘darkness’, on day two He separated the ‘sea’ from the ‘sky’ and on day three He separated ‘land’ from the sea. I immediately began to see that God has a way of interacting in our world around us and a way of creating and blessing the world. God starts with the ‘formlessness’ first. Then on day’s one, two and three He separates out 5 blank canvasses; light, darkness, sea, sky and land. God in fact creates a space out of the chaos in which He can work.

Now stick with me because it’s what God does next that blew me away. Having created a space, those 5 blank canvasses and having dealt with the formlessness, look at what happens next.

On day 4 God creates, the Sun, the moon and also (in the most amazing thro-away and understated comment of the whole bible) the stars. On day 5 God creates all the ‘birds of the air’ and all the creatures that live in the Sea. On day 6 God creates the animals and finally humanity. Having started with the formlessness on the first 3 days, God now switches his attention to the ‘emptiness’. On day 4 God returns to the space he created on day one and he now fills it, with the Sun, Moon and stars. On day 5 God returns to the space he created on day two and onto the two blank canvasses called ‘Sea’ and ‘Sky’ he now fills them, literally an explosion of life and creativity. On day 6 God returns to the space he created on day 3 and he fills the earth with the animals and the start of the human race.

I knew there was something to learn here, but it wasn’t until I had finished work and driven home that the penny dropped. I walked in to the lounge at my home to be greeted with my little girl, Abigail. She looked as though she had been having an amazing time, because the floor was just covered wall-to-wall with toys, Duplo, dolls, books and her favourite Jigsaws. She came running up to me with her favourite Jigsaw and said, ‘Daddy, daddy will you play this with me.’ I looked at her, then I looked at the floor, then I looked back at Abigail and said, ‘Abi, I’d love to play this with you, BUT there’s just no room for us to do this.’ Abigail left me holding the puzzle as she immediately got onto her hands and knees and began to shovel up the toys, pushing them to the extremities of the room and leaving a space in the centre of the room, ‘Now we can do it daddy,’ she said.

At that moment, God spoke to me, and the course of my journey changed. I believe I heard the Spirit of God whisper in my heart, ‘That’s how you treat me, Jonathan. You desire and long for all my creativity, anointing and blessings, and as a father I would love to pour that out into your life, it’s just that when I look at your life there’s no space for me to work.’

Could it be that God in order to work creates a space first and only then does He fill it with His creativity and energy? I longed for the latter but was unwilling or unable to create the space. Suddenly I had entered a different world, because everywhere I looked at the bible I saw the same principle at work.

Adam was formed out of the dust of the ground, what was that? Space! Then God breathed into him, what was that? The breath of God. Moses tabernacle? Space! Then the glory of God fell. A Widow gathers empty jars? Space! Then the oil flowed. John the Baptists ministry? Space! Then the messiah came. New Wineskins? Space! Then came the New Wine.

God wanted me to discover just exactly what it means to become an authentic follower of Jesus. He wanted me to become like Him but in order to do that life couldn’t carry on as it had been doing. I believe God has so much energy, life and creativity lined up for us, and as a father He desperately wants you and I to succeed and to become like him.

The issue is that the space we create for God is often inappropriate, it’s unable to contain what God has for us. If He poured out his creativity into our crowded, cluttered and chaotic lives, much of it would be wasted, lost even indistinguishable from the clutter of 21st century living.
The outworking of this insight for me is still ongoing. Practically I had to create space to ‘restore’ my soul, to discover I’m loved by God and that I have a unique way of connecting with Him and the world around me. I had to say ‘no’ to the good stuff in order to position myself for the best. Creating space helped me to discover my mission, discovering my mission has enabled me to say no to some good stuff as well as to the bad,

Creating space was also about allowing me to become myself. Sounds strange, but I began to realise that God has made me…well me! He’s given me gifts and a personality that has to be given room to grow and to develop. I had been caught up doing stuff that just wasn’t me and I had to create a space to let my strengths flourish.

Creating space was about areas of my heart that had been cordoned off, made inaccessible to God through unforgiveness and bitterness. When Jesus, talked about the parable of the sower, many, if not all of the audience depended on the land. Many of those knew that most of the ‘good soil’ had been swallowed up by the rich and the powerful and by those in collaboration with the occupying Roman army. When Jesus talked about having to sow on the margins of the land, the pathways, the land chocked with weeds etc the listeners identified with this, because this was their everyday experience.

Why am I saying this? Land condition and heart condition were intertwined in the story of Israel, you can see that all the way through the Old testament. If the physical land was occupied, the people had only the margins to live off. Jesus was saying to his people, your heart is occupied by a foreign enemy and I’m left with only the margins to work on. If unforgiveness and bitterness are occupying your heart, God is left only with the margins and in doing so you are running a high risk strategy of losing whatever God gives to you.

Finally creating space is also about inappropriate structures that are outdated and that need to change. New Wineskins are needed, new flexible and relevant ways to create an authentic, Jesus following community that continues to complete the mission given to it by it’s leader to proclaim in word and deed the good news of the gospel. Have we created church structures that are now inappropriate and inadequate to contain the creativity and blessing of God?

If you want my opinion….well maybe next time.

Jonathan is one of the leaders at The Church @ Junction 10 in Walsall. He is an avid Man Utd fan, a lover of books, a secret trekkie and would love to personally lead Anne Hatheway to the Lord!

Have you ever wondered whether we are really on track with prayer - whether we’ve discovered all that God intended the conversation to be?
Gill Mott wondered… and then did something about it.

“What exactly is ‘Nightwatch’? Well, I can say it’s definitely biblical. The Street Bible frames it like this: (Matt 14v22-24) ‘Eventually they’ve all left and Jesus climbs up the mountainside to talk things through with God long into the night.’

Phrases such as ‘All night long’ or ‘Watches of the night’ crop up throughout Ezekiel, Isaiah, Daniel, Zechariah, Joel, Nehemiah and even from Paul in the New Testament.”

John Wesley too often practised the nitewatch - a fact not lost on this East Lancs small group. One night, whilst praying in a Methodist church cellar they discovered a life-size statue of the man, and included him in the gathering!

“We began in a living room, and steadily progressed to using different church buildings as available. Every week a few extra people joined even though we weren’t advertising.
Sometimes God moved and there was silence in his presence. Sometimes we sensed angels with us; Sometimes we argued theology until we screamed! Sometimes we worshipped with a full band set up, in candle light. Sometimes drunks banged on the door and wanted to come in! Sometimes we fell asleep! Sometimes we laid our musical instruments on the altar and knelt for hours on freezing cold marble in the chancel. Sometimes we prayed on the beach, in the pitch black, standing at the waters edge and shivering in the force of the wind.

Nightwatch is organic, it’s sheer, spiritual, indulgence. Once we watched ‘The Passion of The Christ’. We projected it along an entire wall, and then rewound it and stood in the light of the projection itself. Jesus’ blood and sacrifice all over our shirts. By His blood we are made clean.”

Gill Mott runs an organisation called David’s Key, engaging young people in music & spirituality.

How can you swim counter-culturally when the tide is flowing so strongly against you? Only by doing the sort of intensive daily training that a cross-channel swimmer does. Yes, it’s tough but who ever promised it would be easy? It’s obvious, but you need to practise being counter-cultural to be able to do it consistently.

Just knowing the ‘good that I should do’ is not good enough. We all know the worrying facts about our world - whether it’s the ever-growing divide between rich and poor, or the escalating racial and religious tensions. We all know the hurt and pain that is all around us in our communities. The gap seems to exist between knowing this and doing anything about it. Even Paul said, ‘I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.’ (Romans 7:18)

As a teenager, the quantum leaps that I made in learning French did not happen behind a desk in a classroom, but on family holidays in the campsites and villages of Brittany. The phrases I learnt and used regularly there are the ones that I can still recall now. It’s not that my time in the classroom was wasted. It formed a vital foundation of understanding. But without putting this concept into practice where it was subject to scrutiny, it remained a blunt tool. Real learning that lasts happens through experience. Many types of experiential learning are fast becoming acknowledged methods in various professional disciplines. Hang on. It feels as if I’ve heard all this before somewhere. Oh yeah

“Why do you call me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say? I will show you what he is like who comes to me and hears my words and puts them into practice. He is like a man building a house, who dug down deep and laid the foundation on rock. When the flood came, the torrent struck that house but could not shake it, because it was well built. But the one who hears my words and does not put them into practice is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. The moment the torrent struck that house, it collapsed and its destruction was complete”
(Luke 6:46-49).

You may think you cannot change the world but you do have some control over you. People ask me why the world is in the state it is and I usually reply like this. How much control of my life does God have? 40%, 50% perhaps? the truth is, as much as I let him and therein lie all the mixed motivations, selfish moments, and ensuing heartbreak. Just multiply that up by six billion and you actually get quite an accurate picture of the world all its hurts, conflicts and injustices. Why do we believe that, when you look at the big picture, everyone else will be different to us?

Through our devotional lives, we seek to get to know Jesus better day by day. For as long as this ‘getting to know’ is confined to academic study, historical recall or private prayer, we are only seeing certain aspects of who he is. Anyone who works in the deprived parts of this world will tell you that they meet Jesus there. They see him in the faces and hands of the poor and the oppressed. They see him healing the sick, releasing the oppressed, bringing sight to the blind and proclaiming good news to the poor. We meet him in the doing. I remember being asked by my dad to help him wash his car on a Saturday afternoon. I remember feeling so proud. It was only later I realised why he did it. God doesn’t ask us to help because he needs our help. He asks us to help him so we can be where he is. We get to know when we’re involved with him doing what he is doing.

John said that Jesus came ‘full of grace and truth.’ Jesus said ‘I am the truth.’ Learning the truth is not like learning an objective set of facts. We have shrunk it to be something smaller than the living, breathing thing that it is; truth is fleshed out in a person. To meet this truth, you have to meet it in the flesh. Without ‘fleshing out’ this incarnate truth in our communities, we aren’t really ‘knowing it’ either. As Brian Walsh and Sylvia Keesmat put it, ‘In this respect, seeing (experiencing, touching and feeling) is indeed believing.’

Andy Flannagan is a songwriter, author and speaker. He now lives in London, plays a lot of cricket and tries to avoid watching ‘the west wing’ in every waking moment. - www.andyflan.com

Andy’s book God360 is activating and changing the devotional lives of many people. You’ll find yourself praying with Moses in Exodus 17 from the top of your local multi-storey car park, or washing your neighbour’s car as some 21st century foot-washing!

In her stark autobiography Abigail Robson deals with the delicate and often misunderstood issues of self harm, bulimia and anorexia. Not an easy read due to the subject matter and the frustrating nature of all addictions, it is invaluable for anyone wishing to have a deeper understanding into the mind of someone struggling with these issues. Dispelling the often held belief that ‘cutting’ is purely attention seeking behaviour the book offers first hand insight into the torment which many people suffer in an attempt to cope with the reality of everyday day life. Robson is disarmingly honest at times as she takes the reader through her journey through self hatred, insecurity and desire for control to forgiveness, acceptance and ultimate freedom through Christ. Abigail offers hope without trivializing the immense struggles involved in breaking free from this desperate, lonely and destructive cycle.

Keri Wyatt Kent asks you to practice, as she calls it, ‘Sabbath Simplicity’ - a time where you stop all the hurry, maybe for a day per week, to focus on the things God has blessed us all with. Very practical and with special exercises to help you consider your life one moment at a time, ‘breathe’ wants you to slow down, catch your breath & enjoy life. As a mum of 4 kids, a wife of a busy Youth Pastor, and working in Church kids ministry, I feel God has given me a personal invitation to BREATHE, live one moment at a time and enjoy all that God has blessed me with.

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