by Steve | Nov 26, 2001 | Archive - 2001
Archive: Why does God allow suffering
By Nicky Gumbel
November/December 2001
Good News
Glenn Chambers, a young New Yorker, had a lifelong dream to work for God in Ecuador. At the airport on the day of departure, he wanted to send a note to his mother, but he didn’t have time to buy a card. He noticed a piece of paper on the terminal floor and picked it up. It turned out to be an advertisement with the word “Why?” written across it. He scribbled his note around the word “Why?” That night, his airplane exploded into the 14,000-foot Colombian peak, El Tablazo. When his mother received the note after the news of his death, the question burned up at her from the page: “Why?”
The issue of suffering is the most frequently raised objection to the Christian faith. We are constantly confronted by suffering. “The fact of suffering undoubtedly constitutes the single greatest challenge to the Christian faith, and has been in every generation,” writes theologian John Stott in The Cross of Christ. “Its distribution and degree appear to be entirely random and therefore unfair.”
First, we see suffering on a global scale. There are natural disasters: earthquakes, famines, and floods. The suffering that results is often pervasive and arbitrary. The two world wars focused our attention on global suffering in an acute form.
Second, we see community tragedies. Almost daily we read or hear of a plane crashing, a ship sinking, or some other disaster affecting the lives of hundreds of people.
Third, suffering at an individual level affects us all to a greater or lesser extent: bereavement, sickness, handicaps, broken relationships, unhappy marriages, involuntary singleness, depression, loneliness, abject poverty, persecution, rejection, unemployment, injustice, fierce temptation, and disappointment. Suffering can come in an endless variety of forms, and no human being is immune from it.
It is worth noting that suffering is not a problem for all religions. It is an acute problem for the Judeo-Christian tradition because we believe that God is both good and all powerful. C. S. Lewis stared the opposing argument succinctly: “If God were good, he would wish to make his creatures perfectly happy, and if God were almighty, he would be able to do what he wished. But the creatures are not happy. Therefore, God lacks either goodness, or power, or both.”
Theologians and philosophers have wrestled for centuries with the problem of suffering, and no one has ever come up with a simple and complete solution. The Bible is primarily a practical book, and it never addresses this issue systematically in a philosophical way. What we see are a number of approaches to the problem, all the way through from Genesis to Revelation. There seems to be four main overlapping insights, and we shall look at each of them in rum.
1 . Human freedom. Suffering is not part of God’s original created order (Genesis 1-2). There was no suffering in the world before humanity rebelled against God. There will be no suffering when God creates a new heaven and a new earth (Revelation 21). There will be no more crying and no more pain. Suffering only entered the world because Adam and Eve sinned. It is, therefore, an alien intrusion into God’s world. If all suffering is a result of sin, directly or indirectly, why did God allow sin to enter the world?
He did so because he loves us and wanted to give us free will. Love is not love if it is forced; it can only be love if there is a real choice. God gave human beings the choice and the freedom to love or not to love. Given this freedom, men and women from the beginning have chosen to break God’s laws. The result has been suffering.
Again, as C. S. Lewis puts it: “It would, no doubt, have been possible for God to remove by miracle the results of the first sin ever committed by a human being; but this would not have been much good unless He was prepared to remove the results of the second sin, and of the third, and so on forever. If the miracles ceased, then sooner or later we might have reached our present lamentable situation: if they did not, then a world, thus continually underpropped and corrected by Divine interference, would have been a world in which nothing important ever depended on human choice, and in which choice itself would soon cease from the certainty that one of the apparent alternatives before you would lead to no results and was therefore not really an alternative.”
Suffering as a result of our own sin. Some of the suffering we endure is the result of our own sin. At times, suffering is the inevitable consequence of breaking God’s law. There are physical laws of nature; for example, a hand put in the fire gets burned. In this context, pain acts as an early warning system when we exercise wrong choices. There are also moral laws. God made a world built on moral foundations, and there is a natural connection between sin and its consequences. If a person abuses drugs, addiction may be the consequence. A person who drinks excessively may eventually suffer from alcoholism. If someone drinks and drives a car recklessly and injures himself, his injuries are partially the result of his sin. In a similar way, selfishness, greed, lust, arrogance, and bad temper often lead to broken relationships and unhappiness of one sort or another.
Suffering as the result of others’ sin. Job’s friends thought his suffering must be the result of his sin – but they were wrong (Job 42:7, 8). Jesus expressly repudiates the automatic link between sin and suffering (John 9:1-3). He also points out that natural disasters are not necessarily a form of punishment from God (Luke 13: 1-5). The apostle Peter draws a distinction between suffering as a result of our own sin (“a beating for doing wrong,” I Peter 2:20) and suffering that has no connection with our sin (“unjust suffering,” vs. 19,) or suffering “for doing good” (vs. 20).
Much of the suffering in the world is the result of other people’s sin. This is true of many global and community disasters. So much suffering is caused by war, which is always the result of human sin, even if the sin is on both sides. Much of the starvation in the world is caused by the unequal distribution of the world’s resources, civil war, or some other human sin.
Likewise, individual suffering is often caused by the sin of others – murder, adultery, theft, sexual abuse, unloving parents, reckless or drunken driving, slander, unkindness, or selfishness of one kind or another.
Suffering as a result of a fallen world. It is the result of Adam and Eve’s sin that “thorns and thistles” entered the world (Genesis 3:18). Ever since that time “the creation was subjected to frustration”(Romans 8:20). Natural disasters are a result of this disorder in creation. Human freedom does not always answer the question of why a particular individual or nation suffers so much, but it does help explain the origin of suffering. All suffering is the result of sin, either directly as a result of my own sin or the result of someone else’s sin, or indirectly, as a result of living in a fallen world.
2. God works through suffering. Suffering is never good in itself, but God is able to use it for good in a number of different ways.
First, suffering can be used by God to draw us to Christ. C. S. Lewis wrote: “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains; it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world … No doubt pain as God’s megaphone is a terrible instrument; it may lead to a final and unrepented rebellion. But it gives the only opportunity the bad man can have for amendment. It removes the veil; it plants the flag of truth within the fortress of a rebel soul.”
This has proved true time and again in Christian experience. We meet those who have only begun to think about God as a result of suffering the loss of a loved one, a broken relationship, or some other pain in their lives.
Second, God uses suffering to bring us to Christian maturity. Even Jesus “learned obedience from what he suffered” (Hebrews 5:8). God uses suffering to build our characters. One image used by the New Testament is that of the discipline of children. The writer of Hebrews says that “our fathers disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness” (Hebrews 12:10). He points out that “no discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it” (Hebrews 12:11 ).
Peter uses a completely different image: that of a metal worker refining silver and gold. He writes that his readers may all “have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials” (I Peter 1:6). He goes on to explain why God allows this: “These have come so that your faith – of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire – may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed” (I Peter 1:7).
Our temptation would be to say to God, ‘‘I’m quite happy as I am. Please leave me alone.” But, as C. S. Lewis points out, that would be to want God to love us less:
“Over a sketch made idly to amuse a child, an artist may not take much trouble; he may be content to let it go even though it is not exactly as he meant it to be. But over the great picture of his life – the work which he loves, though in a different fashion, as intensely as a man loves a woman or a mother a child – he will take endless trouble – and would, doubtless, thereby give endless trouble to the picture if it were sentient. One can imagine a sentient picture, after being rubbed and scraped and recommenced for the tenth time, wishing that it were only a thumb-nail sketch whose making was over in a minute. In the same way, it is natural for us to wish that God had designed for us a less glorious and less arduous destiny; but then we are wishing not for more love but for less.”
Third, God often uses suffering to bring about his good purposes. Paul tells us that “in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28). We see an example of this in the life of Joseph (Genesis 37-50). He suffered from rejection by his close family and separation from those he loved. He was forcibly removed to Egypt, away from his father, whom he did not see again for twenty years. In Egypt, he was unjustly imprisoned for a crime he did not commit. For 13 years, he faced trials, temptations, and testing. At the age of 30, he was made ruler over Egypt and was in a position to save the lives not only of his family, but also of all God’s people. Towards the end of his life, he was able to speak of his suffering to his brothers, saying, “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives” (Genesis 50:20).
It is not always easy to see at the time what God is doing. Earlier on in his life, Joseph would not have been able to see it so clearly. Often we cannot work out what is going on or why we are suffering in the way we are.
3. God provides a future. Anglican Bishop Gavin Reid of Maidstone, England, tells of a boy in his congregation who shattered his back falling down the stairs at the age of one. For years, he had been in and out of the hospital. When Gavin interviewed him in church, the boy remarked that “God is fair.”
Gavin stopped him and asked, “How old are you?”
The boy replied, “Seventeen.”
“How many years have you spent in the hospital?”
The boy answered, “Thirteen years.”
He was asked, “Do you think that is fair!”
He replied, “God’s got all of eternity to make it up to me.”
God has indeed all eternity to make it up to us, and the New Testament is full of promises about how wonderful heaven will be. All creation will be restored. Jesus will return to earth to establish a new heaven and a new earth (Revelation 21:1). There will be no more crying, for there will be no more pain and suffering. We will change our frail, decaying, mortal bodies for a body like that of Jesus’ glorious resurrected body. We shall be reunited with all those who have died “in Christ,” and we shall spend eternity together in the presence of the Lord. As Martin Luther once said, “I would not give one moment of heaven for all the joys and riches of the world, even if it lasted for thousands and thousands of years.”
We live in a materialistic world that has almost entirely lost its eternal perspective. We need to take a long-term view and understand the suffering of this life in the context of eternity. This is not “pie in the sky when you die.” As the theologian Alister McGrath points out in his book, Suffering: “If the Christian hope of heaven is an illusion, based upon lies, then it must be abandoned as misleading and deceitful. But if it is true, it must be embraced and allowed to transfigure our entire understanding of the place of suffering in life.”
4. God is involved in our suffering. We must be prepared to acknowledge that there is no simple definitive answer to the “Why?” of suffering. Instead, we may approach the problem from a different perspective: God is a God who suffers alongside us.
This fourth insight is perhaps the most important of all. I once heard John Stott say, “I could never myself believe in God, if it were not for the Cross.” God is not a God who is immune from suffering. He is not looking on as an impassive observer, far removed from the suffering world. We see that throughout the Bible and, supremely, we see it in the Cross. He is, in Tertullian’s phrase, “the crucified God.” God was “in Christ,” reconciling the world to himself (II Corinthians 5: 19). He became one of us; he suffered in all the ways in which we suffer. He does not just know about suffering – he has suffered himself. He knows what we are feeling when we suffer.
In 1967, a beautiful athletic teenager named Joni Eareckson had a terrible diving accident at Chesapeake Bay that left her a quadriplegic. Gradually, after the bitterness, anger, rebellion, and despair, she came to trust the sovereignty of God. She built a new life of painting (using her mouth to hold the paintbrush) and public speaking. One night, three years after the accident, she realized that Jesus empathized with her completely. It had not occurred to her before that on the cross Jesus was in a pain similar to hers, unable to move, also paralyzed.
The knowledge of Christ’s suffering removes what Jurgen Moltmann has called the “suffering in suffering.” We are not alone in our pain. When we suffer, he suffers with us.
How do we respond to suffering?
In the midst of suffering, we need to hold on to our hope. This life is always a mixture of battle and blessing, and in times of battle, we need to remember that the battles do not last forever, and often blessing is just around the corner. Whether it is or not, we can be sure that one day we will go to be with the Lord forever. Meanwhile, we need to keep our eyes fixed on Him (Hebrews 12:2), knowing that he is more than able to sympathize with us because He has suffered more than we ever will.
When we see others suffering, we are called to show compassion. In the face of great suffering, attempts to rationalize can be counterproductive. Usually, the most positive thing that we can do is to put an arm around the person and “weep with those who weep” (Romans 12: 15).
We are right to resist suffering because, as we have seen, it is an alien intrusion into God’s world. Jesus fought against suffering wherever he came across it. He fed the hungry, healed the sick, and raised the dead. He saw his ministry in terms of preaching good news to the poor, proclaiming freedom to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, and releasing the oppressed. We are called to follow in his steps.
Nicky Gumbel studied law at Cambridge and theology at Oxford, practiced as a lawyer, and is now ordained and on the staff of Holy Trinity Brampton Church in London. He is the author of the curriculum of the Alpha Course. He is also the author of Why Jesus?, Questions of Life, Why Christmas? Telling Others and numerous other books. This article is adapted from his book, Searching Issues. Reprinted with permission of the author.
by Steve | Jul 26, 2001 | Archive - 2001
Archive: Throwing a Lifeline to Church Dropouts
By Richard Ostling
July/August 2001
Good News
During a lifetime cut off from organized religion, Aubrey “Mac” McCray had gone through three failed marriages and three desperate tries with Alcoholics Anonymous before he reached sobriety. An A.A. friend invited the retired auto worker to visit the Vineyard Community Church in the Cincinnati suburbs, and there he reached a turning point.
McCray heard about a course just starting at Vineyard for those who know little about the faith or aren’t sure what to believe. It’s called Alpha and could be described as Christianity 101. An insider jokes it might just as well be called “Agnostics Anonymous.”
At the tenth and final Alpha session, “the tears just came rolling out like a flood broke loose,” McCray recalls. “I couldn’t stop. It’s just hard to describe.” Alpha “softened my heart,” he says.
As a result, this Easter was McCray’s first as a baptized member at the Vineyard. “It changed my life,” he says.
McCray was one of 16 people who testified to Alpha’s effectiveness in March when the Vineyard held a two-day conference promoting the program to U.S. clergy and lay leaders. The projected attendance at 42 such presentations scheduled around the country this year is 16,000.
Thanks to Alpha, housewife Sandy Ventura also celebrated her first Easter since baptism, at the Covenant Fellowship in Glen Mills, Pennsylvania. She says that before taking the classes she believed in God but, “I didn’t have a relationship with him.”
Now, she says, it is “like a whole new life beginning for me. “
Most responses are less dramatic. But Alpha has undoubtedly cut a swath in the eight years since the concept spread beyond Holy Trinity Brampton church in London, which had quietly run Alpha courses since 1977.
Roughly three million people in many Christian denominations worldwide have now attended, including nearly 500,000 in the United States, where work began in 1996. Both those totals have doubled the past two years. Now, some 17,000 congregations participate.
No one is more astonished by this surge than the Rev. Nicky Gumbel, 45, Alpha’s wiry leader and curate of Holy Trinity, located in the fashionable Knightsbridge section of the British capital.
“None of this was really planned. All the way along, it has been responding to a demand out there,” he says.
Public interest, if not demand, was sparked in Britain when a spiritual takeoff on the “Survivor” show, hosted by Sir David Frost, hit commercial television this summer.
The series tracked 10 Londoners week by week as they respond to Alpha sessions at Holy Trinity and reconsider Christianity.
In England, where worship attendance is low and getting lower, Alpha has “revolutionized many churches and made many new Christians,” Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey told a Billy Graham evangelism conference last August.
Similar enthusiasm is spreading among clergy in the United States, where the plan seems to fit all sorts of churches.
At an Alpha event in Cincinnati, Ohio, local Episcopal Bishop Herbert Thompson Jr. said, “The Alpha program is a marvelous gift to the church throughout the world.”
Baltimore’s Roman Catholic Cardinal William Keeler says he has heard “wonderful testimony” about results from Catholic sessions.
Top Evangelical Protestants – including Bill Bright, Tony Campolo, Charles Colson, and Pat Robertson – have added their endorsements.
A noted layman, pollster George Gallup Jr., told a Philadelphia meeting that through Alpha, “I have seen lives transformed, as mine has been.”
Less reverentially, the Financial Times calls Alpha “a slick global conversion machine.”
For all the hallelujahs, Alpha uses a wholly unremarkable format. People are simply invited to meet weekly to enjoy a friendly free meal, listen to Gumbel on video, or a live speaker chat about basic beliefs, then break into small discussion groups for a half hour.
Though everything is carefully designed to attract seekers and dropouts, Alpha presents an uncompromising conservative message.
On the subject of Easter, for instance, the course insists that Jesus rose physically from the dead, and rebuts one by one the objections to this belief-that miracles can’t happen, or Jesus wasn’t really killed, or somebody must have stolen the corpse, or the apostles were hallucinating when they met him alive again.
As for lifestyle, Alpha teaches that Christians shouldn’t marry outside the faith, sleep together before marriage or dabble in the occult. And the manual guiding discussion leaders on typical questions has a chapter that says homosexual activity “goes against God’s created order.”
What church people think will appeal to outsiders is usually wrong, observes Holy Trinity’s head priest, the Rev. J. A. K. “Sandy” Millar. He assigned Gumbel to run Alpha in 1990 and says his assistant reoriented the course toward people with no previous Christian involvement by reading thousands of questionnaires from Alpha attenders.
Gumbel was well suited to the task, as a thoroughgoing skeptic who converted to Christianity at Cambridge University after reading the New Testament straight through.
The Gumbel-era Alpha seeks to bring people’s doubts to the surface rather than suppressing them. The first session is boldly tided, “Christianity: Boring, Untrue and Irrelevant!”
Group leaders are directed to keep their opinions to themselves the first five weeks. Instead of the conventional Bible studies that Alpha formerly used, no-holds-barred discussions now draw out honest questions and problems.
Attendees are told they’re free to drop out at any time. Those who do are not hounded with follow-up calls.
The course materials give clear, logical answers to challenges against Christianity, reflecting the years both Gumbel and Millar spent as barristers before entering the clergy. But Millar says efforts to reach the mind aren’t sufficient. “The heart is important. The experience of God is important.”
U.S. plans
Alpha’s U.S. outreach is administered from New York City by Alistair Hanna and a staff of 19. Hanna, an Episcopalian, left a senior partnership with McKinsey management consultants in 1997 to become the unsalaried executive director.
His ambitious plan calls for expansion from the current 3,000 U.S. congregations offering Alpha courses to 20,000 within three years or so; then he foresees moving beyond church word-of-mouth to draw “the person in the street” through advertising. He wants to double the budget – currently$ 1.5 million – each year.
“There were plenty of naysayers” when the program was launched in the United States, but it has clearly caught on across church lines, he says.
The Alpha course has reached into 113 countries and 34 languages, says Tricia Neill, executive director at world headquarters in London. She is the former head of Rupert Murdoch’s company that operates trade shows.
The growth will continue, Neill predicts. “We’re only seeing the tip of the iceberg.”
Richard Ostling, a religion writer for the Associated Press, was formerly senior correspondent for Time magazine. Reprinted with permission of the Associated Press.
by Steve | Mar 26, 2001 | Archive - 2001
Archive: Evangelism for a New Era
By Nicky Gumbel
March/April 2001
Good News
I have never been a natural evangelist. I have never found it easy to talk to my friends about Jesus Christ. Some people are completely natural evangelists; they find it the easiest thing in the world. … I’ve been looking for ways in which ordinary people like me, who aren’t naturally gifted evangelists, can communicate their faith with friends, family, and colleagues without feeling fearful or risking insensitivity. …
The Alpha course began in our church, Holy Trinity Brompton Anglican Church in London, in order to present the basic principles of faith to new Christians. It is a 10-week informal course offered to explore the basic meanings of the Christian faith. What we discovered was chat most of the people taking the course were not committed Christians, but people who were merely curious about the faith.
When Alpha first started growing I thought, “How could something that started in Central London work elsewhere?” Alpha currently runs in more than 100 countries: in Zimbabwe, Kenya, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Canada, and many others.
While at an Alpha conference in Zimbabwe, I discovered that Alpha was not only running among the English-speaking white Zimbabweans but also among the Shona-speaking people in their own language. Zimbabwe has a population of just over 10 million people: there are 80,000 whites in Zimbabwe but 90 percent of the black population speak Shona. While I was at the conference l met Edward Ngamuda who had originally done Alpha in English but then thought that he would like to run the course in Shona. A couple who had come to Christ on Alpha asked him to come and run the course with the 900 people who worked on their farm. Thirty people came on the first course and 50 came on the second.
I asked him whether these people were Christians when they came on the course. “No,” he replied, “we had a Muslim, a witch doctor, and a polygamist come.” I asked how the polygamist happened to be there and was told that his first wife came on the first course, and that she had brought him and the other two wives on the next one! Edward assured me that Alpha worked better in Shona than it did in English. It was then that I began to realize that this course, which started in London, could operate in different countries and cultures. Why is this?
Evangelism is a process. Conversion may take place in a moment but it is part of a process. Jesus used the expression “born again” (John 3:3) for the beginning of a spiritual life, and the New Testament speaks about becoming a child of God. While the birth of a child may be one event, there is a much longer process before and afterwards. The Bible uses many other images to represent spiritual growth: some are taken from agriculture, others from the ideas of building or journeying. All these involve a process.
Alpha is a 10-week course involving a total of 15 talks which include a weekend and a celebration party at the end. We do not expect people to respond to the gospel after the first week (although some do). We recognize that people need time to think, watch, listen, and to talk through their questions and difficulties. Each person is beginning at a different stage.
Some are already Christians but will often say in retrospect that at the start of the course they were Christians “without any real experience of God.” Others are at the point of new birth when they begin Alpha. Some have already given their lives to Christ at the party at the end of the previous course, others at a special event before the beginning of Alpha. Still others come to faith through the witness of their family or a friend. Many are still a long way off when they begin Alpha.
Some are convinced atheists, some are New Agers, some are adherents to other religions or cults. Many are living in lifestyles which are far from Christian. … We welcome them all. Some will complete the whole course and still not be Christians at the end; … others will give their lives to Christ somewhere on the course. For nearly all of them, Alpha will enable them to take a step forward in their relationship with God.
The fact that there is a process spread over 15 sessions enables us to give longer to aspects of the Christian faith than one would be able to in one evangelistic talk. For example, in 1994 I saw a man standing at the back of the room who looked very suspicious and worried. When I introduced myself he said, “I don’t want to be here, I’ve been dragged along.” I said, “Great! Let me introduce you to 11 other people who don’t want to be here,” and I took him to meet my small group. At the end of the evening I heard him chatting to someone else in the group.
“Are you coming back next week?”
The other man replied, “Yes, I’ll be here.”
To which the first man said, “Well, if you’re coming back next week, I’ll come back next week.”
Six weeks later he said to me, “This course is like a jigsaw puzzle. Every time I come back another piece fits into place. And I’m beginning to get the picture.”
Furthermore, the fact that Alpha is a process enables trust to develop. There is a great deal of cynicism, skepticism, and distrust about the Christian church. I had no idea of the extent of this until I spoke to someone who said that for the first three weeks of the course he had not eaten the food in case it was drugged. That was an extreme case of distrust, but many people wonder if the church is after their money, their mind, or something else.
The whole person. Evangelism involves an appeal to the whole person: mind, heart, conscience, and will. Each talk is designed to appeal to all four, although in some of the talks the emphasis will be on just one.
We appeal to the mind because we believe that Christianity is based in history: on the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We preach “Jesus Christ and him crucified” (I Cor. 2:2). We seek to persuade with every argument we can muster, just as Paul did on so many occasions (e.g. Acts 18:4). We try to teach only what we can establish from the Bible and we point people to the biblical text. We do not expect anyone to take a “blind leap” of faith. Rather, we hope they will take a step of faith based on reasonable grounds.
Secondly, we appeal to the heart. Our message does not simply require an assent of the intellect to a series of propositions, but rather it calls people to a love-relationship with Jesus Christ. John Stott has written: “There is a place for emotion in spiritual experience. The Holy Spirit’s … ministry is not limited to illuminating our minds and teaching us about Christ. He also pours God’s love into our hearts. Similarly, he bears witness with our spirit that we are God’s children, for he causes us to say ‘Abba, father’ and to exclaim with gratitude, ‘How great is the love the father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!’ … I think it was Bishop Handley Maule at the end of the last century who gave this good advice: ‘Beware equally of an undevotional theology (i.e. mind without heart) and of an untheological devotion (i.e. heart without mind).’”
Graham Cray, principal of Ridley Hall Theological College in Cambridge, England, has spoken with great insight about the culture of the 1990s, which is in the process of shifting from an Enlightenment culture to a new and coming one. In the Enlightenment, reason reigned supreme and explanation led to experience. In the present transitional culture with its “pick-and-mix” worldview, in which the New Age movement is a potent strand, experiences lead to explanation.
I have found on Alpha that those from an essentially Enlightenment background feel at home with the parts of the course which appeal to the mind, but often have difficulty in experiencing the Holy Spirit. Others coming from the New Age movement find that rational and historical explanations leave them cold, but at the weekend away they are on more familiar territory in experiencing the Spirit. Previously they will have been seeking experiences which have then left them discontented and only in experiencing a relationship with God through Jesus Christ do they find their hunger is satisfied.
The gospel involves both the rational and the experiential and it has an impact upon both those from an Enlightenment background who need to experience God and those who have sought experiences but who need to understand the truth about God.
Third, we seek to appeal to the conscience. Paul writes, “By setting forth the truth plainly we commend ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God” (2 Cor. 4:2). We know that every person has a conscience. Deep down we all have a sense of right and wrong. The Holy Spirit, often working through people’s conscience, convinces them about sin. Their consciences therefore are on our side. Throughout the course we are appealing to this side in urging people to repent and turn to Christ.
Fourth, we seek to appeal to the will. We recognize, of course, that no one can come to God unless he calls them. As Jesus said, “No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him” (Matt. 11:27). On the other hand, Jesus went on to say in the very next verse, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28). In other words, he called for a decision.
There is a difference between an appeal to the will and the wrong form of pressure. We try to avoid all forms of pressure on Alpha. We do not endlessly exhort anyone to respond, or chase people down if they do not come back: it is up to them to decide. Over the period of 10 weeks, as we pray and allow the Holy Spirit to do his work, giving people the opportunity to respond, we are, in effect, making a continuous appeal to their wills.
Dynamic and effective. On the day of Pentecost such was the power with which Peter preached that the people were “cut to the heart” and 3,000 were converted (Acts 2:37-41). The remarkable events continued: “Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles …. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved” (Acts 2:43-47).
Remarkable healings followed (Acts 3:1-10). People were astonished and came running to find out what had happened (3:11). Peter and John preached the gospel with great boldness: “When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus. But since they could see the man who had been healed standing there with them, there was nothing they could say” (Acts 4:13-14). The authorities had no idea what to do because “all the people were praising God for what had happened. For the man who was miraculously healed was over forty years old” (Acts 4:21-22).
Far from dwindling away through the period covered by the book of Acts, this spiritual dynamic continued. Even in the last chapter we read of Paul praying for Publius’ father: “His father was sick in bed, suffering from fever and dysentery. Paul went in to see him and, after prayer, placed his hands on him and healed him. When this had happened, the rest of the sick on the island came and were cured” (Acts 28:8-9). All the way through we see the dynamic effect of the coming of the kingdom of God accompanied by conversions, miraculous signs, healings, visions, tongues, prophecy, raising the dead, and casting out evil spirits. The same God is at work today among us. Evangelism can still be dynamic and effective.
The fullness of the Spirit. Jesus told his disciples, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). On the Day of Pentecost the promise of Jesus was fulfilled and “all of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them” (Acts 2:4).
However, it did not end there. Later we read of Peter being “filled with the Spirit” again (Acts 4:8). Still later the disciples (including Peter) were filled again (Acts 4:31). The filling of the Holy Spirit is not a onetime experience. Paul urges the Christians of Ephesus “to be filled with the Spirit” (Eph. 5:18) and the emphasis is on continuing to be filled.
I think that there can be little doubt that the greatest evangelist of our century has been Billy Graham (b. 1918). In his authorized biography, John Pollock tells how Billy Graham visited Hildenborough Hall and heard Stephen Olford speak on the subject “Be not drunk, but be filled with the Spirit.” Billy Graham asked to see Olford privately and Olford expounded the fullness of the Holy Spirit in the life of a believer. “At the close of the second day they prayed, ‘like Jacob of old laying hold of God,’” recalls Olford, “crying, ‘Lord, I will not let Thee go except Thou bless me,’ until we came to a place of rest and praising,” and Graham said, “This is a turning point in my life. This will revolutionize my ministry.”
… Those who come to Christ on the course know that a radical change has occurred in their lives because they have been filled with the Holy Spirit. This experience of God gives them the stimulus and power to spread the good news of Jesus Christ and see, firsthand, the expansion of the kingdom of God.
Nicky Gumbel studied law at Cambridge and theology at Oxford, practiced as a lawyer, and is now ordained and on the staff of Holy Trinity Brompton Church in London. He is the author of the curriculum of the Alpha Course. He is also the author of Why Jesus?, Questions of Life, Why Christmas? Searching Issues and numerous other books. This article is excerpted from his book, Telling Others. © 1994 Cook Communications Ministries, Telling Others by Nicky Gumbel. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.
by Steve | Jan 26, 2001 | Archive - 2001
Archive: How Shall We Pray for Revival
By Nicky Gumbel
January/February 2001
Good News
“I have posted watchmen on your walls, O Jerusalem, They will never be silent day or night. You who call on the Lord, give yourselves no rest, and give him no rest till he establishes Jerusalem and makes her the praise of the earth” (Isaiah 62:6-7).
In the autumn of 1857, New York was in the midst of what was regarded as a national disaster – a financial crash which ruined many of its 1 million population. On July 1, Jeremiah Lanphier, a middle-aged businessman, took an appointment as a missionary in the city center. Churches were suffering from depletion of membership as people moved out of town. Lanphier decided to start a lunchtime prayer meeting. On the first week, he prayed alone for half an hour until five others joined him. The following week twenty came. Within six months, 10,000 people came daily to pray and a revival in North America had begun. Samuel Prime comments, “the places of prayer multiplied because men were moved to prayer. They wished to pray. They felt impelled, by some unseen power, to pray.”
If we, too, want to see revival, how are we to pray?
First, we are to pray constantly. The watchman “will never be silent day or night” (v. 6a). We are to be different from Israel’s watchmen of the past who “lie around and dream, they love to sleep” (Isaiah 56: 10). lnstead, we are to “pray continually,” as the New Testament encourages us (1 Thessalonians 5:17). Paul wrote to the Christians in Rome and told them, “Constantly I remember you in my prayers at all times” (Romans 1:9-10).
The source of the river of prayer which flows in the South Korean church today originated in the dedicated prayer among missionaries and South Korean church leaders at the turn of the century. The Pyongyang revival of 1907, for example, began at a mass meeting in which thousands were caught up in a wave of the Spirit which swept over the entire Korean church. An eye witness account described it like this:
“After a short sermon Dr. [Graham] Lee took charge of the meeting and called for prayers. So many began praying that Dr. Lee said, ‘if you want to pray like that, all pray,’ and the whole audience began to pray out loud, all together. The effect was indescribable. Not confusion, but a vast harmony of sound and spirit, a mingling together of souls moved by an irresistible impulse to prayer. It sounded to me like the falling of many waters, an ocean of prayer beating against God’s throne …. As the prayer continued, a spirit of heaviness and sorrow came upon the audience. Over on one side, someone began to weep and, in a moment, the whole congregation was weeping …. Man after man would rise, confess his sin, break down and weep, and then throw himself to the floor and beat the floor with his fists in a perfect agony of conviction …. Sometimes after a confession, the whole audience would break out in audible prayer and the effect … was something indescribable …. And so the meeting went on until 2 a.m., with confession and weeping and praying.”
Another example of constant, steadfast prayer is Dr. Jashil Choi, mother-in-law of David Yonggi Cho, pastor of the world’s largest church located in South Korea. Dr. Choi gave herself to praying for long periods on a mountain, living in fact, for three years in a tent on the site. In 1974 a permanent building was erected and prayer meetings which attract large numbers of people have been held every day since. Prayer Mountain has grown to be a place where thousands of people come daily to fast and pray. A modern 10,000-seat auditorium has been added which is now too small to hold the crowds that come. Attendance varies, but normally at least 3,000 people are daily praying, fasting, worshipping, and praising our holy and precious Lord. In this atmosphere of concentrated prayer, healings and miracles are a common occurrence.
David Yonggi Cho writes, “I am convinced that revival is possible anywhere people dedicate themselves to prayer … it has been historically true that prayer has been the key to every revival in the history of Christianity.”
Secondly, our prayer should be disciplined. Those who call on the Lord are exhorted to “give ourselves no rest” (Isaiah 62:6), to pray regularly, day in and day out. This is not always easy.
John Arnott, the senior pastor of the Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship, which has been at the center of a remarkable move of God’s Sprit, wrote of his struggle to maintain a disciplined prayer life:
“In my own case, the struggle has been desperate and intense. There have been seasons of wonderful times ‘in the closet with my heavenly Father, praying to him in secret and being rewarded by him openly.’ During such times, one feels that everything is working out for the good, and one wonders why we could ever be so foolish as to not spend generous hours in communion with God. Then suddenly the cares of this life descend with such fury that the now-found prayer route is derailed once more, and the battle to regain it continues.”
Thirdly, we are to pray with urgency. Not only are we to give ourselves no rest but we are to “give him no rest” (v. 7). We are called to be passionate and pressing. Jesus told his disciples a parable “to show them that they should always pray and not give up” (Luke 18: 1). Although the judge in the parable “neither feared God nor cared about men” (v. 2), he gave a persistent widow justice because she kept on asking until he was concerned that she would wear him out – “I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually wear me out with her coming!” (v. 5). Jesus comments, “And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off! I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly” (v. 7-8).
The persistent widow is a good model for us as we pray for revival because she challenges us to be honest about our present state and to ask God passionately for change. “Only when we realize and admit our true condition will we long for revival,” writes Brian H. Edwards in his book Revival! A People Saturated with God. “Praying for revival is not enough: we must long for it, and long for it intensely.”
The historian of revivals, R.E. Davies, wrote: “The most constant of all factors which appears in revivals is that of urgent, persistent prayer. This fact is acknowledged by all writers on the subject.”
Fourthly, our prayer should be persevering. The watchmen are to pray “till he establishes Jerusalem and makes her the praise of all the earth” (v. 7). They are to pray until the whole earth gives praise to the Lord.
Duncan Campbell writes of the 1949 Hebrides revival: “I believe this gracious movement of the Holy Spirit … began in a prayer burden; indeed there is no doubt about that. It began in a small group that was really burdened. They entered into a covenant with God that they would ‘give him no rest until he made Jerusalem a praise in the earth.’”
They waited. The months passed, and nothing happened, until one young man took up his Bible and read from Psalm 24: “Who shall stand in his holy place? He that hath clean hands and a pure heart …. He shall receive the blessing from the Lord.” The young man closed the Bible and, looking at his companions on their knees before God, he cried, “Brethren, it is just so much humbug to be waiting thus night, month after month, if we ourselves are not right with God. I must ask myself – ‘Is my heart pure? Are my hands clean?”‘ He asked God to reveal if his hands were clean and his heart was pure. As they waited on God his awesome presence swept the barn. These men came to understand that revival is always related to holiness. Three men were lying on the straw having fallen under the power of God. They were lifted out of the ordinary into the extraordinary. They knew that God had visited them and a power was let loose that shook the parish from its center to its circumference. In a house four miles away from the barn, two sisters – one was 82-years-old and doubled-up with arthritis and the other was 84-years-old and blind – had a vision of God. They saw the churches crowded, especially with young people. They had a “glorious assurance that God was coming in revival power.”
Their minister sent for Duncan Campbell to come for a 10-day mission, but he was booked up until the following winter. The minister read Campbell’s reply to the two old ladies. They said, “That is what man hath said, but God hath said otherwise. Mr. Campbell will be here in a fortnight.”
His convention was cancelled and he arrived on the island and went to the parish church. The meeting began at 9 p.m. and continued until 4 a.m. There was a crowd of more than 600 inside, with still more listening outside. No one could explain where they had come from. Strong men trembled in the presence of God, and many fell prostrate on the floor. Within 10 minutes Campbell’s voice could not be heard, as so many were crying out to God for mercy. The sound of singing had been replaced with a cry of penitence – “God be merciful to me, a sinner.” As people experienced the holiness of God, they committed themselves to seeking after him. The movement swept into the neighboring parish. There was such a sense of God there that one businessman visiting the island said, “When I stepped ashore I was suddenly conscious of God. He met with me and saved me.”
The challenge facing the church today is to pray for God to “rend the heavens and come down” (Isaiah 64: 1), to give us “a consciousness of the presence of God, the Holy Spirit literally in the midst of the people.” We need a new righteousness, a new freedom, a new identity and new love. It is easy to give up interceding and to grow despondent when we do not see instant results, but we need to pray constantly, calling on the Lord in a disciplined and urgent way “till he establishes Jerusalem and makes her the praise of the earth.” Individual and corporate prayer are a vital part of preparation for revival which in turn leads to greater individual and corporate prayer. As Billy Graham once said, the three keys to revival are prayer, prayer, and prayer.
Nicky Gumbel studied law at Cambridge and theology at Oxford, practiced as a lawyer, and is now ordained and on the staff of Holy Trinity Brompton Church in London. He is the author of the Alpha Course. He is also the author of Why Jesus?, Questions of Life, Why Christmas?, Searching Issues, and numerous other books. This article is excerpted from his book, The Heart of Revival. © 1996 Cook Communications Ministries, Heart of Revival by Nicky Gumbel. Reprinted with permission.
