AND we as Church get to bring others into this place of encountering the God-dream too. You see, when you and I turn up the possibilities of heaven turn up too. All of us who are already in Christ are people who make dreams come true. This thought has transformed my heart for sharing my story of how Jesus has changed my life and telling people all that Jesus has done, may it do the same for you!!

Ps Ed

This is a guest blog post by Yovaan Ilangakoon, a volunteer on one of our most recent Community Action Team projects

I decided to volunteer for the CAT projects as I support the message behind it and what it stands for. Speaking to James Baker, we were to volunteer cleaning up gardens on a ‘something for nothing’ basis. This approach of reaching out to the community by showing God’s love by lending a helping hand with a very real need, rather than forcing ‘religion’ on people appealed to me.

I got to the church grounds early on Saturday and the instructions for the CAT project were clearly laid out by the project leader for the day. The volunteers were split into sub-teams, enabling everyone to have a specific role. After praying for some good Ribble Valley weather we were off!

Seeing the site before we started work was quite daunting. I remember thinking we would be lucky to get the entire garden cleared and looking presentable by nightfall! Everyone on the team was enthusiastic to get stuck into their roles. The passion and encouragement demonstrated by the team was incredible. I’ve played in several sports teams before, but this team really did pull together and help one another out to get the job done quickly and efficiently. It was clear that everyone that was helping out was not only doing this to help out the owner of the house but also to reflect God in everything they did. Being relatively new to the church, the team were extremely welcoming. There was great conversation between us and it was a really good opportunity to bond with other members of the church.

Within a few hours the entire garden was clear of rubbish and debris. The time spent was worthwhile to see the look of amazement on the owners face once the job was done. She was still dumbfounded that people would give up their Saturday to voluntarily clean her garden. It was great to see the word been spread to neighbours about what had been done. Personally, I think a genuine act of kindness speaks volumes. Our work not only touched the life of that home owner, but also the neighbours. The seed was well and truly planted as the leaders spoke to her about Ribble Valley Church at the end and invited her to the service. We pray that through this project and the ones in the future that more people will come to know God’s love. Jesus sacrificed his life for me, so sacrificing a Saturday morning is a small price to pay!!

Romans 5:8: God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

1. They should be Christ followers but outward focused
Jesus should be their number one but they have a focus on seeing others find Jesus for themselves.

2. They should be building the ‘Kingdom of Jesus’ and following leadership
Building the ‘Kingdom of God’ is their life’s work but they do it by following those in leadership, causing unity and God’s Spirit to flow

3. They should ‘pray hard’ and ‘work hard’
They are both God-directed and God-seeking but know it is a divine human partnership that will cause success

4. Be full of encouragement, passion, joy, generosity, confidence, humility, positive and be willing to learn.
They are will rounded people fully capable of helping us achieve all that God has put in our hearts to do

When you find people like this do all you can to make them part of your world!

And be a person like this for others!!

Ed

• Baby prop up cushions
• Car garage or car park
• Play cars
• Dinosaurs
• Wooden dolls house
• Duplo
• Wooden farm with animals
• Pirate ship
• Pushchair for doll(s)
• Dolls
• Dolls clothing
• Dressing up clothes
• Dressing up rail
• HappyLand sets (Early Learning Centre)
• World of Little People (Fisher Price)
• Medium inflatable pool
• Ball pool balls
• Brio
• Trains for brio
• Train table
• Large or medium storage boxes/crates/baskets
• Bean bags for seating
• Popoids
• Stikkle bricks
• Interstar
• Indoor slide
• Refreshment trays
• Baby push-along walker
• Pull-along toys
• Stand up toddler toy (ball run etc)

We are so grateful for your generosity! If you have any of these items and would like to donate them, fantastic! Leave a comment below, get in touch with us, or bring your items to church and speak to Sarah Yates. Also, if you have any other donations or toys that you think would be helpful, leave a comment or get in touch!

Q – Why is lust wrong? And  how do you know when it’s love and not lust?

Definitions are always tricky, but I think what this question is getting at is clear. When you get down to it, Lust is primarily selfish but Love is primarily selfless. Lust says “I want that and I’ll do whatever it takes to get it”, but Love ought to say “I love you so I will lay myself down for you and serve you!” That is the fundamental difference. Job 31:1 says “I made a covenant with my eyes not to look at a woman with lust” – we should follow this example.

Q – What do you say to a non-Christian when they tell you they want a relationship. Not having one may be bad for your friendship?

The Bible is clear that it is unhealthy and even dangerous to be connected to an unbeliever in that way. Paul says in the Bible don’t be ‘unequally yoked’ (2 Cor 6:14), which is the idea that a ‘yoke of oxen’ would plough a field together, and if they are unequally yoked, they would walk at different speeds and wouldn’t achieve a well-ploughed field. In the same way, when we connect ourselves to unbelievers in that kind of relationship we have to ask ourselves “where is this heading?”, with two different faith systems, two different worldviews, and two different authorities in your life, it is almost impossible to make that work over any period of time. If it may be bad for your friendship with that person to avoid a relationship now, it will certainly be disastrous for it in the long run to pursue one.

Q – How do you prioritise properly with a relationship, school & God? If you feel unstable, or are in a weak relationship with God, how is it best to cope with a relationship?

The answer is easy, actually making it happen isn’t so easy! The priority for someone in school needs to go like this – God, School, Relationship. When you have priorities set out correctly, you will find that other things tend to fall in place more easily. How do you do this? You might have to make some difficult decisions about laying some stuff down in your life to actively pursue your relationship with God (maybe less TV, less social time etc). Ultimately, if you are seriously struggling with it all, perhaps the relationship needs to wait till later…

Q – God wants us to have fun when having sex, why is it so wrong to sleep with a few people?

You are right! God does want us to have fun when having sex. The truth is this though – people with only one sexual partner for life have much more fun in sex than those who do it with multiple partners. For one, there’s no comparisons – nothing to measure up to, nothing to complain about because you’re both learning from scratch! In that environment, you can learn to enjoy sex more and more over a life time as you become a pro at it. Emotionally and spiritually the same thing applies. The more partners you have sex with, the more you are robbing yourself and a future spouse of intimacy. God is the designer of sex – he came up with the idea! It only makes sense to listen to Him when it comes to sex because He knows best in this area. And God says “one partner for life – that’s the best way!”

Objection 3 – How Can A Loving God Send People To Hell?

Okay, so today is one of the trickiest topics to address – “How can a God who is supposed to be all-loving send people to Hell? Surely the punishment doesn’t fit the crime? No matter what someone has done, eternal punishment seems far too much.”

Well, as with the previous objections we’ve discussed, there needs to be two major things considered here – the intellectual problem and the emotional problem. The intellectual problem is fairly simple, and should give you confidence to hold fast to these foundational truths of Christianity. However, nearly everyone has an emotional issue with these problems, so we need to address that too.

Firstly, some thoughts on the intellectual problem of Hell -

1. It is not only the extent of the crime that dictates the extent of the punishment, but who the crime was actually committed against. For example – if I lie to a friend of mine in a social setting, I have done something wrong but there is no punishment for me there – except maybe risking our friendship.But put me in a court room and I lie to a judge – now I have a problem! I have committed perjury and can go to jail. It isn’t that the act of lying was any different – it was the person I lied to that really matters.
2. We drastically underestimate what sin actually is. Sin is rebellion against God. Sin is saying “I don’t want to follow God’s rules, His commands and His Word – I want to go my own way”. Now imagine saying that to the government – in most nations of the world today, that is still called Treason and is a capitol offence – worthy of the death penalty. Why should we expect God to not hold us accountable for Treason?
3. We misunderstand what hell is. According to Christianity, God doesn’t send people to  hell. People freely choose to go there. In Romans 1, the Apostle Paul tells us that people have exchanged the truth about God for a lie and that basically, God allows them to pursue their free choice. The person who ends up in hell chose to go there. Also, although hell is often talked about in terms of fire in the Bible, the biblical picture of Hell is more one of ‘outer darkness’ – the Bible, and Jesus, actually talk about hell being separation from God. This lines up perfectly with what Paul says in Romans 1 because people freely choose to separate themselves from God and therefore they ultimately get what they want in eternal separation from God.

So now what about the emotional problem? I think that here the challenge lies in the fact that people know of friends and family members who died without knowing Christ. This is a very difficult issue to deal with. At this point the intellectual arguments would serve only to harden the heart of the person you may be talking to about this. So we need to graciously approach them, with patience. Allow them to explain to you why they don’t like the idea of hell – allow them to vent to you – and don’t butt in! Explain to them that you understand and empathise with them, that you don’t particularly like the idea of hell either! Then you could ask a couple of questions -

Why are you so upset and/or angry about hell if you don’t think it exists?

If you could grant the idea that God may exist, do you think there would be things he would do and command that we don’t like?

In response to these questions, the goal is to try and help them see that they themselves have questions and fears about death and their eternal future. And also that if God exists it is not a question of ‘do I agree with Him or not?’ but actually, it should cause us to search more urgently for answers. And once people open up the door to that kind of thinking and seeking, it’s amazing what God can do in their heart.

Finally, if they are open to it – ensure you share the love of God with them. Help them to know that God isn’t just waiting for us to foul up so he can strike us down! He is a God of love and with that love comes justice. Ultimately God wants us to be with Him, He desires all people to be saved.

For a picture of how the love and justice of God works, read the illustration below:

“Think how we feel when we see someone we love ravaged by un-wise actions or relationships. Do we respond with benign tolerance as we might towards strangers? Far from it…. Anger isn’t the opposite of love. Hate is, and the final form of hate is indifference…. God’s wrath is not a cranky explosion, but his settled opposition to the cancer… which is eating out the insides of the human race he loves with his whole being” – Becky Pippert, Hope Has Its Reasons

There we have it, three major objections to Christianity today. By no means are these answers extensive or even flawless, but they are a good place to begin.

These responses I’ve posted play a role in what’s called ‘defensive apologetics’, basically defending against objections to Christianity. Soon, I’ll post some ‘offensive apologetics’ which play a role in actively giving people positive reasons to believe in Christianity. Will be fun!

- Dave

The contrast hit home as we came in to land at Manchester Airport and the captain address us over the tannoy “…the temperature in Manchester this morning is -5 degrees.” Minus 5, you’ve got to be kidding me! It was 32 degrees in Mumbai yesterday; that’s a 37 degree drop! But the extreme difference in temperature doesn’t come close the extreme difference in lifestyle between these two countries. In the UK, we feel hard done by if we merely have to demonstrate some patience in getting what we want. In Mumbai, kids come running at the promise of a boiled egg!

The pace and chaotic rhythm of life are the first things that hit you in Mumbai and I’m absolutely sure the £1.20 that I spent on our fifteen minute Tuk Tuk ride to our hotel was the long standing leader in the pound-to-trill ratio stakes!

Then, once you’re accustomed to the environment, the work of Vision Rescue blows your mind again, and for several reasons.

The first is their absolute passion and dedication. The need is so real, so in your face, so unavoidable and so expansive that you could forgive them for getting bogged down or lost in the vastness of it all. But they don’t; they put every single moment they have into demonstrating God’s love to as many people as they possibly can.

The second reason is simple, they truly demonstrate the God is enough. So many people there have so little – or even nothing – and yet you can see the sheer joy and peace that comes through knowing that there is a God, that He loves you and that he gave everything of himself for you.

Lastly, is Ps Biju Thampy’s inability to settle for things as they currently are. The Dream Centre is barely half built but Biju’s mind is already planning and dreaming not for the next project, but the project after that, and beyond! Meanwhile, his team are begging to consolidate, or just catch breath for one minute. Biju’s mind seems directly connected to God’s heart in a way that means he can’t help but step into the things of it and into the future with absolute certainty. His desire to see all people experience God’s unconditional love drives him never to settle until the battle is won.

Above all, there is one thing that struck me which will always stay with me. We serve the one true God and his love is for everyone, no exceptions. His desire to see all people experience his sacrificial love is what spurs us all on. We need to capture the urgency and desire to see the people around us experience God’s unconditional love, even those whose comfortable lives lead them to believe they don’t need it.

Let’s ensure we live in this unrelenting vision and desire to see God impact our community, as our friends at Vision Rescue strive to do the same.

- Rob Yates

Objection Two – How Can A Good God Allow Pain and Suffering?

This objection, also known as The Problem of Evil is probably the most common objection people hold towards belief in God today. It goes like this:

If God is supposed to be an all powerful, good God of love, how can he allow such great pain and suffering to happen to so many innocent people? What about the Haitian earthquake? What about the Japanese Tsunami? What about HIV and cancer? If God really was ‘good’, he would prevent these things from happening.

So, let’s firstly look at some of the problems with this way of thinking and then address how you might respond to someone who has this objection.

1. God may have morally sufficient reasons for allowing pain and suffering to occur. We all know of reasons where we would allow pain and suffering to occur in order for ultimate good to come about. It’s a very simple example, but imagine being so protective of your children that you never allowed them to learn how to ride a bike because they might fall off and hurt themselves. Obviously, we all realise that a few bumps and scrapes are worth it in light of eventually being able to ride a bike. Now, scale this up to a cosmic level and we can see that the same principle may apply to God. Just because we don’t like it does nothing to show that it can’t be true. Ultimately, we are unable to see the plan of God at work behind the scenes and have no idea what may come about in the future.

2. Humanity is often to blame. Quite frankly, natural disasters are responsible for a tiny minority of suffering in the world compared to preventable diseases and evil. In the case of preventable diseases, it is often humanity’s lack of action (for example, lack of financial contribution) that allows these diseases to continue killing millions. Along other lines, if we look at the Haitian earthquake, it is easy to see how, if the Haitian government and nation had been free from corruption and had appropriately invested finances into infrastructure and safer buildings, far fewer people would have lost their lives. This kind of human evil magnifies the impact of natural disasters.

3. Evil, pain and suffering is actually evidence for God. C.S. Lewis once said, “Pain is God’s megaphone to the world”. Imagine there was no God; where would we get our sense of justice from? What would be the foundation for our sense of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’? These concepts would simply be cultural constructs, whatever works for the most amount of people. But we do know that things really are right and wrong. There really are such things as good and evil. C.S. Lewis sums it up in this way:

“My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of ‘just’ and ‘unjust? … What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? … Of course I could have given up my idea of justice by saying it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too – for the argument depended on saying that the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my private fancies…. Consequently atheism turns out to be too simple.”

So how might we respond to someone who poses this objection? Above are three intellectual responses. However, in my experience, people with this objection – in fact most people who have a problem with God – are approaching the argument on an emotional level. Here are a couple of appropriate strategies.

Firstly, you could agree. Agree with the person that there is so much evil in the world, that much of it could be prevented and that much of it seems to be pointless. It is true that life can be full of difficulties, sickness, pain and evil. You could even share about some experiences in your own life that have been painful and ask them “What helps you get through those things?” By opening up to the person, you may be able to share about what gets you through the hard times in life – knowing that your Heavenly Father is caring for you and carrying you through. For Atheists, the only way to cope is to accept the pointlessness of the pain and try to find some reason for carrying on through it.

Secondly, share the Gospel. Share the fact that God experienced pain and suffering and tremendous evil when Jesus died on the cross, in our place, for our sins so that we could be forgiven by God and enter into eternal life, knowing and experiencing the infinite love of God forever. Jesus was no stranger to pain, and He knows exactly what it’s like to go through the worst pain and injustice you or I could ever imagine. Why not put your trust in a God who can empathise with you in your pain?

Objection One – There Can’t Be Just One True Religion

This is a huge objection in our society today, hence why we’re beginning here. Educational systems today tend to lead people to think that truth is relative - that truth is what you make it; what’s true for you isn’t necessarily true for me – and we are seeing a rise in the number of people who claim to hold on to this view. This is widely called post-modernism and the objection usually goes like this:

“How can you say there is only one true faith? Isn’t that arrogant, isn’t that exclusive?

What makes you think you have a monopoly on absolute truth?’

There are several problems with this way of thinking. Let’s look at some of them and discuss how you could respond appropriately to someone who holds this objection.

1. The statement “there is no absolute truth” is self-refuting. An absolute truth is one that is true for everyone and every time. But, by stating “there is no absolute truth”, you contradict yourself; you are yourself stating an absolute truth, that you have the absolute authority on the fact there is no absolute truth!
2. No one actually lives like this. For example, everybody believes in absolute truth when it comes to reading the label on a medicine bottle and they duly follow it’s instruction. Everybody holds to some absolute truth in life. People may like the idea of post-modernism, of creating your own truth, but ultimately nobody lives this way.
3. Just because someone doesn’t particularly like the solution in no way means that the solution isn’t the right one. For example, if someone is suffering with cancer and the only course of treatment is chemotherapy, they may not like the fact they need to undergo such treatment, but that does nothing to undermine the truth that chemotherapy is an effective treatment of cancer. The idea of there being an absolute truth can be uncomfortable for some people, but this does not deny its validity.

So if someone brings this up in conversation, how do you respond? Often, just barking out a three-point response like I have above is the quickest way to win the argument but lose the person! So we want to present our argument in a gentle, respectful way (1 Pt 3:15).

Perhaps the following approach would be a good one. Start with agreeing on some of the things that are preventing your friend from believing Christianity. Many times, underneath an intellectual objection lies an emotional one. I would admit thatreligion is dangerous, that religion does cause a lot of problems and that when religion claims to have exclusivity it can be extremely damaging. Then try and show how religion is different to Christianity; share how Jesus despised the religious of the day and spent His time instead with sinners and tax collectors. Christianity was never meant to be a religion that lorded power over people – it’s not a message of ‘turn or burn’! Then lead them to this place – it’s not absolute truth itself that is dangerous or exclusive, it’s which specific claims of absolute truth are dangerous and exclusive. The truth claims of Christianity are hugely inclusive - that God wants all people to come to faith (2 Pt 3:9), that Jesus died for the whole world (Jn 3:16). You can share the gospel at this point – point out the fact that yes, we do believe Jesus is the only way to God (Jn 14:6), but that Jesus Himself understood that there was one way to fix the situation we had gotten ourselves in. If God was going to save humanity, He had to die in order to bring us back to the Father (Mt 17:22-23).

Finally, remember that we do not win people with wise or persuasive words, but with demonstrations of the Spirit’s power (1 Co 2:4-5). During conversations like these at school, college, work or wherever you find yourself,  always be asking the Holy Spirit to soften the heart of your friends and to reveal the truth of Jesus Christ to them. It is God who saves!