The Heart-Beat of the Apostolic

 

Tomorrow I head off for the weekend for my second ever visit to Namibia. Just two months ago I spent just under a fortnight in the nation's capital with All Nations Church and my heart was so captured by this incredible local church and Her story of influence in the city that I find myself counting down the hours till I am back with them again.
Here is an attempt at explaining why we still prioritize travelling +-1500km's,spending four nights away from the city I love and even missing out on a Sunday at home base

 

 

Friendship before function

 

I am still a firm believer in the above well-worn-phrase. In a fast "developing" brand of inter church relationships, the word "apostolic" has seemingly become tied up with the word "mission" to such an extent that real heart to heart friendships that weather storms as well as sail in the wind are being given less and less value. Questions of whether we gather together primarily around similar theological viewpoints, common tasks and events or firstly around the reality of relationships have held much sway in these types of conversations.

 

My heart's conviction holds all three elements as valuable, but it is my natural bent,reading of the scriptures that conveyed Paul's heart, as well as seeing the present prevailing wind of self-interest and emperial thinking that leads me to push the relational aspect to the front of the queue.

This weekend I will definitely preach and declare the message of the King and His Kingdom (which is great theology and strongly missional focused if I can be cheeky enough to say so myself), but what is of real worth to me will be the dining room conversations, laughing with one another, the late nights engaging with new and even newer friends around our common denominators of Jesus, church and the life-changing Gospel, laughing with one another, sharing communion together...and did I mention laughing with one another?

 

 

I'm not going seeking a platform to preach

I'm not going to further a "movement"

I'm not going to see what opportunities there are for us in Namibia

 

 

The apostolic heart is a sefless one. One that says I will come even if it costs me.

Yes, I do go because I want to change the world.

Yes, I do go because out of friendship we will want to do more together.

But for the world to be turned upside down, we first need to be turned inside out.

Our motives and agendas need to be ongoingly re-examined.

It's not friendship for friendship sake...it's friendship for your friend's sake.

No greater love is there than this, that a man would lay His life down for his friends.

 

 

This is what we've been called to. This is the apostolic heart.

 

 

Jesus, sent from the Father, laid His life down for His friends

Other related posts:
http://gabephillips23.blogspot.com/2012/07/namibia-part-one.html
http://gabephillips23.blogspot.com/2012/07/the-nations-are-our-inheritance.html

a moment's ease at the expense of a miserable eternity!

After spending a weekend coughing and spluttering, running a high fever and becoming very familiar with how many steps it is from my bed to the bathroom (eight, if anyone else is counting), it was very tempting to become very sorry for myself, close the curtains tight and refuse to emerge till God took me home in the rapture.

But after refusing to yield to the soft option, I coughed and spluttered my way through a healthy diet of Puritan theology, large passages of Job and of course a dose of Foxe's Book of Martyrs.

To quote Esau, the biblical king of hyperbole, “I was about to die!” and so I turned to the comfort of those who have gone before (in both senses of the phrase) and find solace from the similar hardships that they had to endure.

 Here are just three examples that caught my attention:

1. Peter, a young man, (who lived in AD 249 under the reign of Decius) amiable for the superior qualities of his body and mind, was beheaded for refusing to sacrifice to Venus. He said,

"I am astonished you should sacrifice to an infamous woman, whose debaucheries even your own historians record, and whose life consisted of such actions as your laws would punish. No, I shall offer the true God the acceptable sacrifice of praises and prayers."

Optimus, the proconsul of Asia, on hearing this, ordered the prisoner to be stretched upon a wheel, by which all his bones were broken, and then he was sent to be beheaded.

2. Chrysostom, was seized upon for being a Christian. He was put into a leather bag, together with a number of serpents and scorpions, and in that condition thrown into the sea.

 

3. Denisa, a young woman of only sixteen years of age, who beheld this terrible judgment, suddenly exclaimed,

"O unhappy wretch, why would you buy a moment's ease at the expense of a miserable eternity!"

 Optimus, hearing this, called to her, and Denisa avowing herself to be a Christian, she was beheaded, by his order, soon after.

 

 

After reading these and other accounts of Hebrew 11 type heroes of the faith, even in my sickly state I felt ashamed at how quickly I can lose sight of the joy set before me. Weak and momentary afflictions when not measured against things of eternal value and pleasure can very quickly consume and devour us as we become "martyrs" at our own hand.

 

How often in the majority of christian circles, our "joy" just tracks our circumstances?

 

O God, give me eyes that see past the temporal and to our Man in glory, Jesus! Scarred but not defeated in the slightest. My home is with Him in eternity!

A Zimbabwe Adventure (part 2)

Check out the link and youtube clip below to get a small feel of what Rob Chifokoyo and his Dare2Serve team are doing with the Street School they have started up and are implementing in the city of Harare.

Adding to their mobilisation of young people in the city to serve the lost, the last and the least through building into orphanages, retirement homes, street corners and youth conferences, comes the initiative of adding value on an educational level to street children who would normally have no hope of anything greater than their present circumstances. We were able to catch a glimpse of this incredible work.

To read more about who and what Dare2Serve is about, click on the link below

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.397927590266227.89398.164905960235059&type=3#!/pages/Dare2Serve/234595256603066?sk=info

The storm is coming but I don't mind

People are dying, I close my blinds

All that I know is I'm breathing now
I want to change the world, instead I sleep

-Ingrid Michaelson

A Zimbabwean Adventure (Part One)

Over the last two weeks I have ended each day closing my eyes in seven different beds, in 6 different cities and towns , including one very restless night on a cold, hard floor in Chinoyi. As I write this particular blog in my own warm bed in Cape Town tonight, the memory of the +-90 hours in a car, back of a bakkie or squashed amongst music equipment and baggage as we travelled close on 6000kms already seems a distant memory. The hundreds and hundreds of people that we spoke to, hugged, touched, prayed for, preached to, worshiped with, played with, fed and clothed seem light years away as I draw my curtains on a quiet Tableview cul de sac. The amount of speakers, cables, guitars, drums and the like that were loaded onto bakkies, offloaded, carried into rural settings, plugged in, fixed, tweaked, restrung, equalized, unplugged, carried and loaded back onto bakkies (often in the dark with the only light being from a solitary torch or cellphone) are mainly brought to mind as I casually switch on and off my television, kettle and bathroom light.

The dust, the sweat, the tears, the seemingly endless hours at the Beit bridge border have come and gone and life returns to a much more comfortable and normal hum drum pace.

Or was the last fortnight a small taste of what life really could and should be like?

"O God, rip from me a desire for comfort, a desire for mere earthly pleasures, a continual craving for worldly treasures. Whether on foreign soil or daily-chore-bound, let the memory of Christ’s passion burn brighter and brighter still"

(Check out the next few blogs for Stories from our time in Zimbabwe)