My Adventures with God Ch 42 - Is my Story Worth Telling?

Ch42: Is my story Worth Telling?

Am I having second thoughts about continuing with my story of adventures with God? Yes I am!

I notice I have readers from around the world. This makes me ask: is my story going to help you in your situation for your walk with God?

It is a story of remaining faithful to God under persecution: that is good as far as it goes, but some of you face levels of persecution that make my troubles look trivial.

It is a story of people whose hate rules their lives seeming to win (in a worldly sense). But the hatred I endured while significant by Australian standards looks so petty compared to say survivors from Rwanda!

It is a tale of betrayal by the church hierarchy – but that too pales into insignificance compared to what we are now learning that all churches did to victims of pedophile priests.

But it is also a story of survival and a testimony that God's grace is sufficient and that is worth hearing!

So perhaps my tale has value, and with humble tribute to those who have been confessors and martyrs in a much more real sense throughout the history of Christianity down to the present, I will tell it.

Dominant themes in this story:

Start with God's love for his people, even when they rebel against him.

This is a theme that leaps from almost every page of the Old Testament. It is also a theme of Jesus teaching. Just take one parable, the “wicked tenant farmers”. Remember how in this parable the owner sent messengers again and again, but they were rejected and ill treated. Finally he sent his only son. Whom they killed. Jesus enemies realised that he was talking about them. Then they completed the story by killing Jesus – God's only beloved Son whom he had sent into the world.

The story of Vermont Anglican church is like a tiny echo of this. This church had gone wrong. God had warned them. (I only learned this much later but the parish had accepted as genuine a prophecy given my a member warning them that they were rebelling against God – but they had not obeyed it.) Then God sent me there to try to win them back to him – and two thirds of the church showed themselves receptive. One third reacted more like the religious leaders of Jesus day did to Him. But Jesus did warn us that people would treat his followers the way they had treated him!

Continue with how the evil one uses those who are in his thrall.

Hatred: Jesus said “they hated me without reason”. In this story we meet people whose hate defies any logical explanation of being produced by events.

Pride: In this story we meet people whose “self” is their god.

Lies: Jesus said that the devil was a liar and the father of all lies. In this story you will meet people who turn truth upside down. They are on the side of “Right” (so they convince themselves) so whatever aids their cause must be “The Truth” and anything that hinders their quest is “A Lie”. This is instructive because it is a behaviour pattern shared with the so called “progressive socialists” prevalent in the Western world at present.

Vengeance: Jesus taught “Forgive as God has forgiven you”; the Old Testament sough at least to curb vengeance to “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth”; Lamech, a figure mentioned in Genesis boasted “if Cain is avenged seven times, Lamech is avenged seventy-seven times”. You will meet in this story people claiming to be super-Christians whose thirst for vengeance knew no bounds.

Folly: you will see a church hierarchy groomed to shelter and facilitate people doing evil. This case is very minor compared to the way church hierarchies around the world were groomed by pedophiles to protect them, allow them to continue to prey on their victims and even shield them from the police! However It is another warning to “put not your trust in princes (or bishops!), mere humans who cannot save”.

End with God triumphant!

This is the way every human story ends – whether seen here on earth or whether revealed only on the Day of Judgement or some of each: in Christ God has won the victory, nothing can thwart his eternal purposes and our labour in the Lord is not in vain!