Transformed by love

What happens when a couple of lesbians go to church to cause trouble?

John Burke tells the story.

"Let's go for fun! We'll see how much we can push their buttons," said Amy. "Come on!"

Amy had been in a nine-year relationship that had broken up, leaving her wondering why her deepest longings could never be satisfied. She and Rachel had started seeing each other when they decided to attend one Sunday morning.

"I came on  a mission to shock people," says Amy. "Rachel and I would hold hands in front of people, but instead of the disgusted looks we expected, people met eyes with us and treated us like real people. So we started coming to church weekly. We kept moving to the front each week, trying to get a reaction so that we'd be rejected sooner rather than later. When we couldn't shock people, we stopped trying and started learning."

Rachel stopped attending, but Amy continued.  "I was searching for something," she says. "I definitely wasn't looking to change, but I wondered if God had answers to my deepest longings.  Problem was, I didn't trust God at all.

"The more I listened and learned about the teachings of Jesus, the more I started to actually believe that God really did love me. I heard more and more about being His masterpiece, and in time, I actually started to believe it."

She found out her father had nine affairs while she was growing up, a secret which rocked her world. She saw how the roots of her sexual issues tied together with his. She was just like him, using people to find comfort, life and love outside of God.

As time went by and she learned more of the Scriptures, she fell more and more in love with the Lord. Then she went to a seminar, and what God showed her shocked her. The speaker was talking about bullying.

She remembered a boy who had bullied her all year. Then one day, he apologised for the way he had acted, and invited her to his home. When she went round, two teenage boys were waiting. They raped her. She was nine years old.

The memory was extremely painful, but it was part of the healing process.

Seven years later, Amy leads a ministry in the church to help others find healing.

You see, you can't tell Jesus anything about yourself that He doesn't already know. He loves you. He forgave self-righteous people, adulterers and prostitutes. He wants to forgive you. 

But that's not all. He wants to transform your life into something beautiful. He wants to make you the person He intended you to be. His love can do that too.

'Million' protesters preparing to descend on Israel

Israel-haters the world over will be preparing just now for the Global March to Jerusalem.

On March 30 - next Friday, no less - a million people from 20 countries, the march's organisers hope, will seek to breach Israel's borders and march to Jerusalem to protest Israel's "occupation," the "judaisation" of Jerusalem, and "Israeli apartheid and ethnic cleansing."

Simultaneously there will be rallies in 60 countries, often outside Israeli embassies and consulates, protesting the activities of the "racist Zionist state."

The march is organised by, among others, Iran and terrorist organisations like Hamas. Supporters include Archbishop Tutu, Dr Jeremiah Wright - President Obama's former pastor - and Lauren Booth, Cherie Blair's sister.

A south-east Asian contingent, including activists from Indonesia, India and Pakistan, was welcomed in Iran on its way to the march by Iranian President Ahmadinejad. He told them it was no longer legitimate for Israel to occupy any part of Palestine, that the Zionist regime was "like a malignant cancerous cell," and that "the Palestinians should be running the field and God willing that will happen soon."

The Palestine Solidarity Campaign, on a website supporting the march, says "We reject all racist laws that distinguish between people based on ethnicity or religion and call for their cancellation and criminalization." In Israel, Jew and Arab can enjoy equal citizenship, and election to the Knesset, the country's parliament, is open to Jew and Arab alike. Conversely, Palestinians have said that when they get their state, no Jew will be allowed to live there.

One of the stated aims of the march is "freedom for Palestine and its capital Jerusalem." New York radio show host Aaron Klein interviewed Frank Romano, one of the march's organisers. Klein offered Romano $50,000 on air if he could name one city in the Middle East outside of Israel that has more freedom than Jerusalem. He was unable to do so.

Israel, let it be said, is not perfect. But Israel is a legitimate sovereign state. Israel did not steal its land from Palestinians, but bought it, often from absentee Arab landlords, when it was desert and malarial swamp and by hard work turned it into an economic wonder. The Global March to Jerusalem, like the Gaza flotillas and the Durban anti-Zion conferences, is nothing more than an attempt to delegitimise Israel.

Israel will have much worse to come. According to the prophecy of Zechariah:

I will gather all the nations to battle against Jerusalem;
The city shall be taken,
The houses rifled,
And the women ravished. Zech 14:2.

Because it is prophesied in the Bible, it will happen. What is needed is to see that it doesn't happen before its time.

Supporters of Jerusalem can console themselves with the knowledge that one day Israel will be gloriously restored. Says the prophet Zephaniah:

Sing, O daughter of Zion!
Shout, O Israel!
Be glad and rejoice with all your heart, O daughter of Jerusalem!
The Lord has taken away your judgments,
He has cast out your enemy.
The King of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst;
You shall see disaster no more.

In that day it shall be said to Jerusalem:
"Do not fear;
Zion, let not your hands be weak.
The Lord your God in your midst,
The Mighty One, will save;
He will rejoice over you with gladness,
He will quiet you in his love,
He will rejoice over you with singing."

". . .At that time I will bring you back,
Even at the time I gather you;
For I will give you fame and praise
Among all the peoples of the earth,
When I return your captives before your eyes,"
Says the Lord. Zeph 3:14 - 18, 20.

When mourning will be turned to joy

Next Tuesday, Jerusalem will come to a standstill. There will be no public transport. Shops will be closed. People will gather at the Western Wall to pray and to mourn. Next Tuesday is Tisha b'Av.

Tisha b'Av - the ninth of the Jewish month of Av - has been a remarkable day in Jewish history. (The Jewish calendar does not coincide with the Gregorian calendar, so Tisha b'Av falls on a different date on the civil calendar each year.)

On Tisha b'Av, according to Jewish tradition, the Israelites were forbidden to enter the Promised Land for a further 40 years after the 12 spies came back with a bad report.

On Tisha b'Av in 586 BC Solomon's Temple was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonian exile began.

On Tisha b'Av in AD 70 the Second Temple was destroyed by the Romans.

On Tisha b'Av in AD 135, the Bar Kokhba revolt ended when Betar, the last Jewish stronghold, was taken by the Romans.

On Tisha b'Av in AD 136, the Temple area was ploughed under by the Romans as Hadrian rebuilt Jerusalem as a pagan city.

On Tisha b'Av in AD 1290, the Jews were expelled from England.

On Tisha b'Av in AD 1492 the Jews were expelled from Spain.

And Tisha b'Av in 1942 marked a mass deportation of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto, and the first killings at Treblinka extermination camp.

But Zech 8:19 prophesies a day when Tisha b'Av will be a day of rejoicing:

Thus says the Lord of hosts:
'The fast of the fourth month,
The fast of the fifth,
The fast of the seventh,
And the fast of the tenth,
Shall be joy and gladness and cheerful feasts
For the house of Judah.
Therefore love truth and peace.'

The whole chapter is about how the Jews will be gloriously restored in the Messianic age. Read it and marvel.

How times change!

John Wesley was the founder of Methodism; he and his brother Charles were the spiritual fathers of the Methodist movement. Both shared God's love for the Jewish people and believed the many Bible promises that the Jews would be restored to their promised land (including the area known today as the West Bank and East Jerusalem).

They instructed the Methodists that they must speak tenderly to the Jewish people. The softest and gentlest prayers from Christians are the key, they said, for God to bring life from the dead to Israel, and through them to the church and the whole world.

Charles Wesley, who had an almost incredible gift for writing hymns, some of which, like "And can it be that I should gain," "Hark the herald angels sing" and "O for a thousand tongues to sing" are still in use today, wrote hymns about God's heart for the Jewish people and about those Bible promises.

One says, in part:

Of all the ancient race
Not one be left behind,
But each, impelled by secret grace,
His way to Canaan find.

We know it must be done,
For God hath spoke the word:
All Israel shall the Saviour own,
To their first state restored;
Rebuilt by his command,
Jerusalem shall rise;
Her temple on Moriah stand
Again, and touch the skies.

Send then thy servants forth,
To call the Hebrews home;
From East, and West, and South, and North,
Let all the wanderers come;
Where'er in lands unknown
The fugitives remain,
Bid every creature help them on,
The holy mount to gain.

On June 30 this year the UK Methodist Conference discussed Israel. It was asked to approve the Kairos Palestinian document, written by Palestinian Christians,
which says that the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land is a sin against God and humanity.

It says "fundamentalist Bible interpretation" supports unjust political options with regard to the Palestinian people, is used to deprive Palestinians of their rights in their own land, and brings death and destruction. It calls for liberation of Palestinian territories from Israeli occupation, which, it says, severely restricts religious liberty, disregards international law and violates human rights.

It claims that there would be no Palestinian resistance if there were no occupation, and that if Israel ends the occupation, there will be security, justice and peace. The Israeli occupation, it says, is an evil which must be resisted. Resistance in the face of the Israeli occupation is a right and duty for the Christian.

The conference decided to boycott all goods and services produced in Judea and Samaria (what today's media call the West Bank and East Jerusalem and the conference calls "illegal Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territories") and to encourage Methodists across Britain to do the same.

The Methodist Conference has never previously issued a boycott against a country. It is not now issuing a boycott against any other country. Just Israel.

The conference also called for a full arms embargo on both sides in the conflict. The secretary of the World Council of Churches, Dr Olav Fykse Tveit, wrote to congratulate the Methodists on their decision.

If the Wesley brothers came back to the Methodist Conference, they wouldn't recognise it.

I am grateful to Avner Boskey, a theologian and director of Final Frontier Ministries, for pointing out Charles Wesley's hymns about Israel's restoration. In an attempt to draw a comparison between the revival spirit which accompanied Methodism's beginning and the state of the Methodist church today, he says:

Who will intercede with the God of Jacob so that "Ichabod" will not be written over the archways and entranceways of the churches of the United Kingdom?

Who will get up on the wall and pray that vintage evangelical fire, courage and commitment to biblical truth will again fall in power upon the pulpits and conference podiums of England?

Who will again raise up a Wesleyan standard of burning love, tender intercession, courageous vision and meaningful practice towards the Jewish people and their regathered state?

All right, who?

Such amazing grace

When Jesus was arrested, Peter was afraid. So much so, that he denied that he even knew Him.

When Peter realised what he had done, he wept bitterly (Matt 26:75). He had meant to do so much for Jesus. Now he'd made a mess of it all. He wouldn't be able to do much for Jesus now.

When the women went to the tomb on the first day of the week after the Crucifixion, they saw an angel. "He is risen!" the angel said. "He is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go and tell his disciples - and Peter - that he is going before you into Galilee; there you will see him, as he said to you" (Mark 16:6, 7).

And Peter. So Peter wasn't discounted, cast away, forgotten. (Soon, at Pentecost, after his restoration, Peter would preach and see 3,000 converted. But Peter didn't know that yet.)

When the risen Jesus appeared to a group of the disciples on the shore of Lake Galilee, they ate with Him. When they had eaten, Jesus said to Peter, "Simon, son of Jonah, do you love me more than these?"

"Yes, Lord; you know that I love you."

"Feed my lambs.

"Simon, son of Jonah, do you love me?"

"Yes, Lord; you know that I love you."

"Tend my sheep.

"Simon, son of Jonah, do you love me?"

"Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you."

"Feed my sheep" (John 21:15 - 17).

Why did Jesus ask him three times? Peter understood. He was asking him three times because he had denied Him three times. Peter had failed, and that failure had to be dealt with. But not a word of condemnation. Not a word of reproof.

Our failures have to be dealt with too. Sometimes it hurts. But not a word of condemnation. What grace.