GROW: The adventure and the call

When Earnest Shackleton was trying to recruit men to sign up for his expedition across the Antarctic, legend has it that he posted an advert in the Times newspaper:

Men wanted for hazardous journey. Low wages, bitter cold, long hours of complete darkness. Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in event of success."

 (Sam, cool images are on the web of this advert that could be used in article)

Thousands of people applied. 

Jesus also put out invitations for people to join him and his kingdom movement; an insurgency operation aimed at overthrowing the established order. He challenged his hearers to join him and form part of a new community known for its radical generosity, enemy love and devotion to one another. 

To be part of his band of believers he called people to turn their backs on their old lives, to give up everything and to accept persecution as a likely reality. Thousands applied, hundreds followed him but at times only the original twelve could handle it.* 

Living as a follower of Jesus has never been the easy option in life. It is the narrow way, the denial of self and the fragrance of death to some. It requires guts to follow Jesus and an appetite for adventure like that of those men who applied to be part of Shackleton's mission. 

 

What's in a name?

Passivity isn't possible for the Christian, at least it shouldn't be, since living as a Christian requires activity and exertion. Don't believe me? Consider the terms used in the Bible to describe the church.  

In the book of Acts there are seven different words or terms used to describe the earliest Christians. Those words are: Followers of the Way, Believers, Disciples, Those who call on the name of the Lord, Saints, Christians and Brothers and Sisters. It's worth observing that all seven refer to or imply activity. Christians are those who follow, believe, obey, pray, live righteously (saints), mimic Jesus' lifestyle (Christians) and behave brotherly or sisterly toward one another. 

On top of that Christians are also called: ambassadors, witnesses, soldiers and athletes. Actively pursuing and living for Jesus is meant to be a constant and ongoing part of a Christian's experience. 

Don't give up.

When driving a car it's sometimes the case that another road user doesn't see you and pulls out in front or cuts into your lane forcing you to slam on the brakes or swerve to avoid them. When this happens you might get angry or panicky but rarely does anyone just stop their car and get out exclaiming 'I give up! Driving clearly isn't for me, it's too risky; I'll walk from now on!' Even if that's how you feel you wouldn't do it because doing that wouldn't help you get to where you're going. 'I have a destination to reach,' you think 'and nothing, no amount of crazy drivers, is going to stop me getting there.'

It's the same in the Christian life. Things will trip us up, we will fall down and stumble and stutter in prayer and struggle to believe. The good things in this life will fight for our attention and devotion. We will be tempted to live for our careers, or for our partners affection or our kids approval. We will be tempted to believe that money or approval is the source of life's joy. We will look to the things around us to derive our identity instead of looking to Jesus. But don't give up. 

We have a destination to reach, eternal, full-fat and overflowing joy. We're being made more and more into the character of Jesus, we're proving and enjoying the power of God. We're being prepared for a never-ending, whole-hearted satisfying life with God in the new Creation. 

No man gets left behind.

The people you're living your life around matter to God. The people you stand next to Sunday by Sunday matter to God and the friends in your life matter to God. Given that the Christian life is hard, that it requires an ongoing commitment, and given that there's plenty of things that could potentially derail us, we should expect that the people around us may need us. And, if they're anything like you, they're unlikely to tell you that they need you. 

What marked Christianity out from the religions of its day and what set it's course for becoming the dominate faith in the western world was its community. Whereas people were used to simply attending a temple, making an offering and going home again the Christians lived their lives together. They shared their possessions, met daily in one another's homes, prayed together, wept together and ate meals together; they challenged one another to trust Jesus under horrible circumstances, the committed themselves to one another and they served one another.

We need one another, the people around you need you. We need to start looking out for one another and adopt the military's 'no man gets left behind' attitude. The church needs more men and women who are willing to love the people around them enough to make their walk with Jesus part of 'their business.' Are they in a group? Do they need encouragement to come to church? Could they do with someone praying for them? We won't know unless we ask, we won't ask unless we care and we won't care unless we realise how much they matter to God. 

Writing about the poor and needy in the 20th Century William Booth once wrote: 

While women weep, as they do now, I'll fight; while little children go hungry, as they do now, I'll fight; while men go to prison, in and out, in and out, as they do now, I'll fight; while there is a drunkard left, while there is a poor lost girl upon the streets, while there remains one dark soul without the light of God, I'll fight — I'll fight to the very end!

We need some of that fight in the church again.  

Pete Cornford - Church Plantng

Introduction

Church Planting:

George Carey

I am convinced that church planting is a must of vigorous and outgoing Christianity, and is a sign of hope for the future.

Sandy Millar

The only effective way to grow churches quickly is to plant churches.

John Wimber

The most effective way of expanding the Kingdom of God was by planting new churches. We still believe that here.

John Hosier 

I have often heard it said, and I agree, that the church is God’s A plan to evangelise the world and there is no plan B. If it is true then it is vital that we plant and establish churches according to the biblical pattern.

Tim Keller

A vigorous and continuous approach to church planting is the only way to guarantee an increase in the number of believers, and is one of the best ways to renew the whole body of Christ.

Newfrontiers is a worldwide family of churches together on a mission to establish the kingdom of God by restoring the church, making disciples, training leaders and planting churches.

WHY CHURCH PLANT?

1. Why Plant Churches?

“You who call on the Lord, give yourself no rest, and give him no rest till he establishes Jerusalem and makes her the praise of the whole earth.” 

God’s purpose for his church

• The light of the world.            (Isaiah 60: 1 – 3, Is 62: 1 - 2) 
• The praise of the earth.            (Isaiah 62: 7)  
• The wisdom of God.   (Ephesians 3: 10) 
• The dwelling place of God (Revelation 21: 3).  

Terry Virgo

The church is a prophetic community - God's vehicle for the blessing of the nations.  We have the promises of heaven behind us and Christ with us wherever we go.  Let's give ourselves to this high calling. 

Richard Bauckham 

Jesus in his ministry proclaimed the coming Kingdom of God and practiced its presence.  That is, he anticipated the future hope of the unrestricted, uncontested sovereignty of God, by extending God's rule in the present and inviting people to live within it. 

Church Planting for a Greater Harvest (Peter Wagner)

“Collectively... we can scarcely feel we are obeying God if we fail to plant churches and plant them intentionally and progressively.”  

ANNEX: THE RESTORATION OF THE CHURCH

1. The Dark Ages Why?  "I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting him who called you by the grace of Christ for a different gospel."  (Gal 1: 6)

2. Wycliffe a. Rediscovery of the Bible.

(14th Century) b. Need for evangelistic preachers 

3. Luther a. Justification by faith.

(16th Century) b. Priesthood of all believers.

c. Congregational worship.

4. Calvin a. Doctrine of grace.

(16th Century) b. Primacy of preaching.

5. Anabaptists a. Water baptism.

(16th Century) b. Separation of church and state.

c. Withdrawal from worldliness, especially violence.

6. Puritans a. Simplicity of worship.

(17th Century) b. Primacy of preaching.

c. Power of publication.

7. Non Conformists a. More biblical modes of church gov

(17th Century) b. Pietists, personal devotions.

8. Moravians a. Koinonia.

(18th Century) b. Prevailing prayer.

c. Missionary zeal.

9. Wesley a. Field preaching.

(18th Century) b. Lay preaching.

c. Signs and wonders.

d. Social reform.

e. Christian education.

f. Small Groups.

g. Discipleship and accountability.

10. Carey, Livingstone a. Foreign missions.

and Taylor (19th Century)

11. Booth, Muller, Barnardo a. Home missions.

and Moody (19th Century)

12. Pentecostal Movement a. Evangelistic zeal.

(20th Century) b. Gifts of the Spirit.

c. Healings.

13. Restoration Movement a. Body ministry.

(20th Century) b. Worship.

c. Discipleship.

d. Kingdom of God.

e. Victorious eschatology.

Failure & Disappointment

USA

92% exist after 2 years

81% exist after 3 years

68% exist after 4 years

20%…. is that a myth?

John Ortberg

Failure is not an event, but rather a judgement of the event.

Theodore Roosevelt

Its not the critic who counts; its not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena… who, at best, knows in the end the triumph of great achievement, and who,at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly. So that his place will never be with those cold timid souls who know neither victory or defeat.

The Multiplying Church

Bob Roberts

The real key to a church planting movement doesn’t lie in the individual church that is planted, but in the incubators that produce churches.

Church planting is what I do. Church multiplication is what we do

Its not enough to start churches for the sake of evangelism that will end when conversion takes place.

Gospel planting - the focus is not on the act of church planting itself.

Churches have to own church planting.

I believe every Christian should be part of at least one new church plant.

The biggest obstacle to planting other churches is other pastors

Most planters need encouragement more than new ideas.

Churches that plant churches must be able to do it at a size of 75 or it will never happen.

There is not one particular profile that a church planter must fit... However they’re all daredevils at heart.

No vocational ministry requires more self-initiating skills than that of church planting.

Addition - simply adding one more here and there - requires money and mimicking. Multiplication requires passion and creativity.

A new church plant will grow only to the level and the quality of leaders who are raised up and engaged.

There is no greater stress point in a new church than that of finances.

There are 2 key reasons why new churches fail. First, the leadership of the planter is not sufficient. Second, the marriage of the planter is not secure.

What we need more of are not church starters but church finishers.

Any vision that doesn’t require your entire life isn’t a vision; its just a thought.

Conclusion

Roger Forster

“Where a denomination has stopped planting churches, it will decline… where churches are structured to reproduce themselves, then that particular movement of churches will continue to grow.”

John Piper

Why is church planting so important?

• There are about 200 million non-churched people in America, making America one of the four largest “unchurched” nations in the world.
• Each year about 3,500 churches close their doors permanently.
• Today, of the approximately 350,000 churches in America, four out of five are either plateaued or declining.
• One American denomination recently found that 80% of its converts came to Christ in churches less than two years old.

Tim Keller

Jesus & Paul were committed to making disciples and planting churches.

New churches best reach new generations, new residents and new people groups

New churches best reach the unchurched - 60-80%new members come from ranks of people not attending any worshipping body, whiles churches 10-15 years gain 80-90% members transfers from other congregations.

Church Plants help renew the whole body - 

• new ideas, 
• develop creative strong leaders, 
• challenge establish church to self evaluate
• may be evangelistic feeder for who church community

Tim Keller

“Our attitude to new church development is a test of whether our mindset is geared to our own institutional turf or to the overall health and prosperity of the kingdom of God in a city.’

The vast majority of U.S congregations peak in size during the first two or three decades of their existence and then remain on a plateau or slowly shrink.

Tim Keller

New Church planting is the only way that we can be sure we are going to increase the number of believers in a city, and it is one of the best ways to renew the whole body of Christ.”

Sandy Millar HTB

No ministry at Holy Trinity has been more determinedly pushed by Sandy Millar than that of church planting…Nothing has given him greater pleasure than when the plants themselves have planted churches.

Robinson & Smith

“The world is constantly changed by committed minorities and not by apathetic majorities...”

They argue to be true church planting churches that we should send 3% of our church congregation every year for 10 years!

Peter Wagner

“The most effective means of growing churches today is planting churches.”

Colin Baron

“God has called us as a movement to this great task of planting churches. As God builds our family of churches into an army on the move I believe we will be amazed at the increasing rate churches will be planted.”

Terry Virgo

“Planting a new church is not easy, but if we handle it well, is the most effective way of evangelising a new area.”

Really looking to be a Church Planting Movement….

… is a rapid and multiplicative increase if indigenous churches planting churches within a given people group or population segment.

Books Used

Coaching Church Planters Steve Nicholson

What on earth is the church for? Dave Devenish

Christ radiant Church John Hosier

Church Planting our Future Hope        Charlie Cleverly

Radical Church Planting Roger Ellis & Roger Mitchell

A People Prepared Terry Virgo

Invading Secular Space Martin Robinson & Dwight Smith

Churchquake                 Peter Wagner

Church Planting Course David Stroud

Church Planting Manual Stuart Murray

Cutting Edge Magazine Vineyard

Planting Churches Changing Communities David Stroud

Church Planter Darren Patrick

Church in the making Ben Arment

The Multiplying Church Bob Roberts

Exponential Dave & Jon Ferguson

Father's Day research:

Fathers4Justice:

Nearly 1 in 3 children in the UK now lives without a father

• The UK has the highest rate of family breakdown in Western Europe. Eurostat, 2014
• The cost of family breakdown across the UK is £48bn a year. Relationships Foundation, 2016
• Fatherless young people are almost 70 per cent more likely to take drugs and 76 per cent more likely to get involved in crime. Addaction, 2011
• More boys aged 15 have a smartphone than live with their father. Centre for Social Justice, 2014

Kids growing up in homes without a dad:

• 5 times likely to commit suicide
• 32 x likely to end up in prison

UNICEF:

UNICEF describe father absence as the greatest social issue of our time

Psycholotytoday.com

Psychologist Edward Kruk:

According to the 2007 UNICEF report on the well-being of children in economically advanced nations, children in the U.S., Canada and the U.K. rank extremely low in regard to social and emotional well-being in particular. Many theories have been advanced to explain the poor state of our nations’ children: child poverty, race and social class. A factor that has been largely ignored, however, particularly among child and family policymakers, is the prevalence and devastating effects of father absence in children’s lives.

Researchers have shown that for children, the results of growing up in a fatherless home are nothing short of disastrous, along a number of dimensions:

85% of youth in prison have an absent father.

71% of school dropouts are from fatherless homes.

90% of runaway children have an absent father.

-physical health problems (fatherless children report significantly more psychosomatic health symptoms and illness such as acute and chronic pain, asthma, headaches, and stomach aches)

Physcologists: Moore and Gillette commented over 30 years ago:

We face a crisis in masculine identity of vast proportions. Increasingly, observers of the contemporary scene­, sociologists, anthropologists, and depth psychologists-are discovering the devastating dimensions of this phenomenon, which affects each of us personally as much as it affects our society as a whole.

The Federalist blog

IMAGE: Dad trying to watch TV     humour 

http://thefederalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/shutterstock_390887836-998x666.jpg 

Written by a dad on the responsibilities of fatherhood:

After all, the only reason we are being celebrated is because we are dads, and being dad comes with myriad responsibilities. It’s not just guarding the thermostat, mowing the grass, and putting our dirty laundry in the general vicinity of the laundry basket. It’s also attempting to do projects we said yes to when we weren’t really paying attention or because we watched a YouTube video.
In the end, though, our wives and children do appreciate us, and they take time to show us just how much.

Nicole Russell (journalist):

My dad represents the Holy Grail of fatherhood. He attended every sporting event, spoke affirmingly to me all the time, and we spent hours on a bike, boat, or in the backyard. Dad taught me how to shoot a rifle, how to engage my mind before I engage my emotions, and what to expect of a man who expects to spend his life with me. We wrangled science and faith, politics and government, boys and my brother.
It was through the lens of my relationship with him I gauged every single relationship I had with a male. Few made the cut as friends or otherwise. If I thought a man couldn’t live up to the kind of man my Dad was—or, let’s be honest, maybe half that—he might as well hit the road. Up until I left for college, when my dad returned from work, I always greeted him at the door with a hug.

On the strange response of criticism she sees in herself toward her husband:

Funny though, how when my husband and I became parents, I felt less starry-eyed at first, and much more judgmental about the kind of dad my husband could be. My husband is no dummy, but I’ve rolled my eyes at the outfits he puts our kids in, instead of just being thankful he’s clothing their naked bodies. Or I’ve prepared a speech in my head when I overhear the way he plays, or disciplines, or speaks to one of our four children, ages 8 to 18 months.
Yet I’ve come to realize that, while my husband parents differently than I do, it’s no worse, and probably no better. My husband is one of the most engaged fathers I know. Whereas I tend to be more serious, analytical, and task-driven, he brings levity, adventure, and a joke when one is needed. He regularly engages our children in spiritual discussions, takes them on day-trips around Virginia (bentures, my three-year-old calls them) and throws pillows across the room at their heads. For this, they squeal when they hear him walk through the door and they run to greet him, just like I did with my dad. 

Study from SWITZERLAND on Father's in church:

In short, if a father does not go to church, no matter how faithful his wife’s devotions, only one child in 50 will become a regular worshipper. If a father does go regularly, regardless of the practice of the mother, between two-thirds and three-quarters of their children will become churchgoers (regular and irregular). If a father goes but irregularly to church, regardless of his wife’s devotion, between a half and two-thirds of their offspring will find themselves coming to church regularly or occasionally.

The story of Francis Bok: 

10years a slave in Sudan, escaped and now living in the US working as an abolitionist. Aged 7, he could not count to ten and knew very little of the outside world. On his first trip to the market without his mother where he was sent to sell eggs and peanuts, he was captured by raiding Islamic militia and enslaved.

He was beaten with sticks by his captor's children, told he was no different from the animals, He was forced to tend the family's herds of livestock and soon realised that his father was not going to be able to save him. He was alone and kept in constant isolation, unable to talk to anyone and threatened with the loss of a limb if he laughed or spoke out of turn. He was forced to convert to Islam and given a new name. When he was 17 years old he escaped.

Francis remembers his mother as beautiful and loving. His father was a strong and cheerful man:

. . . he would tell me important things: ‘I know you’re little but you must listen to what I say. . . You will grow up to be like your father. . . . I want you to be a good man, a good member of the community. I want you to have a good life. . .’ My father had always encouraged me, treated me as special.

But most of all, Francis remembers his father telling him he was strong: “You are muycharko!” which means “You are twelve men!”

‘God is always with you,’ my parents had told me. ‘Even when you are alone, He is with you. . . . When you ask God for what you need, He will help you . . .’ Alone at night sitting in my hut, I remembered that. My father once said to me, ‘Even when you are one, you are two. If you are two, you are three.’

I was really muycharko . . . I began to believe that my father had been right: I was really ‘twelve men.’

First Things Magazine: The Preferential Treatment of the Poor
Russell Reno

A Christian who hopes to follow the teachings of Jesus needs to reckon with a singular fact about American poverty: Its deepest and most debilitating deficits are moral, not financial; the most serious deprivations are cultural, not economic. Many people living at the bottom of American society have cell phones, flat-screen TVs, and some of the other goodies of consumer culture. But their lives are a mess.

Want to help the poor? By all means pay your taxes and give to agencies that provide social services. By all means volunteer in a soup kitchen or help build houses for those who can’t afford them. But you can do much more for the poor by getting married and remaining faithful to your spouse. Have the courage to use old-fashioned words such as chaste and honorable. Put on a tie. Turn off the trashy reality TV shows. Sit down to dinner every night with your family. Stop using expletives as exclamation marks. Go to church or synagogue.

In this and other ways, we can help restore the constraining forms of moral and social discipline that don’t bend to fit the desires of the powerful—forms that offer the poor the best, the most effective and most lasting, way out of poverty. That’s the truest preferential option—and truest form of respect—for the poor.

Doug Wilson: Father Hunger

The Kingdom:

It has been said that you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, but it has also been said that it's amazing how many eggs you can break without ever making an omelet. 

If a man lives without reference to the kingdom, regardless of how conservative and traditional his family values might be, he is only breaking eggs and not making omelets.

Masculinity and fathering:

In their families, men are much more important, crucial, and influential than they believe themselves to be. It is the easiest thing in the world for a man to grow up, get married, have kids and still think of himself the way he did when he was a boy. In the words of Mark Driscoll, he is 'a boy who shaves.' He believes that he is just one more person living in this household - just one more of the roommates. 

Gilder says: Masculinity [in our society] is treated like sex in Victorian England: a fact of life that society largely condemns and tries to suppress and that its intellectuals deny...

Masculinity does not mean talking out the side of your mouth. It doesn't mean swagger, or machismo, or a swaggering machismo. It does not mean bluster or bravado, or wearing wife-beaters. It does not mean brittle egos or cinder blocks for brains. It does mean quoting [the Bible].

Masculinity is the glad assumption of sacrificial responsibility. A man who assumes responsibility is learning masculinity, and a culture that encourages men to take responsibility is a culture that is a friend to masculinity.

...biblical authority knows how to bleed for others.

Christianity and Deliverance:

John Ortberg comments on how Christians and Christianity has brought huge changes to the needy in society:

Since the birth of Jesus babies and kings and everybody else look different to us now. Jesus bestowed dignity, worth and honour on not only children but every human being whether healthy, sick, male or female. On the following people, Jesus gave dignity:

The autistic or Downs syndrome or otherwise disabled child... the derelict or wretched or broken man or woman who has wasted his or her life away; the homeless, the utterly impoverished, the diseased, the mentally ill, the physically disabled; exiles, refugees, fugitives; even criminals and reprobates. 

These were viewed by our ancient ancestors as burdens to be discarded. To see them instead as bearer of divine glory who can touch our conscience and still our selfishness - this is what Jesus saw and Herod could not see.

One of the most famous sermons in that century was by Gregory of Nyssa (brother of Basil who introduced the vision to create communities that cared for sick people). This is what he said:

Lepers have been made in the image of God. In the same way you and I have, and perhaps preserve that image better than we, let us take care of Christ while there is still time. Let us minister to Christ's needs. Let us give Christ nourishment. Let us clothe Christ. Let us gather Christ in. Let us show Christ honour.

That was the beginning of what would come to be known as hospitals. The Council of Nyssa (same council that produced the Nicene creed) decreed that wherever a cathedral existed, there must be a hospice, a place of caring for the sick and poor... They were the world's first charitable institutions.

Another follower of Jesus named Jean Henri Dunant couldn't stand the sound of soldiers crying out on a battlefield after they had been wounded, so this Swiss philanthropist said he would devote his life to helping them in Jesus' name. This started an organisation in the 1860s that became known as the Red Cross. Every time you see the Red Cross, you are seeing a thumbprint of Jesus.

Years ago I was in Ethiopia when it was under a Marxist regime and the church was mostly underground. One or another of the leaders of the Christian group would frequently be arrested and put into prison, which was horribly over-crowded and unspeakably foul. Other prisoners used to long for a Christian to get put in prison, because if a Christian was jailed, his Christian friends would bring him food - actually, far more food than that one person could eat, and there would be leftovers for everybody. It became the 'prisoner's prayer'; 'God send a Christian to prison.' 

The Saxon Gospel - The Heliand

Supposedly written by Charlemagne's son 'The Heliand' (a saxon word for 'saviour') is a retelling of the life Jesus in 6000 lines for a Saxon audience.

One writer says of it:

The anonymous author of the Heliand lived in the first half of the ninth century. His work is addressed to his fellow Saxons, who had recently been forcibly converted to Christianity at the hands of their Frankish overlords. The poet of the Heliand does not force his audience to make the heart-rending choice between the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ way, but weaves the Christian narrative about Jesus of Nazareth into the wider framework of Nordic mythology. 

The disciples are called the 'warrior companions'

The Lord's Prayer (the Fadar Usa) is translated as:

Father of us, the sons of men,
You are in the high heavenly kingdom,
Blessed be Your name in every word.
May Your mighty kingdom come.
May Your will be done over all this world,
just the same on earth as it is up there
in the high heavenly kingdom.
Give us support each day, good chieftain,
your holy help, and pardon us, Protector of Heaven,
our many crimes, just as we do to other human beings.
Do not let evil little creatures lead us off
to do their will, as we deserve,
but help us against all evil deeds.

The Things of Earth, Joe Rigney

Some great stuff in this book. 

Chapter 3: Creation as Communication

C.S. Lewis at the toolshed.

I was standing today in the dark toolshed. The sun was shining outside and through the crack at the top of the door there came a sunbeam. From where I stood that beam of light, with the specks of dust floating in it, was the most striking thing in the place. Everything else was almost pitch-black. I was seeing the beam, not seeing things by it. Then I moved so that the beam fell on my eyes. Instantly the whole previous picture vanished. I saw no toolshed, and (above all) no beam. Instead I saw, framed in the irregular cranny at the top of the door, green leaves moving on the branches of a tree outside and beyond that, 90 million miles away, the sun. Looking along the beam, and looking at the beam are very different experiences.

Chapter 9 on self-denial and sacrifice

After a call to reach cultures with little or no knowledge of Christ with the hope that one day they might produce God-honouring pieces of art and culture themselves:

And to those who would scoff at the notion that the greatest theologians, philosophers and culture makers in the history of the church might eventually hail from Somalia or China or Afghanistan, remember this one fact: a thousand years ago Vikings from Saxony, Norway and Denmark were raping and pillaging their way across Europe. They worshiped the one-eyed, bloodthirsty god Odin and fought under the banner of the Black Raven. Before battle, they ate hallucinogenic mushrooms, painted themselves blue, and ran naked into the fray. 

Five hundred years later, one of their heirs nailed a piece of paper to a door and ignited the Reformation. Five hundred more years, and their descendants settled the Midwest, invented hot-dish, and gave us Minnesota Nice... From mushroom-crazed berserker to Christ-exalting worshipper. That's what the gospel does. That's what happens when the grace of God lands among rebels and turns them into friends of God.

Jacob Wrestles: insights from Alastair Roberts

Laban ‘feels’ about in the tent (v.34), just as Isaac ‘felt’ Jacob (27:21-22). The description of Laban’s actions in terms of ‘feeling’ might suggest a recurrence of the darkness/blindness motif. He had used the darkness of the wedding night to cheat Jacob and Rachel out of their rightful marriage.

Now Laban receives poetic justice at Rachel’s hand, as he gropes in vain for his idols. The woman the tyrant had tricked now tricks him. As we have seen, the deception of tyrants is a key exodus motif, and also, as this deception typically occurs through the actions of a woman (e.g. the Hebrew midwives and Pharaoh, Rahab and the men of Jericho, Jael and Sisera, Michal and Saul, Esther and Haman), a reversal of the Fall. The father who is deceived by the daughters that he treated shamefully recalls the story of Lot.

The Jabbok is an important location in a number of respects (the word may be a play on the verb for wrestling, and perhaps also even a confusion of Jacob’s name). The Jabbok is a tributary of the Jordan (v.10). To cross the Jabbok is to cross the Jordan and symbolically to re-enter the land.

The reference to wrestling with God is important. Jacob’s entire life has been characterized by wrestling with God and man, with Esau, Isaac, and Laban. By connecting Jacob’s wrestling with these figures with Jacob’s wrestling with God, Jacob learns that all of the time God has been wrestling with him through these persons. Wrestling with the unknown person in the dark, Jacob may have wondered whether it was Laban or Esau, but it turned out to be God. Later on he will make the significant statement that seeing Esau’s face is like seeing the ‘face of God’ (33:10; cf. 32:30 – ‘Peniel’). Perhaps this is a reference to the fact that Jacob now recognized that it had been God wrestling with him all of the time. While Abraham was marked out by patience, Jacob was a man marked out by patienceand wrestling, a man who struggled with God and man to receive that which was promised.

After wrestling with God, Jacob’s eyes are opened to the fact that God has been dealing with him throughout, that all of the things that had befallen him had been used by God as means of preparing him as a champion and a sacrifice. We see a similar realization in the story of Joseph (45:7-8). The Angel on the banks of the Jabbok is like the ‘boss’ at the end of the game. Having wrestled with the Angel and prevailed, Jacob’s life as a wrestler largely comes to an end. He is given a new name as a mark of his success.

Greg Haslam: The Man Who Wrestled With God

Chapter 1: Pulling Down Strongholds

A chapter on the transformative nature of the wrestle, linking it to the need for us to have strongholds demolished from our lives. He makes the point that we often resist God's involvement in our lives with a lot of effort and pride:

He illustrates this with the story in the 1962 Oscar winning film Alamo in which 130 heavily outnumbered Texans fought against more than 4500 Mexican soldiers of General Santa Anna in the former's defence of the mission station near the town of San Antonio.

We make heroes of 'freedom fighters' like Davy Crocket, Jim Bowie and Major Travers. Their resistance and violent death became an icon of American bravery and the defence of liberty. But our resistance to God has nothing to commend it, for it is not a fight to defend freedom but a bid for self-centred autonomy and rebellion ending in some for of slavery and there is nothing at all commendable or inspiring about it.

Chapter 2: Faith's Rubicon

He likens Jacob's crossing of the ford at Jabbok to the story of Julius Caesar in 49BC bringing an army into Italy form Gaul and crossing the Rubicon river. 'The die is cast' said Caesar. This event was pivotal for Jacob.

Jacob was to come away from this encounter with a painful torn ligament and a conspicuous limp, a permanent reminder of his struggle with the Almighty. For us, as for Jacob, God wants us to learn through such events how to seize hold of him who first seized hold of us.

He says:

I have met believers who have no dread of God in their hearts. God is more like their comforting club mascot or 'best mate' than their almighty Creator, King and master, someone to fall back on when they hit an emergency or they need something, but safe to ignore much of the time. 

Chapter 3: Jacob's Fight Preparation

At some point in our life, especially if it's 'inherited' faith from our parents, must becom first-hand faith and a fully renewed and revived faith if it is to mean anything at all. If you have never felt the horror and awe of what it means to stand in the presence of a terrifying, holy God, then you have not as yet fully encountered the God of the Bible. If you've just 'accepted' Jesus but your real God may be David Beckham, Brad Pitt, Coldplay or Kylie, then you need to have a fresh encounter with the one true and living God!

Smith Wigglesworth:

The only thing I'm satisfied with is the fact that I am dissatisfied!

Jacob had to learn that he was not in charge any more.

Not surprisingly many important encounters wit God recorded in the Bible are connected in some way with water. Jacob crossed the Jabbok, Moses the Red Sea, Joshua, Gideon chose his army by a spring, Jesus consecrated himself at baptism.

The nature of commitment to Christ is this: we are under new-management.

Chapter 4: Subject to examination

A critique of 'seeker-sensitive' church:

Walter Brueggemann: In a culture-bound church such as most of the US Curch is, our preferred strategy for evangelism is to invite people in, with the winking assurance that 'everything' can remain the same.'

This of course is not true at all. Once we have invited someone as great as Christ in, everything is going to change!

Further critique:

I wonder whether childlike beginners in a dumbed-down, user friendly Christianity will ever grow up - whether such seekers will ever become finders and keepers of the faith once delivered to the saints.
-- Ralph Wood 

On the geography and meaning of the place:

Jabbok means 'pouring out' or 'wrestling'. the Hebrew word is closely related to the word abbak which means 'to twist'. Presumably this little stream that enters the river Jordan midway between the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea was a 'twisting' tributary and so it earned itself the name. But how interesting that the name implies wrestling and twisting, conveying the idea of manipulation and deceit. The twister is going to be twisted; the crooked man is going to be 'bent double' in order to be straightened out!  

Consider the statue made by Sir Jacob Epstein in 1940 just after WWII broke out entitled  'Jacob and the angel.'

Perhaps Epstein recognised in this story as so many others have done down the ages, something of the story of our own struggle to believe, to make progress, our struggle with fear, pain and self-doubt. Epstein's Jacob is both locked in combat with the stranger and yet he also, in a way, being supported by him.

Unless we decide to do things we have never done before, we will not see things we've never seend before. We'll never experience anything different from the 'same old, same old'. Jacob the grabber releases his wives, children, flocks, herds... eventually left standing alone in the darkness on the banks of the river. Never before had Jacob 'let go' of anything

As all of his possessions are sent away, it is as if Jacob is stripped of his former identity before God. All the trappings of his wealth are gone for the time being and only he is left. All he has are the clothes on his back. Sometimes God says to us, 'Get rid of everything. Get rid of your toys and free yourself up for what I am about to do in your life.'

Jacobs example teaches us that we must be separated from so that we can be consecrated for.

Chapter 5: Darkness, Separation and Silence

The dark.

God has to take us out of the familiar, the comfortable and the easily seen, in order to deal with us in ways that we've never been dealt with before.

God created the universe in darkness:

Unlike us, God doesn't need the lights on to go about his greatest work in our world or our lives. Maybe God has turned all the lights out on you right now, because unbeknown to you he is about to do something entirely new and creative in your life?

Two types of knowledge: descriptive and experiential

Jacob sends 'sweeteners over to Esau':

In the M. East, goats were the least valuable of all livestock; sheep were slightly more valuable, then came expensive camels and finally, cattle and asses that were worth the most to a rural farmer. Jacob calculated that these 'protection money' bribes would mount up in his brother's eyes and serve to turn away his anger.

Walter Lavage Sandor called solitude: an audience chamber with God.

'Jacob was left alone' - the phrase hits us with searing force.

Bonhoeffer: let no one expect from silence anything but a direct encounter with the Word of God.

George Campbell Morgan: interpreted the name given by God - Israel - to mean 'a God-mastered man.'

Chapter 6: Faith's Showdown