But as for you, the LORD took you and brought you out of the iron-smelting furnace, out of Egypt, to be the people of his inheritance, as you now are (Deuteronomy 4.20).A colleague, visiting from another part of the world, asked me this week what I made of the church in the UK, and whether there was a hope of revival. I was able to give a positive and enthusiastic reply. Why?
At least three things seem to me as characteristic of authentic church, a people set apart as witnesses to the character and concerns of God. Firstly, they will be a people who have a testimony of being rescued and redeemed from a life where they were held captive by destructive and oppressive forces that dehumanised and demeaned them as persons made in the image of God. Secondly, there will be sense of struggle, being brought through a process of transformation, both personal and social, that was by no means easy and quite likely to be painful. And thirdly, there will be a growing awareness and vision of a holistic reality and quality to eternal life begun now, of a New Heavens and New Earth filled with the goodness of God’s character and also the goals that are the realisation of His concerns for humanity and the Cosmos.
Authentic church will have these three components of testimony, struggle and focus here and now. And there are increasing signs of this kind of thinking appearing among congregations throughout the land. Pray God that such a revival continues!
