More thoughts on the 'Sleeping Giant' ...

I write this to give a little more explanation to what I posted yesterday;

There are two comments that I have heard often when talking to Pastors or Church Leaders ... "I have a Church of 200 going on 20!" ... or ... "20% of the people do 80% of the work" ... they might express these ideas in different ways, but they amount to the same thing.

Mobilising Christians to mission has to start by encouraging Christians to be sold out for Christ in every area of life ... Charles Finney wrote "A revival is nothing else than a new beginning of obedience to God ... the first step is a deep repentence, a breaking down of heart, a getting down into the dust before God, with deep humility and a forsaking of sin."

We can pray for revival as much as we like, but it will never happen until we take this work seriously. Thus Pauline's picture is a very powerful image that encourages me to pray. Here are some notes from Pauline to flesh out what I wrote yesterday ...

"John and I had been thinking and praying about what we should share during the UK Directors' report as part of the GO2010 mission festival. As I was praying, the Lord reminded me of a picture that he had given me several years ago as I was praying for the Church in the UK. It was a scene from the film "Gulliver's Travels" where Gulliver, the giant, has been tied down with tiny ropes and immobilised by the Lilliputians.

I believe God was saying, this is the Church – that all believers together have the potential to be a powerful giant in the land, but that believers have allowed themselves to be immobilised by many things.

The things themselves are not necessarily big things (the ropes in the picture are comparatively very small), but all of them together have rendered the giant less effective than it should be. This giant has the potential to be a real force to be reckoned with in the land, but doesn't even seem to realise it.

What are the ropes? Could be a whole host of different things - pride, apathy, complacency, disobedience, fear, discouragement, disappointment, love of money, laziness, unrighteousness, wrong motives and priorities, unbelief, materialism, consumerism, incomplete teaching….the list could go on.

The point is, when believers fully understand their liberty in Christ there is LIMITLESS potential in the Church in this country, if only it would cut itself free from these ropes that tie it down. Obedience and total surrender are key in this. However, it seems that the world and the enemy have, by very subtle means, got the upper hand in too many Christian lives.

I shared this picture in the morning meeting (although not in quite so much detail as there was very limited time) as an encouragement to the folk there that there was great potential in the marquee, and in the churches represented, and challenged the folk to think what the ropes in their lives (and churches) could be.

Each time John is reminded of that picture he feels a big burden to pray, and this was again the case on Monday ... then followed the encouraging sign from the Lord!"

If this challenges you personally, or if you are in any form of leadership, and you would like to contact us to talk more about this then please do.