Christianity is GOOD NEWS

"Then he said to them, "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath."
Mark 2:27

So we've been looking at Mark a lot over this term at CU in preparation for the Free Gospel Project that will be happening across the country this year!! This is one verse we read at some point, and it's kind of stuck in my head and come up quite a few times in various situations.

Most recently, this afternoon I've been chatting to my Mum on the way back from a shopping excursion to Torquay :) , just about how there are often rules we put upon ourseves, or maybe we get put on us by parents or churches, that aren't actually Biblical, and so I guess this principal from Mark 2, if I've interpreted it right, applies to all those kinds of areas...

So to me, and please correct me if I'm wrong, I haven't watched 'hermen who?' yet lol.. but I guess it's about how God made the Sabbath for us to have the rest that we need, and to spend time with Him to strengthen us for the coming week, as opposed to making it to give us a few extra rules to follow i.e. you must go to church twice, you must wear a hat to church, you must wear skirts/dresses if you're a woman, you can't buy stuff on Sunday or go out for a meal, you can't watch tv or listen to secular music, you can't play games, you can't watchfilms, you can't see non-Christian friends.... the list goes on.

Maybe some of those things seem extreme to you, but not really to me. Some of them applied to me when I was growing up, and that's not a complaint because it's meant that I got into good, disciplined habits. The Christian life is one that requires discipline I think, but too often because we're sinful we can go too far one way or the other, so either we get really legalistic and forget that we're saved by GRACE, or we become really liberal and might start thinking it doesn't really matter whether we go to church or not really, that Sunday is just like any other day etc. Both of which are wrong I think.

I guess it's your attitude behind what you do that matters, God looks at the heart right? So for me, I never really get to see two of my best friends from home anymore apart from briefly in the holidays, and not even that now as one of them has moved to Scotland! So in a couple of weeks me and another friend are hoping to go and visit the friend in Scotland over a weekend, and to me, I don't mind missing a church service on the Sunday morning because I'll be building up that friendship and making sure that we're staying close, and as neither of them know Christ, maybe I'll even get a chance to talk to them about Him. Obviously I'll miss being at church and wish I could be there, but I'm willing to sacrifice one service so I can be with my friends. I think it'd be different if it was EVERY week that I was missing church to hang out with my friends.... that's the difference. The attitude.

Having said that, no doubt there are many situations similar to this where my attitude is wrong, I'm definitely not very wise about things like this and I think I have a tendency towards being too legalistic rather than liberal. But it's easy to make a to-do list of rules that I can tick off, it's much harder to rely on God's grace and trust that I'm saved through nothing that I've done. Something that's come up a few times this year is how the Gospel is GOOD NEWS... if Christianity was about following rules, it wouldn't be good news would it. Mark begins "This is the Gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God." Jesus brought good news, of freedom from all of the rules and regulations that the Israelites could never keep in the Old Testament, I need to remember that.

Colossians helped me a lot last year when we studied it in our one-to-ones with these issues as well, coming to university really makes you think about what you believe any why, and there wee loads of things I was trying to work out in my head if they were ok or not, here's what Paul says to the Colossians:

"Since you died with Christ to the basic principles of this world, why, as though you still belonged to it, do you submit to its rules:"Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!"? These are all destined to perish with use, because they are based on human commands and teachings. Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence." Col 2:20-23

That whole chapter is pretty helpful actually although I didn't realise it until we were doing the overview at the end and it was like God suddenyl showed me saying 'Look, here's the answer!' After all my worries, nothing can separate me from God! And all these rules and regulations might make me look holy, but they just make a person proud and have no real value. You can tick the box but it doesn't stop you wanting it. It's the attitudes of our hearts that we need to address.

A book on my 'to-read' list, is Extreme Righteousness: seeing ourelves in the pharisees by Tom Hovestol, which was my church's recommended read of the year 2008, and I've heard it recommended by loads of people. I believe that it deals with things like this, how we can so often try and live by rules instead of by faith, when I've got through the pile of books I already have to read, it will be my next purchase!