In Western society it’s difficult to do life together, but it does happen, it can be sustained and it can be life-changing. I pray these stories encourage you to keep meeting, keep searching and start gathering. This story is told by Beresford Job.
I came to know the Lord in 1971 whilst touring with a street theatre group. One of the guys from a bunch of Christians we happened upon hugged me. In the literal twinkling of an eye, Jesus revealed Himself to a lost and messed up young hippy. In an instant, I knew myself to be a sinner in utter need of His love and grace. In that moment, I was turned upside down and inside out, and all I wanted to do was to follow Him from that moment onwards.
Among the numerous things that I suddenly knew to be true, but which had never been the slightest part of my thinking before, was that the Bible, which I had never even read (except for a couple of Old Testament passages at school in a Religious Education class) was God’s Word, and that it was meant to be our final authority in all matters.
Within just a handful of years, the Lord had led me into a full-time pastoral and teaching ministry. I was fully focussed on His calling on my life to look after people and help them grow in the Lord, and to teach what Paul referred to as ‘the whole counsel of God’. However, I had a special burden to help believers form into house churches as taught by the Apostles in the New Testament, as opposed to the traditional churches which are instead based on the teachings of the Early Church Fathers. Now, fifty years later, in various parts of the world, I continue in this same ministry and calling. Forty of those years having also served as an elder in one such local church at home in England.
There was absolutely no way I could have ever fulfilled this calling from the Lord on my own. He eventually brought me the person I needed more than anyone else, second only to Him. Belinda and I married in 1984. After years of wondering whether it was only ever going to be just the two of us, in 1998 Belinda gave me the most beautiful daughter I could have ever imagined. We named her Bethany and, until recently, she travelled with us wherever we were seeking to help the Lord’s people. Our calling has always been strictly a family effort as far as we have been concerned. Nowadays, Bethany’s life and work commitments means that she can usually no longer accompany us. We were thrilled, however, that she was recently able to be with us on a trip to a church in Australia. Nowadays it is mostly just me and Belinda travelling together.
I am now in my 70th year and, as I look back in time, and at things as they stand now, I can, in all but one thing, identify so very much with the experience of Paul the Apostle. Unlike him I look back on all too much sin, failure, foolishness and mistakes, and I can only but thank the Lord that He has forgiven me so fully. Like Paul, however, I look back and out on both joy and tears. Joy at those who grew in the Lord, and at the churches that are still going strong many years later, but with tears and heartbreak at those believers who did not grow and stay faithful, or who just ended up living spiritually stagnated and carnal lives. Discouragement and heartbreak also over the churches that started – and often very well – but which failed because of unrepentant sin, and the unwillingness of those believers who comprised them to truly live in the light with one another.
Yet even when it comes to those believers who failed to pass the test, and who even returned evil to those who laboured so hard to be a blessing and a help to them, I can truly say that it is still wonderful to know that they were at least given a chance. I feel both humbled and privileged that I and my family could have been part of that process. It is true indeed that everything works together for good to them that love God, and who are called according to His purposes.
So to those who are already on the wonderful path of biblical church life, plus those who are not yet, but who desire to be so, I say the following: it is difficult, and it is fraught with problems, but be encouraged by the knowledge that such are the difficulties and problems that we are meant to encounter. They are precisely designed by the Holy Spirit to sanctify us, and to deal with our sin and bring us closer to the Lord Jesus. They are the trials and tribulation promised us in scripture which, if we endure to the end, bring us more and more into the very life of the Lord Himself. Believers are, by God’s infinite and boundless grace, saved whether they endure or not, but what a tragedy to just live out some comfortable, unchallenged and compromised carnal discipleship, rather than staying at the cutting edge of radical ongoing surrender to the Lord.
So don’t be unduly concerned with what worldly Christians might want to define as ‘success’, and neither be overly occupied with outcomes, whether positive or negative, or seemingly good or bad. All such can be left in the Lord’s capable hands. No! Be rather completely and utterly concerned and occupied with simply being faithful to the Lord, and with living in obedience to His word. Nothing is wasted as long as our desire and motivation is to “…live godly in Christ Jesus.”
Beresford Job can be reached at…
Website: www.housechurch.co.uk
Blog: beresfordjob.wordpress.com
Email: talk2ccf@hotmail.com
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