The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
The News We Hear Pastor Lorne Moorhead Northern Fellowship Chapel A lot of the news we hear is bad. News-gathering agencies seem to believe that good news is 'bad news' and bad news makes 'good news'. So every newscast has its fill of murder, scandal, riots, massacres, disputes and complaints. When you hear news about a church, if ever, it is usually about trouble or division. The apostle Paul heard something good about the church at Ephesus. He writes about it in the book of Ephesians, chapter one and verse fifteen. What he heard convinced him that these people were true Christians and became a cause for thanksgiving to God. What was it he heard? He heard of their faith in the Lord Jesus and of their love for all the saints (believers). Something radical had happened to these people because it was not natural to love others. We are more apt to resent, to despise, to hate rather than love. However, Jesus Christ changes all that. Paul recognized that where Christ is present in the heart, producing genuine love for others, then you have true Christianity. At the present time Christianity is often defined by what a person does. If you do something that is socially beneficial (e.g. run a food bank, operate a crisis centre, or are heavy into an environmental project), that is the essence of Christianity. Church leaders the media covers are those who are involved in some social service project (usually something which meets the approval of the media people). However, church leaders are not interviewed for doing evangelism in the community, or for baptizing a new convert, or for sending out a missionary to save souls for Christ. Christianity must not be defined by the projects we may be involved in, even if they are very beneficial to society. Christianity is centered in Jesus Christ. Without faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour there is no Christianity, even though a person may do a lot of good works and kind deeds. Our good works do not make us Christians. Faith in the Lord Jesus makes us Christians. After coming to faith in Christ, love must result, and then we begin to do good works and serve in any way we can to help others. Wouldn't it be a wonderful thing, if when people hear news about our churches they hear that we have faith in the Lord Jesus and have love for one another!
