Flatliners

I guess you guys are aware that a ‘flatline’ in hospital speak refers to a trace on a heart monitor that indicates a very serious situation?

It means the heart has stopped working.

And if left untreated?

Death happens.

This week I decided to read our visitors book at sanctuary 21. It’s a nice little leather bound book that people usually write nice things about their stay at S21, whether they have come to pray, eat, chat or whatever else they come to do.

I say mostly nice comments because nearly all of them are.

All except one!

Tucked away at the bottom of the page I was reading was this.

NO FLAG, NO CREST? WHAT A SHAME.

And written directly underneath that statement?

DITTO.

So in a place where literally hundreds of people pray and worship day and night, where many more find a family and a community, including the homeless, the lonely and a good smattering of genuine societal outcasts. In a place where many Christians are working together to reach out to the lost on the streets of the City and beyond, there is no flag or crest?

So it will make all the difference to the kingdom if we had these sacred icons?

I have to say that it’s not even because we don’t want them, or don’t believe we should have them or anything remotely like that. It’s just we are a fairly new project and haven’t got round to it yet.

I don’t really think Gods that worried about it really.

I would take an informed guess that he is much more concerned about lives going to waste, or people truly and desperately needing Jesus Christ to turn their lives around.

There is a good indication in the bible for this.

1 Do you not know, brothers and sisters—for I am speaking to those who know the law—that the law has authority over someone only as long as that person lives? 2 For example, by law a married woman is bound to her husband as long as he is alive, but if her husband dies, she is released from the law that binds her to him. 3 So then, if she has sexual relations with another man while her husband is still alive, she is called an adulterous. But if her husband dies, she is released from that law and is not an adulterous if she marries another man.
4 So, my brothers and sisters, you also died to the law through the body of Christ that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God. 5 For when we were in the realm of the flesh,[a] the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in us, so that we bore fruit for death. 6 But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code. (Romans 7: 1-4)

Here is the thing.

Sinful passions can be awakened by the law and when that happens we can easily focus on the nonsensical stuff that really doesn’t produce anything.

In fact, as this scripture says, it produces death.

But when we die to the law?

We will belong to Christ and keep focused on him.

And that produces fruit.

It produces life.

Focussing on stuff we humanly shape into the stuff of importance but in truth is useless unless we are serious about God above all else produces one thing.

A flatline.

A kind of spiritual flatline.

And flatliners are not really of use to anything or anyone because it means we are, well, dead.

But, when we focus our sights solely on Jesus Christ of Nazareth?

Well the power of the Holy Spirit can instantly bring the flatliner back into the normal rhythm. A bit like a spiritual defibrillation. A blast of 220 volts direct to the heart.

And for those of us who focus on things that really aren’t that important? Jesus can without doubt restart our hearts.

NO FLAG, NO CREST?

That is dead talk from dead men walking.

There is no life in that comment.

We have to be careful we don’t become an army of flatliners.

Because we really will be dead.

I’m definitely not saying the whole of the Salvation Army is one big flatline. I see so much life in it. There are so many people who do not try to focus on the law that brings death, but choose to focus on the one true God who brings life.

But according to the S21 visitor book there are those who maybe focus on the not so important things?

Don’t be a flatliner.

Why be a flatliner when we can make sure we are alive?

Today I truly want to bring those who maybe lost in the law before God. (And for myself when I flatline sometimes)

I want to pray this.

Will you not revive us again, that your people may rejoice in you? (Psalm 85:6)

Lots of amazing favour on your lives today guys.