Heaven Couldn’t Wait.
A Gospel for the powerless, in a world of performance.
by
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I have found that a god who only gives to me according to what I first give to Him, is too much like me to save me!
So don’t give me a god who is just another counter of my sins against me. Let me have the one who turned over the tables of the counters! Let me have Emmanuel, God with us, for I find that He is like the dawn. Like the sun rising, it is not the promise of Him but the presence of Him that drives the darkness out of my life. I find that the gospel that brings His presence is not mere instruction on what might be, but the news of what now is. To proclaim the gospel on earth as it is in heaven is not to declare what might be if you. It is to declare what is, because Christ! The song of heaven is not “One day, if you.” It is “Today, because He! The Gospel is the revelation that “Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.”[1] (2 Corinthians 6:1,2)
This is what it is to preach Christ, but unfortunately, I find myself living in a world that has only ever preached me! Such a world has so conformed my thoughts to the earthly realm that I have only ever looked to myself to produce a good life. In the light of His glory and grace, the light of His presence, I can now see that I was so consumed with being right by myself, I couldn’t hear the Gospel as good news. My self-dependency could only ever hear it as good advice. Let me say that differently. I was too religious to take in what God was saying to me. My hope was so much in my behaviour, that it was only when all hope in myself was exhausted that I finally began to look higher than myself for life.
The god of religion promises to meet you at your best one day in heaven. But the God of all grace meets with us in the pigpen. It is there, when we finally realise that we are powerless to be as He is, apart from Him, that we can bow our heads and say what Mary did, “May it be done to me according to your Word”[2] (Luke 1:38). Mary was never asked to produce a life for God but to partake of the life of God, that she might bear His life. The Gospel is the impartation of the life of God, and all who are thirsty, all who will receive this living water, will find Jesus’ words to be true. His life, eternal life, springs up like a fountain within them (John 4:14).
This was never a story about me but always one about us. The person I grew up to be was formed by the family whose life I shared, and you will read in these pages that I was blessed to be raised in a loving family. But family was always the creation of He who was a Father before He was a creator. His love has always desired that each of us would be raised at His table, raised in the fellowship of the Father and the Son, having been begotten of His Spirit through the gospel (1 Corinthians 4:15). This world has only offered us endless instruction, when all we ever needed was to know our eternal father, for knowing Him and the life He has given is eternal life (John 17:3). We were not made by ourselves or for ourselves, but for Him who knew us before our earthly family ever did (Jeremiah 1:5).
When I look to Christ, I find that my life is at peace with God and men, for I stop trying to save myself. But when I listen to the wind and the waves of this world, the voices of earthly-minded men and women, I find my gaze falling from Christ and my peace being stolen. Suddenly I am fighting my corner, grasping to make a better life for myself, and taking offence at those who are not helping me to save myself. In those moments, like Peter sinking below the waves of that storm, I need to feel the strong grip of Jesus take hold of me to hold me up. This is what I experience when I sit under the gospel of God’s grace, as opposed to the worldly gospel of my piety. I feel the strength of His life upholding me, His everlasting arms beneath me.
When men try and reason out salvation apart from the Spirit of God, religion (self-effort) is always the result. This is because religion to the natural, earthly man appears the only reasonable way by which he can obtain the blessings of God. Multitudes of us have been blinded by a reasonable gospel. The only gospel with the power to open our eyes to the truth is the one that sounds like foolishness to the reasonable man:Christ and Him crucified (1 Corinthians 2:1-5). It is not a religion for the pious; it is a gospel for the powerless in a world of performance.
Throughout these pages you will find certain phrases appear again and again. To quote the apostle Paul, “I don't mind repeating what I have written before, and you will be safer if I do so.”[3] (Philippians 3:1). He who has ears, let him hear. Heaven couldn’t wait!
[1] New King James Version.
[2] New American Standard Bible.
[3] Good News Translation.
[1] New King James Version.
[2] New American Standard Bible.
[3] Good News Translation.
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About the Book
The only message that can bring great joy to all people, is the one that addresses the need of all people. A gospel for the clean cannot do this, but a gospel for the powerless can! We have got so used to preaching an earthly gospel (if you will give to God, then He will give to you) that we have settled for an earthly power; the power to motivate. But just because we place a beautiful worship session before a motivational talk, does not mean that the gospel has been preached. Any earthly orator can preach up a storm that stirs the flesh to action, but only the gospel of heaven still causes men to wonder, that even the wind and waves in their own hearts obey and are still. This is not a self-help book. It is not written to motivate you to somehow do better for God. The best gods this world can imagine are ones who remain in their heaven waiting for us to somehow work our way there by the strength of our own piety. But in Jesus Christ we saw a god not leaving us to save ourselves, but one who went down with our ship so that we could be raised in His, the fellowship of the Father and Son in the Spirit. His is a gospel for the powerless, not a religion for the pious, because Heaven couldn’t wait!
About the Author
Phelim Doherty lives in Derry in Northern Ireland. He is a veterinary surgeon and a church minister. He is the author of ‘The Father we never knew’ and you can find further teaching on the subjects covered in this book on the YouTube channel “River City Church Ireland’.