As a teenager growing up with a face full of acne, I was an introverted person who withdrew into the world of secular pop music. I am not advocating that you do that also, because that is definitely not the abundant life He has for us :-)Anyway, one of the great ballads that was frequently heard on the airwaves in 1984 was a song by Foreigner called "I Want to Know What Love Is". It was taken from their album entitled "Agent Provocateur", which was the first time I came across this French-derived word.
Wikipedia defines "agent provocateur" as someone assigned to provoke the awakening of a new order within a group. This assignment can be either covert or overt and predominately represents the interests of others, outside the group.
This phrase was brought to my mind again (after 23 years!) when I listened to a sermon series entitled "Life in the New Covenant" by Pastor Age Aleskjaer, the pastor of Oslo Christian Center, which is the fastest-growing church in Norway.
In the 1st sermon based on Gal 4, "Cast Out the Slave Woman and her son", he tells us that we need get rid of the Law and the ministry of death (represented by Hagar and Ishmael) and only operated by Grace alone and the ministry of life (represented by Sarah and Isaac).
Pastor Age said that he grew up in a Lutheran setting (90% of Norway's Christians are Lutherans), and used to preach very fiery Mt Sinai law-based sermons. In one of his sermons entitled "You Cannot Fool God" where he spoke about God being aware of "hidden" sins, 80% of the congregation responded and went forward for prayer. The remaining 20% who stayed seated were made to feel condemned.
God then began to reveal to Him about where his emphasis had been misplaced, and he started to preach Mt Zion grace-based sermons. This made the other pastors in Norway "nervous" because they were afraid that it would give people the licence to sin. I would even go so far as to describe Pastor Age as an "agent provocateur" -- assigned by God to provoke an awakening of a new order within the group of Norwegian Christians".
The story about what happened in Norway reminds me of a similar situation here in Singapore. On a national scale, there is a sense of nervousness and wariness that pastors and the religious establishment have towards New Creation Church. Here in my own church, I have been removed as cell leader and treasurer because of my overt and unapologetic stance about grace teachings.
But I take comfort because we are all in good company. If we go back to Biblical times, we see how the religious teachers of that day felt nervous about the teachings and ministry of Jesus because it went against what they had been taught by Moses -- such as not needing to fast when others did, or allowing work to be done on the Sabbath, or allowing the woman caught in adultery to be let free instead of being stoned to death. Just imagine the reaction on their self-righteous faces when they saw Him touching a leper, or allowing a woman to wipe his feet with her hair!
In fact, I stumbled across an article about this same theme when reading a dear sister's blog about "Jesus being the first change agent".
May God raise up more "agents provocateurs" around the globe in these last days to reveal His true unadulterated gospel of grace and finished work on the cross. Amen?
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