Page 90 - Heros of the Faith - Textbook w videos short

Vaud. The thrilling story of how God opened the way for them to move there and start the distinctive ministry
called 'L'Abri' (French for 'Shelter') is told in a book of that name.

They were determined to demonstrate several things in the ministry of L'Abri. First there was to be a true
outworking of trust and dependence on God in all circumstances - a demonstration that the unseen
supernatural world really exists. So, for example, they committed themselves to prayer, asking that God would
send the individuals to them that would find their ministry helpful, and that God would provide all necessary
resources of money, housing personnel and so on. They saw, and the work continues to see, real and powerful
answers because, as he would often say, 'God is there'. Francis' book 'True Spirituality' (again another superbly
helpful book) was born out of the desire to show what really living a Christian life looks like when we 'moment
by moment rely on the ministry of the Holy Spirit, who is given to us because of the finished work of Christ on
the cross'.

Then they wanted to demonstrate that Christianity has true and reasonable answers to the questions of the
human heart. He, Edith and the growing family of children (which in time included sons-in-law such as the
author Ranald Macaulay) found themselves inundated with young people that 'God sent'; people with dark
confusion in their minds and deep hurts and problems in their souls.

Too often Schaeffer was written off because others caricatured him as 'an intellectual' and not 'earthed' in real
life. Perhaps this was because some of his earliest books that were released to the general public ('The God
Who is There', 'Escape from Reason', and 'He is There and He is not Silent') grappled with the 'big ideas' that
hugely affect modern Western life. These ideas were not couched in conventional religious terms, or they were
ideas that most pastors would avoid. Yet young people in large numbers found someone who could talk their
language and could demonstrate that the Bible had answers that made sense, and which met our deepest
spiritual needs.

He wrote several books and preached many messages (these are still available through the L'Abri tape ministry),
that are great examples of Biblical exposition. One of my favorites is 'Joshua and the Flow of Biblical History'
which gives a flavor of what it must have been like to sit under his clear-thinking mind and pastorally warm
heart. The answers that he showed the Bible gives have stood several generations of evangelical Christians in
good stead as they in turn seek to help modern people understand the gospel and feel its power.

The Schaeffers also wanted to show that Christianity is not 'dehumanizing' but makes us what we should be -
'whole' people in true 'community' with one another. This community life will never be perfect (he used to say
"If it's perfection or nothing, it will always be nothing in this life"), but there can be real and substantial 'healing'
- in our innermost being, in our relationships with one another, with the wider world, and with the environment.
L'Abri and each local church/community of Christians should be like a 'pilot plant' which shows what life could
be like when the primary relationship - that with our Maker - is restored on the basis of 'the finished work of
Christ plus nothing'. Too often the church has ended up being nothing more than a conventional institution
where religiosity, and not vibrant Christianity, is dominant. His was a clarion call to true reformation and
genuine spirituality.

Later in life, Schaeffer turned in his speaking and writing to some of the big moral challenges of our age. Years
before others woke up to the problems, he could see where dominant secularism was taking whole cultures: to
the devaluing of human life both at its beginning and at its end; to a proud and defiant declaration of
'autonomy' in our sexuality; to a creeping compromise in the church about God's authoritative and trustworthy
revelation (what he called 'true truth' [true in all that it affirms about history and science and not just in the

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