Cotton End Baptist Church

Moving On

2009-10-15T07:32:00.000Z

You may or may not be aware that I have now moved from Cotton End to Upminster. This means that I will no longer be maintaining this blog.

I haven't decided whether to continue to post sermon outlines online, I'm not sure they have any real value, but I am of course continuing to blog at The View From Here.

The Cotton End Baptist Church blog has been moved to a new location here and has the contents of this blog archived there.

Thanks for visiting.

A Missionary People

2009-07-30T05:15:00.002Z

As we come to the end of our series looking at the church under construction it seems right that we remind ourselves of the primary purpose of the church. It was CS Lewis who once said that “the church exists for no other purpose but to draw men to Christ”. Tim Chester wrote: The gospel is good news: a message to proclaim, a truth to be taught, and a story to be told.
This understanding shapes us into a missionary people who follow a missionary God. We are made for a mission as Rick Warren would say.

That our God is a missionary God cannot be ignored. The church was born in mission and grows only through mission. Mission is an expression of God’s own heart for those he misses most, those who are far from him but never out of his reach. It was the Holy Spirit who called for Paul and Barnabas to be set apart for a special missionary task, but it also the Holy Spirit who empowers the church to continue in its mission.

A Missionary People

If we trace the life of the early church we see:

Spirit Inspired Movement

We need boundaries, we need frameworks, but we ought never to forget that we are a movement. Hinted at in the “go” language used by Jesus and expressed as the early church fulfils the words of Acts 1:8

Intentional Engagement

Paul engaged the culture in a dialogue.

Incarnational Influence

A third aspect of the missionary movement is that it is lived out among the people we are trying to reach.

How do we live as a missionary people?

Proximity

First of all we have to be near enough to touch lives and understand them.

Presence

Somehow we have to find ways to be both near the people we are reaching and among the people we are reaching.

Partnership

Partnership with God.

To become fully involved partners with God we need to:

Pray

The three-open prayer: open doors, open my mouth, open hearts

Prepare

Peter writes: Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have

Play your part

Share the story, live the story.

Find out what you do best and do it in a way that makes a difference.

Changing styles

2009-07-20T16:37:00.004Z

You may have noticed in the last post that I've presented the main bullet points with a brief introduction and conclusion without a lot of text in between. I thought this might be a more helpful way of sharing the outline in order to generate questions and personal exploration.

Previously I've left in much of my notes but of course the notes don't really tell you the whole story of what was said. This way I hope you can focus on the main ideas without the intrusion of my explanations!

This is a rather late change given that I'll be leaving Bedford in September and I'm not preaching in August. That means that next week, assuming I post my outline for the last in this current series, will be last post on this blog.

I'm not sure whether I'll continue to post sermon notes when we move or not, but if I do I'll put a link on this blog to the new one for anyone who might be interested in what I'm doing.

It may also be that someone at Cotton End chooses to take over putting notes and stories (I never really got around to doing the later) about what God is doing in rural Bedfordshire somewhere on the internet. Given that this blog comes under my personal blogger profile, it's likely that it will fall into a deep sleep before quietly shuffling off the radar. Or maybe it will get rebranded and relaucnhed later in the year. Who knows!

A Serving People

2009-07-20T16:26:00.002Z

Most of us would probably agree that we are called to serve in some way or another. Quite what it means and how we implement a lifestyle of serving, we’re not so sure. But something in us nags away at our selfish tendencies.

Ecclesiastes serves as a reminder about the ultimately unfulfilling nature of a life lived for self. Having tried accumulating great wealth he turned to power. When power and wealth failed to satisfy he tried pleasure, fame and celebrity. But they all left him with that empty feeling that caused him to declare that is was all “like chasing the wind”. Ultimately pointless and totally unfulfilling.

We were not created to chase the wind, pursue pleasure or accumulate wealth. We were created for a purpose, to join God in his great mission to bless the world, to reclaim, redeem and fix this broken world.

Mark 10:32-45

Based upon his own example he calls those who follow him to become like him in serving others rather than promoting self.

Why we don’t serve

#1 We get distracted

#2 We get demotivated

#3 We delegate to others

#4 We’re denied opportunities

Why we do serve

#1 It’s an expression of God’s mission

#2 It’s an expression of true freedom

#3 It’s about following Christ’s example

How we serve

#1 We serve Christ by serving others

#2 We serve wholeheartedly

#3 We serve in accordance with our gifts

Conclusion

Jim Wallis said: Find out what you do best and then do it in a way that makes a difference.

Service serves the purposes of God. It is a missionary endeavour.

If we are to follow Paul’s injunction in Romans 12 to overcome evil with good, then to do will surely involve acts of service.

A Worshipping People

2009-07-13T10:38:00.003Z

What exactly is worship? What makes becoming a living sacrifice, to quote Paul from Romans 12, an act of reasonable or logical worship?

In truth we might have to concede that the modern-day church has reduced worship to the bit of the service that involves singing. And yet we all probably recognise that worship ought to be much more than that. If we return to Romans 12 for a moment we discover that this reasonable or logical worship is a whole-life response to the mercies of God that we have experienced. Earlier in the letter Paul tells his readers that the natural outcome of the lifestyle choices everyone makes is that they rebel against God and therefore deserve to be judged and sentenced accordingly.

But heaven has a wonderful “however” clause. Rather than judging us as our actions deserve, God offers us the opportunity of forgiveness, the opportunity of a new beginning. Instead of dying because of our sin, we are invited to live because of Christ’s sacrifice. This is mercy. We do not get what we deserve. And because of that Paul says, “Present yourselves as living sacrifices as an act of worship.”

Worship then becomes an ongoing response to God in every circumstance of life.

In the Old Testament worship would be the sign of God’s successful deliverance of the people from slavery in Egypt. As individual characters we meet Jacob who worships God as his final days approach. Job worships God in response to personal disaster. David worships God as he comes to terms with the loss of a son and in celebration of victories.

In the highs and lows of life, worship is always a valid response.

Worship as a whole-life response

Six key elements

Adoration

Andrew Bonar described adoration as “silent wonder”. His point was simply this, that when we truly encounter God at the deepest level we find ourselves lost for words and able only to look at him in silent wonder. Adoration may begin for many as an act of naming God’s great attributes, but it ends up in this place of sheer amazement of who he is and what he has done for us.

Bill Hybels, in his book “Too busy not to pray” describes adoration as entering holy space. In so doing we set the tone for any prayer that follows. Adoration reminds us about God’s identity and inclination. As we adore God, we reinforce our understanding of who he is and what his mission is.

In Acts 4, adoration comes when the community acknowledge the sovereignty of God and his complete awareness of the situation. He is not thrown by anything that has happened.

Confession

Put simply, confession is about naming our faults. Telling God the truth about ourselves. You could be forgiven for thinking in this age of self-promotion that as we confess our faults we would undermine our confidence. Our self-confidence yes, but our confidence in God ought to increase. Confessing our faults is an act of self-exposure that forces us to rely no longer on our own abilities but to trust more fully in God’s great mercy.

John tells us in his first letter that “if we confess our sin, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sin and the cleanse us from all unrigtheousness.” In other words, if we are honest with God about our failures he will be true to his promise and his character and deal with it in mercy and grace.

Intercession

Recent trends in understanding prayer have been in danger of limiting intercessory prayer to those for whom it is considered their gift or their ministry. But intercession is or should be a part of all our lives. Paul tells Timothy about the importance of intercession when he urges that intercession and thanksgiving be made for everyone along with prayers and requests. (1Tim.2:1)

When we intercede for someone we pray the prayers they cannot pray or will not pray. We seek God’s mercy on their behalf. Whether it’s international, national or personal, intercession is a vital part of our worship together and individually.

Petition

If we believe that God wants to give, that he’s the kind of Father Jesus describes who does not give snakes and stones when we ask for bread and food, then petition, the process of asking, will be a part of our worship too. Not the kind of asking that wants more stuff for oneself, but the kind of asking that looks to see God honoured and at work in the life settings of oneself and those around you.

If you struggle with how to ask or what to ask for, then simply be honest with God. When I’m not sure I often start my prayer with, “Lord, I’m not sure what to ask for in this situation but here’s what is on my heart. This is my request, if it’s the wrong thing then show me.”

In Acts 4 it’s interesting that the petition made is not for protection but for boldness. To paraphrase Reggie McNeal, they ask God to show up and show off.

Thanksgiving

Paul says in 1Thess.5:18 that we should Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. Sometimes we think that feeling grateful is thanksgiving enough. It isn’t. Thanksgiving is an intentional act. We seek out the person to whom we feel grateful and say, “Thank you”. It’s a simple act but an important one. When Jesus healed 10 men of leprosy, a terrible disease that left people living as social outcasts, only one came back and said thank you. All of them were undoubtedly grateful, even profoundly grateful, but only one came back and said thank you. And it moved Jesus.

Thanksgiving is important.

Expectation

The last element is expectation. What are your expectation when you worship? Do you expect God to show up? Do you expect him to answer prayers?

In Acts 4 we see great expectations being expressed in the prayers and worship of the gathered community. The ask and expect God to act, not on their behalf but because that is the kind of God they understand him to be. One who is interested in and involved in the lives of ordinary people who follow him and who do not. Their expectation of God is that out of this situation mission will flow. That’s why they ask for boldness not protection, because they know that there is yet more to be done for the sake of the kingdom of God.

Conclusion

It seems that the more we look at the church under construction the more we see the intimate connection between the life of the church and the mission of God. Whether it’s Pentecost, pastoral care or worship, all of them seem to have a place in the missionary purposes of God.
So let’s commit ourselves to honest, living-sacrifice worship of our God and rejoice at what comes as a result because I believe that God honours this kind of worship in ways we are yet even to imagine.

You know my question, the one about why, when crises come do Christians stop praying and non-Christians start praying? Well perhaps the reason we stop is not a lack of faith or a failure of spirituality but a failure of perspective. Perhaps the reason we stop is because we don’t spend enough time in regular worship that involves adoration and confession, intercession and petition, thanksgiving and expectation.

Acts 17: A Prophetic People

2009-06-29T09:08:00.002Z

What does it mean to be a prophetic people?

For many people, prophecy is the process by which we discover things we could not ordinarily know, particularly about the future. But is that the sum total of the role of the prophet? In the Old Testament Moses is considered the first of the prophets. He spoke about God’s purpose to raise up a prophet like himself in the future, but the primary role Moses fulfilled was to call the people to wholehearted commitment in keeping the covenant.

If you were to trace out the prophetic patterns of the Old Testament you would come to the simple conclusion that God raised up the prophets to call the people to a life of obedience without compromise. From Moses to Malachi, from Habbakuk to Haggai, from Amos to Zephaniah, they all spoke of the need for 100% commitment to the cause of God.

And if, as we believe it to be true, Jesus is the fulfilment of the words of Moses, then he too follows this same line, calling the people back into a deep and fully devoted life of discipleship within the kingdom and purposes of God.

For the church to be considered a prophetic people therefore it must exhibit such a commitment as we follow the pattern of Jesus himself. There is no room for anything less. As Bill Hybels puts it:

Christ and the cause of Christ is the only thing worthy of our full devotion

Paul tells the Ephesians: We are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do the works he prepared in advance for us to do.

What will this commitment look like?

Exhibit a growing Christlikeness

Through the process of transformation and sanctification. We are, to use Paul’s language in Romans 8, to be conformed to the likeness of his Son

Alongside obedience without compromise, a prophetic people will also:

Share a common vision that brings clarity about God’s mission and plan.

Be a people committed to engaging with God’s truth through the careful study and application of the Bible

Carry a common burden as together we share God's heart for the lost and missing, for justice and integrity.

The church therefore becomes a prophetic people when it heralds the good news of Jesus Christ, when it challenges the society around it with God’s word and when it reveals the nature and character of God through the lifestyle and testimony of its people.

Acts 17

In Acts 17, as Paul wanders through the ancient city, he expresses the prophetic nature of the church in a number of ways.

#1 Distress over the state of the world

He doesn’t judge the people around him for the worship in which they indulge or the lifestyle choices they make. Rather he’s moved emotionally and spiritually over their lostness.

#2 Engages the culture in meaningful ways

Paul begins with where the people are on their spiritual journeys. In the synagogues, in the market place and at the debating forum. As Paul begins his famous speech at the areopagus, he doesn’t tell the people how wrong they are, he tells them that they are going in the right direction and he’s going to tell them how to get there! He even quotes their own poets to them.

#3 Reveals the truth

He tells them they carry the mark of God as his offspring. And he points out God’s demands for all people: repentance. Ignorance is no longer a defence. God has revealed his truth and we must choose our response to it.

All this he does in this wonderful cultural context whereby he invites his listeners to take the next logical step in their spiritual journey. It's almost as if he is saying, “You've come this far, why wouldn’t you step into God’s full truth?”

This is a far cry from some of the outreach the church has done in it’s history.

Conclusion

God has called us to be a prophetic people. A people transformed by his good news and conformed to his image. A people who will take this good news and declare it in every place possible. In market places, in religious places and even in the highest places.

To be a prophetic people means we will serve him wholeheartedly, declare his message persistently and life a life worthy of all this consistently.

Authentic Church

2009-06-21T11:56:00.002Z

Last weekend I was at Biggleswade Baptist Church. I shared with them some of what I want to share this morning. This is where I began.

I love the local church. I have a passion to see the local church become the church that Jesus intends to build. I believe that the fundamental shape of that church is missional, that it’s focus is not internal, meeting the needs of the gathered faithful, but external, influencing the world through sharing kingdom life.

I would not argue with those who quote the creed and say that the chief end of man is to worship God, but I would dispute that as a definition of the church. That, it seems to me, is where we have gone wrong. We have turned the missionary movement that we were meant to be into a gathered community of like-minded people who share their sense of collective disappointment that the rest of the world doesn’t realise how wrong it is.

I believe that the church must change.

Defining the task

We have our mission and purpose set out like this:

Our mission is to know God and to make God known

Our purpose is to love people into a deep and growing relationship with God through Jesus Christ

Together these two things help us understand the simple call and purpose of being the church. It is a call to live out our faith in relationship with God and as partners with him in his mission to the world. That mission is redemptive (restoring the broken relationship between humanity and God through the cross of Christ) and it’s active (God came looking, Jesus said, “Go!”) The activity of God in the world was made clear through his covenant with Abraham when he declared that he would bless Abraham in order that Abraham’s descendants would be a blessing to others.

Time and time again this principle of the people of God being a blessing to the world beyond the confines of the people of God is seen in the Old Testament story. Jonah is sent to Nineveh, Daniel serves in Babylon. Fast forward into the New Testament and although the Gospels make it clear that Jesus focussed his ministry on the Jewish people, he consistently blessed those beyond the nation of Israel. The Roman Centurion’s servant, the Syro-Phonecian woman’s daughter, and a Samaritan woman of questionable moral standards.

This is the kind of church I believe Jesus wants to build. A church made up of people who will partner with him on his mission to bless the world and share the message of his redemptive love and sacrifice.

Reshaping the church: Romans 12

In it’s context Romans 12 reflects the call on the church to be a worshipping, prophetic, caring, serving missionary people. All of this is based upon Paul’s earlier arguments that the world is broken and God has broken into this broken world with a plan to redeem it. It’s not a repair plan or a patch plan, it’s a radical reshaping and renewing plan.

In chapter 1 we’re told about the gospel, the power of God to save those who believe the core message.

In chapter 3 we are reminded that everyone has fallen short of God’s standard through the selfish rebellion that we call sin.

In chapter 4 Paul points to the example of Abraham whose faith in God was what mattered most. Not his position as the father of the nation of Israel but his attitude of faith that brought about the reward of God’s blessing.

In chapter 5 we’re reminded that God solved our problem while we were unaware of either the problem or the solution. Even as we rebelled against him, he poured out his love for us through his son Jesus Christ.

In chapter 6 we’re reminded that end product of our rebellion is death but the end product of God’s mission is life.

In chapter 7 Paul exposes the state we are in as he describes life caught between two worlds, the world of wanting to do the right thing and he world of doing the wrong thing.

In Chapter 8 he celebrates the release that comes through knowing God as he declares that there is now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.

In chapters 9-11 Paul talks about his passionate concern for Israel and his hope for its future.
And that all brings us to chapter 12 and Paul’s Therefore, brothers and sister I urge you, in view of God’s mercy, to present yourselves as living sacrifices.

In other words, based upon his argument so far, Paul challenges us to become a people who worship God exclusively, serve him unconditionally and partner with him wholeheartedly.

The Acts 2 framework

Acts chapter 2 presents us with a simple pattern for building a church that is totally committed to worshipping and serving God. It is characterised by four things (thanks to Willow Creek!):

Helping people far from God find faith

Growing mature, fully devoted followers of Jesus

Developing a Biblical community

Carrying a servant towel

Conclusion

There is only one question we must ask ourselves:

Are we willing to step up to the challenge of building this kind of church? Of partnering with God as he builds a church that bears his image and follows his pattern?

We will need to ask ourselves more questions as we go along. Questions like:

What kind of followers of Jesus Christ does God want to produce in this church?

What kind of experiences will we need to have in order to become those kinds of followers?

What kind of leaders will we need to help us become those kinds of followers?

A place to start is with an honest assessment of where we are as individual followers of Jesus.
This is not a pass or fail examination. This is an opportunity to look at where we are going and think about what we are going to do in order to get there.

I am the light of the world

2009-04-27T19:54:00.003Z

We all know the value of light. We have all probably faced a situation where we have thought to ourselves, “If only I had a torch handy.” If you like watching crime dramas, you may well have noticed how popular a torch is for those crime scene investigators. They seem to use them all the time to highlight the area they are focussing upon in their search for clues. Light is very important to us.

The focus for Jesus’ self-declaration, “I am the light of the world’ is a discussion about his personal testimony about himself and the validity of the claims he makes. This all takes place in John 8, and culminates in Jesus saying, “Before Abraham was born, I am”, which so enraged the Jews with whom he was debating that they picked up stones to stone him. We know from elsewhere in the Gospel that the reason they wanted to stone him was because they believed he was guilty of blasphemy because he was claiming to be God (John 10:33).

In the Old Testament David declares, my God turns my darkness into light, and, The Lord is my light and my salvation (Ps. 18:28, 27:1). Most famously perhaps are the words from Ps.119: Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light for my path.

Isaiah too uses the power of the symbol of light when he speaks prophetically about the coming of a new dawn: The people walking in darkness have seen a great light, on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned. (9:2). And later when he says: Arise, shine, for you light has come (60:1)

So, light is a powerful symbol of both the presence and the power of God. As John would later write in his first letter: God is light, in him is no darkness at all. (1 Jn.1:5)

Light in John

In John’s gospel, light features 16 times in the first 12 chapters. It is part of John’s opening prologue, it features in the discussion with Nicodemus and is used to describe the ministry of John. It is the self-declaration of Jesus in both chapter 8 and chapter 9 and is used by Jesus himself to talk about his own ministry in chapters 11 and 12.

Incidentally we ought also to remember that Jesus tells his close followers that they too are the light of the world and that Paul would call the Ephesian Christians to live as children of the light (Eph.5:8).

Light reveals God

In his prologue John tells us:

The true light was coming in to the world but would not be recognised. He would give to those who believed in him the right to become children of God. Light and life are linked and the light is more powerful than darkness because the darkness can neither understand nor overcome the light.

This is one of the fundamental things about light. It is light that transforms not darkness. You cannot turn on darkness, you can only turn of light. Darkness is defined by the lack of light not the presence of something more powerful than light. The light that John declared was coming into the world was the life that is expressed in the living Word who is God himself.

Light exposes sin

In his dialogue with Nicodemus, which rather interestingly happens “in darkness” because Nicodemus comes “at night”, Jesus speaks about the power of light to expose. It must have been an interesting discussion as Jesus talked about light and darkness and shadows in the flickering glow of an oil lamp. “Men love darkness,” He said, and the reason they do is because, “their deeds are evil”. The shadows are their natural habitat because the shadows can conceal the true nature of their actions. But light exposes them.

God does not cover up our sin. He exposes it. As Paul puts it: He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness.

Now it has to be said that when you truly think through the implications of that statement, it is far from comfortable. For who really wants their every dark thought and deed exposed to the glaring light of God’s holiness and scrutiny? No wonder we run towards the shadows rather than towards the light. And no wonder it hurts when we come into the light.

But once exposed, it is not God’s intention that we are left to deal with our sin on our own.

Light Liberates

The wonderful thing is that although everything is exposed, nothing is left hidden, the opportunity for freedom also becomes available. Stepping into the light is a choice to live by the truth and not according to a lie. The lie is that we’ll be okay, that somehow God will find a loophole in our favour that will allow us to go on living how we want and at the same time make us acceptable to himself.

Coming into the light is an acknowledgement that we can no longer go on living as if we know best and that our choices have no bearing on our eternal destiny. The light lets us see the real truth that we desperately need God’ forgiveness and grace in order to live in the light. Light sets us free, and when the son sets us free, we are free indeed.

Light offers life

Once we are free, we are free to enjoy a new life. As John would write later:
If we walk in the light, as he is in the light... The blood of Jesus purifies us from all sin.
In his prologue John makes this statement: In him was life and this life was the light of all people.

If you want to know life, then you need to step into the light.

How to walk in the light

I want to offer you two simple guidelines for walking in the light. I’m guessing that we could produce quite a list of things we’d all consider significant, but rather than doing that I want to make it as simple as possible.

Here are my two things. They are taken from Ephesians.

Walk worthy.
Imitate God.

To walk worthy is to ask the simple question: Does this honour God? Whatever decision you’re facing, whatever choices you’re about to make, whatever actions you are taking, ask yourself: Does this honour God?

To be an imitator of God is to ask yourself the other simple question: What would Jesus do?
Wearing a bracelet or necklace or carry a key ring with WWJD doesn’t count if you are not asking the question.

Conclusion

Jesus said: I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness. He called us to put our trust in the light while we have it. If you choose not to believe, not to trust, then you stay in the darkness. If you will trust Jesus Christ, then you step out of darkness into light,and in the light there is life, there is liberty and there is forgiveness.

So choose: Darkness or light. Which will it be for you?

I am the bread of life

2009-04-22T10:31:00.001Z

We’re beginning a short series of studies on the the so-called “I am “ sayings of Jesus in the gospel of John. There are seven of these sayings, eight if you include the debate Jesus has with the religious leaders in chapter 8 where he declares, “Before Abraham was, I am.”

The significance of “I am”

To you and I, “I am” is a part of our everyday language. I am hungry, I am thirsty, I am tired. Nothing unusual or significant in our use of the phrase. And to be honest there would be nothing unusual about its use in the time of Jesus either except for two things. Firstly you generally didn’t need the personal pronoun “I”. In the languages of the day, the verbs told you who was doing what. You didn’t need to say I or she,or they, the verb carried the person with it.
So you only ever used the pronoun if you wanted to emphasise something. Literally speaking, when Jesus said, “I am the bread of life,” he said “ I, I am the bread of the life.”

The second significant thing about “I am” is that it had strong religious connections for the Jewish people themselves. “I am” was the name by which God introduced himself to Moses, the archetypal prophet leader who spoke to God as one speaks to a friend. No one else matched up to Moses and he was revered amongst the people.

When Jesus used this term about himself the people and the religious leaders knew he was putting himself in place of Moses and even more amazingly he was claiming equality with God.
If it were not true, then it was blasphemy and it outraged the religious leaders of the day.

The story of chapter 6

It’s hard to miss the connection in chapter 6 between the feeding of the five thousand and the conversation about bread, but what has the story of Jesus walking on water got to do with it? Why introduce something so remarkable in the middle of a debate about bread and manna?
The key is Moses as God’s mediator of the old covenant and the status if Jesus as the new Moses, mediator of a new covenant.

For those who know the Biblical story, you will remember that Joshua served as aide to Moses. When he took over the role of leading the people he had to demonstrate that as God was with Moses so he was with Joshua. So, just as Moses had stretched out his staff over the sea and the waters had parted, so too Joshua stands on the bank of the Jordan and God expresses his power through Joshua as the Jordan dries up and the people cross over. Jesus takes authority over water to a new level. Rather than parting it, he walks on its surface. Feeding the five thousand and walking on the water set the scene for the conversation that is to follow.

A new Moses, a new Passover

Moses is mentioned 12 times in John’s gospel. To the Jewish people he was a very important part of their history. He was, as we’ve already mentioned, the key link between God and the people. It was Moses who brought the Ten Commandments, down the mountain, Moses who lead the people out of Egypt and Moses who delivered the design template for the special tent called the Tabernacle.

But John wants us to understand that things are changing because Jesus is here.

In chapter 1 he tells us that the Law came through Moses, rightly so, but now grace and truth have come through Jesus, God’s Son. Moses represents what God did, Jesus represents what God is doing.

The Passover

What did the Passover represent?

#1 Rescue

Israel had been slaves in Egypt and God had rescued them. They had escaped the oppressive regime of Pharaoh, wandered through the wilderness eventually reaching the land God promised them. For Egypt read Rome and the empire. The only difference was that the oppression was happening in their own land. A new Passover would surely bring a new rescue from a new oppressor.

What they didn’t appreciate was that the original exodus, the original escape plan was part of a much bigger picture in the plans of God.

#2 Redemption

The second key aspect of the events marking the first Passover is God’s act of redemption. As the culmination of the demonstration of God’s authority even over the Egyptians, there came the death of the firstborn. The only salvation available was through the blood of the Passover sacrifice, blood that bought back the life of all the firstborn of Israel or any Egyptian who joined them. This wasn’t about becoming an Jew, it was about trusting God.

A new Passover needed to offer not only escape from oppression but redemption from judgement.

Jesus the new Passover

Enter Jesus. Having fed 5,000 and having walked on water he demonstrates his authority over creation and he opens the door to a new rescue package a new offer of redemption. He reminds the people that it wasn’t Moses that gave them the bread form heaven but it was God who worked through Moses; it was God who gave the manna and it was God who had sent the new bread, the true bread from heaven.

“Give us this bread,” cries the crowd, “I, I am the bread,” declares Jesus. “ I am God’s rescue plan, I am your new redemption.”

Of course the religious people didn’t like what Jesus was saying. They grumble and argue, they even accuse Jesus of suggesting some form of cannibalism. But the point Jesus is making is that to benefit from the Passover you had to take part in the Passover. You couldn’t simply give intellectual assent to it. If the first generation of Israelites who escaped form Egypt had not daubed the door posts with the blood of the sacrificed lamb, if they had not taken part in the meal and eaten its meat, they would not have been rescued, they would not have been redeemed.

The Passover is not effective for those who only argue about its significance or debate the proper application of its elements. It works for those who share in it.

Jesus would make this clear when he shared his final Passover meal with the disciples. “This bread,” he would say, “represents my body”, This wine represents my blood.”

Why do we need a Passover?

You may be wondering what all this has to do with you. Do you feel like you need rescuing? Are you aware of a deeper need for redemption. Whether you feel it or not, the Bible says you most definitely need it. And the good news is that God didn’t wait, doesn’t wait, for you to notice your need, he made provision for you through the death and resurrection of Jesus himself.
We need a Passover because whether we recognise it or not, we need rescuing, we need redeeming. The Bible tells us that we’ve all messed up, we’ve all made mistakes, we’ve all failed God.

Jesus makes an interesting observation about how the people responded to him. He said that they were only really interested in getting enough to eat. They wanted all the benefits of his presence but without all the expectations and demands. They wanted cheap grace. Easy access to God’s provision. They were the kind of people who would praise God went things went well, but if things got hard, well maybe they’d look elsewhere.

But grace is not cheap. It was paid for with the highest price, the death of Jesus himself. The apostle Paul reminds us that we are bought with a price, the precious blood of Jesus himself.
When the crowd asked Jesus what they must do to respond appropriately to the grace of God, he told them they must believe in the one God sent, the bread of life, Jesus himself.

To believe is to share in the new Passover. Just as they had to trust in the redemptive value of the Passover lamb, they now needed to trust in the redemptive value of Jesus, “The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” as John described him.

Conclusion

Jesus makes the same offer to you and I that he made to the crowd that day. You can go on trusting the old way,you can go on trusting yourself, or you can choose to trust God’s new way.
If you choose the latter, then the steps are simple and straightforward.

Step one, acknowledge that you need rescuing.
Step two accept that only God can rescue you.
Step three, act in accordance with God’s plan.

Easter 2009

2009-04-12T16:52:00.002Z

We celebrated Easter this morning with an early communion and an All-Age Celebration.

Our all-Age event was a news cast from Rome's premier TV station VVV (Veni, Vidi, Vici) with host Gloria Evermore, roving reporter Max Amillion in Jerusalem, and Fiona Brucia in the studio.

The whole thing went really well.

Love is not an emotion

2009-03-17T18:03:00.002Z

We’ve discovered, over the last 10 weeks or so, what love is and what love is not. We’ve found out that love is the best way to live, the highest call upon the church and the ultimate expression of God at work in us and through us. We’ve learnt that love is not the number one gift but that it stands apart from the gifts as the way of life of the true follower of Jesus.

We’ve learnt that love is crucial, generous, has nothing to prove, no hidden agenda at work and no axe to grind. We know that love comes first from God (1 John 4), that Jesus commanded it as the best expression of our discipleship (John 13) and that it is one characteristic of the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5). We know too that the greatest expression of love is seen when someone lays down their life for their friends (John 15), and that we have seen and experienced this when Jesus laid down his life for us.

In Romans 13, Paul sums up the importance of love by declaring it to be the fulfilment of the Law. In other words love achieves everything the law set out to achieve. Earlier in the same letter he points out that Jesus is also the end of the law, the culmination of it all. Jesus and love, both expressions of the fulfilment of the law.

Isn’t it interesting that when Jesus either asked or was asked what the greatest commandment was, the answer was all about love. Love the Lord your God.. Love your neighbour.

Love sums up the law. But if the law is now fulfilled by Christ, and in Christ. If it is satisfied through his sacrifice. And if the law no longer rules over us, then what outward sign of our obedience do we have?

For the church in Corinth the answer seemed to lie in the secret knowledge we possess or the gifts we exercise. Position and status replace legal observance as the discriminating mark of those who rank higher in the kingdom.

In 1 Corinthians 13, Paul reasserts the primacy of love as the true mark without denying the principles of gifts in their proper place.

Love grows us up!

As Paul draws this passage about love to a close, he uses a series of images and metaphors to reinforce the primacy of love.

Firstly he talks about those things that will come to their natural end. Prophecy will cease, tongues will be stilled and knowledge will pass away. All the things that the Corinthian Christians have made most important will, in the end, disappear. It is of course in this context that Paul introduces the language of imperfection and perfection. A phrase that has caused many questions to be asked. At the heart of Paul’s use of these terms is the idea of incompleteness. We know in part, we prophesy in part. But a day is coming when God will bring all things to completion and on that day we will know fully, see clearly and be fully known. Clearly that day has not yet arrived!

Paul’s second image is about moving from childhood to maturity. Again the picture is of a transition from incomplete to fully formed. His point here is not that spiritual gifts are immature but rather that the Corinthian Christians, with their over-zealous focus on gifts have failed to come to a mature appreciation for and application of the gifts. They have not yet grown up in their understanding. It has produced a playground mentality: “My gift is better than your gift”, a kind of Top Trumps game being played out in the life of the church.

The grown up church certainly needs the gifts, but it also needs to recognise that the gifts are only “partial”. They are not the full story. The gifts operate in the present, love is forever. To rediscover spiritual gifts is to rediscover their true place and value in the life of the church. Not to return to a less mature approach to being the church.

Thirdly he speaks about seeing clearly against seeing unclearly. Again this image reinforces Paul’s point that we are in fact all immature when we put ourselves in the context of eternity. Certainly none of us would put ourselves in the category of “perfect”.

All three images remind us that things change, that we are on a journey. But the one thing that doesn’t change is love. Love outlasts spiritual gifts. Gifts have their place in the life of the church, but they are not the most important thing. I don’t think that Paul is suggesting that a preoccupation with spiritual gifts is a sign of immaturity and that if we are mature Christians we should have left these things behind by now.

In chapter 12 he has clearly made his case for the value of spiritual gifts in the life of the church. The problem in Corinth was that they were speaking, thinking and reasoning as if spiritual gifts, knowledge and wisdom were to be more highly valued than anything else. The consequence of this was that there were divisions among them.

Paul’s point is rather that if you have all the gifts, no matter how great they are, all you have is something that will one day pass away. And when that day comes you will be left incomplete.

Signs of maturity

Love becomes the pre-eminent way to live and the testimony to our spiritual maturity. It is, according to Colossians, the virtue that binds all others together (3:14). But let’s take the image of the child, the immature young of the species so-to-speak, and reflect on maturity for a moment.

Paul says that when we are children we speak, think and reason like children. When we grow up, we put childish ways behind us. This is not about rejecting the learning experiences of childhood but about the process of coming to maturity. How does Christian maturity impact these three areas?

How we talk

James reminds us that the tongue can be difficult to control. It can be like a spark that sets light to a forest. It needs monitoring.

It’s fascinating to watch a child learn to speak. Sounds become words, words build into a vocabulary, sentences begin to emerge. Without being told, they experiment with creating tenses, not that they know that’s what they are doing, but they do it.

We’re wonderfully impressed when they use their first word, say please and thank you for the first time, and maybe, just maybe, rather pleased when they produce their first example of an adverb used in a correctly constructed imperfect tense! Or maybe that’s just me!

As Christians we learn a new language. In our context of 1 Cor.13 we could say we learn a new language of love. And it takes time. But if learnt properly it will affect the way we talk. We will learn to control our speech, to not say that which will hurt and wound, but instead to say that which builds up and encourages. We “speak the truth in love” (Eph. 4:15) and we refuse to allow “unwholesome talk” to be our pattern. (Eph.4:29)

Prov. 16:23 A wise man’s heart guides his mouth, and his lips promote instruction

How we think

In Philippians 4 Paul encourages his readers to think about those things that are noble and pure.

Finally, dear brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable–if anything is excellent or praiseworthy–think about such things.

And in 2Cor. 10:5 he urges us to take captive every thought and make it obedient to Christ.

How we reason

Perhaps the most preoccupying idea for many children is simply this: Is it fair? Is his piece of cake bigger than my piece of cake? Has she had a longer turn on the swing that I have? Why can’t I have what I want?

As we grow up however, we discover that fairness is not the issue, or at least ought not to be the issue uppermost in our minds. We reason differently. Isaiah Spoke of a generation that would see with perceiving, hear without understanding, and as a result would be hard hearted. That's not a description to which any us aspire!

Conclusion

Perhaps Paul’s challenge to the church in Corinth was to become mature. To get things in their right perspective and to begin to live out the good news more than they preached the good news.

When we come to Christ we begin to think differently, talk differently and reason differently.
All this we do, not in the context of what’s best for me, but in the context of what’s best for everyone.

No posts for a while

2009-03-09T06:47:00.002Z

Just in case you thought we'd stopped posting outlines....

On Feb. 22nd we had a visiting speaker from Rope (Relief for Oppressed People Everywhere), March 1st was our All-Age Celebration and on The 8th March we had another visiting preacher.

Next week I'm back on the platform, so the outline should appear here.

Love has no axe to grind

2009-02-17T12:27:00.003Z

If you do a quick search on the internet for revenge you will discover some interesting things. You will of course find a definition for revenge. You might even find a film with revenge in the title. But what you will definitely find are a websites designed to help you exact revenge on those by whom you have been hurt.

Take “The Revenge Lady” for example. Revenge Lady gives advice on using the ancient art of revenge to bring humor and happiness back to your life. There is even a revenge quiz so that you can find out if revenge is right for you! And in case you were thinking it was limited to ladies, there is also revengeguy.com offering to help you get even, pull one over, take revenge against those that have wronged you.

Love has no axe to grind

Anger is the enemy of love.

Man’s anger does not bring about the righteous life God desires Jas.1:20

Jesus said that anger was a serious business. In the Sermon on the Mount he said that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgement just as anyone guilty of murder. Why does Jesus take anger so seriously? What does anger do to us?

It causes us to act unwisely. Proverbs 29 says: A fool gives full vent to his anger, but a wise man keeps himself under control.

It creates conflict and disagreements. It promotes friction. An angry man stirs up dissension

It generates a need for revenge on those we see as our enemies. But Jesus calls us to bless those who persecute us and pray for our enemies. We are to walk the extra mile, give up our cloak, and turn the other cheek. Revenge has no place in the way of love.

Anger turns us into fools. Eccl. 7:9 Do not be quickly provoked in your spirit, for anger resides in the lap of fools.

Managing anger

The simple truth is that we all get angry. Paul doesn’t say that love doesn’t get angry, he says that love is not easily angered. Remember patience? Patience is a long fuse.

Secondly we have, according to Paul in 2 Corinthians (5:18-19), a ministry and message of reconciliation. Reconciliation comes through the cross of Jesus, By his death we are reconciled with God and through his death we can be reconciled to each other. Not only this, but we can take this reconciliation to the world around us by sharing the message of Jesus with our angry, vengeful society.

Thirdly, we live out reconciliation. In the words of Jesus, we forgive those who have sinned against us.

Proverbs 17:9 He who covers over an offence promotes love, but whoever repeats the matter separates close friends.

Fourthly we must be ruthless in seeking to remove anger from our lives. In both Colossians and Ephesians Paul tells us simply to rid ourselves of anger.

Love keeps no record of wrongs

Why is it that we find keeping a record of the wrong done to us so much easier than remembering the blessings? I think we keep a record of wrongs in order to protect ourselves. Love is painful. Love is vulnerable and because of this we need some security and that comes through making sure we have reasons to withhold love. That’s a record of wrongs. It’s a list of why we shouldn’t love, why we shouldn’t forgive, why we shouldn’t be reconciled.

The problem with a wrong remembered is that we have to decide what the exchange rate is between a wrong and a right. Is it two to one, three, or more? How many times must the offender ask forgiveness, how many trustworthy things must they do before the debt is paid?
And yet of course we know that if God did this to us, then we could never pay the debt of all our wrongs.

Keeping a record of wrongs destroys friendships, ruins relationships, poisons parenting, undermines marriages, generates bitterness and harbours resentment. And what’s worse is that it can actually make you physically ill.

Take the case of the wife who went to the doctor and discovered that she had an ulcer. He wasn’t sure what the root cause was but suggested that it might be wise to seek the help of a counsellor.

On arrival in the counsellors office she placed on their desk an inch thick dossier of double-sided typed pages. The dossier contained a carefully chronicled list of all the wrongs she felt her husband had committed in their 13 year marriage. All of sudden the root cause of her ulcer became apparent.

You can usually tell when someone is a keeper of records, as one observer once pointed out: in an argument the keeper of records of wrongs usually get historical not hysterical.

Paul’s solution to keeping records is not simply to forget stuff, although choosing to put something away in the past is an important part of the process. In 1Corinthians 13 Paul offers us a positive alternative. We are to love in a way that always protects, always trusts, always hopes and always perseveres.

Love assumes the best about others. If someone inadvertently offends you, you choose to believe the offence was unintentional. If someone seeks to harm you, you "bear all things", forgiving unconditionally. If a positive light can be shed on a difficult encounter, you grasp it. If someone continually provokes you, you "endure all things". You never lose hope in the ones you love. You practice the same unconditional love towards others that Christ gives you.

From Day-by-Day

Love does not delight in evil

Anger and record keeping inevitably lead to the same place. A place where we become proud and self-righteous to the point that we take pleasure in the ill that befalls others. But love does not delight in evil: If love always thinks the best, always seeks to protect, to hope to persevere, then it cannot by its nature rejoice in that which is evil. To delight in evil is to take pleasure in someone else’s misfortune, to draw strength from another’s failure, to feel good when you get even with those who have wronged you.

None of this is consistent with the lifestyle to which we aspire as fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ.

And the more you delight in evil the less you will rejoice in truth. The more you take pleasure in the pain of others the less you will be drawn towards grace. You will want it for yourself, but it will always be something that deep-down you believe you deserve.

You will say to yourself, “I’m not as bad as this person or that person.” A delight in evil leads inevitably to a presumption of forgiveness. “Surely God will forgive me because my sins are nothing compared to the sins of so many others.”

But grace doesn’t work this way. Grace is not about how much you deserve it, it’s all about how much you don’t deserve it.

Perhaps the world experiences grace through the love it experiences through Christians
Philip Yancey, in his book What’s so Amazing about Grace, tells the story about a conversation one of his friend’s overheard on their daily commute. One passenger was reading the book The Road Less Travelled.

“What are you reading?” asked the neighbour.

“A book a friend gave me. She said it changed her life.”

“Oh. What’s it about?”

“I’m not sure. Some sort of guide to life. I haven’t got very far yet.” She began flipping through the book. “Here are the chapter titles: ‘Discipline, Love, grace,…’”

The man stopped her. “What’s grace?”

“I don’t know, I haven’t got to Grace yet.”

Perhaps our friends, neighbours, colleagues simply haven't got to grace yet and we're are the ones who can show them the way. But we can only do that when we stop grinding axes. If you’re not grinding an axe what are you doing?

In the OT the prophets tell the people that a day is coming when weapons of war will be turned in to farming implements. Now I know an axe is not a weapon of war as such, but the image caught my imagination.

If we’re not grinding an axe ready to take revenge, because that’s why we grind our axes, then we’re turning them into things that will nurture rather than destroy. Not only do we not do these things–envy, boast, get angry, delight in evil and record all wrongs no matter how small, but we do the exact opposite. We rejoice in truth, we forgive wrongs done to us, we bring peace.

In short we live grace.

Love has no hidden agenda

2009-02-13T07:13:00.002Z

I used to have a calendar with cartoons, one for each day. One of them was a cartoon of a minister sitting on the sofa looking at a large, complicated year planner. His wife (it happens to be a male minister) says to him, “Don’t worry dear, just remember that God loves and everyone else has a plan for your life!” But it’s not only the agendas that other people might have for us that can deflect us. We can have what John Ortberg calls our shadow mission, our hidden agenda.

Paul makes it very clear that to live by the way of love is to dance to a different beat, to walk to a different pattern, to live to a different agenda, It is a way of life that is not meant to moulded and shaped by any other agenda than the agenda of the kingdom of God expressed through the life of the disciples if Jesus. It is a way of life that should reshape and challenge that which the world may see as normal, offering a new normality, a more excellent way.

The way of love subverts the agenda of a selfish, greedy, sometimes irresponsible agenda with an agenda of generosity, contentment and sacrifice. The way of love, according to Paul always trust, always perseveres, always protects. But to follow this new kingdom agenda will mean that we must reject the alternatives. Something easier said than done.

The alternative agendas are subtle. We are so used to living in the world’s normality that we find it hard to recognise the false agendas from the true agenda of Jesus. So we adjust the agenda of the kingdom to fit the agenda of the world around us. For example, Jesus said, “Love your enemies” but we adjust his call in order to meet our need for security.

How then do we recognise the false from the true? How do we choose between competing agendas?

Agendas Jesus refused to follow

Political Agendas
Restoring the kingdom
Religious Agendas
The Pharisees and the Sadducees
Spiritual Agendas
The temptations
Self-fulfilment: make bread for yourself
Self-promotion: Worship me and I will give you power
Self-Preservation: Throw yourself down and God will save you.
Social Agendas
Stay with us

Handling Competing Agenda

Prayer
Perception: Discerning what is going on around us, and in us.
Priorities: Seek first the kingdom
Position: Following Jesus not leading

What is my agenda?

Consumer: typified by only worshipping God when things go well, only serving God when the cost is manageable, only following Jesus when it’s not too demanding.

My shadow mission: In public generous, forgiving and loving. In private mean, spiteful and self-centred.

Jesus calls us to an agenda of:

Surrender: “Here I am Lord, send me”
Commitment: "Take my life and let it be..."

Conclusion

Have you checked your agenda recently?

Have you taken a good, long look at your priorities? Are they more about you, your ambitions, your desires, than they are about following Jesus wholeheartedly, seeking his priorities for your life rather than your own.

Perhaps you have never prioritised the kingdom of God in your life. Perhaps the way of love has escaped you because you have never discovered God’s love for you in the first place. Perhaps today you need to step into that love in order that you might begin to live in the way of love.

Jesus calls us to reject any agenda that is not the kingdom agenda, to choose one master to love an to serve.

You alone can make that choice.

Love is patient and kind

2009-01-29T08:04:00.002Z

Having set out love as the way of life, modelled on the pattern of Jesus and fulfilling the great commandment to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind, we now begin to take a closer look at Paul’s great description of the attributes of love. Love is, of course, the expression of the work of the Spirit in us. It’s no surprise therefore that we find parallels elsewhere in the New Testament. In Galatians 5 we see the fruit of the Spirit as love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
Peter encourages his readers to add to your faith, goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love. His reason for this is that if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Put simply: knowing a lot about Jesus is no substitute for knowing him and following him wholeheartedly.

So, if we want to walk in the way of love, to follow the more excellent way Paul talk about, what will that way look like?

Love is patient, love is kind

The first two characteristics Paul tells us about are patience and kindness. All that follows flows from these two attributes.

Patience is about we respond, how we react to people, circumstances, and events around. It is essentially passive. We respond with patience.

Kindness is about we act, it’s our active response to those same things.

It’s hard to imagine being able always to act with kindness if w fail to react with patience. I don’t know about you, but I can’t ever remember being on the receiving end of angry kindness.
Kindness and patience are therefore two key characteristics of a Christlike response to any situation. Paul, in 2 Corinthians goes so far as to say that we prove we are God’s servants when we display patience and kindness among other traits.

Patience

What does Paul mean by patience?

We live in an angry society. Road rage, trolley rage, everything we do seems to have degrees of rage associated with it. But patience isn’t just the simple opposite of anger. Patience is a good translation of the Greek word Paul uses. It means to be long suffering, long-tempered. You might even say that love has a long fuse.

The advantage of a long fuse is that you can put it out before the explosion happens. It’s always useful, for example, that if the bad guys trap you in a mine and intend to blow you up inside it, that they use a nice long fuse so tat you have time to escape the poorly tied ropes, free yourself, and blow out the fuse.

And maybe it’s not just when trapped in an old mine that you need a long, slow fuse.

To be slow to anger is to follow the example of God himself who is regularly described in the Old Testament as slow to anger and abounding in love. Is it possible that if we are to abound in love, to live out Paul’s more excellent way, then the first thing we will need is patience?

Proverbs 15:18: A hot-tempered man stirs up dissension, but a patient man calms a quarrel.

Not only is patience slow to get angry, it is also slow to accuse.

Prov. 19:11 says: A person’s wisdom yields patience; it is to one’s glory to overlook an offence.

Remember how quick Adam was to blame Eve and Eve to blame the serpent? Little patience, quick to accuse and very slow to take responsibility. Slowness demands that we take the time to think and then to think again before we start to throw accusations around the place.

Thirdly, patience is slow to assume.

Have you noticed how worked up we get when we make assumptions? Assumptions lead to conclusions that often wrong and inaccurate. Patience is slow to assume. Do you assume someone doesn’t care because they don’t call? Do you assume no one has noticed because they haven’t commented? Have you assumed someone has understood just because you’ve told them? Assumption are dangerous things, especially when made quickly.

So, patience is slow, but it is also submissive.

Heb.6:15 tells us that Abraham waited patiently and in the end he saw the promise fulfilled. David said: I waited patiently for the Lord, and he answered me. (Psalm 40)

Kindness

Kindness is how we act when we’ve been patient. Kindness never flows from anger. Kindness honours others, it encourages them, it blesses. Proverbs tells us that a kind or gentle word turns away anger, and that it cheers the anxious heart; Kind words are like honey–sweet to the soul and healthy for the body

Kindness as outreach

Kindness provides opportunities to do what Steve Sjogren calls “Low risk, high grace” outreach. As we serve people with kindness we:

Offer them a glimpse of the kindness of God at work through his people
We break down the stereotype of evangelical Christians as those who simply stand in judgement.
We create opportunities to share our story of how we have experienced the kindness of God through Jesus Christ.
Allow our hearts to be softened towards those whom Jesus misses most. The lost and missing no longer are objects of God’s anger and judgement but people whom he loves and to whom he wants to show mercy and grace.

Kindness becomes our strategy for breaking up the unploughed ground in readiness for the seed of the good news about Jesus to penetrate and take root, eventually producing fruit for the kingdom of God.

Conclusion

These first two attributes of love, patience and kindness, are crucial if we are going to make any headway with what follows. Without patience, love will fail, without patience, love will not persevere. Without kindness, envy can easily take root as we become selfish rather than generous. And so it goes on.

So get to work on your patience, manage your anger, seek God’s help to extend your patience and kindness so that he is honoured and kingdom grows through you.

After all Jesus said that if we bear much fruit then the Father is glorified, and who doesn’t want to glorify the Father?

Love is Crucial

2009-01-19T08:16:00.002Z

If love is the “Killer App” then it makes sense that it is central, crucial to becoming a whole-hearted follower of Jesus Christ. He loved, and he called those who follow him to love like he did.

The opening verses of chapter 13 have a regular refrain to them that goes like this: If I do not have love, then I do not have anything. I have nothing to offer, nothing to gain, and I am in fact nothing at all. Love makes me who I am in Christ. Tongues, prophecy and miracles count for nothing. Self-sacrifice has no value. Love is the most excellent way.

The clanging cymbal and noisy gong would be familiar aspects of pagan worship rituals. Is Paul saying that without love supernatural gifts are little more use than pagan worship?

But what is love?

There are three Greek words typically translated love. In classical literature, Two are used as synonyms but in the NT they are used to mean two different things. One is used to describe the general love shared by people. Family love, societal love. It’s the word which often provides us with part of a word like anglophile, or hydrophile and Philadelphia (lit. brotherly love). The other word came to be used in the NT to describe God’s love for us and our love for God. It’s used here in 1Cor.13 for the “way of love” of which Paul speaks. If you hear preachers talk about agape love, this is what they are talking about.

The Corinthian question

Perhaps the critical question that was being asked by the Christians in Corinth was the kind of question we still ask today. We might be more subtle about it, but I suspect we still want to know the answer to the same question.

This is the question: What the best indicator of my spirituality?

Perhaps the question is even more subtle: What’s the least I need to do or demonstrate in order to show that I’m sufficiently spiritual to be accepted into heaven?

Now we would never say that out loud, but our human tendency to do the minimum required gives away our deep seated values. When we walk this path we are using Jesus to get to heaven and little else. He is not the way of life, he’s simply providing safe passage. In Corinth this leads them to a wrong emphasis on spiritual gifts as the key to spirituality. Whether it was tongues or prophecy, faith or altruism or even self-sacrifice, what we do for God was the heart of their search not who we are in Christ.

Wrong emphases:

Create selfish behaviour
Mislead us
Make the less important the most important
Rob us of possibilities.

Because we are always measuring ourselves against the wrong criteria we end up in the wrong place with God and with each other. In Corinth, tongues, prophecy, self-sacrifice, even faith had superseded love as the ultimate prize.

Are we in danger of the same thing happening to us? Perhaps not over these issues, but what about other things?

Things like busyness: “I’m so busy doing God’s work, that must make me spiritual”

Zeal: “I’m so committed to making sure we’re always teaching unequivocal truth, that must make me spiritual”.

Evangelism: “I’m always telling people how to get right with God, that must make me spiritual”

Worship: “I know all the words to the songs in the latest Spring Harvest book, that must surely make me spiritual”

The truth is that none of these are the true sign of spirituality. Only love is that sign. That’s why it’s crucial.

The way of love and the grace of God

John Ortberg wrote: Living in grace, remembering grace, keeps love alive.

Grace is key to understanding the way of love because it is by grace that we are saved, by grace that we are made alive and by grace that we are loved. We deserve none of these things. Because of rebellion towards God we do not deserve the live (in the day that you eat of its fruit you shall surely die, Gen. 2, 3). We are under judgement for sin.

Because we’ve rejected God’s way, we do not deserve to be loved let alone rescued.

But we are all three. Loved, saved and alive.

Grace makes no sense to our rule dominated, law driven lives. But to God it makes perfect sense. It was the only way we were going to be set free. And so God did for us what we could not do for ourselves and gives to us what we cannot get for ourselves.

The way of love is the sign of true spirituality because it’s the way of grace and that’s the way of God.

Conclusion

The things the Corinthian church prized as signs of true spirituality were no signs at all. But we are not the Corinthian church. But are we better? What do we prize of a sign of spirituality that is in fact nothing of the sort? Do we prize more highly a spiritual gift or ministry.

What would church look like of we prized most highly the way of love as the sign of true, deep, life-transformed spirituality? What would that church look like?

Love is: "The Killer App"

2009-01-15T18:05:00.001Z

Tim Sanders, once of Yahoo, wrote a book called "Love is the killer app" His basic point was that looking after No.1 is not the best way to get ahead. The Bible has a lot to say about love. God’s relationship with humanity is predicated upon his love for us. Love, according to the apostle Paul is the only debt that should remain outstanding and the first characteristic of the fruit of the Spirit in our lives (Rom.13 Gal.5). The writer to the Hebrews (10:24) exhorts us to consider how we can stir one another up to love and good works, and Peter (1:22 & 4:8) twice tells his readers to love one another deeply. Returning to Paul, love surpasses knowledge because knowledge puffs up but love builds up (1Cor.8:1) and is the fulfilment of the law (Rom.13 again). In the end, Paul has one way to describe love:

And now I will show you the most excellent way

Corinth

Corinth was an important city for both the Greek and Roman Empires. It had a reputation as one of the most culturally diverse cities of its time. It’s location made it important as a trade route, offering an easier land route across Greece rather than the more treacherous sea route around the coast. The Corinthian games were second only to the Olympic Games of Athens.

Cultural and religious diversity produced a society measured by the the philosophy you followed, the teacher with whom you associated yourself or the religion you adopted. The problems and challenges that the church in Corinth faced are a reflection of the issues that probably existed within Corinthian culture.

The Letter

1 Corinthians is essentially a letter to a church made up of people who are struggling to get along and set aside their social/ cultural background. Chapter 13 sets out the value of a single virtue, love. With their Roman and Greek philosophical culture, the corinthians would be well used to this kind of narrative. What would have taken them by surprise is the earthy practical nature of Paul’s argument when compared to the ethereal propositions of philosophical debate and discussion.

Putting Chapter 13 in it’s context

In chapter 12 Paul has made his case for a theological framework for correctly understanding the nature and purpose of a diversity of spiritual gifts. In chapter 14, Paul will taken up this line of discussion again. Chapter 13 is a digression with a purpose. If, as is generally agreed, the Corinthian Christians had become fixated on tongues as the only true sign of spirituality, and ranking themselves according to their gifts, Paul is correcting their misunderstanding by pointing out that all gifts are equal in that they all come from God, given in accordance with his plan and for use in the whole body. No one gift is greater than another, no one person therefore is greater than another. But if the gifts are equal, what is their purpose? Paul’s answer is that they are intended to build up the whole body. If that’s the case, then how do you use them to do that?

Chapters 12 & 14 set out the 'how' for correctly using the gifts. Chapter 13 is Paul’s answer to the question: What’s my motivation? How ever you use the gifts it must be in the context of love, of seeking to build each other up rather than promote oneself. “The more excellent way” is not an alternative to gifts, but the true context for them. Love becomes the proper framework in which to explore, exercise and eagerly desire the gifts of the Spirit. Love defines and directs the Christian life.

1Cor.13 and the NT

Where the Sermon on the Mount is an exposition of the Ten Commandments, the Law from God, 1Cor.13 is “a description of that law fulfilled”

Just Love p11

RT Kendal Just Love identifies three key attributes of 1Cor.13

Demonstration of love
Description of love
Direction love gives to life

For John Wesley, 1Cor. 13 was about the necessity of love, the nature of love and the duration of love.

What Paul doesn’t offer is a sentimentalised view of love. This isn’t in praise of an unattainable virtue, but a realistic expression of a better way to live. The best way to live.

The best way to live

The Corinthian church had some big questions. Among those questions was the issue of spirituality. What is true spirituality? Is it in hidden in special knowledge, is it rooted in which apostle baptised you? Is it in spiritual gifts or patterns of worship, styles of dress? Does it have any bearing on lifestyle or is this physical life irrelevant?

Love is the way to live, to learn, to lead, to laugh and to let things be.

Have you ever wondered how to describe the fullness of life Jesus promised? It’s the way of love Paul describes.

Corinth was a city dedicated to Venus (Aphrodite), the goddess of love. But Paul’s way of love was very different to the normal expressions of love in this city. Love was not naturally linked to self-denial and self-sacrifice, it was purely physical, a matter of pleasure, of self-fulfilment for many Corinthians.

I suspect that many of the things Paul has to say about love are exact opposites of how life was being done in the city and reflected in the church at Corinth. Think about it for a moment, there were law suits but love, Paul says, keeps no record of wrongs; relationship problems, but love perseveres; issues with pride, but love is not proud, doesn’t envy or boast and isn’t self-seeking.
Paul’s picture must have been quite a challenge.

Love is no optional extra that you add on to faith, doctrine and practice.

What’s the contrast?

What’s the contrast to the way of love? If love is the most excellent way, or the more excellent way, then what are the alternatives?

The selfish way. Me first others second
The self promotional way
The suspicious way
Form, image, reputation before heart
The secret knowledge way
The right doctrine way
The best gift way

The duration of this way

How long does this way of life go on? Put simply, it will go on way past all the alternatives. One day tongues will be irrelevant, prophecy not required, knowledge unnecessary. But love will last forever. Not sentimentally as we’ve already said, but as an eternal context for life lived to the full.

Conclusion

This then is the lifestyle to which we aspire. A lifestyle not determined nor defined by what gifts we have, what connections we have or what things we have learnt. Defined rather by how we have lived towards others.

Have we loved them as Jesus has loved us?

Covenant 2009

2009-01-08T18:15:00.000Z

Introduction

In both Old and New Testaments the concept of covenant takes a central role. Through covenant, God established a relationship with his people. Early in their history Baptists sought to express their relationship with God and with each other in terms of a covenanted relationship. They promised to walk together as disciples and to watch over each other in prayer.

As we gather today we will renew our commitment to do the same. A commitment to love God wholeheartedly and to love others as we want to be loved.

We are called to be a worshipping community, offering all to God in prayer.
We are called to be a missionary community, making known the redeeming love of God.
We are called to be a sacrificial community, generously giving from all that God has given us.
We are called to be an inclusive community, sharing the hospitality of God’s Kingdom with all.
We are called to be a prophetic community, challenging powers that oppress and corrupt

As a Gospel people, let us covenant together before God and each other:

The covenant we share

As part of our covenant together we share a common vision to build a great church that honours and glorifies God; built on biblical principles; teaching biblical truth; influencing its community; where personal relationships are deep.

We share a common purpose to love people into a deep and growing relationship with God through Jesus Christ, and we share a common mission to know God and to make God known.
We share a common desire: to share God’s heart for the marginalised and oppressed.

All this is expressed through our life together as we gather for worship, ministry and mission.

We are: A people called and set apart by God, who gather together to worship him, serve each other and reach out to the world. We do not do this alone, but together as the community of faith.

Together we commit ourselves to:

Serve the mission of the church: By inviting others to join the journey of faith; by engaging in evangelism

Safeguard the unity of the church:By loving one another; by refusing to gossip; by engaging with and submitting to the decision-making processes of the church

Support the integrity of the church: By developing a servant heart; by living a life that honours Jesus Christ; by believing the statement of faith

Share the responsibility of the church: By giving regular financial support to the church; by attending regularly; by using my gifts to serve.

We pray our covenant prayer together

Covenant prayer

Heavenly Father,
We come today to covenant with you and with each other:

to watch over each other and to walk together before you in ways known and still to be made known.

We give ourselves again to you and to each other

to be bound together in fellowship, and to work together in the unity of the Spirit for the sake of God’s mission.

In our congregation, in local partnerships, in our association and in the wider Union,

we commit all that we have and are to fulfil God’s purposes of love.

Pour your Spirit upon us. Help us so to walk in your ways that the promises we make this day, and the life that we live together, may become an offering of love, our duty and delight truly glorifying to you – Father Son and Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Wesley’s prayer (adapted and slightly modernised)

I am no longer my own, but yours O God.
Put me to what you will, rank me with whom you will.
Put me to doing, put me to suffering.
Let me be employed for you or laid aside for you,
exalted for you or brought low for you.
Let me be full, let me be empty.
Let me have all things, let me have nothing.
I freely and heartily yield all things to your pleasure and disposal.
And now, O glorious and blessed God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
you art mine, and I am yours.
So be it.
And the covenant which I have made on earth,
let it be ratified in heaven.
Amen.

Christ has many services to be done. Some are easy, others are difficult. Some bring honour, others bring reproach. Some are suitable to our natural inclinations and temporal interests, others are contrary to both... Yet the power to do all these things is given to us in Christ, who strengthens us.

Philemon: refresh my heart

2008-12-31T16:29:00.002Z

The letter to Philemon is one of only two truly personal letters in the New Testament, although there are of course several that are individually addressed (Timothy, Titus, 2John, 3John, Philemon). In his introduction to the letter, Eugene Petersen says:

Every movement we make in response to God has a ripple effect, touching family, neighbours, friends, community.
Philemon and Onesimus... Had no idea that believing in Jesus would involve them in radical social change.

There are three main players in this little drama and a big supporting cast.

Paul, the apostle who although now a prisoner was once the itinerant preacher under who’s ministry the others found faith in Christ.

Philemon, probably a fairly wealthy business man of his time. Known for his faith and his ability to bring joy, encouragement and refreshing to others. A church leader perhaps in Colossae.

Onesimus his name means useful, but he’d proved to be far from that in his past. He was a runaway slave, formerly of little use to anyone but of great use to both Paul and Philemon because of his transformed life through faith in Christ. It’s possible that Onesimus is not only a runaway but a thief to boot.

Also involved but not mentioned here is Tychicus who has travelled with Onesimus to deliver the letters to the Colossian and Laodicean churches as well as this personal letter to Philemon (Col. :7-9)

The focus of the letter is the need for both Onesimus and Philemon to “do the right thing”, that is the thing that most honours God. For Onesimus it is to return to the master he had formerly wronged, for Philemon it is to take Onesimus back, but not as a slave and not subjecting him to the punishment the law and society might have expected. It’s a fascinating insight into household life and the impact Christianity had on it. But the things that caught my attention, and the thing I want us to think about most is how Paul speaks of Philemon:

Your love has given me great joy and encouragement, because you, brother, have refreshed the hearts of the Lord’s people. V7

The “heart” is the deepest emotional place. It’s the place from which the compassion of Jesus springs.

We're all aware of things that drain our hearts and we know that there are other things that refresh our hearts. If we imagine that we have a "heart tank" that gives us the reserves for ministry and missions, we need to make sure it's regularly topped up. If our resources are low, our ability to minister will be low. We know that God can make up the difference, but that's about when we run out of resources not about when our resources are depleted. It's a different thing altogether.

What refreshes Paul’s heart?

1. Stories of faith among God’s people.

In almost all of Paul’s letter you will find something about which he gives thanks with regard to his readers. In Rome it is their faith that is reported all over the world; Corinth-all their spiritual gifts, Ephesus it’s their love for others as it is in the letter to the Colossians.

2. Expressions of love

Jesus remains largely unquoted in the the New Testament outside of the gospels. Only one time do we hear anyone make any mention of what he said and that is Paul in Acts 20 when he’s about to leave Ephesus. There are other times when people remember what Jesus said, but this is the only direct quote and it’s interesting because it’s not something we find in the gospels.
But clearly Paul understood one core aspect of the teaching of Jesus with great clarity. His call to love one another. And Paul is clearly refreshed when he hears about love in action amongst the people of God.

3. Generosity

Paul’s appeal for Onesimus and his obvious desire to have him around to help, is not pushed on the basis of authority and apostleship. Rather Paul wants Philemon to choose to be generous. Remember that formerly Onesimus belonged to Philemon as his slave. He owned him and as such he had the right to sell him, recover losses by exacting punishments etc, etc. But Paul knows that Philemon is a generous-hearted man (he even asks about the guest room), and wants him to express that generosity.

4. Forgiveness

There’s no attempt in this letter to cover up what Onesimus might be guilty of having done. There’s no attempt to suggest that this is not relevant to the current situation. A debt remains. Sin always has consequences. The death of Jesus doesn’t remove the consequences of sin, it removes the penalty for sin. But, again as Jesus would have said, if we’ve experienced forgiveness how can we withhold that forgiveness from each other?

Paul is not asking Philemon to forget the debt owed to him, in fact Paul offers to cover that himself (although I’m guessing he’s hoping for another act of generosity by Philemon at this point!). But he is asking him to forgive Onesimus for what he has done.

5. Obedience

Finally Paul’s heart is refreshed by obedience. Not to his words but to the full expression of a fully devoted life to the pattern of Jesus. In verse 21, Paul is confident of Philemon’s obedience. In other words he is confident that Philemon, above everything else, wants to follower Jesus wholeheartedly.

Carol Service 2008

2008-12-22T08:36:00.002Z

One of our readings this evening was all about a rather strange set of visitors who called in to see a group of livestock herders during the night shift. These were ordinary folk doing an ordinary job on an ordinary night. Nothing spectacular or special about their surroundings, nothing odd about the weather, nothing strange about the passing hours. But then something quite remarkable happened. Suddenly our late shift shepherd’s night was disturbed. An angel appeared, made an announcement and then was joined by a choir of angels who began to sing. It’s enough to wake a sleeping sheep!

You can tell it wasn’t normal practice for this kind of thing to happen to this group of shepherds because although they were used to the sights and sounds of the night–the sound of an approaching wolf maybe, the hoot of an owl, the rustle of leaves, the moving shadows, the wax and wane of the moon light–this one caught them by surprise. The Bible simply says that they were terrified. I suspect that this was something of an understatement.

So shaken were these poor shepherds that the first thing the angel says to them is “Don’t be afraid!”. Easy for an angel who has just appeared from nowhere to say, not so easy for a group of boot-quaking shepherds to do.

But then comes the announcement:

I bring you good news of great joy to all the people. Today, in the city of David a Saviour has been born to you. He is Christ, the Lord.

And then more angels appear and join in singing: Glory to God in the highest heaven and on earth peace to those on whom his favour rests.

Three things for Christmas

#1 It’s a Celebration

Christmas is an opportunity for each of us to set aside all the pressures of our daily lives and focus on God. The amazing thing is that God loves us so much that he became one of us in order to communicate with us. He became a human being so that he could reveal the full extent of his love for us.

Of all the ways he could have entered the world–descending on a royal throne surrounded by angels maybe; arriving in a whirlwind riding a majestic horse perhaps; walking down some magnificent stairway possibly–he entered the world the same way we all enter. Born as baby.
I wonder if the reason he did that was simply because the one thing he didn’t want us to be was to be afraid of him.

#2 It’s an opportunity for salvation

Salvation is not a word you hear very much these days. Although you might often hear someone say, “Thank you, you saved my life,” when what they actually mean is, “thank you for the change, now I won’t get a parking ticket.” But when the Bible talks about salvation, it is talking about the chance to rebuild a broken relationship with God. A relationship shattered by rebellion but rebuilt through the coming of Jesus.

Put simply, salvation is forgiveness for the past, the power to manage the present and a secure hope for the future.

But be careful, this is a gift and the thing about a gift is that you need to accept it.

#3 It’s an opportunity for reconciliation

I knew a pair of twin brothers. They had their rivalries, their ups and downs together, but once they they fell out big time. They refused to talk to each other, they cut themselves off from family connections. They avoided each other at all costs. Do you know what they fell out over? Rabbits. Yes, rabbits. They both bred them and took them to shows. And somehow, don’t ask me how, they managed to fall out over them. I don’t know if they ever spoke to each other again, but when the angels sang on that hillside they sang about peace on earth.

The Bible says that through Jesus Christ you can make peace with God, and if you do that then you will receive peace from God. When you’re at peace with God and you’re experiencing peace from God it becomes easier to make peace with other people.

Conclusion

Tonight we’ve talked about the coming of Jesus, we’ve read about the events and we’ve reflected on those event. But here’s the challenge: When Christmas is all over will Jesus go back in the box with all the other Christmas decorations? Will the nativity get forgotten until next year’s Christmas plans are being made? Or will you let it make a difference all year round. Will you accept God’s good news of great joy that a Saviour has been born to you, and that you can know forgiveness and hope and reconciliation with God and with others.

This is God’s precious Christmas gift to you, will you accept it?

Hope Realised

2008-12-22T08:29:00.002Z

Because we know the end from the beginning we forget how, as the story unfolds, everything must have appeared as out of the ordinary at the very least. Angels popping up all over the place making major announcements looks quite commonplace to us as we read the story, but it was far from that. In Luke 1 Gabriel appears to Zechariah, six months later he turns up at Mary’s house. Sometime in the course of the next 9 months an unspecified angel appears to Joseph in a dream. So vivid and real is this experience that Joseph changes his plans for a quiet divorce and accepts Mary as his wife and the unborn child as his own.

Outside Bethlehem an angel of the Lord appears to the shepherds along with a choir to announce the birth of Jesus.

Sometime during Mary and Joseph’s stay in Bethlehem a group of wise men turn up guided not by an angel but by a star this time. Somehow in a dream they are warned about Herod’s false intentions, which may or may not have been an angel, we’re not told. Joseph then gets another angelic visit to go to Egypt and when Herod dies, you guessed it, an angel of the Lord tells him it’s time to go back to Nazareth. The next time angels would appear to human beings is when they announce the resurrection and ascension of Jesus.

The point is that kings saw angels, prophets saw angels, heroes like Daniel saw angels, but carpenters and shepherds?

The Angelic Message

Good news of great joy to all people

The extraordinary thing is that God chooses to send a message of history changing importance via the angel to ordinary people. And these ordinary shepherds did not go onto become celebrities, to host their own chat shows or star in reality TV. They didn’t judge the strictly come shepherding competitions, or bequeath their staffs to the Bethlehem museum of sacred artefacts. We don’t even know their names, something that is also true of the wise men who would visit Jesus.

Numbers don’t matter.

Responding to God’s revelation is what matters most.

How do you respond to good news?

You can usually tell when someone has received good news. Take the presenter on Radio 5 this morning, Phil Williams. He’s an Aston Villa supporter and yesterday they beat Wets Ham to go third in the Premiership. Now that might not be very important or significant to you, but to him it certainly put a spring in his step and he was bright and clearly very happy this morning.

Responding to the Message

When the shepherds got the good news message from the angel they decided to do a number of things.

First they decided to go and see for themselves: Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing…

They made a personal journey of discovery. You may hear the good news via someone else, but you must experience it for yourself.

Second they couldn’t contain the message: When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child.

I doubt that they had had much theological education or philosophical tutoring. They simply shared what they knew. I’d guess that if someone had asked them, “How can this happen?” there response would most likely have been, “We don’t know. We just know that God sent us a messenger and what the messenger told us turned out to be true.”

Thirdly they could not contain their worship: The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.

God does not lie or cheat or deceive us. He does not tell shepherds on a hillside something that isn’t true and he doesn’t do that to us either. You can trust him. When he says a Saviour has been born, he means a Saviour has been born. And if this is true, everything else he has to say is also true.

Shepherding the good news

How can we be more like the shepherds when it comes to how we handle to good news of Jesus Christ?

First we can share the simple truth of what we’ve heard and experienced for ourselves. People may not believe you, people may thing you’re a little crazy, but if you’ve experienced the good news, you know it’s true.

Second, we can let it show. The shepherds teach us that one way we can let it show is through our heartfelt worship. They returned praising and glorifying God, we can too. This praise was rooted in the truth of what they had seen and heard, what they had witnessed first hand. It came out of their personal experience. You and I not only have our personal experience of God’s truthfulness but we have a written record of it through centuries of Biblical and later church history.

Letting it show through our worship is only part of our story. From Luke’s account we have no further information about how this encounter with God and his purposes affected these shepherds. We don’t know what happened to them.

What we do know is that we are changed by our encounter with Jesus. Paul says that when we become Christians we die to old ways of living and begin to live a new life.

I am crucified with Christ, and I no longer live but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God…

Conclusion

If you’re still waiting for an angel to pop in to see you and tell you what’s happening and what to do, you might just have to wait a while. It might look common place in the nativity story, but it’s not as common as you might think.

God has entrusted his message of good news to a different group of messengers.

In the days of Jesus’ birth, God sent an angel to a group of shepherds who in turn became the first messengers to other people. And now It’s our turn. You and I are God’s messengers to the world. To our communities, to our neighbours and colleagues and friends and families.
The local church has become the carriers of the message that is the hope of the world and you and I are the local church.

Hope Revealed

2008-12-14T14:46:00.002Z

Today was our All-Age Nativity. The following short talk continued our theme of Hope.

The story you have just seen presented is all we expect it to be. We had angles making announcements, shepherds watching flocks, wise men travelling long distances and a baby being born. We had governors whose names we dread having to try and pronounce, a bad king and a stable.

We sang all the right songs and had we the time would have sung some more. We might even have sung about all our hopes and dreams being met in him tonight.

But are they?

Does a Play-station 3 count, or a new bike? How does the headache of trying to sit the whole family around your dining table fit with the birth of Jesus? Or what about paying the credit card bill in January?

And there are the hopes and dreams for a peaceful Christmas, for the end to injustice and poverty, solutions to the world’s biggest problems and answers to the bigger questions like how come the BBC didn’t see the problems with having only three couples left in the semi-final of Strictly Come Dancing?

What are the hopes and dreams that are met in Jesus Christ?

First there are the hopes and dreams of God’s great promises. You need to remember that in Israel the voice of God spoken through the prophets had not been heard for almost 400 years. Almost 800 years before Jesus was born, one of the prophets had spoken about the coming of one who would reconnect us with the God who loves us. He said a child would be born, that God would keep his promise, and now he has.

Second, there are the hopes of a new start. With the arrival of Jesus everything is about to change. As Jesus reaches 30 he begins preaching and teaching and changing lives. For three years he travels around Palestine touching lives, making the blind see, the deaf hear, the lame walk and the dead live. He shows people that even though they had grown up thinking that God had forgotten them, that he couldn’t possibly love them, that it simply wasn’t true. He inspired hope and faith in many.

Thirdly, there’s the hope that this can be true for us today. After three short years the authorities finally decided to do away with Jesus. You might be tempted to think that this meant the end of all he had done. But you’d be wrong.

After three days he came back to life, returned to the people he’d spent his time with and told them, “I still love you, now go and share this message, these opportunities for change with everyone you meet.

2000 years later lives are still changing, people are still discovering that no matter how little they might love themselves, God still loves them more than they can imagine.

You can discover that too. We have, I have.

The baby at the heart of our story offers you more hope than you can imagine. He offers you something far better, more precious than the latest toy or high-tech gadget. He offers you the unconditional love of God and the unlimited power of God to transform your life.

Now that’s a hope worth having.

Hope Expected

2008-12-08T15:12:00.002Z

Today is the second Sunday in Advent and we’re considering the expectation of hope. By the time we get to the New Testament we become increasingly aware that the expectations surrounding the arrival of God’s promised Messiah were tied up in political expectations of removal of the Roman rulers and restoration of Israel as a great nation.

But before we judge the first century people for failing to see beyond their situation, let’s remember that God had brought about political change in the past. For example, when Hezekiah was king, God rescued the people from the advancing army of Sennacharib.
So it’s not unreasonable to see God’s promises in the context of present circumstances.
Let’s continue what we started last week by putting our reading into its historical context.

A short history of Israel

In 587BC Jerusalem finally fell to the Babylonians and the people were taken into exile far from their homeland. Amongst these captives was a young man called Daniel and his three friends. Most of know the story of Daniel in the Lion’s den, a story about God’s faithfulness to Daniel who had been faithful to God. For 70 years Daniel lived out his life as a servant to a foreign king in a foreign land. While others might have been tempted to think that God had deserted the people, Daniel, Ezekiel (the prophet of the time) and Ezra, among many, knew differently.
As the story of Daniel comes to a close the Babylonian empire falls to a new empire ruled by kings from Persia.

The OT book of Ezra begins with this new empire and the story of the new king’s favourable view of Jerusalem. But this is not the king’s idea, this is an idea planted in him by God himself.
God was, as Ezra points out, fulfilling his word spoken through Jeremiah as he ‘moved the heart of Cyrus’ the new king to declare it was time to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem. Setting off with gifts from the people and the items that had previously been removed from the Temple, Zerubbabel lead the first group of exiles back to Jerusalem.

You might have expected them to have enjoyed great success, but life isn’t like that and it would be a long process of rebuilding the Temple, then the city walls and their relationship with God. They faced opposition in Jerusalem that caused them to stop building the Temple for 15-20 years. When Nehemiah returned some years later, he too faced local opposition as he rebuilt the walls of the old city. And between the Temple project and the walls being built they faced possible annihilation at the hands of Haman in the story of Esther, the ultimate trophy wife who turns out to be God’s chosen spokesperson to act to save the people. Fancy that, a woman saving all the men, as John Ortberg once pointed out!

While the history gets a little complex as we try and match Biblical names of Persian kings to their kingdoms, it’s clear that the returning exiles didn’t have everything go their way. As one king supported them, another denied them support. How hard it must have been to keep faith with God’s promises when there seemed to be no let up in the pressure. Just like the people, described by Isaiah, who walked in darkness in the north of the country, these people would have had a tough time seeing the hope in the midst if their situation.

Zechariah’s role

Zechariah was a contemporary of Haggai, speaking to the people during the time of rebuilding the Temple after the return from exile in Babylon. God uses Zechariah to encourage the people to keep going with the rebuilding despite the opposition they face and sadness they feel over past glories and past failures. Zechariah does so by painting the bigger picture of God’s eternal purposes through a series of visions and prophetic narrative. The picture he paints is of real life, with real ups and real downs. It’s about pressure and faithfulness, of failure and restoration. But ultimately it’s the story of God’s triumph and God’s purposes.

Three key points along the way

#1 Recommitment

Chap.1 Tell the people this: this is what the Lord Almighty says: “Return to me,” declares the Lord Almighty, ”and I will return to you,” says the Lord Almighty.

#2 Restoration

Chap.8 “I will return to Zion and dwell in Jerusalem”

#3 Resolution

Chap.14 A day of destruction and a day of glory: “The Lord will be king over the whole earth. On that day there will be one Lord, and his name the only name.”

The coming King

This then is God’s framework into which he introduces the coming king. It’s a framework of prophetic hope and present experience of return and persecution. And into this context of God speaks these amazing words of hope and restoration in chapter 9. A king will come on the colt of a donkey rather than a horse. A symbol for some of peace rather than power. And the peace this king will proclaim will be peace to the nations plural, not peace to the nation of Israel alone.
A covenant of hope

All of this comes about, not because of what the people do, not even because of what the promised king will do, but because of what God has already done. He has made a covenant with the people. A covenant that goes right back to Abraham and is renewed and developed through Moses and and the monarchy God established. All of this points forward as prophecy does towards a future event. The king of which Zechariah speaks is none other than Jesus himself, who rides triumphantly into Jerusalem on a donkey’s colt.

Prisoners of Hope

Who are the prisoners of hope?

In Zechariah’s prophecy they are the ones who benefit from God’s blessing (I will restore twice as much to you); they are the ones who will rise up against ‘Greece’ a symbol of those who seek to oppress them; and they are the ones who will become warriors instead of a frightened weary group of folk who can’t even complete a building project out of fear of their neighbours. In other words, for a prisoner of hope, how it looks is not how it is going to be. Everything can change because God is bigger than any circumstance or situation, everything will change change because God is working out his plan.

What imprisons you?

Fear: fear of lack, fear of failure, fear of someone?
Greed: you cannot serve two masters.
Sin: Put simply doing those things that separate you from God. Hebrews 12 talks about the sin that so easily entangles. Easy to get into, difficult to break free from.
But in Christ God has done everything necessary to set you free. He has done everything necessary so that you don’t have to do anything except believe.

Getting free

The good news is that Jesus came to set prisoners free. And, as John's gospel points out, if the Son sets you free, you shall be free indeed.

How free do you want to be?

Just like the people to whom Zechariah spoke you do not have to be defined by your current circumstances. You can become a prisoner of hope, a captive of God’s kingdom, rather than a prisoner of your present worries and concerns. The Bible says the process of finding freedom is very simple.

First of all you need to recognise that you need the freedom.

Second that true freedom can only be found through Jesus Christ. He is, as Paul points out, the only true mediator between God and humanity.

Third you need to confess your sin and turn away from it all. Sin separates us from God, it’s all those things we do that we know deep down inside are not the things God would have us do.
Sin is our rebellion against God.

Fourthly you need to trust God to do what he has promised. If you believe then you will have the life he promises.

This is not a get out of jail free card, but a live life to the fullest card. This is not about doing the minimum you need to do in order to secure a place in heaven when you die, but a choice to live your life totally in the hands of God rather than your own. A choice to become all that God intended you to be or settle for being manipulated into that which the world wants you to be.
A choice about real freedom with God or imprisonment with the world.

Your choice, so choose well.

Hope Foretold

2008-12-01T15:34:00.000Z

You don’t have to have been around the church for many Christmases to know the importance and significance of Isaiah 9. Unto us a son is born… and his name shall be called… As Isaiah looks to the future we recognise the past as the prophetic word is fulfilled through the birth of Jesus. But although that is the natural place for us to finish, let’s begin with Israel and the situation at the time that Isaiah spoke these all-important words.

For 120 years Judah, the land of the two tribes who had remained loyal to the house of David, had been ruled by God-honouring, faithful kings. The last of these was king Uzziah who was succeeded by his son Ahaz.

Ahaz was not a God-honouring king.

Ahaz did not do what was pleasing in the sight of the Lord… 2Ki.16:2

Aram (modern-day Syria) and Israel (the northern kingdom) attacked and besieged Jerusalem, the capital of the southern kingdom of Judah, but failed to conquer it. Ahaz made an alliance with the king of Assyria. In the end, rather than helping Ahaz, the king of Assyria attacked him and defeated him, so Ahaz and Judah became subject to Assyria. Ahaz had used the treasures in the Temple to pay for Assyria’s help and then, when Ahaz became vassal to Assyria he closed the Temple completely. It is somewhat ironic that a future king of Assyria would help restore the Temple.

2Chron. 28 tells us that Ahaz was under even more pressure from Philistine and Edomite raiding parties on the western and eastern borders. So the kingdom was under pressure from three sides.

The tribal territory of Zebulun and Naphtali was in the far north of the kingdom of Israel, the northern kingdom. This would become the area of Galilee in New Testament times. It would also have been the first part of the kingdom to fall into enemy hands.

It’s against this background of the king’s refusal to trust God and the impending invasion from Assyria and the pressure from Israel, Philistine and Edomite raids that Isaiah speaks about God’s plan and purpose in chapter 9. This is the darkness, the gloom that cast its shadow over the land. Ahaz was looking everywhere else other than to God for deliverance.

Into these dark days, God speaks light. He speaks words of deliverance and hope. Not only this, but the land to be honoured is the land that has rejected God’s appointed king in the past. Remember that after Solomon’s death, the kingdom divided. It is this land, not Jerusalem, not Judah, that will bring forth God’s Son.

God’s promise

Light from darkness
Joy from despair
Freedom from burdens
Peace from battle

Light from Darkness

To paraphrase Jesus: People who are in the light don’t need light, but people in darkness are the ones most in need of light. Without light we are destined to stumble around in darkness.

Jesus offers us:

Light to guide. Your word is a light to my feet, a lamp to my path
Light to expose. People love darkness… come into the light
Light to bring life. In him was life and that life was the light of men.

The Message: light to live by

NLT: The Word gave life to everything that was created, and his life brought light to everyone.

Joy from despair

The Psalmist says: You have turned my mourning into joyful dancing. You have taken away my clothes of mourning and clothed me with joy,

The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace…

James tells us to: Consider it an opportunity for great joy when “troubles” come our way. What he’s not saying is, “Be happy when things are going badly” as if joy is defined as some form of positive thinking. Joy in this context is connected with a growing faith. Far from being superficial, joy is discovered in the process of a deepening and maturing faith faith in God. Joy comes form being able to say with David, “Even though I walk through the valley if the shadow death, I will not be afraid because you are with me” It’s recognising that light shines in darkness and darkness cannot overcome it.

Freedom from burdens

The days of Midian is a reference to Gideon. A time when the people were suffering the darkness of oppression in the land. In the story, we’re introduced to Gideon as he threshes wheat in a winepress to hide what he is doing from the Midianite marauders. Judges 6 tells us:
The Midianites were so cruel that the Israelites made hiding places for themselves in the mountains, caves and strongholds. They left Israel with no food, reducing the nation to starvation. And God rescued them. Just as he’d done so before when he rescued them from Egypt and would do again and again as Israel stumbled their way into disobedience like a repeating refrain through history.

Their heavy burdens may have come through their sin, but they were always lifted by the grace of God as he acted in love towards them.

Fast forward into the New Testament and Jesus promises an easy yolk. A light burden. Come to me all you who are weary... and receive rest. My yolk in easy and my burden is light

Peace from battle

Where once the people suffered from invasion and war, God promises peace. The one who was coming would in deed be the Prince of Peace. In the last book of the Bible John sees a vision of a great city. A city lit by the glory of God, a place of joy, lifted burdens and peace. He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain.

These are God’s promise, and he intends to keep them through the gift of a Son.

The One to come

Isaiah paints the picture of an eternal kingdom ruled by God himself. Not only ruled by him but established and accomplished by him.

Conclusion

People who walk in darkness matter to God. Good or bad, they matter to God. His promise is to all of them. It’s a promise of hope and possibility because God is a God of hope and grace.

We Believe in the missionary God

2008-11-27T13:47:00.002Z

We’re at the end of our series on things we believe. We’ve looked at our vision, we’ve looked at our mission. We’ve considered stewardship and giving, discipleship and prayer. Our last topic brings us almost full-circle.

We believe in the missionary God.

This is not just about believing in the mission of God, or the mission mandated to the church. When we say: We believe in the missionary God, we’re saying something about the nature and purposes of God that ultimately must be reflected in the people who call themselves the community of God’s people.

A missionary God calls a missionary people

The story of Abraham

Most of us know the story of Abraham. Of how God called him to leave his home and family to journey to a new home, a home God would give to him. We know about the promises God made to him: to have a son, to be the father of many nations. We know about the great test of faithfulness that Abraham faced when God called him to sacrifice his only son, and we know too the faith Abraham expressed even at that time and the vindication he experienced from God. As we trace his story we see a fallible man whom God loves, reveals himself to and move towards a life fully lived for his purposes. And, in the story of Abraham we expressed the missionary heart of God.

John Stott says of Genesis chapter 12 that: The previous eleven chapter lead up them [ the opening sentence] ; the rest of the Bible follows and fulfils them.

Chapter 12 contains the first occurrence of a covenant promise that will be repeated over and over again in the OT: I will be their God, and they will be my people. It is in chapter 12 that God reveals his missionary character.

Chapter 11 takes us to Babel, the high point of human expansion and endeavour to this point in history. But God’s plans are not human plans. He calls a man, Abram, to turn around and walk in a different direction, to go against the flow of human expansion and rebellion. He calls him to follow God faithfully and wholeheartedly.

The promise is simple. If Abram is obedient, if he is faithful, then God will lead him to a land that will become his home, he will make him into a great nation and his children will become the vehicle for God’s blessing of people across the whole world. The promise is made clear in Gen.22:18 through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me. No wonder Abraham becomes a focal point for both Old and New Testament writers.

The nature of God’s blessing

Ultimately the nature of the blessing that God wants to give is expressed in the New Testament most famously in John 3: ...that whoever believes in him will have eternal life. God’s greatest blessing is not wealth or power. It’s not health or even long life. It’s not influence or great skill or ability. It isn’t even a great ministry. God’s greatest blessing is eternal life. Its forgiveness for sin and a promise of a place in God’s great house forever.

A missionary God wants a missionary people

In truth, the missionary God calls his missionary people.

Go into all the world and make disciples
As the Father has sent me, so I send you
You shall be my witnesses...

According to Jesus we are like a vine, designed to bear fruit and when we do we glorify our Father in heaven.

If mission is part of God’s character then it ought naturally to be a part of the nature of the church that bears his name. To be the people of the missionary God we need to be a missionary people. And to be a missionary people we must follow the example of the missionary God.

Jesus defined his mission:

Bringing the kingdom of God near (Matt. 4:17)
Fulfilling the Law and the Prophets (5:17)(Later Jesus would answer a question about the greatest commandment with the words: To love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind, and to love others as you want to be loved. He went on to say: All the Law and the prophets hang on these two commandments. (22:37ff))
To bring forgiveness
To call sinners rather than the righteous
To reveal the Father
To build his church
To give his life as a ransom for many

In Luke’s gospel he defined his mission at the beginning of his ministry by reading from Isaiah:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim that captives will be released, that the blind will see, the oppressed will be set free and the time of the Lord’s favour has come.

How does this translate into lifestyle?

#1 Recognise that God has called the church to be a missionary community

#2 Choose to seek to live a missional life(More about God than about self.)

#3 Follow Christ’s example (Love others, serve them.)
#3 Pray persistently and consistently for opportunities.
#4 Invite others to join the journey

This is what Isaiah had to say: Feed the hungry, and help those in trouble. Then your light will shine out from the darkness, and the darkness around you will be as bright as noon. (Isa.58:10)

We Believe in Tithing

2008-11-16T21:26:00.002Z

Probably the most well known verse in the Bible on the importance and significance of tithing are found in the final book of the Old Testament.

"Will a man rob God? Yet you rob me. "But you ask, 'How do we rob you?'  "In tithes and offerings. You are under a curse—the whole nation of you—because you are robbing me. Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this," says the LORD Almighty, "and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it.

These are strong and challenging words, but what relevance do they have for the church of today? Well I believe they have enormous relevance. If you want one positive reason to practice the Biblical principle of tithing, then surely these verses give it to you.

RT Kendal wrote a book about tithing. It was subtitled: A call to serious, Biblical giving. Whatever we think about the issue, we should certainly consider giving as a serious part of our stewardship of all the resources God has given to us.

In his book RT Kendal quotes another writer who says: When a fellow says, “It ain’t the money but the principle of the thing,’ it’s the money.

Nothing bothers us more than thinking someone is about to tell us how to live our lives or spend our money. We’ve earned it, we should decide what to do with it. But is that biblical? If we’re serious about wholeheartedly following God, then can we shut him out of our finances?

Tithing myths

#1 If you tithe God will make your rich.

We don’t give to God in order to get his blessing on what we do. We give as a loving response to his love for us. It’s a sign, not a merit badge.

#2 Tithing is part of the Law of the OT and we’re no longer under the Law.

True we’re no longer under the law, but Abraham wasn’t under the law when he chose to give away a tenth of the goods he’d recovered when rescuing Lot to the king of Salem as an honour gift.

And in the New Testament Jesus takes the religious people to task for tithing but ignoring other aspects of a life pleasing to God. When he does so he tells them that they should pay attention to both the weightier matters of the law (justice, mercy and faith) without neglecting tithing (Matt.23:23). And Jesus is not just saying, if you can, but he says you ought to tithe. In Greek it’s the same word applied here as it it is when Jesus says to Nicodemus You must be born again if you want to see the Kingdom of God.

Paul on giving: What do you think Paul meant when he said each person should put aside an amount in keeping with his income? Do you think that Paul, an educated Jew and a devoted follower of Jesus Christ would suggest that your giving should be done only in line with what you could afford, or do you think that he’s reinforcing the idea that there’s a reasonable proportion of income that everyone should consider as the appropriate amount to give?

#3 A tithe (10%) is all that God wants from me, when I’ve given that, there’s no more giving to be done.

In biblical terms, 10% is a guideline starting point. It’s not the top end of what we should give, it’s not a kingdom tax that we pay.

What kind of givers is God looking for?

Willing ones (2 Cor. 9:6)
Obedient ones (Mal.3)
Generous ones (Luke 21-the widow’s offering) Not only was she generous but she was sacrificial too.

What stops us from tithing?

Selfishness: Are our reasons for not giving simply excuses to keep it for ourselves?

Are we afraid that we won’t have enough money to meet our needs?

Are we unwilling to follow a Biblical principle? Rebels at heart.

Can we not imagine that God will bless us?

Do we believe:

That God can, and will, meet all our needs (Phil.4:19)
That he has a positive plan for us (Jer.29:11)
That the kingdom of God should be our priority (Matt. 6:33)
That we should count our lives as worthless compared to knowing Christ (Phil.3)
That to live is Christ (Phil. 1:21)
My life is worthless to me unless I use it for finishing the work assigned me by the Lord Jesus (Acts 20:24). And therefore that means that, in the word of the song we sing, “Lord, I am not my my own, no longer my own”

What is it we fear that keeps us from tithing?

One simple reason to tithe

Because of what it will do for the work of God’s kingdom on earth. Personally speaking I’ve always considered the local church as proper place for my tithe. Anything else I want to support, I do so beyond that.

How do you get it right?

How do you work out what to give to God? If not a tithe, how else would you measure your giving? The tithe is helpful, not because it tells us what will appease God, but because it stops us getting our giving out of proportion. You could give what’s left after you’ve met all your expenses each month. But then what do you do when you spend a little more than you intended? Do you simply give a little less than you intended? You could decided what’s manageable whilst still leaving you enough to spend how you want. You could soften the financial challenge by including your time or factoring something else into the equation.

First you have to decide what your reasons are for not following the Biblical injunction to give 10% of your income back to God. I put it this way around because it’s a harder question to answer than deciding what percentage of your income to give. Second you need to take a good look at what you are currently giving and why you currently give as you do. Third you need to work out a plan to get to where you understand God wants you to be form where you are.

Personally I have a simple plan. Each year, as we do our tax returns I check our P60’s to see what we’’ve earned in that year. Then I look at what we’ve given away and do the simple calculation. If it’s above, I leave it for another year, if it’s below I put it right.

But what if you’ve never tithed, and you’re in debt and you can see no way to go from what you currently give to what you now believe God is calling you to give?

Set a goal. If it take 5 years to get to the point where you tithe Biblically then set about it today. Don’t wait for the day to come around when you can afford to tithe, because believe me it’s highly unlikely that that day will ever arrive. decide now that you are going to make thins a non-negotiable habit for the rest of your life.

Second, work out what 10% is and deduct this from your income whether you give it or not. The point here is to look at what income you would have to live on if you tithed. You might be surprised to discover that 10% isn’t that much when you get right down to it. And if you practice now living on 90% you’ll be preparing yourself to truly give it way in the future.

You might also find you can move to a tithe sooner than you thought. It might be difficult, and it might take some time, but it’s not impossible.

And what if God is true to his word? What if he will do what he promises if we will show our commitment through tithing? What if we “brought the whole tithe into the storehouse”, and God opened heaven’s blessing to us.

Is that not worth the risk?

We Believe in Fellowship

2008-11-03T07:57:00.002Z

National Statistics for the UK show that: 20% of people say they have neither a ‘satisfactory friendship network’ nor a ‘satisfactory relatives network’.

It was the poet John Donne who wrote:

No man is an island entire of itself.

The poem goes on to say: any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind.

According to Rick Warren it is through fellowship that the church grows warmer. In other words, relationships develop and deepen through regular contact. This is not rocket science, in fact we all know that in order to build good relationships the two things we need are time and proximity. Fellowship is a key characteristic of what it means to be the people of God together on a journey. There is no escaping it.

It was in sharing fellowship that the early church developed it’s communal life. Because they were together they could pray together they could share together the joys and struggles of living lives dedicated to God. It was because of fellowship that Luke could describe the early church as a community in which no one was in need, and historians of the age would marvel at the love shared among those early followers of Jesus.

The reason the Bible doesn’t give us much instruction about how to live the life of a lone believer is because we are made for community. We were meant to be in a community of faith. We are, to use Rick Warren’s phrase, Formed for God’s family.

The OT is the story of the people of God as they journey through the wilderness, make their home in the Promised Land, lose and return to it. Jesus spoke about the kingdom of God, about those who followed him, who listened to what he had to say, as his family, his brothers and sisters. Paul writes to the churches of God in Corinth, Ephesus, Galatia, Philippi, Thessalonica, and Colossae. He speaks often about loving each other, comforting each other, encouraging each other, even correcting and rebuking each other. His favourite image to describe the church is a body where every one plays a part. Even when he writes to an individual, Timothy, Titus, Onesimus, it’s in the context of being a community.

Fellowship is important because we were designed to share life together.

Fellowship is important because we are exiles, we don’t belong in this world, this kingdom this host empire in which we find ourselves. If we feel like we do belong, then we’ve become too comfortable.

Fellowship and the credit crunch

How does being a family affect the way we live in these times of insecurity and instability in the markets? Is it every man or woman for themselves? Do we revert to a “Charity begins at home” mentality? Or do we make a stand and say we part of a bigger family. We carry responsibility for a wider family.

Being God’s family in troubled times is a tough choice. To remain generous and outwardly focused is harder when the going gets tough. But God has called us to live differently in the world. To have security in him, not ourselves, not the financial markets, not bricks and mortar but hope and faith.

Let’s finish with a prayer for our troubled times:

Lord God, we live in disturbing days:
across the world,
prices rise,
debts increase,
banks collapse,
jobs are taken away,
and fragile security is under threat.

Loving God, meet us in our fear and hear our prayer:
be a tower of strength amidst the shifting sands,
and a light in the darkness;
help us receive your gift of peace,
and fix our hearts where true joys are to be found,
in Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen

We Believe in Stewardship

2008-10-26T12:00:00.000Z

Steward and stewarding are typically defined in terms of looking after something that does not belong to you. It is an act of service. Air stewards, racing stewards.

In the Ancient Near East, a steward was a servant who looked after his master’s property or household affairs. Jesus told a story about a dishonest steward in Luke 16, and he told stories about faithful servants too.

A steward was clearly a trusted member of the household staff. Joseph in the OT became the trusted servant in Potiphar’s house.

So, if you and I are stewards of something, we need to ask ourselves firstly what it is that we are stewarding and secondly how can we steward as the best stewards we can be.

In Matt. 6 we discover some key principles about our stewardship responsibilities.

#1 Stewards of our treasure

Jesus says: Do not store up treasure on earth… but store up treasure in heaven.
If our hearts express what truly matters to us, then Jesus says that what everyone sees with regard to the treasure you accumulate will point to the place where our hearts reside.

What counts as heavenly treasure?

You might think that worship counts as heavenly treasure, you might think prayer counts as heavenly treasure. And yes, God commands our worship and calls us to prayer. But he’s also passionate about other things.

Last week we heard about the Micah challenge.

Micah 6:8 has long been a verse which has occupied my thoughts: He has shown you O man what is good, and what does the Lord require of you? To act justly, love mercy and to walk humbly with the Lord your God.

It’s interesting to notice that justice and mercy are key values in God’s eyes, but they are not isolated from a deep relationship with himself. To love mercy and to act justly are things to which all people should aspire, but they are not enough to build treasure in heaven. They need to arise out of a relationship with God. On their own they are simply good works that honour God, yes, but merciful and just people don’t get to heaven by virtue of their mercy and love and concern for justice.

A humble walk with God is also an essential ingredient.

And for those who see themselves as okay with God because they’ve entered into a relationship with him through Jesus Christ, the words of the prophet are clear. Add justice and mercy to your portfolio. Not to gain merit before God, but to do what pleases him.

To paraphrase one of the speakers at the recent leaders conference: If you want your life to matter, live it in the context of what matter to God. Justice and mercy matter to God.

#2 Stewards of ourselves

There are times when we are all guilty of sitting back and simply waiting for God to do something spectacular on our behalf. To somehow change us overnight, to put right all our faults and failures with a wave of his hand. But Jesus reminds us that we are to pay attention to our spiritual health. If your eyes are good, you whole body will be full of light. Can you hear the echo of his words to Simon as he washed his feet? If you’ve had a bath, you need only wash your feet.

Being a good steward of one’s self is to follow Jesus closely, to keep in step with Spirit as Paul would urge us all to do.

This we do by faith, for we know that without faith we cannot please God; Heb. 11:6

And by confession: 1John 1:9

#3 Stewards of one master

Verse 24 presents us with a simple truth: You can have only one master.

#4 Stewards of an alternative world-view

Having laid a foundation of the way of life of the good steward Jesus paints a picture of the impact of the choices already made. It’s a picture of life focused on who God is, what God can do and what God will do. He says don’t worry because worry doesn’t change a thing.
What we know of course is that if all our treasure in earthly based, if all our self-esteem is wrapped up in how others see us, where we are in the pecking order of life. Then worry and anxiety will follow us around.

We worry about what we will eat, what we will drink and what we will wear. But the wise steward has his or her focus elsewhere. Rather than the earthly things, their focus is on the kingdom of God.

This doesn’t mean that they do not think about the present, it’s not time-bound. It’s not eternity versus the present that is as stake here, it’s the kingdom of God. And Jesus, don’t forget, has already declared that the kingdom is here, in some measure the kingdom of God is a present reality. He even taught his disciples to pray “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

I think this means that to focus on the kingdom of God rather than the kingdom of this world is to focus on what God is doing and wanting to do among us and through us. It’s about those passions that he wants us to share for justice and mercy. It’s about the good news he wants us to share and to be and we seek to walk humbly with him. Living examples of God’s normality for the world.

This alternative world-view is rooted in the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ. Paul reminds us all in 1Cor.4 that we, like Paul himself are charged with a responsibility to live out and steward this gospel.

Sadly the good news is not perceived that way in the world. In a recent survey of 16-29 year olds in America, the following assessments of what Christianity was about were made:

91% said antihomosexual
87% said judgmental
85% said hypocritical
78% said old-fashioned
75% said too involved in politics
72% said out of touch with reality
70% said insensitive to others
68% said boring
64% said not accepting of other faiths
61% said confusing

Apparently we need to work on our stewarding of the good news.

Conclusion

The teaching of Jesus in Matthew 6 is very relevant tour day. With it’s rampant consumerism, it’s easy to see how we can be sucked into a pattern of life which does not focus on God’s kingdom. We get caught up in the message of our modern world that there are just too many things without which our lives are hardly worth living.

Jesus says to us, “Put this consumerism on one side. you can’t serve the god of get and keep and the God of grace and hope, of generosity and mercy and justice.

The good steward will care for those around him, will care for her environment and will care about the resources that are available and should be shared among all people. When we get locked into the world of consuming we become greedy and selfish.

God, by contrast, calls us to focus elsewhere, to live unselfishly, generously and graciously.
To be careful, to steward things well, so that no one is deprived of the grace of God.

We Believe in the Power of Prayer

2008-10-21T16:47:00.002Z

I’ve often wondered how many prayers are recorded in the Bible. I’ve sometimes thought it would make a wonderful study to go through the Bible and not only count them but study them. Maybe I’ll do that one year, but until then I’m pleased to be able to tell you that someone else has done it too and he counted 650 prayers in the Bible and 450 recorded answers. I haven’t read the book, and so I don’t know what he counted as a prayer and what he counted as an answer, but at least I now have an answer to me question!

Our theme today is We believe in the power of prayer.

In order to believe in the power of prayer, you first have to believe in the power of God to answer prayer.

Before we look at the question of the power of prayer, we must answer two vital questions:

Why do we pray?
Why is prayer important?

For many people, prayer is a last resort in a crisis. Something somewhere deep inside of them calls them to pray in those darkest moments. I believe that this call comes from our deep need to connect with the God who created us. We may not understand it, we may even believe it, but it happens.

For others is a matter of duty, a matter of ritual. Sometimes this is a positive thing, others times less so. Praying the same prayers in adulthood that you prayed as a child is surely a sign that growth has been held back for some reason or another.

And then there are those who pray because it’s the most natural, compelling and satisfying thing they do. To bring all their concerns, worries, joys and desires to the God who loves them is purpose enough for their prayer life. As they pray they record wonderful answers and can see the hand of God moving in and through all that they do.

This is surely not only a great reason to pray, but also a great expression of the importance of prayer.

Prayer, powerful prayer is prayer that changes me as much as it changes things around me. Powerful prayer deepens my knowledge of God not just my knowledge about God. And none of us would surely argue with our desperate need to know God better.

Prayer is also important because some things can only be changed through prayer. Some great act of self-control won’t do it, or some great act of personal sacrifice won’t be enough. Sometimes only a miraculous answer to prayer from the God who can do immeasurably more than we can ask or imagine as Paul puts it, can solve the problem, answer the need or close the gap.

The simple truth is this: God’s power is released through and in the lives of those who pray.

God’s power can change circumstances and relationships. It can help us face life’s daily struggles. It can heal psychological and physical problems, remove marriage obstructions, meet financial needs–in fact, it can handle any kind of difficulty, dilemma or discouragement.

Too busy not to Pray Bill Hybels

A pattern for prayer

In Matthew 6 Jesus offers us a pattern for prayer and some principles for prayer.

The principles

Pray in secret. Jesus uses the example of the man who stands on the street corners to pray. His prayers are probably clever and articulate. They are the prayers of a proud man, not a humble person.

Jesus says pray in secret not because prayer is not meant to be done in public but that it’s not meant to done to impress anyone. Prayer is about you and God, not about you and the crowd of people around you. Even when we pray together in church or in a small group, we should be praying in the secret place.

Pray sincerely. One of the most crucial things we need to learn about prayer is simply this: be honest with God. God loves an honest prayer. Remember the story Jesus told about the Pharisee and the sinner who both prayed? It was the honesty of the sinner that brought justification through prayer and the grace of God.

Don’t try and muster up faith, express your prayers in the context of your faith as it is. If you’re unsure of your motives in prayer, tell God you’re unsure and trust that he will take you in the right direction. To say” Lord if it is your will” is not a cop out for those who lack faith, but an expression of our inability to have 20/20 vision when it comes to prayer. My favourite expression is to say to God, “This is the desire of my heart, if it’s wrong change my heart.”

Pray specifically. Sometimes we take this to mean pray for a red bicycle with 26” wheels and those little things in the spokes that make a noise when they go round.
Well that’s a pretty specific prayer, but praying specifically doesn't always mean giving an exact description. If we go back to the pattern Jesus gives us in Matt.6 we see that specific prayer is focused prayer.

Honours appropriately
Worships authentically
Submits willingly
Asks clearly
Confesses openly
Seeks protection humbly

The challenge of prayer is to abandon self-reliance, autonomy and selfish choices.

Understanding how God answers prayer

In Too Busy, Bill Hybles uses a simple three word explanation of how God answers prayer:

Go
Slow
No

How to improve our prayer lives?

Time: If prayer is ever going to be more than something you squeeze into your schedule you will have to work out how to set aside sufficient time to pray. You alone can answer the question as to whether 10 minutes a day is more valuable to building your prayer life than an hour a week.

Focus: On your relationship with God more than getting answers to your prayers. Answers are good, answers encourage, but if your relationship with God is not growing, if you are not changing then I;d suggest there is something wrong with your prayer life. Prayer is an intimate connection between you and God. That should change you.

Content: Think about what you are praying. Draw up a plan, follow a pattern. You can use the pattern of Matt.6, you can uses the ACTS pattern. As you read through the Bible, make a note of those verses that encourage you to pray and what to pray. Recently in my reading I found this verse in 1Tim.

First of all I urge you to pray for all people. Ask God to help them; intercede on their behalf, and give thanks for them.

That’s impacted how I pray for people and who I pray for in recent weeks.

Record:Write it down. Simply record your prayers and record answers too. I’m not so good at this, but I do, form time to time, write my prayer down.

Conclusion

When we pray remarkable things happen. We change, circumstances change, people change. Not because we pray, but because God responds. He’s not a puppet under our control, tug his strings correctly and he dances to our tune. No, prayer is what aligns us with him, with his purposes, with his plans.

Yes there are times when God says no, there are times when he doesn’t appear to answer or even hear us. But at those times we need to remember that he hears all our prayers. What we need is the patience to wait and listen and learn.

We Believe in Radical Discipleship

2008-10-15T07:46:00.002Z

What does it mean to be radical? How would you define it?

The problem with being radical is that it’s become a by-word for fanatic, for terrorist for something quite frankly to which we should not aspire. But Jesus called the people who follow him to do so in radical change of lifestyle. Radical would have been the best way to describe the life of the followers of Jesus in the early church. It’s unconventional, maverick and counter-cultural.

Is that still true today? Does Jesus continue to call people to follow him in radical discipleship? And if so, what will it look like and how do we live it?

Keys to a radical lifestyle

You might think that when we talk about radical discipleship we’re going to talk about how to read you Bible more often, more fully and more deeply. You might think we’re going to talk about how to develop a more fulfilling prayer life or a more active evangelistic life.
But we’re not. Important as those things are, Bible reading, prayer, fellowship, mission, they are not what makes us radical. What makes us radical is the pattern we follow, the pattern of Jesus.

Key characteristics

#1 Christ-centred

A Christ-centred life is a connected life. Jesus said, "I am the vine you are the branches. Every branch that remains in me bears fruit..."

A Christ-centred life never asks God to bless its plan, rather it asks what are God’s plan and what part can I play in the fulfilment of his purposes? We ask a simple question: "Lord, what are you doing and how can help?"

#2 Whole-hearted

No other gods but me; Love the Lord your God with all your...

A whole-hearted, Christ-centred life is a surrendered life. Jesus spoke about carrying a cross and dying to self. The alternative to whole-hearted is the half-hearted, lukewarm Christianity against which Jesus speaks in Revelation

#3 It’s a faithful life

Radical discipleship means not giving up when things get tough. We do not stop worshipping God, we do not stop praying to God, we do not stop meeting with others, we do no stop seeking God just because problems come.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: How come Christ-followers are quick to give up on prayer when things are going badly and yet those who do not profess to follow Christ are among the first to start praying when things are going badly.

#4 Spirit inspired risk oriented

Only God’s agenda matters. The radical follower of Jesus Christ echoes the words of Isaiah the prophet by saying simply: Here am I, send me.

The big question of course is: How do you know it’s from God? I wish I had a simple answer.
In the end only time will tell. If it’s from God it will last, it will produce fruit, kingdom fruit. But the time frame might not match our expectations and the fruit might not be what we expect.

How is it expressed?

This is not an exhaustive or comprehensive list, but I believe that a radical life of discipleship will be expressed through:

Unconditional acceptance of the people Jesus misses most

Willingness to fail. The radical disciple gets out of the boat. He or she will have stories to tell their grandchildren about the amazing things that they have seen God do with the ounce of faith they offered him.

Generosity towards others

Grace-filled

Radical discipleship is not about our ability to tick the right boxes, it’s about our decision to abandon ourselves to the purposes of God. Radical discipleship settles for nothing less than 100% commitment. It is not satisfied with less and will do all it can to raise the standard and live the life. It is not into self-recriminations but accepts failure as part of the journey. Radical discipleship is relentless in its pursuit of God.

World-changers

I think we all know that it is through these kinds of disciples–Christ-centred, whole-hearted, faithful, Spirit inspired–that God will work his purposes in our world. If we want to be world changers, if we want to influence our communities for Christ, then this is the pattern of discipleship to which we need to aspire.

How do we respond?

Two ways:

First, with a sense of failure and defeat. We say yes to the idea of radical discipleship but we say we’re not up to the call. We realise we haven’t lived like that and every time we try we fail. So we give u and settle for mediocrity.

Second, with a sense of hope. We still acknowledge that we fall a long way short of the life of a fully devoted follower of Jesus, but we know that by the grace of God we can get up and get going once again.

I am what I am, but I am not all that I can be.

How do we get there?

So how do we become Christ-Centred disciples, radical disciples? It’s not easy! There are no instant fixes, quick solutions or fast track training programmes. It is a life-time’s work.

Some basic principles:

#1 Check your pulse. If you have a pulse, then you are still alive and therefore have the chance to start again!

#2 Check your position. I use four things normally when I go out for a walk. I use a map, a compass, my gps and my eyes. The map tells me where I should be and where I should be heading. The compass helps me orientate myself according to what I see on the map. The GPS helps me get an accurate fix on where I actually am. And I use my eyes to see the reality of my situation in the real world around me.

#3 Check your purpose. We said earlier that the radical disciple has no other agenda except the agenda of God. There are times when we kid ourselves into seeing our agenda as God’s agenda. But I believe that if we practice the principles of radical discipleship we will become more and more aligned with the purposes of God.

#4 Do it daily

Conclusion

If Paul is right when he declares that we are created in Christ Jesus to do good works that God prepared in advance for us to do, then tell me why we should should ever settle for anything less?

We Believe in the Gospel

2008-10-05T12:00:00.000Z

It seems a little odd to have to make such an obvious statement as “we believe in the gospel”. It’s as taken for read as “We believe in God”. We are, after all, an evangelical church with an evangelical statement of faith. But it’s one thing to say that we believe it and another to say and act on the basis of what it is we believe.

Maybe we should be asking what it is that we believe about the gospel.

For example do we simply believe the gospel as a series of propositions about our faith. A series of statements that best fit our understanding of where we stand before God. A sort multiple choice questionnaire like the ones the market research people do... "On a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 is strongly agree and 5 is strongly disagree. Please rate the following statements about your faith…"

Before we look at what we believe about the gospel, let me ask a question: What first drew you to Jesus? What was the one big question you had that demanded an answer?

I had a big question: Who gives meaning to my life?

Maybe Nicodemus had a big question. "Are you really from God?" From the answer Jesus gives to Nicodemus’ first statement and his then question would imply that the gospel is a radical rethinking of the relationship between God and man, not only for a religious man like a Pharisee.

But the gospel, the good news, is not about having all the answers to all the questions. Foe many years we’ve taught ourselves that in order to prepare properly to share the gospel with another person, we must first learn a series of answers. But times have changed. The questions we may have had 30, 20 or just 10 years ago are not necessarily the questions being asked today.

In the message of Jesus Christ we have the one answer to the one question. The question of reconciliation with the God who made us and who loves us. The only problem is that is not the question with which many of our friends begin.

Douglas Coupland, a Canadian author who first used the term ‘Generation X’ to describe the children of the 1980s articulates the question being asked like this:

Now–here is my secret: I tell it to you with an openness of heart that I doubt I shall ever achieve again, so I pray that you are in a quiet room as you hear these words. My secret is that I need God–that I am sick and can no longer make it alone. I need God to help me give, because I am no longer capable of giving; to help me be kind, as I no longer seem capable of kindness; to help me to love, as I seem beyond being able to love.

The point is this: We believe in the gospel as a message of forgiveness and reconciliation, as the answer to the most fundamental questions of life. We believe in the gospel as the message of eternal security. But what if our friends and neighbours aren’t looking for forgiveness? What if they aren’t interested in eternal security? What if their starting point is a search for a life that makes sense of terrorist threats and crashing markets? What if they simply want to learn how to love, to give, to be kind, to live a deeper life? What does our gospel have to say to the those questions?

What do we believe?

When we say: We believe in the gospel, what do we mean?

The gospel as truth
The gospel as power
The power to save
The power to change lives:

The great evangelist H.A. Ironside was interrupted one time by the shouts of an atheist. The atheist yelled, "There is no God! Jesus is a myth!" and finally, "I challenge you to a debate!"
Ironside responded, "I accept your challenge, sir! But on one condition. When you come, bring with you ten men and women whose lives have been changed for the better by the message of atheism. Bring former prostitutes and criminals whose lives have been changed, who are now moral and responsible individuals. Bring outcasts who had no hope and have them tell us how becoming atheists has lifted them out of the pit!
"And sir," he concluded, "if you can find ten such men and woman, I will be happy to debate you. And when I come, I will gladly bring with me two hundred men and women from this very city whose lives have been transformed in just those ways by the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ."
Ironside knew that atheism doesn't change lives. Jesus changes lives.

The gospel is “good news”. And the good news is that the kingdom of God has broken into history in the powerful person, ministry and sacrifice of Jesus Christ. And lives are changed forever as a result of an encounter with him.

What answers does it provide?

Perhaps one of the most crucial things we need to demonstrate is that faith actually works. That a lifestyle based upon the good news of Jesus Christ actually works in practice. That it makes us better people, kinder people, caring people.

The crucial factor in persuading someone to believe [is to] …awaken a desire for God in them.
The Provocative Church

...our lives need to become increasingly aligned with the example of Jesus... It means, though, increasingly becoming people of justice, kindness, mercy, strength, hope, grace, generosity, and hospitality. (64) Michael Frost Exiles

What would a gospel church look like, what does a gospel lifestyle look like?

Missional, incarnational, grace-filled

The gospel impacts our eternal destiny, but how does it affect our daily lives?

Live a life worthy of the calling you have received
You attitude should be like that of Jesus... who humbled himself
The gospel as counter-culture
The gospel as subversive
The gospel is Christ first method second

How does what we believe impact the questions people may be asking?

Conclusion

What believe about the gospel must affect how we live among the community in which we find ourselves. It cannot remain a series of bland statements to which we simply give intellectual assent.

The gospel must become a way of life, we must once again become a people of the way and not just a people of the book.

We believe in the God who loves the world he made

2008-09-28T13:00:00.000Z

I believe in God the creator. I believe that if he so chose, he could simply have spoken the universe into existence with a single breath. I believe that God is greater than the universe he made and it is he who holds it together.

And I love science.

From a very early age I was interested in how things worked and why things worked. I wanted to know what made the world turn and if it was true that the water goes down the plug-hole the other way in the southern hemisphere (the answer is that it doesn’t, at least not because of gravitational effects).

When I was 8 or 9 I got my first chemistry set and proceeded to perform experiments, although my sisters were reluctant to act as lab technicians for my work. I suspect my chances of a Noble prize were seriously undermined by their lack of faith in my scientific genius. At school I was in my element, so-to-speak, when I was in a chemistry or biology lab. I loved dissection and I loved mixing chemicals.

At university I studied environmental science and chemistry.

When people say that it’s hard for a scientist to believe in creation, I wonder why it’s so hard. It has never conflicted with my view of science.

So what about Genesis chapter 1?

#1 Don’t ask the wrong question

Genesis 1 is not a scientific paper looking at first origins. It is not a faith competitor for Darwin. It never has been. Although Genesis 1 describes a ‘how’, ‘How’ is not the focus.

The culture in which Genesis 1 was written was full of stories of the chaos of the primeval universe. Of good fighting evil, of gods battling with each other for supremacy. Earth and humanity were, according to many of these stories, the result of the battle.

Then along comes the writer of Genesis and we see something new.

#1 A new perspective

1. In the beginning God

Genesis begins with a profound statement: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

The implication is this: Before God created anything there was nothing. In the beginning God. No battles, no minor deities fighting it out in the cosmos, nothing. And from that nothing, the writer tells us, God made everything. The universe, the solar system, the planets, the world in which we live find their beginnings in the creative plans and purposes of God.

2. Order: … and there was evening and morning

The second point the writer wants us to notice is that God’s creative work was an orderly work. This is one of the key reasons I think that we have a timetable. Later in Israel’s history, the orderliness of creation would be one of the reasons why taking a rest day once a week was enshrined in their legal system.

And this orderly creation by an orderly God pays attention to the detail. As the story unfolds it become clear that God is concerned with all he makes. Nothing is done by chance, everything is done with purpose.

3. And it was good

The third thing to notice today is that when God made something he made a good job of it.
As each day’s work comes to completion there is the simple declaration that God saw what he had made and it was good. As one writer once put it: God does not make junk.

#2 God so loved the world

If we fast-forward to some time in the first century we’ll find an old man living in exile on a small island. There is nothing particularly remarkable about this old man. To some he probably appears a little odd even crazy as he describes visions of future events. But this old man has a remarkable tale to tell because he was one of the 3 people closest to Jesus. When he wrote his version of the events surrounding the life and work of Jesus he began his story this way:

In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God…Through him all things were made.

This, John tells us, is Jesus. And the reason Jesus came was because God so loved the world.
It is in John 3 that we read the words that remind us that the God who began it all continues to care for the world he made and people who live in it. He cares so much that he was willing to send his Son who was in turn willing to come, to live and to die that we might know the God who began it all.

Conclusion

Genesis chapter 1 introduces us to the God who loves us, the God who created the world in which we live and who, through his Son, has demonstrated the extent of his love.

Now you can ask about evolution and you can ask about creation, but maybe the better question is this: If God will go to this extent to create a world for you, how much must he love you?

We Believe in the Mission

2008-09-14T13:48:00.003Z

We have a very simple mission statement: To know God and to make God known. Not very original but it does the job. It describes out mission, but here’s the question. Do we get it? What does it mean?

Acts 13 is a defining moment in the life of the Early Church. I doubt very much that any member of Central Baptist Antioch (it must have been a Baptist church mustn't it?) thought of it as a defining moment, but defining it was.

A predominately Gentile church was about to commission to Jewish Christians to set out on a regional mission. It’s as if a small part of the emerging church has suddenly got it and is about to get on with it!

Mission is about to get a whole lot more entertaining.

God says to this fledgling church take you two most senior leaders, your strongest connection to the church in Jerusalem, and send them on a journey. Unlike Philip this was not a journey predicated on the miraculous ability of God to move them from one place to another or persecution. Unlike Peter this was not a one off journey defined in clear terms prior to the guides arriving.

But this was still God working out his purposes, calling his church to action in his mission.
Today, out them is mission, and we’re going to explore what we mean by mission and what mission means for the way we live.

John Stott once said that mission was everything the church did. For some, this definition is way too broad. It allows everything to be declared a missionary activity and draws attention away from the central thrust of mission–evangelism.

On the other hand, if you define mission only in terms of evangelism are we not in danger of reducing mission down to a verbal presentation of truth, a focus on the eternal destiny of the individual, with no room for for anything else.

Perhaps what we need is to understand mission more in the context of the Gospel story than in the context of church history.

Let me explain.

Defining Mission

I believe there are two fundamental mistakes we make when we start trying to define mission. The first is to define mission in the context of the church. When we do this we end up asking questions about how we can people into church. How we can connect them with what we do, what we believe and how we live. Start with the church and almost inevitably the mission will get lost.

The best example I know of this approach came quite recently with the Hope initiative in town. For some, the first question was not “How can we reach and serve the most number of people who are from God?” The first question was:” What’s our basis of faith?”

The second error is to define mission in the context of what’s wrong with the world. When we fall into this trap we find ourselves standing in judgement over our neighbours. Mission becomes focussed on righting wrongs and defining acceptable behaviour. Whilst it’s important to challenge policies and laws, to write to MPs and ask tough questions, our mission is not a quest to get Christian values enshrined in the constitution of the land but to populate heaven with people who have reconnected with the God who loves them.

So how do we define mission, where do we begin?

The only place to begin if we want to define mission correctly is to begin with Jesus. What we believe about Jesus has to be the basis for what we believe about mission and interestingly, what we believe about mission will lead us in the end to better understand what we believe about the church.

Think if it this way: What we believe about Jesus determines our what believe about how we live in the world (our mission), our mission determines our how we live as a community of faith (worship). Technically: Christology determines missiology, and missiology determines ecclesiology.

So, when we launch a celebration in Shortstown, when we begin a housegroup in the Wixams, it will be with the tag line: It’s not about coming to church, it’s about coming to life.

How did Jesus do mission?

If Jesus is the defining criteria for our understanding of mission, then what do we know about how he did mission?

Jesus did mission relationally

He invited followers,
he lived among them,
he entered their world,our world.
He committed himself to them.

Jesus did mission incarnationally

The good news was not just about Jesus, it was Jesus.

When he said the kingdom of God was near, it was no mere philosophical proposition, it was a bold statement of the presence of God made flesh among them. God had drawn near, and he still does. In the person of Jesus Christ the holiness of God stood next to the unholiness of humanity and the only who died as a result was the holy one himself.

The Old Testament people feared such an encounter. At Sinai they begged God to stay clear of them, Jacob, who wrestled with God declared with amazement that he had seen God face to face and lived to tell the story. Isaiah declares himself ruined as he sees a vision of God Almighty, high and lifted up.

But when Jesus came, he came humbly, he came as a servant, he came as one who was powerless. He drew near and threw his arms around saint and sinner alike.

This narrative of the God who walks among men is the story in which we find ourselves. This is the defining strategy for the mission of God’s people, to live among the missing in order that some, even all, might be found.

Living missionally

If Jesus defines our mission, then we have a few questions to ask. First we can ask what we truly believe about mission and our part in it. Second we can ask what it means to live our lives in the light of this mission. Thirdly we can ask to who are we sent? This third question arises out of the very nature of our missional calling to Go and make disciples

What do we believe about mission?

I’m not asking about the definition, we’ve already established the basis for that. I’m asking what we believe about our role.

Do we believe the the mission is urgent?
De we believe it is a priority?
Do we believe we have a part to play in it?
Do we believe it is primarily someone else’s responsibility?

What is a missional life?

A missional life is: (I think these three terms are from Ed Stetzer)

Incarnational: we live the story. The gospel is not just something we believe, it’s the way we live.

Indigenous: In other words, we live among the people we are trying to reach. We don’t go somewhere to do mission, we live somewhere to be the mission, to live the story. It’s another way of saying relational.

Intentional: We live on purpose and with purpose. We are a sent people. We may not have been prayed over, set apart by the Holy Spirit to travel throughout Asia, but we are all a sent people.

The challenge we face is not to do mission but to live missionally.

To whom are we sent?

Of course we can say simply that we are sent into the world. Not to make it a better place but to live out the good news story so that others might see and choose to live it too.
But we’re also aware that God has placed and is placing opportunities, clear opportunities before us.

Perhaps the credit crunch will give us a little more time to get ready, but houses are being built, people are moving in and we cannot stand by and do nothing.

We see the communities in which we already live and know that we cannot wait for someone else to come along and engage for us, we have to answer God’s call to be the mission.
Whether your heart burns for Cotton End, for Shortstown, for Wilstead or for Wixams, there is an opportunity for all of us to share the journey together.

Conclusion

I believe God has called us to a missional life. I believe will all my heart that the church exists primarily to serve the purposes of the kingdom of God through engaging in mission. We are here for the benefit of those who are yet to believe.

And if we get it, then for the sake of the kingdom, let’s get on with it.

We Believe: in the vision

2008-09-07T07:52:00.003Z

I think one of the most powerful questions we’ve asked ourselves in recent months is this:

If we get it, are we getting on with it?

When we talk about the church, the vision, about the mission, about all the things we’re going to explore over the next couple of months, there are many things about which we could say, “We get it”.

Our Vision, Mission and Heart

Our Vision: is to build a church that honours and glorifies God; built on biblical principles; teaching biblical truth; influencing its community; where personal relationships are deep.

Our Purpose: is to love people into a deep and growing relationship with God through Jesus Christ.

Our Heart: is to share God’s heart for the marginalised and oppressed.

Where have you seen this before?

Actually, you see it every week because it’s printed n the front of the bulletin!

Three keys to “getting on with it”

#1 Ownership.

How much would you say you “own” the vision? Not how much of it is yours and yours alone, but how deeply have you bought into what we sense God has called us to do and be as a community together?

Bill Hybels spoke last year at the Global Leadership Summit about hired hands and owners. Hired hands run away at the first sign of danger. When wolves come to attack the sheep, they say, “I’m not paid enough to risk my life for these mangy sheep”. And they up and leave.

Owners act differently. For the owner the sheep are his or her life. Without the sheep they have nothing. They are fully invested in sheep and therefore fully committed to their protection. Losing sheep is not an option and they will do whatever it takes to protect them.

If we own the vision, then we will be more interested in seeing that come to fruition than almost anything else. It will consume us.

#2 Passion.

When it comes to the life of the church, to the mission of God, the basic expansion plans of the kingdom then I believe that we need to be passionate about it.

This is no mere business plan to build a big church, this is about life and death, about eternal destinies, about the very heart of God.

In you go away with one prayer today, then let it be “Lord, give me a passion for the people you miss most.”

If passion escapes you, then listen to the radio on a Saturday night. Tune in to Radio 5 for a while and listen to the football ‘phone-in. You’ll hear some passion then!

#3 Purposefulness

As followers of Jesus Christ we are called to live our lives purposefully.

In other words we are not called to live our lives wandering around this world until the day comes when either God takes us up into heaven or Jesus Christ returns to the earth and then takes us to heaven.

Everyone knows that if you want to fulfil your potential then you have to work at whatever it is that defines that potential. Michael Phelps may be genetically well suited to swimming with his long torso, short legs, big feet and fast recovery times, but he would not have won 8 gold medals without application, without being purposeful about reaching his goal.

How much more significant is the goal of fulfilling our call in the kingdom of God? How much more significant than a gold medal is God’s affirmation, “Well done, good and faithful servant?”

Conclusion

If we get it, then we ought to be getting on with it.

It is a s simple as that.
If we own the vision, if we’re passionate about the purposes of the kingdom and we’re purposeful about living our lives for the glory of God, then how can we not get on with it? Tell me, how is that possible?

Re:ACT Fun Day

2008-08-09T16:11:00.004Z

Last Sunday (3rd August) a team of young people from all over the country descended on Bedford to put on an enjoyable afternoon of fun for all the family. Re:ACT is a short term mission project organised by Urban Saints (formerly Crusaders) that has been going on for several years, but has gained an awareness from churches in the country this year through Hope 08. Volunteers for Re:ACT are usually in their teens and embark on an 11 day residential outing where they learn practical skills for running 6 events in an area as well as more about their faith and how to express it with other people.

The Free Family Fun day in Bedford was the last stop on this team's tour, and would not have been possible without the involvement of the churches in Bedford which join together under the banner of Hope in Bedfordshire. It was held next to the river in Bedford which provided plenty of space for the crowds which soon followed. The day started slowly (mainly because people were having their lunch) but after this the site began to populate.

Being separated into three areas, there were plenty of different activities in which visitors could participate. On the main stage, the presenters and band took it in turns to entertain the crowd, with music and messy games. For those feeling peckish, the hotspots were the barbecue area and the tea and coffee marquee (managed by Jaffa Orchard), which had a large range of home-made cakes. Elsewhere around the field there was a combination of inflatables, provided by Urban Saints, and other games put on by the churches for the entertainment of all the family, with favourites being Beat the goalie and the coconut shy.

In the centre of the grounds, the prayer tent offered support, discussion and prayer with a team of volunteers from the local churches. There were also many leaflets and flyers for people to take away with them with regard to faith, Hope and the Alpha course, as well as display boards of community projects reaching out to families and churches involved in the area.

The afternoon concluded with Church Outdoors, an event separate to the activities of the fun day yet still presented by the Re:ACT team, in which the informal congregation joined in with worship performed by the band. Most of the attendees were from churches in the community. This was really nice to see as it was a reminder of being all part of the same family and that good things happen when we all come together. The service included testimonials and a short talk before the clouds, which had been threatening all day, opened above us and washed the grounds.

I would just like to give a big 'thank you' and 'well done' to all those who were involved with the organisation and preparation for running this event. Overall this was a very successful and much appreciated day out for the local community.

Fifty Thousand Shirts for China

2008-06-10T20:18:00.001Z

Click the image on the left to go to the Fiftythousandshirt website.

Sabbatical

2008-06-01T09:00:00.000Z

As from today, June 1st, I am on sabbatical. So, for the next three months, it's unlikely that there will be any posts on this blog.

You may of course be grateful about this, but in case you're not, I'll be back in September!

Mission prayer (week 4)

2008-05-28T09:00:00.001Z

Prayer guide for week 4

Sunday 1^st June
Pray for our communities. Pray that God’s grace would be seen throughout our neighbourhoods. Pray that Christ would be honoured, and that many would begin to seek a relationship with God.

Monday 2^nd June
Pray through your “Monday list”

Tuesday 3^rd June
John Kramp in his book Out of their faces and into their shoes challenges us to be there for people as they emerge from “lostness” to offer support and guidance. Ask God to give you a heart for lost people and offer yourself a someone he can use to help lost people find him.

Wednesday 4^th June
Jim Henderson talks about being a spiritual guide for others when they need it among his list of Ordinary Attempts. Pray for opportunities to do ordinary things that God can use for the Kingdom.

Thursday 5^th June
Pray that the church would grow through the impact of outreach and evangelism, both personal and corporate. Ask God to give us all a passion for the lost and missing in our communities at home and at work etc. Pray the church “out” into the community rather than praying people “in” to the church.

Friday 6^th June
Give thanks for the many opportunities we have to engage in outreach. Ask God to give us boldness and courage to share our faith and to encourage us as do so.

Saturday 7^th June
Take some time to reflect on this month of prayer. What things has God brought to your attention? What things need further prayer? What are you going to do next?

Has God spoken to you about something that the whole church needs to hear about? Do you have a story about this month of prayer that you could share with the church on a Sunday morning?

Thank you for sharing in this month of prayer.

Mission Prayer (week 3)

2008-05-21T09:00:00.000Z

The prayer guide for week 3

Sunday 25^th May
Everyone is on a spiritual journey. Some people are moving away from God, some are moving towards him. Our role is to be there when people need a spiritual guide. Who are you helping with their spiritual journey? Has God placed any particular person in your life who you can help? How can you help them take another step towards God? Ask God to speak to you about these things.

Monday 26^th May
Pray through your “Monday list”.

Tuesday 27^th May
Pray for your workplace or school or college setting. If you’re not in such a setting, think about where you spend most of your day and where you connect with people outside of the church.

Wednesday 28^th May
Just walk across the room, Bill Hybels book, outlines a simple strategy for connecting with people far from God. Ask God to show you where you could take this simple idea and apply it on your personal evangelism. (Add any ideas that come to mind to your “Monday list” as necessary.

Thursday 29^th May
Our nearby communities are set to grow significantly beginning this year. Pray for the new developments at the Wixams. Ask God for one house in the first village that will give us a place from which we can reach out to that new community. Pray for the new homes nearing final completion in Cotton End and pray too for the expansion plans in Shortstown. Pray that God will help us to be creative in the ways we connect with our new neighbours.

Friday 30^th May
Take another opportunity to pray for our communities and our neighbours. Pray for Cotton End, Shortstown, Wixams and Wilstead. Pray for your nearest 20 neighbours.

Saturday 31^st May
Acts 2 growth. In Acts 2, as the emerging church committed itself to fellowship, prayer and discipleship, mission seemed to flow naturally from their lifestyle. Pray that we too would experience growth as we seek to follow God wholeheartedly.

Failure and Restoration

2008-05-18T15:49:00.002Z

Most readers agree that this was not Israel’s finest hour. Moses had been up the mountain for 40 days and the people were restless. Whilst he was getting clear plans and instructions for the proper form of worship, the people were impatient and their impatience led to sin. In the matter of a few hours, maybe a day, they managed to break at least half the commandments. They’d gone from promising total obedience to running wild in less than 7 weeks. And the consequence of this is that they also went from being “my people” to being “your people”.

As Moses smashes the copies of the Ten Commandments the realisation comes to the people that they have smashed the covenant with God. What they now deserve is judgement and rejection. What they get is mercy and grace. It doesn’t look much like mercy and grace, but all the same it is mercy and grace.

The simple truth is this: Break one commandment or break all ten, it makes no difference. As James puts it: The person who keeps the whole law yet stumbles at just one point, is guilty of breaking all of it.

The question of the day becomes not why did 3,000 die but why did any survive?

In verse 10 the God who craves community cries, “I want to be alone”. Alone with his thoughts and alone with his plan. Now Moses may have thought it sounded like a good plan. Destroy this lot and start again with me, but in his heart he knew at least two things.

He knew he was no different from the rest of the people. Moses was just as stiff-necked as the rest. He could so easily fall into the same kind of pattern, and if he could then surely his descendants would too. Judgement only brings more of the same. It doesn’t transform, it cannot transform.

He knew God as a merciful and loving God.

After failure comes restoration

The one ingredient that makes restoration possible is grace. Grace turns judgement into mercy and mercy in turn triumphs over judgement. As Moses intercedes for the people, grace is his trump card. He reminds God of three things:

His covenantal relationship with the people.
His holiness and trustworthiness (his character)
His promises to the Patriarchs

Moses wins the argument and God relents and does not bring the disaster on the people that he promised. He relents, not because of the eloquence of the propositions Moses puts before him, but because Moses interceded. He sought the favour of the Lord.

In the OT God “relents” on the basis of three things:

Intercession, for example here and in Amos 7
Repentance (Jer.18, Jonah)
Compassion (Deut. 32; 2Sam.24)

The people deserved judgement, they get grace. So, to quote Philip Yancey, “What’s so amazing about grace?”

The Divine do-over

In the film City Slickers, Billy Crystal plays Mitch, one of three friends who’s lives are not altogether going to plan. One friend, Phil, works in his father-in-law’s store but has been having an affair with one of his co-workers. She arrives at a party and announces that she is having a baby and Phil’s affair becomes public.

Putting their lives on hold, the three friends set of on a western adventure that gets turned upside down when they foreman dies mid-trip and the hired hands leave them in the wilderness after a fight with guests. During the fight Phil takes control and returns to his tent having disarmed the drunken cowboys and demanded a little peace and quiet.

In the tent Mitch tries to calm Phil down as Phil talks about his life and the problems he faces. Mitch reminds him about how they used to shout do-over when things went wrong as they played baseball in the yard. “It’s like a do-over,” he tells Phil, “a second chance to start-over.”
This is how grace works, a divine do-over on offer to all who will take up the opportunity to start again with a clean slate.

Grace is the scandal of our time. Sinful, fallen, failing human beings get forgiven simply by asking God.

What was more offensive to his Jewish brothers, what was more scandalous about Paul’s message: the cross or the divine forgiveness that went with it? Where they more scandalised by the proposition that forgiveness comes through such a death or that it comes so simply?

Grace forgives
If my people...
I will not turn them away

Grace restores
Peter, Aaron

Grace abounds
Where sin increased, Grace increased even more

Graces goes on
God never takes his grace back. Paul in Romans 8 tells us that he is convinced that neither death nor life, height nor depth.... Nothing can separate us from the love of God.

Mike Yaconelli says that we could rephrase this:

Neither failure, poor church attendance, inadequate Bible reading and prayer, betrayal, denial, doubt,insecurity, guilt, weakness, bad theology, or even losing our temper can separate os from the love of God.

The problem of “ungrace”
Philip Yancey describes ungrace as a refusal to forgive.

The problem, he argues, is that ungrace is so easily passed on through the generations. It justifies itself with the argument that forgiveness is only for those who deserve it or who ask for it. Preferably on their knees, pleading with us.

Ungrace turns forgiveness into something that works for the one who needs to forgive rather than for the one who needs forgiveness. We trade ti like a commodity. You give me humility, you take all the blame, you own up to what you’ve done to hurt me, and I might, if I think you’re sincere, if I think you really mean it, I might just forgive you, but there will be conditions. I will store up this memory and use it at my convenience to remind you of your failure.

When I make a mistake, I will use your failure to demand forgiveness for mine. I will remind you that your sin was worse than mine ever could be and that mine would not have happened if you hadn’t failed in the first place. I will shift the blame.

In short, ungrace puts a price on forgiveness.

Grace, by contrast, has already paid the price.

Living in grace

Accepting: I am forgiven. I forgive myself. Perhaps we struggle with forgiving ourselves because we know how easily we excuse our failures. Perhaps, because we don’t want to let others off the hook so easily, because in truth grace looks like an easy solution to failure, we’re unwilling to let ourselves be forgiven.

Growing: The principle of becoming more like Christ

Living out grace

Forgiving others.

We’ve talked about how ungrace puts us at the focal point. Grace turns things on their head.

Love, Paul tells us, keeps no record of wrongs.

Conclusion

As we come to a close, let me remind you of something very simple. There are three things you can ask form God and I can guarantee he will give them to you.

The first thing you can ask from him is justice. (Getting what you deserve)

The second thing you can ask for is mercy. (Not getting what you deserve)

The third thing you can ask for is grace. (Getting what you don’t deserve)

The choice is yours, justice, mercy or grace.

Mission Prayer (week 2)

2008-05-14T09:00:00.000Z

Sunday 18^th May
Personal evangelism. Most of us struggle with finding the right words at the right time to share our faith with others. Ask God to give you the courage you need and the words you need, and ask him too for opportunities to share you faith with others.

Monday 19^th May
Pray for the people on your “Monday list”. Give thanks for any answers to prayer. Review your list and make any additions or changes needed.

Tuesday 20^th May
Doable evangelism. Ask God for an opportunity to engage in some aspect of doable evangelism. It may be helping someone, it may be noticing a need or offering a silent pray. Ask God to open your eyes to the possibilities that you have to impact another life in a simple way.

Wednesday 21^st May
Hope 08: Pray for the opportunities that Hope 08 will give us to connect with our communities. Pray for the Re:Act fun-day in August.

Thursday 22^nd May
Pray for our Children’s and youth ministries. Pray for the outreach that happens on Fridays and the discipleship ministries on Sundays. Pray for Becky and Amanda as they coordinate these ministries. Pray also for the outreach work in Shortstown and for Barbara as she leads this.

Friday 23^rd May
Pray for the Exercise classes that happen on Saturday. Pray that God will use these events to help us build strong relationships with friends outside of the church.

Saturday 24^th May
Pray for your neighbours. Pray for them by name if you know their names, pray for opportunities to get to know them and build a relationship with them. Pray for any difficulties you are having with your neighbours and for the opportunity to express God’s love through grace and patience if needed. Pray for the five neighbours either side, and for the ten neighbours opposite your home (if you have them!)

Sabbatical

2008-05-14T06:44:00.003Z

In a few weeks time I will be going on sabbatical. So, from June 1st through to the end of August I won't be preaching and that means that this blog will go quite unless someone else at church picks up the baton and chooses to provide outlines.

If not, I'll be back in the autumn with a new series based around John's Gospel.

Any sabbatical blogging will happen on The View From Here.

God's tent

2008-05-14T06:35:00.002Z

If you read my personal blog, you will have seen some photographs of a simple model of the tabernacle. As we stood outside in the physical space we'd created, it was really interesting to reflect on how Jesus fulfilled the role of sacrifice and fulfiller of the law.

For me, one of the striking things about the tabernacle is not the design or the foreshadowing of God's redemptive purposes, but the lengths to which God goes in order to be able to live amongst his people. It should not be possible for a holy God to be so close to an unholy people without judgement ensuing. But because of God's gracious and forgiving heart towards his people he makes it possible using tents and altars.

In other words, God does not make it too complicated for us to draw close to him, in fact he makes it as simple as possible.

Of course eventually he makes it really simple: Jesus said, "Whoever believes in me has eternal life."

The Prevailing Church

2008-05-11T14:23:00.002Z

What happened on the Day of Pentecost?

Put simply, God happened. Acts 2 opens and closes with a description of what God did that day. It begins with the outpouring of His Spirit and it ends with his adding to the church those who were being saved.

What model of church do we see in Acts 2?

1. Committed to discipleship (the Apostle's teaching)
2. Committed to relationships (fellowship)
3. Committed to worship (breaking of bread)
4. Committed to prayer

The outcome of the commitment was that the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved. God may have added 3,000 as a result of the events of the day, but the daily growth comes as a direct result of the ongoing life of the church. The point here is that the church, when it’s working right, will grow.

Recasting the vision

One simple question: What kind of church has God called us to be?

Our mission is a simple one: To know God (ie to build a strong personal relationship with God) and to make God known (ie to share that relationship with other people).

Building a great church in Cotton End, Shortstown, Wixams and maybe Wilstead.

We’ve set this mission and vision in the context of:

Journey: The spiritual journey we are all making and the journey that we invite other to join.
Family: The church local, and the church global.
Community: The people around us, the people we are called to serve and to reach.
Mission: Our great purpose in God’s hands is to engage in his mission to the world. To love people into a deep and growing relationship with God through Jesus Christ.

A great church will have a great commitment to the great commandment and the great commission.It’s interesting to note how closely our aims (journey, family, community, and mission) and our core values (Commitment to Christ, Authentic lifestyle, commitment to serve and reach our community, commitment to each other, centrality of prayer and worship) mirror those set out by Rick Warren in The Purpose Driven Church (Worship, Fellowship, Discipleship, Ministry, Missions)

What kind of “local church”?

“I believe that the local church is the hope of the world. I believe to the core of my being that local churches have the potential to be the most influential force on planet earth. If they get it and get on with it, churches can become the redemptive centres that Jesus intended them to be. Dynamic teaching, creative worship, deep community, effective evangelism, and joyful service will combine to …strengthen families, transform communities and change the world”

This is a quote from Bill Hybels, I think it’s from Courageous Leadership.

If “the local church is the hope of the world”? What kind of local church is the hope of the world?

If we can describe the kind of local church that is the hope of the world then by our own admission "we get it" We actually understand. And we get it, then it's time to get on with it.

How do we move towards becoming this kind of church?

In order to become the church we believe God is calling us to become, we need to change. That’s not a negative thing to say. If we are going to grow as individuals we know we need to change. If we are going to become better followers of Jesus Christ we know we need to change. So it follows that we will not wake up tomorrow suddenly transformed into the church we so desire to become for the glory of God.

In order for this great church, this healthy church, this growing church, this missional church to come into reality, we will need to become great, healthy, growing, missional followers of Jesus.

What experiences do we need in order to become those followers?

Is it more teaching? Teaching helps, but it’s not the answer alone.

Imagine the day when…

What is your dream, your wildest dream? Mine is simple. A Christ-centred, community focused, growing church serving Cotton End, Shortstown, Wixams and Wilstead. Not four separate churches, but one church resourcing mission and ministry in diverse and innovative ways in these communities.

We won’t all see it quite the same way. But we all should have a dream of some kind. The challenge is, by the grace of God, to see that dream become a reality.

Of course we know that unless God builds the house, those who labour, labour in vain. But that doesn’t say, “Don’t dream.”

Committed to growing

This is about personal spiritual development. Earlier we noted that the continued growth of the early church arose from their commitment to be the prevailing church described in Acts 2. The Health-check assessment is there to help. My promise is to do my best to provide the encouragement and teaching to help you grow, your promise must be to help yourself to grow. No programme will help you grow unless you follow it through. At the gym you might hire a personal trainer to help you establish a personal programme for fitness, but unless yo choose to follow that routine, you will not reach your goal.
It requires: An act of disciplined choices coupled with prayerful devotion and dependence upon God by his Spirit.

Counting the cost

Jesus said never embark on a course of action without first counting the cost. Whether it’s going to war, building a house or following him. The truth is that there’s a cost to staying still as well as a cost for going forward. Nothing is without a cost. And it’s not just about financial costs or though there will be some significant costs involving money.

Cost #1: You will have to give up more of your time. A project like the celebration in Shortstown is gong to cost time and effort. It won’t happen if we don’t do it. It won’t happen because everyone else will do it.

You may have grown used to the idea of only having to come to church once on a Sunday. If the Shortstown Celebration was to be on a Sunday afternoon, would you consider that too much to ask of you or would you consider it a price worth paying if it’s going to make a difference.

Cost #2: It won’t be instant. We will have to commit to a long-term plan. This cannot be a few meetings and then a slow death as enthusiasm wanes.

Cost #3: You may need to move house. Perhaps it won’t be you, perhaps it will be me! But are you willing, if God were to call you, to make the move to reach a new community?

"Lord, we get it. Help us to get on with it!"

A month of prayer for mission

2008-05-09T09:59:00.003Z

Following on from our prayer month in February, I've created a mission focused guide for the next four weeks. It was meant to start on May 4th, but in the confusion of the morning celebration at church, very few guides were distributed. This version starts this Sunday, the 11th May. A printed version will be available in church on Sunday.

Sunday 11^thMay
As we begin a month of prayer about mission, thank God that lost and missing people matter to him. Ask him to pour his Spirit into you and the church that we might share his passion for the people with whom we live, work and relax.

Monday 12^th May
Write a list of the people for whom you are, or want to pray. Think about something specific for each person, for example an opportunity to extend an invitation to Alpha or a Sunday Celebration or the opportunity to share something of your faith or simply the chance to serve them. Keep this list where you can use it each Monday for the next four weeks at least. Monday will be our day for praying for these opportunities

Tuesday 13^{th May}
Pray for the mission of the church.
Pray that we would re-establish a pattern of regular involvement in outreach through things like Servant Evangelism, Ordinary Attempts, Just Walk Across the Room. Pray for some specific opportunities for you to share something of God’s love with another person. Ask God if there is a particular person he wants you to invite to church or Alpha.
Ask God to widen our horizons in mission and expand our expectations. Ask him to guide us as we seek to reach into communities, families and lives.

Wednesday 14^th May
Pray for Cotton End. Pray for the relationships we have with the people in our community. Pray for opportunities to build new relationships.

Thursday 15^th May
Pray for Shortstown. Pray about the idea to begin a monthly celebration in Shortstown. Pray for a committed core group who will make this happen. Pray for all those things that will need to fall into place and pray for God’s blessing on this outreach adventure.

Friday 16^th May

Pray for the Wixams. As houses begin to be built, pray for those who will move to the Wixams villages over the coming years. Pray that we would be able to establish a place from which we can build relationships and reach into the new community.

Saturday 17^th May
Pray for Wilstead. Wilstead is a settled community with which we have quite a lot of connections. Pray about any future opportunities that may come our way in the village.

Three simple lessons

2008-04-29T15:25:00.002Z

As I've been reflecting on the year so far, there were three things that seem to have arisen from the teaching programme at church.

Lesson 1: How it feels is not how it is

I'm no sure where this came from, maybe it's just the simple truth over all that we've been through so far this year. I know it's only April, but we seemed to have lived a lifetime in four months. The tragic death of two teenagers can do that to you, but it's more profound than this. Jon Ortberg wrote a book called Everybody's normal 'til you get to know them. In he argued that what we experience now is usual but it isn't normal. Normal is defined by the Kingdom of God.

Lesson 2: You can't rush God's promises

Abraham waited 25 years to have a son, and to become a nation, let alone the father of many nations, was a longer wait. Joseph spent 13 years in Egypt, Moses spent 40 years in training and then another 40 before he even saw the Promised Land. And even then he never set foot in on the land until he joined Jesus on a mountain top. Daniel was in captivity for 70 years. The list goes on. You can't rush God's promises.

But even though you can't rush them, does that mean that all we do is sit back and wait for them to happen? There has to be a relationship between waiting for God to do what he promises and being active as we wait. The danger is that we put activity first, we're in danger of doing the wrong thing. But doing nothing doesn't feel like the right thing either.

3. You can take the slave out of Egypt but it's much more difficult to take Egypt out of the slave.

The problem that Israel faced when they left Egypt was that although the location changed, who they were had not yet changed. God didn't do an overnight transformation. They wee still slaves, they acted like slaves, they moaned and complained like slaves. Slavery was what they had know their whole lives, being slaves is what they were and moving into the desert didn't change that.

God was less interested in how long it was going to take to make the journey from Egypt to Canaan than he was in who the people would become along the way. The journey was not just a means to an end, it was an integral part of becoming the people of God.

The Mountain of God

2008-04-25T21:30:00.002Z

Introduction

Sometimes you have to go out into the wilderness in order to meet with God.
God led the Israelites out of Egypt to the Promise Land. This could have been a short trip of about 200 miles. However, they didn’t take the direct route because God knew they had lessons to learn in the wilderness. He was more concerned about the people they would become than how quickly they would get to the promised land. (Jon Ortberg)

The significance of Sinai

This is the first revelation of God to the newly emerging Israel and it carries with it a conditional promise: If you will obey me, you will be my treasured possession… a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.

It is in the wilderness not the Promised Land

Therefore it is not the place to settle. However it does mean that you can encounter God, in all his fulness, on the journey. You don’t have to wait until to reach your final destination. You don’t have to wait until you die to meet with the living God!

It is both the place of revelation and the place of failure. It’s while Moses is up the mountain that the people make their idol.

It is the place where God called Moses. (Acts 7:30)

"After forty years had passed, an angel appeared to Moses in the flames of a burning bush in the desert near Mount Sinai.

It is the place to which Elijah flees

Let’s think for a while about how God reveals himself to us.

How has/does God reveal himself?

1. In creation (his general revelation)

“What can be known about God is plain to them, for God Himself made it plain. Ever since God created the world, his invisible qualities both his eternal power and his divine nature, have been clearly seen; they are perceived in the things that God has made. So those people have no excuse at all” (Romans 1:20 TEV)

Also part of this so-called general revelation of God is his self-disclosure through history and humanity.

Because humanity bears the image of God, those things that separate us from the rest of creation point towards the image of God that we bear. In history, God is revealed through the outworking of his plan. As one writer puts it:

History’s continuation despite the forces of destruction at work within it points to the compassion of God; a new community (the church universal) emerging out of the chaos of history points to the love of God, and the drive of history itself to a climactic finish points to the ultimate sovereignty of God.

Christianity 101, Gilbert Bilezikian

2. Through his word

From In the beginning God ... (Gen. 1:1) to Come Lord Jesus ... (Rev. 22:20), the Bible teaches the reality of God. There is never a hint of doubt in the Bible concerning the reality of God. It never attempts to prove the existence of God, but asserts His reality as unquestionable. The existence of God is never questioned in the Bible. On the contrary, the Bible boldly confronts us with who God is and what God does. From beginning to end we are faced with accounts of ordinary men and women who dared to believe that God is - and who lived their lives accordingly.

3. In Jesus Christ

John 1: In the beginning was the Word… The Word became flesh and dwelt among…

The differences between the people encountering God on the mountain and the people encountering God on the hillside (Sinai versus Jesus)

(Sinai)Thick cloud God is hidden---(Jesus) Jesus can be clearly seen, God is revealed

People needed to be consecrated---People didn’t need to do anything particular, they can simply come

Limited approachability---Jesus “touched”

Death was the consequence for touching the mountain---Healing was the consequence of touching Jesus

Limited access (only when the signal given)---Free access

Moses was the go-between---Jesus was his own go-between

In the OT the holiness of God is was separates the people from God. This remains true in the NT and in our time. It’s the incarnation that brings him close. He shall be called Emmanuel, God with us.

And the dwelling of God will be with human beings… he will be their God… (Rev. 21)

This is the measure of God’s love for us: In his holiness he must separate himself from us, but he wants to be close to us, so he chooses to become one of us. God, through Jesus Christ makes it possible for us to stand in his presence without fear of being destroyed.

What does God reveal about himself?

1. That he is “other”
The theological word for this is transcendent. At its simplest it means that he is “Above all things”. We must not confuse God with the universe he created because he is not a part of it. This transcendence is characterised by the three “omni” qualities: omniscience, omnipresence, and omnipotence.

2. That he is active
Right from the beginning of the Bible we read about the God who is active. He creates, he builds relationships, he acts in judgment and mercy and he reveals a long-term plan.
The idea of God’s activity continues throughout the Biblical story. Even Jesus pointed to the fact his Father was always at work.

3. He is holy
The restrictions placed on the newly emerging Israelite community at Sinai were as much about their protection as they were about God’s privacy!
Jacob, when he’d spent the night wrestling with God declared: I have seen the face of God and lived.”

4. He is gracious
Not in terms of the way he moves, but in terms of the way he treats us. Paul reminds us that we are saved by grace through faith. The OT reminds us that he is slow to anger and full of loving-kindness.

What is the key lesson that Israel must learn at Sinai?

1. Patience: While Moses is away, God is still present. He sees everything. But the people get inpatient and wonder where Moses has gone and make an idol.

2. Obedience

3. Boundaries
The parameters of the relationship. It was from Sinai that God would give the Torah, the instruction. This would define what it would mean to live in a relationship with God.

Conclusion

What comes out of an encounter with God? Usually new or renewed purpose. Think about Abraham, Moses, Jonah, Elijah.

For the newly emerging community that would become the nation of Israel, the most important lesson for them to learn was that God loved them deeply, rescued them at great cost and would guide them into a positive future.

In Christ he makes the same disclosure and offers the same eternal reward to those who will trust him now. In Christ, the journey of life has meaning, direction and purpose, whether you’re in the land of slavery, or in the wilderness or in the Promised Land.

Winning the battles

2008-04-15T12:32:00.002Z

Background to the Battle

Amalek was the son of Eliphaz, the eldest son of Esau. This made the Amalekites distant cousins to Israel. That they came and attacked Israel a long way from their own territory suggests that either they were truly afraid that Israel was looking to their land as a destination, or that some other interests or fears were at work. If they had only remembered the promise made to Jacob, perhaps this battle could have been avoided.

The very next story involves Jethro and the Midianites, who respond more positively to Israel.

Thus the pattern is set for the outcomes for the nations in accordance with their response to Israel. Attack them and suffer the consequences, bless them and experience God’s favour.

The Amalekite attack draws God’s anger because:

A) they fail to recognise his purposes and plan

B) Their first targets are the sick, aged and tired. (Deut. 25:17-19)

Meet the enemy: Eph. 6

Our battle, as Paul says, is not with flesh and blood but against principalities and powers

Whilst we do want to dwell on our enemy, it’s important to know our enemy.

What do we know about our enemy? He’s sneaky, deceptive (the father of all lies), he set on taking power, he’s defeated, he’s powerful but not all-powerful, he knows the Bible well but twists and abuses it…

Winning Battles

Divine intervention

Human responsibility

To pray

To obey

To act

This battle would not, could not have been won if it were not for the intervention of God. Joshua may overcome with the sword, but it needed Moses to overcome with the staff first. When he lowered his hands, Israel faltered, when he raised them, Israel prevailed.

The sword is subservient to the staff. Prayer is what actually wins the day, not the power of the army.

Why is it that when Christians face a challenge they typically stop praying and when non-Christians face a crisis they usually start praying?

Moses positioned himself so that he could see the big picture. We need big picture pray-ers.

Moses did not go up the mountain alone. We need prayer partners.

Moses did his job so that Joshua could be successful in his job. Perhaps even at this point God was preparing Joshua for the leadership role he would eventually fulfil as he lead Israel into the Promised Land and through the battles they would face there.

Prayer that wins battles is based upon the belief that God cannot be defeated.

John Piper: Christian vision is not the imagining of a possibility, but the grasping of an inevitability.

In Ephesians 6 Paul speaks about the importance of prayer as he outlines the armour of God. He says:

And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints.

What battles do we face?

Battle of the mind

Philippians 4:8

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.

Battle of the will

Joshua 24:15
But if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD."

Battle of the heart

To love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind.

Battle of temptation

When it comes to temptation remember:

There is nothing new…

The temptations in your life are no different from what others experience. And God is faithful. He will not allow the temptation to be more than you can stand. When you are tempted, he will show you a way out so that you can endure. (1Cor.10:13)

Jesus knows about temptation

Heb. 4:15

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin.

We don't have a priest who is out of touch with our reality. He's been through weakness and testing, experienced it all—all but the sin. So let's walk right up to him and get what he is so ready to give. Take the mercy, accept the help.

Victory comes through:

God’s word Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God

Honouring God appropriately: You don’t throw yourself off high towers, you do throw yourself upon his grace and mercy

Worshipping him wholeheartedly

Conclusion

Battles are part of life. We may not face an attacking army, but we certainly come under attack form time to time. The trick is to be ready.

We should not be surprised to come under spiritual attack, but we should prepare ourselves to face attacks and respond accordingly. As Paul says, we should to do everything we can to stand, and when we have done everything we can to stand then we should stand. (Eph.6:13)

God will provide

2008-04-11T19:43:00.003Z

The story so far...

God has brought the people out of Egypt. Pharaoh has been defeated, they’ve crossed the sea and are now in the wilderness. The journey, although already underway, is really only just beginning. And the people are complaining (15:24 So the people grumbled)

Dancing and singing had turned to worry and anxiety.

Now that’s understandable because three days without water is as long as anyone can last. But it doesn’t say that they were without water, it says that they didn’t find water. There’s a big difference between not having any water and not finding a fresh supply.

Isn’t it interesting how quickly we think God has forgotten us. If we miss a meal, has God forgotten us? If we miss the bus has God forgotten us? If we miss a deadline, has God forgotten us?

The problem for the Israelites is that all they had known for generations was slavery and they were still thinking like slaves. We all get stuck in our history, breaking out of those old patterns needs divine intervention.

They say we suffer in the 21^st century from a short attention span, how short is our attention span when it comes to God? Mine can be perilously short.

What do we learn from the story?

#1 God provides

He does so naturally, through the 12 springs at Elim, and he does so supernaturally through the manna and quail, and he does so through a sign at Marah.

He is both the God of the extraordinary and the ordinary.

#2 People generally are rarely satisfied

If ever a people group could be described as high maintenance, it would the Israelites in the wilderness.

As far as the story goes so far they are two out of two for complaining about something. And as you read the story, you’ll soon discover that the very next time they face a challenge they complain again.

They were not yet predisposed to see the up side of what God had done or might do.

Maybe we are more like them than we came to think.

#God will continue to provide

This is not a story about stewardship. There are times when God says: Store up, and there are times when he says don’t so it. This is a “Don’t do it time”

This is a story of God’s continuing provision throughout the wilderness wanderings of Israel. No matter what they do, no matter how much they complain and grumble, God continues to love them, to care for them, to provide for them.

Yes, there are times when judgement comes, people die and God punishes the people. But grace is still the key. It is still there, being poured out day by day for those who will see.

The same is true for you and me. Every day God offers us his grace, everyday we must choose to see it and receive it, or to ignore it and reject it.

Nowhere to go

2008-03-31T05:45:00.003Z

What do you pack for a road trip into the wilderness?

The Israelites left Egypt like a plundering army, they marched out boldly, but it didn’t last. Very soon their boldness had turned to terror as they realised that Pharaoh was following them with chariots and an army. They cried out: “Were there no graves in Egypt?”

For all those former slaves, leaving Egypt and heading off to the Promised Land meant leaving behind what they knew and entering into the unknown. For generations, slavery was their only life, and now God had stepped in, promised change and a new life, but the question remains: “Can he deliver?”

What does it take to leave Egypt?

1. It takes vision

Vision is the ability to see not only what is in front of you, but into the distance of what lies ahead, into the possibilities. Vision means being able to look beyond Egypt, through the wilderness and into the land of promise.

Vision calls us into a journey that we wouldn’t normally make. It demands of us things we feel we can’t give and it asks questions of us for which we are yet to discover answers. Vision is, as one writer put it, the ability to see the invisible. Or as another said: Some things have got to be believed to be seen.”

2. It takes courage

The generation that left Egypt would not be the generation that crossed the Jordan. Except for two, Joshua and Caleb, they lacked the courage needed to follow God all the way into the land. They reached the border, but that was it. They sent spies but the spies report worried the people, so they turned away and never entered the land.

A vision is important, but without courage, vision remains a dream.

3. It takes faith

The writer of the letter to the Hebrews understood the link between faith and vision when they wrote: Faith is the substance of things hoped for the evidence of things not yet seen.

What do you need to know if you’re about to leave Egypt?

You need to know that:

1. God has a plan

It can’t have looked much like a plan: leave Egypt, camp on the bank of the river with no way to escape Pharaoh and his angry army. God's plan seemed to be to put the people in an impossible position in order for them to learn to trust him for the rest of the journey.

God’s plan is:

1. Good

for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose. (Phil.2:13)

2. To our benefit

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him. (Rom. 8:28)

3. Certain

Because God wanted to make the unchanging nature of his purpose very clear to the heirs of what was promised, he confirmed it with an oath. (He.6:17)

2. God will guide

Prov. 3:4-5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart... He will make your paths straight.

Show me your ways, O LORD, teach me your paths; guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my Saviour, and my hope is in you all day long. (Ps.25)

The issue rarely is whether we believe that God guides, the issue is usually “Will he guide me, at this time, in this situation?”

In order to be guided you need to be:

Willing

Committed

Patient

The key tools to use for guidance are:

The Bible: tells us everything we need

Prayer: our route into the heart of God

His Spirit: at work in us and in our circumstances.

Properly applied these three things will help you discern God’s call and direction.

A word of caution.

First do not forget that God can and does use those around us to help in the process. You do not have to walk the journey alone. But also be careful about how you interpret things. For example, if you decide to go to some foreign country to serve God as a missionary and that country rejects your visa application, does that mean God doesn’t want you to go or that he wants you to show more determination about going?

Guidance is not an exact science.

Thirdly, God is able to turn our mistakes to his glory. This is important because it means quite simply that there can never be a “God’s second best” for your life because you missed what he really wanted you to do.

3 God tests

After such an amazing turn of events, you’d have thought the Israelites would be ready to follow God anywhere, do anything to serve him and face any challenge for him. After all they had been set free from slavery, left like a conquering army and were headed for a new life in a new country. Faith must have been at an all-time high.

Then comes the first big test, and faith evaporates like the morning mist. They moan, complain, worry, panic, disobey. Nobody ever asks: What is God trying to teach us through this? No one ever asks: I wonder what God will do now?

What Moses tells them to do:

Not to be afraid (have courage)

Stand firm & be still (Have faith)

See the deliverance the Lord will bring (have vision)

In other words, facing the ongoing challenges and tests that come with following God takes the same things it takes to start the journey in the first place.

4. God comes through

God will come through for you. How many times in the Bible does God apologise for being late? Zero. He always comes through because:

He is omnipotent (He is able to do)

He is omnipresent (He is always with us)

He is omniscient (He knows it all)

Conclusion

Where are you on this journey?

Are you just about to leave Egypt? Are you looking at the sea? Are you looking at the chasing army?

Wherever you are, do you trust God? Do you believe he has your best interests at heart, that he is for you not against you?

For God so loved...

2008-03-23T16:50:00.003Z

History has only one main event.

Mankind’s time line is dotted with important moments: the first spark from the first flint; the rolling of the first wheel; the treating of the first wound. Who dares minimise these events? But who dares compare them with the cross? History has only one main event.

Scripture has only one main event.

Other matters, but only one is essential. The story of Jericho might stir you, but falling walls can’t redeem you. Moses will give you direction through the wilderness, but no solution for your sin. David’s defeat of Goliath might reduce your timidity, but only the cross prepares you for eternity. Scripture has only one main event.

Even in the life of Jesus there is only one main event. For if there is no cross of Christ, then there is no truth to Christ.

And, when it comes to your life, the same is true. To remove the cross is to remove the hinch-pin from the door of hope. The door of your hope. For if there is no cross then there is no sacrifice for sin. If there is no sacrifice for sin then how will you face a sinless God? Will you cleanse your own sin? And if there is no cross of Christ then there is no resurrection of Christ. And if there is no resurrection of Christ, how will you live again? Will you push back your own grave? Forgiveness of sin and deliverance from death, these are the claims of the cross. Let there be no mistake. The cross is not an event in history, it is the event of history.

Whether we believe in Jesus Christ or not, his birth, life, death and resurrection dominate our history. We calculate our dates with reference to him, our justice system reflects upon his teaching. Our systems of government, of education, of social order are all connected in some way to this carpenter from Nazareth.

Abstracted from He Chose the Nails by Max Lucado

Max Lucado describes “3:16” as the numbers of hope, the hope diamond of the Bible. A twenty-six word parade of hope: beginning with God, ending with life, and urging us to do the same. But what does it mean to you and to me?

God so loved: Not an anger filled wrath declaring revenge taking God, but a God who loves.

Loved the world: Not the Europeans, or the wise or the wealthy but simply the world.

That he gave: not words or rules or regulations, edicts or philosophical papers, but his Son, his one and only son.

Why? So that whoever…

Whoever

Whoever unfurls 3:16 as a banner for the ages. Whoever unrolls the welcome mat of heaven to humanity. Whoever invites the world to God.

Whoever is inclusive. The good news that Jesus brings is an open invitation to everyone, because everyone is a whoever.

Believes in him: Whilst the invitation is wide, the application is narrow. You must choose to believe or not to believe. What comes next is a salutary reminder of the consequences of the choice you must make.

This isn’t about getting ahead in life or a better seat at the heavenly dining table, this is about life and death, about eternal life with God or eternal life without him. It;s about choosing to pay the price for you sin on your own or accepting the price Jesus has paid on your behalf.

So, in the end, it’s up to you to choose whether or not to accept this crown jewel of God’s great love. He won’t force it upon you, he won’t back you into a corner and make you an offer you can’t refuse. But he will remind you that the price you will pay for saying no is a price you won’t be able to pay.

If it wasn’t for the love he has for you, he wouldn’t bother to tell you this, but it’s because he can’t bear the thought of heaven without you that he sent his Son into the world to die for you.

Zacchaeus: If you ask, he will come

2008-03-17T18:03:00.001Z

The story takes place in the city of Jericho. Zacchaeus, the local senior tax-collector wants to see Jesus. Why?

The story happened near a tollbooth on the road through Jericho. Let me explain. There were two major highways in Israel at that time and one of them went right through Jericho.

Jews traveling north south would all pass through the city and they had to pay poll taxes on every cow, calf, and camel that came through customs.

It was also Passover time which meant that tens of thousands of Jewish pilgrims were coming down from Galilee, going around Samaria because it was unsafe, and coming through the toll booth at Jericho and paying their poll taxes. Researchers tell us that two or three million people showed up for the Passover.

Circus time. Jesus had become a circus star. Jesus had raised Lazarus from the dead, healed Bartimaus of his blindness and turned the water into wine. If you can turn water into wine, you become a circus star, a super star. Jesus had superstar status, and the tens of thousands of people passing through customs at Jericho wanted to see Jesus.

Zacchaeus collects taxes. He works for the occupying army of Rome, he is despised and ostracized by every respectable person in town. So, what is stirring in the heart of this heartless man?

Perhaps he’s heard of the way this Jesus accepts all comers. Perhaps he’s reached a point in his life where he know it’s now or never to get his life sorted out.

What Zacchaeus could not have known was that this would be the last time he would have to see Jesus.

Jericho was his last stop on the way to Jerusalem. Luke tells us that from this point on Jesus set his face like flint to go to Jerusalem. If Zacchaeus had missed this opportunity, if he’d have thought to himself, “I’ll catch him next time around,” he would never have seen Jesus.

It is a sobering thought that we might miss our last opportunity to do anything, even more sobering to think that we might miss our last chance to meet with Jesus.

Attitudes towards Tax Collectors

Just to get things straight, tax-collectors were not well liked.

"As one robber disgraced his whole family, so one publican in a family; promises were not to be kept with murderers, thieves and publicans" -Nedar 3:4

This typifies the Rabbi’s view of a tax collector. They were little more than thieves and treated as social outcasts. They had no right to attend the Temple or the Synagogue. Their testimony was not accepted in a court. As far as the Rabbis were concerned there was no hope for a tax collector.

The people despised them because they often took more money than the actual taxes in order to make a profit for themselves. They were a constant reminder that the people were slaves in their own land.

For the Pharisees, tax collectors were no better than Gentiles and they too despised them. It must therefore have been quite a surprise when Jesus used a tax-collector as a symbol of a more acceptable prayer than the prayer of a Pharisee.

But Jesus saw them differently. He looked beyond what personal choice and societal pressure may have made of a person. He saw their heart. He even told a story about a religious person and a religious outcast, a Pharisee and a tax collector. And the amazing thing about this story is that the person whose prayer is accepted by God was not the religious person but the so-called “sinner”

And so, as Jesus passes through Jericho on the road to Jerusalem, the scene is set for an encounter between a publicly known sinner and the traveling preacher who was known as ‘a friend of sinners’.

What Jesus knows

He knows his name: Jesus calls Zacchaeus by name, only a prophet would/could do that. For the religious people that raises a difficult question: If he is a prophet how come he doesn’t appear to know what Zacchaeus is, and condemn him for it.

He sees him: Jesus picks out Zacchaeus from the crowd: So many people that it was hard to see, especially for a small man like Zacchaeus. But Jesus sees through the crowd, over the crowd. He is able to pick out Zacchaeus at a distance.

Knows who he is: (is that by reputation or by previous knowledge or is this divinely discerned?) and therefore knows what he is and what he has been doing. But Jesus isn’t about to condemn or reject him. He already has one tax-collector amongst his followers (Levi).

Invites himself to his home: Jesus knows that left to our own devices we might never get around to inviting him, so he invites himself. Not even the most powerful would have the audacity to invite themselves, but Jesus does. Why? Because the grace of God always reaches out, always makes an offer. Zacchaeus had spent a long time hearing that he had no place among the family of God. Perhaps he was wondering if Jesus would reject him too. By calling his name, by inviting himself, Jesus says quite clearly, “Zacchaeus, if you ask me to come to your home, I will come.” Now it was up to Zacchaeus to decide what to do about the offer.

What Zacchaeus does

Zacchaeus welcomed him gladly

Everyone else, considered Zacchaeus beyond redemption. But not to Jesus. Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham.

What does it mean to be a son of Abraham?

Faith not law: Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness (Rom.4:3). Paul goes to make the point that this is a gift not a right. Zacchaeus can be made righteous precisely for this reason. He was one of the ungodly who trusts God who justifies the ungodly (Rom.4:5)

Son of a promise: Therefore the promise comes by faith, so that it may be by grace and may be guaranteed to all Abraham’s offspring–not only to those who are of the law but also to those who have the faith of Abraham. (Rom.4:16)

Zacchaeus responds to grace rather than trying to buy it. His restitution is much higher than that set by the Pharisees for theft.

Conclusion

We are known; We are invited; We are accepted.

It really doesn’t matter how you come to Jesus, what matters is that you take up his offer to come.

Is your sin any worse than the sin of Zacchaeus? If Jesus accepts the tax-collectors and sinners of the first century do you not think he will accept the 21^st century equivalent?

He will, he always will. You are invited, will you come?

Sarah: God keeps his promises

2008-03-11T22:02:00.001Z

Have you laughed at God’s promises recently? How ridiculous have they sounded recently? Have you reached the point where you wonder how impossible it is rather than the point where the only possibility of success lies in God’s hands?

There’s a big difference.

We know that some of God’s promises will only be seen to be kept when we stand with him in heaven. There are things about the kingdom of God that we know are “not-yet” but there is plenty about that kingdom that is is “now” too. Being able to live with the tension between the now and the not-yet is a challenge and, like many of our predecessors and antecedents in scripture, we find it hard to discern the difference.

Then there’s another problem. Do you worry that laughing at God’s promises mean he won’t keep them?

Sarah’s story is an example of God keeping his promise despite fears and anxieties, hang ups and errors of judgement, laughter and disbelief.

Why the change of name?

When God changes Abram (‘exalted father’) to Abraham (‘father of many’), Sarai becomes Sarah, but there is no real difference in meaning. Two possibilities exist for the change of name.

First: Because Sarah is usually understood to mean princess, the change of name makes more explicit the ‘mother of kings’ promise of 17:16. Remember at this point Sarai or Sarah has had no children, so God underlines the promise he makes: I will bless her and surely give you a son by her, and connects it with his covenant with Abraham that I will nations of you, and kings will come from you.

Second: The second possibility is more sentimental. One possible reading of Sarai is that it means my princess. In other words, it was almost like Abram’s pet name for his wife. Sarai was Abram’s world, he loved her no matter what. He went to great lengths to protect her and, despite her barrenness, he remained faithful to her. She was his princess and her name said it all.

But God has a different plan, so Sarai, the princess who belonged to Abram, become Sarah the princess because God blesses her and keeps his promise to her.

Abraham’s promise was always to love her, but he could nothing about her childlessness. God’s promise was to bless her and he could do something and he did.

Sarai is no longer just Abraham’s princess, she is God’s princess too.

Sadly the writer of Genesis does not explain which, if either of these possibilities is true, so if you’re in the mood for a nice, romantic approach to the story, that’s okay. If you just want the logical explanation, it’s there too!

Sarah and Hagar

The imperfections of the family are brought to the fore as the story of Hagar and Sarah unfold into the story of Ishmael and Isaac.

Sarah was desperate to have a son, desperate to have a child. So desperate that she persuaded Abraham to take Hagar as a wife.

I suspect Abram told Sarai about the vision and the promise God made to him after he had rescued Lot. About how God had said that a son coming from your own body will be your heir.

But there was no clue how this would happen, and Sarai took responsibility for the solution. There were tests to undergo, no medical investigations to see if it was Sarai who could not have children or whether it was Abram. So together they agreed to try an alternative therapy… a second wife.

It must have been hard for Sarai to do this, but it seemed to her to be the only way of raising a family and fulfilling the promise. It was a very human thing to do, but since when did God need our help to keep his promises? He asks for our willingness, our obedience our trust, but he is the one who keeps the promise.

And hard as it must have been for Sarai to see Abram go into the tent with Hagar, how much harder must it have been to see Hagar pregnant.

Now it truly was her fault that Abram had no children.

And so her frustration and low self-esteem give way to envy and bitterness. She hates the human solution to her problem and takes it out on Hagar who runs away.

Do you have days when the real problem isn’t the real problem? Do you have moments when personal frustration shows up as anger and bitterness?

Is your present bitterness over one issue expressing itself in anger towards someone or something else?

Perhaps, even more pertinent a question is this: Are you angry with God because you think he hasn’t kept his promise to you and are you taking that anger out on someone else?

How do you wait for God to keep a promise?

1. Patiently

We already know that sometimes it can take a long time to see God’s promise kept. 40 years for Moses to become a leader, 25 years for Abraham to have a son, 750 years for Isaiah’s prophecy about Jesus to be fulfilled.

It reminds me of the sign at the golf course I used to play in Lincolnshire: If you don’t like slow play, play somewhere else.

2. Faithfully

If there’s a recurring theme through the stories of Abraham and Sarah and Isaac and Rebekah, it’s that when people try to hurry along God’s promise, the consequences can be disastrous. Ishmael and Isaac, Jacob and Esau.

All the problems they faced were created through a failure simply to be faithful to the God who made the promise.

Lack of patience leads to a failure of faithfulness as we try to keep God’s promises for him.

3. Expectantly

Of course the problem with a long wait is that it dulls our hope and raises our doubt.

Did we hear right? Did God really say? Have we missed something?

It’s okay to ask questions.

4. Graciously

To wait graciously is to wait in God’s hands. It’s to wait in a way that says it doesn’t matter if the promise is kept or not, being in God’s hand is sufficient for me.

But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. (2Cor.12:19)

Conclusion

God is the God who keeps a promise. Number 6 reminds us that God is not a man that he should lie. He is faithful to the promises he makes.

The hard part is waiting and trusting and walking in faithfulness.

This is our part. To wait.

God’s part is to fulfil, we do well to remember that.

Let me finish by asking what promise has God to you that you are still waiting for him to fulfil? Because the truth is we are all still waiting for something.

How will you live differently, act differently, believe differently this week because you know that God does not make a promise he can’t or won’t keep?

Will you live patiently? Will you live faithfully?

Ruth: Living beyond yourself

2008-03-07T07:07:00.001Z

Ruth sits between the stories of the early Judges and the new era of the monarchy, the times of kings and queens in the life of Israel. As part of the story of transition from one from of leadership to another, Ruth reminds us that God is working out his plan.

He worked it out in the Exodus through Moses, in the conquest through Joshua, through the early occupation through the judges and he will continue to work out his purposes through tghe newly formed monarchy because he already has a king planned in David the as-yet-to-be-born son of Jesse, Great-grandson of Ruth.

Key things about the story of Ruth:

1. God is always at work. In the seen and the unseen ,God is presented at work through the story of Ruth.

2. Hesed: Loving-kindness; covenant loyalty (7 examples in Ruth). There is a case for hesed being translated as loyalty rather than mercy in Ps. 136 etc. Faithfulness would carry a better sense of the original, but it still doesn’t go far enough. Need to think about what it means for God to be loyal to his covenant.

G-K #2876: 248 times;

Used to describe God’s love for us:

Give thanks to Lord for his unfailing love (Ps.107)

Ps 136: His love endures forever

The treaty God draws up with the people is a covenant of love (Deut.7)

Now rethink those verses with loyalty instead of love.

Give thanks to Lord for his unfailing loyalty (Ps.107)

Ps 136: His loyalty endures forever

The treaty God draws up with the people is a covenant of loyalty (Deut.7)

How does that affect the way you see God’s attitude towards yourself?

The story of Ruth is a story about covenant-loyalty, about acts of loving-kindness that reflect the nature and character of God who inspires such acts because he is loyal. It begins with Ruth’s loyalty towards Naomi and it concludes with God’s loyalty to Naomi.

The story opens unpromisingly. There's famine, relocation, death, loss, despair and separation. Not an uplifting picture. And the author never tells us that it's okay because God has it all in hand and Ruth will marry, have children and become David's great-grandmother.

It made me wonder: How many lives are lived in the gloom of chapter 1 rather than in the light of the hope that unfolds through the story? How many people do I know who, because things are not going well, cannot see the loyal hand of God anymore?

I am no different, I have good days and bad days. I have days when life and busyness overwhelm me and I'd rather be anywhere else, doing anything else, than what I have to do. But I am not called to give up, I'm called to persevere.

I’m called to faithfulness, I’m called to be loyal.

As a follower of Jesus I have a hope that ought to infect everything I do. I can live with hope, I can grieve with hope, I can face challenges with hope, I can face failure with hope. I am not defined by any of these obstacles, I am defined by my relationship with Jesus. I am, first and foremost, "in Christ" . That is who I am and that is what defines me.

And what of Ruth? She got on with life, and as she persevered she discovered God's involvement and care, his loyalty as he met her needs and the needs of the despairing Naomi, and then went way beyond just meeting her needs and gave her a fullness of life no one could have predicted when she left her home to travel with her mother-in-law.

Hope in God: loyalty to God, blessing from God

The story of Ruth is a story of love, loyalty and commitment.

And they all begin in the heart of God.

An Opportunity to join us in mission

2008-02-25T11:34:00.003Z

This a reprint of a post I did on my blog The View From Here.

For the last couple of years we've been watching the progress of a project to build a new community just two miles from our village. Almost 10,000 homes will be built over the next 10 years or so and currently the infrastructure is being prepared. The first residents are expected to move in some time in 2008.

By comparison the village in which we currently and minister has 300 homes and the nearby village of Shortstown has about 1,000 homes (set to double in size in the next year or so). It seems obvious to me, and to others at church, that this is a God-given opportunity to engage with a new community from it's very beginnings. An opportunity to do mission in new ways with new people.

This has demanded a lot of thought and prayer about what thismight mean, and I believe it's really important that we get committed Christians into the community as early as we can. This is an opportunity to serve a new, emerging community. It's an opportunity to contribute to the DNA of a neighbourhood, a village, even a town from its beginnings and as it grows.

Will you pray with us that God will bring to these new communities Christians who will connect with their neighbours, Christians who will be able to connect with us and partner with us in reaching this new community?

If you're interested in what's happening in these developments, you can visit the main developers site here.

Prayer month (week 4)

2008-02-24T15:02:00.000Z

Week 4 is available here.

David: A flawed leader

2008-02-24T14:44:00.000Z

The life of David can be described in a variety of ways. We could talk about his rise to power and the role he played as the second king of Israel. We could talk about the way he took his skills as a shepherd and applied the role of leadership.

And David shepherded them with integrity of heart; with skillful hands he led them. Ps. 78:72

We could talk about his life as a mighty warrior, winning battles and defeating his enemies.

We could talk about his lapses, his moments when he failed. The times he made mistakes of judgement and chose the wrong course of action.

The simple truth is this, David lived an ordinary life full of ordinary ups and downs, highs and lows. Just like all our other characters, David was a normal person, working out what it meant to live his life in God’s hands. He was just like you and just like me.

God’s plan for David

Where’s the first hint that we get in the Bible that God has a plan in mind for the youngest of Jesse’s sons? In 1 Samuel 16 we’ve reached a significant moment. Saul has been rejected by God as the king of Israel and has sent Samuel on a mission to anoint the king to succeed him. What is interesting at this point is that while God clearly chose Saul, he is equally clear in his choice of a successor. Secondly, there is no timescale announced. There is no hint that this newly anointed king is to straight to Saul and depose him as king.

Once again we seemed to be facing the same question we faced with Abraham, with Moses and with Joseph: How long are you willing to wait for God to keep his promise? Abraham waited 25 years, Moses spent 40 years in the wilderness, Joseph spent 13 years in Egypt as a slave and a prisoner.

But when God chooses David as the new king it’s not his leadership potential that brings him into close contact with the royal court, it’s his ability to play music that soothes Saul’s troubles mind. Of course there is the day that Saul throws a spear at David, it wasn’t all plain sailing.

But to answer my initial question: When do we get the first hint? The first hint comes of course in the story of Ruth. At the end of the story we read these simple words:

This then is the family line of Perez:

Perez was the father of Hezron, Hezron the father of Ram, Ram the father of Amminadab, Amminadab the father of Nashon, Nashon the father of Salmon, Salmon the father of Boaz, Boaz the father of Obed, Obed the father of Jesse, and Jesse the father of David.

Perez, in case you wanted to know, was the son of Judah.

So, in some ways, David’s rise to prominence begins with the grace of God working through the family line and through the life of Ruth, a Moabite, someone outside the line who chose to be part of the line.

The point I want to make is simply this: You cannot know the significance of your own life in the eternal purposes of God. You can only know the significance of our own life in the context of your relationship with God. Ruth did not know she was going to become the great grandmother of the king of Israel, mainly because they didn’t have kings on Israel in her day! Jesse didn’t it would be his youngest son, and David didn’t know that he would become the king to whom God would promise and everlasting link to the throne that would be fulfilled through his own son Jesus Christ. All you can know is your past and your present. All you can choose is how you live in the present.

God’s plan for your life may be to use a son or daughter, a grandson or granddaughter or even a great-grandson or granddaughter to lead a ministry or take on a role that you cannot even imagine. Perhaps God want to influence a particular life through you. Are you willing to live for that single purpose?

Does anybody recognise the name: Mordecai Fowler Ham? No, I’m not surprised. I wouldn’t have know who he was unless I’d looked him up on the internet. There is no Wikipedia page about him, unlike one man who chose to follow Christ as a result of being at one of his evangelistic meetings.

Mordecai Fowler Ham was the preacher God used to finally bring William Franklin Graham to the point of repentance and faith. It was in 1934 that Billy Graham chose to make Jesus his leader and forgiver, but God chose someone we will never remember like we remember Billy Graham to be the person of influence in his life.

David’s highs and lows

Being chosen by God does not make us immune from mistakes. David had his ups and downs. Being chosen to be king; defeating Goliath; winning battles; being lauded by the people; seeing the ark returned to its rightful home. All great highs.

And he had his low points too: Being pursued by Saul; Pretending to be mad; adultery with Bathsheba; the murder of Uriah; the death of the son; Absalom’s rebellion; disobeying God by taking the census.

If only following God was a simple matter. We choose to follow; God gives us clear guidance, we always make the right the choice. But it isn’t that easy. We misread the signs, we misunderstand the guidance, we choose selfishness over sacrifice, self-will over God’s will. It is not easy to follow Jesus wholeheartedly, but then again it was never going to be.

The problem is that sin gets in the way. Sin means we choose to do our thing before we choose to do God’s, we choose to please ourselves before we please him. We ask’ “What’s best for me?”, rather than ,”What would Jesus do?” The question isn’t will we have high and lows, the question isn’t will we sin and fail, the question is: What will we do about it when we do?

The Difference between Saul and David

This is where I think we see the greatest difference between Saul and David. Rather like Judas and Peter, we see in David and Saul the difference between the person who chooses to throw themselves on the mercy of God and the person who simply hopes for the best and lives in denial of the truth.

When Saul found himself distanced from God, he turned to a medium for help. He did the exact opposite of that which a God-follower should do. David on the other hand, when he found himself far from God, confessed his sin, and sought God’s grace and mercy. Was David’s sin any less sinful than Saul’s? I don’t think so. God does not grade sin the way we grade it.

Secondly God looks at the heart:

the LORD searches every heart and understands every motive behind the thoughts

The one person you cannot fool about your motives is God.

What differentiates David from Saul is that David is described as a man who “Walked with uprightness of heart” (1 Kings 9:4)

Life lessons from David

Because he was a poet and musician, many of David’s life lessons are reflected in the Psalms he wrote. David learnt about many things: Grace; Provision; Guidance; Forgiveness; Purpose; Blessing; Mercy

Conclusion

A life lived in the hands of God is not guaranteed to be a life lived without problems and difficulties, without highs and lows. David lived just such a life.

Your highs, your lows, are not evidence of whether God loves you not, they are not evidence of whether God is blessing you or not. They are just evidence that you are living a normal human life. God has always loved you, always had a plan for you. You just need to choose to search it out and seek to live for him. You may never know the significance of what you do, you may never see the fruit of your faithfulness in this life, only in the life to come.

Rick Warren talks about living life in the light of eternity. In The Purpose Driven Life he says this:

“The consequences of your mission will last forever; the consequences of your job will not. Nothing else you do will ever matter as much as helping people establish an eternal relationship with God.” [284]

We could add to that that the purpose of your life will last forever if it’s God purpose for your life. But only you can choose, so choose wisely!

Peter

2008-02-17T16:34:00.002Z

The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing. John Powell

It’s possible to look at Peter’s life and see only a series of incredible highs followed by a series of incredible lows. He seems to go from mountaintop to valley floor with amazing speed and ease.

But maybe the thing about Peter is that he’s an enthusiast. He’s the kind of person you meet who sits in a foreign restaurant and orders the dish that sounds most interesting.

He’s not reckless of course. The truth is that being around Jesus gives him the confidence to step out of boats, fish from the other side and challenge the authority of the Sanhedrin when they try to stop him preaching.

As we’ve done with our other characters, let’s try to track Peter’s progress from his fisherman beginnings to his apostolic ministry.

Peter the Fisherman

In Mark’s gospel our first encounter with Peter is with his brother Andrew as they fish. Not as recreational fishermen, but as their business. John gives us a little more detail inasmuch that Andrew was a disciple of John who followed Jesus on John’s instruction and went to find his brother. Their hometown was Bethsaida, although it’s possible that they relocated to Capernaum to be nearer the sea of Galilee (both Mark and Matthew talk about Peter’s home in the context of Capernaum rather than Bethsaida).

The bottom line is this: Peter was a fisherman. He was not a scholar, hadn’t been to university in Jerusalem, he just worked in the family business. Jesus, of course, knew about the world of the family business, and he probably knew a thing or two about working for his father, both earthly and heavenly.

I guess, when it come to it, you probably wouldn’t have been able to pick out anything about Peter that set him apart from every other fisherman of his time. Better than some, not as good as others. Possibly a person with leadership qualities, but otherwise just an ordinary man going about his ordinary business.

Peter the follower

It’s when he meets Jesus that his life begins to change. Just as we can’t say what it was about Peter that set him apart, we really don’t know what it was about Jesus that commanded such immediate loyalty from Peter. But something did. Jesus says, “Come follow me,” and Peter does just that.

He only returns to fishing once, when he thinks it’s all over, but that return is short-lived as Jesus calls him back into a kingdom ministry that fishing would never replace.

The truth is that when you answer the call of Jesus to follow him wholeheartedly, there is no turning back.

The call is interesting too because Jesus says, “Follow me and I will teach you how to fish for men.” Is that what an evangelist does, or is it what a fisherman does?

Years later the apostle Paul would write to the church in Ephesus about apostles, prophets, pastors, teaches and evangelists as gifts given to the church by God himself, but was Jesus calling Peter to the ministry of an evangelist or a pattern of life and ministry that more like the fishing he knew than the evangelist we define?

Perhaps Jesus was simply calling Peter to engage in something that would have an impact in eternity rather than an impact on the barbecue.

The flyer and the faller

One thing we know about all the early followers of Jesus is that being with him, seeing the miracles he performed, hearing the stories he told, exploring the explanations he gave, didn’t stop them making mistakes along the way. They just as easily confused at the end of three years with Jesus as they were at the beginning! Oh so like us!

You’d think we’d learn wouldn’t you? Having seen one miracle, we’d find it easy to have faith for another. Having experienced grace once, we’d know that it was available the next time we fell or failed. But just like Peter, and James and John and Thomas and all the others, we too have our highs and lows.

Peter’s highs included:

Going up on the mountain and seeing Jesus transfigured first hand, and getting to see Moses and Elijah too according to the story.

Having a moment of truly amazing clarity and revelation about who Jesus is, You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.

Being the only who could sit around the camp fire and tell the story if the night he stepped out of the boat and onto the water. Onto not into.

I wonder what that was like? Do you think he realised what he was saying or did it just come out? “Lord, if it really is you, call to me to come to you on the water.” “Peter, it’s me, come, walk with me.”

If it were you, what would your first thought have been?

“Actually Lord I was rather expecting you to say, it’s okay Peter it’s me but I’ll come to you in the boat, you don’t have to risk getting your feet wet.”

Or, “Peter, that’s the kind of faith I’m looking for, but you don’t have to take the risk, just being willing is enough for me.”

Maybe it would be the simple, “Why did I have to go and open my big mouth. Lord, what I actually meant was, ‘if it’s you, then call Judas to get out of the boat and walk on the water. That’s what I meant to say.’

Preaching on the day of Pentecost and seeing God’s amazing grace extended to the gentiles at them home of Cornelius must have been high points too.

And then there were the lows.

Sinking after having got out of the boat; having had his great revelation only to follow it with a great misrepresentation–blessed are you followed by “get behind me Satan.

And the lowest point of all, the denial of Jesus. Having been so brave (we will die with you) only to be undone by the persistent questioning of a servant girl.

The one thing you could not say about Peter was that he was lukewarm.

Peter the failure; Peter the fulfiller

Peter was not the only disciple who betrayed Jesus, who failed to follow through on his professed commitment. Thomas was full of worries, James and John had delusions of grandeur, and Judas gave Jesus up for a price in silver.

Judas and Peter share this common failure, that they denied the one they had been following and carried the pain of that failure with them after the arrest and trial and execution of the Jesus they’d denied or betrayed. But there is of course a major difference.

Judas decided to carry the weight of his failure alone. He decided to run and hide. I guess there was little else how could have done. I don’t suppose the others wanted him back, they probably didn’t understand why Jesus had chosen him and tolerated him anyway. He’d been given responsibility for the common purse, the accounts, and as far as we can tell from the gospels he wasn’t averse to helping himself from the money bag.

Peter on the other had, distraught as he was over his denial, when Jesus called his name after the resurrection, was quick to respond. He knew he failed, he knew he’d come up short, but I think he’d been enough to know too that in a relationship with Jesus there was always the possibility that something miraculous might happen.

And so Peter, unlike Judas, finds himself facing a simple question: Peter, do you love me?
Not, “Peter are you sorry,” or “Peter do you realise how much you hurt me,” or “Peter what were you thinking?” But, “Peter do you love me?”

“Peter, does you love for me, your commitment to me your determination to be a follower of mine and a worker in the kingdom outweigh all other concerns. Because of it does, feed my sheep, care for my lambs.”

Peter discovered through that question that forgiveness is real, and reconciliation is possible and service can continue. Peter discovered that failure does have to mean the end of everything.
You’d think that saying “I don’t know the man”, would have signalled the end of Peter’s possible role in anything Jesus was planning. After all hadn’t Jesus said something along the lines of if you deny me I’ll deny you (Luke 12:8-9– "I tell you, whoever acknowledges me before men, the Son of Man will also acknowledge him before the angels of God. But he who disowns me before men will be disowned before the angels of God.”) It’s so easy sometime to take two and two and make five, Peter knew this and he knew too that Jesus was the great forgiver and not the great grudge keeper.

Judas never experienced this forgiveness and went to his grave carrying his own burden of guilt and shame. Peter on the other hand, rediscovered Jesus and let go of his personal burden. He found the rest for his soul that Jesus had spoken about, he found his place in God’s kingdom because he found Jesus.

Conclusion

If we were to lay out Peter’s life like a long line, where would you put yourself? Are you somewhere near the beginning, just going about your daily business quite unaware of the implications of ho this Jesus is who is about to interrupt your life?

Maybe you’re a bit further down the line. Jesus has called you name, he’s offered to change you life, but you’ve not yet taken any big risks with him, had any great revelations about him. You’re just following and learning.

It’s possible that in fact you’ve just reached the point of seeing Jesus for who he really is, the Christ the Son of the living God, and you know that everything hinges on the reality of this truth.

And it’s also possible that you find yourself having seen the glory of God but now you’ve messed up, and you feel like a failure. Welcome to the club of the those of us who made mistakes as we follow Jesus.

Where else might you put yourself? On the water, in the boat, on the beach, at the cross in the courtyard?

Wherever you might be, Jesus says the same thing to you that he would have kept saying to Peter:

Do you love me? Will you follow me? Come to me?

The question isn’t will Jesus keep loving you, will he keep forgiving you and calling your name, the question is will you answer him?

There once was a day when Jesus had something that had offended many of those who had begun to follow him. He turned to his closest friends, the disciples he called by name to form his circle of twelve close companions and asked too if they were about to leave him. It was Peter who turned to Jesus and said: “You have the words of eternal life, where else will we go?

Where else will you go?

Prayer month (week 3)

2008-02-13T06:38:00.000Z

You've guessed it, week 3 is now available on the view.

Joseph

2008-02-10T21:11:00.000Z

The story of Joseph is the story of a favourite son who falls out of favour with his brothers. Sold into slavery, things go from bad to worse before they get better. By the time we reach the point in the story from which our reading comes, Joseph has been sold by his brothers, falsely accused and imprisoned and now forgotten again.

How much worse could it get?

Joseph could be forgiven for wondering where was God in all of this. Had he been abandoned by the God of his forebears. Any stories his father may have told him about God’s intervention in his life, the life of his father and the life of his grandfather must have seemed like distant, remote and unreal as he sat in prison falsely accused and forgotten.

But God never forgets who we are and where we are.

You keep track of all my sorrows.

You have collected all my tears in your bottle.

You have recorded each one in your book. (Ps.56:8)

God never forgets, and he never forgot Joseph.

Where does it all begin?

The favourite son

Now Israel loved Joseph more than any of his other sons (Gen. 37:3)

If Joseph was in any way arrogant, his father did little to remedy his condition. He made it very clear that Joseph was his favourite. He gave him a coat,a tunic that set him apart. Now I don’t know if Joseph wore it to please Jacob or to wind up his brothers, but it certainly achieved both.

The dreamer

If his coat wasn’t a big enough reminder of Joseph’s sense of importance, there were also his dreams. If you have a dream that you family will bow down before you then you can be sure of one thing: If they didn’t despise you before, they will now.

The rejected brother

So, when the Midianite merchants came by, his brothers pulled Joseph up out of the cistern and sold him for twenty shekels silver to the Ishmaelites, who took him to Egypt. 37:28

How must it have felt for Joseph to have listened to the plot his brothers hatched for him? How abandoned must he have felt, how much would you wanted pay-back?

A Slave in Egypt

Sold by his brothers, Joseph doesn’t exactly make a new life himself in Egypt, rather it is made for him. But what he does do is to keep faith with God.

How many people do you know who, when trouble comes, blame God and run from him? They will do almost anything except trust him and continue to walk the walk of faith with him.

We get a glimpse of Joseph’s integrity as he resists the advances of Potiphar’s wife. Eventually it cost him what freedom he has earned, and once again an item of clothing is used in evidence against him. First his many coloured tunic dipped in goat’s blood, now his cloak left at the scene of the so-called crime.

Take a moment to contrast the integrity of this rejected brother with Judah. Judah leaves home of his own volition but he chooses a different path to follow. He lacks integrity, he acts dishonestly and appears to get away with it until an identifying “item of clothing” reveals what he has done.

A prisoner in Egypt

I don’t know how long Joseph served Potiphar, but his slavery and imprisonment lasts 13 years.

That’s a long time to suffer a false accusation. But again, Joseph keeps faith with God and goes about his business the best he can.

All of this is preparation for what God will do, but as far as Joseph is concerned it simply the present tense of his experience. It’s all he knows, and he simply gets on with it.

Forgotten again

After 11 years in Egypt, Joseph finally sees an opportunity to make his appeal to the highest authority in the land. The chief baker and cup bearer were no mere servants in Pharaoh’s household. They had somehow displeased the king, found themselves thrown in prison, and now they had both had dreams.

It’s now that God begins to reveal his purposes for Joseph. In the midst of his suffering, his slavery and imprisonment, God begins to show his hand.

How often do we miss the intentional development of God’s purposes because we focus only on what we are enduring, rather that for which we might be being prepared? Remember Esther… for such a time as this.

This is not about knowing what God is preparing you to do, but being willing to be prepared. It’s turning suffering into something that has purpose rather than allowing to be something without purpose.

But once rescued, the cup bearer forgets about Joseph until the king needs him. I think forget means it was simply not convenient to remember him.

God’s purposes finally revealed

Pharaoh has his dream and Joseph’s time comes. But it’s not his charismatic ability to interpret dreams that is the ultimate goal for his life. God has not been working in his life in order to buid some great prophet ministry through Joseph. In reality it has been his ordinary demonstrations of faithfulness, good stewardship and trustworthiness that the attributes belonging to his long-term place in God’s unfolding plan.

What if, during all those years of captivity, Joseph had been good at interpreting dreams and bad at everything else? Do you think Pharaoh would still have put him in charge of all the land?

Joseph’s prime ministry was not the spectacular but the ordinary.

Lessons to learn

1. A matter of perspective.

We only see what surrounds us. We need God’s help to see beyond our circumstances and into his plan. Sometimes,like Esther, it’s the words of a friend, sometimes, like Joseph it’s just a matter of time.

2. No matter what the circumstances, Joseph’s life was always in God’s hands.

He may have been rejected by his brothers, sold into slavery, wrongly accused, falsely imprisoned, but always his life was in God’s hands.

3. Be the best, whatever the situation

Joseph did not know what God’s ultimate goal was for his life. So he had to get on with life as it came to him. He had to face disappointment and rejection and yet find the strength to carry on and do what he was good at and do it well.

4. Doing the right thing is always the right thing to do.

Actions, moral choices, do the right thing. Not based on outcomes, things did always go well for Joseph, but based upon honouring God.

Conclusion

Joseph makes two amazing observations about his circumstances. He says of his brothers actions:

You intended to harm me,but God intended it for good. (50:20)

And of his time in Egypt:

God has made me fruitful in the land of my suffering (41:52)

Your circumstance may be challenging at this time, you may feel like you are living in the land of suffering rather than the land of promise (remember Joseph had left Canaan), but are you honouring God or doing what suits you.

Are you living like Joseph or are you living like his brother Judah?

Prayer month (week 2)

2008-02-08T18:53:00.000Z

Week 2 of the prayer month is now available.

Month of prayer

2008-02-08T18:25:00.001Z

I've posted week one from our month of prayer on my personal blog A View From Here. I will post the other weeks fairly soon so that you can see them online.

Book Club

2008-02-08T07:23:00.000Z

We've just launched a Book Club at church. A small group of people have agreed to read the same book and then meet together to talk about it. The Book Club is open to anyone who wants to join. If you are interested in joining in via the blogosphere, our first book is 3:16 The Numbers of Hope by Max Lucado.

Jonah: The Reluctant Prophet

2008-02-05T06:47:00.000Z

One thing you must understand is that Jonah is not the only reluctant prophet. Okay, so he was the only prophet to be swallowed by a large fish, and he was the only prophet to run away to another country in an attempt to get away from God. But taking God’s message to the people, any people, was a scary thing. Jonah, perhaps of all the prophets, did the most human thing when he tried to run away.

What is unique about Jonah?

I wonder what we might see as the defining moment for Jonah?

Was it right at the start when God said: Go to Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.

Certainly this is a clear and distinctive call from God. The job description is unequivocal, the task unmistakable.

Perhaps the defining moment came when Jonah decided to run away. Surely fleeing from the Lord under normal circumstances would have defined Jonah as the prophet who ran away.

In truth, life is full of defining moments.

Both the call and Jonah’s reaction are moments of great significance in the shaping of Jonah’s life and ministry. Let’s list out the other defining moments that shape this story.

There’s the storm in which God gets Jonah’s attention; the moment Jonah takes responsibility; his submission to God by being thrown into the sea.

God’s provision of a huge fish to rescue Jonah in a most remarkable way.

Perhaps the most significant moment of all is when Jonah prays from inside the fish: What I have vowed, I will make good.

There are still more moments to define the shape of Jonah’s ministry; the response of the Ninevites, Jonah’s anger at God, and his petulance over the weed.

But in all this, what defines Jonah most is not what he does or says, where he goes or where he doesn’t. What defines Jonah most is his relationship with God.

It is God’s call, God’s message, God’s persistence, God’s grace, God’s rescue plan, God’s granting of a second chance, God’s concern for Nineveh, God’s eternal purposes. These are the things that define Jonah. Not big fish and personal misery.

When God looked at Nineveh he saw the sin of the city and its people. He knew that the only logical thing to do was to judge the city and be done with it.

But our God is full of compassion and love. A compassion that Jeremiah reminds us is renewed every morning. So, when he sees sin he judges it, but he also looks for a way to bring the message of grace to bear upon it. He looks for a man, a person, who will speak his truth into the situation. And as he looks, he waits for a response.

Jonah’s message was simple: Forty days more and Nineveh will be overthrown. The people of the city clearly understood what this was all about and the decree goes out: give up your evil ways, and they do, and God sees and God does not destroy them.

Jonah’s message, much to his surprise is a message of hope wrapped in the grace of God. A message that both Nineveh and Jonah needed to hear.

So where does that leave you and me?

Well we could ask ourselves where we would put ourselves in the story.

Are you:

Running away from God?

In the middle of a storm, but asleep, hoping it will go away?

Have you reached the point of taking responsibility and preparing to put yourself in God’s hands?

Do you feel like you are in the darkest place?

If this is where you would put yourself then let me ask you this: Are you praying in that place?

Are you out of the fish, on dry land again and ready to do what God has asked you to do?

Are you doing it?

Are you angry with God, with other people?

Are you sitting under a weed, miserable with yourself and with God?

Where are you?

Esther

2008-01-27T16:46:00.000Z

Introduction

The story of Esther is the story of a young woman who faces a choice. A choice she alone can make, a choice no one can make for her. She must choose whether she will fit the mould society has for her, or reject it in favour of the pattern of life that God asks of her.

Who are the characters

Although their names may be unfamiliar to most of us, the characters are typical, even of our day.

There’s the king, Xerxes, the most powerful in the whole world. He has everything he wants, everything money and power could buy, but he lacks almost everything he needs. He lack inner strength and conviction. He’s easily swayed by those around him and he’s lost touch with reality because reality doesn’t serve his goals. In other words, he may be cash rich, but he is character poor.

There is Queen Vashti. She has position and influence, but it the end her refusal to play the king’s games costs her the position of queen. In one respect at least, queen Vashti sets the scene for the choice Esther will have to make later when her time to choose comes.

Haman is the chief villain in the story. He’s a more able and powerful leader that Xerxes, but he’s also selfish, jealous, deeply manipulative and intent on the destruction of the Jews.

There’s Moredecai, the thorn in Haman’s side and the man who demonstrates principle and character in a way no other male character in the book seems to do.

And lastly there’s Esther, the central character. A young orphan girl whose only asset, at least at first, appears to be her youth and beauty.

These are the characters around which the story will unfold. It’s a story of intrigue and political power struggles. A story about the weakness of one leader and the evil intent of another. About the self-interest of a king and the selfless sacrifice of a queen. It’s a story in which one woman rescues all the men!

It’s a story, as one preacher put it, about a culture so superficial that middle-aged men would try to impress other people by showing that they had so much wealth and power that they could attract a wife with youth and beauty.

It’s hard to believe that human society ever sank to such levels, but once looks were everything, especially for young women, and little else counted.

As far as society was concerned, Esther’s only duty was to please the king. It was after all the reason she got the job of queen in the first place. She from all the candidates had been the one who pleased the king most.

There was a whole entourage of people who dedicated themselves to keeping the king happy, because an unhappy king was a problem king. So Esther’s job was simply to play the part of the dutiful and beautiful wife of a wealthy world leader. To not do what Vashti had done, but simply to go on pleasing the king. To sit around doing little else than her nails and hair, and to be paraded in front of others as the ultimate trophy wife.

But through the words of her uncle, Esther had to face the fact that she may not have risen to such a position on the whim of an ageing egocentric king, but according to the purposes of God Almighty.

Esther rejected her stereotypical role in order to fulfil her true role, the role that God had positioned her to fulfil. But it wasn’t an easy choice to make. She had to think long and hard about it.

The choices we must make: For such a time as this

What the world would want from us… conform to society’s values and expectations. But is that what we want for ourselves? To live a life of such mediocrity that it’s just like every other life. How about choosing to live life to the fullest? Jesus offers all those who will trust him and follow him a full life, an abundant life. Not a life full of possessions and power, but a life full of meaning and value and significance.

Esther had the choice, and it was a hard choice.

Here’s the story: Haman has hatched his plot to murder all the Jews and manipulated the king into making happen. Mordecia has found out and sent a message to Esther to enlist her help. But there’s a problem. The king hasn’t sent for her for thirty days. She is no longer the light of his life. She might have youth and beauty, but she doesn’t have the king’s undivided attention or affection. After all there were 127 other contestants for the role of queen.

So Esther tells Mordecai that she’s scared and doesn’t want to do it…

11 "All the king's officials and the people of the royal provinces know that for any man or woman who approaches the king in the inner court without being summoned the king has but one law: that he be put to death. The only exception to this is for the king to extend the gold sceptre to him and spare his life. But thirty days have passed since I was called to go to the king."

Understandably Esther fears for her life, but it’s not just about her anymore.

12 When Esther's words were reported to Mordecai, 13 he sent back this answer: "Do not think that because you are in the king's house you alone of all the Jews will escape. 14 For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father's family will perish.

And then Mordecai presents Esther with a challenge. He says:

And who knows but that you have come to royal position for such a time as this?"

Esther replies and calls a fast and she chooses to face a destiny that society did not have in mind for her.

15 Then Esther sent this reply to Mordecai: 16 "Go, gather together all the Jews who are in Susa, and fast for me. Do not eat or drink for three days, night or day. I and my maids will fast as you do. When this is done, I will go to the king, even though it is against the law. And if I perish, I perish.”

The choice is simple: Let the world shape your destiny or let God shape it.

Employing our gifts and shape for God’s purposes.

Are you chasing the shadows, looking to fulfil the dreams and aspiration of a superficial society or would like your life to mean something? To have value beyond the day when your good looks and fine physique have given way to the impact of age.

A life that means something

Rick Warren, the senior leader of Saddleback Church, says that we all share 5 common purposes:

1. We were made for God’s pleasure

2. We were formed to be part of God’s family

You were never meant to make the journey of life on your own. You were purpose designed to be a part something so much bigger.

3. We were created to be like Christ

The Bible tells us that God’s plan is that we all become his sons and daughters, members of his family, sharing the likeness of Jesus his one and only Son who came to earth to live and die on our behalf.

His example of personal sacrifice and commitment are to our pattern of life.

4. We were shaped for serving God

You have gifts and abilities that God wants to use to make an impact on our world. You have a passion for something deep within your heart that fires your purpose, and you have and are gaining experiences that make you who you are and that God will use if you will let him.

5. We were made for a mission

Your mission has eternal significance

“We will have all of eternity to celebrate with those we have brought to Jesus, but we only have our lifetime in which to reach them.” [284]

Your mission gives your life meaning

“William James said, “The best use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.” [285]

My life is worth nothing unless I use it for doing the work assigned me by the Lord Jesus—the work of telling others about God’s wonderful kindness and love (Acts 20:24)

Find out what you do best, and then do it in a way that makes a difference, Jim Wallis

The Choice you must make

It’s a simple choice: the world’s pattern or God’s pattern.

Synchronise Google Calendars and Outlook

2008-01-26T10:16:00.000Z

Whilst looking around the internet for something else, I stumbles upon a bit of software that claims to synchronise Outlook to Google. If you want to try it and let me know if it works, please feel free to do so and post a comment. This is all early days for us with regard to sharing dates in this way, so any ideas and help would be great.