I'm a bit silly/God is rich in mercy.

I'm a bit silly you see. In my wallet I have a small business card with a few words on it. It's been in there for years, and to be honest i can't even remember where I got it from. For Christmas one of my sisters got me an excellent 'flying Scotsman' leather wallet (it's a beauty!) and as I transferred all the contents of my old wallet to it I realised that I had no clue what was written on this card. Which was:

I am no longer my own but yours.
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;
let me be full, let me be empty.
let me have all things, let me have nothing;
I freely and wholeheartedly yield all things to your
pleasure and disposal

I couldn't believe it. I had opened up my wallet and seen its worn corners regularly but never got around to actually reading it. Literally years it had been there. Known about but un-read. Silly Billy! ;-)

Maybe our faith can sometimes be like the card in my wallet which I knew was there but never explored it further.

Have a look at Ephesian 2: 4-5...

"But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved"

Amazing!!!

Instead of living as Spiritual orphans (who claim to live in God's household and supposedly know Him as Father but actually live homeless on the street), we can now enter His house and be welcomed in the fullness of His grace through Christ :-)

Mindblowing.

Work the land

"He who works his land will have abundant food, but he who chases fantasies lacks judgement"
Proverbs 12:11

In this proverb there are two men.

One man who acknowledges what is in front of him, and works away at it.
One man who doesn't know what is in front of him, and chases fantasies.

We are told that the first man has abundant food. And that the second man lacks judgement.

This is a very simple proverb but I think it has a lot to it.

Here are some thoughts...

1. Stop seeking others 'fields' and comparing yours to theirs.
2. But be diligent and work with what God has placed in front of you right now.
3. You probably won't be in this place forever so work with it for God's Glory while you can.
4. Trust that God is Good and Gracious and that there will be abundant 'food'.

As Christians we are working together as a community for God's Glory, and God calls us all differently but by no means is this an individual tihng. It's all for the same purpose right?

"If anyone speaks, he should do it as one speaking the very words of God. If anyone serves, he should do it with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ. To him be the glory and the power for ever and ever. Amen."
1 Peter 4:11

Discipleship

"Since our Master Himself found it essential to rise early in the morning to pray, and jealously to guard time for quiet meditation, we may safely say that it is impossible for His followers to manage the difficult business of living without taking time, jealously guarded, to look up into the face of God, to offer our lives afresh to Him, to seek guidance for the day before us, to listen to His voice and to lift up our hearts in petition and intercession"

Quoted from the book 'Discipleship' by Leslie D. Weatherhead

Church. Mission. Gospel Intentionality.

Church is not an event. It’s a Community.

Mission is not an event. It’s a Lifestyle.

We are called to live ordinary life with Gospel Intentionality.

(Tim Chester)

Passion and Discipline

Recently I've been thinking about the relationship between passion and discipline:

Think of an old, skilled pianist playing in concert and the wonderful sounds that are made.

Or a married couple who once forgot their love for each other but now have a healthy and loving marriage.

Or a young Christian who still goes through many struggles but over years has gone from finding the bible boring to now dwelling richly in it each day.

What about our passion (or enjoyment) and discipline in following Christ? What about those days when we feel up for giving Christ our everything, and then those days when we just plain don't?

I guess at different times in our lives there will be a crazy amount of interplay between passion/enjoyment and discipline, and being realistic there's no way we will constantly feel passionate about following Christ and also have the discipline to get on with it. With this in mind I was thinking about the dangers of relying on either discipline or passion.

1. Relying on discipline

When there's that thing we seriously don't want to do (but need to do), going through the discipline of getting on with it can often turn out for the best as you get stuff done. However if we focus too much on our discipline a danger is that we might encourage a 'you need to work harder' mentality which could sideline grace and rest, where if something goes wrong we get down and if something goes well we get proud.

2. Relying on passion

A genuine passion for something can provide a great drive, which can then lead to great results. However a problem here is that when there is no passion you will never put in the time or effort. You can become fickle and constantly change your plans depending on your emotions, which can lead to a 'I will only do what I feel like doing' mentality.

So what's the alternative?

Rely on Christ.

To throw ourselves upon He who gave Himself for us and admit that we will not always feel fired up for Him, and we will not always have the discipline to be obedient to Him, but in all things we will choose to rely on Christ and his love for us.

"Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written:
"For your sake we face death all day long;
we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered." No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us"
Romans 8:35-37.

Know it. Apply it. Speak it.

I was just reading some stuff by Jeff Vanderstelt, a leader of Soma Communites (http://www.somacommunities.org/some-of-our-team/).

He regularly speaks of 'gospel fluency' and he suggests three ways in going about this.

Firstly he says we need to know the Gospel: not just the gospels but the good news of Jesus Christ as a whole, which saturates all of scripture.

Secondly he says that we need to apply the gospel: that just knowing the gospel isn't enough because for true transformation to take place it needs to be applied to our lives and those around us.

Thirdly he says we need to speak the gospel into each others lives regularly and naturally in a whole manner of different situations.

Here's what he says on a recent blog post...

"Shaping a Gospel Fluent Culture starts with you being regularly shaped by the truth of the Gospel. This means you have to KNOW it and APPLY it to everyday stuff, while asking others to SPEAK it into your life"

(http://soma-missionalmusings.blogspot.com/2010/03/training-on-gospel-fluency.html)

Let's put this into practice!

Awaken us...

Our culture is just so good at making us asleep to God! Big questions of life are quickly put back to sleep with the response "how can you honestly expect to find an answer to that? Life has no meaning! And even if there was i'd much rather live my own way"

In our hearts and minds that nagging question of "maybe there is more to life than this?" can quickly be silenced and replaced with an iphone or some other material-god which we will so obviously die without (I actually quite like iphones so don't take that too seriously!)

The wonderful thing about life with Jesus as Lord is that our hearts are awakened to new life.

Jesus initially awakens us from death when he saves us, but as Christians we can tend to fall back into a semi-dead mode; we've been saved by what Jesus did on the cross but we're now kind of asleep to what he wants to do in our lvies today.

If you don't yet know Christ you are alive but really you are dead! Jesus wants to awaken you!
If you know Christ yet don't seek after him you are alive but as good as dead! Jesus wants to re-awaken you!

I guess it's a continual thing as well. I find that I need to be re-awakened, re-focussed and reminded each day of God's love, grace and mercy in my life.

Song of Songs 5:2 says that "I slept but my heart was awake". I love this because it tells us that when we're in a relationship with Christ, even when we feel tired, exhausted or struggling, our hearts can still be awake and responsive to what God is doing.

In Ephesians 1:7 we read of God's amazing grace. How awesome is it that God awakens us as a loving Father!

"Like the rising sun that shines
Out from the darkness comes a light
I hear Your voice and this is my
Awakening"

Awaken us Lord!

Engaging the Silence

This is taken from p.32 of 'God on Mute' by Pete Greig.

Engaging the Silence

first
there is
prayer
and where ther is prayer
there may be
miracles
but where miracles may not be
there are
questions
and where there are questions
there may be
silence
but silence may be
more than
absence
silence may be presence
muted
silence may not be nothing but
something
to explore
defy accuse
engage
and
this is
prayer
and where there is prayer
there may yet be
miracles

Isaiah 26:8

"Yes, LORD, walking in the way of your laws we wait for you: your name and renown are the desires of our hearts"

Everything

I was at my sister's church in Leeds on Sunday (http://www.mosaic-church.org.uk/) which is a fantastic vibrant and growing church. They have what looks like a great conference coming up called 'Everything' and here's a description of it...

'The Earth is the Lord’s and everything in it' - Psalm 24:1
"The gist of the conference is that Everything - not just the ‘sacred’ elements of culture, but everything - belongs to God. And as His people, we are called to get involved and have a positive influence on society."

I think that the prayer 'Your Kingdom come, your will be done' demands our whole lives; that we will seek God in all things-our work, our sleep, our play, our social, our pain, our suffering, our joy, essentially just where ever we are, whatever's happening, whatever we're doing.

"Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labour in the Lord is not in vain"-1 Corinthians 15:58b

The Hound of Heaven.

(Talking about the poem 'Hound of Heaven' by Francis Thompson)

'The name is strange. It startles one at first. It is so bold, so new, so fearless. It does not attract, rather the reverse. But when one reads the poem this strangeness disappears. The meaning is understood. As the hound follows the hare, never ceasing in its running, ever drawing nearer in the chase, with unhurrying and imperturbed pace, so does God follow the fleeing soul by His Divine grace. And though in sin or in human love, away from God it seeks to hide itself, Divine grace follows after, unwearyingly follows ever after, till the soul feels its pressure forcing it to turn to Him alone in that never ending pursuit.'
—The Neumann Press Book of Verse, 1988

Jesus. The Hound of Heaven.

1 Corinthians

It has been a long time since I last blogged! So as I sit on the train back to London from Aberdeen I thought it would be good to get a few thoughts down on 'paper'.

Over the past week i've been going through First Corinthians using the ESV study bible (very good resource!).

Here are just a few things i've learnt:

1. Unity

Paul seemed to plead for the church at Corinth to stay unified and humble through a love for Chirst and each other. In Chapter 1 verse 15 Paul asks the question "Is Christ divided?" and so requests his followers not to be.

In chapter 3 we find that there are problems with certain people saying that they followed Apollos, and others saying they followed Paul. In response to this Paul says "what after all is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe - as the LORD has assigned each to his task".

To me this speaks of unity in diversity: that we're not all called to do the same thing, clearly Paul and Apollos had different tasks (see 3:6-9), but instead we are called to be unified above all in giving Christ glory.

2. To some The Cross is foolishness

In chapter 1:18 Paul says that "the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God"

I was reminded of that this week after bumping into a friend who has no religious background at all. He came to a free lunch and talk that our University's Christian Union was hosting last week, and straight away he brought up the lunch and told me that all us Christians are mental with all this Jesus stuff! But amazingly he said it was great and wants to find out more.

3. Love. Judgement. Mercy

Love is everywhere in 1 Corinthians. Whether Paul is talking about worship in the church, food laws, marriage, Spiritual gifts, unity, idols; it all leads back to the question 'does this show our love for Christ and for others?'

Love. Love. Love.

But where does God's judgement come into love? Often I find it difficult to see how discipline or judgement can go hand in hand with love and mercy. In chapter 11 I think we find a verse that can really help us in our understanding of this:

11:32: "But if we judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged. But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world"

WOW! For me this is huge a verse! Right here loud and clear we find that the reason why, as Christians, we are disciplined by the Lord is because of his great love for us so that we will not be condemned! We receive judegment but it is in essence a great sign of mercy.

The ESV study bible's footnote to this verse says that "When suffering alerts a Christian to the presence of sin and leads to repentance, it functions as an act of both disciplinary judgment and mercy".

To me this drastically changes a lot, for if I realise that everything that God does is out of love then it demands a trusting of him in all things.

So those are just a few messy thoughts, which are definitely not 100% water tight...please weigh all this up for yourself!

And now I get to enjoy three weeks off uni for easter! :-D

The purpose of the Lord will stand!

So it's my 20th birthday today!!! Yes! I'm no longer a teenager and have entered the 20s-30s age bracket! Haha what a joke!

As I look ahead I am incredibly excited as to what God will be doing as we faithfully seek him.

I am reminded of Proverbs 19:21
"Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand"

I wholeheartedly believe that his Kingdom is being extended in wonderful ways and will continue to do so in ways which will blow our minds! But I don't want to forget that we can make all the plans we like, however unless they are made in Christ and for Christ they are completely worthless.

But isn't this that idiot?!

In Luke 4 we find that Jesus is back in Nazareth, where he had grown up, but now teaching and receiving praise from people (v.15). One Sabbath he was in the synagogue and he read publicly from Isaiah then boldly stated "Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing" (v.21)

This passage from Isaiah that Jesus read out is ACTUALLY AMAZING! It speaks of great hope with freedom for prisoners, recovery of sight for the blind and the oppressed being released! Wow! And Jesus is central to this because it is fulfilled in him!!!

The people of Nazareth knew Jesus' seemingly insignificant background and they compared those memories they had to what he was doing now...and they were confused. Luke 4:22-"..."isn't this Joseph's son?" they asked". I think it can be a great comfort to us. Because the same thing can happen to us.

As we go about living Christ-centred lives people may start saying things like "wait a minute, isn't this that guy who used to be so selfish?", "isn't this that girl who went off the rails?", "isn't that the guy who was depressed?", "isn't this the woman who neglected her family?"...because they now see something new.

I guess the main difference behind Luke 4:22 and people asking that question about us is that our past is full of sin, but Jesus' wasn't, so we can't claim any glory for ourselves as we're "saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone" (Martin Luther)

As we are transformed more into the likeness of Christ we may find that people start saying "isn't this 'x' who... but now he/she is..." but with joy we can respond "yes, that's what happens in the Kingdom of God!"