25 Wednesday Jan 2012
Posted in honesty, God, church, Change, Guest blog, David, freedom, The Journey, dreams
The church I am part of has a ‘Futures’ document that sets out the vision of the church from 2012 onwards. When this was introduced the pastor was honest in his appraisal of the document. It provides a starting point. We may have missed stuff that God wants us to do or be as a church. We may have included things that God will remove. Continue reading »
It seems to me that the love Jesus displayed was not a frilly, doily type of love but a love that drove Him to the cross. “Greater love has no-one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends” said Jesus, and He should know.
But although parents do fail regularly the issue is not about single events but the whole child. It would be easy to dwell on my own failures. With five children I have been given many opportunities to fail. When I look at my father who is eighty-years old I do not examine his failures but I celebrate his successes. I am proud of my father. It wasn’t easy.
A plague wipes out 70,000, and then God sends His angel to Jerusalem to smash it. But it becomes too much for God and He extends His mercy calling the angel off as he is poised over the threshing floor of Araunah. It’s at this point that David looks out and sees the angel with his sword drawn, poised but frozen and David is faced with the place where God’s wrath meets God’s mercy. This threshing floor goes on to be the site of the temple. This visual representation of the wrath/mercy smack down captivated me.
Several months have passed since I last wrote about tea. I am amazed that a simple cup of tea could …
When I prioritise the relationship rather than the arrangement I find it easier to maintain both. I don’t hold myself to a legalistic schedule, I operate grace and somehow it has worked.
Finding your way as a Christian is no different. If you don’t know where you are now then how can you work out where you are going? Christian life is a journey. It has a beginning, but this is where many choose to sit and go no further.
Could it be that in the act of sacrificially loving others we meet and learn to love Jesus on a whole new level? It seems that focusing on Jesus can be an excuse to ignore the plight of our fellow travellers while still convincing ourselves that we are ‘right with God’.
While I cannot see the future, God views my entire life in an instant. He planned it. He sent me to sea because He needed to use that experience later on in my life. He put me where I am now. He has prepared and trained me for everything He has expected from me.
For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his …
Yesterday John and I took a pre-Christmas trip to Devon to deliver Christmas presents to my parents. While they went …
I mean surely the Holy Spirit requires more room in the heart than it does in the belly. It’s not that I’m massively overweight but there has been a noticeable expansion in the gut region in recent years.
Satan does not differentiate when he comes to rob and steal and destroy, but he does seem to enjoy hitting high profile targets such as church leaders. Many of us are soft targets and easily defeated yet God has made everything we need to become hard or harder targets freely available. The only real demand He makes of us is our time. Because it takes time to put on armour.
I’ve been thinking a lot about advent recently. Advent is defined as the arrival of a notable thing or person. The Jews were living in advent of the Messiah. We live in advent of our own selfish desires. We are desperate for them, they consume us. There is one other thing we are waiting for, but we are not as desperate for – Jesus return.
Contrast that to the move my second eldest son and his wife are making later this week. They are moving into a house built in 1907 that requires much more work than the house next door to me. They will live in the house and tackle the task bit-by-bit, room-by-room. It is going to take quite a while.
We convince ourselves that we have some how escaped the sphere of God’s vision, knowledge, influence, and reach, and rather than turn back towards the light we retreat further into the darkness. The film Nightwatch put it like this ‘It is easier for a man to destroy the light inside him than to fight the darkness all around him.’
The mate tipped me out of my bunk and onto the deck of my cabin. “The crew are on strike. Get your backside down into number five hold and get sweeping. The old man (captain) is down there. If the old man is sweeping, then so are you.” (Polite version.)
And that’s the real rub isn’t it? Things not turning out how we expect. The world would be a much better place if things turned out that way I expected all the time. A much better place… for me at least.
I’m not sure what made me say it, but as the coffee shop lady drew level with me I said “ain’t you gonna bless me too?” I got the same treatment as the taxi driver. Too say I was stunned is an understatement.
