Passion for God

Well it’s the start of New Life Conference 2010 today and a bit of a rainy start at that! New Life is the annual conference for our network of churches and is held at Rora House in lovely Devon. The speakers this year are Larry Hill and Les Wheeldon and the theme is Y as in why.

We’ll be posting regular updates on the blog so check back to keep up with the latest. You can also follow us on twitter.com/passionforgoduk for shorter updates. If you want to join in the conversation then leave a comment on the blog, login to post your own thoughts or use #newlife on your tweets.

We’re looking forward to a great week and whatever you’re doing or wherever you are we hope you have a great week too!

Psalm 84 says “Blessed are those whose strength is in you”. Interesting then to read the whole Psalm and find out what it means to find our strength in God. On a monday morning it might just be the very thing you need. Or maybe it is personal or financial. difficulties. Whatever it is, you’re probably thinking I really need God’s strength at the moment.

The psalmist starts by recognising ‘how lovely is your dwelling place, O LORD of hosts!’ It starts from there, from recognising that the best place you could be is in God’s dwelling place. He is the LORD of hosts, the title used to remind his people that God commands the host of heaven and there are millions upon millions of angels who serve Him. The psalmist then turns to himself and says ‘my soul longs, yes faints for the courts of the LORD; my heart and flesh sing for joy to the living God.’ The next secret of strength is having that longing in your heart to be in God’s dwelling place, even just to be in the courts of the LORD for in those days no-one could enter the Holy of Holies. The psalmist’s desire to meet with God was so strong that if he didn’t he said he would faint. Our thirst and hunger and passion for God

is

our strength!

The psalmist understood that every creature has a home, even the sparrow in their humble nest. And our hearts cannot rest until they find their rest, their home, in God. We were made for Him and without Him there will always be that nagging doubt that we were made for more than this. And so he says ‘ Blessed are those who dwell in your house ever singing your praise! Blessed are those whose strength is in you’. To have our strength in God is to recognise that His dwelling place is the best place we could be and to be those who hunger and thirst to find our home in Him.

The next verse is interesting! ‘In whose heart are the highways to Zion.’ What does that mean? Every year the people of God would pilgrim up through the highways of Israel to the mountain of God for their festivals and songs and feasts. The psalmist is saying that those who are strong have the highways to God’s dwelling place in their hearts! When we need that strength we can look inside us and remember our times of pilgrimage and meeting with God. Maybe it was our very first experiences with God. Maybe it was a time of prayer and fasting in our lives when we really met with God. Maybe it was an experience of God’s faithfulness in the toughest of times or a word of prophecy that God spoke to us. Whatever it is we all have those ‘highways’ in our hearts and the time we need them is when we need strength from God.

‘As they go through the Valley of Baca they make it a place of springs; the early rain also covers it with pools. They go from strength to strength; each one appears before God in Zion.’ Those who have the highways in their hearts can pilgrim to God any time. You don’t need a conference or festival, or a great speaker or worship leader. You can pilgrim! And as you start to do that you will make the valleys a place of springs. You will start to know God’s presence and blessing where you need it most and the springs will turn into pools and you will go ‘from strength to strength’ until you appear before God in Zion. Your strength is found in your pilgrimage and knowing the destination of God’s presence that you are pilgriming to!

And that begins to put the psalmist in the place where he can pray ‘O LORD God of hosts, hear my prayer!’ Before you jump straight in with your requests try a bit of pilgriming first!

‘For a day in your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere. I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness.’ The only thing that is going to keep you from the tents of wickedness is the longing to be in the house and presence of God. To know that simply being a doorkeeper is better than anything else by far. Nothing and no-one compares to God. A day in his presence will see you through a thousand days elsewhere. An encounter with him will sustain you for years.

‘The LORD God is a sun and a shield; no good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly. O LORD of hosts, blessed is the one who trusts in you!’ The LORD blesses and protects, it is a double blessing! He is a sun and a shield. Walking uprightly is the way to know his blessing and provision. The last line sums it up, this is all about trusting in God and the one who does is blessed and finds their strength in Him.

Happy pilgriming!

Over the last month we’ve had 195 visits from over 31 countries.  On average people spent between 3-4 minutes and had a look at just over 3 pages – that’s almost 700 page views of the last 30 days.  The most popular being the blog and this month the women’s page.

148 of those visits were unique visitors for the month rather than the same person visiting us 195 times! The most visitors on one day? On June 14th 30 people visited passionforgod.org.uk to read ‘How to be a tree’!

We hope you’re enjoying the new website and don’t forget you can leave comments on any of the articles or register yourself and write your own blog post for passionforgod.org.uk. Happy Reading!

Here are my notes from a talk by Wayne Grudem at The Kings Centre, Chessington on the 01st July 2010 organised by the Christian Institute. It was an excellent talk that took five wrong views on the interaction of the Christian faith and politics and tackled them from a biblical perspective to show their error. It was an encouraging talk for anyone who is considering involvement in or who is involved in taking their faith into the public sphere.

My notes are not necessarily complete and are brief towards the end because he was short on time and spoke less on the latter points. If you want to read the arguments in more depth then wait for his new book ‘Politics according to the bible‘

Wrong View #1: The government should compel religion

• Matthew 22:15-22 shows us the legitimacy of paying taxes, also teaches us that not everything belongs to Caesar (e.g.: peoples religious beliefs). Here Jesus was teaching a clear distinction between church and government, a very new and challenging view for the Israelites for whom faith and government were intricately linked.
• Luke 9:52-55 Jesus refused to compel people to him by force of judgement, only instead by invitation. Imagine how many people would have come to him if he had let his disciples had commanded fire from heaven. He did not judge at that point in time. This shows us how there should always be freedom of religion, not suppress anything and everything that is anti-biblical. We should be confident that the bible has power to stand on it’s own in the public sphere.

Wrong View #2: We should exclude religion from government and the public square

• Rom 13:4 Civil authority is Gods servant, we should submit to it, we should also understand and teach good and evil in this context. There are many examples in scripture of godly men reproving Government because they did not do ‘good’ bringing the gospel into the political sphere:
• Luke 3:19 John the Baptist reproved Herod for not just one thing he had done but for ‘all the evils which Herod had done’
• Acts 24:25 Paul ‘reasoned about righteousness, self-control, and the judgement to come (KJV)’ when in front of Felix the governor

Wrong View #3: All government is demonic and therefore Christians should not get involved

• Luke 4:6 versus John 8:44: Greg Boyd’s recent book “the myth of a christian nation” claims this exact point but is based on a misinterpretation of Luke 4:6. In this passage Satan tempts Jesus by ‘showing him all the kingdoms of the world’ and saying to him ‘all this power will I give you, and the glory of them: for that is delivered unto me’. Boyd’s premise is that Jesus did not deny Satan’s claim that he was the ruler the ‘kingdoms of the world’ because they were ‘delivered unto him’ and therefore they were all entirely his to give, Satan was in control of them, including government. However this is not the case as later Jesus says that everything Satan says is a lie: John 8:44 “because there is no truth in him”
• Rom 13:1-6: There is no authority except for Gods. We need the police force because you can’t stop drunk drivers with the gospel. Sometimes the Government achieves great good before the church, for example the Army under Lincoln overthrew the southern states to destroy slavery. This was Gods way of achieving his ‘good’ Wrong

View #4: We should do evangelism not politics because the government does not do any eternal good

• 1 John 3:8 Fully understood, the gospel should transform not just individual lives but also result in changed families, schools, businesses, even government. We should seek to influence politics because God left us on earth to do evangelism AND good works to all men.
• Mark 12:31 The greatest commandment also includes this command to ‘love your neighbour as yourself’. If we love our neighbour then we would want laws that protect their marriage, children and freedom to hear the gospel.
• Mat 5:16 So let your light shine before men, so that they might see your good works… In other words the good words evanglism is more than just preaching the gospel.
• Eph 2:8-9 & 10-11. Note how 10 and 11 follow on directly from 8&9! The great and classic passage on justification by faith carries on immediately to state that we are created for good work
• There are many examples in history of Christian Influence on government. For example the abolition of slavery (wWlberforce), the prohibition of the burning of widows on funeral pyres in India, prohibiting the binding of feet in china, banning of gladiatorial contests in the Roman empire, Martin Luther Kings fight for abolishing racial segregation.
• Matt 6:13 ‘Deliver us from evil’ in the Lords prayer show us how we are to pray for protection from evil
• 1 Tim 2:1-3 Paul write to Timothy that we’re to pray for rulers and those in authority that we might have a quiet and peaceful life that the gospel might prosper.

Wrong View #5: We should do politics not evangelism

• Laws solve many problems but we know that laws don’t change hearts.

The right view: There should be significant Christian influence on government

• There are many examples through the bible of men and women who had significant impact on the political leadership of their time.
• Consider the life of Daniel or Esther.
• Consider Jeremiah who was told when he went into captivity that he should “seek the peace of the city that I have caused you to be carried away to as captives, and pray to the LORD for it: for in the peace thereof shall you have peace.” (Jer 29:7) We should also so seek to influence politics to help bring about peace for our community, nation etc.
• Consider also Nehemiah the cup bearer to the King, a high office with access to the Kings ear and also Esther.
• It’s not for everyone, some are called into politics, others into business, others into other things but in each case bringing Christian influence into their environment.
• Consider 1 Peter 2:12-17 ‘submit your self to every authority’ and also ‘As free, and not using your liberty for a cloke of maliciousness, but as the servants of God.’: Where we do gain significant influence we must not enforce religion and we must protect free speech not stopping or opposing in a hostile way literature or other critique of the Christian faith
• Last of all, pastors and teachers in church have a responsibility to teach the ‘whole counsel of God’ (Acts 20:26-27). Paul did not shrink from teaching on any topic simply because it was unpopular, and he considered himself blameless in this matter.

If you’ve ever wondered what we talk most about on passionforgod.org.uk check out this wordle that sums it up:

It was created using wordle.net which is pretty cool. Just out of interest here’s a couple created using the names of God. You can download any of these to use so have fun!

Want to know how to be a tree? Fortunately the Bible has the answer! It can be found in Psalm 1 called in the NKJV ‘The way of the righteous and the end of the ungodly’ which about sums it up.

Do you want to know how to be blessed in life rather than cursed? The read on as Psalm 1 starts with this line: “Blessed is the man.” Blessed is the man who does what? Well let’s start with three things he doesn’t do.

1. He doesn’t walk in the counsel of the ungodly.
The man who is blessed doesn’t take advise from those who aren’t! Literally he doesn’t ‘walk in their advice’. What are the sources of advise in your life as we all have them. Do we ‘walk’ in advice that isn’t helpful to us? The latest news or trends, how to get rich quick or succeed in life? Even the latest Christian fad or celebrity? We have to be careful who are friends are.

2. He doesn’t stand in the path of sinners.
This is going one step further. From walking in advice that isn’t helpful to standing in the path of sinners. If you stand in the path of a truck you’re going to get hit! Don’t stand in the path of sinners and then complain when things go wrong. Get out of the way of the truck!

3. He doesn’t sit in the seat of the scornful.
The lowest form of wit is mockery. It’s the easiest thing in the world to sit and criticise and mock and scorn. Don’t sit in that seat. Don’t be the one who says it will never change or ‘there’s no hope’ or ‘I can’t do it’. Be a God-believer as with Him all things are possible.

But if that’s what he doesn’t do where are the positives? Read on!

“His delight is in the law of the LORD and in his law he meditates day and night.”

One answer to all this. Listen to God’s advice, stand in His path and sit where He sits. Focus your thoughts and attention on God, on what He says and what He does, His principles and His word. Let it be your meditation, the thing you think on when you have those 5 minutes, when your brushing your teeth or waiting at the lights. Why?

Because if you do that you’ll become like a tree! You’ll plant yourself by the rivers of water, by the rivers of God. You won’t be moved and you’ll drink deeply of His river, of His life.

It may not look like anything is happening but look what it says next. When it’s time, when it’s the season the tree will ‘bring forth fruit’. God has a time for you, it may not be now but he has a time for you to bear fruit. Will that happen automatically? No, you need to prepare, you need to be planted, you need to drink that water up. It can take years for a tree to fruit but without those years of growing and watering it wouldn’t be ready to do so.

What about the tough times? “Whose leaf also shall not wither.” Even in the valley and through the rains and storms the tree planted by God’s river will stand strong and firm. And sometimes those times will be the making of the tree so it is ready to bear fruit.

Don’t worry about whether you’re doing the right thing or whether you’re in the right place. Christians can get very hung up about finding God’s will. What does Psalm 1 say? “Whatever he does shall prosper.” It’s more important that you’re planted in God than about having the right job. God can prosper you where you are if you stop fretting about whether you’re in the right place and start meditating on God’s law.

If you don’t choose this way. Well, you’ll get blown away like the chaff, you won’t stand a hope of standing strong so don’t kid yourself that you can do it in your own strength.

The LORD knows the way of the righteous but the way of the ungodly shall perish.

Selah.

There’s a story in Luke where Jesus calms the storm. For many of us that’s a very useful analogy for what goes on in our lives and we can often feel that we need the ‘storm of life’ to be stilled.

Amazing to think they only encountered the storm because they were in the boat with Jesus. Sometimes following him can mean we go through storms on the way to our destination, but remember they are not the point or object of our travels, only things we must endure ‘if needs be, for a little while’ (1 Peter).

Do these things bother Jesus? Well in one sense no. He is the Lord of all and knows exactly what is going on. But of course it’s true to say that Jesus ‘had compassion’ and he ‘walked where we walked’ so he knows and feels our trials.

So what did they need to do when they encountered the storm? Not panic, or sing, or even do their devotions. They simply needed to ask Jesus to sort things out. It can be the simplest things that we can forget to do. Have you asked Him to ‘rebuke the wind and calm the raging waves’? He can and will if we will but ask him. They had to endure the storm for a time so they might ask him to help. How often do our trials serve to benefit us because for the first time in a while we have to ‘ask’? In the calm we can forget our reliance on Him.

What did Jesus call for in return? Faith – trust in Him, leaning on Him, relying on Him, depending on Him so that if he doesn’t come through we’re sunk.

The other thing they learned? More about who Jesus actually was. You would have thought they knew but again this storm served to open their eyes to the wonder of the King.

Next time you see the waves swelling around you, remember this simple gospel story!

Here’s the full story:
“One day he got into a boat with his disciples, and he said to them, Let us go across to the other side of the lake. So they set out, and as they sailed he fell asleep. And a windstorm came down on the lake, and they were filling with water and were in danger. And they went and woke him, saying, Master, Master, we are perishing! And he awoke and rebuked the wind and the raging waves, and they ceased, and there was a calm. He said to them, Where is your faith? And they were afraid, and they marveled, saying to one another, Who then is this, that he commands even winds and water, and they obey him?”

Donald Fraser from WEC preached recently at Clifton Community Church in Worthing. Several people became Christians as a result so we’d thought we’d include the sermon here so you can have a listen to his testimony.

If you know of any good preaches recently at your church or that you’ve been listening to why not tell us by commenting on this post or contacting us. You could even register on the site and write the article yourself. Happy listening!

‘Your kingdom come!’ A snappy title for a great weekend, but I hope we won’t be abandoning the theme too soon. As Dave shared from Matthew 5:5 (‘Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.’) some of the things Jesus said about his kingdom can knock you for six if you stop for a moment to really think about them. In fact, the kingdom of God is so counter-intuitive, so different to our way of thinking that Jesus had to explain it through a montage of parables using everyday things to explain what we would otherwise be powerless to grasp.

 I’ve been thinking recently about the parable of the sower in Matthew 13, particularly verse 8 which describes the productivity of seed in good soil. The minimum return on the seed is thirty times what was sown. And that’s the minimum – the parable also mentions returns of up to one hundred times! My question is this: if the word of God is so powerful, what am I doing wrong?! I have something inside me that has the power to multiply thirty, sixty, even a hundred times over, so why is it not happening? Why is my life apparently so lacking in fruit? Where is the increase?

 There are several possible responses to this question, the first (and least advised) is to get quite depressed about it and conclude that I must be a fraud. This usually involves criticising the ground on which the seed is sown, either in myself (“There must be something wrong with my heart because the seed isn’t growing!”) or in others (“They’re so unresponsive and hard hearted, no wonder the seed isn’t growing!”). However, the parable Jesus told was not meant to be a criticism of his followers nor of his hearers. There were places like Samaria where the disciples could only see hardness and opposition but Jesus saw fields ‘ripe for harvest’ (John 4:35). Nor was Jesus criticising the seed. Whatever barriers to fruitfulness might exist, the gospel itself is not one of them. Paul writes in Romans 1:16:

‘I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes…’

So what was Jesus saying in this parable?

 In fact, the parable of the sower was meant to be an encouragement! Jesus was telling his disciples to keep sowing because when the seed landed on good ground it would produce a harvest many times what was sown. In the face of “enemy ground” he was saying “No more excuses! Stop saying the harvest isn’t ready yet! It’s the workers that are few, not the ready fields!” We don’t need to fear that our labour is in vain, the seed will do its own work if it is only given the opportunity to do so.

 This brings us to the real question – are we actually sharing the gospel? I don’t simply mean once a week ‘hits’ on street corners or fantastic seeker services, I mean in our day to day lives are we sharing the gospel that has worked so powerfully in us with others? Perhaps our greatest danger is ‘shrink-wrapping’ the gospel, protecting and hiding it until we find the ultimate piece of responsive ground in which to sow it. Unfortunately, like Jesus’ disciples we are not usually very good at recognising good ground when we see it. Going back to Samaria, it is amazing that the disciples, who knew the gospel of the kingdom, were able to walk right into the heart of the city, buy bread, and leave without having any effect at all. Yet Jesus, waiting by a well outside the city, took the opportunity to share the gospel with the one person who happened to arrive there, a sexually immoral woman whose religion and culture caused offence to the Jews. Through that one act of seed sowing Jesus did not even need to enter the city – as a result of the woman’s testimony (more seed sowing) the people of the city came out to Jesus and begged him to stay!

 The gospel has never lost its saving power nor its potential to give a massive return on what is invested. However, unless it is freely sown and allowed the opportunity to grow and reproduce it remains all potential but no realisation. As an older bible version says, ‘it abideth alone’ (John 12:24 KJV).

Struggling to pray? Not enough time, don’t know what to say, not feeling passionate, mind wandering, tired? You’re not alone! Everyone feels that way at some point, if not many points! Fortunately the Bible gives us some guidance.

Infact it does better than that it gives us an insight into the prayer lives of many saints. And today we’ll look at just one verse from Paul’s life in Philippians 1:3-5.

After all, how do you change the world? One life at a time. Or in the words of the film Evan Almight, one random act of kindness at a time. The President of the United States, Barak Obama started his career by doing legal aid work, and now has responsibility for a whole lot more. What relevance has that? Well, often we wish to leap to the heights of prayer and intercession and when we jus don’t know how to pray we feel a failure and give up altogether. But how do we change our prayer lives? One prayer at a time! Much the same way if we’re struggling to read the Bible – where do we start? One verse at a time!

Little and often is the rule in many things in life and stands true in our prayer life. If we want to run a marathon we start with a 10 minute jog. If we want to learn the piano, we start with the scale of C. If we want to be a prayer warrior (or even manage to pray for at least 10 minutes a day) we start with a simple prayer.

And that simple prayer today is – “thank you”. It will do more than just change our prayer life, it will change our attitude and over time our character. Why thank you?

Well let’s read Philippians 1:3-5.

3 I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, 4 always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy, 5 because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. 6 And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.

In every ‘remembrance’, ie prayer for every time we remember someone or something it is also a chance to pray. Paul said thankyou. This should immediately move us away from the guilt-tripping ‘quiet time’ which isn’t found in the Bible to a place of seeing prayer as part of our every day lives, much like breathing. If you’ve ever been to the Middle East you’ll know that you don’t get much peace and quiet and the concept of personal space doesn’t really exist! The only ‘quiet time’ that Jesus probably ever had was when he retreated to the mountain top to pray and in a middle Easter culture that was the only way to get away!

3 I thank my God in all my remembrance of you

Let our rememberings be our chance for prayer. Then we don”t start off the day with a guilt-complex. But instead we look forward to the day as full of opportunities for remembering and therefore for praying. And in this insight into Paul’s life we start to understand that he always started with thankyou and that he said thankyou in every rememberance! Now there’s a challenge even before you start to prayer. You may be familiar with sayings like ACT – adoration, confession, thanksgiving. We should rightly start with adoration of God. But if you don’t know how to do that start with thanksgiving. For in thanksgiving we start to acknowledge all that God is and all He has done.

When we thank him for our breath that he provides…
When we thank him for our food that comes from Him…
When we thank him for our health that we owe to him…
When we thank him for creation that He made with his hands…
When we thank him for our family, that is modelled on Him,
When we thank him for our work, which we use to honour him…
When we just thank Him…

For as we thank Him, so we start to acknowledge Him as our God and our Creator…

Our King and our everything…

Start with simply saying thankyou…

Start with one thankyou at a time…

It will transform your prayer life…

Start today.

Next time we’ll look at joy. And being thankful is a good way to get ready for joy!