Pressing On

Following on from my recent blog on Captivity ... here is my second thought stemming from reading Philemon. It concerns v6 "I pray that you may be active in sharing your faith, so that you will have a full understanding of every good thing we have in Christ." I saw this posted on a friends Facebook page recently, whic h sums up in a very clear way what I think the Apostle Paul was trying to tell Philemon. It is never the Lord's intention that we live our lives as consumers. Partly, because then the tendency is that everything becom es inward looking rather than outw ard and p artly, because those with the desire to serve end up serving almost exclusively within the Church and to a Churc h - so we lose out on tw o levels. It is a common statistic that about 20% of the Church for 80% of the work. Or, as one Pastor once tol d me, "I have a Church of 350 going on 40 people! " People with a consumer mentality or within a consumer led system...

In 1 Chronicles 5:20 we read ... "(God ) a nswered their prayers beca use they trusted i n Him ." We know that across the world the re are many people that pray . For example, i n the book " Christian Prayer for Dummies " a survey is quoted stating that in the UK 82% of adults and 89% of teenagers pray at least once a week!  We kno w, too, that prayer s may be directed to a 'god ' , 'divine being' or 'some one/something' that it is supposed can hel p in time of need, whether or not there is an experience of being in a relationship w ith the object of the prayers or not.  However, what strikes me in this verse is t hat the peoples prayers w ere answered not simply beca use they pr ayed, but because they exercised faith, they trusted in the One they were prayin g to ... which leads me to the question " How do we have faith?" How can our experience m ove beyond a blind hope into a confident trust? For me the answer ...

In reference to 2 Tim 1:7 "For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of p o wer, of love a nd of sel f-discipli ne."   Norman Grubb decl are d that; "We are set in our day and generation to be overcomers, not to sail through calm seas but to walk on storms, to replace need with supply, to transform aspiration into realization. The language of defeatism, fear, lack and weakness is not to be in our vocabulary. "Let us go up at once and possess it, for we are well able to overcome it. As for these giants, they are bread for us," we say with sturdy Caleb.  We are to act as the men of faith of old; we are to visualize our goal in clear outline; we are to take it for granted that we shall reach it, for we have both the commission and anointing of God?   We lay our plans ,build our organisations, produce our written and verbal pronouncements,  prayer our prayers, do our work, not as those who will fail and fall by the way, but...

Recently I was reading in the book of Philemon, which doesn't often happen because it is so small and easy to overlook, so let me start with a quick plug extolling the benefits of systematic reading of scripture if nothing else! This time, as I read, I was struck by a couple of verses - in this blog I will focus on the first .... in verse 1 we read "Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus..."  Which is an interesting way to start a letter, especially when we consider that Paul was in f act a prisoner of the Rom an state ... so why does he refer to himself in this way? W hat is captivity?   The greek word 'prisoner' is transl ated as " a captive (as bound):--in bonds, prisoner." The idea of captivity can be expressed as follows; The dictionary defi nes cap tive as; n. 1. One, such as a prisoner of war, who is forcibly confined, subjugated, or enslaved. 2. One held in the grip of a strong emotion or passion. Which interestingly leads us to reflect o...

Recently I received some notes, in advance of a small group meeting, containing the following question "Do you feel that God is pleased with you? why?" How would you respond to this question?  My first reactive answer to this was 'sometimes!' then as I reflected a little deeper I've come to the conclusion that this is not the answer and that it can never be the answer. The answer must either be 'always' or 'never'!  Here is my thought processes that led me to that conclusion ... Firstly, the work Christ on the cross. If you do not please God you must be displeasing Him - in which case you have fallen short of his expectations, which is our imperfection or sin. On the cross Jesus perfectly, and completely, paid the price for our sin. This is either a perfect and complete work or it isn't and, somehow, God kept back a little punishment for us ... which, of course, he hasn't which means God looks at us through the filter of ...

Sacred Pathways: Discover your Soul's Path to God - Gary Thomas  When you became a christian did you look around other people's lives and seek to model some of their spiritual disciplines? Did you find that somehow they didn't work for you in quite the same way as they seemed to work for them? Did this lead you to a place of discouragement? Did you think that, somehow, the things that bring such life to other people but don't bring life to you must mean that there is something wrong with you? Or that maybe God doesn't love you as much as He loved those people whom you sought to emulate? These are very real questions that all c hristians probably grapple with at some point. As we grow and mature in Christ we eventually reach a place of liberty where we realise that we are unique and therefore we shouldn't be surprised when our Father deals uniquely with us - and the way we most easily 'connect' to Him is also unique. Or perhaps we find over time th...

  Often as evangelical believers we talk about the concept of ‘calling’ explaining it along the lines of God speaking to his people, sometimes this is narrowed even to the experience of a special, select ‘few’ and limited in scope to those who are engaging in full-time Christian ministry. The following are some notes I prepared for a talk: Firstly, I would like to say that most Christians would believe that God communicates with his people, and that this may happen in many different ways. What is of utmost importance is that it does happen. We are in relationship with a Living God, who we call Father, and who communicates with us His creation and covenant people.   God communicates in a number of ways and one special way in which He leads and guides his people might be termed a vocation or calling and it’s this particular aspect of His communication I want to focus on.   So what is the calling? Who is called? And what are we called to? The whole i...