God never misses

There's this ‘thing' we refer to as the presence of God. I'm not sure if there is another way of labeling it or a more clever turn of phrase to correctly describe it. But then again I like the phrase the presence of God: that's exactly what it is. It does what it says on the tin.

 It's when God is near, it's when God feels closer than the air in a steam room. It's when all this talk about ‘it' becomes talk about ‘Him'. And if we believe that God is not dead but alive, it is the most precious ‘commodity' we have.

 When Jesus left earth to be with his father again he said that he would leave his ‘spirit' with us. The Holy Spirit. The Holy Ghost, our comforter. It's the ‘spirit' that breathes life into the law. Now, laws are good but we know from the whole of human history that no one can keep them all. The law is just half the story - that's all it can only ever be. The ‘bestsellers' - the ones that have the whole story -  always have the ‘spirit' imbedded in the plot.

 It's in the presence of the living God that we are convicted of our sin. It is there that we realise how it's good to have boundaries, that it's good to stay out of trouble, that it's good to not pick the apple off the tree. It's when we make the choices to obey the law in the light of ‘his face' that we start to understand freedom.

 I am enthralled by the story of Moses and the moment he heard the very voice of God coming from a burning bush. God always speaks in the most unusual of places and here was Moses taking his sandals off next to some tumbleweed that was on fire but not actually burning! [A complete aside: I wonder if I've ever appeared to be on fire but not been ‘on fire', so to speak.]

 Anyhow, the thing that got Moses' attention was the very ‘presence' of God.

After realizing he was in the company of his maker he asked him a simple question.

 "Who shall I say has sent me?"

 "I AM WHO I AM", "I AM has sent me to you".  Enough said.

 In the last 20 years we have had a revolution in the way we present ourselves as church. When I was a kid I remember the first time I asked if we could have a drum kit in the evening service and whether I could play a ‘real' guitar, the kind you plugged into a Vox AC30. The organist, a very sweet lady, thought that everyone had gone to the ‘dark side', but to be fair to her she soldiered on believing that without her the sound would be ‘dull'.

 Nowadays it is commonplace for there to be Coldplay sound-alike worship bands all across the world playing modern hymns on a Sunday morning. I love it, I celebrate it and I think God loves it too. I also think God loves the creativity. Skinny-fit jeans for socks and sandals, sculptured haircuts instead of comb-overs, tattoos for rainbow straps and ‘church news' on a video screen the width of Tower bridge.

 I love it all.

 But I sometimes get nervous. I worry that we don't need God anymore. We don't feel the need to take our shoes off.

 Do we really miss him these days? After all our church meetings have become ‘perfect' now, we have learnt how to ‘do it', we have got the thing down at last.

And anyway, who needs God when we can sing ‘Historymaker' to make us feel good underneath the new lighting rig?

 I am not a cynic, I am part of the problem.

 We have led ourselves to believe that these things will attract the ‘non churched' or make Jesus ‘cool' again to a post modern secular society. I'm sorry if the ‘show' ever got in the way of the ‘nooma'. Humans want to be loved not impressed.

 I am glad of the pioneering spirit that has taken church into a new century but we must never forget the most powerful thing we have, our distinctive, our joy our prize... the presence of God.

 Let's not retreat into old nostalgic patterns but keep pushing the creative boundaries, but in it all let's know deep in our bellies that ‘apart from you, we are nothing'

 We can have ‘everything' but nothing if we leave God at stage left. Even Wayne Rooney can't score from the bench. God wants to be involved, to breathe life into people, to heal cancers, to open blind eyes, to help someone out of debt or help them through the pain of betrayal.

 He can take our ‘foolishness' and make it great. He can live in the chaos and bring truth. He can take an old lady on the organ and breathe life into her ageing fingers so that when she plays the peoples hearts break.

 God is not impressed with excellence, but purity. God is bored with air-brushed worship and just delights in a sacrifice of praise. This means anyone can do it, everyone is included. All we have to do is invite God to the party and we will see a tsunami of his power flood the earth once more.

 Believe me, we are not going back, we must go forward. When anyone asks who sent us, we can confidently reply, "I AM has sent me to you". This goes for the old geezer on the tambourine (yes he seems to get around!) or Chris Tomlin crooning in a stadium. Our trust is not in the sound system but in the voice of God. No longer the songs but the one who sings over us.

 God can do amazing things when he's on the pitch, and you know what?

He never misses.

- Martin Smith from Delirious?

Ecclesiastes

⁴ Generations come and generations go,
       but the earth remains forever.
 ⁵ The sun rises and the sun sets,
       and hurries back to where it rises.
 ⁶ The wind blows to the south
       and turns to the north;
       round and round it goes,
       ever returning on its course.
 ⁷ All streams flow into the sea,
       yet the sea is never full.
       To the place the streams come from,
       there they return again.
 ⁸ All things are wearisome,
       more than one can say.
       The eye never has enough of seeing,
       nor the ear its fill of hearing.
 ⁹ What has been will be again,
       what has been done will be done again;
       there is nothing new under the sun.
 ¹⁰ Is there anything of which one can say,
       "Look! This is something new"?
       It was here already, long ago;
       it was here before our time.

 

Ecclesiastes is a good book in the bible, one of my favorites. Such a reality and spit in the face of what really is around us. 

People live in the now, in this world on this earth thinking about the now, the yesterday the tomorrow, the next day. 

Pleasure is meaningless, wisdom is meaningless, there's nothing new. 

People get lost in things that fade away and have no meaning much..

Everything is just so meaningless. I couldn't explain what I was thinking, couldn't make out what was in my head, when I read Ecclesiastes it somehow untangled the mess and put it into words. Opened up the words shut in deep within me.

Press the pictures to make them bigger!

limited

Started reading another new book, which just captivated me and is ridiculously challenging.
Sometimes, so many times, we, or I, get caught up in religion, cause we have so much head knowledge of everything, and we become religious b/c we don't even do all of that which we know.
Lately I've been dreaming of going out evangelizing. But it's either Shula, or it's the fear of the unknown that hinders me. That makes me slightly mad.
Because the life I'm living now isn't what God had in mind for those who believe in Him.
I'm sick of sitting and critiquing how someones doing something thats a bit off, I'm sick of critiquing while not doing much myself. What matters is that we should be out extending the kingdom of God wherever we go. Praise and prayer and getting in the Word and going out is what will start the change around us. Not when we see the problem and walk around trying to think of ways out of it. Our thinking is limited. and the Holy Spirit is not.

negativity of the day

Just as everything was going so well and smooth and calm, that is, minus my headaches, some other things I never thought would started chipping away and slowly crumbling. I'm in for a rude awakening I fear. I'm such a nothing.
Parents keep telling me that as soon as they find a good place to rent, than Shula and I could come live with them. That will be a glorious day, when I will be away.
Today Esther told me that she doesn't know why, but everything I say & do irritates her. And now, walking silently and angrily into the room to get me out so that she could be by herself, she told me that my makeup looks like someone punched me in the face.
Excuse me, am I the one responsible for sleepless nights and weak under-eye concealers?
Sounding negative won't do much,
I'm in the midst of a very inspiring and positive book. That is a little sunbeam in my days. It's not as bad as we tend to make.
In the end, challenges, problems, isolation, disappointments, do at the very least add maturity.
Just decided to sit down and ponder on the last hour. And what came up is the words of a person whom I love so much, who can't stand me being alive and around her. And other things which I just don't understand.
Oh well. gonna go drink something and keep reading