Declare a holy fast! Joel 1.14

If you forgive me the opportunity for a play on words.

To declare a fast for Jesus, for God , is to put on our "go faster stripes" and to train for a deeper spiritual life.

Claire preached to us last Sunday about the reasons for fasting . And we heard from a witness about experiences at the International church.

To fast is to expect more from God. In my experience there is always more! God your ever loving father always wants to give you more. He never wants to give you less.

Do you dare to take from the hand of God? Do you dare to go deeper and let the heart of God speak to your life?

Matthew chapter 25 is about this sort of thing, it divides out into two sorts of subjects "having" and "giving."

On the having front we have all been given access to the full riches of God. He doesn't hold back and doesn't have favourites. He gives to each one who chooses to be his the full riches of God's glory. We can have it all. One day at a time.

The parable story about bags of gold in this chapter is about what we do with his love. Do we hold it like gold? Holding it to our chest hoping that no one will wrestle it away from us? Or do we give it away?  Squander it almost, because we know that there will always be more? Always there will be a fresh infilling of the riches of God for those who give away those riches. That's what Jesus is getting in his teaching, we need to understand that, and realise we are not in a spiritual famine where we need to hold God's riches back for some rainy day future. God gives! we use! Keep nothing in the storehouse God is our sufficiency.

So we have and we give, without fear or favour. We Share God's riches with the the wealthiest and also with the poorest of the Poor.

Matthew 25 "what you do to the least of my Brethren you do to me."

So this coming fast is an exciting opportunity to go deeper into the heart of God. To hear from him at a deeper level.

For reflection
* listen to Claire again
* are you going to pray 7/12/7
* who can fast with you?
* full fast or partial?
* look our Burlington Web page for the fast

* read the book of Daniel 

"I want my people to give a damn"

Walking to leadership prayer last Thursday morning I asked God if he wanted to say anything. Immediately the words "I want my people to give a damn" came into my mind. I think I interpret that as Jesus wants his disciples to care very much about the things of God. To "hunger and thirst after righteousness"  in the same way Jesus did. I then found myself asking the prophets continual question is that word just for me (as it might be) or is it for the body of Christ?

When I got there. And we started praying I was prompted to read Psalm 135. God put the actual Psalm reference into my mind. I read it aloud not knowing what it was going to say. It seemed to resonate with what we had been talking about. And then Jonathan said that it reminded him of a passage that had been in his prayer times a lot recently.

This being 2 Chronicles 20. Which led to a fruitful discussion for the two of us.

It seems that when we do obey God things happen. The work of the Holy Spirit gets carried along that bit further. The fact that the Psalm meant something to Jonathan also had the side effect of bolstering my faith too. We so often cry "show us the work of your hands" or variants thereon but forget we are already the work of his hands. With the same Holy Spirit dwelling in us. I have a sneaky feeling that the more we obey the promptings of the Spirit. The more we are blessed.

Yes, yes. God really is in the small things. But an accumulation of small things becomes a big thing. God is in our "yes" when we dare (or perhaps bother) to say it to him.

And yes God you are right. You want your disciples to "give a damn". If that translates as "to care" - you want us to care a huge amount about the poor. Both the spiritually poor and the materially poor. You want us to harbour your kingdom in our hearts. To share your kingdom and to build it. And to care about it at an extreme level. To love with passion and without reserve.  To allow our own heart conversion to spill out to others, through loving action and listening and talking.

An example of God building on small acts of obedience is our Missional Community which we call Impact. That started because Cherie acted out of obedience and knocked on the door of the hostel that first time. I remember her saying she didn't know what she was going to say until the door opened.

Who are you God to work in such a mysterious fashion in our lives? Oh yes, you are yourself the origin of love. The place where love flows out from. Bless us O Lord. Bless us this day. So we may respond. AMEN

Wait in the city!

Now what, Easter is over is it time for us to relax?

To follow Jesus is always a tension between action and meditation. He invites us to act but also he invites us to be with him in the garden praying before significant moments. Watching with him. Listening even to his breathing or even to his crying for humanity. This morning I find myself thinking what use is a watchman if he doesn't watch? If he doesn't stand with Jesus before his betrayal or at other times. What use is a watchman who doesn't cry with Jesus at injustice , or rejoice with him for every blossom on the juniper tree.

After Easter what? Like the disciples we should wait in the city. Yes even in fear maybe. Jesus words were "And now I will send the Holy Spirit, just as my Father promised. But stay here in the city until the Holy Spirit comes and fills you with power from heaven." Luke 24;49 NLT

Be like Habbakuk and dare to dream, dare to believe. Dare to hope. Dare to wait for the quickening of the Holy Spirit in your life. His prayer was:
"Lord , I have heard of your fame; I stand in awe of your deeds, Lord . Repeat them in our day, in our time make them known; in wrath remember mercy." Habakkuk 3:2 NIV

As you wait in the city dare to pray for a new pentecost in your life. Ask for a new in dwelling of the Holy Spirit. A new strengthening, A fresh compassion for others, a heart for love. Come Holy Spirit dwell in us afresh. So that we may build your kingdom here on earth. So that the line between heaven and earth may become blurred. Blossom out into our lives again. Fill us again with the joy of your Spirit for your glory. Bring your love. Bring your healing in your wake. In this city Lord. In your people. We pray for an overflowing of your Holy Spirit. In Jesus name! For now Lord. For this time! Amen

Season of the Spirit

I confess that winter really is my least favourite season. Although there are some aspects of it that I like. For example, the English countryside on a cold frosty morning can be amazing and inspiring. Watching ducks and other waterfowl waddling around and quacking at each other, pecking at ice can be fun and invigorating. I hate forever,well it seems like forever, going to and from work in the dark. December can be a weird mixture of fun and a certain angst or sadness remembering people you can't be with. January launches us into the unknown New Year. We break through into a brand new year like ducks pecking at the ice.

What this Watchman is noticing is that 2015 has a different spiritual atmosphere to it. It's true already that some people are going through a very difficult time. But in addition to that is an awareness that spiritually speaking this year is different. Yes! I dare to promise you, in the Lord's name it will be different.

God wants to gather us in. We need to be aware of that. To make it more personal God wants to gather you in! He is calling out to you across the ages. Calling to you through the person of Jesus Christ. The itinerant healer, who lived and died for you. Who rose from death and was seen by five hundred of his disciples.

Lean into Jesus this year. As the Psalm says "lean not on your own understanding," lean instead into God. Let him speak to you about the things of the Spirit. The things of God. Turn to him and face up to him. Invite him into your life. Admit your emptiness and ask for an incoming of the Holy Spirit to bless and refresh your life.

All this seems somehow impossible to you. But God is the God of the possible, who formed you in your womb and brought you to life. I am inviting you to experience again the true life of the Spirit. Just as you knew it before the world pressed in on you with it's darkness and doubts. Believe in your inner most being that this life can be different. I invite you to say "Maranatha" with me. This ancient word is spiritual shorthand inviting the presence of Jesus and means "come Lord Jesus" into our lives.

Maranatha, we ask you Jesus arrive in our lives. Speak to us as priest, prophet and king. Bring with you healing and reconciliation between people. Come and speak to our spirits about the mystery of divine love. How you want that love to take over our hearts and live in us. The time for bitterness has gone. The time for forgiveness has arrived. To be forgiven and in turn to forgive others. Understand this and take it to heart. This is a different season of the Spirit. May Jesus be present in your life. May you find wholeness.

For reflection:

• The words of St Margaret of Scotland "Take for your motto: love has conquered me, it alone shall possess my heart"
• "What does love look like? It has the hands to help others. It has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy. It has eyes to see misery and want. It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men. That is what love looks like." St Augustine of Hippo

What happens when people meet Jesus in a real context

"As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector’s booth. “Follow me,” he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him.

While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. 13 But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”" See context

Matthew left his job to follow Jesus. He didn't work out a period of notice. His encounter with Jesus was enough to knock him off the normal course of his life. Bless him, he was a tax collector, in those days fairly despised individuals known for their corruption and for taking an extra cut from those that they were collecting from. He was by his tax collectors booth! This was a portable construction that was set up where he was collecting his tax. All a bit more vulnerable than we at first think. He must have been challenged by Jesus to leave this and also torn. Do I hang on to the money or follow the Holy Man? Well he became one of the twelve - so he must have opted for the life changing option to follow Jesus. What would we do I wonder?

To encounter Jesus at that time was something that knocked people off the normal course of their lives. I believe this was because Jesus personality was so arresting that you had to stop in your tracks and say to yourself. Who is he? Is he for real? What is he offering?

Well what Jesus offers is something that is contrary to the material world's values. The Good News is something for our spirit, something for the inner man or woman. That lifts us up and alters our lives and changes them for the better. To live outside Christianity is to live a life without hope. To live as a Christian implies a commitment to change.

Yes, Jesus comes to sinners, tax collectors and prostitutes to the shock and dismay of the Pharisees, but it is so that he can bring the healing power of God's love. As he says he comes as a doctor into their lives. He doesn't feast with the Matthews of this world to pick up tax collecting hints. He doesn't feast with prostitutes in order to pimp. He is at the feast because he has something of real value to give he is offering rescue.

To the Pharisees he says 'Go and learn the meaning of the words what I want is mercy, not sacrifice.'

The irony is that the Pharisees were sinners too. The difference between them and the others were that they didn't know it. They were too busy looking at other peoples lives to assess their own.

If you look at the gospel again you will see that Jesus is ministering to everyone including the Pharisees.

This is why his ministry is so effecting. It speaks to everyone and to us - even now across time. The quote he offers the Pharisees is from the Bible. From the book of Hosea, which says 'What I want is love, not sacrifice; knowledge of God, not holocausts.'

That is interesting isn't it? In Old Testament times, before Jesus came, they used to try and appease God by killing and burning animals as a sin offering in the hope that this would put them right with God. But even then the Prophet Hosea says that God doesn't want this kind of material response. He wants us to change so that we love more. This requires a change of heart - are we ready?

The gift of Faith

Lately I have found myself involved in a few conversations where I have been prompted to remember how I came to believe in God.

I "caught" God as a young man. Not caught like you catch a virus. But God found me and I started to understand why he was searching for me and wanted me to know about him. I could have denied his presence. I could have pushed him away but I didn't. I am so glad because when I found him, and he found me, he changed my life. I know that he meets the darkness in me with his light. He moves me to love, whereas the things of this world can easily move me to hate. God the ever living, ever loving creator of the world, wants to be in relationship with me and also seeks you just as avidly.

I am praying this morning, as you read this for the gift of faith for you. Just as God hovered over the waters breathing life, I ask him to breath faith into your being.

Looking back on my life I can see that certain people did this for me.  I know my mother for example had carried on praying for me after I had opted out of going to church with her. In my agnostic phase she never gave up praying for me. And then there were certain chance meetings that I had with people that led to decision points. Yes there were more than one!  Certain people were sent to stand in the gap between God and me. To help me get my head around what was going on.

Our life isn't just about our flesh and blood and our human desires. There is a Spiritual side to life that we sometimes ignore or push below the surface although we can readily believe in spiritual evil  we are less ready to believe in good.

One of the very first people to have an encounter was a shepherd called Moses. He had a very clear encounter with God. Not many of us will have experiences like that. But we can have our own small encounters with God which can be just as convincing. Times when we feel the presence of God.

Moses is a biblical hero but he didn't start out that way. In fact if you read his life story you discover he is was a murderer. Someone who did something very wrong before he encountered God and managed to get his life back.

When Moses meets God it is one of the first occasions that we know of where God speaks directly to a man. As I said Moses at the time is living as a Shepherd. A shepherd's life is very solitary and a lot of time is spent watching the sheep, and the weather, and the countryside. A life of contemplation almost.

One day Moses sees a burning bush. It's a strange fire because it is not consuming the bush. 

He hears God calling to him from within the bush, saying"Moses! Moses!"So Moses thought, “I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up.”   

When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, “Moses! Moses!” 

And Moses said, “Here I am.” 

  “Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.” 

Then he said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.”

At this, Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God.   The Lord said, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.”   

But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”   And God said, “I will be with you. And this will be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain.” 

  Moses said to God, “Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what shall I tell them?”   

God said to Moses, “ I am who I am . This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘ I am has sent me to you.’ ”   God also said to Moses, “Say to the Israelites, ‘The Lord , the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob—has sent me to you.’ “This is my name forever, the name you shall call me from generation to generation.

(Read the full biblical text here  if you wish)

For reflection:
What kind of God would want to intervene in Moses life?
What do you make of God's statement "I am who I am?"

Prayer
Dear God, increase the gift of faith within me. I pray that in your own way you may be present in my life to bless me and also my family. Amen

Depart in silence!

Let's start with an unapologetic trip down memory lane.

I have been thinking recently about the use of and meaning of silence in church and prayer groups. At men's prayer group we have been experimenting with silence in a group setting.

Depart in silence! That's what the instructions say for the Catholic liturgy on Maundy Thursday. At St Gerties, in the 1990s we had a bit of a campaign to try and make that happen. It's not because we were trying to "harsh anyone's buzz" but it's just extremely fitting to have a reverent or even stunned silence after you have determinedly remembered and tried to make yourself present at the last meal Jesus had before his execution. When you consider the enormity of the situation for the disciples. The mixture of the Thanksgiving meal, Jesus talking like he was going to die and Judas betrayal. The instruction should say "depart in stunned silence."  But I forget the number of times we explained to people, if you are being true to the events you don't have a hymn at this point. You should leave the church in total silence or stay praying until midnight. It's one of the times where there should be a sense of grief almost in a church setting. A time where there should be no chitter chatter in the church afterwards. Reverent silence. But does modern man or woman do reverence? Of course some do!

Silence can be surprisingly instructive if we can dare to expose ourself to it. Although watch out! God can speak in the silence, so if you weren't planning for that to happen it can be disconcerting. I have experimented with silence in my prayer times and found that sometimes it can be energising or even powerful. There are different kinds of silence. For me silent prayer usually comes after I have said some psalms and I have set my heart to listen to God. There then follows minutes of what I think of as 'struggling silence.' It is the struggle to not stop and think about something else like the shopping or the dripping tap. Or the cat. If I can get beyond the struggle I can reach a stage of contented silence. Where "God looks at me and I look at him" - like friends, we don't always need to talk to each other. This is content silence. If you are really fortunate you can then go beyond this and God will speak. Not audibly of course. The God speaking silences are more frequent the more you practice the praying with silence. Today in the silence God asked one question "did you refuse to prophecy in my name?" His questions can be disturbing. Sometimes he can tell you that he loves you. It's not all challenge. He is after all a tender hearted God.

Sometimes I pray in tongues in the prayer time. This can help. It can lead to one of those loaded silences where God is present in all of his glory.

I don't normally talk about this stuff. But I think sometimes there is a time to share what's going through your head. Prayer is like an acorn. Hard to tap into. But once the right conditions are reached. Growth happens. The picture is of one we found in the back garden.

Dear God, let me go deeper. Help me to hunger for the peace of Christ. Send your Holy Spirit to renew my life. Let me welcome you! Amen

James 1:21-25 NIV
...... humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you.   Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do.