Northern Men's Convention

The Northern Men's Convention is a great day of teaching, fellowship and a time to think through particular issues as men.

Here is a link to the website to see what is on, you can also download past teaching: Link

Proving or disproving the resurrection

I guess we sometimes feel pressured to prove the resurrection to sceptical friends and family. This is a great quote from Tim Keller's book The Reason for God:

“Most people think that, when it comes to Jesus resurrection, the burden of proof is on believers to give evidence that it happened. That is not completely the case. The resurrection also puts the burden of proof on its unbelievers. It is not enough to simply believe Jesus did not rise from the dead. You must then come up with a historically feasible alternative explanation for the birth of the church…” (pg 202)

Love in the community

Been re-listening to Tim Keller and Philip Jensen on Church Planting and have been reminded again of the need for us to break the mould.

There are so many stereotyped views of Christians; boring, hypocritical, judgemental, preachy and so on.... The big question is what am I doing to disprove them? How am I disabusing people of those notions?

How do we as churches show people that such views are wrong? In fact they are one of Satan's greatest ploys as they stop people ever considering the lifesaving, eternally significant message that the church has been entrusted with for the world!!!! If the gospel matters I, we must be demolishing such wrongheaded stereotypes both personally and corporately. Are we doing that? How do we go about doing so?

Maundy Thursday

Commemorates the Last Supper and Jesus washing of his disciples feet, it was the day on which Jesus commanded his disciples to "love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another."

It is something well worth pausing and thinking about today in a world centred on me and I. Contrast Jesus who in the midst of betrayal, knowing all that was going to befall him undertakes to wash his disciples feet as a sign of his love for them.

What will I do today to love my brothers and sisters as he has loved me?

Easter Egg

I wonder how you think of Easter? It was great today to go into a school to do an easter assembly, to be able to share the gospel with 200 kids and their teachers. However, I also had a first - I was asked to be the judge of the decorate an Easter egg competition.

The thing that struck me was that all of the kids had taken a lot of time over these eggtravaganza's (sorry a poor yoke!). But what struck me more was that quite a few were about the real Easter Story. There was one of the garden with the egg as the stone over the tomb, there was another with the egg on a donkey and part of the Easter story written out and so on.

It was great to look at them and then go on to explain what happened at the cross and to try and get them to think about Easter eggs differently. The foil is shiny like a crown and reminds us Jesus was God's kings, the chocolate that Jesus came to earth, the egg has to be broken just like Jesus body and the egg is empty just like the tomb.

We must take every opportunity to explain the gospel and what a great opportunity Easter brings.

How I view the world

God rules! That is the big message of the book of Daniel. Daniel and his friend serve great kings in the worlds eyes, great empires in the worlds eyes and yet Daniel outlasts them all. Why? Because he is not some flunky who attached himself to a king or a court and sought to gain favour. But Daniel serves the God who he knows rules the world, who hold history in his hands.

As I've been studying Daniel I find that an amazing challenge. I know in my head that is what the Bible teaches and that it is true. But what about in the way I live, does that show? Daniel can live as he does, living for God, in an alien pressured and pagan environment because he knows that truth as more than just a theological truth but as a living breathing reality.

It means he can stand for God when under threat, when facing persecution because God is sovereign and Daniel can put his trust in his God for the outcome.

But Daniel also gives us a view of the world that we need, it is found in the apocalyptic visions in the second half of the book and it is a reminder that we sometimes limit our living to the world pulled over our eyes to blind us. When in reality we as the people of God are engaged in a spiritual battle and therefore need spiritual weapons.

My prayer is that these two truths inform my mind and heart and transform my service of God while he continues to give me breath.

Engaging at Easter

We always seem to take Christmas as being the time to share the gospel with our friends and it feels a little like Easter is the poor relative in that regard. But isn't Easter in many ways the better opportunity.

Why do I say that? Because actually it confronts us with our sin and forces us to work out exactly who the baby in the manger claims to be. The baby is quite safe and cuddle, but the battered, bloodied, and beaten man on the cross confronts us with rebellion against God.

Christmas is a manically busy time of year, but Easter seems to be a little calmer with more time for reflection. Ask people what Christmas is about and they can usually tell you, ask them about Easter and actually I think there is more that they are unaware of.

I'm not saying don't make much of Christmas, but make more of Easter. Easter confronts people with the man on a cross and the question who is he, and if he is the Messiah why is he hanging there? It confronts us with the awful bill for our rebellion and gives us stark choices to make about what we will do with such a sacrifice.

Will you use Easter this year? Will you have tracts ready to give out? Are you ready to engage with friends, family and work colleagues?

What do you love?

1 John 2:15-17 is a great little passage, it reminds us that actually we are to be counter cultural especially in our relationship to the world.

John calls his readers and us to a mutually exclusive love. Notice what John says (15) you can’t love the world and love God. The world is a big theme in John (23x) and it is seen as everything that is opposition to God. To love the world is to live for the world – it is about setting your heart on it.

We live in a dangerous place, as did John's readers because we live in the world, and it competes for our love. That is what advertising is about - it is designed to make us love and want the world. The danger is that without being aware of it we become ensnared by it like the frog that remains in water which is gradually boiled.

The world – human systems, morality etc… are not to be loved by those who love God. (16) Makes even clearer 3 of the dangers the world brings: literally the desire of the flesh (living for physical pleasure), the lust of the eyes (Advertising, making us want; be it sex, a certain lifestyle or better bananas) and lastly pride in what we have and do (or maybe in waht our family, children, grandchildren have or do).

John reminds us we live in enemy occupied territory and the big question he poses is do I find myself loving the world?

But John also poinst out another mutual exclusive in these verses; Mutually exclusive endings.(17) John calls believers to wake up, to recognise the danger of loving the world but he also reminds them of the mutually exclusive endings of these things. In fcat bearing in mind the temporary nature of the world and its loves will help us. The question is will you live for things that are temporary or will you live for things that last forever?

What do I find myself living for? What do I find myself loving?

The Passion

On Sunday the 16th March the first part of the BBC's new adaptation of the Easter Story will begin. It will the first of 6 parts to be shown on successive nights in the lead up to Easter.
Nigel Stafford Clark has said that: “My job is telling stories. The fact that it is the backbone of one of the world’s great religions is what, for me, has stopped it being told properly as a story before because people back away from it. It’s not just a story that is told in churches. It really happened,”.

“Our version is not remotely controversial. There is no attempt to twist anything – you don’t see Jesus sleeping with Mary Magdalene or anything like that. We have tried to make it feel like it is really happening. And because you understand why people are behaving the way they are, what Jesus is doing becomes even more extraordinary.”

“With the world the way it is at the moment,” he continues, “anything that is about something that goes beyond your everyday existence is of value. People are looking for something beyond their new car. Telling a story like this quenches that thirst. It makes you feel there is something beyond your own limited existence.”

The challenge is to be ready to watch and then talk to our friends, encouraging them to read with us the real gospel accounts and to understand not just the events of history but their significance then and now in terms of eternal thing.

Are we ready for Easter? We gear up for months to Christmas but Easter seems almost to be secondary. Why not use this series with its flaws to explain to your friends the significance of a story that is like no other, because it holds out the promsie of salvation from hell, forgiveness for guilt and relationship with God.