nbc blog

Ouch!

2012-02-16T10:51:00.002Z

When God wants to drill a man,
And thrill a man,
And skill a man
When God wants to mold a man
To play the noblest part;

When He yearns with all His heart
To create so great and bold a man
That all the world shall be amazed,
Watch His methods, watch His ways!

How He ruthlessly perfects
Whom He royally elects!
How He hammers him and hurts him,
And with mighty blows converts him

Into trial shapes of clay which
Only God understands;
While his tortured heart is crying
And he lifts beseeching hands!

How He bends but never breaks
When his good He undertakes;
How He uses whom He chooses,
And which every purpose fuses him;
By every act induces him
To try His splendor out-
God knows what He's about.

(Anon)

Proverbs 3:11-12....

Happy New Prayer!

2012-02-07T08:36:00.004Z

It’s the second day of February and this morning I posed this e-question to one friend (who I haven’t spoken to for a while but wanted to catch up with), ‘is it too late to wish you a Happy New Year?’

Well, is it?

I guess not and of course, it doesn’t really matter whether it’s too late or not. The important thing is to know whether the happiness for the new year that we wished upon those to whom we offered the sentiment, is borne out, or not.

February for them, as for us, will be different to January, and September to June. Different daily and monthly challenges determine how happy our respective years will be.

January is a month of cold weather, dark evenings, credit card bills, school examinations. February, the same.

So who knows what this year has already brought for some – or what the rest of it - will bring for others? Which raises the question, is it futile to wish someone a Happy New year, to hope for it even?

Just prior to Christmas, the local paper did a short interview with me about mission and the work I am involved with. I said something that I often say to people, along the lines of ‘when you start praying for people, you start loving them.’ When the article was written, the word ‘praying’ was replaced with the word ‘hoping’ which for me, missed the point completely, though I understood why it was done.

Reminds me of that old Dusty Springfield song, ‘wishing, and hoping, and thinking and praying…’

What’s the difference between the words?

Well, for Christians there is a difference, of course, between merely wishing for something that has no real impact, and praying for its success.

The great thing about prayer is that we can cause an effect, we can make an impact in the lives of those to whom we may have (maybe casually) wished a Happy New year to at the turn of the year.

We can bring about the intended outcome to the greeting if we believe in prayer.

We can’t foresee what is to come in the lives of those we pray for, but God can, and He hears our prayers.

But how intentional are we of turning our wishing and hoping into thinking and praying?

One thing I did over two days in the New Year period was to pray through my mobile phone contacts. That’s a good way of cross sectioning our contacts, friends, work colleagues, neighbours and so on. I prayed for some really random people and really enjoyed it.

I am expectant of God’s impact on their lives this year because I know He is faithful.

Intentional prayer. Let’s get on to it.

Crumbs!

2012-01-31T09:13:00.003Z

Picture our fellowship as a loaf of bread.

Would it be brown or white?

Wholemeal, granary, with large air holes or doughy and heavy?

I like to think of it as a seeded, nutty loaf, maybe with some malt and the odd sultana!

I can say this as a coeliac; the sort of loaf we don’t want to be is gluten free!

It is the gluten that holds bread together, if you’ve been at communion when we handed round gluten free bread you know it falls apart, turns into crumbs and is hard to swallow as it stays dry and separate.

A whole gluten free loaf is a rather brittle thing, so our fellowship loaf would be better with a bit of give, and able to hold together when dropped!

So, the gluten is an illustration of love, which helps us stick by each other when things get difficult, the masks come off and sometimes we are not so nice to be with.

We are one body, and love holds us all together.

That doesn’t mean we are all the same, in fact, it is how we love and appreciate our differences that make us so fascinating to others.

Nuts and seeds are both great nutritionally, especially together, and we are healthiest when we have a varied diet.

God has made us uniquely and put us together, and He knows what He is doing, so we will grow best when we co-operate with where we are and those we are with.

Decide which bit of the loaf you are, or feel God is growing you to be, but don’t look at others and copy them, be your own sultana!

Fill in the space

2012-01-21T15:09:00.009Z

When God created humankind, I'm not convinced that he ever intended for communication between us to be any harder than, 'Hey Dad, how business?' 'What's on your mind, Dad?' 'Tell me about you, Dad.' 'I was thinking the other day, Dad...'

What d'you reckon?

Personally, I find my default setting when thinking of prayer is to panic, look back over the last week of my life, decide that it would be probably more agreeable for the Almighty to not hear from me given the state of my soul, and make a personal commitment to self to 'sort my life out' before Sunday church so that I can engage with 'the worship', whatever that means; my prayer life is reduced to firing off quick one-liners of generic christianese that don't really help anyone.

Feels a bit foolish to me.

Actually, I'd suggest that the Father is waiting, longing, even desperate, for us to drop such ridiculous methods and start behaving a little bit more like His CHILDREN.

I spend an awful lot of my time complaining to God, and frankly to anyone who will listen, that I'm not quite where I want to be 'with God.' The thing is, that's a completely human and downright idiotic way to go about this Christian business.

As I understand it, the Father gave everything, including His own son, so that I could be in relationship with him - that's filial, Father-son, closer than anything else sort of relationship by the way - so if I'm finding any space between us, you can bet large sums of money that it's because I made the space.

If I don't feel I'm 'doing well with God', best to start by telling Him that; it's called confession.

The space needs to be filled from our end.

May I suggest that it might look a bit like this:

'Hey Dad, how business?'

'What's on your mind, Dad?'

'Tell me about you, Dad.'

'I was thinking the other day, Dad...'

'Dad, I'm really struggling with this...'

'I love you, Father.'

Just a thought.

The Weeds

2012-01-12T11:25:00.000Z

When I was young I never dreamt for one second that livingin your own house would mean you have to do the gardening.

I guess it was my mum rather than nature itself that keptthe lawn mown, the bushes in some kind of order and the grass cut.

Over the last year and a half I’ve learnt the toils ofcutting back bushes and mowing the lawn (grass grows really quickly!).

However, I discovered no enemy is more arduous andlongsuffering than weeds.

Weeds are phenomenal, they grow back again and again.

They don’t need planting.

They don’t need good weather.

They don’t need watering.

They don’t even need soil sometimes!

As I was spraying weed killer all over my weed infestedflower bed I had a bit of a moment where I felt God spoke to me.

He said, ‘What are the weeds in your life?’

I thought about this a while and after tweeting a little noteof how I declared ‘war’ on weeds, the words of Romans 5:3-5 came to mind.

‘…but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we knowsuffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character hope.And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into ourhearts by the Holy Spirit, who he has given us.’

Sometimes it is the very weeds of our lives that God uses tobring about hope.

It might be a situation we have no power to change,

someone who persistently winds us up,

an addiction to something that causes us to stumble.

Whatever these weeds might be, God has called us topersevere through them.

Don’t run from them, face them, rejoice in them!

As we persevere and our character is refined, we see Jesus’victory in these situation.

We see God intervening with situations,

we see love breaking through the hearts of those that windus up,

we see freedom from addiction.

If we persevere and don’t give into the first suffering weencounter, hope springs up.

Hope in a God that acts.

Hope in a God that saves.

Hope in a God whose love conquers all.

The example of Noah

2012-01-05T20:48:00.003Z

Genesis 9:9 says that 'Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked with God'.

The Bible is full of verses with threefold areas to focus on. Here three elements are something to aim for.

Firstly, Noah was a righteous man. When we are in God's family we bear His name and we long for what is on his heart. Righteousness is central to that. Seeking justice, fairness and all that is right is part of wanting to see His Kingdom come.

Secondly, he was blameless among the people of his time. So many Bible characters stood out in society for their contribution, their attitude, their integrity. Paul encourages us similarly in 1 Thessalonians 4: 11 & 12 to make it our ambitions to lead quiet lives, minding our own business (not busybodies or gossips) and working hard. By so doing our lives will win the respect of outsiders. We're to conduct ourselves in a manner worthy of the Lord. To be blameless among the people of our time.

And of course, thirdly, he walked with God. Noah and Enoch are listed as ones who walked with God. Moses talked with God as a man talks with a friend, face to face. We should seek to walk with God. Not ahead of Him, not away from Him, not too far behind Him, but with Him. Jesus saw what the Father was doing and then did that. So should we. We don't invite God to walk with us, and to grant what we want. We should seek His will and His kingdom, and get alongside Him in what He is doing.

So, as we start this new year make Noah your example. Desire righteousness, seek to be blameless among the people of our time, and walk with God.

Welcome

2011-10-20T10:13:00.003+01:00

Welcome to Northchurch Baptist Church's blogging site.
You can expect insightful, funny, God pursuing thoughts that will hopefully encourage and challenge you in your walk with God.
There will be at least weekly updates so please keep checking the blog for the latest thoughts and comments!

Thanks for reading!