But somewhere along the line that passion began to fade, and the dreams started to die. For a while you held on to hope, you fought to stay excited, but then life began to take its toll. After all there’s bills to pay, work to be done, people to see and TV to watch. And I don’t even have children - goodness knows how you cope when there’s clothes to wash, homework to be done, games to play and mouths to feed.

With the world around us constantly trying to get our attention, waging war against us and our time, its hard to find space for the God who created it all. Never mind trying to stay excited and passionate about the things He’s done when the next thing demanding our time needs done right this minute.

Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called
1 Timothy 6:12

I think I’m at an age now where I need to hear these words; where I need to make a stand and make the choice to not give in. It would be so easy for me to let life take over, to let how the world tells me to live my life take over, but I know I am designed for greater things. I will fight because I know that my Father loves me, and because I know what my Father wants of me.

I feel like I’m going through a moment of relearning and reawakening to the things God has for me, to the plans and dreams He has spoken over my life. His love for me has moved from being a theological but slightly unbelievable concept to a every moment of every day reality. I’m rediscovering who I am through Him and in Him. I’m fighting for more of him, I’m desperate to see more of Him, my honest desire is for more of Him. I hope I have the maturity and experience to know that more of Him is not going to look how I thought it would 10 years ago, but I still dream of His Kingdom coming, I still long for His glory to fall. Those aren’t distant unattainable concepts, they aren’t things of the past, they are the present reality of a people who seek first His Kingdom and His righteousness. They are ours for the taking.

Blessed are those whose strength is in you, who have set their heart on pilgrimage
Psalm 84:5

I’m in it for the long haul. This isn’t a 1 year project, a 5 year project, or even a lifetime one.  Moves of God can take place over generations. Reawakening and rekindling a body of people takes time. I’ve set my heart on pilgrimage, trying to strike a balance between patience and expectation, trying to be faithful in the small things and the big things. Making sure I rejoice in the small victories and the big ones.

Let me give you an example, when we first moved to the Shankill spending any time with God was difficult, very very difficult. The realities of the place and the apparent lack of God’s presence made me feel like I was knocking my head off a brick wall. 3 years later, its changed - I’ve a real sense of freedom, an ease almost of spending time with Him. It took work and perseverance, but its a small but extremely significant victory in my life.

Its so easy to spend our time looking at what God isn’t doing that we don’t acknowledge and rejoice in the things He is doing. Pilgrimage means just that - marking out the milestones on our journey, reminding ourselves and reminding God of what He has done and what He said He would do. The Bible is full of people reminding God and God reminding people - He loves to tell a story, and He loves to hear our stories. Its a part of the cycle of life with Him.

I’ve taken some time recently to look back and I can honestly say I’m amazed by what has happened in the last couple of years, never mind the last five or six. God has been so faithful, so incredibly faithful.

This has turned into some confessional-biopic piece that I never intended! I’m only talking about me because I hope it resonates with you, because I hope it inspires you, because I hope it calls you on.

We need to persevere. We need to not give in or give up. We need to keep dreaming big with the full expectation that he will complete the work he begun. He is so far from finished, in fact he’s only just warming up. We need to ask for and call down the kingdom of heaven to here on earth, and everything that comes with that. We need to call for His glory. We need to believe in the impossible.

A verse that I keep coming back to (and have done for years) is Malachi 3.10:

Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,” says the LORD Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it.

Persevere.
Give Him it all.
Don’t hold back.
Don’t give in.
Give your full offering.
Give your full tithe.

He wants to open the heavens, He wants to give us everything we dream of.

And so much more.

So remind yourself of the dreams you had - whether you are living them out or whether you still hold them close. Remind God of what He said He would do. Remind yourself of what He said He would do. Believe that it can happen. Ask Him to make it happen. If you have no other words, then pray the only thing I seem to be able to pray right now:

God. We wait for You to come and show Your Glory here today.
Alleluia. Come.

You know Moses - the guy who was told by God he wouldn’t get into the promised land.

Well - it turns out he did get there.

Don’t believe me? Read Matthew 17.

After 40 days in God’s presence Moses has just been given the blueprint for humanity (also known as the 10 commandments), but arrived at the bottom of the mountain to find the Israelites had decided they could make a better God out of a gold calf. It was not their finest hour.

God was angry - very angry.

The people he had chosen to be his example for the rest of the world to follow had turned away from him before they had barely taken their first steps. It was over before it had begun.

God had had enough - and wanted out: “I will send an angel before you and drive out the [tribes]. Go up into the land flowing with milk and honey. But I will not go with you...”

God being God was going to be faithful to His promises. He would still give the Israelites the land that He said would be theirs. He would send an angel to clear out the tribes living in the land, and make sure that they would settle into the land. All that He had said would happen to the Israelites would happen, but He himself would not be there.

But for Moses - this isn’t enough:

“If Your Presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here. How will anyone know you are pleased with me and your people unless you go with us? What else will distinguish me and your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?”

Let me translate this for you.

Moses says “NO! That’s not good enough!”.
Seriously.

Moses has the boldness (stupidity?) to tell God that he thinks he’s got it wrong.

But more than that.

Moses tells God that even if all the promises happen, even if everything is good and wonderful in the promised land - if God isn’t there its not worth it. He doesn’t want to move, he doesn’t want to take one step unless God is right there beside him.

Moses’ relationship with God was worth far more to him than any of the promises, than any of the fame, than any of the amazing things he would get to see.

This is why I keep coming back to it. This is why inspires me.

But it doesn’t end there.

The very next thing we read is that God changes His mind.

I don’t know how that fits with your theology - but its right there. God changes His mind.

Now - if I was Moses I’d be quickstepping out of the there with a smile on my face and a bounce in my step, but somehow he isn’t done. Maybe its the elation of the moment, maybe he feels he has God on the back foot, but he has one more thing he wants to say.

“Now show me your glory”.

Huh?

Moses knows that he has not seen enough of God.

Despite all the talks they have had, despite all that God has shown him, and all that God has done through him, Moses has not seen enough.

And so he asks for more.

He’s already proved that his priorities are the right way round - that his desire for God is greater than his desire for the things of God.

So now he asks for more.

Show me your glory, your presence - allow me to look at you, to see you, to feel you. Moses is showing a hunger, a desire, a longing for a new depth of relationship with God.

Do you see now why I love this story?

This guy is one of the heroes of our faith. He has seen things we can only dream of, he has communicated with God and heard things that no one else had heard before. But he knew he needed more. He knew it wasn’t enough. There was something inside him that still longed for more of God, that longed for something deeper.

So the obvious question is - do you want more of God?

When we take a step back and look at ourselves, can we honestly say that we desire a deeper relationship with Him? If we’re really honest, maybe we want the things of God more than relationship with God himself?

For the last while I’ve been really trying to increase my desire for more of God.

It started out by recognising that I needed to - that my passion had grown thin. You could say that I needed to want to want to want more of God. So I kept telling him that I wanted more of Him - probably more for myself to hear than anything else.

I want to be able to stand before God and say I’m not going unless you go with me. I want to have the face to say show me your glory and mean it. I want to want relationship with God above anything else that the world can offer me. I want my passion for Him to be so infectious that others get caught up in it along the way - that their passion for Him is stoked. I want to be completely comfortable when I’m in His presence, and completely uncomfortable when I’m not.

The bible speaks of the generation of those who seek God’s face. I want to be one of them. And I don’t mean in some itty bitty way - I want to be fully seeking after Him, all or nothing.

I guess where I’m going with this is that if we don’t want more of God, then we’ll never get more. Until we start asking, until we start longing, we’ll be caught up in the same old same old. Hitting the same depths, never going any deeper, never getting any closer to Him, and never seeing more of Him.

As a body, as the church, we need to start hungering for him more.

Jesus said He only said what he heard from the father, and did what the father told him.

That is supposed to be our inheritance too, it is supposed to be our experience of walking with God. But that depth of relationship is beyond us unless we start desiring God above all else. We need to prioritise intimacy with our heavenly Father.

We need to find the strength of Moses, the boldness and courage that he showed.

We need to respond to God in the way that he showed us is possible.

We need to be people who dare to say: “Show me your glory”.

Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. “The time has come,” he said. “The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!” - Mark 2 v 14-15

I think gospel is one of those words that I think has become muddied over time, the meaning lost on us as it has been used in different ways and with different intentions.

We hear a gospel message.
We assume its just another word for “good news”.
We think its one of the first 4 books in the New Testament.
We see a gospel choir, or listen to a gospel song.
We think of it as the moment we are saved.

Lots of different meanings, but none of them close to the magnitude of what the gospel really is.

However, I think that verse from Mark expresses exactly and succinctly what the gospel is.

It is the announcement that Jesus is Lord - Lord of the world, Lord of the cosmos, Lord of the earth, of the heavens, of everything we see, everything we think and everything that might ever be.

When we start to try to get our heads around this, there can be some huge implications.

The friction between preaching the gospel and social action dissipates in an instant. Preaching the gospel is announcing Jesus as Lord, social action is bringing that Lordship into being - they are one and the same. In fact, to preach the gospel without living it out is a contradiction, just as living it without preaching is an great omission. More than this, the gospel is at its most powerful when it is presented as words with action combined.

If Jesus is Lord over all, then there is no area of human life that does not need to come under the sovereignty of Jesus, there is no area of our lives that we can hold back from being obedient to Him. We can no longer treat our faith as only a personal thing between ourselves and God - if Jesus is Lord then our lives have to align with his rule.

We often rest on the thought that we saved by faith, however Paul talks about “obedience by faith”. Faith and obedience are not opposite - they are complimentary. The word our bibles translate as faith could just as correctly be translated faithfulness. In that light, the onus shifts from not just having faith, but to being faithful; being true to what God has asked of us. When we look at it this way, we recognise that holiness and obedience are the appropriate response for those who, by grace, are in the family of God.

As we look beyond ourselves, we see that the world around us owes allegiance to Jesus, that it is out of line with His rule. We need to show the world that there is a better way of being human, a way that is characterised by self-giving love, by justice, honesty, and by breaking down divisions.

If Jesus is Lord of all, then money and materialism are not. We must remind ourselves and others that we have another King, and that we are not to give into worshipping an idol.

If Jesus is Lord of all, then sexuality and all that the modern world tells us about it is not. We can no longer allow ourselves to buy into the lies that surround us. We need to reclaim the purity and purpose of self-giving love. We need to rediscover God’s perspective on sex and relationships, not being seduced into thinking the way the world thinks, but staying true to His intentions.

I could go on applying this to other areas of life, but I won’t.

I guess what I’m getting at, is that the gospel is not an experience, the gospel is allegiance.

When we announce the Lordship of Jesus, we proclaim that, in Jesus, the one true God has once and for all dealt with sin, death, guilt and shame, and calls every man and woman to abandon the idols that hold them captive, to discover a new life, and a new way of living in Him.

It is not about making us feel warm and fuzzy. Its not something we can pick up and set down.

It is a royal announcement, and no herald in the ancient world would say, “Caesar is emperor, accept him if it suits you”.

The gospel offers a way of life that ultimately leads to self fulfillment. However, to get there, we must first go through the cross. There is no doubt that we will experience many things from a life lived in allegiance to Jesus, however the only experience that is guaranteed is that of carrying the cross.

I think I’ve spent most of the last year being pretty frustrated.

I keep going round in circles, hoping for what could be but constantly being reminded of what is. Sometimes over the space of weeks, sometimes over the space of seconds.

I’ve ended up in a place where I’ve decided that if what we call Christianity is all we have to offer to the world - then I don’t want it, and I completely understand why the world doesn’t either.

Now this isn’t me recanting, its just a realisation that the version of Christianity that we peddle and tentatively offer to people is a dismal imitation of what I read in the Bible. Its completely incomparable to what I read in the gospels, in Acts, in the letters. And thats not right. In fact, it makes me angry.

I want to know how the Christianity I read can become the Christianity I see. I want to know how the fullness of the Kingdom of God starts to work its way out in my day-to-day life. I’m determined that it will, and I’m wrestling with how that happens.

Romans 12:2 says this: “Do not be conformed any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”

The word transformed in this verse is identical to the word used to describe Jesus on the top of the mountain as He met with Elijah and Moses in a moment we call the Transfiguration (Matthew 17). In other words, Paul is saying “Don’t be like the world, but become transfigured by the renewing of your mind”.

As He was transfigured, Jesus shone with the presence of God - so much so that the clothes He was wearing started to shine too. Moses had a similar experience after spending time with God - his face started to shine so much that the people asked him to cover it up. A book I’ve read described this as becoming “Radiant with the Glory of God”. I love that. So “Don’t be like the world, but become radiant with the Glory of God by the renewing of your mind”.

A word that I’ve struggled with for a long time is “repent”. It has too many associations with sandwich boards, street corners and megaphones for me to be comfortable with it.

Recently someone shed some light on the word that has started the process of me falling in love with it.

Re - pent. Pent being like a penthouse. The top of the building. The highest point. Re meaning go back.

Repent - going back to the highest point, going back to God’s perspective.

This fits so naturally into that verse - “Don’t be like the world, but become radiant with the Glory of God by getting back to God’s perspective.”

Still with me? Good. Lean a little closer - there’s more.

In Exodus 32 we find the moment when the 12 tribes are crossing the river, and going into the promised land - the land they had heard about for generations, the culmination of the promises God has spoken of for so long.

Except its not 12 tribes. Its 10.

2 tribes decided to stay on their side of the river. The wrong side of the river. They didn’t want to live in the promised land.

I can’t help but feel that we’re like these 2 tribes.

God can and wants to do more than we can ask or imagine - but will we let Him? Will we step across to the other side of the river? Will we leave the safety of what we know and take the risk in hope of what could be waiting for us in the place we haven’t been?

Crossing the river means getting God’s perspective, renewing our mind, so that we can become radiant with His Glory and experience the fullness of relationship with Him. The overflow of that relationship, the things that result from that closeness to Him - thats when the world around us changes. I’m already starting to see glimpses of it - things I’ve prayed for, things other people have prayed for have started happening almost accidentally of late. Its amazing. And I know its happening because myself and others have been trying to regain God’s perspective.

Hopefully by now I’ve convinced you of the need - so how do you go about renewing you mind?

The only place to start is to begin to realise how God sees us. Isaiah 55 v 11 says that every word sent down from heaven won’t return to Him until it has fulfilled what God send it to do. Each of us is a word from heaven - spoken by the mouth of God. We need to realise that when God looks at us, when He thinks about us all He feels is love. Love. Love. Love. Love. Love. Get it yet? Love. Love. Love. Love. Love. Read 1 John 3:1 if you want something to back this up.

Whatever we think about ourselves, no matter how bad we think we are, God loves us. Its overwhelming, its completely undeserved but He doesn’t care, He just wants to love us, and we need to learn to realise it. We need to learn to accept it. We don’t need to earn it, or prove ourselves for it, His love is given to us freely.

When we begin to doubt His love, when we create reasons why He shouldn’t, were believing lies that are intended to deceive us from the truth. And these lies keep us from having the renewed mind that God intended for us. We need to refuse to believe these lies.

When we accept His love, our mind comes into line with His.

Another way we get God’s perspective is to begin to ask for the things He wants - which is pretty much summed up as heaven on earth. Its there in the prayer He gave us to pray - Your Kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. That is God’s great desire, for His rule to come over the earth.

We need to read the Bible and listen carefully to what it says about heaven, and about the Kingdom of God (I think the two are interchangeable) - some of the things it says are hard to believe at first, but if we hold onto them they start to seem more and more possible - no more sickness, pain, death, disease - these things are God’s desire, and we need to stop creating excuses for them happening. We need to believe that God hates them, and wants no part of them. We need to believe He will do something about them.

We need to listen to the stories of what God is doing with other people and other places, and learn how to rejoice in those stories. To allow ourselves to become excited by what God is doing elsewhere, and for that to stir up hope in us for our situations.

Finally, I’ve made it my constant conscious thought to ask God for more of Him. Every time I think to do it, I do - first thing in the morning, last thing at night and at every opportunity I remember. I don’t even know what it looks like but I know I need to ask for it, or it will never happen. I need God to know how desperate I am, how committed I am, I need to see things shift and change, and I will keep asking until they do.

1 John 3:8 says: “For this purpose the Son of God became man - to destroy the works of the devil”. We are meant to follow in His footsteps. We are meant for more than we currently are - we have an amazing destiny - we need to start fulfilling it, we need to start living it. We have the mind of Christ, we need to start using it.

Over the last few year, Adidas have run a great ad campaign, with a great strapline. They tell stories of famous sports people, showing their journey to the top of their profession, and they finish each with the line “Impossible is nothing”.

That phrase should be on the lips of every Christian, it should be the battle cry of the Church. With God - nothing is impossible, but we go through life believing that so much is. As we renew our minds, we begin to think and act like “impossible is nothing” - we need to show the world the truth of that.

The first thought is a simple one.

Any organisation, business, charity, or group of purposeful people has a mission statement, and end goal that they are working towards.

The Church is no different. We have an end goal. A purpose. A calling. Something we are working towards. Something we all agree on. Something we can build upon. Something we work out in action.

But I’ve never come across a mission statement, nobody gave me one when I became a Christian! Is part of the reason we seem so disorganised because we don’t have a common goal?

So what should it be?

To get to heaven?
To become more like Jesus?
To do good things in the world?
To tell others about him?

All those things are true, but they aren’t the mission - they miss something of the dream that God has for His church; they don’t capture the whole story.

I came across this in 1 John 3:8: “For this purpose the Son of God became man - to destroy the works of the devil”.

That sounds good to me. We’re supposed to be like Jesus, this what He was about so it makes sense that its also what I’m about -  I’m almost sold on it. So much so, that it made it onto my wall (real wall, not Facebook).

But then I came across this in a book recently and it just sealed the deal for me. Inspired by 1st Corinthians 15, with a bit of the verse above thrown in; the purpose of Christianity is:

“To defeat sin and death, and liberate the whole cosmos”.

Wow.

Now thats a movement I want to be part of. Thats something I would gladly sign my life up to.

To defeat sin and death? To liberate the whole cosmos? Thats sounds more like the Church I read about in the Bible, that sounds more like the people God was wanting.

So there you have it, a mission statement for the Church.

Now - lets start to figure out how that looks.

Christina and I got back from a lovely couple of weeks in Germany last Tuesday to a letter telling us we have to move to a new house. So we’ve been searching around trying to find a new house, and yesterday we settled on one a little further up the road.

All in all it feels like we’re on the brink of a fresh start, a reset, a chance to try again.

We’ll see what the next few months will bring. Prayers appreciated. I’ll do better at updates in future. I promise.

Quote: We believe that the easiest way to change people’s behaviour for the better is by making it fun to do.

How can we use this thought pattern in Wells?

One such thing is the measure of success - the size of your community.

We’ve been brought up in a world of capitalism, where the most successful people are those with the most money, the most talent, the best looks. They are the ones who are put on a pedestal as the route to follow, and used as an example of how we should all be living.

By and large the church has done the same - we hero-worship leaders within the church as if they are the ones who have got it all figured out. The leaders with the biggest churches, the best worship bands, the most ministries must surely be the most successful - they must surely be the ones to follow?

I’m becoming more and more disillusioned with anything that is ‘big’.

You see, there is a mindset that builds up around groups with a small core at the centre. The wider congregation start to build their value system around the importance of being at the centre - they dream of being worship leaders and speakers, rather than the humble servant Jesus modeled. People value being at the centre more than they value being followers of Jesus. We start to idolise the ‘christian celebrities’ in our midst - making unrealistic expectations and examples of them.  We choose to attend churches that have the famous people in them, so that we can ‘be blessed’ by them.

We have created an idol.

Its easy to understand how. I mean the world around us does it 24/7.

But that doesn’t mean its ok. The church is meant to be different.

We are meant to model a different type of society, one that is renewed around who God is - where there is “no Jew, no Greek, no Gentile”, where everyone is equal, valued and important - as everyone is the image of God.

My conversations with Christians I’m talking to for the first time usually ends up with two questions:

“What church do you go to?”

“How many people go there?”

As if they are somehow trying to figure out whether I’m important by how big my church is. If we really had caught Jesus’ heart, surely a better second question would be:

“How does your church look after the poor, the widow and the orphan?”

You see, the more I read about Jesus, the more I encounter Him, the more I discover about Him, the more I realise we have got it so wrong. SO WRONG.

“Love the LORD your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength; and love your neighbour as yourself”.

In one amazing moment, Jesus sums up the core of the new covenant - the law that he promised through Isaiah to “write on our hearts”.

Call me a heretic, but I’m pretty sure Jesus’ isn’t that interested in massive worship services, with well formed talks and introspective worship songs. He wants us to love him with everything that we are (and not just sing about it) - then to show our love for him by loving our neighbour as we love ourself.

From the moment he set apart a people for himself, Jesus blessed them to be a blessing to the world.

Be honest - do you really use the blessing that God has given to you to be a blessing to others.

Or let me put it another way - when was the last time you spent serious time with someone who was poor, or who is a widow, or who is an orphan?

Back to the size thing.

Size takes energy, effort, money and time. Creating a regular worship service can be all consuming. Meeting the pastoral needs of a large group of people is emotionally and physically draining.

I take so much heart from Jesus. He didn’t even try.

He chose twelve, a small and manageable number. Then he invited that twelve to walk with Him as he lived a life meeting the needs of the poor and unveiling the Kingdom of God to those who had never encountered it.

Jesus didn’t do big - he concentrated his time, effort and energy on a small group of followers, disciple-ing them until they understood what it meant to be set apart by God.

So why are we trying to do something Jesus never tried to?

What if we stopped creating worship services.

Let that sink in.

What if we stopped creating worship services.

What would we use our church buildings for? What would our church leaders do? What would we do with all the money we suddenly had at our disposal? How would we express our faith and community? How much more time would we all have?

Challenging huh?

I think its time to free ourselves from the need to be big, to have big numbers, to feel successful - the new humanity doesn’t work in that way…