Umberto Eco: Baudolino The Holy Grail, the Turin Shroud and the Letter of Prester John are all forged by the eponymous hero in this medieval adventure.
Bryn Jones: Radical Church "To the restorer, anything that cannot root itself in God as its source has no place in the life of the Christian or the practices of the community of God."
C.J. Sansom: Revelation The latest detective novel the mystery-obsessed Aubrey family have got into. The fourth in its series, it is set in Tudor England and follows the adventures of hunchback lawyer Matthew Shardlake.
Umberto Eco: The Name of the Rose A medieval whodunnit that also manages to be a beginner's guide to semiotic theory, a catalogue of fourteenth century religious debate, an exploration of heresy, and a love letter to books.
E. Stanley Jones: The Unshakable Kingdom and the Unchanging Person The best book on the kingdom of God I have ever read. Explains the ways in which the kingdom is natural, built in to the DNA of all mankind, and how the kingdom is 'the spirit of Jesus universalized'.
I recently came across this short article by Bryn Jones. I found it so challenging and profound that I thought I'd post it here. It's in no way a criticism of others; in reading and rereading it, I look only within to ensure I change and grow.
Why some people who think that they are tomorrow's people today are not:
- They have vision, but it is only second hand.
- They fear anything that could expose them to failure.
- They are controllers rather than fathers.
- They are owners of the vision instead of servants of the vision.
- They look for glory, recognition and status.
- They are locked up by the people instead of leading the people into liberty.
- They are perfectionists rather than purpose motivated.
- They spend time trying to perfect the present rather than pressing forward to the future.
- They use people instead of making them useful.
- They are threatened by people with gift and purpose because they fear they will lose their position.
- They seek to submerge people rather than seeking that people emerge.
- Always seeking to highlight weaknesses in men, but never learning from their own mistakes because they never own up to them.
- They talk of tomorrow but live for today.
- Instead of vision taking them on a journey, ego takes them on a downward spiral.
'In becoming a carpenter, Christ sanctified the workplace, illustrating to us by his own labours that work is the place for the holy as much as for the skilled. We need to be filled with the Spirit to do our daily work as much as we need to be filled with the Spirit to preach the gospel of Christ.'
Last night at All Nations Church we had our monthly Bible study evening, The Bakery. Our theme was 'Worship: Who, Why, How?'. We started by asking what we think of when we hear the word 'worship'? You can see the responses above.
Then we read together Revelation 4 and 5. From there we looked at who we worship, why we worship him and how we worship. The responses, below, were excellent and very inspiring!
Last Sunday I had the opportunity to preach at All Nations Church, Cardiff. The title of my message was 'Guard Your Heart To Grow Up'. You can listen to it here.
Last Sunday I had the privilege of sharing the Word of God with All Nations Church, Cardiff. We looked together at the life of Caleb in Joshua 14:6-14, learning lessons for how we can guard our hearts to gain our inheritance.
Don’t give up. Caleb didn’t quit. He believed it when God said the Israelites could take the land. Caleb still believed it when he spied out the land. And he still believed it despite the bad reports of other spies. God rewarded him by promising Caleb that he and his descendents would inherit the land.
Learn to live by the word of God and not by the words of men. It was what God had said to Moses that motivated Caleb, not words Moses had spoken of his own initiative. If we learn to live by the Word of God and to guard it in our hearts, we cannot fail to gain our inheritance.
Remember what God has said. Caleb reminded Joshua of what God had said to Moses concerning them both. It wouldn’t have been the first time in forty-five years either! As you remind yourself of what God has said in the past, it gives opportunity for God to bring you a ‘now’ word with a ‘now’ application.
Keep your heart right even towards those who may hold you back. Caleb called the ten unfaithful spies, ‘my brothers’. He held no bitterness toward them, despite the fact that their words caused him to wait forty-five years to inherit the land and threatened his life after the people wanted to stone him and Joshua.
This was because Caleb had learned to fulfil your obligations. He was able to say to Joshua, ‘I have followed the Lord wholeheartedly’.
Caleb had learned, as well, to stay strong. He knew that in order to guard his heart, in order to be ready to gain his inheritance, he had to stay strong. We stay strong as we allow the Word of God to work in our hearts. It’s a vital key for overcoming faith.
Caleb, too, maintained a positive confession. No one who grumbles, complains or rebels can be said to have guarded their heart. Jesus said, ‘out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.’
Don’t become bitter as others gain their inheritance. Caleb waited patiently for forty years in the wilderness and another five in Canaan itself to claim Hebron. He could have become bitter as he watched others get their inheritance but Caleb guarded his heart and celebrated the successes of his brothers.
Keep your eyes on the prize. Caleb’s inheritance was Hebron; he never set his sights any lower as he got older. The same three giants who lived there when Caleb spied the land he defeated when it came time to claim his inheritance.
Understand that claiming your inheritance is part of a much bigger purpose and plan that God has. God had said he intended to fill the earth with his glory; Caleb saw his inheritance in the light of God’s bigger picture. What’s more, he brought his family into his inheritance, not to mention the rest of Israel as Hebron became a place of refuge, a city for Levites and, finally, the place where David began his kingship.
My Dad's new book, The Elijah People, is out and this weekend I got my copy. (Mind you, I have read it a few times, having edited as I've done his other books - The Circle of Life, Discovering Godand Stars and Sand. What this basically means is that you can blame me for all the typos.)
Dad has posted some extracts already on his blog and they're well worth a look if you're considering buying the book. It's currently available as an e-book and will soon be out in paperback. Enjoy reading a fresh challenge to radical Christian living!
'In recent years, the church has woken up to the truth that it is not here waiting to be taken away to the kingdom; it is here to be proactive in prayer and ministry to bring the kingdom down to Earth.'
'True worship is not singing songs, clapping, and raising hands in the presence of God. True worship is not shouting and jumping. It may include all those things, but true worship is laying down your life for God....Worship is giving myself utterly, totally, unconditionally to God.'
'The place of Christian service or worship is in the uncleaness of the world, where there is unbelief and persecution! True participation in the Christian "alter" is to be found in accepting the disgrace of identifying with a crucified and rejected Messiah. Furthermore, since there is no abiding sacred refuge for Christians here, the challenge to confess Christ and serve him in the world is coupled with the challenge to seek the city which is to come.'
'It should be noted that there is a vast difference between the doctrine of Christ's coming and the hope of his coming. The first we may hold without feeling a trace of the second. Indeed there are multitudes of Christians today who hold the doctrine of the second coming. What I have talked about here is that overwhelming sense of anticipation that lifts the life on to a new plane and fills the heart with rapturous optimism. This is what we today lack.'
Recent Comments