The Mustard Seed

Worship: Who, Why, How?

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!

The Elijah People

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 God and 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!

Tony Ling on the Kingdom of God

'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.'

from The Lion and the Lamb

Jacques Ellul on Progress

I read this recently in Ellul's book The Presence of the Kingdom and it has become a favourite quote of mine. It encapsulates so well the frustrations of modern man and the Christian's duty to transform his world.

'I refuse to believe in the "progress" of humanity, when I see from year to year the lowering of standards among men I know, whose lives I follow, in the mdist of whom I live - when I see how they lose their sense of responsibility, their seriousness in work, their recognition of true authority, their desire for a decent life - when I see them weighed down by anxiety about what the great ones of the earth are plotting, by the fear which penetrates our world, by the hatred which they feel for a terrible phantom which they cannot even name; when I see them cornered by circumstances, and, as they suffer, becoming thieves and frauds, embittered, avaricious, selfish, unbelieving, full of resistance and rancour, or when I see them engaged in a desperate struggle, which comes from the depths of their being, against something they do not know. The intellectual who wants to do his work properly must to-day go back to the starting-point: the man whom he knows, and first of all to himself. It is at this level, and at no other, that he ought to begin to think about the world situation.'

from The Presence of the Kingdom

E. Stanley Jones on Prayer

'Prayer is the deepest thing we do and in that deepest thing we do, the coming of the kingdom is the most important. It is the foremost and the uppermost - without it the prayer is comparatively meaningless.'

E. Stanley Jones, The Unshakable Kingdom and the Unchanging Person (1972)

Jacques Ellul on Prayer

'It is prayer which should be decisive, but we no longer have any confidence in the extraordinary power of prayer. Prayer is the power which exorcises demons, by the Holy Spirit, and is thus the weapon of faith.'

Jacques Ellul, The Presence of the Kingdom (1948)