PRAISE HIM !

High up on the Wolds, we looked across the Ancholme Valley towards Winterton. It's usually a good view, but at 8 o'clock this morning the mist completely obscured our town. We prayed as we looked into the mist, knowing that the people we were praying for were right there, even though we could not see them, or their houses.

How important it is that we pray

EVEN WHEN WE CANNOT SEE.

The Psalmist prayed to God in HOPE and his prayer became a song of praise:

But I will hope continually, and will praise you yet more and more.
My mouth will tell of your righteous acts, of your deeds of salvation all day long, though their number is past my knowledge.
I will come praising the mighty deeds of the Lord God, I will praise your righteousness, yours alone.
O God, from my youth you have taught me, and I still proclaim your wondrous deeds.
So even to old age and grey hairs, O God, do not forsake me, until I proclaim your might to all the generations to come.
Your power and your righteousness, O God, reach the high heavens. You who have done great things, O God, who is like you? Psalm 71:14-19NRSV

Verse 18 in the AMPLIFIED Bible speaks to me !! (in more ways than one) …

Yes, even when I am old and grey-headed, O God, forsake me not, [but keep me alive] until I have declared Your mighty strength to [this] generation, and Your might and power to all that are to come.

Waiting on God

How long have you been waiting for God to answer your prayers? How long will it be before His promises are fulfilled? I for one easily get impatient.

Here's a lesson for us in waiting on God, praying continually, and trusting He will act in His time:

After three years, I went up to Jerusalem. Later I went to Syria and Cilicia. Gal.1: 18, 21

Paul was a man of action, who didn't let the grass grow under his feet. Immediately after the stoning of Stephen, he went to the high priest, asking for letters of authority to the synagogue leaders in Damascus so that he could arrest any there 'who belonged to the Way'. Confronted by Christ on the Damascus road, however, and called to proclaim the gospel, Paul 'at once began to preach in the synagogues that Jesus is the Son of God'. Same man, same urgency.
The book of Acts compresses the time that Paul spent in Damascus. But in his letter to the Galatians, Paul says that it was not until the third year after his conversion that he went to Jerusalem (Gal.1:17-18). The urgency of the Acts narrative dissolves into an indeterminate time spent in 'Arabia'. When the Jerusalem visit finally happened, Paul no doubt felt that his time had come, and he recalls in Acts 22 (v.17-18) his dismay when, as he was praying in the temple, the Lord told him to leave immediately because his life was in danger. Accompanied to Caesarea, Paul was then sent up north to Tarsus, in the province of Syria and Cilicia, where he spent the next ten years.
Whether in the desert east of Damascus, or in Syria and Cilicia, this passionate, driven man spent up to fourteen years in obscurity, before his primary ministry opened up before him. Bear in mind that by this time - in an age when life expectancy was low - Paul must have been well into his 40s.
Why did God allow - or ordain - these long delays? Reading between the lines, we can deduce that Paul needed teaching - first, to understand the gospel in all its richness, and second to learn to submit his will and his temperament to the lordship of Christ.
God's sovereign purposes may well conflict with human reason, with our passion for plans and programmes. In our driven age, let us not fight against delays, but use times of unemployment, sickness or disappointment creatively, with gratitude, to learn more of God and of what it means to be conformed to the image of his Son.
thanks to Helen Parry (LICC)

PRAYER

I want to encourage you through these blogs to get serious about prayer (and fasting...it's Lent on Feb 6th !)

My experience of prayer is like that of Jacob (Genesis 32 v24-30), a varied mixture of struggle and blessing! Though long in the tooth as a believer, I still find it hard to tune-in to the 'still small voice', and really listen to God....

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'His Isles' was a national prayer conference held at Swanwick organised by the Prayer Association for the British Isles.

Here's a few of the highlights:

From Kenya came a word from the Lord that 2007 would be a year of preparation for the nation and that 2008 would be a year of harvest. But there are three things that God hates and that we need to urgently pray about as a nation - our deception, our bloody hands and our idolatry.

Later another prophecy came that God is putting in place a net across our nation but that at the moment the net isn’t strong enough to hold his power. What are we doing to build ‘networks’ with police, teachers, local authorities as well as other churches?

How many of us have ‘planted seeds’ into people’s lives which we are still waiting to see the fruit of? God says that the seed is still to come forth…keep praying!

In 1966 when the Evangelical Alliance acknowledged the Charismatic Movement, one prophecy given paralleled this to Jesus going into the wilderness for 40 days after receiving the Holy Spirit at his baptism. Jesus came out of the wilderness in the power of the Spirit. The Church is coming out of a 40 year wilderness in that same power. Keep praying!
with thanks to Lou Ashford (September 2007)

We MUST get serious about prayer NOW.
What better time to recover our prayer life than this Lent.

William Arthur, a leading Methodist of the 1850s argued that the primary need of the ministry is the power of the Holy Spirit; he believed that it’s absence is our corporate responsibility. 'Prayer is the condition of obtaining this power. Prayer, prayer, all prayer – mighty, importunate, repeated united prayer'. He goes on to insist that a Church’s members must be ‘mighty in prayer’.

So we need to pray, to cry out to God, to wrestle in prayer, to pray all night if necessary. To refuse to ‘let go’ until the blessing is ours.

What if, together, we say this through the 40 days of Lent:

Lord Jesus Christ,
driven into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit,
I come to you aware of my frailty
and reluctance to fight temptation.
Make me, by the same Spirit,
determined to discover you
in stillness and activity,
in order and chaos,
when alone and when in fellowship,
in weakness and in strength,
when uncertain and when certain,
when needing help and when giving it.
Wherever I am and whatever I am doing,
I pray that the Holy Spirit will help my unbelief,
and grow faith in me....
such faith as will release in me
prayer without ceasing. Amen

Seeking faith and speaking words I never thought I'd say

As it's that time of year when Methodists join with other local churches in an Annual Covenant Service, let's explore what it's about.

First an interesting observation:
‘We observe that in some places significant numbers of members absent themselves from the Covenant Service believing it to set a higher standard for discipleship than that which permitted them to become members.'
Philip Drake

The Introduction
‘Christ has many services to be done:
some are easy, others are difficult;
some bring honour, others bring reproach;
some are suitable to our natural inclinations and material interests,
others are contrary to both.’

The Covenant Prayer
I am no longer my own but yours.

Put me to what you will, rank me with whom you will;

put me to doing, put me to suffering;

let me be employed for you, or laid aside for you,

exalted for you, or brought low for you;

let me be full, let me be empty,

let me have all things, let me have nothing:

I freely and wholeheartedly yield all things to your pleasure and disposal.

And now, glorious and blessed God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, you are mine and I am yours.

The Covenant Service is acknowledged to be one of the jewels in the Methodist liturgical crown. The enthronement service for the present Archbishop of Canterbury used it at a solemn moment of the liturgy. It was adapted from earlier traditions and introduced into Methodist worship by John Wesley as a means of regularly reaffirming our commitment as disciples and followers of Jesus. Yet it is now felt by many to be too difficult and too intense.

It's clear that this affirmation is a serious one that embraces the whole of our life, in all its parts. Most people find it quite tough to say, and really mean it. In our culture we tend to prize our ability to make decisions and choose our own path in life. It can feel very hard to give that up. But this prayer is like a love poem. It is about surrendering to God in love and joy.

The service, which is full of the assurance of God’s love for us, in whose power alone we are able to undertake such promises, includes a profound meditation on how we can discern what is being asked of us. It is clear that the ‘many services’ Christ may ask of us could involve social reproach or financial hardship. But there is a beautiful balance, which suggests the possibility that our calling will include undertaking activities that we enjoy and that will bring us prosperity and honour. It is impossible to rule out hardship. It is about genuinely offering ourselves – ‘no longer our own but yours’. It is the giving up of our own powerbase and right to choose which is so hard.

People have resisted the phrase ‘put me to suffering’, as if God deliberately willed us to experience pain. However, the word simply means the opposite of ‘doing’; it is the state of waiting or passivity, of ‘being done to’ in some way, and parallels the next phrase, being ‘employed’ or ‘laid aside’. The desire for control, power and choice is a very strongly encouraged stance in our society, and it is not surprising that we resist truly offering God our willingness to let both activity and passivity be ‘for you’. However, to believe that God cannot be served except in active ‘doing’ will lead us to marginalise those whose calling is now to lay things down, or who do indeed have to endure suffering in the modern sense. The revised version of the prayer clarifies the point by referring to ‘all that I do, and in all that I may endure.’ *

The Covenant Prayer (revised)
I am no longer my own but yours.
Your will, not mine, be done in all things,

wherever you may place me,

in all that I do, and in all that I may endure;

when there is work for me and when there is none;

when I am troubled and when I am at peace.

Your will be donewhen I am valued and when I am disregarded;

when I find fulfilment and when it is lacking;

when I have all things, and when I have nothing.

I willingly offer all I have and am to serve you,as and where you choose.
Glorious and blessèd God,Father, Son and Holy Spirit,

you are mine and I am yours.

May it be so for ever.

Title of this blog is ‘Seeking faith and speaking words I never thought I'd say’...

Song lyrics from Prince of Egypt featuring the original version of 'When you believe'..... Leon Jackson's recent number one.

Try this link:

http://www.thelyricarchive.com/lyrics/whenyoubelieve.shtml

* edited version of extract from Methodist Conference Report 'Time to Talk of God'

Thirteenth Night

The tinsel and flashing lights are gone. Welcome to 2008, blog readers !
I reckon there’s a challenging year ahead for the Joyces:

Driving Lessons begin when our youngest turns 17 shortly. Recollections of the previous three learning to drive (before and after passing tests) bring a smile (or was it a grimace?) to the old phizzog.

Also we’re destined to be grandparents for the 4th time in May.
A boy or a girl? They have chosen to wait until he/she arrives to find out. Wisely….daughter in law’s close relatives have produced 9 boys and 0 girls so far….so no pressure !

Our parents continue to thrive. We’re fairly unusual in our age-group as we’ve still got all four….in their 70s, 80s and 90s. Will they all survive 2008, and stay healthy? It will be a miracle if they all do.

…and that’s just family life.

…work, church and community activities would occupy a few sheets of A4, so let’s not go there today !

Last night a small group of us meditated upon that ancient hymn, ‘Be Thou my vision’ *
The last two lines in one translation read:

‘Christ of my own heart, whatever befall
Still be my vision, thou ruler of all’

That says it all for me.
How about you?

*http://www.oremus.org/hymnal/b/b021.html

Hope of the world, Mary's Child

Before we leave Christmas behind may I share with you this picture, which I introduced to our new Men's group just before Christmas.
I was reading about this statue in a book 'Nativities and Passions, by a contemplative writer Martin Smith, and found this picture on the net. Smith was on retreat at Burford Priory just outside Oxford. Every day he prayed in the chapel before this statue of the Madonna and Child. After returning home, a few days later he took out the photo of the statue: and looking again at the child Jesus facing out towards the viewer, his arms spread out with the back of his wrists against his mother’s shoulders..... for the first time he sees what the artist was attempting to show. The naked child Jesus has taken the form that he will take when they nail him naked to the cross. And so he writes:
"If there is any image of the mother and child to stay with, this must be the one. We can linger with this image because it tells the truth, and only the truth can set us free.
It is an open secret that the innermost experience of many at Christmas is soreness of heart, soreness at the bitter sufferings of the world. A quick fix of Yuletide cheer and a day’s hilarity, and then there is the morning after the night before. The mystery fixed in this statue of Mary and her child is not the quick fix. Mary asks us to take a long look at her baby, his arms stretched out on the cross of her body. Look, she tells us, this is God coming into the world to keep us company in the worse that can befall us. This is love in crucified companionship coming to bear the world’s pain in pierced hands."
The statue forces us to connect Christmas with the mature Christ, to connect Crib and Cross, to realise that they are both made of the same wood. And it is only when we do this that the remarkable story of shepherds and stars, wise men and donkeys can become a story with the power to save, a story with the power to address real human need.... this is a story about the world’s healing.... about God’s desire to reach out and bring home the lost....about HOPE for a world that has little of it.

As Christians, this treasure, this Good News is ours to share. Let's do so in 2008.

Happy New Year to you all!