It’s been another busy weekend. Amanda and Terry travelled to Heaton Baptist Church in Newcastle for the Northern Baptist Association’s Spring Assembly. Terry reckons that Heaton Baptist Church makes the best coffee of any church he’s been to in recent years. Our guest speaker was Mark Greene from the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity. Mark is a funny and engaging speaker and Amanda and Terry had both heard him speak a few years ago at Leading Edge in Warwick. Indeed his book “Thank God it’s Monday” is something Terry used to help him have discussions about faith in his workplace. Check out the NBA facebook page or http://www.thenba.org.uk/assembly to see some extracts from the sessions.
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adly this Sunday we were met with some vandalism to the new ramp at church. It’s really frustrating when we’re trying to reach out to the community and this sort of damage occurs. However we pray that whoever feels the need to do this sort of thing realises in time the implications and costs from such actions.
Tim led our Sunday service accompanied by Jonny and Amanda. Today’s prayer points…Pray for Leah captured by bokka haram who wasn’t released as she would not convert to Islam. Pray for Peter struggling with illness. Pray for Ian that he will feel your healing touch. Pray for those struggling in Filling Station and across the town. Pray we always find the right words and actions to reach those God puts in front of us.
We had a bit of fun with a serious message today as Tim used balls of wool to connect the whole church to the vine that we are instructed to be part of.
Tim led us in continuing theme of looking at highlights from the Bible. Focus for today was on Exodus 3 and Moses’s encounter with the burning bush.
An epic part of this story is that it gives hints as to what is going to happen to Moses. Tim reflected on the fact that this week the public have been talking about the naming of a prince. Queen Victoria always vetted her grand children’s names. Names are important. People agonise over what we are called. Parents have books to refer to. They trawl the internet for backgrounds and meanings behind names.
This passage is all about a name. Moses was doing his best to lose his name, remember his journey is from bulrushes baby to Egyptian prince. We encounter him her in chapter 3 whilst he is trying to lose his Egyptian accent. It was worth losing for him, he was raised as a dirty secret in the court.
Remember he killed the slave driver and goes on the run. He marries, begins a new life and job. Did he have nightmares, we don’t know. Here is a Midanite shepherd trying to live a new life trying to stay on the straight and narrow, one foot in front of the other following the sheep.
But Moses’s eyes stray . Moses’s commissioning start here with a look and a turning aside to see why the bush isn’t burning . God upsets the settled, the recommended or established path. God’s people can be depended on to shift their gaze from the established to the new and the different . This is a story between a wily conniving outlaw (that’s Moses) and a God who bends him to his will. Seems standard story , burning bush , deprecation and Moses humbled. Yet here is the question from Moses, what if the Israelites are sceptical? This is a power play, it’s subtle but it’s there, remember Jacob (which means the heel) grabbing his brother’s foot whilst still in the womb. Remember if you know someone’s name you can get their attentio
n you have power. God’s answer is so perfect. “I am who I am”. A great answer with God saying don’t box me in don’t categorise me . A better translation might be “I will be who I will be.” Moses signs on for God’s mission in the world here.
Tim gave us all a bit of a Hebrew lesson. He wrote the Hebrew characters for God
They are the same as “to be” or “I am” this is the big thing to note and we miss it if we only read the English.
No vowels in the Hebrew . God’s name is unutterable so vowels added. Jehovah is the vowels from the word for lord with the word for god. Or is it Yahweh? It appears 6800 times in the kJ bible.
The Greek for I am is used in the New Testament. This translates to us as Ami or friend.
Gods secret name is unutterable but wrapped up in this name is the holiness of god. I am the vine, I am the way
On the other side of this story , Moses doesn’t need to ask God’s name . By Exodus 15 he knows God well. He had learnt who God is, and had learnt the nature purpose and truth of God.
He followed his ancestors and his descendants followed him . To know God you have to be with him. It’s a full contact participation sport. God will be who he will be. We cannot second guess him. Maybe we have questions for God he will answer. Tim pondered on what God might have in store for us all. Think about the opportunities in the coming week. Most of us don’t see ourselves in the superheroes of the bible. God uses ordinary fallible flawed people to do extraordinary things. Interestingly Mark Greene was making a similar point at the Spring Assembly. He gave the example of a grandmother who didn’t feel she had any meaningful work in her church. She didn’t feel she was sharing the work of the church or the love of God in any way. However after each service she would meet up with her 23 year old granddaughter and talk about what had happened at church that day, what the pastor had preached on and what songs and scriptures had been discussed. She was reaching a younger generation with the word of God. The pastor also got to realise that rather than just preaching to the over 50s he was preaching to young people albeit with a 2 hour delay built in.
God does not ask us to do it on our own. He distracts us to new directions, but never leaves on our own always reminding us “he will be who he will be”.
rship was led by Jonny with music provided by The Apple Tree. I was lucky enough to join them for a worship night earlier in the month and found the music and worship very uplifting. Today they brought us a mix of more established and newer worship songs, providing a louder worship experience which fitted very well with what Judith was preaching on.
wing the glory cloud of God. This them being delivered out of the hands of the Egyptians. It looks to the present and the literal sense of where they were gathering the harvest and looked to the future the coming of the messiah.
Jesus just wants to just sit with us sometimes and hold our hand and say it will be alright, it builds us up when we connect to God. If you swim in a river for a day can you say you’ve experienced the whole river? Think about all the explorers who map a river from its source to it’s estuary. Sometimes we need to go to the source, Ezekiel says our job is to get in and swim. If you take water away from the flow it becomes stagnant. You can react in a good way in the workplace, thank god that we can do our best to shine for him where we are. We know when we don’t make time for him. Come back to him he’ll give you rivers in a dry desert. Judith shared that she’s never content, never assumes she knows. Are you divinely dissatisfied? The Holy Spirit gives power to disciples to be witnesses. You might believe you know the letter of law but without water of the spirit becomes difficult to swallow. How to stay in river? Pray, ask for more of God. Need to honestly ask “Have you got all of me, God?” We need to obey prompting, and keep our sin account short. Ask God “Let me know” and then obey. We either progress or we regress. We don’t stand still. Keep your roots in the streams of living water. Psalm 1 reminds us of the need to be a tree planted by a stream of water.
Judith moved on to the faith of the woman with issue of blood who’d been a pariah all her adult life. She wanted to reach out and be healed. She should have been at home, a pariah… yet she ignored society , she knew she just wanted to touch the tassels of Jesus’s tallit or prayer shawl. She pushed through the crowd with desperation to touch in faith, to risk stoning, so hungry and thirsty for a touch of god. Jesus always responds to the touch of the hungry heart. Isaiah 41:17 states that the poor and needy search for water . Judith urged us all to get into the river, get into the presence of God, don’t get stagnant, don’t block the river with boulders. Time to step up and step out.
at that meant for folks from other faiths, and where we would all end up. Our newest recruit to town pastors gave him some honest answers and I tried to share my own faith journey with him. We’re never sure what takes root in such conversations but we left him hopefully with some thoughts to mull over. The team eventually clocked off at 3:40 am. A couple of hours later I’m then up and on my way to a cold blustery sunrise service on the headland. Sadly I’ve not much in the way of photos from this as I forgot to put the memory card in my camera and my phone ran out of power. Clive Hall led this short service and did a great job competing against the awesome noise of the sea hitting the breakwater and sea wall. As always the atmosphere of the sunrise service is something special. A few dozen Christians remembering the dawn of the resurrection really sets the proper tone for Easter reflections. The bonus as always is the 3Bs… Bacon Butties at the Baptists. Headland Baptist church as
always getting up early to serve hospitality to the rest of the Christian community who gathered to greet the new dawn of the greatest day in history. After a short time of fellowship I was on my way home. I managed to grab a quick hour of sleep before heading off to West View for the morning service. Tim led the service supported by Amanda and Jonny with Jonny’s cousin called in to serve as our drummer. The song choices were fantastic this morning, and Tim involved a lot of the young people in the service. Eleanor was also pressed into service to provide the artwork for our “family” tree where everyone at church was asked to add their names
. With a little artistic licence we ended up with the resurrection story told by Lizzie as Mary Magdalene, the boys as Peter, the other disciple and the other, other disciple. They did a lot of running about. They were greeted by the girls as 
angels with red cowboy hats. All of our young people served to illustrate John’s version of events in Chapter 20, verses 1 to 18. It got across the real core of what Jesus expects from us. What we do for the least of his people we do for him. We focused on how Mary Magdalene recognised Jesus. It was when he said her name in only the way he could. In telling Mary to go and tell the others he was creating the first apostle, the first missionary. He was also summoning his church together, sharing and serving together as a family, calling God their father. And my short term plan… to borrow a phrase from a well known “blogger” , “and so to bed”
om the men’s Bible study, He reflected on Jeremiah 13 and the linen belt or loincloth that God had instructed Jeremiah to buy and then to hide in a crevice in the rocks. When Jeremiah was eventually instructed to go and retrieve it, it was spoilt and ruined. Matty reflected that this was like God’s gifts for us and that without care they too would be ruined.
y, he always made time for people and also for his father. We reflect on this Palm Sunday with our crosses made from palms that the people who welcomed him on this day subsequently turned on him, denied him, betrayed him and turned their backs on him.
Reflecting on what Yvette had preached on I was reminded of some of the training I had undertaken for Hartlepool Town Pastors. Part of that training focussed on avoiding conflict and being aware of how our actions affect and influence others. The Betari Box model expresses the fact that our attitudes and behaviours have a direct effect on the attitudes and behaviours of others. We need to let the Son shine from us and be the best Bible that people get to read each day. A tall order and we will not always manage it. The good news is that God does not hold it against us. We get to keep on trying each and every day.
There was probably a man called Noah. There definitely was a flood. The early writers were interested in getting us to follow God. These chapters lead us to Abram. The call of Abram is found in Chapter 12. Some 9 generations after Noah a man named Terah is born. This guy is loaded he has a big estate , father of a great family estate , lots of land, and has 3 sons, Abram, Nahor and Haran.
eved the promise of God and went! He travelled the northern shrines . The geography is not really the point though. It’s about pilgrimage and journey. Abram trusts the promise. Would we, we like to be settled and secure. No one likes change. God is a God of movement, of journeys, of stepping out in faith when called. There are numerous examples of this. God is a tent dweller he moves. Look at his Tabernacle. in Hebrews Jesus too has nowhere to lay his head . By faith Abram made his home in a foreign land, from this one man comes numerous decedents . All this from a man who because of his great age could be considered as good as dead. God calls us to be tent dwellers and it’s not one generation, not just the here and now. God’s promise assumes we pass it on to future generations. Abram enters the land, finds it full of Canaanites, he doesn’t fight them. The promise of God is hard, not easy, to believe and practice . Has to be done in the midst of others who don’t believe. Abram’s is an interesting relationship with no evidence of conflict. The Canaanites may even be a temptation. There is no evidence he tried to covert them. His task was simply to live amongst them , and he leaves altars as he moves around. Tim posed the question, “Where’s your place to connect to God, or is it maybe a simple wooden cross in your hand.” God was about to do something amazing for Abram. Abram simply responded . That’s all God wants us to do. Take the first step, let God bless others through you. Take the step even when you don’t know where the journey take you help us is to trust.
way station being mocked and questioned about his beliefs. His answer was simply to sing the words of the song to his mockers. Eric Liddell just sang the words to his mockers as a simple way of demonstrating that he was indeed a man not afraid to follow when God calls.