Lent

Some thoughts from The Husband on Lent (originally published here)

WHAT are you doing for Lent?

Do you feel you ought to give up chocolate, or you must quit smoking (again): that you should sacrifice?

But those feelings of `ought-itude and must-ness', this slavery to should, are not what Lent is about. Lent is about the historical event of a man going into the desert of Palestine 2,000 years ago, a man just like you and me.

With one difference. He was the proof that we never need to be alone because someone loves us more than we could ever imagine. Someone loves us so much that God became a human being, just like us, and lived and died so we could know how much God loves us, and so we might come to know Him.

What are you doing for Lent? Why not explore the evidence for Jesus and see if it's worth taking the risk of trusting Him? You won't regret it if you do.

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Try:

Reading a gospel here; or

Taking part in a short Christianity Explored course - see here.

Or talk to me ;-)

Did you know..... (Who was Cyrus?)

I found this (originally copied from an article in the Times I think, when I was doing Overview, or maybe Isaiah).... you've heard of Attila the Hun, but have you heard of Cyrus?

LISTOMANIA

The men who conquered the most miles

Genghis Khan (c1162- 1227): 4,860,000 square miles, including northern China, Mongolia, southern Siberia and central Asia.

Alexander the Great (356- 323BC): 2,180,000 square miles, including the southern Balkan peninsula, Asia Minor, Egypt and the entire Near East.

Tamerlane (c1336-1405): 2,145,000 square miles, including most of the Near East.

Cyrus the Great (c600- c529BC): 2,090,000 square miles including the Median Empire, Babylonia, Assyria, Syria, Palestine, the Indus Valley and southern Turkistan.

Attila (c406-453), king of the Huns: 1,450,000 square miles, encompassing most of central and eastern Europe and the western Russian plain, but not Gaul.

Adolf Hitler (1889-1945): 1,370,000 square miles, including most of continental Europe — extending from the English Channel to the outskirts of Moscow, and from North Africa to Norway — all of which he lost within 31/2 years.

Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821): 720,000 square miles, including France, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Poland, Switzerland and Spain.

Total Church: Why Gospel?

'Churches can also polarize beween intellectualism (what you think is what matters) or emotionalism (what you feel is what matters). In some churches issues of the hear and emotions have become functionally asent. We acknowledge their importance, but they feature little in our lives. Some of us just do not like to talk bout our relationship with the Lord in emotive terms. But we need look no further than the Psalms to see how important emotion is in true faith.' (p29)

To sum up
The gospel is a word so the churhc must be word-centred (p31)
The gospel is a missionary word so the church must be mission-centred (p32)

Implications
'So being gospel-centred means being both word-centred and being mission-centred. The church exists both through the gospel and for the gospel.'(p32)

'We sometimes ask people to imagine they are part to imagine they are part of a church planting team in a cross-cultural situation in some other part of the world: What criteria would you use to decide where to live? How would you approch secular employment? What standard of living would you expect as pioneer missionaries? What would you spend your time doing? What opportunities would you be looking for? What would your prayers be like? What would you be trying to do with your new friends? What kind of team would you want around you? How would you conduct your meetings together?
We find it easier to be radical in our thinking when we transplant ourselves outside our current situation. But we are as much missionaries here and now as we would be if we were part of a cross-cultural team in another part of the world. Mission is central to us whereever we are. These are the kind of questions we should be asking wherever we are

Books: Total Church - Tim Chester and Steve Timmis

Now that I have got over my uncomfortableness (is that a word?) about writing in books, I'm finding it much easier to read books critically (as I can now write exclamation marks in the margin!). I can also annotate comments next to paragraphs which are particularly interesting.
One of the first books to be subjecting to my scribblings is "Total Church - a radical reshaping around gospel and community" by Tim Chester and Steve Timmis.

The blurb on the back is as follows:
"Total Churchpleads for two key principles for church and mission. First, the gospel as content: being word-centred (for the gospel is truth) and being mission-centred (for the gospel is truth to be proclaimed). Secondly, the community as context: sharing our lives as Christians and offering a place of belonging to unbelievers.

The authors apply these principles to church planting, evangelism, apologetics, social involvement, leadership, discipleship, pastoral care, world mission and notions of sccuess. They critique current trends within the church: emerging church movements are strong on community but weak on truth, while conservative evangelicalism is strong on truth but weak on community. Their call is a call for the best of both"

Why am I a Christian?

Those of you who know me (even slightly) will know that brevity is not high on my list of natural abilities. I can also take more than a reasonable length of time to get to the point.

Helpfully, not everyone is like me (God, in His wisdom, grants us many different gifts) - some of those not like me have put together short website presentations of the good news of Jesus -

God's Plan and

Two Ways to Live.

Please do take the time to read.

I would be really interested to know what you think of them, whether you are someone who would consider themselves to be a Christian (in which case, what do you think of the outlines - helpful or not?) or not (in which case, what is your reaction to points as made?).

Those of you who know who I am, will know my email address.....

Useful links

Found this at Monergism.com. Seems to be a useful, clear overview of the main elements of heresies over the past twenty centuries. Has given me a few distinctions upon which to build a more detailed framework/understanding (e.g. the idea that heresies are either soteriological or Christological [or sometimes both]) and the link between 'historic' heresies and their modern-day offspring.

Book group

I've started reading through "Partnership (Philippians)" with a small group of friends. Well, I say started: we met today for the first time. It's been far too long since I met up with a small group of girls to do something like this. It has probably been two years since my prayer triplet dissolved (due to members moving to other church services/church plants) and I had forgotten how wonderful it is to sit and chat and discuss God and His Word. Really, really enjoyable afternoon, and just what I needed after quite a difficult morning (just feeling exhausted and spread quite thin). However, plans to read through the book in five sessions (two chapters at a time) may prove to be optimistic... we spent two and a half hours on one chapter (and associated digressions!)

New Word Alive

Booking for New Word Alive has opened!
Most exciting. Now to see if Doctor Fi and Adrian can come. I think it will be excellent - Piper, Carson and Virgo all lined up to speak. See the website here

How I became a Christian.....

I was prompted to write this recently as part of a discussion on a website to which I belong ... thought that it might also be useful/interesting to post here.

Home
Resisted church as a child (bribed with raisins to keep quiet, favourite part of church was sliding up and down the pews on the lovely tapestry cushions, taken to one side in Sunday School - run by Mum! - for being too disruptive). Given a choice between farmwork and church on a Sunday morning, I chose the farm(!)
Early teens - saw Cliff Richard on the TV and he said that if you asked Jesus through the door into your life He would come (Behold! I stand at the door and knock etc....) and I thought that was quite a good idea, so I prayed that prayer. My sister and I attended diocesan youth group activities (called "Holy Disorder") - all dry ice, drama, standing on the pews, hugging and modern songs etc. Enjoyed that, and remember praying that God would make me a better Christian. That lasted for a while, but my attendance tailed off eventually.
Confirmed aged 13 (largely because my younger sister wanted to be). Confirmation classes meant watching the 'Jesus of Nazareth' videos with Ian McShane in (yes, Lovejoy!) and having a bit of a vague chat. I don't remember opening the Bible at any point (eek!), but do remember that my sister and I were asked not to attend one session, because it was going to be about suffering, (and we hadn't suffered bereavement/divorce etc. at that point).

Late teens - monthly church attendance only, playing in the music group (compromise struck with Mum). Prayed three prayers each night:
1)thanking God for the day (because I knew you were supposed to be thankful),
2) praying that if I died in my sleep God would take my soul,
3) praying that the house wouldn't burn down while I was asleep. Sometimes I threw in the Lord's prayer for good measure as well. Wasn't reading the Bible at this stage, but I do remember borrowing my sister's youth Bible - although I spent more time reading the little 'boxes with real life situations' rather than the text itself.

University - 1st year
Church attendance stopped (no-one to nag me!).
Went to the college CU welcome lunch (because Christians = nice people), but had 'better things' to do with my time than go to CU (like study, student politics etc.). Heard brief talk at the lunch, along the lines of "there once was a young man who achieved material success and never found time for God, and then he got run over and died.....". One of the college CU reps, John-Daniel, asked me "if you died tonight, would you go to heaven?".... and seemed to think that my answer of "I certainly hope so" wasn't quite good enough... Left thinking they were all terribly keen (which was fine for them, but not for me...).

University - 2nd year
Lived with 9 other students. The two girls on the top floor with me were both Christians. One was very keen and seemed to spend hours praying (very audibly) next door in the evening. Mildly intrigued by this.
Six weeks into the New Year (having just been elected JCR President) Mum died suddenly of a brain haemorrhage (she was 45). Left a note asking the CU to pray as I left for the hospital. Coped/dealt with grief (badly) through: JCR politics, working, drinking, partying.
After 6 weeks, I realised that this wasn't working. At this point, my theology was all over the place (not sure if the confirmation class on suffering would have helped though) - I felt outraged at the interment when the curate said "God, you don't know why these things happen" as I felt that He certainly ought to... although I also thought that it might have been linked to something I had done as well. Praise God, that my sister's cell group was steadily praying for me during this time, and the college CU rep Louise was becoming a good friend.

University - 3rd year (1999/2000)
Louise mentioned that the CU were looking for a room in which to hold their weekly prayer meeting, I offered mine as it was the biggest in college. So, every Tuesday at 7.59am I would wake up, roll over and unlock the door to let in all the slightly scary CU people (who had cycled in from houses two miles away and eaten breakfast). Prayer meeting would then start (and I would be slightly unsettled by all the non-liturgical prayers.... some of them were very enthusiastic.... it didn't seem very Anglican to me....).
Was taking Philosophy of Religion as part of my degree, and was irritated by my tutor who classified me as a liberal Anglican, on the grounds that I was quite vague about what I believed, and generally put up a feeble defence to any of the arguments he (and my atheist tutorial partner) came up with, whilst being insistent that God really did exist.
Decided to read the Bible as I thought that this would help me in my PoR exam. Bible reading was distinctly uncomfortable as for the first time I began to feel convicted of my sinfulness.
Accepted Louise's invitation to the talks at the mission week (thought that that would also help). The 'CU guest' helping the college CU asked me a lot of pointed questions, and pointed out that I needed to respond to what I was hearing in the talks. The evening talks were on John's Gospel (passages leading up to, and dealing with the Cross). I remember sitting in the Sheldonian, dwelling on the Cross and was all very, very, real. I'm fairly sure that I repented and asked for the Lord's forgiveness then, (I certainly did several times over the following weeks... just in case). I went to (what I can tell with hindsight was) a follow-up evening course - (a bit like CE) to keep my friend (another CU rep) company.

Started to really pray, attended church at least a few times (very odd - vicars wore suits and badges rather than vicar-frocks... was a little worried that they might be
American televangelists, sermons lasted closer to 30 minutes than 5, and were based a passage from the Bible, rather than 'Thought for the Day', sermons also expected you to make personal application of what you were hearing), went to a couple of student lunches, where I started my collection of Christian books.

Remember us being urged to find a church (when we left university) which placed the Cross at the centre of everything which it did.

London - 2000+
Arrived and was keen to find a church to attend regularly, as I knew that if I didn't find one soon, I would fall into the habit of not going.
St.H was mentioned by a friend, but they thought that it might be too far away from Camden where I was living. Looking around on the internet and had found a few churches, although not attended any.
Randomly (or rather, providentially...) one weekday afternoon I came out of Next on Oxford Street and bumped into (almost literally) Kate, who was CU rep at college when I was a 1st year. I asked her to recommend a good church. She took my contact details and told me to come to St.H.
Started coming in the evenings (terrified, - surely it wasn't quite right that a church should be this full? and preaching on the Old Testament?).
Joined RML John as a way to make friends, although I thought it faintly odd that you needed to take a whole year to read a book of the Bible. I thought that it was very fortunate that Kate turned out to be my RML leader (little did I know that this was not random).

During that first year, much changed as I learned how to really study the Bible for myself.
I started RML Romans convinced that studying over the course of a year was a very good thing indeed, and came prepared with a special set of colouring pencils, notebook and the entirety of Romans printed out from the internet with all the ESV subtitles taken out (as these are not part of the original text)... and the chapter and verse references.... (which made the question "where are you getting that from?" a little tricky).

Since then there have been ups, and quite a few downs, through which the Lord has taught me many things about constancy, dependency and prayer, (whilst gently reminding me of my utter sinfulness and fecklessness).

The Lord is my strength and my song: he has become my salvation (Psalm 118:14)