Buckets: News items

On loss of free speech in UK:

MPs who claim to support the right to free speech should be invited to carry 'I am Harry' banners in memory of Harry Hammond, a street preacher convicted under the Public Order Act for carrying a banner in Bournemouth saying: 'stop immorality. Stop homosexuality. Jesus is Lord.' He was fined £300 and ordered to pay £395 cost, and died soon afterwards. -- The Spectator, 17 Jan 2015

Joel Virgo: Seasons in Leadership Development

God trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle -- Psalm 144:1

Accept the reality that God will be working a lot more in us than he will, through us for long phases of our lives. Being faithful with much and being entrusted with much comes providing we don't stay at the level of only having God working in us. We get stuck here because we don't learn the lessons God aims to teach us when he teaches them to us.

He is my steadfast love and my fortress -- Psalm 144:2

Seasons of leadership development:

1. Formation of core convictions.

Why is this important?

• As people come into the church we will serve them best when we lead them with clear convictions. When we're persuaded about things in our soul we don't need to argue or get emotional with people about them.
• Because our culture is losing its Christian convictions and needs Christians who hold to authentic Christianity.
• Because more and more are not showing the level of conviction and evangelical clarity as they ought to. 

When we are persuaded God can use us. We become an effective tool in God's hand.

Billy Graham had a friend Charles Templeton. Charles Templeton was cleverer, sharper and more able. Templeton yielded to liberalism and eventually lost his faith. Graham wrestled with this and the sadness of his (more brilliant than he) friend's demise. It was against that backdrop that he made the statement on a walk once : 'God I will trust this book and what you say.' He came out with clear and strong convictions as a result. 

Doubt pretends to work on our reason when actually it's working on our emotions.

Find core disciplines that help form the core convictions. Do not just live by emergencies, develop consistencies.

A lot of real growth is formed behind your back.

The times when God is building deep foundations in you are also the moments that are characterised by costly decisions and crisis points.

We can't live on the encounters with God of others, we need to encounter God for ourselves, personally and powerfully.

2. Silence from God.

The Bible talks a lot about the wilderness and the way these seasons form us and develop us as leaders. To handle that: maintain your post. Keep doing the thing God has said. Carry on faithfully and trust that he is mightily at work.

We need to be able to walk through seasons where we're getting on and doing what God has said even if we're not enjoying it anymore. 

As a generation we have a dreadful weakness for not being able to stay the course. This comes when we associate the activity of God with adrenaline. 

Learn to be a good reminder of yourself. Have some way of calling things to mind.

Who is that coming up from the wilderness,    leaning on her beloved? -- Song of Songs 8:5

As believers we too often become tempted to look for crisis encounters with God and believe that we can live on them. The two ways we grow as Christians:

• Crisis
• Process

 We need both. If one is stronger than the other, God might, for a while put a patch over one of them (like correcting a lazy eye).

3. Obscurity 

Seasons in our lives where we feel like everyone else apart for us are being used. It hurts more for some than it does for others. For some their sense of self-importance is more closely linked to public profile. 

Bible figures who have to go through this: Joseph, David, Jesus (Isaiah 53)

An important principle to understand is that you are always under the spotlight in heaven. There is never obscurity before God. God uses obscurity to purify our hearts from an idolatry of public ministry.

Keep your eye on the main thing. If the main thing is acclaim, you're quite useless when you've got it. There's a big difference between wanting to be President and actually doing President. 

 

Your ways are not hidden from the Lord, you are hidden with Christ in God. God's gifts to us are thoughtful and carefully chosen. They're not like pyjamas from a distant relative who sends you the same thing every year without giving it much thought. 

Joel was given a prophetic word in the early nineties from a prophet who said: you and I will meet again in 7 years time at which time you will be at the heart of a festival of thousands of young people. It looked improbable even 6 years later as he was still employed as a school teacher. 6.5 years later Dave Devenish sat him down and asked him to leave his job and start New Day. 7 years from the prophecy Joel bumped into the prophet at an event that neither of them knew the other was going to be at.

4. Singleness & Marriage

You are called to be single or married. If you're single, you are called to be single - right now. 

What if marriage doesn't work? It is supposed to be a challenge. Marriage is two sinners living together, it isn't going to work in the way Hollywood presents it to work.

5. Sexual Purity

Jesus said: the pure will see God. What an incentive for pure living. 

Bible lists sexual selfishness and impurity and says 'because of these things the wrath of God is coming.' 

A church leader of many years fell sexually 3/4 years ago. Overtime his family was restored to him and his marriage is on the road to recovery. Joel sat with him and asked the question: What happened? The answer: Discouragement is dangerous. Keep searching for joy and delighting in God and seek pleasure in him.

6. Decision Making

Remember your core convictions. What do you know already? God's commands in scripture come first. If you're living a sexually immoral lifestyle, it's no good asking God which job to take when you're clearly disobeying a command of scripture.

God gives you a compass, not a map. He tells you the way to go and says 'get there'. We want an ordinance survey map, he doesn't give us that. Paul gets told by God 'I'm sending you to the gentiles.' Which is everywhere in the world! He then has to work out the more specific details in that.

Remember guidance comes in various ways. God speaks to different people in particular and specific ways. 

The deity has dignified humanity. Using your God-given faculties is still a viable and valuable way that God speaks to you.

Be honest about what you think God has said and what you think we should do.

7. Key Ministry Relationships

The relationships you have in ministry are very varied. To be fruitful we need to work out our different status's and stages with our relationships. Am I a father, a mentor, a brother, a follower, a son...? 

Understand gift alignment. Be yourself, who you are and where/how you fit. 

Have a sober assessment of yourself. We can get very drunk about ourselves and how special we are or we can be blind to our gift and value. We need to talk about it. We need to ask people honestly. 

Team when it works is wonderful. To get to that place is vital but it doesn't come over night. 

Excel at giving honour to one another. If the lion doesn't do that, no one will. 

8. Correction

Show grace and humility when corrected and others will trust you.

Some of the issue is that we don't receive correction, some of the issue is that we receive too much - we listen to too many people, we listen to everyone's opinion. We need wisdom to know who to listen to.

Story of Dave Holden. At the Down's Bible week as a young man in his 20s three separate people told him on the morning he was to speak that he had 'pride in his life.' It robbed him of confidence and courage. Terry Virgo, noticing something was wrong asked him. Dave told him and Terry replied 'if there was pride in your life I would not have asked you to speak. I've asked you to speak, now speak!' Choose who you listen to.

9. Opposition

Jesus said: woe to you when all men speak well of you.

and yet...

The worst things people can say about you are still not as bad as the truth. David Pawson went to God complaining to God about some things that people had said about him and felt God reply 'it's not as bad as the truth.' Martin Luther similarly. When the devil would tell him how bad he was or what sin there was in his life, he'd reply 'you've missed out some of the worst.'

10. Relationship disappointment

Learn how to be loyal. Joel told the story of a time he found a letter in his dad's office who had said some really horrible things to him. Joel & Terry were praying together and Terry started praying blessings on the man who'd written the letter. Praying that he (Terry) would have the grace to be a rock upon which the man could vent all of his sadness and heartache without needing to respond.

Things learnt by the government from Google

Check this out for a good list of 17 things learnt from a week with google:

https://gcn.civilservice.gov.uk/blog/2014/11/24/a-week-at-google-steve-vaughan/

Thankfulness

Thankfulness

The barracks where Corrie ten Boom and her sister Betsy were kept in the Nazi concentration camp Ravensbruck were terribly overcrowded and flea-infested.

They had been able to miraculously smuggle a Bible into the camp, and in that Bible they had read that in all things they were to give thanks, and that God can use anything for good.

Corrie’s sister Betsy decided that this meant thanking God for the fleas.

This was too much for Corrie, who said she could do no such thing. Betsy insisted, so Corrie gave in and prayed to God, thanking Him even for the fleas.

Over the next several months a wonderful, but curious, thing happened. They found that the guards never entered their barracks.

This meant that the women were not assaulted.

It also meant that they were able to do the unthinkable, which was to hold open Bible studies and prayer meetings in the heart of a Nazi concentration camp.

Through this, countless numbers of women came to faith in Christ.

Only at the end did they discover why the guards had left them alone and would not enter into their barracks.

It was because of the fleas.

This Thanksgiving, give thanks to God for every good and perfect gift (James 1:17), but also thank Him for how He will use all things for good in the lives of those who trust Him (Romans 8:28).

In this time of declining home values and rising unemployment, in a time when many are facing physical and emotional challenges, there can be little doubt that such a trusting prayer of gratitude will be challenging to consider.

But when you feel that challenge, take a moment, and remember the fleas of Ravensbruck.

And thank God anyway.

James Emery White

Sources

Corrie ten Boom, The Hiding Place.

      

Editor’s Note

James Emery White is the founding and senior pastor of Mecklenburg Community Church in Charlotte, NC, and the ranked adjunctive professor of theology and culture at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, which he also served as their fourth president. His latest book, The Rise of the Nones: Understanding and Reaching the Religiously Unaffiliated, is now available on Amazon. To enjoy a free subscription to the Church and Culture blog, visit www.churchandculture.org, where you can view past blogs in our archive and read the latest church and culture news from around the world. Follow Dr. White on twitter @JamesEmeryWhite.

Simon Holley: Quotes and notes

From Center Parcs talk:

• Before God was a lawyer, he was a lover
• I used to read the Bible religiously but now I read it relationally
• Hurt people, hurt people. Healed people, heal people. Free people, free people.
• When all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail
• The root of the word forgiveness means to cut, to severe a tie with someone.

The importance not of specialists but of 'one anothering'.

God came to bind the broken hearted and all of us are broken hearted in some way. The church needs to be made up of people able to help one another rather than always needing to refer us to the specialists. 

Some basic tools:

To help on another walk in the freedom that Christ has for us:

Two opposing worldviews: 1) Christian head-in-the-sand-ism. Just get on and mission and don't worry about the stuff of the heart. 2) Christian annoying-super-spiritual-ism  

We want a quest for the radical middle.

Three things to go through:

1) Ungodly beliefs 

2) Heart wounds

3) Deliverance 

Everything we need is available to us because of the cross. The cross released the power, broke the power of sin and made freedom possible. Physical, spiritual and emotional healing came at the cross.

But if this is all true, why do I not have it? Why are people walking in captivity of freedom is ours at the cross?

Eph. 2:13-
- He is our peace
- He made peace through the cross
- He went and preached peace

After being it and making it he had to go and also preach this peace for others to receive it.

Ungodly beliefs

Beliefs that do not agree with what God says in his word about himself and about reality.

Experience shapes our view of reality. We are transformed by the renewal of the mind.

Without having ungodly beliefs pointed out we live unaware of it.

Solution:

We need to feed the truth into the lie to restore our thinking and belief. Table / chart of truth vs lies. There are tonnes of lies we believe that we need to walk free from.

Heart Wounds

Sometimes memorising scripture isn't the answer. How do we heal the wounds of the heart? Simply memorising and quoting scripture won't be enough. We need more...

Five things we need to understand in order to forgive:

1. The extent to which we have been forgiven. The immense unpayable debt we owe to God has been paid for us.
2. The extent we are called to forgive: Corrie Ten Boom.
3. Understand what forgiveness isn't.
4. Understand how to forgive.
5. Understand some lies that keep you from forgiving.

Forgiveness isn't:

• Letting time pass.
• Being a door-mat or enabling an abuser.
• Not dependant on feelings (but it does involve feelings).
• It's not minimising (it wasn't that bad...).
• It's not excusing (he'd/she'd had a terrible background...) they're responsible for their own sin.

How to forgive:

1. Acknowledge. Identify the sin. Picture the person in front of you and speak to God the Father.
2. Express. Speak to the person as if he's in the room. 
3. Speak. 
1. Speak words of forgiveness to the person. 
1. Allow Jesus to appear and speak to people. 
2. Get people to picture a box and picture themselves putting their junk in a box and giving it to God. 
4. Tell God that you give up the right to judge. 
5. Speak the truth to yourself. Speak truth to yourself (in the third person) as an adult.
6. Bless the person. Tell God.

For reconciliation: 

Own the part of the problem that's yours and ask them for forgiveness. Often our softness will bring about a softness in them as well.

BUCKETS: Quotes

On unequal distribution:

'...the top 1 percent have as much loot as the bottom 50 percent— and where the richest eighty-five people have as much as the bottom three and a half billion.

That same brutal principle of unequal distribution applies outside the financial domain— indeed, anywhere that creative production is required. The majority of scientific papers are published by a very small group of scientists. A tiny proportion of musicians produces almost all the recorded commercial music. Just a handful of authors sell all the books. A million and a half separately titled books (!) sell each year in the US. However, only five hundred of these sell more than a hundred thousand copies. 12 Similarly, just four classical composers (Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, and Tchaikovsky) wrote almost all the music played by modern orchestras. Bach, for his part, composed so prolifically that it would take decades of work merely to hand-copy his scores, yet only a small fraction of this prodigious output is commonly performed. The same thing applies to the output of the other three members of this group of hyper-dominant composers: only a small fraction of their work is still widely played. Thus, a small fraction of the music composed by a small fraction of all the classical composers who have ever composed makes up almost all the classical music that the world knows and loves. This principle is sometimes known as Price’s law, after Derek J. de Solla Price, 13 the researcher who discovered its application in science in 1963.

It also applies to the population of cities (a very small number have almost all the people), the mass of heavenly bodies (a very small number hoard all the matter), and the frequency of words in a language (90 percent of communication occurs using just 500 words), among many other things. Sometimes

Peterson, Jordan B.. 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos (p. 9). Penguin Books Ltd. Kindle Edition. 

On modern problems:

Tyler Durden from Fight Club: We are the middle children of history - no purpose or place. We have no great war, no great depression. Our great war is a spiritual war. Our great depression is our lives. We've all be raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars. But we won't. We're slowly learning that fact. And we're very very pissed off.'

Michael Stipe - R.E.M.: We are floundering more - culturally, politically, spiritually - than I can imagine anyone has been in several centuries. It's hard to imagine that so many people are confused about who they are, what their dreams, hopes, and aspirations and desires are - and who's pulling the strings.'

Historian Arnold Toynbee: of the 21 greatest civilisations that have existed on the planet, the modern West is the first that does not have or teach its citizens any answer to the question of why they exist.

On Jesus' influence:

Inscription at the entrance to the Rockefeller Center, NYV: Man's ultimate destiny depends not on whether he can learn new lessons or make new discoveries and conquests but on the acceptance of the lesson taught him close upon two thousand years ago.

Napoleon Bonaparte: I know me and I tell you that Jesus Christ is no mere man. Between him and every other person in the world there is no possible comparison. Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and I have founded empires. But on what did we rest the creation of our genius? Upon force. Jesus Christ founded his empire upon love; and at this hour millions of men would die for him.

Newsweek magazine ran a cover story: '2000 years of Jesus: Holy Wars and Helping Hands - how Christianity shaped the modern world.' and said: By any secular standard, Jesus is also the dominant figure of Western culture. Like the millennium itself, much of what we now think of as Western ideas, inventions, and values finds its source or inspiration in the religion that worships God in his name. art and science, the self and society, politics and economics, marriage and the family, right and wrong, body and soul - all have been touched and often radically transformed by the Christian influence.'

H.G. Wells: I am an historian, I not a believer, but I must confess as a historian that this penniless preacher from Nazareth is irrevocably the very centre of history. Jesus Christ is easily the most dominant figure in all history.

On religion and grace:

Christianity is the unreligion. It turns all our religious instincts on their heads… The ancient Greeks told us to be moderate by knowing our inclinations. The Romans told us to be strong by ordering our lives. Buddhism tells us to be disillusioned by annihilating our consciousness. Hinduism tells us to be absorbed by merging our souls. Islam tells us to be submissive by subjecting our wills. Agnosticism tells us to be at peace by ignoring our doubts. Moralism tells us to be good by discharging our obligations. Only the gospel tells us to be free by acknowledging our failure. Christianity is the unreligion because it is the one faith whose founder tells us to bring not our doing, but our need.” (Dane Ortlund, Defiant Grace, EP Books, 2011, p. 38; 

On Doubt:

Tim Keller in 'Counterfeit Gods' says : doubt isn't wrong but resting in its shallows can be.

"A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion." - Sir Francis Bacon

Mark Lilla, professor at Chicago University. Upon hearing a man say he wanted to become a Christian found himself trying to stop him and then realised:

I thought I was out of that business, but maybe not. It took years to acquire the education I missed as a young man, an education not only in books, (and here, Lilla is so self-knowing) but in a certain comportment toward myself and the world around me. Doubt, like faith, has to be learned. It’s a skill. But the curious thing about skepticism is that its adherents, ancient and modern, have so often been proselytizers. Why do they care? Skepticism offers no good answer to that question…and I don’t have one myself.

On Christianity:

Christianity is a religion of the heart -- Jonathan Edwards

On Loving God:

So much as we see of the love of God, so much shall we delight in him, and no more       -- John Owen

 On God as Father:

Martin Luther is once alleged to have said: 'I have difficulty praying the Lord's Prayer because when I do I think of my own Father who was hard, unyielding and relentless. I cannot help but think of God that way.'

If you should ask me to state in one phrase what I regard as the greatest defect in most Christian lives I would say that it is our failure to know God as our Father as we should know him. -- Martin Lloyd Jones

On Worship in difficulty:

Is there nothing to sing about today? Then borrow a song from tomorrow, sing of what is yet to be. -- Charles Spurgeon

On Control:

Many welcome spontaneous zeal as long as there is not too much of it. We pray for the wind of the Spirit but not for a mighty rushing wind. I believe in a rushing wind and pray or its presence at all costs to our restrictions. -- Rolland Allen

 On Revival:

Lord send us revival without defects but if this is not possible send revival defects and all. Careful people will assess the fruit of manifestations. Wise people will rejoice at what can be rejoiced in but will be slow to put all the phenomena down to God. It seems we are going to have to live in the tension of rejoicing with caution. -- John Wesley 

On the manifestation of the Spirit:

On Saturday George Whitfield and I discussed outward signs which has so often accompanied the inward work of God. I found his objections were chiefly grounded on gross misrepresentations he had heard concerning these facts. The next day he had the opportunity of informing himself better, for no sooner had he begun to invite sinners to believe in Christ than four persons collapsed close to him. One of the them lay without either sense or motion. A second shook exceedingly. Te third had strong convulsions over his entire body but made no noise other than groans. The fourth convulsed equally and called upon God with strong cries and tears. From this time I trust we shall all allow God to carry on his work in the way that pleases him. -- John Wesley (from his diary)

On Loving yourself:

Jesus said that we are to love our neighbour as we love ourselves. If we don't love ourselves, God help our neighbour. -- Peter Jackson 

On Happiness:

It is a Christian duty to be as happy as he can. -- C.S. Lewis  

God threatens terrible things if we will not be happy. -- Jeremy Taylor 

My first duty in the morning is to get happy in God -- George Mueller 

On spiritual gifts:

Spiritual gifts are for using, not collecting. -- Andrew Wilson 

From Atheists on Christianity:

Egalitarian universalism, from which sprang the ideas of freedom and social solidarity, of an autonomous conduct of life and emancipation, of the individual morality of conscience, human rights and democracy, is the direct heir of the Judaic ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love. This legacy, substantially unchanged, has been the object of continual critical appropriation and reinterpretation. To this day, there is no alternative to it. And in light of the current challenges of a postnational constellation, we continue to draw on the substance of this heritage. Everything else is just idle postmodern talk           --Jurgen Habernas  

On Leadership:

specifically on the Queen becoming the longest serving monarch. A times editorial wrote: Succesful kingship relies not upon intellectual brilliance or superlative talent of any kind, but upon the moral qualities of steadiness, staying power and self-sacrifice.

On Atheism:

The New atheists act like 'intellectual colonialists' says James Smith in 'How to be secular'

On Irresisitble Grace:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/adrianwarnock/2007/08/unstoppable-saviour-irresistable-grace/

On Friendship:

I came across an enriching definition of friendship while reading this week from Sacred Unions, Sacred Passions, by Dan Brennan:

A friend is one whose presence is joy, ever-deepening relationship and love, ever available in direct address, in communion and presence. A friend is one who remains fundamentally a mystery, inexhaustible, never fully known, always surprising. Yet a friend is familiar, comforting at home. A friend is one who urges human freedom and autonomy in decision, yet one who is present in the community of interdependence. ---Anne E Carr

On Humanity:

Edward Wilson, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and author of The Origins of Creativity: “The real problem of humanity is the following: we have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like technology.”