A provocative statement that I am working through!

I read this sentence earlier this week and it has been living with me since:

"A man with an experience is never at the mercy of a man with an argument."

This was written in the context of a book about the Holy Spirit called 'Good Morning Holy Spirit' by Benny Hinn.  Now I know that that name puts different thoughts in different minds.  There is such a mixed opinion of Mr Hinn and this blog is not a statement endorsing or attacking the man.  I just thought this statement was provocative.

In one sense I fully agree with him.  When sharing my personal story, no one can say it didn't happen without any integrity (as long as I'm not making it up!)  My personal walk with Jesus and the way that I live that out and communicate it will be the rebuttal to any great argument against Him existing or being God.  People will not always see it that way, but my experience will be my experience.

I think the danger of the statement is that our experiences can become the bench mark that we live by.  The person who experiences the baptism of the Spirit will point to that and say of course it is as it is written in the book of Acts.  Likewise the person who is healed.  However the person who has not been healed or who has prayed for but never experienced the baptism can rightly say to anyone trying to present a case that their experience is of no healing and of no Holy Spirit power.  Who is right?

This can only be settled I believe when we take our experience and line it up against what scripture says.  If my experience does not line up with the flow and body of scripture then my experience cannot be the bench mark. We cannot bring the bible down to our level of experience or we cannot add to the bible because of our experience.  The Bible must interpret our experiences and be the high water mark of what we expect God to do in our lives.

As you can see this has exercised my mind and will continue to do so as I think about the way I pastor and teach and counsel and live and love and be the follower of Jesus that I long to be.  I love the gist of the statement for evangelism purposes and as long as the experience is always measured against the great plumb line of God's word.

These are just initial thoughts and I'm sure they will continue to stew!

The two week countdown to Alpha has begun

With only two weeks left to go until the next Alpha course starts, it's time to start inviting people. We've got 9 people signed up already, will you or your friend be the next person to sign up.

I found  this story on the Alpha website and found that it gave me a fresh desire to invite someone because you don't know what God will do if they say yes, regardless of how reluctant they might be:


Alpha Testimony Sophie from Holy Trinity Brompton on Vimeo.

Back after the Summer Break

It's good to be back after the Summer break; a Summer that was inspiring and wet! It was great to be back among the church family again and as always a privilege to be able to preach.  

I'm so looking forward to this term and over the next couple of days I shall headline a couple of things coming up that will enable us to invite friends to an event that will be what they need.  As always it would be great to have your suggestions as to what sort of events we can be running in 2012 as we start to plan for the coming year.

A rework of part of Sunday's preach

On Sunday I preached the last message in the series We Know and We Love, looking at  he 1st letter John wrote to the churches in modern day Turkey (you can listen to each of the messages by clicking here).  We looked at chapter 5v13-21and found that there were some troublesome verses in the passage (16 and 17).  After preaching in the morning and after receiving feedback, I reworked this section in the afternoon and preached the following in the evening, it's a long post but here goes:

"Paul now enters the middle of the race – he is now commentating on what he sees and what he hears and he moves on to talk about sin.  In particular he talks of something that has been a little tricky to understand throughout the ages.  Theologians have debated its meaning and have come up with differing opinions all based on the text and the context!  To think that I in the time we have would be able to unpick it so that it satisfies every question would be futile to say the least.  However I do think it’s important to have a way of navigating these hard passages and coming to an understanding of how they fit together for yourselves, so if my understanding does not quite cut it for you this is well worth investigating and looking into a little more with study.

So here goes - He talks about a sin that leads to death and a sin that does not lead to death.

To help us here we must remember that he is talking to those who are believers and he is speaking to those who are not yet believing the heresy that is flying around.  He is regrounding them in their faith to give them assurance.

I do not believe here that John is at all saying that people who genuinely have accepted Christ as their Lord and Saviour can lose their salvation!  Rather He is talking about a sin that shows that these people were not even following Jesus in the first place.  Maybe they liked the moral code or the buzz of the people.  Maybe they liked the doctrine of grace but didn’t want to back that up with the works that followed, or maybe they liked the works and didn’t get the grace.  Maybe they just liked charismatic leaders and followed after men who seemed to have more answers!

So what is John saying?

Let’s break this into two sections.  Firstly let’s look at the sin that does not lead to death.

This is the sin that we all experience.  As followers of Jesus we know that we mess up that we give into temptation.  We get caught out and make mistakes, but let’s remember 1 John 2:2

“My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin – But if anybody does sin, we have one who speaks to the Father in our defence – Jesus Christ the Righteous one”  YES!!!

So as followers of Christ we can see forgiveness of our sins.  Once any sin becomes evident to our brothers or sisters then we are to pray for each other.  Whatever that sin might be we are to pray.  Maybe it’s lustfulness or inappropriateness with the opposite sex.  Maybe it’s drinking too much alcohol, maybe it’s gossiping.  We can pray for their reconciliation.  We can pray that the Holy Spirit will convict them and that they will repent.  We may even do as Paul says in Galatians 6:1 and go and talk to them and restore them gently. 

If someone has sinned against us let’s do as Jesus says and go to talk to them about it so that we can seek reconciliation.  We can pray together and sort it out.  As true followers of Christ we should want to repent as hard as we might find it to turn away from that which we have been doing, we should not want to live with sinfulness in our lives, it is alien to us.

This is the sin that does not lead to death, because it is forgiven. When we repent, sin is forgiven and that repentance leads to life and not death.

So what is the sin that leads to death and why is John indifferent about whether you should pray for it or not?

One commentator writes: “If John’s major emphasis as the letter concludes is that only those who believe that Jesus is the Son of God have eternal life, then the sin that leads to death, the death that excludes the sinner from the life of God, must surely be the denial of that saving truth.  If this is right then the sin that leads to death does so because, by nature, it rejects the only means by which sin can be forgiven – the atoning death of the incarnate Son of God.  This underlines the important truth that it is not that this sin is unpardonable, but that it remains unpardoned.  We need to preserve this distinction because so much of the rest of the letter has carefully established it.” (The Message of John's Letters, David Jackman, page 164)

Therefore this sin that leads to death is actually a rejection of Jesus, his deity and his death on the cross to forgive sin.  The sin that leads to death is the sin that does not appropriate forgiveness because it rejects the one, the way and the means by which forgiveness comes. 

When we are stubborn and hard hearted and don’t repent of sin then we are rejecting the grace of God;  we are saying again that we know best we are acting as if we are unbelievers and John says that this is a sin that leads to death.  One that leads to hardness of heart and one that leads to a rejection of Jesus, because in our pride we don’t want to own up to what we have done or see that it is indeed wrong. 

If this becomes a persistent, ongoing rejection of Jesus and his grace then we need to act accordingly.  It’s at this point that we as believers, when we see this happening, when we have done all we can to plead with our brother or sister, need not pray for their restoration or reconciliation through forgiveness of any particular sin they may be involved in.  Rather that it’s time to start treating them like an unbeliever as Jesus teaches in Matthew 18 meaning we turn our attention to praying for their salvation!  This would be church discipline or as Paul put it – giving over the immoral unrepentant believer to Satan or over to their unrepentant wishes.

Now just a note here, I also know that we can hold on to sin because we don’t think that we can be forgiven of it.  We might have thought that it is the unforgivable sin or the sin that cannot be pardoned.  We therefore store it up and let it condemn us and it causes us to lose joy and brings distance between us and God and also between us and our brothers and sisters.  We don’t want anyone to mention that particular part of our lives in 

case anything comes out about it and people really find out who you are!

Brothers and sisters let me say to you today if that is you – do not be hamstrung by the lie of the devil.  If you are worried that you have committed some unforgivable sin, then let me say you haven’t – if you had you wouldn’t care about it!!!  Whatever you have done come to Jesus, repent and you will be forgiven.  He knows about it anyway and he is just waiting for you to acknowledge it is sin, turn to him and lay it at the foot of the cross and leave it there.  His death was sufficient to take even your sin.  His death has completed the work of destroying the hold that sin can have on us.  Come out from condemnation and live in the freedom of your new life."

The weekend that was

Last week saw the last Newfrontiers leaders conference at Brighton.  It was a great time of hearing from God worshiping with thousands and getting an understanding of how Newfrontiers will move forward as a movement. More details and highlights can be found on Sean's blog here.  This was then followed by a very busy weekend.

My good friend of some 12 years, Tim Rooke got married.  I had the honour of being one of his best men on the day, which also meant a 7pm rehearsal on Friday evening.  Tim has waited for this moment for so long and it was such a joyful occasion to see Sarah practice walking down the aisle and her tears as she went through the marriage vows one last time before the big day.

Saturday was somewhat of a whirlwind of getting the groom to the church building, ushering ushers, being the master of ceremonies, holding the details of the reception and of course making a speech!  By 9pm I was ready to sleep!

Sunday was a wonderful day of meeting with RFC and having the pleasure of preaching the final sermon in our series 'we know and we love' looking at the first letter of John to the churches of what is now modern day Turkey.

As  I reflect on this busy passage of time I can only see God's hand being worked out in the lives of his people.  I am so thankful for friends of amassing years who I have had the joy and the pain of walking closely with.  I am also full of wonder at  the great gospel that we carry, the great Father who gives it through his wonderful Son Jesus made real to us by his Holy Spirit.

South Reading Churches Funday

Fun Day Volunteers Promo 2011 from Reading Family Church on Vimeo.

This Saturday sees this fantastic free annual event take place again.  With over 4000 people coming over the 4 hours there isn't anything else like it in the community of Whitley.  This year we continue in the vain of climbing walls, BBQ's and different types of stalls, as well as offering a place to be prayed for.  There will also be live music and  'Whitley's Got Talent' amongst other activities for children of all ages.

It's such a great day and it draws people of all ages together.  We are praying for good weather (please do the same!)  and trust that God has that in hand on our behalf.  There is a prayer time this evening at 7:30pm to seek God for the event.

If you are available maybe you would like to help out on the day or just come down to check it out.  If not please pray that the event will go off without hitches and that it will be an event that draws the community together.

'First Thursday' Prayer and Fasting

Tomorrow night we gather together as a church to once again seek our God. We will worship Him with songs and prayers of praise. We shall wait on Him and see what he has to say to us. We will also pray for our church, our town, our nation and the nations as the Spirit guides and leads us.

I look forward to these nights and am in high expectation that we will meet with our God as we gather together - 2 congregations but 1 church.