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Camp@church

Camp is going to be great!

We’re kicking off Friday night with the world-famous-in-Hamilton Dessert Off. Last year’s Dessert Off between the men of Chapel Hill across two categories sparked a flurry of competitive cooking and baking. Can 2011 winners Jonathon Allred and Gavyn Jones repeat the performance? Not if I have anything to do with it! This is looking like an annual event, with trophies and bragging rights galore...not to mention awesome desserts galore for all to share.

Our Saturday (and Sunday) morning sessions will be a mix of informative, discussion and workshops around how we stoke the fires of faith in the home and in our community. Our awesome youth have agreed to look after the children during this time, so parents are freed up to fully participate in the sessions.

We’re pulling together a smorgasbord of fun activities for Saturday afternoon, such as go-karting, a table tennis tourney, and even a home-grown version of Destitute Gourmet featuring live demonstrations on making good quality, tasty food on a tight budget.

We’re booking a spit-roast dinner for the Saturday evening so the main catering is taken care of and we can just sit down and relax together (and then get stuck into the dishes...).

Saturday finishes off with a talent show. From what I’m hearing, there are already some great ideas on the boil!

Registrations open on Sunday 17 June, so please come ready to sign up for camp, 13-15 July, @Chapel Hill!

Healing’s joys and trials

Last Sunday’s healing meeting really tugged on the heart.

Proverbs 13:12 has real significance at times like these, “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.”

We know what it’s like to hope for something today, and not receive it. We feel it was probably better not to have hoped at all. The pain and disappointment can make the brief flaring of hope seem worthless, or a dangerous lie. It would be easier, or safer, to not believe God can and will intervene in today’s troubles and pin our hopes in a future restoration only.

And yet, when this longing to be released from pain and physical torment is answered, we are made anew. Praise God that many on Sunday night can testify to God’s healing power being present. Some of the healing was at a heart level, with God showing his care and love beyond the physical. We praise Jesus for all of it. Every healing, in every form, brings glory to his name. Even healing through the medical profession is a common grace to humanity.

How then do we understand those who have not yet seen their healing? Why does God seem to heal some and not others? Is it God’s will that some would suffer and others be relieved?

The fact we wrestle with this mystery makes me admire anyone who is able to find the courage to dare seek his direct intervention and healing. Personally, I think it gives God as much glory as an obvious or immediate healing does. What faith this is. What simple trust in the goodness of the Father. Eventually, we will all take this faith with us to the grave, and be raised again according to it. After all, it is faith, hope and love that are eternal.

Remain in Christrol

Have you seen the New Zealand Transport Agency’s “Mantrol commercials” encouraging men to stay in control of their cars? The agency has coined the term Mantrol to appeal to the male ego that likes to think it is always in control.

We’re supposed to have a manly control over our vehicle, driving according to the conditions, and within our abilities.

As Christians we need to remain in Christrol – giving the Spirit of Christ control over our lives and directing our paths. Paul says it boldly in Galatians 3:3-5 “Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort? Have you suffered so much for nothing – if it really was for nothing? Does God give you his Spirit and work miracles among you because you observe the law, or because you believe what you heard?”

Paul is appealing to the Galatians to remain in Christol – they believed in Christ through faith and were born anew of the Spirit, the evidence of which was a new joy (see 4:15) from the Spirit and a working of miracles. But they stopped letting Christ control their lives through the Spirit, and started to take control back by obeying law.

The pressure to return to letting the soul take control is massive, as Paul explores in Romans seven and eight. The soul and spirit are in conflict and only one can be in charge.

Let’s encourage one another to be in Christrol, where Christ’s Spirit is calling the shots. Let the small whispers of his Spirit in you guide your path and celebrate the fruit he brings of love, joy, peace etc (see 5:22). And let’s anticipate an empowering in ministry and prayer seeing miracles worked as we pray according to his will and in the expectation we have through faith in God.

Courageous active waiting

Have you heard of active listening? Active listening recognises that communication is not all about the one talking, it’s also about the listener who works to understand what is being said. Active listening is quite hard work, even though it appears as though you’re doing nothing.

Courageous active waiting is in the same arena. Perhaps we have a vision or passion for something, but don’t know what to do or where to go with it. In these times we engage in courageous active waiting.

The courage comes from resisting the temptation to give up, or to ‘make it happen’. So often we fear missing the opportunity, fear losing the vision and growing cold, we see the problem clearly and know the solution needed to happen yesterday...many things can make it extremely compelling to just do something! And if we can’t, we are tempted to give up as too hard.

There is a third option. If it’s not yet right to act openly, then act privately – pray a lot, research the issue, find partners who share the vision or who can add to and refine the vision, keep the issue alive between yourself and God in a way that leaves the initiative in his hands. He will act when he is ready, and when he judges that you are ready.

Great works of God were often done through people who had proven themselves diligent and obedient when people weren’t there to see it. King David was able to kill Goliath because he and God had tackled lions and bears together defending his father’s sheep.

Later, King David would need to show a different kind of courage – to refuse to defend himself from Saul who sought his death. Even though he was anointed king to succeed Saul, David withheld his hand, trusting God to establish him as promised. But he was by no means idle in that time of waiting. God sent him the down-and-outs, the disgruntled and disaffected people to govern, which was perfect preparation in trusting God when governing a nation of warring tribes.

In a world that worships the strength of our arm, the use of our own skills and resources to solve problems and to make our way in the world relying on nothing or no one, we must champion an attitude of active waiting that honour’s God our provider and protector, so that we are ready for the Lord’s timing.

40 Days of Preparation

22 February 2012

In the traditional Christian calendar, today is known as Ash Wednesday and marks the beginning of a 40-day period of time called Lent.
Lent is a ‘ritual’ journey to prepare us for the story of Easter.

As such it’s often a time of repentance – allowing the Spirit time and space to convict us of areas we grieve Christ and need his forgiveness, or where he wants to lead us on new paths of thinking and acting. It is a time to reflect on the passion of Christ to feel again the weight of his love expressed in the free giving of his life on the cross. And as we take that journey, we are prepared for entering into the receiving of resurrection life that the Easter story draws us to.

It’s a wonderful opportunity to create space in our lives for God to speak to us by removing distractions, slowing down and letting God be God.

And in the Year of the Relationships, we remind ourselves in this season of Lent that our right standing before God is only due to Christ and his cross; our place in his kingdom as born again children of God is by the resurrection and ascension of our Lord Jesus.

Let’s enter into this Lent season together...who’s in?

I’ve been thinking of ways to create additional space in my life – not for more activity as I already have spiritual disciplines of scripture reading etc, but for stillness. I sense the need for making an absence in my life as an invitation for God to draw near in a new way.

Historically people have fasted, a day a week (or more) until Easter. In more recent times, people opt to fast from habits such as tea/coffee, TV or retail shopping. The idea is to deprive yourself of something (as long as it won’t kill you!) to help identify in some small way with Christ’s absolute deprivation willingly entered for our sakes.

I invite you to reflect on what you could do to create this space in this season of Lent.

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