Pass the Salt - 7 Dec 2011

7 December 2011

Christmas – where did you come from?

Are you getting the feeling that Christmas has just appeared out of the gloom of life without warning?

Suddenly the season is upon us again whether we’re ready for it or not.

If it has come upon you with speed, it may be time to grab some ‘reflection’ time. The power of reflection is in helping us gain some perspective. With a better perspective, we can make responsible decisions about our priorities. Good questions to ask are:

How much time am I giving to my relationships?
How am I showing my family they come first at the moment?
Where is my joy coming from?
If I could change one thing about my life today, what might it be?
Christmas is a season of promise – that in Jesus, God is returning to us, his loved ones those things we have lost. He offers himself as the means to restore us to relationship with him, the power to find love, joy and peace in the trials of life, to free us from those patterns of life and thought that bind us.

Christmas may have come upon you fast – like it has for me – but it needn’t pass us by as quickly. All it takes to receive some measure of the peace God offers is actively taking hold of some time to reflect with God.

21 November 2011

Nucleus the powerhouse of any organism

There’s an old saying, “you can’t see the forest for the trees” to make the point that you can’t see the big picture if you’re too focused on the details.

That being true, the other truth is all forests are made up of individual trees and if you want to strengthen the forest, you need to focus on strengthening each plant. If the church is the forest, then we are each the trees that make up the forest. To strengthen the church then is about helping each other grow.

This is the principle behind our ‘spiritual formation’ groups, which are our Life Groups and the newly launched Nucleus Groups. Nucleus Groups are being introduced because of their microscope-like focus. By contrast, Life Groups are like mini-greenhouses creating wonderful nurturing environments that help people gain health and grow strong together, but we can also need more one-on-one attention.

Unlike plants though, we humans have free will. Though God may seek to prune and shape us, or provide nutrients to inspire new growth, we can reject the gardener’s attention. We can even get really good at doing this within a greenhouse environment, appearing to grow while actually resisting the pruning and shaping of the gardener.

A Nucleus Group is about eye-balling one or two other people and answering the hard questions and being held to what we say. It’s a great way to cut through our avoidance tactics. It will be uncomfortable at times, but can lead to new growth where we may have grown stuck and stagnant. If that sounds like something you want, or need, then see who wants to join you on that journey...be careful, it might be life changing.

9 November 2011

What Rex said

Haggai chapter one is expressive of a truth we have all experienced and wondered at – when things should be getting better, they seem to be growing worse.
There can be a sense of quiet despair at times: a passion for food doesn’t hit the spot, fashion is only as satisfying as the moment of purchase, and we live according to the salary we have ensuring our bills increase with our income. No matter what we pursue, it’s never enough.

John D Rockefeller, oil magnate of the last 1800s and possibly the world’s richest man since Solomon, was once asked how much money was enough. He thought for a moment and said, ‘just a little bit more.’

The Teacher of Ecclesiastes addresses the same questions of life. Many believe the author is King Solomon reflecting on a life lived to the maximum, fuelled by endless wealth and the God-given wisdom to apply it. He even applied himself to madness and folly hoping to find a path of meaning. His conclusion? Everything is passing, fleeting, a vapour and the only hope is to seek God and obey him while you can. Jesus said something similar in John 6:29 (last Sunday’s reading), ‘the work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.’

Rex’s conclusion from Haggai chapter one was a call to build a precious space in our lives for God; we are the new temple of God, and he wishes to inhabit our everyday. What did God’s Spirit speak to you about on Sunday? How does he want you to create space for him as the temple of God?