Get ready! It's harvest time.

When my arthritic joints complained loud and long about jogging, I took up swimming. After several months of enjoying the space of a large open-air pool, with a change of season to chillier weather, I have now started swimming at our indoor pool.

Recently I went down early to swim my lengths and found the whole pool fairly full with people intent on swimming their own lengths. There were no lane markers, just a free-for-all.  Everyone had their own space which they were relentlessly occupying and I struggled to fit in. I only really got a space to swim, instead of dodging round everyone else, when some people finished their swim. It reminded me of how church can be.

There is much talk of our being on the edge of breakthrough, that there is a sound of harvest in the air and my concern is how we are going to make room for a harvest or a significant influx of new people into our midst.

Unfortunately too many churches are like the swimming pool. Everyone is busy in their own space and no one is prepared to move over to make room for anyone else especially newcomers. It is a well-known fact that in all churches, traditional and new, everyone has their favourite place to sit. It may no longer be my pew but it is my row or my seat. How will we react if someone else sits there? How will we feel if instead of having a spare seat next to us, someone new and dare I say it, maybe not smelling so good, sits next to us?

However it is a lot more than just where people sit.

Harvest and great moves of God mean new Christians, lots of them, people who have no idea how things are done in church. Will we be the people who welcome them, not just with a superficial greeting but with a genuine invitation to join us? Will we talk to people and help them feel at home?  I loved going to a church in New York who not only welcomed visitors but also explained what was happening and why. It was very refreshing.

Harvest may also mean we are going to have to dust off our discipling skills both individually and as churches. Jesus said “go into the world and make disciples …’ He didn’t ask us to just make converts.  Discipling is a messy, time consuming process. New Christians need a lot of attention and I have always been very grateful to the people who discipled us in our early days.

In previous years, most people in Britain had a basic understanding of Christianity and the church. Our British culture was based on it. Most people would go to church once or twice a year – it wasn’t a complete unknown. Nowadays though many people, even those brought up in UK, have no idea at all about Christianity and the Church. Many may become believers from other cultures and even from other faiths.  Churches, no matter their worship or service style, have a very definite culture.  An awful lot of people in Britain today will have no idea about that culture and will need help feeling at home.

Newcomers to church need to feel they have friends, people who like them. If we are too busy in our own friendship circle with our own ministry to speak and live lives with others, people will slide out the back door as quickly as they came in the front.

At our prayer meeting this week, we were challenged about how harvest will impact us as a church and as individuals. My feeling is that now is the time to start thinking about this topic and change our own mind-sets and heart attitudes. How are we as individuals and churches going to build a welcoming attitude of openness and help people feel at home? We can also, as churches, start considering how we are going to disciple people and with what resources. This will need to be across the ages not just for adults.

This is not the first time this topic has come up in my Christian lifetime and I suspect the Church missed something previously. We just did not get ready. I really do not want to have to walk this circuit again so my prayer is that I, my church and the Church will prepare both our hearts and our programmes for the breakthrough and harvest we have been praying for for years.

Just keep jogging

The final blog based on the topic of jogging.

As you will know from these blogs, I have not only taken up jogging, aged over 65 but can now jog for 30 minutes without stopping. The main thing I have learned is that to succeed you need to master your breathing and pace. Speed is not important – finishing is the goal.

How similar this is to the Christian life. We are exhorted to run our race to win the prize which is the crown of life given to us when Jesus rewards his faithful servants. We are not in a race against one another – we are in a race with ourselves – to persevere and finish. My prayer has always been that I want to finish strong, not fast - strong. I don’t want to crawl over the line but jog over with my head held high knowing that like Paul, I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.

So many give up. I can think of all those whom I knew, who were there with me in church and who have now turned away. I also remember all those who were running well and whilst they are still there they are no longer running with passion. They’ve given up their calling and ministry through hurt, disillusionment and discouragement.

There is so much that can hurt or disappoint us but our goal is to keep going and do the best we can. Like Jesus, Paul endured terrible hardships for the Gospel yet he finished because he had his prize in mind.

So as the writer to the Hebrews says ‘… let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us’. He goes on to say Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith who for the joy set before his, endured the cross, scorning its shame and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

Jesus endured the cross for us – because of the joy of seeing millions redeemed and coming into relationship with our heavenly Father. There are Christians around the world facing terrible circumstances for their faith. So next time that no one turns up or we are let down – again - let’s not give up or give in but fix our eyes on the prize and keep jogging to the finish.

Earlier this year, I took up jogging, something I had never done before in my life. I have always been active but actual jogging – no way. I needed some inspiration to get going so I found a suitable podcast and for 8 weeks followed the programme successfully. The eighth week was particularly inspirational as it used the launch and landing of the space shuttle Discovery to start and end the run.  There was a real sense of achievement after running for 30 minutes nonstop for the first time.

We all need inspiration to help us in our lives. Over the years, many people, Christians and non, have inspired me to live better, to make the most of my life and to give to the world.

However, as Christians we need also to be inspirational. There is so much negativity about Christians and the Church that when people come across someone who has an authentic faith being lived out on a daily basis, it becomes a source of comment, question and hopefully helps someone towards salvation. I know that was very important when we got saved over 30 years ago. The friends who had been encouraging us took us to a water baptism service. It was the first time we had been to a full immersion baptism. I was struck by the fact that the people in this church were getting a lot more from life, church and their Christianity than I certainly was. It was an important step along the way.

We all impact those around us both positively and negatively with our words, actions and attitudes, often quite unrealised. We have a friend in South Africa who has an amazing testimony of God’s deliverance and salvation from drug abuse, prostitution and a lifestyle of abuse.  We were all in our home group one day when she commented that looking at the married couples had really helped her realise that marriage could work. Her experience of marriage had not been good, yet observing the marriages of various older couples – not perfect but working – helped heal her extremely negative view of matrimony.

I am always amazed at the comments people make about my life, telling me they’ve noticed I don’t swear, that I am a Christian even when I’ve said nothing. On one occasion, when I was just standing admiring the bowls green before a game I was asked if I was praying for the match. I wasn’t but I offered to do so if they would like!

We also though need to inspire one another in our Christian walk. I love being around people who have a different or deeper faith to mine but I believe we all have a role to play in inspiring one another. In 1 Thessalonians 5: 11 Paul wrote Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing. This was written in the context of Christians awaiting Jesus’ second coming but it’s appropriate in any circumstance.

Encouragement and inspiration may be overt but also unintentional by a positive lifestyle full of love for the Lord, a passion for his name and a consistency in the good and not so good times. God didn’t save us to be grumblers and complainers but to be light to the world, to see things from God’s perspective and to show this to our world.

Catch me if you can

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. Hebrews 12: 1 - 2

Every baton change was secure and it was with great cheers that the British men’s 4 x 100m relay team brought home the gold medal. It had been a rather disappointing week of athletics for Britain but on the final weekend all four relay teams won medals.

Watching relays always reminds me of the analogy of handing the spiritual baton on as an inheritance to the next generation.

An inheritance is something passed on that we get for nothing from someone else who has paid for it. It can catapult us up to the next level. For instance – getting a financial inheritance can help us buy a house we couldn’t possible afford otherwise. Spiritual inheritances work in the same way. We inherit a grace for something, for instance healing, that others have laboured for and may have paid a high price in terms of commitment and even criticism but it makes us more effective for the kingdom.

A natural inheritance gives us something we did not have before but a spiritual inheritance reveals to us something that was there all along but which we had never seen or grasped before. When we realise the inheritance we have, we receive all the knowledge and experience gained by the previous generation. We don’t have to find it, earn it, dig for it, battle for it but just receive and walk in it.

Bill Johnson says that one of the saddest things in the Church is that one generation has never been able to pass on revival to the next generation. Revival has become the boost that the Church receives every few years instead of being the norm. What should be normal is that ‘of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end’ Isaiah 9: 7.

Going back to the analogy of passing on the baton it is as if the next runner takes the baton, looks at it and decides that running the next leg is too hard, demands too much and anyway they are too busy with work and family. Worse still it when the baton is put in a place of honour and revered as ‘the baton from the GB and NI team who won the gold medal in 2017.’ This is like honouring Smith Wigglesworth or John G Lake but not trying to run past them and push into God for the next revelation or grace he wants to impart.

For me the saddest thing is when the next generation take the baton and then goes back to the starting blocks and starts the race all over again, running the same lap as the previous generation. Instead once the baton has been passed, the next generation must take their inheritance and run hard their own race into fresh new things of God.

Jesus ran the first lap and he promised we would do greater things than he did (John 14: 12). That’s the norm. Our forefathers are our example and they are cheering us on the greater deeds, to greater revelation that the Kingdom of God would advance not stagnate or repeat.

Have you ever seen how the previous runner at the hand over, shouts at the next runner exhorting them to run their fastest? May it be the same in the kingdom. As we pass on all we have laboured and fought for, may we urge the next generation to catch hold of everything and then run into a fresh season of revelation with faith and anointing to increase the Kingdom and see Jesus revealed in ever greater measure.

A life of devotion

We are all very familiar with the stories of the two sisters, Martha and Mary. Martha was almost certainly the older and she was the one who served – who got the job done. Mary just sat around at Jesus’ feet.

If asked which one you identify with, most of us would say Martha. We know Jesus said, ‘few things are needed – or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.’ (Luke 10: 42) but somehow sitting at Jesus’ feet when there’s work to be done doesn’t seem like the ‘better’ thing.

However Mary lived the life of devotion that followed the first and greatest commandment Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength (Mark 12: 30). It was given by Moses to the Israelites (Deuteronomy 6: 4- 5) and is part of the bedrock of the Jewish faith, the Shema, spoken by pious Jews morning and evening and it starts synagogue services.

Mary loved the Lord extravagantly and her greatest act of devotion is recorded in John 12: 1 – 8. A dinner was given at Lazarus’ house – Martha and Mary’s brother – in Jesus’ honour. Martha was serving as usual and Lazarus was reclining with all the guests.

Mary then did something incredibly brave. She walked into a room full of men eating their dinner and instead of quietly serving, the appropriate thing for a woman, she brought an expensive jar of pure nard and poured it on Jesus’ feet. The women would have been shocked and the men embarrassed. It was so inappropriate.

Some have surmised that this perfume may have been Mary’s inheritance. Money was hard to keep safe so inheritances came in the form of land or objects. Mary was blowing the very thing that would keep her in her old age in one extravagant act of devotion.

The apostle John noted that the fragrance filled the whole house – her act of abandoned love touched everywhere.

However even more shockingly Mary undid her hair and wiped Jesus feet with it. If people were embarrassed before, now they would not know where to look. Respectable women did not unbind their hair in public and only lowly servants dealt with dirty feet. Mary was not mindful of her reputation or her social standing, she just wanted to pour out her love to Jesus.

Some present ‘rebuked her harshly’ (Mark 14: 5) and she invoked criticism especially from Judas Iscariot who piously would have liked to give the proceeds of the sale of the nard to the poor. In reality he wanted to get his own hands on the money (John 12: 6). In this account in Mark 14, Judas was so offended by her waste that he went to the chief priests to betray Jesus. It was if it was the final straw.

Jesus however commended Mary for her beautiful act of worship. You can imagine all those reclining at the table who hadn’t known where to look before now sagely nodding their heads in agreement.  Jesus then said, ‘Truly I tell you, wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.’ How true - today we all know about Martha and Mary and her life of adoration.

Devotion though is a hard path to walk. Mary was criticised by her own family for sitting at Jesus’ feet instead of helping. The believers criticised her for extravagantly wasting an expensive jar of perfume.

Mary chose the ‘better way.’ Works for the Lord are important but they flow out of the greater thing. The priority is to Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.

People will almost certainly criticise us for extravagant acts of worship – for living a lifestyle devoted to God – but it is the ‘better way’.