John 6:16-21 Jesus Walking on Water.

How many people (or communities?), on first seeing Jesus mistake him for something else? Something dangerous, undesirable, horrible, frightening, imaginary?

What assurance do they require? To hear his voice? To know he is real and not a ghost, not an illusion, not wishful thinking?

If they then accept him and receive him into their boat, how many will (and do) have the testimony that their struggles end with unexpected (impossible, miraculous) speed?

Church has a new website up, mostly done by Craig Spickernell, who is one of our "Timothy" workers.

New website is here: http://www.newlifechurchonline.co.uk/

I especially like that we're now posting talks etc. to the website, so you can download them and listen at your leisure. :)

My mate Nick has a great site for his climbing club, and this is a blatant attempt to increase his Google ranking.

http://www.themmc.org.uk

I happenned to pick up a headline from reddit just now (www.reddit.com), saying that Coretta Scott King has died. She was the widow of Martin Luther King.
I read someone quoted in the article (http://thefuturum.com/blog/?p=404) as saying

“It’s a bleak morning for me and for many people and yet it’s a great morning because we have a chance to look at her and see what she did and who she was.”

Now, I'm a senitmental old thing, and I couldn't help mentally rewriting that to say:

It's a bleak morning for many people, and yet, if I could hear Coretta's voice whispering over the morning wind, perhaps I would hear her encouraging me: "It's a great morning because it's illegal to advertise a job 'for whites only'. It's a great morning because there are no longer black seats and white seats on buses. It's a great morning because it is no longer tolerated to question a man's intelligence, ability or patriotism because of the colour of his skin." We are not there yet, but it's a great morning.

Yes. It's a great morning.

One of those insights

So, I've been reading through 1 Samuel.
This is because Martin's been doing some teaching therefrom in our occasional Men's Meetings. (I can't decide if "Men's Meetings" sounds testosterone-laden or just a little bit too touchy-feely). Anyway...
Reading about Samuel, and about how upset he was (and God was) that Israel wanted a king rather than a judge, it hit me that the judge, not the king is the biblical model for leadership.

A King

• Is king because his father was king
• Is king for life (unless physically deposed)
• Has authority because of his throne (ie. his own authority)
• Is answerable to the people
• Is lord over the people first
• Is a servant of God second
• Passes his throne to his genetic son

A Judge

• Is chosen specifically by God
• May be chosen for a specific purpose / mission
• Does not have a throne as such
• Has authority because of his appointment by God (not his own)
• Is a servant of God first
• Is ruler over the people second
• Does not pass his position on to his sons (can do, but not necessarily)

A King, then is permanently above his people, whereas a judge is lent authority not his own by God. A king is over the people, but a judge goes before the people.

... just some thoughts for next time you're looking at how leaders in the church should behave.

;-)
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OK, so this is now about a week old, but here goes.

Last Tuesday's cell group was men only (say that in a nice deep voice, now). The ladies were going to have their own meeting on Wednesday, but it was cancelled due to a centimetre of snow (bless). Anyway, we chaps turned up, all masculine and testosterone-laden to do chaply things, and the proceedings are documented below...

1 March 2005 Ellis Cell Group (Men) @ Ellis

Dependence on God

How do we continue pressing on?
How can I get more into God? Closer? More like Jesus?
How can I please God?

We started by brainstorming a simple question:

What do we do with our time? What stuff fills our lives?
We came up with a list like this:

• health
• work
• leisure/sport
• family
• wives
• children
• sex
• *time management*
• friends
• (men's) meetings
• church
• cell
• yoof
• alpha
• transitions
• music/worship
• travelling
• diy
• domestic engineer / management
• worries
• planning
• quiet time
• holidays
• finances

(We'll come back to that list in a minute).

Let's look at a bit of a bloke-thing:

I am not self-sufficient.
This is a big thing for a bloke to accept.
In our culture, there's a big bloke thing that:

• I can cope
• I don't cry
• I dont' ask 4 help
• I can do things on my own

There is a danger that I can carry this misconception into my christian life.
That would be a Bad Thing, because I am completely powerless next to God. I can't do anything. This is the gospel of grace: I have nothing to offer God. In order to get anywhere as a Christian, I have to accept God's help for everything.

So, we looked up Philippians 4:13, which says:
I can do everything through him who gives me strength.

What is the "everything"?
It's all the stuff I do - all the stuff in the brainstorming list above.

How does my relationship with God affect all that stuff?
How does all the stuff affect my relationship with God?
Is God involved in everything I'm spending my time on?
Am I involved in stuff God's spending his time on? Or just in my own stuff?

For example, what about finances?

• My attitude should be different from that of a non-Christian.
• God provides; I trust him.

So what about our place in our families?
With our wives, we are a couple (duh). One unit.
Within this unit, we have responsibility and authority.
If I pray with and for my wife, it will affect her relationship with God (and mine too).
But it is difficult to pray with my wife, because there can be no pretence there. It's a humbling and vulnerable activity because she knows me, so I can't fool her.
This is difficult for the typical man, because we are used to hiding behind an external appearance of strength.

Also hard for men in our society is the idea that we have authority.
The bible makes it clear that we have spiritual authority.
This is a right to say and do stuff as we see fit. That's a very uncomfortable idea in our society, but the fact is that any team needs a leader, and in our marriages the leader is (or should be) us men.
We must take responsibility for our wives and families.
For example, we need to take responsibility for our finances - this is not the same thing as bringing home the bacon: it's not about who earns the money, it's about who takes the responsibility for our financial well-being: who decides how much we can afford for what?
It's easy to hand this over to the woman, but that's wrong. Why should she be burdenned?

Authority is something I have from God.
It's not from me - it's not about how good I am, nor how skilled I am.

Part of building a healthy family involves prayer for and with both my wife and my children.
My job is to establish a RELATIONSHIP with God.
This builds spiritual authority, both imparting more of it and making me a credible leader, because if my wife sees me submitting to God, she will have no trouble submitting to me.
But my relationship with God can only be on his terms, not mine. This can be a tough one.

How can I build this relationship?
"The Look of Faith."

• I need to pray - to listen to God.
• I need to study the bible - to see Jesus.

It might help to look at my family in the same way I look at my job.
We don't have too much trouble seeing that at work we have people we have to submit to, and people who have to submit to us. The people who work under us are not worth less than us, and we're responsible for them. That's not a hard thing for most men to see, but accepting that a similar situation exists in the home can be very difficult.
Our "job" as head of the household has been specifically and personally given to us by God.

The bottom line is:
I have to remain *dependent* on God to do all this stuff.

God is above Man
Man is above Woman

This means that a woman has to submit to both her husband and to God.
A man has to submit to God, but must be over his wife, taking responsibility for her and her wellbeing. So while a woman has to deal with 2 relationships which are in the same direction (submission), a man must deal with 2 relationships in opposite directions. This is not easy. (is it supposed to be?).

• It's hard to be a (good) man
• A wife just has to get the submission thing sussed
• It's meant to be harder to be a man than a woman
• We often abdicate this difficult and let it fall on our wives
• This makes it harder to be the woman
• We men have the choice in this: we can abdicate or step up and take our responsibility and authority.

So I have to ask:
Where do i look?
Whom do i trust?

One thing is certain:
THERE WILL BE TESTS OF OUR RELIANCE ON HIM
But remember: God tests for strength (Satan tests for weakness).

Romans 12:1-2
Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God–this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is–his good, pleasing and perfect will.

Finally, Pray for:

1. The renewal of my mind
2. A deepenning relationship with God
3. Vision as head of my family
   

Had coffee with Kevin today. He's a top bloke, and possibly my closest friend, simply by virtue of the fact that we have a coffee together for an hour most weeks. Just spending this kind of time with someone is what I find I need to foster a really good kind of depth of friendship. It gives us time to talk about big things and little things, spiritual and profane, programming and accountancy. What annoys me is that I don't get to do this with anyone else. The closest I come is with Rich & Dunc, where we meet every other week. That's cool, and I hope it will develop into a similar sort of thing, especially as we meet over food before doing the "spiritual" thing.

Anyway, one of the things we were talking about over coffee today was making some kind of notes while reading through the bible, so that you don't get into the slightly embarassing situation (as one of us did) of saying "I've just read Joshua, and some bits of it really spoke to me, but now I can't remember any of them."

My solution has been to blog about my daily readings. That is to say, my _ideal_ solution is to blog. I actually managed to do this in practice for a couple of days in 2002. I must press on and make this happen. (I actually enjoy blogging - and reading blogs - it's just on my level).

There's no time like the present...

I didn't actually read the bible on the train up this morning. I was praying (or at least trying to). However, I managed to get in Revelation 4 while waiting for Kevin. Rev 4 is where John is transported to Heaven and sees the throne of God. It's a visual description of what he sees - not a very clear description, though: he obviously struggles to put the vision into words. There's lots of use of phrases of the type "something that looks like xxx." - ie. it's not xxx, but xxx is the closest thing I can think of that looks like it. There's a fair bit of that in Revelation (and apocalyptic writing in general, I think), and it helps to bear in mind that the writer is trying (and possibly failing) to describe something really very very _wierd_.

So what can we say about what John sees in heaven? The creatures near the throne are endlessly saying:

"Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!"

Endlessly. All the time, they are declaring God's holiness, acknowledging that he is The Almighty. That's what happens in God's presence. There's nothing else you can do. I am, frankly, very unhappy about what this shows about my life. I do not live as if God is Holy and Almighty. I must change. I will change. I will live as though God is Holy and Almighty and as though I am in his presence. Will you?