“The main benefit that is obtained by preaching is by the impression made upon the mind in the time of it, and not by the effect that arises afterwards by the remembrance of what was delivered.” Jonathan Edwards.

This Album is really good. Im loving it at the minute. Track 4 is amazing! You can get it from all the usual places  iTunes, it’s cheaper at Amazon, and of course it’s also at Spotify

It’s from Trinity Grace Church in NYC.

Big Tim Keller is speaking in Berlin this week… or as he calls is Berlin, Germany! During his talk today he has just given 10 top tips on sharing you faith… He seems to be following in my own very humble footsteps on the ten top tips bandwagon, but that’s ok.. we all need role models Tim!

1. Let people know, casually and naturally, that you are a Christian.

2. Ask questions about your friends religious beliefs offering NO comment or response. Just asking thoughtful questions.

3. Invite someone to share with you about a problem they are having. Make it clear that you pray for people you care about and offer to pray for them.

4. You share a problem or issue in which your faith has really served to help you, illness, bereavement, lonliness, unemployment, etc.

then if your friend, neighbour or colleague wants to take things further

5. Share a book or recording that you think they might find helpful

6. Share your story of faith

7. Ask whether there are any problems that they have with Christianity

8. Take them along with you to church

And if they’d like to take things further

9. Meet regularly to read the Bible

10. Take them along to a discovery group eg Alpha or Christianity Explored.

I got this from a new blog I’ve found and enjoy…so HT Neil Powell check him out!!

I spoke about Gospel in the Community last Wednesday… What a great bunch!!!

Here as promised is the Getting to Know Your Community Questions from the very helpful and worth reading Everyday Church…

Understanding Local Community

Where?

Where are the places and activities in which you can meet people? (‘the missional spaces’)

Where do people experience community?

Are there existing social networks with which we can engage, or do we need to find ways of creating community within a neighbourhood?

Where should you be to have missional opportunities?

When?

What are the patterns and timescales of your neighbourhood (‘the missional rhythms’)?

When are the times when you can connect with people (the missional moments’)?

How do people organise their time?

What cultural experiences and celebrations do people value? How might these be used as bridges to the gospel?

When should you be available to have missional opportunities?

What?

What are people fears, hopes and hurts?

What ‘gospel’ or ‘good news’ stories are told in the neighbourhood?

What gives people identity (creation stories)?

How do people account for wrong in the world (fall)?

What is their solution (redemption)?

What are their hopes (consummation)?

What are the barrier beliefs or assumptions that cause people to dismiss the gospel?

What sins will the gospel first confront and heal?

In what ways are people self-righteous?

What is the good news for people in this neighbourhood?

What will church look like for people in this neighbourhood?

A gospel is ‘the glad and delightful message of the grace exhibited to us in Christ, in order to instruct us, by despising the world and it’s fading riches and pleasures, to desire with our whole heart, and to embrace when offered to us, this invaluable blessing.’ In the gospels, the evangelists do not just record the facts, ‘but also explain for what purpose he was born, and died, and rose again, and what benefit we derive from those events.’ John ‘dwells more largely (than the Synoptics) on the doctrine by which the office of Christ, together with the power of his death and resurrection, is unfolded’ or ‘the power and benefit of the coming of Christ’. The Synoptics ‘exhibit his body’ but John ‘exhibits his soul.’ So, this gospel ‘is a key to open the door for understanding the rest.’

I’m finding this in my preparation, I’m meeting Jesus afresh. John reveals Jesus in such rich detail. You simply could not make this stuff up!! Jesus breaks all of the expectations that we might attempt to place upon him. He is tough and tender, active yet at rest, able to speak to the somebodies and the nobodies, powerful and humble…

Here is what one writer says about Jesus and the Woman he meets at the well. The woman has had lots of men in her life, she has obviously been let down by every one of them. Jesus challenges her about this life she has been living.. she is amazed by this stranger who talks to her…

“You can almost hear her thinking: ‘He knows me yet He still loves me. He sees into my heart yet He is still talking to me.’ That is a wonderful thing. Perhaps especially so for a woman who has gone from man to man. She has been looking for love but finding only sex and emptiness. Her thirst is insatiable… [In] Jesus you have real love and real fulfilment. Jesus, He loves me without make-up on, without my bravado, without any show or facade. Could this be God? Who else loves like this?”

That’s from Simon Vibert and a book called Lives Jesus Changed… It’s all about the “Strangers” Jesus met. As I prepare to preach I want people to see what Calvin is talking about…I want people to embrace what’s offered to us… I don’t want to communicate the facts.  I want people to hear what John says about Jesus so that they understand what Jesus has done for them! I hope I get better at that as I preach John this year. It’s good to be back in John’s Faithbook (He writes that we might believe!!!) We are here DV till the Christmas sermons start in December when we will take another short break!!

I never liked Harvest when I was younger. It was all about fruit and veg, which I hated. As a minster in the city I think harvest time is odd. However, I think it’s good to be drawn to think carefully about thanksgiving… I am a big fan of thanking God.

I found a bunch of quotes from GK Chesterton about thankfulness (picture by):

“I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.”—G. K. Chesterton

“There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person.” —G. K. Chesterton

“The aim of life is appreciation; there is no sense in not appreciating things; and there is no sense in having more of them if you have less appreciation of them.”—G. K. Chesterton

“When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.”—G. K. Chesterton

“You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink.”—G. K. Chesterton

“When we were children we were grateful to those who filled our stockings at Christmas time. Why are we not grateful to God for filling our stockings with legs?”—G. K. Chesterton

Eeek!

CHS says elsewhere.

a Christless sermon! A brook without water; a cloud without rain; a well which mocks the traveler; a tree twice dead, plucked up by the root; a sky without a sun; a night without a star. It were a realm of death—a place of mourning for angels and laughter for devils. O Christian, we must have Christ! Do see to it that every day when you wake you give a fresh savor of Christ upon you by contemplating his person. Live all the day, trying as much as lieth in you, to season your hearts with him, and then at night, lie down with him upon your tongue.[sermon: “A Bundle of Myrrh” (3/6/1864)]

Leave Christ out of the preaching and you shall do nothing. Only advertize it all over London, Mr. Baker, that you are making bread without flour; put it in every paper, “Bread without flour” and you may soon shut up your shop, for your customers will hurry off to other tradesmen. … A sermon without Christ as its beginning, middle, and end is a mistake in conception and a crime in execution. However grand the language it will be merely much-ado-about-nothing if Christ be not there. And I mean by Christ not merely his example and the ethical precepts of his teaching, but his atoning blood, his wondrous satisfaction made for human sin, and the grand doctrine of “believe and live.” [sermon: “Christ the Glory of His People” (3/22/1868)]

Leave Christ out? O my brethren, better leave the pulpit out altogether. If a man can preach one sermon without mentioning Christ’s name in it, it ought to be his last, certainly the last that any Christian ought to go to hear him preach.[sermon: “A Prayer for the Church” (1867)]

 

The gospel, the work of Jesus is announced and applied in every part of scripture. If we are not preaching about Jesus, the alternative is preaching will be about us. Tim Keller says that the bible is mostly about Jesus and hardly ever about us, other than our response to Jesus. Every character in scripture points to him… 

Jesus is the true and better Adam who passed the test in the garden and whose obedience is imputed to us.

Jesus is the true and better Abel who, though innocently slain, has blood now that cries out, not for our condemnation, but for acquittal.

Jesus is the true and better Abraham who answered the call of God to leave all the comfortable and familiar and go out into the void not knowing wither he went to create a new people of God.

Jesus is the true and better Isaac who was not just offered up by his father on the mount but was truly sacrificed for us. And when God said to Abraham, “Now I know you love me because you did not withhold your son, your only son whom you love from me,” now we can look at God taking his son up the mountain and sacrificing him and say, “Now we know that you love us because you did not withhold your son, your only son, whom you love from us.”

Jesus is the true and better Jacob who wrestled and took the blow of justice we deserved, so we, like Jacob, only receive the wounds of grace to wake us up and discipline us.

Jesus is the true and better Joseph who, at the right hand of the king, forgives those who betrayed and sold him and uses his new power to save them.

Jesus is the true and better Moses who stands in the gap between the people and the Lord and who mediates a new covenant.

Jesus is the true and better Rock of Moses who, struck with the rod of God’s justice, now gives us water in the desert.

Jesus is the true and better Job, the truly innocent sufferer, who then intercedes for and saves his stupid friends.

Jesus is the true and better David whose victory becomes his people’s victory, though they never lifted a stone to accomplish it themselves.

Jesus is the true and better Esther who didn’t just risk leaving an earthly palace but lost the ultimate and heavenly one, who didn’t just risk his life, but gave his life to save his people.

Jesus is the true and better Jonah who was cast out into the storm so that we could be brought in.

Jesus is the real Rock of Moses, the real Passover Lamb, innocent, perfect, helpless, slain so the angel of death will pass over us. He’s the true temple, the true prophet, the true priest, the true king, the true sacrifice, the true lamb, the true light, the true bread.

The Bible’s really not about you – it’s about him.

We want everyone to know what we are all about. So we put it right in the middle of our new sign we spell it out. West Kirk “It’s All About Jesus”. There are lots of great organisations doing work up and down the shankill. I think it’s a great place and I’m growing to love the Shankill more and more… But, in the end we are not all about the Shankill… There is some great mission going on all over the Presbyterian Church, great history and strength in the denomination, and that’s great, but we are not all about the PCI! West Kirk is a 40 year old congregation, it has been going in different forms for longer than that, but again, were not all about West Kirk. We want to be, beyond anything else, before anything else… All about Jesus. All that we do is all about HIM. All for HIM. Everything about us, our buildings, every group that runs, every Sunday that Christians meet in West Kirk, every pound we spend, every song that we sing, every lesson that is taught, every word of encouragement or counsel that is given, absolutely everything we do must be all about Jesus. 

Listen to Jesus as he talks about himself:

• I am the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end…
• I am the way, the truth and the life…
• I am the good shepherd…
• I am the bread of life…
• I have come to give life and give it to the full…

These are  just a few things that Jesus says about himself.  When we think about these words, it makes sense that we should tell everyone about Jesus and make a big deal of him! In our day to day life and in the life of our congregation.

Paul, was dead against Jesus and his people, until met Him, and was totally transformed! He gave his life over to telling others about Jesus, and wrote huge chunks of the New Testament. He says this :

 But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ.  What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things.    

 Paul said, that if there were a hundred important things that he had to say and do, the good news about Jesus was THE most important :

For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.

I want us to keep coming back to that, let this shape us and lead us. I want us to always come back to Jesus as our confidence and comfort. I want our mission and reason for being to be shaped by his words and his mission. I want us to reflect his grace and forgiveness in our lives.