Another two cracking sermons!!

Sunday 11th October

Can’t remember if I went to swing dancing today. Don’t think I did because I was starting to do my old headless chicken routine getting ready for next weekend.

Anyway, what I do remember from my notes is that we had another two really good sermons. The first one was about Windows & Walls. Basically, the devil will get you to a good thing to stop you doing the best thing and he’ll absolutely love you if you don’t think. It’s possible for Christians to be lied to and for us to believe the lie. One lie that Christians fall for is that they can add to their salvation which is a load of rubbish, otherwise everything Jesus did was a worthless endeavour, yet it’s so easy to think we have to do the right thing or God is just going to smash us like bugs.
I think this all stemmed from the current popular belief that there’s no such thing as truth (is that true?!), or at least it isn’t an absolute anymore.
Daniel Ralph (speaker) pointed out that the first of the Ten Commandments is to do with the mind and the rest are all behavioural. OK, we’re not bound by the Law because we’re under the New Covenant, but his point was that if you’re not thinking like a Christian, then you’re probably not living like one either.
Basically, we need to look at the words that God has given us so that we can see through the windows in the walls that the devil’s built i.e. know the truth that God has given us so we don’t get fooled by the lies of the world.

The evening service was taken by Derek Burnside – who taught on the 18-30’s holiday this year and will forever be remembered for cheating appallingly on The Great Adventure (at least by me). On a more important note, he is a really good teacher and he’s doing a series on the Holy Spirit this week which I’m really excited about because I’ve never had teaching on that before.
His talk was on Nehemiah 4. Nehemiah was a key player in the then latest stage of God’s rescue plan of gathering lost, scattered, sin-ridden people and bringing them back home (to Jerusalem). That’s basically our job. Nehemiah was building a wall to help that, we’re helping build the church so we need to learn the same lessons that Nehemiah had to learn.
He pointed out that halfway marks can be dangerous points – the initial excitement and drive has worn off and though we’re aware of the progress that’s been made, we’re all too aware of what’s left. Having started but not finished a lot of writing, I can heartily agree with that.
Just as what Nehemiah was doing was worth attacking because there were outside forces that didn’t want to see God’s people restored, what we’re doing is so important that it’s worth attacking for the same reason. John Stott realised that the devil’s tactics haven’t changed. If we’re ridiculed, it’s because people are angry and people don’t get angry unless they’re worried. When we’re ridiculed it’s easy to just put our heads down and hope it goes away, but instead we should pray for those people because in ridiculing God’s work, they’re mocking God which is a pretty dangerous place to be in. If we’re discouraged and take the lies of the enemy seriously, then we need to have faith and remember that we’re on the winning team.
Derek pointed out more attacks and counter-attacks that he didn’t have time to explain fully, but he was very encouraging. Everyone here is tooling themselves up to do the most important thing a human being can do and we will be attacked, but Jesus is more powerful. BRILLIANT!!!