reversing the flow

'Cultural Connections' is one of the 'blogs' I follow.

Nigel Pollock posts some pretty interesting stuff on this blog. And today I was doing some 'catch-up' on his two most recent posts.

The one he posted on Sunday past is worth a look (well, they're all worth a look, of course: but this one's short and striking, and a pretty good place to start if you've not already checked this blogger out).

It's a clip from Youtube called 'Lost Generation' and it argues in a striking way for a thorough-going reversal which brings hope to the world in which we live.

It's that sort of thing that I'm involved in too. Changing the whole direction of people's outlook on life. Changing the way folk think and see and live.

The Bible calls it repentance. A total change of mind and heart. A complete change of direction.

A refusal to accept any longer the values and attitudes everyone else has assumed. A resolve to embrace the values and outlook of God. To enter his kingdom. To go against the flow.

It's this that I see the Lord always doing in people's lives. Reversing the flow.

We were praying last night at our 'group of 8' (the one that grew from 3) that the person who's found life tough would know God's presence in a singular way today and would really enjoy a total reversal of what yesterday's experience had been.

Here's the text I got tonight in relation to this person whom we'd prayed for - "she wants you to know she had the best day ever!"

Reversing the flow.

God's good at that. That's what is kingdom is all about. That's what Jesus does.

And that's what we're involved in, therefore, too. Exhorting, cajoling and summoning those we meet to change the whole direction of their lives and enter this kingdom of God.

This kingdom of God where God is at work restoring, renewing, remaking.

My day's been really full of that in one way or another.

I had a man in early on. A man who'd 'chanced' to be there at our worship Sunday past. And for whom God's word had been a powerfully personal thing. It spoke to him directly.

We chatted a while. I suggested to him that it felt like his life was in 'free-fall'. Which is a very scary feeling.

Out of control and spiralling always downwards. Very scary.

That's a man who needs to know the restoring power of God. Reversing the flow of his life.

There is hope. There is hope.

And it starts when we choose to change the direction we live.

Check out the clip and see for yourself.