Messiah and the mall

We're made to be creative. Like God himself.

Christmas is God at his creative best. 'Dropping in' on the world, to the surprise, consternation and delight (depending on who you were) of the multitudes.

Brilliant. Audacious. Breath-taking. Life-changing. Turning a corner in history.

How 'creative' can we be in a manner reflective of God?

Well, how about this. Back on the 13th November this year a whole crowd of unsuspecting shoppers got a big surprise while enjoying their lunch. 'Christmas' kind of happened all over again. (Click on the picture to view it)

There were over 100 participants in this 'Christmas Flash Mob', using their combined creative talents (and a good deal of Spirit-given courage, since they risked occasioning offence, ridicule and possibly [who knows these days] the sanctions of the law), to sound out that glorious good news of Jesus all over again!

Isn't this what we're called to be and do as Christians?

gospel ministry

Like most of the country, a thick carpet of snow covers all our ground.

We have a lot of ground, including a sizeable car park, which slopes up and away from the hall. Drainage, accordingly, is not generally a problem.

But the downside comes when there's snow or ice. Park at the top of the slope (if you manage to get your car there) and there's a chance that your parked car will slide back down the slope of its own volition.

Having a huge big car park is great. But it's a lot to clear when there's been a heavy fall of snow. And since the doctors' surgery is right beside us and patients use the car park when they go there, we can't exactly leave it untended - a miry pit from which there's no way out.

I was out shovelling snow the larger part of the morning. I thought I'd make a start before the snow had got trampled down, so it was a half past seven start. And that was me 'til after 11am!

Mainly because every time I thought I'd call it a day someone else got stuck and I had to go and dig them out.

It seemed to me a graphic illustration of the essence of the work to which I'm called as a preacher of the gospel. Digging people out and setting them on the road again.

Psalm 40 puts it in that sort of way. "He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire (read 'snow and ice'): he set my feet upon a rock and gave me a firm place to stand."

That's what the Lord does, in and through the gospel. Digging people out seemed like a graphic illustration.

At the other end of the day, another illustration. I'd called by a couple to see if they needed provisions. While there, the lady of the house fell. It was just as well that I was there as she might have remained on the floor for a good long time otherwise!

As it was, we got her on her feet again, and all was safe and well. As I say, another illustration of the work of gospel ministry. Getting people back on their feet again.

We are a 'fallen' (and often 'falling') people. Jesus puts us on our feet again. Psalm 40 again - "he set my feet upon a rock, establishing my way"

Like clearing the snow and digging folk out of the slippery rut into which they've slid; like helping folk who have fallen back onto their feet again, the work of gospel ministry is hard and uses muscles you didn't know you had.

But there's more than a little satisfaction at the end result!

Jonah

You'll know the story of Jonah, I'm sure.

But the 8 minutes you'll need to hear it re-told by a child will not be wasted time! (Click on the picture to view it). One of our older members e-mailed this in - The story of Jonah like you've never heard it before, and probably never will again.

pastors

Talk about 'meeting together'!

Having underlined yesterday the importance of meeting together, I find today is a long succession of meeting with different people. It's a steady, seamless stream of people, all by arrangement, mainly here, but I'm 'off-site' and out and about as well.

Conferring with a range of different leaders across a very varied spectrum of the church's life: and working through with other folk I'm meeting with some painful pastoral issues.

It takes me from the morning through to meal-time at the end of the afternoon. And then there's also a meeting at night with the leaders here, addressing the next year's budget.

One of the folk I've been seeing today highlights the value of taking some time 'apart'. Simply getting away for a day from time to time. Pastors need that space, he says.

He gives me a leaflet along these lines. The leaflet has a number of intersting quotes -

"Pastoral ministry is deeply rewarding and an immense privilege. [I couldn't agree more. It is a huge privilege, sharing with so many people in spheres that are essentially such 'holy ground'. And yes, it's wonderfully rewarding, too - not least in seeing the Lord at work, effecting change, and bringing gneuine healing].

"But the role brings with it particular vulnerabilities and peculiar pressures. The Gospel may be unbreakable treasure but the messengers of the Good News are positively fragile."

They have to be. They have to be utterly sensitive. Sensitive to the Lord, to what he's saying and doing in a person's life. Sensitive to the person they're with, to the needs and the feelings that person has, and to what's being said in what is not being said.

That sensitivity, though, does make a pastor vulnerable. He feels the weight of others' cares as though they were his own. He feels the hurts that others know as if they were his own.

And because his skin is never thick (he can't afford such calluses to grow across his heart), he often struggles inwardly with an aching sense of failure and most times feels acutely any criticism made.

The leaflet quotes from C H Spurgeon, a preacher from a by-gone generation, whom I always have admired -

"It would be a dreadful thing to be a pastor without cares ... but some are overloaded with cares and overweighted with sorrows."

I remember my grandmother speaking about Spurgeon (their lives over-lapped). He was a remarkable man, an astonishingly eloquent preacher in the Baptist Church, occupying, with his sizeable frame, the Metropolitan Tabernacle pulpit in London for many long years, and drawing vast crowds of people every week.

The pastoral ministry consequent on that was huge. The Word of God, expounded by a man anointed by the Spirit of the Lord, simply ploughs the ground of human hearts and brings all sorts of things right up to the surface. Things which need to be addressed, worked through.

Pastoral ministry, properly understood, is the personal application of the Word that's being expounded. Given there were thousands every week attending that worship in London, Spurgeon had a lot of that to do.

Outwardly you'd have thought he had it all together. But the struggles he had in himself you'd hardly believe. Lifelong, massive struggles, in a number of different areas of his life.

Overloaded with cares and overweighted with sorrows.

The man spoke (or wrote, since the quote is from the book, 'An all round ministry') from very real personal experience.

But then, that's pretty much what the great apostle Paul was saying, too, when he spoke about the trials and afflictions he'd endured.

He wrote that "the God of all comfort .. comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows. If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation: if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurancec of the same sufferings we suffer." [2 Cor.1.4-6]

He's saying, in a sense, that pastoral ministry involves a great amount of empathy. There's a sense in which the pastor has had to have been there, known that, and got, not the T-shirt, but the scars and wounds to prove it.

Pray for your pastor! He's not some thick-skinned superman. He carries the cares and the burdens of those for whom he cares as though they were his own. He feels for his people. He aches for his people. He yearns for his people.

And the pain of that yearning is great and intense and ongoing.

meeting together

An important part of surviving in the jungle of our secular world is our meeting together.

"Let us not give up meeting together ..."

It can be tempting, for all sorts of reasons, to skip the meeting together. We're busy people, after all. Time is at a premium.

But this meeting together is part of the basic survival package which the Lord gives to us. Because hand in hand with the call to meet together is the urgent exhortation to encourage one another. The two belong together.

There's the Sunday meeting together. That's why and how the 'day of rest' was first defined. Not just downing tools and quitting the work side of things for a day: but actively meeting together.

"A day of sacred assembly," as the good book puts it.

We meet for together every single Sunday. It's meant to be a priority (not all can make it each week, of course, for different reasons: and some can't make it at all - but that doesn't alter at all the fact that it's to be a high priority).

Our survival, remember, depends, at least in part, on this meeting together - and the encouragement that brings. Which is why we try and make it very clear that the time over coffee and tea at the end is just as integral a part of it all as the slightly more formal 'act of worship' itself.

The chance to engage with each other - to meet together, rather than simply sitting beside each other.

I was up in Aberdeenshire last night, for an evening service there. Howe Trinity Parish Church host an annual Songs of Praise, which draws in folk from neighbouring congregations. An expanded version of this meeting together.

And a time of real encouragement. There was a good-sized congregation and a vibrant spirit of worship. And the Lord himself was present in our midst.

Today has been much the same. Meeting together with different folk.

Meeting with people this morning. With the set intent of affording each other encouragement. They need it. I need it. It doesn't come any other way than by meeting like this together. It's how we survive. As important as that.

Through to Glasgow this afternoon, to meet with others who've gathered from all over the country. We don't really meet to decide that much. But as one of the men there says - it's the meeting together which helps. There's encouragement in that.

Tonight there's our regular monthly time of prayer (well, it's not as regular as it might be, I guess, since it's not always the same night of the week).

This, too, is our meeting together. And this, too, is for our encouragement.

Clive Parnell is here tonight, sharing something of the work in which he's involved with UCCF.

He reminds us that committed Christians comprise perhaps something like 2% of the student world. He draws some helpful contrasts with the way things are now as compared to maybe 20 or 30 years ago.

More students, less care. More stress, less cash. More mess, less maturity. More ignorance of the Bible, less confidence in the gospel. More plurality, less tolerance.

A whole series of contrasts. It's a very different student world today. It's good to hear of what's going on. Encouraging.

The Scriptures stress this meeting together. Our society today can sometimes make it hard.

Neighbours often don't really know each other at all. The garden fence, over which neighbours of a former generation often talked, has become a high-level hedge or even a wall. A barrier and a boundary, the opposite of any sort of meeting together.

The common green's been replaced by individual lawns. Families barely see each other: there's a TV in everyone's room. Even the pub's been largely superceded by the virtual world technology has somehow engineered.

It's harder now than it used to be. But certainly just as important.

Let us not give up meeting together! Our survival depends on it.

friends

'Friends'.

A bit like 'Neighbours', the word has been hi-jacked by the television programme of the name.

Which is a shame, since there's more to the notion of friendship than Monica, Ross and the four other flat-mates convey on the box.

There is such a thing as a friendship that's rooted in Christ. The strong and lasting bonds of genuine brotherhood (and sisterhood) which are tied to the Lordship of Christ in our lives. A deep and enduring commitment to one another in the alternative 'society of friends' (though that phrase has already been coined, of course, long ago, and is now a specialist term).

It was that friendship in Christ to which I was pointing the folk today who gathered to share in our lunchtime service of worship. Friendship whereby we covenant together in Christ and pledge to be committed to each other and to seek each other's good.

That's what it means to belong to the body of Christ. And when that sort of friendship pervades a congregation's life, then healthy growth ensues.

We work quite hard to cultivate the contexts where such friendship can take root. A quick dipping in and out of a Sunday worship service cannot really suffice. Try sowing seeds on a pavement in a gale force wind. There isn't a hope of the thing taking root.

Part of the Wednesday worship involves the lunch, of course. And for some, as well, the journey on the bus we run to bring them here and home. Friendships are formed, take root, and start to grow. There's the time and the space, and the 'warmth in the soil' as it were, which fosters the growth of such friendship.

But it's not just ensuring the contexts are there for such friendships to grow and to flourish. There's a need to work at attitude as well. That's where the commitment comes in.

We choose to bind ourselves to one another in the fellowship of Christ: to seek each other's good: to take each other's hand: to fight each other's cause. We're careful, thus, in what we say and how we speak, and how we live our lives. We choose to help each other, to promote each other's good.

That's the sort of people we aspire to be. Where this friendship is an integral component in our way of life.

And much of what I'm doing is entirely in that realm. I am friend as well as pastor. Relationship is basic to such leadership. I understand that. I have to work at that.

A lot of my time is thus spent in my working things through with my friends. Personal rather than professional.

You are my friends, Jesus declared. Which was a bit of an eye-opener to those who'd come to recognise increasingly just who he was and is.

Friends. To whom he was and is committed.

It's that he longs to be reflected in the life his people live.

suffering

Suffering.

Sooner or later, one way or another, to some extent or another, we all suffer.

We don't enjoy it. And we don't understand it. We're not always sure what to make of it.

The why-is-this-happening-to-me line of thinking kicks in from the start. Especially with those who have offered up their lives to Jesus Christ and sought to serve their Lord. You'd expect that they of all people would get, if not exactly a 'special' deal, at least a fair deal.

So why is it that good Christian folk still suffer?

1. Suffering can be the discipline of the Lord. I start with this, not because it's the most common reason for the illness or pain or the trial we're having to bear, but because, for sensitive souls, this is where they tend to start.

I'm suffering, therefore I must have done something wrong. I'm being punished by God.

That's what I term Sound of Music theology (you know the bit where Lisa, I think, enjoying the thrill of her first teenage love, sings that song and concludes - ".. so somewhere in my youth, or childhood, I must have done something good ..").

It's very simplistic, has a grain of truth about it which gives it credibility, but can often simply add to the pain and the struggle being borne.

Our suffering can be attritbutable to that, certainly. It can be the means that God uses to discipline his child. He is the righteous God, after all, and like any wise and loving father, he will discipline his children when they step out of line and get things wrong.

But in many ways, this form of 'discipline' is something of a last resort. It was C S Lewis, I think, who used to say that pain is God's megaphone - the only way, sometimes, that he can make his voice heard in the face of our stubborn resistance.

Most times, though, the suffering Christians endure is not attributable to this. That was the mistake that Job's four pals all made: you're suffering - you must have done something bad.

Which was a load of nonsense in his case.

Search your heart and life, certainly. Acknowledge any sin before the Lord, for sure. Repent and put things right if things are wrong.

But don't lash yourself unecessarily, and recognise instead that there are other reasons why you may be suffering.

* * *

2. Suffering can be a 'sanctifying' experience in our lives. This is akin to the no-pain-no-gain principle which athletes understand.

It's not the Lord who causes or sends the suffering. But he allows it - and does so because he is able to turn it to good and make it work for our growth in grace.

This is a pretty constant theme through the pastoral letters of the New Testament, picking up on the conviction which poor old Job first expressed when he cried out defiantly - "when he has tried me I shall come forth as gold".

Suffering of one sort or another is likened to a furnace through which much that is merely 'dross' in our lives is burnt off: and we come forth as 'gold'. Suffering, in other words, does something to us.

It strengthens us. It softens us.

It makes us more resilient and at the same time more compassionate.

It draws us closer to God. It gives us a deepening sense and experience of his presence and his love.

There was a girl I remember from years ago - a lovely Christian girl - who passed through a dark and difficult time. I wouldn't wish what I've been through on my worst enemy, she said: but I wouldn't have missed it for anything.

It did something to her. It changed her. It deepened her knowledge of God. It fashioned her likeness to Christ. It made her fit for service.

* * *

3. Suffering can be part of the cost of serving Christ. We follow a crucified Saviour, after all. And we're called to take up our cross and share with him in his redemptive work in the world of today.

Paul once wrote some remarkable words along these lines. "I rejoice in what was suffered for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ's afflictions, for the sake of his body, which is the church." [Col.1.24]

That's pretty daring, the way he puts it. What is still lacking in Christ's afflictions... If you didn't know better you'd figure he was saying there was something incomplete about the costly death of Jesus.

I hope you do know better! Because he's not saying that, of course. But he is saying that the pattern of Jesus' life and ministry is replicated in the lives of his people, and that to good effect.

As the resurrecting power of God was released through the crucifixion of his Son, so that same healing and renewing power is released through the lives of his people as they share, too, in a multitude of different ways in the suffering which he bore.

"For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that his life may be revealed in our mortal body. So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you."

Our suffering becomes redemptive in Christ. Sometimes you need to cling onto that with everything you've got.

You resolved to follow Jesus. You count it your privilege to share in his work. You asked that he would glorify himself in and through your life.

More often than not, our suffering is related to such prayers. Not so much a punishment as a purifying privilege and ministry.

just another day

I had a kind and thoughtful e-mail on Saturday past in relation to my having spoken at the Men's Meal last week.

"Many thanks for speaking at the Men's supper, which finished off the occasion on just the right note. Not easy to do, after another 12 hour working day for you...."

The guy is always very gracious and I appreciate enormously his constant courtesy in the way he's always careful to articulate his thanks.

But I laughed out loud at the last little bit of his thanks.

".. after another 12 hour working day .."

I wish!

Most of my days are a good deal longer than a mere 12 hours. Not that I object at all. I love what I do. And there's always a great variety in what's to be done.

Today's been another long day. Already it's almost 11 at night and I'm still not done. I never am!

The morning was sorting some admin out, then meeting with various folk, and trying to address some computer issues (they're great when they work, but a bind when there's something askew).

Back to the Halls (it's afternoon now) to attend to some e-mails; then meeting again with some people regarding our youth.

Some preparation next for Wednesday's lunchtime service. Then preparation, too, for this coming Sunday evening.

I'll be away up north myself that night where I'm preaching at a service elsewhere. We've Jonathan de Groot (from St Stephen's Comely Bank) preaching here at night, so I'm starting to put the service together for that.

There's a song he's requested which will tie in well with the thrust of what he'll be saying. O Church arise, by Stuart Townend and Keith Getty. I know the song. The lyrics and music are good.

But we don't have the song in the books that we use - and we haven't sung it here before. So I'm working to get both the music and words, and arranging for folk who will give us the lead that we need in singing the song through the service, come Sunday night.

By the end of the afternoon, I'm beginning to get that sorted.

A quick bit to eat then I'm out again. Helping ensure that an evening meeting here in the halls runs smoothly - in terms of microphones and things like that.

A lengthy time of pastoral help to one of our people here. Life is far from easy for any of us.

More visits. Back to the halls to be putting the mikes away. Some further pressing admin to attend to. And some preparation too.

Where has the day just gone?

Just another day, as the Beatles once sang. Well, yes. Just another day. But every day is different. And every day is full of the Lord and his gracious, unseen presence through it all.

He's at work. Quietly. Marvelously. Sovereignly.

And in amongst the pieces which comprise each day, I'm remembering that - and thrilled by that as well.

remembrance

Another full day with an early start and a late finish. So what's new?

Remembrance Day. Always a poignant day.

It's long since developed from what the day's origins were. The succession of conflicts across the globe, and the extensive media coverage there is, have long since combined to make the day a much more up-to-date and in-your-face occasion.

I'm along at the Royal High School early on. Their memorial door, and the memorial windows, too, which they have (all alike transported to the new school campus here these many years ago), serve as a lasting reminder of the former pupils of the school whose lives were ended all too prematurely in the two 'World Wars'.

It's more than a passing nod that the school gives to the day. It's an extended reflection and a solemn, deliberate marking of the sense of debt there is to those who gave (and give) their lives.

One of the local councillors is there today. His father was killed in action at the end of the second World War. It only serves to make the thing more personal still. The grief and loss remains, I guess, as real today as ever it has been.

From there I've a rapid dash across to the primary school for the first of their assemblies. I'm not there for the start today (I can't be in two places at once), but one of our elders has gone along and spoken about the poppies to the pupils there. I'm in time to lead the prayer at the end.

A quick trip back to the church, and then I'm back along the road to the school again. Assembly mark 2. This time it's the younger ones, the Primary 1s-3s.

They listen well on the value for the month. Creativity. A long and rather abstract word, but they seem to have got the gist of the thing.

The Head reminds them of the story he told the previous week.

An Australian farmer who sold off his farm because the years of drought had made the land unprofitable.

Many years later the man went back and found a thriving mining company there. They'd bought the land for next to nothing, dug down just that little bit further than the farmer with his ploughs had ever gone - and discovered great seams of silver.

If only the farmer had dug down just that little bit deeper, he'd have found this rich treasure himself.

The Head reminds them of the gifts of creativity they have. Dig down deep to discover them in yourself, he says.

The backdrop to it all, of course, (which doesn't get mentioned) is that we're made in the likeness of God, the great Creator: we're made to be creative.

Back to the church where I'm meeting with folk.

Then back to the school for the SU group. Today I get them to think a bit about Christmas. Their responses are more than a little interesting. One lad draws a picture of three crosses and spells it out that Jesus came to die for our salvation. Sometimes children grasp profound truths with astonishing clarity and simplicity.

I've got a lot of preparation still to do (and I'm starting to wonder when on earth it's going to get done) and a whole load of people to see as well. My afternoon is more than occupied.

And at night it's off to The Lot for the Men's Meal. Almost thirty of the men from the church are there. A lovely meal and a great chance to chat. Relaxing and very refreshing. And the after-dinner speech to do at the end.

'God and humour' is the title I've been given. I thought the man who organised the thing was my friend. Now I'm beginning to wonder, with a title like that!

I speak about just why and how God laughs. And why it is that 'laughter' is our middle name.

Looking back on the day I can see it's all about people. Pupils at the school today. People from the past. People with the problems which they're facing at this time.

Remembering. People are what the gospel is all about.

pastoral ministry

Our mandate from the Lord is hardly what you'd call complicated. "Go and make disciples."

Difficult, perhaps. But not exactly complicated.

The church is not there to make a noise, or to make a fuss, or to make a nuisance, or to make a big impression.

It's disciples we are to be making.

Not just converts. Not just members. Disciples.

People who are learning to follow Jesus and live life under his lordship. People who are growing in their knowledge of him, in their likeness to him, and their fruitfulness for him.

And it doesn't happen magically.

The formation of disciples is a long and demanding task. It requires a steady resolve on the part of the pastors, a teachable spirit on the part of all of God's people, and a framework within which it can happen in the life of a congregation.

It's that which we've been working on for a while. A 'framework' for pastoral ministry which is deliberately geared to securing that growth in Christ.

Most of this morning was spent on this matter again. Meeting with one or two others, who are closely involved in the thing, to work on this 'framework' again.

It involves a bit of a change of our outlook, I guess, on the part of both pastors and people.

A change of outlook on the part of pastors, because I suspect that we've not all been thoroughly clear in our minds that pastoral ministry has that growth in spiritual maturity as its aim: and even when it has been clear, I suspect we've not all been terribly clear about how such growth is promoted in those we are seeking to pastor.

A change of outlook on the part of God's people, because I suspect that commitment to Christ has not always clearly been seen in these terms of submitting our lives to the Lordship of Jesus and making ourselves thus accountable to those who are 'over us' in the Lord.

I suspect, as I say, that such a notion as that will be quite a shock to the system for some. It'll involve for some, I suspect, a radical change of perspective.

But we don't have an option. This is our calling in Christ as the people of God. To go and make disciples.

So we have to have an appropriate 'framework' for pastoral ministry.

We have to have pastors equipped to minister in this distinctively pastoral manner.

And we have to cultivate within our people this clear understanding that their coming under the Lordship of Jesus involves this commitment to growth - a long and costly path of true discipleship.

Transformation is at the heart of the gospel.

religion or the gospel

One of the books I read while off on holiday last week was "Death by love" by Mark Driscoll and Gerry Breshears.

If you get the chance to do so, it's certainly worth a read. But I should warn you - it's not for the faint-hearted.

It's a book about the atonement, or, as Mark Driscoll puts it in the Preface, "simply, the accomplishments of Jesus' death on the cross."

Each chapter, exploring a different facet of Christ's death on the cross, is written as a pastoral letter, so it's strong, not only on exposition, but on application as well.

"By way of warning," writes the author, "this book takes the pain of human sin very seriously and, consequently, it may be brutally harsh to read at some points (perhaps because we have been inundated with fluffy Christian books about victorious living)."

As an illustration of just how brutally harsh some of it may be to read, how about this for the way in which one of the letters begins - "Dear John, You are a despicable human being..."

Among the 12 compelling chapters, there's one on the gift of God's righteousness which is secured for us in Christ by his death on the cross. And in the course of the letter he writes in this chapter to a man by the name of 'David', Mark Driscoll declares -

"Dave, you are a very religious man, but I'm not sure you are a Christian man."

He then goes on helpfully to set out "ten basic differences between religion and the gospel because I do not believe you functionally understand the difference."

My guess (and observation) is that Dave is not the only one who doesn't understand the difference. Here then are the 10 differences between 'religion' and the gospel, as outlined by Mark Driscoll -

1. "Religion says that God will not love me until I obey his rules enough to earn his love. .. The gospel says that because God has already loved me and expressed this through the person and work of Jesus on the cross, I am now free from sin to live a new obedient life by the power of his love given to me as a free gift."

2. "Religion says that the world is filled with good people and bad people. .. [The gospel says that] the world is not filled with good people and bad people but rather with sinners who are either repentant and trust in Jesus' death for their life, or .. who are unrepentant and remain spiritually dead and separated from God under his wrath."

3. "Religion is about what you do. .. Conversely, the gospel is about what Jesus has done - for you, in you, through you - by grace."

4. "Religion is about getting from God. ..But the real gospel is not about getting what we want from God. Rather the goal of the gospel is to get God himself, who is our greatest treasure, highest joy, and source of life, whether we are rich or poor, healthy or sick, living or dying, happy or sad."

5. "Religion sees hardship as unloving punishment rather than sanctifying discipline. .. The emphasis in God the Father's loving discipline is correcting us, which godly punishment does as well."

6. "Religion is about you. .. However, because Jesus has lovingly served us, and we love him, we are to lovingly serve people as Jesus has us."

7. "Religion focusses almost exclusively on the external, visible life of a person and overlooks the internal, invisible life of the heart where motives lie. .. The gospel is concerned first with the state of our internal self."

8. "Because reigion is about what we do, the end result is that we lack assurance regarding our standing before God. .. The gospel tells us that because our standing before God is contingent on Jesus alone, we can know with assurance that we are secure as redeemed people."

9. "Religion simply does not work, because it results in either pride or despair. .. Conversely, the gospel alone leads to a humbly confident, joyous obedience because it teaches us that our righteousness is not our own, but rather a gift from Jesus because of his work on the cross."

10. "The desire underlying your pursuit f religion is in fact a noble one. David, you simply want to have righteousness. But you have sinfully sought it by the power of your own righteousness and not the cross of Jesus, which enables gift righteousness. .. Let me point out three things about this gift righteousness. First, it is through faith, not rule keeping. ... Second, the righteousness God gives is a status that is imputed, reckoned, attributed, or granted to us. .. The gifted righteousness is, thirdly, imparted to us at the time of faith, at the same time as our justification. ..."

It's a powerful book, as I say, and well worth the effort required to read it.

prophetic ministry

"And they will prophesy."

These are the words which more than any other define the church of Jesus Christ.

On the day when the church came into being, the text for the first sermon was taken from the book of the prophet Joel, a passage which anticipates the outpouring of the Spirit of God on all his people (rather than as it had previously, at best, been, upon only some).

And what will the effect of that utpouring of the Spirit of God be? Well, "your sons and daughters will prophesy," Peter declares, quoting the verses from Joel.

And to make quite sure that the point gets across he repeats the statement a couple of lines later on - adding it in to the text that he's quoting (it's not there in the original): "and they will prophesy."

That's what the church does. That's what she's called to be and to do. To exercise this essentially 'prophetic' ministry. The church is to be, individually and corporately, a prophet.

Now the prophet, properly understood, had two main roles or responsibilities.

The first was prayer.

"He is a prophet and he will pray for you and you will live." That's the first time the word 'prophet' gets used in the Bible (Gen.20.7). It puts down a marker. This is what prophets do. They pray.

They pray for others. And life, life from the Lord, is imparted. People start to live. Or to live again.

I'm one day back from holiday and I've had a series of calls from different folk. Quite strikingly, many of them were looking for me to come and to pray for someone or some situation. That's what prophets do, after all.

Alongside that, there's the task of proclamation.

Prophets had the call of God to bring the word of God to the people of God and to point the whole creation of God to the grace of God in the Son of God.

They were called to proclaim the gospel (in its fullest sense). To articulate the eternal truths of Scripture and to apply those truths to the contemporary world in which they lived.

That was their 'job'. That's what prophets did. It wasn't complicated.

They prayed and they preached. And they did so in a way that no one else was able to do.

Because the Spirit of God was upon them.

And that's what the church was, plainly, right from the start, called to be and do.

"And they will prophesy." They will exercise a prophetic ministry.

They are prophets, and they will pray for you, and you will live.

They are prophets, and they will preach God's Word, and ... well, the intention is always that the life-giving Word of God, declared through the power of the life-giving Spirit of God, should impart the life of God.

I fear that we've far too often lost the sharpness of that focus in our congregational lives, as the church in our land today.

Prayer and preaching. This is what the church is for, in the 'economy' of God. There are loads of worthy and worthwhile things which might be done, which invariably need to be done, and which certainly could be done, by the church - but these are the two tasks which only the church can do.

Pretty early on the church was aware of how easy it always would be to be side-tracked by all sorts of other, worthwhile and necessary things. And their response?

"We will give our attention to prayer and the ministry of the word." (Acts 6.4).

Simple.

We mustn't lose our focus!