BOGOF! (That’s Buy-One-Get-One-Free to you!!)

There’s no such thing as a free lunch!

This week’s free, no obligation offer! 

We’re bombarded with attractive offers that make great play of something that is free.

And in the New Testament, and most especially in the Letter to the Galatians, Paul tells us that “It was for freedom that Christ has set us free”   Galatians was called by Martin Luther the greatest book of the Bible.  It is called the Christians’ Magna Carta of liberty.  If someone like Luther thinks a book based on Christian freedom is the greatest book of the whole Bible, then we should be at least curious about it.

What do you have to do to be a real Christian? What makes real Christians different from those who are just acting religiously?  In this world if you want to get into a club, you have to pay to get in. If you want to be known as a helpful volunteer, you have to work at it. So what do you have to do to be a Christian?

Over the centuries a lot of different people have come up with a lot of different ways for being a Christian. If you want to become a Christian (they say), you must belong to a particular church, or must give a certain amount of money, or must live your life in a certain way or follow a particular leader or must do a number of good things to please God.

But the Bible gives a different answer to the question, "what can you do to be a Christian?" The Bible's answer is: absolutely nothing! You don't make yourself a Christian. Christ makes you a Christian. You don't have to jump through hoops to become a follower of Christ. God does everything to make you one. Rather, Paul tells us that Christ has set us free, free from sin, from death, and from any requirements to earn God's love.

The trouble is that ordinary human beings like you and me don’t handle freedom well.

If you are like most other Christians who have ever lived then you will run into one of two problems with regard to the freedom we have in Christ.

1. We abuse that freedom.  Until Christ frees us, we live lives addicted to sin.    We are set free from addiction to sin in order to choose the way of Christ.  It’s the freedom to make a choice to follow His way for us.  We accept the freedom from the penalty from our sins that Christ offers but then we use the freedom to choose to behave selfishly.  We ignore the fact that we can only be slaves to sin or slaves to doing it his way. 
2. We run away from freedom.  The idea of being free to is too big; too scary.  So we want something that takes the choices away from us.  We want someone else to set out some firm boundaries for our lives. And so, like virtually every other human being since time began, we become religious.  To be religious is to live according to laws and rules which bind and rob us of the choice.  The word religion comes from a root word meaning to bind - and all religion binds.  It is the opposite of the freedom that Christ offers.

It was for freedom that Christ has set us free.  The freedom is not something to long for.  If you truly belong to Christ then you have it already.  It’s what we do with the freedom He gives that is our business for today.

Paul wrote his letter to the Galatian Christians for a specific purpose  -  because someone had heard Paul’s teaching about the freedom that Christ offers and was now trying to undo that and make them slaves to religion once again. 

Paul had visited Galatia during his first missionary journey, somewhere around 55AD. Galatia wasn't a town but a whole region in the south part of what is (today) the country of Turkey. Paul visited various towns in Galatia and started Christian churches there.

But after Paul had left Galatia, someone else had come into the area and had started stirring up trouble.

It happens all the time. Christians are faithful to God and trust his good news and believe his Word and then someone will come and start putting wrong ideas and doubt in their heads.

The doubt which the Galatians had is a common one among Christians: Doesn't God really ask  us to do something for his forgiveness? Don’t we have to persuade God we are worth it?  God can't really forgive our sins for free, can he?

The freedom we have in Christ cost Him his life, his reputation, his dignity……everything.  What will you do with the freedom he offers you today? 

Read JOHN 20:  19-31

Poor Doubting Thomas!  Tradition labels the man.  It seems that after every Easter, poor Thomas’ lack of faith in the risen Jesus is brought out again for us to laugh at.

Preachers usually take it as a warning about lack of faith. But it is also a lesson about what a church is. After all, this little group of disciples was the first church. And their story is the story of every church since, and of our church, too. The important question this text asks is: when is a church really a church? And it answers: A church is a church when Christ stands at the centre of His disciples.

When Jesus was taken away and killed, the disciples started to become lost again. We find them here, locked and hidden away, gripped by their fear.  A little later in John's account, we read that the disciples began to drift back to their old ways. A depressed Peter said, "Let’s go back to fishing." And the others agreed.  Without Jesus in the centre, only the past looked good.

But everything changed when "Jesus came and stood among them." He wasn't dead;He was truly alive. God had given Him a new life so real, so determined that nothing - not locked doors, nor locked hearts - could keep Him from coming in. At once, their anxiety vanishes, their gloom lifts. When John says it simply: "They rejoiced when they saw who it was," I guess he could almost win a prize for understatement.

From the centre of the circle, Jesus breathes His new life on them. "Peace," He says, "Shalom”. He kisses them with a love so understanding of their cowardice; so calming of their fears that, within days, they are bold enough to share good news so that thousands of people believe what they say, finding this new life, this Christ, for themselves.

A church is a church when Christ lives in its centre.  Then there's reason to rejoice, a reason to face up to our fears, a reason to become witnesses to something, to offer a spiritually hungry world what it needs. With Jesus at the centre, the disciples received His breath, His commission to go out and they received forgiveness from His own lips.

Without Christ alive at the centre, a church becomes a people who lie down with the dead Christ in His tomb. Without Christ alive at the centre, the church celebrates its rich tradition, but it is really a community of memories, always looking back at a past that is better than the present and better than what they fear lies ahead.

Without Christ alive at the centre, the only mission that inspires any passion is the preservation of the museum. We guard the exhibits, check that the cabinets are locked and make sure everything's in its usual place. We may move a few items around and change the labels but all we do is look upon previous generations’ experience of Christ.

Without Jesus at the heart of things, the church becomes a club of like-minded people, wanting to live well and do right.  A place to meet and make friends. Not a bad thing; but you can do all of them elsewhere. God wants to give us more than the world can give.

A church is a church only when the living Christ, standing in the circle of disciples, breathes His Spirit on us, takes our fears away and removes our chains, and then goes with us to carry to others His peace and forgiveness.

What about us?  Well, church is where we are firstly accepted, and then can start to change, deepen, stretch and be strengthened for life and work until everyone has met Him and can say, like Thomas, "My Lord and my God!"

We are now in the last week of Lent:  that is, the forty (weekdays) running up to Easter.  We don’t find Lent anywhere in the Bible but it helpfully brings to mind the time that Jesus spent in the wilderness getting close to God before he called his first followers.  Lent offers us Christians the chance to look inward to see what needs some spring cleaning in our relationship with God.

This season of Lent is about one question: "How are you and me doing, Lord?"

Don’t for a second think that this is easy to ask this or that you can let yourself off the hook.  It is a serious undertaking to ask such a question and mean it. Most of us prefer not to.  Indeed there are big barriers to the process.

• We allow far too much noise into our souls – by which I don’t mean broadcast sound.  We are just often far too busy to meet with Christ in the private room of our inner life.

• When we do look prayerfully within, we are usually too lenient when it comes to our own lives and far too hard when it comes to judging the lives of others.  Quick to justify ourselves and slow to excuse others.

• And...  we are sometimes fearful of what we will see.

Take a few minutes now and read PSALM 51

This psalm is written by the famous King David who we find  in the Old Testament of the Bible.  Like many of us, David was living in denial of his sin.  In his greed and lust, David broke every major commandment: lying, murderous conspiracy, adultery and theft! 

He glosses over the seriousness and the reality of what he has done until Nathan the prophet courageously comes to him and confronts him with his sin.  Cleverly, Nathan leads into this with a parable in which the King looks at his situation as though someone else had committed the wrong.  In this parable, a rich man steals a lamb from a poor man to feed a guest.  The lamb had been like a member of the poor man’s family.  The rich man, who could have anything he wanted and any lamb in the land, nevertheless devastates the poor man by stealing his one lamb.

King David is incensed and angrily blurts out, "As the LORD lives, the man who has done this deserves to die; he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he had no pity." [2 Sam 12:5-6] Then Nathan delivers the crushing truth, "You are the man!"

Psalm 51 is the account of David dealing with his corrupt personality. How could God forgive such a sinner?  How could God ever think of blessing someone who had done such things?

Well God did forgive when David repented – that is, turned his life around, to go in God’s direction again.   Yet, even though David is forgiven, his life was changed ever after that. He was scarred.  Besides the death of his child, David endured lifelong pain and anguish in a family life that had been derailed by his selfish actions.

We so often gloss over this point.  We may earnestly repent and kind heaven will forgive.  But the scars and the consequences of sin are a hard reminder.

We do not take sin nearly seriously enough. 

We need to come face to face with our sin and separation from God. I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. [Psalm 51 v.3]

• No matter who we have hurt or harmed, or what we have done, all sin is sin against God.  David had sinned against his people, Uriah, and Bathsheba - but it was all sin against God.  "Against you, you alone, have I sinned, and done what is evil in your sight..." [v.4]

• God alone can clean us up from sin and give us spiritual healing / recovery.  "Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions" [v1]

• Forgiveness of sin brings about new life, new birth or new creation. "Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me." [v.10]

• There is no real joy in our living until we are reconciled to God.   Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and sustain in me a willing spirit. [v.12]

So, this Lent ask the question each day:  “How’s it going between you and me, God?”  Repent, turn around your life.  And may God give each one of us the spiritual courage not only to look within ourselves and confront our sins but also to get right with him.

have you noticed how many 'forty days and nights' are in the Bible? Wow - Moses on the Mount receiving the tablets of law - Noah at sea in The Ark - Jesus in the wilderness. 

Found this info http://www.biblestudy.org/bibleref/meaning-of-numbers-in-bible/40.html

Interesting. Any thoughts?

Here’s a story, told by M. Scott Peck in his book, Further Along the Road Less Traveled: The Unending Journey Towards Spiritual Growth, that touches on God’s complete forgiveness:

A little girl said she talked to Jesus, and people in her village began to get excited about that. Then word got around so some of the neighbouring villages, and the other people began to get excited about it.  Finally, word reached the bishop’s palace in and the bishop became somewhat concerned, because, after all, you can have any unauthorized ‘saints’ walking around in the Church.  So he appointed a priest to investigate this case.                                             

The little girl was brought to the bishop’s palace for a series of interviews.  At the end of the third interview, the priest threw up his hands and said, “I just don’t know, I don’t know what to make of this. I don’t know whether you’re for real or not.  But there is one acid test.  The next time you talk to Jesus, I want you to ask him what I confessed at my last confession.  Would you do that?” The little girl said she would. 

She went away and came back for her interview the next week, and with barely disguised eagerness the priest asked, “So, my dear, did you talk to Jesus again this past week?”
She said, “Yes Father, I did.”
“And when you talked to Jesus this past week, did you remember to ask him what I confessed at my last confession?
“Yes, Father, I did.”
“Well, when you asked Jesus what I confessed to at my last confession, what did Jesus say?”
And the little girl answered, “Jesus said, ‘I don’t remember.’”  

Done something really bad?  When you confessed and asked his help to change, God forgave that.

A man’s walking down the street when he falls in a hole. The walls are so steep he can't get out.

His pastor walks along and the guy shouts up, 'Hey Reverend. Can you help me out?' The pastor writes out a prayer for deliverance, throws it down in the hole and moves on.

Then a lawyer comes along and the guy shouts up, 'Hey, I'm down in this hole can you help me out?' The lawyer pulls out his business card, throws it down in the hole with an offer to help sue whoever dug the hole, but he too moves on.

Then a friend walks by, 'Hey, mate, it's me. I’m stuck in this hole - can you help me out?' And the friend jumps down into the hole. The first guy says, 'Are you mad? Now we're both in the hole!'

The friend says, 'Yeah, but I've been down here before and I know the way out.'

God is so completely different to us that we could not possibly know him or anything about him.  So he sent Jesus to identify with us in all that we face in our lives.  Because Jesus has been in the hole with us, he can help us because he is the way out. 

“We have a great high priest, who has gone into heaven, and he is Jesus the Son of God. That is why we must hold on to what we have said about him. Jesus understands every weakness of ours, because he was tempted in every way that we are. But he did not sin! So whenever we are in need, we should come bravely before the throne of our merciful God. There we will be treated with undeserved kindness, and we will find help."  Hebrews 4: 14-16

Happy Christmas and New year everyone. Hope yours is a good one.

God bless

dave

Hmmm  I've neglected this blog for a while.  There's no shortage of things to do in church or in family life and somehow it always seems to slip to the bottom of the 'to do' list.  But I have missed it, or at least I have missed this chance to think aloud and try and make sense of things that happen.  So here's an early 2011 resolution:  the blog and I wont be quite such strangers in the coming year.

I had a milestone birthday in 2010 and my present from Nikki was to go and spend a day at River Cottage in Dorset, which is where Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall has created the HQ of his TV series.  My day there in April was good fun:  it was their Pig and Pork day and the trainer was Ray Lewis who has a lifetime's experence as a butcher.  Ray demonstrated how to divide a half-pig into the different joints of meat (these were raffled off later and I came home with a 7lb boned organic pork joint!).  He then demonstrated how to turn pork belly into home-cured bacon and pancetta, before moving on to making sausages and salami.  Lunch was pig's liver (one of my favourites), with vegetables grown at River Cottage.  In the afternoon we did some hot and cold smoking of meats from the morning. 

So why, in Christmas week, am I thinking about pigs and pork?  Well just this:  I started curing our own bacon as soon as we moved house a little while ago (didnt think Val would have appreciated this in the flat at Hadleigh) and we have two pieces maturing in the workshop at the end of our garden which should be ready for Christmas Day - one bacon, one pancetta.  Now being my first efforts, I know that they may not be perfect and I am ready to make changes when we taste the bacon, including the need to vary the time spent 'curing' or the ingredients of the 'cure' itself (mainly salt, dark brown sugar and spices).  But here are two thoughts on all this.  Firstly, my day at River Cottage could have been just fun in itself but the real fulfillment of the present will be the long awaited day when I have tasted home-cured bacon for the first time, even if it needs a lot of improvement next time around.  The second is that I am waiting (yes, counting the days!) not for turkey or presents or even our Christingle, though they will be fun.  But waiting for the time to be right to experience something that nature and I have worked on together.

I'm probably the only person in Southend who is eagerly anticipating Christmas morning for this reason (among other more important reasons)!  Children will be prodding, squeezing and sniffing at wrapped presents to try and guess what they will receive.  Lots of people will be looking forward to Christmas Dinner, with all the trimmings (and, yes, there have to be Sprouts).  Some people will be hoping for company and warmth or simply to forget. Christmas can be a dark time for some.

A long time ago, God set in motion a rescue plan for us.  He hinted to people in the Old Testament of the bible that one day something would happen that would make a world of difference to those who chose to see it.  It took ages for it to come about. Lots of people lived and died waiting for God's plan to be seen.  And each Advent and Christmas we are reminded that "when the right time came, God sent his Son, born of a woman" (Galatians 4:4).   One of the names of Jesus in the bible is Emmanuel, which means God with us.  God has not left us alone with our hopes and fears but has come to share his life with us. If we take hold of this, it will make a world of difference to what we hope for. Advent is the time leading up to Christmas each year when, once again, we look forward to God with us again. 

And if we need a sharper thought this Advent than presents or tinsel or bacon, here's a thought to finish.  It was written by Oscar Romero, a South American archbishop who left his bishop's palace and lived in a homeless hostel.  He was murdered in 1978 when he stood up to those who used murder and torture to stay in power.

Advent should help us to discover
in each brother or sister that we greet,
in each friend whose hand we shake,
in each beggar who asks for bread,
in each worker who wants to use the right to join a union,
in each peasant who looks for work in the coffee groves,
the face of Christ.
Then it would not be possible to rob them,
to cheat them,
to deny them their rights.
They are Christ,
and whatever is done to them
Christ will take as done to himself.
This is what Advent is:
Christ living among us.

I went to a Christian men's breakfast the other day. At the end, the Minister gave us a subject to discuss. It was regarding the apparent changes to way the Christmas is perceived in this country. I thought I'd share it with you to see what others thought.

Has Christmas been overtaken by 'spend spend spend'?

What do we think about some Town Councils 'cancelling' Christmas to launch a Mid Winter/Winter  Festival instead? This is to make people of other faiths feel easier/happier by not making them feel 'awkward

What do we think about some offices and places not allowing Christmas decorations, so that they don't insult other religions?

What do we think of the news that Easter public holidays may be cancelled to balance other public holidays that are 'in the pipeline'?

it's a funny world isn't it? Back in 1960's southend council decide to replace a roundabout at victoria circus with a roundabout nearer the station. they also blocked up the high st and the old roundabout, paved it in and dug an underpass below a new shopping mall to get traffic to flow better across the town.

they are now digging up lots of road and demilishing the roundabout to put in a T-junction with traffic lights (I think). They are also blocking off the underpass that goes under the (now) refurbished shopping mall.

er....how is that an improvement????

It's been proved that (in general) roundabouts keep traffic flowing much more evenly than T- junctions (unless you put traffic lights on them on them of course - silly billys)

Poor old Southend. For those of you who don't remember the Town before 1964...what a pity. It was lovely !!!