A New Start

Now that I now have a little time during the week, I'll be updating this more often.

The Church of England is starting their Lambeth Conference today. Apparently they are not going to discuss homosexuality until the last day in three weeks time. And there was a 'break-away' collection of Bishops meeting in Jerusalem last month who have decided not to recognise the authority of the Arch-bishop of Canterbury. It doesn't seem strange, only sad, that such an institution that once was the concience on the nation cant even agree on who its ok to sleep with, or the deffinision of Anglicanism... To me it would be beneficial to go back to the Bible, swallow pride, pray hard, listen to God, take a deep breath and be speak out what the Bible says clearly.

On a lighter note. Jules and I returned from the Newfrontiers Brighton Leaders Conference hosted by Tery Virgo, with the main speaker being Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Church. Mark aslo joined Jubilee Chruch last weekend. See Adrian Warnock's for a review and some more links.

A call to Prayer

A call to prayer. We are called to pray. Jesus instructs us when we pray, not if, but when we pray, to go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

Two 'types' of prayer are, the fervent prayer where you cry out to God to help those you care for, rule over you, and for His kingdom to increase, for Jesus to come, to heal the sick for the blind to see and the lame to walk, and then there's the more relaxed type of prayer, almost a conversational prayer, like a Father/ son chat, where you talk with God which includes listening to what God has to say. This second type of prayer is some what rarer i feel.

Prayer also changes through out the year and over time. There are many reasons for this. Most are what happens around us. During the good times we can forget to prayer, sort of thinking that if everything is going well, then lets just get on with life and leave God to get on with what He does. In a way this is quite dangerous. You only have to look at what happened to Israel in the Old Testament. When Israel went through good times, they tended to stray from God, and only came back to Him when things went bad. When things go well, it would be good to thank God and give the Glory back to Him for without Him, there wouldn't be good times.

Other reason for prayer to change could be sin, feeling guilty out doing something and then not feeling 'right' to come before God. Well, maybe this should be the time to come before God, to ask for forgiveness, to 'put things right', to ask God maybe to help you put things right with your friend/ brother/ etc.

Answered prayer. This can be such a discouragement, but can also have the opposite effect of encouraging us even more to pray, and to pray for answers. And sometimes we don't like the answers too.

The final one in this note is tiredness, and I think we all know this one. The pressures of everyday life, work, the home, the children, friends, family, they all demand your time and energy.

But, sometimes, God will allow something tricky to happen that will draw us back to Him. First we run back to God with 'sorry I've been away, I didn't know I was doing it'. Then we realise that really we ought to make time, set aside time purposely to be with God, regularly. The Psalmist writes in 46;10 "Be still and know that I am God" or as the NASB puts it as "Cease striving..."

This week

Well, Sandra, Jules's aunt has moved out into her own place in Enfield. I am slowly making friends at work. Jules isn't feeling too well at the moment so we're not too sure if we'll make her work Xmas dinner on Friday. I hope we do.

Looking forward to tomorrow (Wednesday) evening as we're (Jubilee Church home groups) are meeting near Chingford. Should be good.

More later in the week when I have more time...