“Well,” says the man. “I was happily married to the same woman for 52 years. I never looked at another woman. I was attentive and loved her dearly.”

“That’s great,” says Peter. “That’ll be two points.”

“Hmmm,” says the man. “This is going to be harder than I thought. Well, I attended church regularly, volunteered my time and tithed faithfully.”

“Wonderful,” says Peter, “That’s worth another point.”

“One point!” says the man. “Okay, okay. I was involved with a prison ministry for twenty-five years. I went into the prison, at least monthly, and shared Jesus with them.”

“Wow!” says Peter. “That’s another two points!”

“Only two points!” says the man. “At this rate, it’ll be only by the grace of our Lord that I’ll ever get into this place.”

“Bingo!” says Peter. “That’s one hundred points! Come on in.”

1. Sometimes we ask God to change our circumstances—heal the sick, give us daily bread, protect us from suffering and evildoers, make our political leaders just, convert our friends and family, make our work and ministries prosper, provide us with a spouse, quiet this dangerous storm, send us rain, give us a child.
2. Sometimes we ask God to change us—deepen our faith, teach us to love each other, forgive our sins, make us wise where we tend to be foolish, help us know You better, give us understanding of Scripture, teach us how to encourage others.
3. Sometimes we ask God to change everything by revealing Himself more fully on the stage of real life, magnifying the degree to which His glory and rule are obvious—Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven, be exalted above the heavens, let Your glory be over all of the earth, let Your glory fill the earth as the waters cover the sea, come Lord Jesus.

But what we need to do is to learn how to interweave each of these aspects of prayer.  A good example is the Lord’s Prayer which contains all three, tightly interwoven.

Read the full article here…

Thought about the General Election

Today, they have published an interesting article by the co-director of Ekklesia called Would Jesus Vote ‘Other’?, which gives 10 suggestions to encourage debate about whether Jesus might in fact opt for something other than a vote for the three big parties.

Please have a read, and then let us know your thoughts.

It was a film that wasn’t billed as a sci-fi movie, but it became a prophecy of what would happen in Britain in the next decade. Once upon a time we would have gathered around the TV to watch stunning films of exotic animals in green-glazed rain forests. And we would have wondered and been in awe. Now we began to gather round TV sets watching ‘reality’ programmes, analysing the humans on parade before us. Programmes with ominous titles such as Big Brother, or Celebrity Big Brother. Programmes about people taking driving lessons, turning up at airports, engaging in parenting, wife swapping, throwing up on city streets after all-night binges. People with dirty houses, horrible diseases, yearnings to relocate. And programmes about people performing, wanting to be a Pop idol, persuading us that Britain does have talent, making us to believe that they have an X factor – whatever that may be, this year.

And it was real. ‘Reality TV’ became the staple diet for all of us in the noughties.

So what did it tell us about ourselves. It revealed that we could be really cruel. Does anyone actually prefer the final rounds of X Factor to the initial auditioning rounds? Isn’t it more fun to wonder at the sanity of the talentless who think they have talent, than to try and decide between four people who clearly do have a modicum of talent? It’s the equivalent of the Victorian side show. Roll up, roll up. Be amazed, be disgusted, be ready to heap your humiliation on the performer.

And if a phone call vote is not enough to show your displeasure, go to our website and post your comments for all to see.

Reality took people, ordinary people, flawed people, and paraded them for our entertainment. And we loved it when they failed to amuse us or disgusted us or bored us. How could they be so ordinary? So like us?

We want our reality TV to not be too much like reality. In reality, all our ‘reality TV’ is heavily edited, shaped, emphasised in such a way that it no longer looks like reality at all. After all, we can’t bear too much reality.

We have created lots of Truman Shows. And ‘behold, we thought it was good’.

But it wasn’t. It made us meaner, crueller, less affirming and less involved. Reality TV was not good for our reality, or I suspect, our souls.

They may have provided us with ‘water cooler moments’ at work, but they did our humanity no good at all. It’s hard to ‘think on these things: all that is noble, right, pure …..’ when the air you breathe is polluted with alternative toxins.

These toxins seep in unnoticed. Who’ll be the first to say, let’s do ‘Elim’s got Evangelists’ on TV, a race to see how many can be won for Christ in 30 minutes. Come on, the clock’s ticking. Or ‘Britain’s best preachers’, how do you rate for content, style, panache. Who’ll be Simon Cowell? I’m joking. But only just.

The truth is that Jesus calls disciples to reality. Not the reality that’s edited out of all recognition, but the reality of everyday. The reality of living faithfully with your spouse over the long term, battling when boredom threatens, staving off the allure of unfaithfulness. The reality of long-term loving of children who challenge, make mistakes, choose alternative ways. The reality of faithful work in the market-place, staying true to principles that mean you may be overlooked for promotion, or thought dull or perhaps, worst of all, eternally reliable, and used as such. And the reality of belonging to church communities of ordinary people who can be petty, small minded, as well as loving, gracious and trustworthy.

These are the realities in which discipleship is forged. These are the arenas where you declare yourself to be a follower of Jesus, following his truth, in his way, committed to receiving his life.

For it’s in the midst of this reality, that you will discover the true reality of the resurrection life.

Am I the only one who struggles to get through these dark months, and long for the longer days, the chance of sun and a sense of waking up from enforced hibernation.  Snow’s fun, but when it returned on Wednesday was I the only one who thought it was getting a bit wearing now.  The dark nights are good for feeling snug in a warm house, watching good telly, but won’t it be nice to walk around in the early evening in the sunlight.  Dark mornings are great when you have chance to sleep in, but it’s horrid going to work and getting home again in the dark.

I could go on.  I’m good at this sort of thing. It’s called moaning, whinging, whining.  I’ve got loads of things I can moan about – it’s not just the time of year.  I’m really quite skilled at it – bins that aren’t emptied, traffic jams, missed buses, gas companies that get you all mixed up.  No end of topics.  I can bore for ever.  I’m an expert.  It’s not a gift, it comes naturally and easily to me.

But I’ve had to interrupt this natural stream of consciousness recently  because of a challenge.  It was New Years Eve and a friend challenged a few of us to find three things to be grateful for each day.  Just 3.  And all we had to do was to jot them down before we went to sleep each day.  Not much of a challenge.  A bit of a pain to remember to do it.  And I felt a bit daft doing it.  But 3 things.  No problem.

The first day was easy.  New Year’s Day.  A holiday.  Free time, no stress, no pressure.  The next day was trickier – it involved missed flights, cold trains, lots of extra cash being paid out.  But still one of the things I was grateful for was just getting home.  And so it went.

And then normality set in.  The normal rhythm of life.  And some days three things became more of a challenge to search out.  I mean I could cheat and make stuff up – thanks for a roof over my head and the rest, but I wanted to do it with integrity and only put down what I meant. So I had to start really looking for these three things.  I found myself stopping in the day to register things I was grateful for.  The woman who served me in the shop really well.  The meal that just hit the spot.  The music I heard that lifted my heart.  The friends around me.  The late night chat with my wife.  The sound of the front door being slammed that signalled the kids all being home.

Ordinary stuff.  But things to be really grateful for.  And the more I started to pay attention to this, the less time I had for moaning, even though that’s my natural default setting.  I think this was what the challenge was about all along.  A chance to recognise all the good things that come my way.  A chance to say thank you.  In my case to God, the one I believe sends blessings around us, if only we can train our eyes to spot them.  A chance to break out of the cycle of endless moans.

The challenge was only for a month, but I’m going to carry on doing it.  It makes me feel better about my life.  It helps me see that whilst there are challenges, there are many good things.  And it’s always good to balance the ‘help’ prayers that we often call out, with ‘thank you’ prayers that come from grateful hearts. Maybe you’ll try it. After all, you might have thought of three things already.  Just three things. Not many is it.  But find them, and you’ll feel blessed.

But without doing a spoiler – it’s not the be all and end all. He has sisters, one of whom is getting married and they need him. They are not that particularly attractive. His older sister is sharp, cutting and ordinary. The groom is a bit of a boring geek. They don’t have much money and their homes are, well, homely. No steel surface and leather here.

And this is rootedness. But it’s boring, small, ordinary.

And this is the choice we all have – to run after the glamour of a life always moving – always for us, and one that’s here and now and for others. Ordinary kids, ordinary work, ordinary church, ordinary friends, ordinary marriages. Making the best of the ordinary.