The Invitation

I’ve been struck lately by the fact that it is God who invites us into a relationship with Him.
Often we think that we invite Him.
i.e. we invite Him into our meetings, into our worship, into our situations, into our lives, and usually for our benefit.
“ Come into our meeting Lord and bless us” we say.

Well it is God who has invited us into a relationship with Him
He says, “though your sins be as red as scarlet come”
“ Come let us reason together”
Jesus said, “Come follow me”
“Come to me”

The invitation is always His. We have the privilege of joining Him (not the other way round) in what He is doing (not what we are doing). I know He is gracious and is interested in what we are doing but the invite is to join Him in something bigger and better. We’ve been called to join Him in an adventure, which would change the world if we followed Him. To join Him and follow Him, to be His disciples, to see what He is doing and do the same, to go where He goes, to give up and surrender our wants and desires, our lives and ambitions (just as He did for us). To commit ourselves to Him and His will for our lives. To commit to each other out of love for Him. He goes before us and we follow not as meaningless sheep but as soldiers following a Great King, confident of winning the battle, assured of where we are going because we follow Him who has gone before.
This is the invitation: - Life Eternal in the presence of Him who loves us and died for us so that we might be together as it should have been from the beginning.
And on the way great adventures!!

The Hunt for Mission

The hunt should actually be not for mission or what we can do for God.
The hunt should be to find God Himself.

“Seek and you will find when you seek for me with all your heart”
It is in seeking after God that we find our place in this story we are in.
Finding ourselves in Him, we truly find ourselves!!
He is the A&O.
In Him ALL things move and have their being. After all He made them.

Thoughts for a beginning

Matthew 16:18
Jesus said that He would build His Church
i.e. He would build it
It is His Church

How much of the ‘church’ that we see to-day has been built by man and how much do we claim it is our church?
How much of church theology and doctrine is based on the epistles rather than on the Gospels?
We often look at the teachings of Paul and the others (many books written on or about the epistles) yet rarely look at the teachings of Jesus (not so many books written on or about the Gospels)
We look at what we call the ‘Great Commission’ Matt 28:18-20 and yet a greater ‘Commission’ can be found in Matt 22: 38-39 for surely out of this would come the other.
Jeremiah 6 vs16 tells us to look for the old paths. In other words go back to basics.
The basics of our Christian life are to be found in the teachings of Jesus i.e. the Sermon on the Mount for one.
Surely it beholds us to look at those and apply them to our lives
However by loving God 1st and others as ourselves (Matt 22 vs 38-38) what we read in the Sermon on the Mount becomes our way of life.

This is not easy. It requires us to constantly place everything before God.
To quote David Adam:-
Between each thought and each action place the presence (of God)
Between each encounter and each event place the Presence (of God)

Still there you are, I don’t have the answers but somewhere along the way we shall discover a better way of mission.

New biginnings

So what is the purpose of this blog?
I honestly do not know.
I'm just aware that God appears to be moving some of His people into a new expression of His Kingdom.
So maybe this is to explore with others, what this new thing is and where do we go.
Please feel free to use it to express your thoughts, feelings, experiences and insights.