REFLECTIONS

“The Morning After The Night Before”

These “reflections” took place on Tuesday October 11^th 2011 over a three hour period in the morning when I wrote them all down. This is the first of three pieces based on those “reflections”

So last night (Monday 10^th October 2011) I attended the monthly “Prayer For Revival” meeting for churches from across the Norfolk area to come together to seek after God’s will and His calling for us all across our county.

The meeting was held in Norwich at the buildings of Norwich Family Life Church (NFLC) and the evening was led by Rev. Phil Thorne of City Church Norwich.

I was originally due to be part of the worship team that evening but personal and business circumstances the previous Friday were such that I was unable to make the rehearsals. The worship was superbly led by Mark Watson of City Church and a guest leader Richard Lewis. The worship team skilfully brought us into the Throne Room and the feeling of God’s presence in the building was palpable.

The speakers spoke with power and authority and the messages they brought were simple and straightforward. I was delighted to see Pastor Mark from Carlton Rode Baptist speak just before the communion as this man had been on a prayer call put out by a friend of mine at his church as he had suffered a stroke in 2010 and only really started receiving his speech back in January of 2011 but powerfully so in July of the same year.

Anyway…………………………

There was much spoken of which after mulling it all over and just thinking on it has led me to three distinct areas of reflection:

          Planning Permission

          Credit Where Credit Is Not Due

          Purpose And Unity

So I am going to look at these one at a time over three days. Once again these are simply what came to me whilst I put pen to paper and focused entirely on what had happened and been said the previous evening.

“Planning Permission”

In part of the service Phil directed the peoples attention to some wooden pegs (stakes) that a member of the church I attend, Fakenham Baptist Community Church, (FBCC), had made. The idea was that people would take one and then place it into the ground in their community making a physical act of “staking” a claim to the ground that through them God would take back.

On one side of them it had a scripture reference from Isaiah 54 vs. 2 & 3. Those verses say this:

2 “Enlarge the place of your tent, stretch your tent curtains wide, do not hold back; lengthen your cords, strengthen your stakes. 3 For you will spread out to the right and to the left; your descendants will dispossess nations and settle in their desolate cities”.

So the passage speaks of is enlarging your tent (or house, or dwelling depending on the translation you read) and not just a small enlargement but to the right and left (east and west) and that the enlargement when it takes place will dispossess nations. He is talking about covering a whole area with His Glory and transforming Nations and Cities. I went on to wonder - what if the passage had been written today and we carried out those instructions (as we are being called to do) in our neighbourhood, so if I took the passage and applied it to doing this in real life a few things might happen and some things would need to happen:

·        Neighbours might complain about what God intended to do

·        God would need to have architectural plans

·        God would need to get planning permission

Well on the face of it you may say I was being very irreverent, but is it as irreverent as it at first looks or sounds? I think not:

I actually think God has this completely covered and all of the three sections do happen and will happen and what is probably most likely needed is some action on our parts:

“Neighbours Complaining”:- well unless everyone is asleep it takes no genius to realise that in the supposedly “Christian” country we live in, in what is supposed to be the new “tolerant” nation, that wherever Gods people are trying to follow His will and His calling they are criticised, hated, complaints are made against them, dare I say persecuted even if by comparison to some persecutions that go on around the world it is minor. We can read and we know that Jesus faced complaint and criticism as He went about carrying out His Fathers will.

Oh and shock, horror!! Some of that criticism came from within the established church of the time. Of course that could never happen today………….could it???

Throughout His ministry Jesus remained focussed, spoke the truth, did not retaliate harm received by giving out harm in return and He showed us how to continue doing the Fathers will in the face of criticism and complaint.

A small note here: something tells me that if we do not see criticism and resistance to what we seek to do, then maybe we are simply “talking the talk” without really “walking the walk”. We are made to be overcomers – that means conquering a battle knocking down walls and obstacles – not warming a seat or a pew in our church!

“Architectures Plans”: I am no building expert – just ask my wife or my brother – but if you want to extend your home then you need to have accurate and robust plans in order to do that. These plans would need to be carefully prepared by someone with the correct skills and knowledge of what you would require in order to carry out your extension. A sketch on the back of the proverbial “back of the fag packet” simply will not do!!

So as God has called us to carry out the prophecy from Isaiah 54, then we need to have detailed and accurate plans of how we are going to achieve that drawn up by an expert in the field of enlarging God’s house and presented in a way we can understand them so we can follow them.

Well thank God that He saw fir to do exactly that by providing us with the plans we need and not relying on a committee or, dare I say it, a Church Business meeting, to pull those plans together, because if He had we would still be debating them when time came to an end.

God did two things. One: He gave us His written word that just like an architects plans we need to study and fully understand and ensure we are fully equipped to carry out the task. Secondly: He gave us a real living role model who walked the paths that we walk and lived on Earth as we do, His Son Jesus Christ. And let’s not hear people cry out “but things were different” and “times have changed”!! Were they? Have they?

He was tempted, but did not succumb to temptation, He was taunted, but did not retaliate with abuse and insults and He was wrongly accused of crimes He DID NOT commit. So sure our physical living conditions and surroundings have changed but the principles of God’s plans for His people and the pattern he laid out for our guidance have never changed and are as relevant today as they were thousands of years ago.

“Planning Permission”: Going back to my “building project”, I have received complaints from the neighbours that their “view will be spoilt by my extension”, I have my architectural plans drawn up and my house design is completed, I will still need to get planning permission from a committee of people before I can move ahead with the plans I have. Oh and there is a cost – not sure but several hundred pounds I believe to get the planning committee to look at my plans with no guarantee that they will be approved.

My Daddy God is Awesome, all Powerful, Merciful, Mighty, Ever Present, all Seeing and all Knowing. So in fact He could just “do” anything that He wanted. But He chooses not to. See He is a God of love, allowing us freedom of choice, allowing us to do what we want to do. So he chooses not to force His will on us.

God needs your permission to carry out His plans for your life, His plans for revival.

Freedom of choice comes with a cost. We do not have to pay that but Jesus did pay it on the cross. But freedom of choice comes with consequences that we are responsible for. If we choose to turn our backs on Him then by consequence we choose to live a life alone, facing certain death and demise with no hope for the future. If we choose to follow Him to listen to His call and look to follow His plans for us, then their may be a cost in ridicule, there may be a cost financially but there will certainly be a need to submit our own selfish will and allow God’s will to be done in and through us.

And He needs our Planning Permission! He needs us to receive the call He is making and He needs our permission to let Him use us to achieve the plans that He has. We can block Him out, we can refuse to give Him that permission, you can call that free will, or you can call it stubbornness.

This is why he is a God of love, He allows us to make a choice. If we refuse to let Him work His plans out through us then He will find someone else, some other church, village, town, county, country, continent – His plans will come to pass and if we do not rise up to the challenge and opportunity then He will move on to a people who will

I for one want to be part of brining new revelations of Gods love to those around me and I for one am having to learn to lay aside my stubbornness and just let God work out His will in my life. I do not want to miss out on the good things he has planned for me or Norfolk right now!!