Praying for yourself

"Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; 

knock and it will be opened to you."

Matthew 7:7, ESV

We recently had a worship night for young people in our church, one which we hold every couple of months. A group of six people (including myself) lead the times of praise at these events, and the usual procedure is that we meet up two or three times before each event to have a run over some songs. Before this most recent event we had three meetings, and at each one we had a short time of prayer to open up the time together. The idea was to pray for three different elements of the event, one at each practise, as follows:

1. Praying for the hearts and attitudes of the young people coming along, for an openness among them to let God work freely.
2. Praying for Ruth Cooke and Jonny Elliot, leading the talk based on the work of IJM.
3. Praying for ourselves and for each other, for personal focus in the week leading up to the event.

I have genuinely never found anything in my prayer life as challenging as the ten or fifteen minutes I spent at our third practise praying for myself. 

Over the years I've been involved in worship groups, outreach teams and youth groups, all of which have involved an active prayer element, and I've always been a fan of it. I get a real kick out of a time of prayer, there's something very reassuring and exciting about calling upon God to involve Himself in what we're doing. But in this moment I became very aware of how rarely I pray for myself. I had no idea where to begin. Ask me to pray for a team that's about to begin, for a friend in need or a situation on the other side of the world and I will have no problem at all, but when I tried to turn the focus on myself, I really struggled.

Don't get me wrong, I've prayed many prayers over the years for exams coming up and for steady nerves before I speak at something and all that kind of thing, but that's always been in relation to a specific thing. This was new, the idea of just praying that I might be who God needs me to be in order that His Spirit might use me. I've been leading worship in various ways for about five years and this was the first time I'd realised this. I had to be honest with God, accept that He knows all my flaws and that I must acknowledge them before Him if I am to ask for His help in overcoming them. I felt so exposed before God, terrified that if I let my walls come down by mentioning my inner issues in prayer that He would see me for the struggling sinner I really am.

That verse from Matthew is such a widely-known one, a sentence many of us have been able to speak from memory ever since Sunday school. Yet how many of you are like me and have no idea how to take it for what it really is? Am I really the only one who has no problem praying for the healing of the physically sick because I believe God is that powerful, yet can't fully convince myself deep down that he can help me overcome some personal weaknesses?

Ask and it shall be given. Simple as that. Lust stopping you from being who God wants you to be? Ask God to take away your lust. Struggling to maintain a devotional life with God? Ask Him for the determination to keep it up. Job done, case closed. As long as we ask God with the faith that He requires of us, it really is as simple as that.

So let's strive for that faith. The results of those times of prayer we had at our practises was clear. Young folks responded to the movement of God through their worship in ways I hadn't sen in them before. Ruth and Jonny spoke a powerful and challenging message about the world and what Christians need to be doing within it. So if God responded to these prayers so clearly what reason have I to doubt that He will respond to my most personal and desperate prayers? With the assurance God has blessed me with through this last event I am making a conscious decision to pray for myself openly and honestly with God, and if anything here has sounded familiar to you I hope you can do the same :)

Prayer is not asking. It is a longing of the soul. It is the

daily admission of one's weakness. It is better in prayer

to have a heart without words than words without heart.

Mahatma Gandhi

Musings on Musical Content

Last year I put up a post about the debate over what Christians should and shouldn't watch on TV or in films, and a similar chat recently emerged between a friend and myself. Essentially this friend was flicking through my iPod and started to laugh when they found music on it by a band who call themselves Holy F**k. (Breathtaking electronica, well worth a listen!) They then said that they would never have such a thing listed in their music library and made a 'what-if-your-minister-found-that-on-there?' kind of joke. So we mulled over this for a while, debating what a Christian should be listening to.

For the record, there is a lot of stuff on my iPod that I wouldn't play at my gran's 80th birthday party. There's some Eminem (I'm somewhat ashamed to say), a lot of Bill Hicks stand-up material (covering all manner of subject matter) and the Team America soundtrack (enough said). Not to mention a wealth of classic bands who ever now and then let a dodgy word slip in there (John Lennon, Pink Floyd, Dave Matthews etc etc etc...).

Now, people are always quick to relate to the passage in the Bible where Peter denies Christ, how he curses to try and convince people he isn't a follower.

He began to call down curses, and he swore to them, “I don’t know this man 

you’re talking about.” Mark 14:71

People then say that from this that to swear is to distance yourself from Christ, and following on from that they say that it is no better to put this stuff into you head through what you watch and what you listen to. While I don't entirely agree with this viewpoint I can understand the reasoning and I have an awful lot of admiration for the restraint of people who discipline themselves this way. My problem, however, is that many people take the idea of 'swear words' too seriously, letting this cloud their judgement.

My view on swearing in a nutshell is that there are no bad words, there are only bad intentions. Now I don't use bad language, but I don't believe God set certain words aside as naughty words that we're not to use. I believe that man has always used words to hurt, and over time this use has stuck with certain words. So for me, intent and nature mean more to me that specific language where listening is concerned. If I were a parent, I like to think that I'd be happier with my children listening to Manic Street Preachers who have the odd curse word, than Katy Perry or Rihanna, wherein the soul purpose of the music is to glorify and glamourize a lifestyle which God finds totally abhorrent. Some of the music on Cool FM genuinely disgusts me and it might not contain a single word which you couldn't say on daytime TV. Therefore I find it difficult when a Christian won't listen to a particular song or watch a particular film because of the verbal content, but they happily pick up the latest compilation of radio chart-toppers.

Food for thought...

Reflections on church

A housegroup has recently been formed in Orangefield Presbyterian for young adults, and right from the beginning there has been a challenge set in the meetings: how well are we functioning as a church? This does not mean, how happy and comfortable are our members? It means, to what extent are we seeing the kingdom of God enlargened or advanced? How do we see God's hand at work through what we do? These questions are posed in our housegroup, but answers are not handed on a plate. A thought will be thrown out to the group, then people reflect on it and discuss it. When you start to think about it, you start to realise some worrying things.

I recently performed a survey within the church for a college assignment, and every answer I recieved stated that the person in question was, to some degree, not engaging with the worship in our church. By this I mean, they either did not feel free to become lost in worship, they did not feel like they were meeting with God, or they did not feel the time spent worshipping encouraged them in their Christian walk.

This is a very serious thing.

And this is not simply the young people not liking some older songs or any situation like that, these responses came from a wide variety of people, male and female, young and old. Robin Mark states:

"That [God] requires our worship, totally and without wavering, is a Biblical fact."

Our worship is the basis of everything in our Christian life. Without prayer, praise and a firm understanding of the scripture (so, everything we do on a Sunday!) nothing else can function properly. Our community outreach, our fellowship, our mission work... We cannot jump to step 2 without first taking care of step 1. Well, we can, but it will soon fall apart.

A few years ago, I attended Hillsborough Bible Week and R.T. Kendall was speaking. He suggested that if the Holy Spirit were to suddenly be removed from the Christian church in the UK, that the vast majority of churches would continue without noticing a thing. This thought genuinely scares me, that a church could be so misled in it's work that it completely neglects the influence of the very God it's serving. What if that were your church? 

In a situation where people are able to say that their time in worship in their home church is not enabling them to meet with God, it is a time for radical change. To me, that is not something that can be accepted and allowed to continue OR be gradually changed over an extended period of time. The latter is often how we tend to do things. We have "special services" once in a while, where we do something a little out of the ordinary. We dip a toe in rather than plunge; and for the most part, this is the better option. A lot of the time it is a bad idea to change something and just expect the congregation to be okay with it.

But I don't think that is the case here.

I don't think we can continue going about the everyday church procedures while the foundation of it isn't as it should be. 

After thinking about it a great deal over the last few weeks, I would propose 2 things. They are only my own rambling thoughts which you are more than welcome to disagree with, but for what they're worth:

1.

To those who are responsible for our services. So many of our meetings involve lengthy discussions about how long services are to be, or in particular how much time is allowed for different sections of the service. If we fall into a situation where structure is our defining factor on a Sunday then we cannot expect God to get involved. Every week when the worship team meets to pray, we ask God to move, we ask Him to be the center and the focus rather than us, and we ask that the congregation can experience Him. But we're asking Him to do these things within our constraints. Our hearts are not truly desiring those things if there is uproar every time our praise runs on a little longer than it sometimes does. We need to be less worried about the rigid layout of our services. Many of the answers I got to those questions mentioned the worship feeling suffocated, that there was no room for the Spirit to move.

2.

To those who attend our services. NOBODY can make you worship. Nobody in any position of leadership in any church in the world can force you into a time of worship. If you do not come into a Sunday service prepared to meet with God, really hungry to experience His power, then it doesn't matter how the worship is led, you won't engage the way you should. Ask yourself how often you truly prepare yourself before worship to meet with God, to allow Him into every aspect of your life and to ask Him to move.

It is important to remember that we should never seek to make worship comfortable (whether leading or experiencing). That is not the aim. God challenges through worship, He pushes us and moulds us, and a lot of the time this is uncomfortable. 

If you have any thoughts on this stuff do let me know.

The holidays are coming...holidays are coming...

My Twitter feed has been alive over the last coupld of weeks with people on two sides of a battle. One the one hand, we have people who from the middle of October are in full-fledged Christmas mode, putting up countdowns, quoting Christmas songs and generally being obnoxiously cheerful. On the other hand, the people who moan about Victoria Square having their lights up before December even starts and snap at anyone who mentions the possibility of putting their tree up. Where am I? I suppose I'm somewhere in the middle. I hate putting the tree up but I love the dinner. No pain no gain, I guess...

I find myself wondering more and more each year to what extent we do take part in the commercialization of Christmas though. As Christians we obviously have a very different approach to and meaning behind the celebration of Christmas. We set a particular time apart each to commemorate the coming of God in human form to take part in the salvation of all mankind. Probably worth a mention once a year, yes?

So how does God feel about his people getting sucked in to the way the world has trivialised it? If we weigh up the amount of time we spend pondering over presents, decorating houses, writing cards, watching the films on tv and even simply daydreaming about a few days off work; against the amount of time we give it the proper focus it deserves, are we really surprised that God is not glorified to the extent He should be? Countercultural living is surely never more important than at a time of year when something profoundly spiritual is abused by marketing and industry.

Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love Christmas, genuinely can't wait each year. There's nothing wrong with that. And even though the world doesn't quite get it, it's still a time of year that seems to promote only love and compassion. But what better chance is there for Christians to shine than when celebrating the birth of Christ? Instead we so often choose to go along with the superficial.

If I had more time I'd also go on about how even the Christian worship folks seem to pounce on the market in order to sell a few CDs of Christmas songs, but for another time...

How does church affect our worship?

Haven't done one of these things since before the summer holidays, and a lot has been going on since then. We've had Summer Madness, I battled through Round 2 with Oxegen, and our church had our summer outreach week, JAM.

So a little overview of these things first to set the scene for something that's been on my mind.

Summer Madness was my ninth year (I think) and my third going with a group of obnoxious sods from Orangefield. We had around thirty-five young people this time round and it was a phenomenal week of worship and teaching. I confess the last couple of years I've felt less and less impressed by the festival and worried that maybe it was just me getting older but thankfully this year reassured me. Martin Smith was a total blessing in the worship and Simon Guillebaud and Duffy Robbins proved that totally different speaking styles can be equally instructive.

JAM was also a third year affair, with 50-odd people staying for 8 days in the church building and three different programmes running every day (check out the podcasts) and the answer to prayer evident throughout the week was unbelievable. The Friday night saw a massive response among the teenagers attending where our designated prayer room couldn't cope with the number of people looking to get in.

And in hindsight there's something that's been on my mind from these two spectacular events.

Anyone who's been to Summer Madness knows that the worship is some distance away from the average Presbyterian church. The songs range from dance-based bouncy numbers all the way to the epic soaring tunes (or, "Coldplay" worship) and it's very involved. There is a lot of hand-raising, people fall on their knees, the band can play for five full minutes without anybody singing anything and the atmosphere of worship is not broken or strained. It's a wonderful experience, and usually a real highlight of the week. And at JAM there was a lot of the same thing. We had a few worship sessions where people entered in in very emotional ways. There was some crying, some response through prayer etc and a lot of hands in the air.

SO WHY DOES THIS ONLY HAPPEN IN CERTAIN PLACES?

I'm not talking about how it happens a lot only in some churches, I mean among our own people. The same people who worship like this at Summer Madness largely don't on a Sunday in a church service. This isn't a problem and I'm not saying it's something that should change, it's just interesting. It seems to imply that our worship comes from a different place in one area than from another. Does it solely have to do with the way the worship is lead? Obviously there is a vast difference between the two settings; our church doesn't boast a powerful lighting show, we don't play hour-long uninterrupted sets on a Sunday morning and we don't hand-pick our worship solely with the teenage listener in mind. But if this is true does it mean that we are too heavily influenced by what happens around our worship as opposed to the worship itself?

Or maybe it's just the place in which the worship occurs. Perhaps it is easier to feel free in the way you worship when you find yourself in a crowd of 6,000 people around your own age, who you don't know, than it is in a church building in which your family and people of different generations are standing. Here the problem presented would be that people feel pressurized in the way they choose to express their worship by those around them. Worried about what would seem appropriate to people rather than before God.

I mention this simply because I enjoyed leading worship massively at JAM, always do. It's genuinely one of my favourite things about the week, seeing people respond to God freely. If you have any feelings or general musings on the subject fire away!

Things to change

The world's perception of Christians and their God

"I do not find in orthadox Christianity one redeeming feature."

- Thomas Jefferson

"In no instance have the churches been guardians of the liberties of the people."

- James Madison

"Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people."

- Karl Marx

"Our Bible reveals to us the character of our god with minute and remorse exactness. It is perhaps the most damnatory biography that exists in print anywhere."

- Samuel Clemens

"No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says; he is always convinced that it says what he means."

- George Bernard Shaw

Our attempts to achieve our own standard of perfection

"According to the Bible, God responds more to desire than he does to competence...that's good news if you're messed up!"

- Bart Campolo

"Seeking to know is only too often learning to doubt." 

- Antionette du Liger de la Garde Deshoulieres

Spare some change?

 

"You know why banks are closed on Sunday? 

Cos if they wasn't, church would be empty!"

- Chris Rock

 

Chris Rock is one of my all-time favourite stand-up comedians. If you can get past the some of the more lewd subject matter and live with his incredibly foul mouth then you discover he is miles ahead of anyone else on the modern comedy scene. The key to his genius rests almost entirely on his ability to look at topics that are important to our society such as politics, race and religion, and put them forward (with humour) in an unashamed and totally straight-on style. There is no sugar-coating, no delicate nature and no dancing around things.

So if he's spot-on in his narrative and perception, how does this quote make us feel?

This line comes from a routine about people's obsession with money, and while it's directed at Americans it offers a chilling depiction of a culture in which, whether we like it or not, 'church' is becoming more heavily rooted. You see, churches tend to mimick the world in an attempt to bring people in. The world has fast-paced pop music, so Christian music moves into the same style. The world has clubbing, and there are Christian dance venues opening up across the UK. This isn't a bad thing of course, the church has to change with culture otherwise it will lose it's relevance. But would we notice if we were gradually adopting other aspects of the world? 

I recently found myself struggling money-wise as I was getting less and less hours in work, and it was looking like I would have to pull out of a couple of things I'd planned to do over the summer. It really stressed me out. I made it out to myself like it was the end of the world. I'd gone and bought a ticket to Oxegen and wasn't going to be able to go because I couldn't afford the travel costs. I'd committed myself to helping out at Summer Madness with my church youth group and wouldn't be able to afford it. As it happens, without me mentioning this at all a member of our congregation gave me some money because they felt I needed it, which was an incredible moment. But what does it say about the things I lean on that as soon as the money dries up my life is thrown into disrepair? Is that a sign that I rely on money too much? Is my hope truly built on nothing less that Jesus' blood and righteousness?

I'm a member of a church which is still working it's way through paying off a £3million building, and as such an awful lot of what we do is in some way associated with money, whether it's paid events or monthly donations. Now I'm not saying at all that our church is misplacing it's focus, but it certainly becomes messy when you try to rely on God as well as the things that money affords you. Especially when we read stories in the New Testament about how people met in houses and sold their possessions. It can kind of feel sometimes like we're getting gradually better and better at storing up earthly treasures. Or at least blurring the line of seperation between what's a necessity and what's an indulgence. Does a church need incredible lights, fabulously comfortable chairs and a sound system that could power Glastonbury? Or are those just things we subconsciously think give the image of our church that we want people to have? Seems like an important line to hold on to. 

"He who has no rule over his own spirit is like a broken down city without a wall."

Proverbs 25:28

Don't get me wrong, money is a phenomenally grey area. Christians throughout the world sit at both ends of the spectrum, and none of them have the authority to judge any of the others. But surely we can at least agree that we have to try hard to have rule over our own spirit. Ask any Christian and (I hope!) they will tell you that they want God to have a higher grip on their spirit than money does. So if we take hold of our own spirit then we can totally make it God's. The first thing that comes to mind with me is that when I work, I feel like I've earned it. My job is dull, depressing and makes me get out of bed at 6 in the morning! I feel like I earn my week's wages! But not once do I ever thank God for the money. In a world where people die of starvation, a world where £2 a week can feed a family through some charities, not once do I thank God for the £50 I get every week. To me, that sounds like a key factor in offering my life to something other than God. The moment I forget to see something as a gift from God is the moment I have lost my focus; the moment I have lost rule of my spirit. 

If you feel the same or agree at all, let's change it starting now. Maybe after a while the image people have of the church won't be that they're in church because the bank's closed :)