There’s a meme going around that goes like this:
Jesus: “Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you.”
Onlooker: “But Lord, what if they’re Muslim?”
Jesus: “…Ok, let me start again from the beginning.”
I’ve found myself having a love/hate relationship with this meme and its variations!
At the start of each sitting day in the House of Lords a prayer is read by a Lord Spiritual (made up of the Archbishops of Canterbury and of York, the Bishops of London, Durham and Winchester as well as specific bishops of the Church of England).
Here are some of the choices available…
No one but me knew about the manor house. The trees that surrounded it made people forget.
The original inspiration for this song came about when a good friend of mine experienced a very serious health issue. It was the kind of thing you could die from. Even though I’d had no information that it would end up this way, I was still worried. The lyrics and melody seemed to flow very easily which, for me, hardly ever happens.
(1 Corinthians 14v26)
The second part of this verse says “Everything must be done so that the church may be built up.”
Do you read this as: “Everything done in church has to be positive” ?
Or do you read it as “The Lord has instructed me to bring something positive to church” ?
I’ve been planning a second worship evening event for a while, and today I’ve been choosing songs. I’ve always known song choice is important to help draw people into the throneroom and allow them to worship.
However, he’s another way to look at it:
Never try to fit God somewhere into our songlists and plans.
Always come open, fitting into what it is that He is doing.
Has it ever dawned on you that you are responsible spiritually to God for other people?
Behold, a certain lawyer stood up and tested him, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?”
He said to him, “What is written in the law? How do you read it?”
He answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, with all your mind, (Deuteronomy 6:5); and your neighbour as yourself (Leviticus 19:18).”
He said to him, “You have answered correctly. Do this, and you will live.”
But he, desiring to justify himself, asked Jesus, “Who is my neighbour?”
And then Jesus doesn’t say who his neighbour is.
The International House of Prayer has a 24/7 live worship stream. I was just listening to it at http://www.ihopkc.org/prayerroom/ and I heard the lyrics “I don’t want you to be // a familiar stranger to me”
It reminded me of part of a song I wrote some time ago during a personal time: “It’s been some time, since we spent time, and I walk the line of barely knowing you”
1 Thess 5:25 – “Brothers, pray for us”
If you could change the world, or at least significantly change your church, how much would that be worth to you? How much effort would you put into that?
I’ve been giving this quite a bit of thought lately – how do you define a Christian country? Is it one that contains more than 50% of it’s population as Christians? That’s something that America has seen change recently, with their percentages dropping below 50% for the first time.
Politics is not government, although without one you might not have the other! We often get our backs up when ‘politics’ enter the church, but we’re open to a governing structure, sometimes ones that are man made.
