Dave preached tonight on the power of a testimony and how Jesus can change lives. Speaking from John 4:1-26 and 39-42, he talked about how there are no such things in life as coincidences, but rather there are divine appointments or ‘God-incidents’ where God moves in situations to work out His plans.

Jesus’s meeting with the Samaritan woman is one such example of this. It was very unlikely that a Jew should converse with a Samaritan and even more unlikely that a man would converse with a woman in the way that Jesus engaged this woman in conversation. He was careful, however, to do only what He saw His Father doing and to go only where He was supposed to go (see John 8:28) and in obedience, He gave us a model for how to live.

Jesus didn’t put rituals and traditions above the needs of people. He showed this woman compassion and kindness, not judging her lifestyle but speaking to her with kindness as well as truth. Truly, He came into the world not to condemn the world, but to save it (John 3:17)

Jesus took our sins. When He was baptised, John the Baptist recognised His sinlessness and couldn’t quite grasp why He had come to him, but in that symbolic gesture, Jesus showed that He was willing to take our sins upon Himself and become the sacrifice for sin that God required. He took the punishment that should have been ours. He was the means by which God could blot out our transgressions and remember our sins no more (Is 43:25).

The Samaritan woman had known about God but needed to understand fully who He was. The others in the village – who had presumably previously shunned her, thus necessitating the trip to get water in the heat of the day – were intrigued by her testimony. They presumably saw more than words; they saw her changed lifestyle and were interested enough to want to find out more about Jesus themselves. Our testimony can be a powerful tool in the hand of God!

In addition to this, we also celebrated Ralph’s birthday!

“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.” (Matt 7:13-14)

This is another of the paradoxes of the Christian life, that the way which seems the most open, comfortable and spacious is not the path we have to take. Just as a Sat-Nav doesn’t always get it right, so too we can’t always take the obvious paths in life if we want to arrive safely at heaven’s destination. The ‘default setting’ of mankind, corrupted by Adam’s sin, is the popular road that the New Living Version translates as the ‘highway to hell’.

Instead, as the Message version translate these verses, “the way to life—to God!—is vigorous and requires total attention.” We can’t rely on “sure-fire, easygoing formulas for a successful life that can be practised in your spare time”; rather, we have to understand that the only way to eternal life is to enter by the gate, Christ Himself (John 10:9); He is ‘the Way, the Truth and the Life; no one comes to the Father except through me.’ (John 14:6) There is no other name under heaven by which we can be saved (Acts 4:12); there is only one entrance.

In his book, ‘Celebration of Discipline’, RIchard Foster looks at some of the practices which we need to develop if we are to give our full attention to the cost of discipleship.

The inward disciplines of prayer, fasting, meditation, and study in the Christian life can’t be avoided if we want to grow spiritually. These have to be done in secret and not for public acclamation or affirmation, as Jesus teaches clearly in Matthew 6. In that passage, Jesus shows and teaches us how to do something tangible in an invisible way in order to develop a visible relationship with an invisible God.

Similarly, the outward disciplines of simplicity, solitude, submission, and service are key to any believer’s spiritual growth. We have to learn that ‘godliness with contentment is great gain’ (1 Tim 6:6) and whatever our personality type have to foster an attitude that seeks God in solitude and submission, learning to walk by faith, not by sight, learning that ‘this broken road prepares Your will for me’ (‘Walk by Faith’, Jeremy Camp). Service is our outward demonstration of faith (as James said, ‘faith without works is dead’ Js 2:26). We belong to a wider community of faith and serve God in our communities.

The corporate disciplines of confession, worship, guidance, and celebration are things that are done together, in community, as a body, as ‘church’. When we confess our sins and failings to each other (see James 5:16), we cut down the pride that tries to make others believe we are better than we are and we put an end to the ‘stained glass masquerade’ (Casting Crowns) that so many of use to hide behind. Worship in a corporate sense is our response to God’s grace and love. Yes, it will often involve singing and celebration, dancing and praise, clapping and shouting, all those expressions of delight in God. But worship can also involve lament, tears, silence and repentance. Our services should be places where we learn more of the story of God and can grow in faith as we listen to His word and His Spirit.

We also should be waiting on God to listen for His guidance. Just as the Israelites were led in the wilderness by the pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire, so we too need to be led by God. We need to have a teachable spirit and a willingness to go where He commands: as Chris Tomlin puts it in the song ‘I Will Follow’:
“Where You go, I’ll go
Where You stay, I’ll stay
When You move, I’ll move; I will follow.”

The narrow road may not be the easiest to walk down. It may be full of pitfalls and potholes and we stumble along the way. We may have to walk in single file because of the narrowness of the way, but we walk also in community, holding each other’s hands, sure that, by God’s grace, the spacious destination of heaven is awaiting us when we complete the race.

During this Lenten period, we attended a concert reflecting on the Passion week in particular by Michael Card, an American songwriter and author http://www.michaelcard.com/ Michael Card has long been one of my favourite songwriters, combining depth of lyrics with a scholar’s grasp of the Bible and an ability to express truth through a variety of musical styles, and it was a privilege to again be able to listen and to reflect on the story of Easter.

I grew up, as mentioned before, learning about paradox first hand at university, having become a Christian the year before I left home, and Michael’s songs held me steady through the secular world of doubt and scorn. His commitment to truth and to community reflected my own beliefs. He wasn’t afraid of lament, pain and doubt, and I learned to sing the psalms (even the uncomfortable ones!) through many of his songs. A few years older than me, he wrote the lullabies I sang to my son when he was born. He’s even left-handed like I am!

So, last night, as a family we travelled to Hinckley in Leicestershire to a small United Reform Church to reflect on the Passion week. If anyone’s interested, the songs sung were:

* Only His Wounds
* Known by The Scars
* Ride on to Die
* How much more a servant could He be?
* A Better Freedom
* Come to the Table
* The Basin and the Towel
* In the Garden
* Why?
* The Death of A Son (Psalm 22)
* The Tears of the World
* Crown Him
* This Must Be The Lamb
* All that was lost
* Emmanuel
* Love Crucified Arose
* Only His Wounds (reprise)

Some of the things that stood out for me as we reflected on the life, death and resurrection of the Lord were the fact that our Lord truly is a servant – ‘the suffering servant’ described by Isaiah, conquering through weakness, triumphing through obedience, winning the battle at Gethsemane before the final war at Golgotha – and the fact that despite all He had taught them, no one really expected the resurrection – there was a ‘persistence of doubt’ among the followers of Christ that only the power of His Spirit could remove. May we find encouragement even in our own suffering, doubt and weakness, for when we are weak, then He is strong.

Research has shown that it takes 21 days to establish a new habit. In a book entitled ‘Psycho-Cybernetics’, Dr. Maxwell Maltz, a plastic surgeon, noticed that it took 21 days for amputees to cease feeling phantom sensations in the amputated limb. From further observations he found it took 21 days to create a new habit and wrote about this development which has been helpful to many people in understanding that change can happen, but perhaps takes longer than we expect.

In the Bible study this week, we looked at Romans 6:1-14, focussing on verse 11, which says “count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.” That means a reckoning, a pausing, a definite stopping to recall the facts revealed to us in the Gospel: namely that Christ died and rose again, therefore sin no longer has mastery over him – and because we are in Christ, it no longer has to have mastery of us. We can, in the words of Ephesians 4, “put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and [to] put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.” (Eph 4:22-24)

Various heresies concerning grace and the Gospel have been around since the New Testament was written. Paul refutes one in Romans 6, namely the view that if grace flourishes where there is sin, we ought to sin more so that grace can abound! This view has a false understanding of both sin and grace and Paul refutes it emphatically here, because if we have a true understanding of what Christ accomplished on the cross, we see that we can’t entertain sin in our lives; we are no longer slaves to sin, running errands for our old nature like a servant eager to do his master’s bidding. We now have a new master!

But another false teaching was that because of all Christ has accomplished on the cross, we can live lives of sinless perfection here and now. John refutes this teaching most emphatically in 1 John 1:8-10, but it is also clear from this passage in Romans 6 that there is a new way of life expected of us. We now have the power to choose. We can choose to obey sin (our old master) or we can choose to obey God. We can offer ourselves to sin, or we can offer ourselves to God.

For most of us, it takes considerably longer than 21 days to work this out in our everyday lives! You could say it takes us a lifetime. But the good news of the Gospel is that we now have a choice. Sin no longer has mastery over us. We can know freedom. We may find it difficult to resist temptation; we may need help in overcoming some of the sins that specifically cause us to stumble (see Hebrews 12), but Christ has shown us that there is a new way of life. The chains of sin have been broken and the symbolism of baptism shows that we are identified with Christ’s death and resurrection. “We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.” (Romans 6:4)

Just as I never thought I would be able to give up my sweet tooth but had to, on being diagnosed as diabetic, so we can live differently through the grace of God and the power of the Holy Spirit. We can learn to RISE:
• Reduce what is wrong in our lives, fleeing where necessary from the things we know cause us to fall
• Increase the good things we can do in our lives
• Substitute good things for the things that cause us to stumble
• Eliminate the problem

This may, indeed, take a lifetime of practice, but we now have an alternative way of living. We don’t have to let sin have the mastery over us – thanks be to God! We can find, in the words of Michael Card, a ‘better freedom’, for Christ has ‘enslaved my soul to set me free’ – another of those paradoxes which make up the mystery of the Gospel!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxxcTvtURP4

Christian Concern ran a campaign last year entitled ‘Not Ashamed’, based on the verses in Romans 1:16 and 2 Timothy 1:12, a campaign for Christians to stand up and be counted. David Barlow, a guest speaker, talked last night about the difference between the Gospel and general teaching and doctrine and how we must be careful not to add our own ideas and thoughts to the gospel given us by Jesus Christ.

The church in Galatia was taken to task by Paul for deserting the Lord and turning to a different gospel (Gal 1:6). The church had been influenced by those who said that circumcision was necessary for salvation; faith in Jesus Christ was not enough.

Paul reminded the Galatians that he received the gospel by direct revelation from Jesus Christ; that the gospel does not originate in human thought and is not man-made (Gal 1:11-12). It is a gospel of faith, not works (Gal 3:1-6).

At the end of His earthly ministry, Jesus gave His disciples the Great Commission (see Matthew 28 & Mark 16). Here, we are told, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation” (Mk 16:5) and after baptising the new disciples we are told the work continues by “teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you” (Matt 28:20). We have a two-fold duty to both preach the gospel and teach those who have made the decision to follow Christ; the two things are not the same. There can be a great variety of opinions about many doctrines within the Christian church, but we have to remain true to the Word of God and must preach the gospel faithfully, declaring all we know of the life, death, burial, resurrection, coronation and glorification of the Lord Jesus Christ so that others may know God’s great plan of salvation.

Forgiveness is at the heart of the Gospel. We are forgiven because of God’s grace and mercy. We have been forgiven so much that we can never begin to repay God. But so often we still find it hard to forgive others.

The principle of forgiveness is bluntly laid out for us by Jesus in Matthew 6:12-15, where we are commanded to pray ‘forgive us our debts (or trespasses) as we have also forgiven our debtors’. The concluding verses in that passage (“For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins”) make it clear that if we don’t forgive others, God is unable to forgive us, for unforgiveness is sin and God cannot look on sin.

In the parable of the unforgiving servant (Matthew 18:21-35), Jesus demonstrates both the extent to which we have been forgiven and the need for us to forgive others. Peter asks Jesus how many times we need to forgive a brother or sister who has sinned against us. His suggestion (“Up to seven times?”) clearly indicates his frustration and exasperation. Most of us would sympathise with Peter at this point. Forgiving when we are hurt just the once is hard enough. If we manage to do it more than once, surely we’ve done something really noble!

Jesus’s reply (however we take the maths) indicates that we have failed to understand the Gospel if we are still counting. The parable clearly illustrates the problems caused by unforgiveness and ends with a terrible warning: “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”

Before we throw up our hands in despair – for it’s obvious that Jesus is talking about more than the mere words ‘I forgive you’ here – we need to look at the practice of God on this very subject. For God never asks us to do something He has not shown us how to do Himself. Psalm 103:10-12 tells us “he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.” Jeremiah 31:33-34 tells us that God will forgive our wickedness and remember our iniquities no more. We have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Rom 3:23), but God has chosen to forgive us. Moreover, we see the ultimate practice of forgiveness on the cross, as Jesus prayed, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” (Luke 23:34)

We therefore have no option, if we want to remain forgiven and to be in that perfect position where we can receive God’s blessing. We have to forgive.

Many of us accept that with our heads, but struggle to put it into practice in our hearts. We feel wronged. We have been offended. We struggle to get past the hurt done to us. Mark concluded by asking the piercing question: “Who is more at fault? – the one who causes the offence, or the one who takes offence?” Whatever the wrong done to us, God expects us to forgive. He has modelled forgiveness for us. May we have the grace to forgive others and to enter into the freedom He has purchased for us.