A Fresh start

I have two of the world’s most valuable possessions. They aren’t rare, you can get them in many shops but they are definitely extremely important and valuable to us. Anyone guess what is under here?

Well you’ll have to wait and see if any of you were right

How many of you have built a bed? I have, more than once, and I have to admit I am awful at it. The first time I ever built one was when I was 20, I had graduated from uni, got my first full time job, moved into my first home on my own, and had brought this really modern wooden bed for my new room. I couldn’t wait to get it up and sleep on it. So heres how It went….

Day 1 – the bed arrives…. I unpack every part of it downstairs look at it all and think great where do I start….. realise I should start by actually putting it together in the right room, so I put everything back into the box and manage to get it into the bedroom, totally exhausted I decide that’s enough for the first day so I sleep on the sofa and continue my building project the next day.

Day 2 – Once again I empty the box, put everything in an ordered fashion on the floor of the room, so that infront of me I have a bed, well lots of pieces of wood which could be anything. I start putting the wood together and half way through realise that my bed is looking less like a bed and more like a wardrobe as I go on, so for the first time I check the instructions (I am a man afterall) and realise I may have gone a little wrong, so I decide to sleep on the sofa again and start again in the morning.

Days 3, 4, 5 and 6 – I go through the daily challenge of banging wood together, tightening and un tightening screws, trying to understand why when the instructions say it should be straight on the floor it always seems to end up at an angle, and ends up with me sleeping on the sofa to start again the next day.

Eventually I realised (im a slow learner) that I couldn’t do that bed on my own, and was lucky to have a friend visiting me for a few days and when he arrived (probably about day 9 in this story) we worked together and this simple task which had taken me days on my own took less than an hour with the two of us working together. A pair of fresh eyes looking at the instructions and a helping pair of hands made all the difference and this impossible task became possible.

You may not be as bad as me at DIY but many of us go through this same routine every day of our lives. We wake up every morning feeling like life is a chore that we just cant get right, we try to sort it out ourselves in different ways. We work hard to distract ourselves only to feel worse when we finish work for the day, we fill the times when we aernt working with distractions like TV, cars, football to stop us thinking only to find when we have a rare moment without those distractions the things we need to think about are still there. We use alcohol, drugs, tobacco, sex, pornography to fool our bodies and our minds into thinking theres nothing wrong, but the effect of these things runs out and we find ourselves needing more and more of these things to make us feel ok.
Then one day a friend turns up with a fresh pair of eyes and he works with us to use the instructions we were given and a helping pair of hands and the impossible task of life becomes possible.

That is what Christianity is about

Christianity is about a fresh pair of eyes in our lives – Gods eyes.

Christianity is about God working with us through the Bible to help us understand the instructions of life a little easier.

Christianity is about God giving us the holy spirit as a helping hand to make living life achievable again.

Or to put it simply, Christianity is about having a fresh start which leads to us achieving a God centred life.

So who is entitled to this second chance? This fresh start I’m talking about? I mean some of us are sat here feeling lonely, feeling like theres no one in this room despite sitting next to someone, feeling like they don’t have a friend to help them.

Well 2 Corinthians 5 verses 14 and 15 tell us “Christ’s love controls us. Since we believe that Christ died for all, we also believe that we have all died to our old life. He died for everyone so that those who receive his new life will no longer live for themselves. Instead, they will live for Christ, who died and was raised for them.”

It says it two times in order to ensure no one misses it

“Christ died for all”
“He died for everyone”

It doesn’t say “everyone who doesn’t drink, smoke, take drugs” it doesn’t say “everyone with 5 friends or more” it says “everyone” and that everyone includes you even if you don’t feel like it does.

One of the hardest things for some to accept is a gift for no reason, or a random act of kindness. It seems to be that we associate such things as charity, and, certainly in British culture accepting charity seems to feel like weakness. This is one of the reasons its so hard for us to accept and understand the basis of our faith, even those of us who have given our lives to God, and have been in his church for years.

Christ came down and died for you and for me as the ultimate random act of kindness, because he knew we needed help and because he wanted to help. He died so “that those who receive his new life will no longer live for themselves. Instead, the will live for Christ”

Again it may help to hear what it doesn’t say

It doesn’t say he died so that you can have a crutch to help you struggle through, it doesn’t say he died so that you will have to go to church and be part of a religion, it says he died so that you:

Receive his new life

Four important words to hear.

Receive – to receive something is to accept it, to open it and to use it for the purpose it is given to you.

At Christmas if you get a brand new kettle and you leave it in the box and never use it you haven’t really received a kettle, you’ve just received a box. You only receive the kettle if you take it out the box and start making tea with it.

Even if you come to church every Sunday without fail, even if you are always listening to worship songs, if you don’t receive the gift God is offering and use it then you’re missing out on the real reason Christ died.

The next word

His – there’s no room for doubt here, its not yours, its not mine, its his.

This means it’s even more valuable. When someone lends you their car, you take care of it because you don’t want to let them down. The gift God offers us is more valuable than any car, and because it belongs to God we need to take care of it.

Taking care of something isn’t about not using it, and not having fun with it though. Its about ensuring the right fuel goes into it, making sure things that damage it doesn’t get too close to it, and making sure it is used enough so it doesn’t get stiff.

New – not recycled, not second hand but new!

Life – the opposite of death

So put these four words together and its true meaning comes out: -

Receive His new life

We need to receive the gift of life, a new life, a life which belongs to God and then we need to fully use that gift of life to achieve its purpose.

This is where Corinthians continues by telling us what this new life means

2 Corinthians 5 verse 16 says “So we have stopped evaluating others from a human point of view.”

This new life means we are different, it means we have a different way of looking at things than other people. We no longer evaluate from a humans point of view – now we evaluate from Gods point of view.

Our new life means we look at the world through Gods eyes, the things that make God happy make us happy, the things that make God sad make us sad. Its important to remember that it doesn’t say we should be judging people, the Bible clearly says do not judge as only God has the right to do this. What this means is that if we see that something clearly makes God sad or angry then we should do our best to avoid it, and to help other people avoid it when guided by God.

To be able to do this we need to know God, and to know God we need to spend time with him, and so this verse of Corinthians is the reason why we must spend time with God in prayer and Bible study.

How can we say we now evaluate others by Gods standards if we don’t ever speak to him or allow him to speak to us? We can’t.

This also goes back to the point made earlier about taking care of something. We have to take care of the gift God gave us, but this isn’t about not doing things, its not about not having fun, its not about not making mistakes, its about making sure we live life with the right fuel, following the right directions, and with the right target being headed for.

Our fuel is time with God, we must spend as much time with God as we can, and definitely more than we do on things like TV and internet (as hard as that is)
If (as I have been sad enough to be doing recently) we spend an one or two hours on face book ploughing pretend farms and only spend half an hour with God what is actually fuelling you?

Our direction is the Bible, or to reuse the over used phrase “Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth”. We need to know and understand what God says about things if we are to think like Him.

Our target is, according to 2 Corinthians 5 verse 20, to be Christ’s ambassadors so that others can see God through us and so that they may want to find out more and receive Gods gift as well.

Its not easy, but that’s why we are reminded that Jesus did this exact same thing for us first and now he is appealing to others through us.

All of this is fine, except life isn’t easy, life isn’t perfect, people hurt people, people suffer. There may be people in this church now sitting there feeling no connection to God at all, and they are probably thinking to themselves “yes yes God loves me, yes yes he have his life for me but im still depressed, still in debt, still addicted etc etc wheres God in this situation”.

And to those who may be thinking that I want you to know that God wants today to be the day you wake up, the day you let a friend in to help, the day of your fresh start.

I spoke earlier about how we don’t truly receive a gift unless we use it, and many Christians haven’t truly received Gods gift because we don’t use him the way he wants to be used.
Remember we heard how the new life is His not ours.

Well this means the stresses, the worries, the addictions, the debts, the bullys are his to. He wants you to give him total control over them so that he can take you in the direction he wants to take you.

This is even harder than becoming a Christian because some of us feel like the things we go through are too small to give to God, he gave his life for me, I couldn’t trouble him with such a small thing like this. And others feel the opposite feeling like God has done so much for them on the cross that they cant give him another problem to sort out especially one so big.

God wants you to give him every part of life.

Things you love, things you hate, the good and the bad.

He wants to heal you emotionally and physically.

He wants to take away and deal with everything that stresses you and deal with them his way.

He wants all of this so that you have truly received the gift of His new life.

Under the sheet I mentioned earlier, the valuable items.

Tipex and a rubber.

Two tools which enable us to have fresh starts, but there is a big difference between the two.
Tipex just covers up your mistakes and lets you write on top of them, only when we use a rubber do we really get a fresh start.

We all make mistakes and have things go wrong and sometimes, even as Christians we try to deal with it ourselves and tipex over it ignoring the scars etc that remain underneath the “fresh start”.

What God wants us to do today is let him be the rubber that gives us a real New life,

one where he has control,

where he carries the baggage,

where he takes the stress

where he removes the worrying

where we are free to be his ambassadors

where we are free to live a new life
where we are free

Accept that freedom today.

We are giving you a chance to physically respond to what God has been saying. The band are going to lead us in the song Purify my heart and as it plays if you want to accept and receive God’s gift of a fresh start today we have two prayer stations for you to come to.

At the prayer station we encourage you to spend time with God, just giving him your whole life, the good and the bad, and then wash your hands as a physical sign of a fresh new start with God in control.

Whether you’ve been a Christian for a long time or whether you want to give your life to God for the first time, God wants you to give him control, take that fresh start today.

God knows what this is about!

Working for christian agencies/churches has always been an interesting challenging experience for many reasons but recently I have been forced to ask the question about how it effects your faith.

before I continue I should say some things: -

• I believe God gives us all we need
• I believe God doesnt put us in situations we will drown in as he knows what we can cope with and will help us in all situations
• I believe God can perform miracles

that being said it is obvious to me that the more work you do for God the more the devil will attack, which can make the work seem harder, which can make your faith stronger - but also can shake your faith to the core.

The Devil can use anything to attack when things are going well, family, friends, sickness, managers, ministers, colleagues, funders, health, addictions, you name it he can use it. This is often ignored or forgotten by people because we know that God can do and use anything, and God is more powerful than Satan.

However it is dangerous not to remember the way the devil attacks, and be prepared for them, especially when in the midst of actively working for God. The Bible says to cover yourself with the armour of God at all times. The Bible says we are given the Holy Spirit to comfort and guide us. this doesnt make it easy tho does it?

Thankfuly we know that God hasnt promised us an easy life, he just promised a life in all its fullness, and a life in all its fullness can only be achieved with the low points and the high points.

The Bible has the low points in them, Joseph being sold as a slave, Daniel being thrown into the Lions den, Disciples being thrown into prison, Jesus being Crucified, and these parts of the stories can leave us feeling like saying "oh great so follow God and all you get is pain and suffering". Then you read the rest of the stories and you realise that the things they went through were used by God to ensure that his plans for the people involved succeded and that the people themselves were ready for what he had in store.

Ecclesiastes says "there is a season for everything, a time for every occupation under heaven" and sometimes the seasons are bad and sometimes they are good, but with God we can guarentee that when you put all the seasons together his plan for our lives will be achieved - on one condition, and that condition is that we keep our eyes on him and follow his directions, even when times get tough.

one of my favourite parts of the Bible is Peter walking on water, and I use it a lot when preaching, its not my favourite because he performed a miracle, its my favourite because Peter sank and Jesus went over picked him up and walked with him. I reckon Peter remembered that moment for the rest of his life for 4 reasons,

1. he walked on water
2. he feared for his own life
3. acknowledged his fear and Jesus helped him overcome it
4. His faith and trust in Jesus grew

For me this one scene is a step by step guide to how our lives can be when working for God

1. we make a step of faith - start work, make sacrifices etc etc
2. things start getting hard, we fear we made the wrong choice, wondering if we are in the right place etc etc
3. give our fears to God and ask him to help us overcome it
4. become more secure in our faith and trust in God more

Im about half way between point 2 and 3 at the moment, having so many doubts and worries running through my mind that every little thing has a chance to be used by the devil, and my own shortcomings, addictions, issues seem to be popping up more. But, as I write this, I realise something, and that something is that because of these things I am growing closer to God, and whilst Im along way from being the perfect holy spirit filled, tongue speaking, Gospel spouting Christian God is moulding me into what he wants me to be.

Only God knows how long I will be in my current situations

Only God knows what will happen next

Only God knows how long I will be on this earth

But those statements give me so much more assurances, because I know God knows, and God knows best so I can concentrate on enjoying my life, whatever the season, so that when me and God sit down for a pint on a cloud in Heaven I can say "thanks for the good time you gave me", and he can respond, "thanks for enjoying the journey"

so does working for a christian agency effect your faith, yes, but so does everything you do.

Lifes a journey, go with it, enjoy it, coz with God as your Guide it wont be boring!