RUNNING ON

Just squeezing in one last post... Take a look at Terry Virgo's blog for his thoughts on the 'Lakeland Revival.' Terry is brilliant at bringing a biblical and balanced approach to what is happening in Florida at the moment.

RUNNING OUT

A friend of mine is this weekend competing in the Grand Union Canal Run, a 145 mile trot between Birmingham and London. He has done it before, and says it is fun, as well as tough. Well, each to his own I suppose...

This will be my last post for a week or two as I am having some holiday and leaving the internet behind. The 4.5 months I have been in Poole have been both demanding and huge fun, and now it is time to take a few days off to recharge the batteries. June & July are going to be full of activity so a week sitting on a beach, digging sandcastles and reading a Spurgeon biography is just what I need!

I thought this was also a good time to change the look of my blog, as I had become a bit weary of the spots - so its a stripped down clean look for summer, ideal for the beach!

STILL THANKFUL

I was bitterly disappointed by the last couple of days in Parliament. Basically we lost the lot – animal-human hybrids allowed; saviour siblings allowed; the lesbian legal fiction of children being created without any male involvement allowed; reduction in the time limit for abortion not allowed. It is utilitarian, consequentialist ethics taking its inevitable and depressing course. Our societies attitude to embryos now seems to be, “make one, scrap one, harvest one, mutate one.” It sucks.

But, even in the midst of such madness it is good to thank God! We are in a preaching series on praise at Alder Road at the moment, and as it’s a while since I have reviewed a book here I thought it a good moment to do so. The book I would like to recommend is Thanking God, by R.T. Kendall.


This is a simple little book, but is also quite profound. I think it is a good one both for those who are not great readers and for those who like deep theology – Kendall manages to communicate on both levels. As would be expected from a man who spent 25 years as minister at Westminster Chapel this book is full of the Bible, but it is also full of anecdotes and illustrations from Kendall’s long ministry. It is very personally engaging and honest, as well as biblical.

Kendall makes a plea for us to thank God and to understand the importance of being thankful. Our culture is not naturally a thankful one, but Christians should be full of thanks. God is good! God is worthy of our praise! We should thank God for common grace – food and shelter; doctors and firemen; rain and sunshine – and we should thank God for saving grace – that he gifts us with faith and draws us into relationship with him.

There’s no fluff in this book. It is hard-edged about the pain and difficulty we encounter in life. But Kendall is clear that thanking God is not something that should be dependent on circumstances. God is always worthy of our praise, and praising him is always the best way for us to find our way through pain.

If you are feeling happy at the moment you should read this book – it will help you direct your happiness in thanks to God. If you are feeling sad at the moment you should read this book – it will help you to understand something of God’s sovereignty over every situation and give praise to him even though you don’t feel like praising him. If you are grieving at the moment you should read this book – it will help you to lift your eyes to God’s eternal plan for a new heaven and earth where there will be no more weeping or pain, and that will cause you to give thanks to him.

The greatest mystery of all is why God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son to die on a cross for our sins. I don’t understand it. Do you? All we can do is stand back, and worship. And be so very, very thankful.

FLOYD AND FUNERALS

My brother asked me if I would blog about the Roger Waters concert on Sunday, and as he paid for the tickets I thought I would!

Going to a Waters concert is much more performance than gig. It is something to be watched and applauded more like a West End show than boogied to. All the classic Pink Floyd motifs were on display – amazing lights and visual effects, awesome musicians, an inflatable pig floating around the arena. It is sensory overload. And it is like a theatre or opera performance in that some of this stuff now almost has the status of classical music. I last went to see Pink Floyd (the David Gilmour branch, rather than the Waters denomination) 20 years ago at Wembley. I was 18, smoking my first joint, and running from God. Thank God that by his grace all that has changed - and at the O2 you get thrown out for smoking! Back then the musicians were different, but the tunes were the same. And there is always the flying pig.

The O2 is quite something as well. A real arena.

Travelling back from London yesterday with daughter No. 2 (who had accompanied me to my grandfather's funeral) we were listening to a Horrible History about the Rotten Romans. In it the author, Terry Deary, told the story of Perpetua, the famous Christian martyr, tortured and executed in a Roman arena for her refusal to worship anyone but Jesus. I think the Romans would feel at home in the O2. There is something very spiritual about arenas. They are our cultures temples. And there was something very haunting about Waters and band performing Shine On You Crazy Diamond as pictures of a youthful and beautiful and now dead Syd Barrett were projected on the vast screen.

My grandfather's thanksgiving service was less dramatic but more uplifting. It was fascinating to learn some things about him I had never known before. He had always seemed a somewhat austere figure, so it was wonderful to hear tales of his younger days. One man had travelled up from Brighton to say his farewells and told how Ted Hosier had been his Sunday school teacher at Kentish Town Mission, and been instrumental in him coming to faith in Christ. He had been reconnected to my grandfather recently when Granddad was moved to a home in Worthing. Wonderful!

A Pink Floyd concert followed by a funeral is enough to unsettle anyone though, and I am feeling very disappointed in our parliamentarians who yesterday voted to allow human-animal hybrids and the creation of “saviour siblings.” They get to vote on lowering the abortion time limit from 24 to 20 weeks this evening. I am praying they do a better job this time.

MORE GRACE

God has been reminding me of his grace a great deal recently.

Our current preaching series at Alder Road (“Horizon Widening Praise”) necessitates a focus on grace – how are we going to praise right without understanding grace?! – and I have been enjoying finding the grace of God in the scriptures. Last weekend Terry Virgo was with us, and he brought such a flavour of grace to us. Terry preaches grace, and lives grace, and demonstrates grace. It was superb to have him with us. We also saw God’s grace at work as Terry prayed for the sick and saw many healed, especially those with long-term back problems. It was wonderful to be able to start our meeting on Sunday with testimonies from those who had been healed at a leaders meeting on Saturday evening – faith was stirred!

I find I need to keep coming back to grace again and again, because it is easy to quickly wander from it. Terry was brilliant on Saturday evening, illustrating from the story of Samson how grace is given, not earned. I have preached this story as an example of grace myself on a couple of occasions, but hadn’t previously spotted that Samson most probably was not the muscle-bound hulk we imagine him to be – if he had been, why would anyone have asked, “What is the source of your strength?” The reason Samson was strong was because God graced him with strength, and not because he had huge muscles. And despite all his lamentable failures Samson still received grace, and is recorded in Hebrews 11 as one of the heroes of the faith. I need reminding that grace is given and not earned. God’s gifts are not rewards – they are free gifts. I need to be reminded of this so as not to feel resentful towards those who appear to have been gifted with more than me, and so as not to neglect the gifts that I have been given, but to fan them into flame.

I was talking with two friends the other evening who had recently been at the Dwell Conference in New York where Mark Driscoll was speaking. One of the things they reported was that Driscoll reads 300 pages a day, as well as having grown a church from zero to about 8,000 since starting Mars Hill in 1996, a year after I began full-time Christian ministry. Even more depressing is the fact that he is the same age as me! (Coincidentally, he is also married to a woman called Grace, but he has five children to my four.)

When confronted with someone like Driscoll it is good to be reminded of grace. Driscoll has been given grace for certain things, and I for others. Grace teaches me that I don’t have to measure my worth against another man’s gift, but that I find my worth in Jesus Christ and his call on my life. Its all grace!

This has been a week in which I have also been enjoying the general blessings – “common grace” – that God pours out. On Monday we picked the kids up from school and went for a barbeque on South Beach, Studland. It was about the most like being on holiday without actually being on holiday that I have ever experienced.



I am on the road a lot these couple of weeks, so my carbon footprint is going to be bigger than normal. The past two days I have been in Peterborough for our regular Newfrontiers leaders days of Prayer & Fasting. Saturday I am in Cornwall, taking a wedding. Sunday, after preaching at Alder Road, I am up to London, to see my brother and go with him to a gig at the O2 arena (Roger Waters performing Dark Side of the Moon). The day after that I am in north London for the thanksgiving service for my grandfather, and then on the Wednesday back in south London for a meeting of the Newfrontiers Theology Forum. The next Sunday I am again in north London, preaching at North West Church, and then on the Monday we go to Cornwall again, but this time for a weeks holiday.

I will need a weeks holiday! There is grace for holidays.

TRIPPING, NOT STUMBLING

The most fun day of the last twelve months for the Hosier Household was walking through the Caranca Gorge while on holiday in the Pyrenees last August. This is a spectacular walk, and potentially dangerous.


Along one side of the gorge a tunnel is carved into the cliff through which to walk, with on one side a rope to hold on to and on the other a sheer drop far down to the river below. It felt somewhat hairy doing this with young children, bit they all survived to tell the tale.


Life often seems like that walk - it feels as though a bad stumble could send us hurtling over the edge to disaster. But there is a rope to hold on to:

The steps of a man are established by the Lord,
when he delights in his way;
though he fall, he shall not be cast headlong,
for the Lord upholds his hand. (Ps. 37:23-24)

Keep hold of the rope! And don't look down!

BURMA

It's hard to know what to say about a situation like the cyclone in Burma. Yes, tens of thousands have died, but it is "a far away country, of which we know little." And it is a country ruled by a despotic regime reluctant to receive the help of the outside world, so what can we do? Already it seems to have slipped way down the news agenda.

As so often, John Piper makes some helpful remarks about how to respond to this situation. You can find them here.

HOSIER UPDATE

This past weekend marked my fourth month in Poole. There are different ways to look at this – on one hand, its still only been four months; on the other, a third of the year has gone already!

I feel that we are making good progress at Alder Road. I have been trying to encourage the prayer life of the church and recently preached three sermons on ‘Horizon Widening Prayer’. The Friday morning men’s prayer meeting we started a couple of weeks back has been excellent. And tomorrow evening we have a church prayer meeting. Last Sunday I started another short series called ‘Horizon Widening Praise’, which I hope will help us to think more about the grace of God and respond to it with appropriate thankfulness.

This Sunday we have Terry Virgo with us. Terry has just been in France, having just got back from the Crimea – but I’m sure Poole is the most glamorous and exciting destination he has had for a while! There is a wonderful account of a recent healing on Terry’s blog, and I am expectant of the word being faithfully preached and signs following as Terry ministers among us.

More personally, Grace, the girls and myself continue to enjoy the lifestyle benefits of living in this part of the world. I, and daughter No. 2, have joined Poole Harbour Canoe Club and we are enjoying getting to grips with this new sport. It is much easier to learn at 8 than 37, but with all this water around it is fantastic to actually be able to get out on it rather than just look at it.

Yesterday we walked on the coast path between Kimmeridge and Worbarrow. It is a very dramatic bit of coastline.

I saw a peregrine falcon on Gad Cliff and went for my first sea swim of the year in Worbarrow Bay – yes, it was cold, and no (unfortunately) that is not my yacht.


Also, yesterday was the first Bank Holiday Monday in seven years that I haven’t raced in the Tonbridge Triathlon. Last year I crashed off my bike while racing there and banged myself up quite badly. As well as being very painful it marked the start of a turbulent phase of our lives – within three weeks I found I was leaving New Community and life was turned upside down. If there is any synchronicity to these things yesterdays extremely pleasant walk along the cliffs should presage a year of much blessing for us!