CIRCLE OF BLOG

Here's a thing - a blog about Newfrontiers bloggers.

COMPLETION

I just got the call from my solicitor to say that completion has taken place on my house sale and the money will be in the bank by the end of the day. This is very good news!

It has taken us pretty much exactly 12 months from putting our house on the market to reaching completion. It has been a slow and painful process. At the end of 2006 I seriously thought about selling our house and renting instead as I was sure the housing market had peaked and it would be a good time to cash in. I didn't do so because at the time we had no plans to leave SE London and it didn't seem worth taking the punt and living with the disruption. Of course, had I known that six months later we would be on our way and that my financial predictions would be proved to be on the nail I would have gone with what my gut was telling me - O the wonders of hindsight!

But that aside, completion is a wonderful feeling. Even when something is promised, it is only at completion that you really feel all the benefits of the promise. Paul writes to the Philippians that, "I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ." It is good to stand today in the promise of all that Jesus is for us, but how good it will be - O how good! - when the promise comes to completion.

REVIVAL FIRES

I have so far refrained from commenting on the 'Lakeland Revival' on this blog. The blogosphere is awash with other people's comments so it hasn't seemed worth me getting into it as well, other than to point people towards Terry Virgo's thoughts. However, last Sunday I felt I had to say something about it at Alder Road, as I and the other elders have been concerned at the potential for division that comes with something like this - it is so easy to polarise into 'pro' and 'anti' camps and for both sides to miss what God is actually doing. You can hear my comments here.

At Alder Road we have been blessed by one of our church members receiving a significant healing when at Dudley (where Trevor Baker has 'brought the anointing back' from Lakeland). I thank God for this, but I would also recommend looking at Phil's experience at Dudley. Phil is someone I feel I can trust, and he makes some very helpful observations, both positive and negative, about the meeting he attended there.

Another friend pointed out to me today how powerful the media is in this - if something happens in Florida it gets picked up by the God Channel. Less well known is that Ram Babu, a healing evangelist familiar to many of us in Newfrontiers, has been holding meetings in India attended by crowds of up to 100,000 and seeing many remarkable healings. God is at work across the earth, and we should look for him to also work amongst us, wherever we are, even if there are no TV cameras present.

A CLOUD OF WORDS

What words do we use most often? If our words could be presented as a picture, how would that picture look? What would the picture reveal about our priorities and attitude?

Between Two Worlds has a link to a very cool applet called Wordle. Enter a piece of text and Wordle produces a word cloud that gives greater prominence to the words most frequently occurring. Its fun (as well as a potential hour eater - so don't get too distracted by it!).

Here is the word cloud for everything I have so far posted on my Worship Poole blog. And here is one from yesterdays sermon on justification.

And one for John Piper's sermon the previous Sunday.

This is dangerously addictive...

ALL CHANGE

Thank you Jesus! Our house exchange has just happened.

Today is the longest day of the year, and by some spurious maths also meant to be the happiest. It is certainly a weight off my mind to have sold the house.

FRIENDS LIKE THESE

One of the ways in which God has most graced me is in giving me many friends around the world. A lot of these friends are going to be in the UK for the TOAM conference and I have been able to get some of them booked up to come and be with us at Alder Road. Members of Alder Road should be very familiar with what we have going on over the next few weeks, but if there is anyone else out there who would like to come and join in the fun you would be more than welcome!

Here are the details:

Sunday 29th June
Tapiwa Chizana preaching
Taps is a Partner in accountancy firm Deloittes and an elder in River of Life Church, Bulawayo. He is married to Flora and is very cool.

Saturday 5th July
Marriage seminar with John & Linda Lanfermann. 7.30pm
John leads the Newfrontiers apostolic team in the USA and is based in St Louis, Missouri where he started Jubilee Church. John & Linda are in great demand to speak on the subject of marriage and it is a privilege for us to host them at Alder Road.

Sunday 6th July
John Lanfermann preaching & Phil Varley leading worship.
Phil is an elder and heads up the worship teams at King’s Church, Catford. Over the past ten years King’s has grown from a couple of hundred people to nearly 1,000 today and Phil has played a key role in the development of the church.

Saturday 12th July
Greg Shepherd from New Community Church will be leading a training session for musicians and worship leaders. Greg was with us earlier in the year and made a great impact with his teaching and worship leading.

Sunday 13th July
Stephen Manhanga preaching & Greg Shepherd leading worship
Stephen is based at River of Life, Bulawayo and heads up a recently formed training college giving teaching to school leavers in agriculture, business and the Bible. Stephen will be here with his wife Molly.

Tuesday 15th July
Parenting seminar: Motivating Your Teen, with Ian & Adie Wilsher. 7.30pm
Every parent wants their teen to get the most out of school. It seems teenagers do not always co-operate with this goal! This seminar will help you understand your teen better so you can best help them achieve their potential.

Ian and Adie have been in ministry for 26 years, 14 of which were in a Pastoral role and 12 as Founders and Directors of the Christian Counselling Centre in Harare. Ian has authored a book called Restoring Relationships which is a workbook designed to help couples restore and build a marriage relationship that is struggling. They have been married for 30 years and God has blessed them with 3 fantastic children (now all adults).

Wednesday 16th July
Church celebration meeting with Mbonisi Malaba. 7.30pm
Mbo leads the elder team at River of Life, a church he planted while also working as a doctor in Bulawayo. Mbo is a superb preacher and will stir your soul! Mbonisi’s wife Tash and young son Ethan will also be with us.

Thursday 17th July
Relationships seminar: Managing Anger – being strong without being aggressive, with Ian & Adie Wilsher. 7.30pm
The way we manage our anger will affect all our relationships – positively or negatively. We can be passive (which breeds resentment, more anger, and changes nothing) or we can be aggressive (which results in harmful things being done and said) This seminar is about harnessing the energy of anger to bring constructive and positive change.

Sunday 27th July
John Groves preaching
John is lead elder at Winchester Family Church and is a well known Bible teacher across the Newfrontiers family of churches. John also has a strong prophetic gift and has brought a number of significant words that have shaped us as a movement.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!

38 today, although a member of my staff guessed my age at 45! The suggestion was then made by Les the treasurer that she should be handed her P45!

No, the house still isn't exchanged. Would have been a good birthday present if it had...

As Monday is my day off we tend to celebrate birthdays on a Monday rather than any other day, as any other day is just another working day. And celebration in the Hosier house means food. Since moving to Poole we have been eating a lot more fish, mostly purchased from the excellent harbourside fishmongers in Hamworthy - cheaper and fresher than I've ever seen elsewhere. Saturday we had a jumbo mullet (very cheap and greatly underrated) but for yesterday we indulged in a lobster. Larry was a fine creature, and I felt almost guilty to consign him to the boiling waters of doom. But not that guilty..!


I think I feel more tangibly aware of the grace of God this birthday than any I can remember. Truly God is good.

And so is lobster.

STILL NO (EX)CHANGE

An update for those who are interested... We are told that our buyers went to their solicitor this morning, signed the papers and paid the deposit, but still we have not exchanged, so I don't know what their solicitor is up to. All rather disappointing and stressful.

Keep praying!

MONEY 9: STAYING GENEROUS

This is obviously a time of economic difficulty. I wince every time I pass a petrol station, food bills are going up dramatically, and the housing market is in turmoil. Grace and I are meant to be exchanging contracts on our London house next Monday, but it is on something of a knife edge. If there are people out there who read this blog and pray for the Hosier’s, please pray for this one – it will be such a relief to us to not have any remaining anchors in SE London and to be able to get our roots fully down in Poole.

Economic uncertainty breeds a lot of fear in people, and the natural reaction for us is to shut our wallets and look out for No. 1. As Christians, we need to have more faith than that! Last night we had a church meeting at Alder Road at which, amongst other things, we talked about our financial position and I challenged the church members to raise their giving levels. I also read out this quote from Spurgeon, delivered close to the end of his ministry, that had challenged and encouraged me:

I have coveted no man’s silver or gold. I have desired nothing at your hands, but that you love the Lord Jesus Christ, and serve Him with all your might. But I have coveted, and I do still covet to have a generous people about me, because I am sure that it is to God’s glory and to your own advantage to be liberal to His cause. Poor men should give that they may not be always poor. Rich men should give that they may not become poor. These are selfish motives; but, still, they are worthy to be mentioned. “There is that scattereth, and yet increaseth; and there is that withholdeth more than is meet, but it tendeth to poverty”. As a general rule, he that keeps his substance will not find it multiply under his hands; but he that gives shall find that it is given back to him, “good measure pressed down, and shaken together, and running over,” Besides, I do not think much of giving when I have plenty to give with; I like it better when I can pinch myself. If you pinch yourself, there is a sweetness about giving to the Lord. What you do not want, you can dispense with, and exhibit small love; but when you come to what you do want, and give that to the Lord, then there comes to your own heart the comfortable assurance that you are really doing it unto the Lord, because of the needs of His cause.

I think every pastor would have complete agreement with Spurgeon’s sentiments here; this one certainly does.

FRESH BLOGGINGS

I started a new blog last week. This blog is a series of daily notes designed to help believers in their personal devotional disciplines. In this I have been inspired by C.H. Spurgeon, who once said:

Beloved, when you and I have seen or heard anything which God has revealed to us, let us go and write it, or make it known by some other means. God has not put the treasure into the earthen vessel merely for the vessel's own sake, but that the treasure may afterwards be poured out from it, that others may thereby be enriched. You have not been privileged to see, merely to make glad your eyes, and to charm your soul; you have been permitted to see in order that you may make others see, that you may go forth and report what the Lord has allowed you to perceive. John no sooner became the seer of Patmos than he heard a voice that said to him, 'Write'. He could not speak to others, for he was on an island where he was exiled from his fellows, but he could write, and he did; and, often, he who writes addresses a larger audience than the man who merely uses his tongue. It is a happy thing when the tongue is aided by the pen of a ready writer, and so gets a wider sphere, and a more permanent influence than if it merely uttered certain sounds, and the words died away when the ear had heard them.

I have waited a few days before going public with this blog in order to see if I could sustain it, but I think I can, so here it is! I hope it will be useful to some.

ELECTION

I preached about the doctrine of election at Alder Road this morning. It is a wonderful, beautiful, liberating, amazing doctrine. And it always provokes the same questions! Grasp it and your life will never be the same again. Resist it and you'll get ulcers trying to argue all those scriptural references away.

God's election of his people is very different from our democratic election of political candidates. What God decides is going to happen, happens. And once it has happened the decision is not subject to dispute or recount.

Human elections are fascinating though, and it was interesting to see Hilary finally concede defeat yesterday. (There is a brilliant analysis of why Clinton lost by the BBC's correspondent here.) Since last year I have been predicting that Obama would win the Democratic nomination and so have a smug satisfaction in being proved right. There were a couple of dodgy moments, especially the furore over Obama's pastor, but the whole thing seemed so The West Wing that it was inconceivable he wouldn't pull it off.

However, I have also been predicting all along that Obama will lose the Presidential election to McCain. On this one we may all have an opinion, but until November God alone knows...

JOY & PAIN

Many years ago I sojourned awhile at Spurgeon’s College. I remember once being set an essay titled something like, “Is it possible to be human outside relationships?” I don’t think I really understood the question then, but would do a much better job of answering it now.

There is in all of us a crying need for relationship. I believe this need springs primarily from our being created in the image of God, for relationship with God. As Augustine put it, “Our heart is restless until it rests in you.” This primary need of relationship with God is then expanded by our need for relationships with other people. As God said of Adam before the creation of Eve, “It is not good for the man to be alone.”

This being the case, relationships with others are the source of our greatest joy, but also of our greatest pain. A couple of weeks back I took a wedding, and yesterday I took the funeral of a baby. Both these occasions reinforced the truth of this.

Whenever we commit ourselves to a relationship we commit ourselves to joy. After all, we enter into relationships in order to find joy – no-one gets married or has children in order to make themselves miserable! Yet at the same time, when we enter a deep relationship we also guarantee ourselves pain. If a loved one suffers, we suffer with them. If a loved one dies, a part of us dies with them. If a loved one sins against us, our souls are cut.

On returning from Cornwall on Monday I uploaded our photos on to my hard drive and while doing so had a quick look at some videos and pictures from previous Cornish holidays. Those pictures represent moments of incredible joy – moments of numinous blessing with my wife and kids. I would like to be able to stick together every joy filled moment into one long video tape, and keep playing it over and over and for that to be my life evermore!

But that is not how life is. Every joy filled moment is only the prelude to a more painful one – something as trivial as the kids having a fight, or the frustration of wrestling huge amounts of stuff off the beach up endless cliff steps, or a mosquito bite to the ankles; Or maybe something massive and life-shattering, like the death of a spouse or a serious illness.

Our hope as followers of Jesus though, is that this is not how life will always be. There will be a day when those moments of joy will expand infinitely while the points of pain will recede into nothing. We have the hope of resurrection, and a new heavens and earth – of a world and life made perfect, where “God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” (Rev. 21:3-4)

BLAZING A TRAIL

Back from Cornwall.

It was very wet on the way down, and although the rest of the week was fairly dry we never fully dried out! But every day we saw some sun, and much time was spent in the sea. On Saturday a cold sea mist came in, but the silver lining in this cloud was that it meant that no-one bar the Hosier’s were in the water – the whole beach to ourselves!


As a last minute thing I preached at Blaze Church in Newquay on Sunday. This is a church that I have seen from its beginnings seven years ago, as a number of the founding members used to work with me in the youth meetings at Stoneleigh Bible Week, but this was the first time I had actually attended a meeting there. The church meets in a nightclub, which makes for an interesting venue, and they are doing a fantastic job of making Jesus known. The thing that was really impressed upon me as I preached was that although Newquay is only a small town it has the influence of a major city in terms of its impact upon fashion and culture in the UK, so the church there has a disproportionate potential to also affect the nation.

If you are ever down in Newquay on holiday I would encourage you to check Blaze out.

Before going away I posted about a friend of mine who was taking part in the Grand Union Canal Race, and here is a report on his efforts by our club coach:

Congratulations to Pat Robbins for his remarkable run at the Grand Union Canal Race. Not only did he win the race but broke the existing course record by some 25 minutes. He completed the course in 27 hours and one minute. For those of you that are not familiar with this event it’s a non-stop 145 mile run along the Grand Union Canal between Birmingham and London. What makes it even more remarkable is that this is only Pat's second year running ultra distances. Last year he entered the race more in hope than expectation and confessed to some of his racing colleagues that he had only ever completed one marathon some years earlier and that his longest run in training for the event had been 22 miles. This created a good deal of leg-pulling although this soon turned to admiration as he turned in a superb first performance to finish 4th overall in a little over 31 hours.

Pat started his race really sensibly and covered the first 22 miles in 4 hours 11 minutes, at this stage he was over an hour behind the leaders. Through the first half of the race this extended and at one point Pat was over 2 hours behind the leading runners. Running through the night along the canal he saw a few interesting sites including 2 men trying to rescue a cow that had decided to go for a swim! That could have however just been a bizarre dream caused by sleep deprivation and too much Red Bull!

With around 50 miles to go Pat hit a purple patch and was really picking his pace up, fuelled by gels, cashew nuts and other assorted goodies provided by his Dad in full support crew mode. He passed the second place runner and pushed on, continuing his momentum. After arriving near Paddington and on the vantage point of a bridge he spotted the first place runner around 400m ahead, he quickly caught and passed him. Being concerned that both chasers might mount a last attempt to wrestle back the lead Pat pushed on again. Even with 133 miles in his legs at that stage he covered the last 12 miles in an amazing 1 hour 45 minutes.

This account is just packed with sermon illustrations about how we should run the Christian life! Well done Pat on a quite extraordinary feat of endurance.