Come on Jesus sort it out

"One touch from Jesus can change everything."

I do believe this, that indeed Jesus can change any situation in a moment, He is after all God.

However, I have heard the phrase said so many times, often at the end of a preach encouraging people to come forward and have that one touch, that one encounter...

How many of the people who go forward don't get the 'one touch' to change everything, they have to keep on keeping on. Yet the leaders promised a life changing touch, come on Jesus get your finger out!

But did Jesus ever use this language? He talked about the kingdom of God being like a mustard seed, tiny but growing into a massive tree. 2000 years ago there were only a few hundred Christians and now there are maybe 2 billion across the world. That seems like a fully grown mustard tree but not really an example of 'one touch' changing everything.

What about Paul & the other New Testament writers? They seem to use language of the race or the journey, part of that journey is to throw off what hinders, and throwing could be a one time action but it often is a action to be repeated. We also told to put things on but not in the sense of just once but more of a daily uniform like picking up our cross. We are told to be filled and to keep on being filled.

The nine lepers who were healed and didn't return to Jesus, they had their one touch but Jesus didn't think much of them.

Encountering Jesus is wonderful and His touch is always just what we need. However God is always with us, we need to learn to engage with Him in our heart everyday right where we are (I know I so need to be reminded of this).

So instead of waiting to the last five minutes of a special meeting for that 'one touch', take five minutes during everyday (more than once a day if you can) and keep in real touch with God.

Daily Audio Bible - my solution (this year) to reading the bible!

Unless you're a book person, one of those natural readers who just automatically defaults to reading - which I am certainly not - then regular reading can be a struggle to get into and easy to fall out of. That is certainly true of me especially when it comes to regular reading of the Bible. I want to do it but I'm definitely not the best reader. I'm very much an erratic compulsive reader. Whether it's the Bible, newspapers, books, even reading blogs and the like on the internet, I usually go through phases where I get gripped and focused on reading for a while. After a few weeks I often find my attention and therefore time and space has moved onto something else and coming back to reading is difficult.

Then around the end of May I came across the Daily Audio Bible podcast. The Daily Audio Bible is at it's core the simple reading of the bible from cover to cover over the course of the year.

So I thought I would give it a go and it has worked really well for me. I have set my phone podcasting app to pick up the download around 6am and so when I wake it up it is usually downloaded and I can listen to it over breakfast or even in the shower (I leave it on the external speaker on max so I can hear it above the sound of the water!). Sometimes I listen as I ride it work or if I haven't been able to listen during the day I put my headphones in and listen as I lie in bed, no need to have the light on or my glasses to read at night (and occasionally I have fallen asleep to it - but I trust that is what God wanted for me at that time!).

Brian Hardin the founder of the Daily Audio Bible has been doing this over five years and in the course of this time a huge number of people have connected with this ministry. Brian has started a church community in his town (based in a coffee shop he setup) and provides a place for prayer and community off the back of what has developed through the Daily Audio Bible (via the website). What I really like about Brian is that he has stuck at doing the core activity - bringing the bible into peoples lives everyday - whilst slowly adding other aspects to the ministry but each aspect is built in a spirit of community in both the general sense of people all across world have things in common but also very much in a local sense, always encouraging people to engage where they are in a local faith community.

So if you think this could help enhance your reading and love of scripture then why not have a listen - click here for a link to the podcast feed.

Inspiring preaching

Over the last six months I have been listening to and incredibly blessed by the teaching of Mars Hill and their main teachers Rob Bell and Shane Hipps. You may have heard of Rob Bell from his Nooma films.

These two preachers take you on a journey, they tell you the story, the setting and share insight and observations. They build a cathedral of words which they invite you to come in and stand and enjoy the wonder of the the word and the world of God.

The last two series that I listened to were on the Jesus' parables and currently Ecclesiastes.

Jesus' parables are often 'simple' stories but digging deeper we see the profound riches within. Take the story of the man who finds treasure in a field, buys the field with all he has and puts the treasure back in the field. This treasure is not so much hidden as in plain sight to those who have their eyes opened to discover it and what is the field that the treasure is in and then re-buried into if not our lives?

The latest series on Ecclesiastes is so encouraging! Meaningless? A better word to read instead would be temporary (the Hebrew word is Havel) - "everything is temporary". So the teacher exhorts us to live a life of joy and peace with God, others and ourselves because everything is temporary.

So if you want to try something a bit different go check them out at itunes or you watch an excellent video clip of Rob Bell talking about resurrection (below). You could even see him for real this year at Greenbelt.

Resurrection: Rob Bell from Rob Bell on Vimeo.