Young people uniting
Standing as one
Working to advance the kingdom
To reach lives, to touch souls
Being a generation that seeks God’s face

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“Then Jesus asked them, “Would anyone light a lamp and then put it under a basket or under a bed to shut out the light? Of course not! A light is placed on a stand, where its light will shine.” Mark 4:21

We are called to let the light of Jesus shine through our lives. We are commanded to be light to the darkness. But so often it can seem as though we aren’t having any impact. And a possible reason for that is that we are getting lost in the light from other Christians.

Here’s an experiment for you to try. If you have a torch function on your phone, activate it the next time you are at church (if it doesn’t, go and get a proper old-school torch and use it instead), and see how much of an impact the light from it makes on the overall brightness. Then at night go outside and activate the same torch, and see how much of an impact it has on the light level. Unless your church is having electricity problems you should notice the light from your torch has considerably more impact at night in the darkness.

And that’s how it is with us as Christians. When we let the light of Jesus shine it has considerably more impact in the darkness than in areas which are already illuminated by brighter lights. And yet so often that is where we spend most of our time shining.

We let the light shine when we are in the comfort of church, YF, small groups or in our group of Christian friends. Yet in these occasions so often our light can get lost in the light of the overall Christian glow. We waste our efforts shining in areas that are already bright, while outside the doors of our Church there is darkness, at the pubs and clubs our lost friends are going to there is darkness, in the life of that girl from school that no-one talks to there is darkness. And yet we concentrate all our collective light in small areas that already are bright anyway. And the impact of individuals is lost.

So maybe the question isn’t are we shining, but are we shining in the right places. Because Jesus said “Healthy people don’t need a doctor – sick people do” (Mark 2:17). Likewise people who are saved don’t need us to shine bright for them, but the lost do.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying we can neglect fellowship with other Christians. But we should view fellowship as a chance to recharge before going out into the world to shine for Jesus, rather than seeing it as the place where it is safe to shine.

Because when we go into the ‘dark’ places and shine it will have a much greater impact. People are more likely to notice us shining when there aren’t other sources of light for us to get lost in. So today strive to find your ‘dark niche’, the friendship into which you alone can shine with Jesus’ love. And once you have found it, shine in it!

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So how can you use your phone for God?

First off, unless you have amazing Rainman style memory powers, on it you will have numbers for all your friends in a phonebook application. This can also serve as a list of names to scroll through and pray for. Depending on your contract plan/top-up rewards you may well find you are paying for texts that you don’t use. Right now for example I have 515 free texts to use by November 14th – I don’t know about you, but there is no way I could come close to using those in regular message in the week I have from now til then. But rather than let those be lost come the end of the month why not use at least some of them up by texting encouraging verses to your friends?

As well as sending texts you are also able to receive texts almost anywhere (unless you are on Orange, then you are majorly restricted by poor signal coverage) through the wonders of modern technology. But did you know that for free you can get texts from All4God on a regular basis (i.e. whenever I remember to do it) with Bible verses and great quotes relating to faith? All you need to do is become a Fan of All4God on facebook and sign up to receive status updates by SMS, or follow us on Twitter (@all4God) and activate SMS updates there. Depending on your phone network and country you may be able to use either, or just one of those, but it is well worth trying to get one of them. (You’ll not be spammed with lots of messages, and I don’t get your number so I can’t sell it to third parties, no matter how desperate I get for a bit of cash!)

I mentioned at the start that I tend to have my phone with me more than my bible – well there is a simple solution. See, it is possible to get Bible applications for most phones, and if you don’t mind your translation with a few “Thee’s, thou’s and Thy’s” in it you can even get it for free from GoBible.

There’s a few other simple things you can do with your phone – you could set a Christian image as your wallpaper/screensaver to help remind you of the need to honour God in everything you do before you send a message/make a phone call that maybe wouldn’t be best pleasing to Him. You could put a worship tune as your ringtone, which could be a good way to start conversations with people who hear it and ask what song it is.

You may be able to think of other ways in which you can use your mobile phone to help you grow closer to God – if so please do share them with us in the comments!

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If you have ever been to a circus you’ll probably have seen a tightrope walker walking along the rope at quite a height above the ground. You may also have seen ‘circus schools’ on TV that let people try out various circus activities for themselves. At these the tightrope is usually a lot closer to the ground. There is a reason for that – the lower the rope, the less danger you will be in when you fall.

It makes sense when you are learning to walk on a tightrope you would start at a low level, then gradually build up to doing it on a higher rope. You want to become confident at a safer level, and then when you have mastered the basics you can move on. And I think there is a similarity there with our trust in God.

See, so often we say we trust God, but have we moved to ‘the higher rope’, or is our trust still just a short distance off the ground? Do we trust God in the big things, in the unproven things, or just with small issues, with things we know He has been faithful in before? Do we trust His guidance in all areas of our lives, or just the parts that don’t matter too much?

Jesus sent his disciples out telling them not to take money or a change of clothes with them (check it out in Matthew 10:5-23). To go without anything to fall back on takes serious trust – they were walking on the high tightrope. Are we prepared to do that? Or do we prefer to set up our own ‘safety net’ of comfort? Do we not trust that when God sends us He will also provide for us?

In Matthew 6:31-33 Jesus says “So don’t worry about these things, saying, ‘What will we eat? What will we drink? What will we wear?’ These things dominate the thoughts of unbelievers, but your heavenly Father already knows all your needs. Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need.” Do we have enough trust to take those words literally?

One last thing on the tightrope analogy. Health and safety regulations these days mean there will be a safety net to catch tightrope walkers should they fall. And in life we don’t have a safety net; we have no assurance that everything will go just fine for us because we trust God. But God does promise that when we fall, He will pick us up again – Psalm 145:14 says “The Lord helps the fallen, and lifts those bent beneath their loads.”

So today put full trust in God. Trust enough to live life on the high rope, without a safety net of assurance that it will all go ok, with the reassurance that if you slip, God will be there to pick you up again.

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This one verse from 2 Chronicles is so packed with application for our lives (It almost comes as a surprise to remember it is from the Old Testament – not all the Old Testament is lists of names and laws!) In the Casting crowns song ‘What if his people prayed’ it is used to encourage people to pray, and while that is one of the aspects of this verse, as I looked at it, there is actually so much more to it than it simply being about the need to pray – this verse makes it clear that prayer on its own is not enough.

I’m going to start at the end of this verse, which is a message from God to His people, where God makes a promise “I will hear them from heaven and will forgive their sins and heal their land.” I think it is clear that our land needs healing – there is rising teen suicides, more and more people are going out every weekend getting drunk and sleeping around, many people have huge levels of debt, there is all sorts of political corruption around the world, Islamic extremists are preaching their messages of hate unopposed while great restrictions are placed on the Church’s freedom to speak out. Our land needs healed! God has promised to heal it – when He says “I will” you can be sure that He will – but it is a conditional promise, It is not freestanding – it is dependant on us doing our part.

The promise will be fulfilled when “[His] people who are called by [His] name will humble themselves and pray and seek [His] face and their wicked ways.”

All who are Christians have been chosen by God to be his people (re Ephesians 1:5), therefore if we want God to heal our land it is up to us to fulfil the four requests God makes in the first half of the verse – to humble ourselves, to pray, to seek God’s face and to turn from our wicked ways.

“…humble themselves” When we come before God, we need to come with the right attitude. We are not worthy. We can not come before Him because of our own righteousness, but because of Jesus’ blood, shed on our behalf. ‘We are who we are by the grace of God’ (re 1 Corinthians 15:10). It is not about what we have done, but what God has done through us. On our own, we can do little, but with God “all things are possible” (Philippians 4:13). We need to strip away all pride, all thoughts of self-righteousness, all our desires to get glory for ourselves, and come humbly before God. We need to acknowledge that whatever we achieve it is because He has enabled and empowered us. In our relationship with God (and with others) the focus should be on Him, not us. Jesus says if you want to be the greatest you should become the least. He had every right to think of himself as worthy, but he still got down and washed his disciples’ feet.

Joab gives us another example of humility. In 2 Samuel 12:26-31 he led the Israelite army against the city of Rabbah, and achieved a great victory. Yet just before the end of the battle he called King David, and let him come and get the glory for winning. He was prepared to do the hard work and risk his life and then let someone else take the glory. That’s the kind of humility we need!

“and pray” – this part should be pretty straightforward. If we want our land to be healed, we need to spend time praying that is will happen. John Wesley once said that ‘God will do nothing but in answer to prayer’. Without getting drawn into a theological debate about that, we should strive to keep that in mind while we pray. For our land to be healed it will require God’s people getting on their knees in intercessory prayer. Does it concern you that many of the people around you will be spending eternity in Hell? If it does, that should compel you to pray for change, for eyes to open to Christ. And if it doesn’t, you need to pray that God would give you a passion for the lost. Prayer has great power – let’s utilize it on behalf of our land!

“and seek my face” . The healing of our land will be an advancing of the Kingdom of God. We as believers have been called to advance the kingdom, yet we cannot advance it without knowing God, and having a passion to want to advance his kingdom. As we grow in our relationship with God we will have a better knowledge of who He is, and should have a greater passion that others would see Him for who He is – the creator and sustainer of all things, our strong tower, and the only hope for salvation. And we will only grow in our relationship with God by spending time seeking his face – in prayer, in Bible study, in devotion, in praise. Psalm 24 describes the generation who seek God’s face:

“He who has clean hands and a pure heart,
who does not lift up his soul to an idol
or swear by what is false.” (NIV)

Are we ready to be that generation? Can we honestly say our hands are clean and our hearts are pure? Because to be the generation that fully seeks God’s face that’s what we need to do!

“And turn from their wicked ways” – it is not enough to repent of our sin – we need to flee from it! We will never be totally free from sin here on earth, but we cannot use that as an excuse to slip up. We should always be striving to be more like Christ, who was perfect in every way. He died to make us a new creation – there is no place for the old sinful life in our new life as followers of Him. This means casting aside everything that holds us back, whatever that might be for you. The race of life will be tough enough without making it harder by trying to bring extra baggage with us.

We need to nail all sin to the cross, and leave it there (”Those who belong to Christ Jesus have nailed the passions and desires of their sinful nature to his cross and crucified them there.” Galatians 5:24)

We cannot use the same mouth to praise God and then belittle His creation! We can’t have devotional time and then go off to watch all sorts of inappropriate nonsense on TV. It is hypocrisy, and Jesus wasn’t too fond of hypocrites…. Leave the passions of your sinful nature on the cross. The only thing you can gain from sin is regret.

When the Body of Christ gets those four things right, we will see great breakthroughs. We will see great transformation. God has promised it. Are we willing to be the generation that humbles themselves, prays without ceasing, seeks God’s face like never before and totally turns from its wicked ways?

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4 Discouraged Christian Witness

Grrrrrr I’m angry; actually over that feeling I’m more discouraged  I was in work today, and I bought a Bible for the staffroom in hope staff members fumble upon it and start reading something that will challenge there view on the way they live their life! However, one staff member who came a cross it today impolitely told me no-one is going to read it- and called me strange for buying it! Hmmm? Since August till now I have been trying to persuade work colleagues to believe in the gospel (obliviously I understand only the Holy Spirit can convict and save in-the-end, but as Christians we are to influence our life-changing belief)! In order to be influential I’ve been filling the staff room with Gospel leaflets, been persistently bringing up conversations that might challenge them to choose Christian faith, trying to be a living example in the way I talk and act round them, praying for change, been inviting them to church/youth fellowship constantly –unfortunately each time declined!

The thing is we can’t convince someone who doesn’t want to be convinced! They have to come to point in their lives when they are willing and open to listen and believe-for themselves! I’m reminded of the story of Moses and Pharaoh- it makes me feel better! As nothing could convince Pharaoh that Moses represented the one true God –not plagues, not miracles, not event the death of Egypt’s firstborn. If this kind of stuff couldn’t move Pharaoh to believe in God, then I’m not surprised that Christians today have trouble convincing people about God!

Does this mean we should give up witnessing?

NO, never give up as the bible says;

‘So let’s not get tired of doing what is good. At just the right time we will reap a harvest of blessing if we don’t give up. Therefore, whenever we have the opportunity, we should do good to everyone-especially to those in the family of faith.’ Galatians ch6 v9-10 (NLT)

Biblical References

We are called to spread the gospel- Mark Ch 16 v15

We are called to be witnesses- 1 Corinthians Ch 8 v 22-23

Moses- Pharaoh Story- Exodus Chapters  4 -12

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Firstly, we forget things. If we have journalled our thoughts, made a note of that class quote we read, listed down what we have been praying for, then we can refer back to it easily and refresh our memories.
Secondly, by journaling it gives us focus during our quite times. It can be easy to get distracted, but having a pen in your hand and noting down your prayer can keep you focused on what you are praying about. And also I have found that when I write down my prayers then I end up praying for a whole array of things I wouldn’t have normally thought to pray about.
Also, another benefit of journalling is that it gives you something to look back over and see how you have grown, see how God has answered your prayers, and during rough times it can give you some encouragement by reminding you of better times spiritually.

So how do you go about it? It’s pretty straightforward – all you need is a notebook of some sort – it could be plain, lined, one with a fancy cover, a specific journal book as sold in Christian bookshops, just whatever you feel comfortable with. And also you’ll need some form of writing tool (I’d recommend a pen or pencil!). Other than that, you just have to go for it. It can be hard thinking what to write first, but I have found once you get past that initial moment of being stuck for what to write, things just come flowing out after that. So give it a try today if you don’t already journal. And don’t forget to look back over it at some point in the future too, as that is a great benefit of journalling, having wee reminders to look back at and draw encouragement and inspiration from.

If you have any thoughts related to journaling, please do share in the comments!

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“Paul says, ‘I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received.’ (Ephesians 4:1 NCV) What would that life look like? Well, that life isn’t about keeping score. It’s not about how many friends you have on Facebook, and it’s not about who you’ve dated, are dating or haven’t dated but would like to! It isn’t about what sport you play or how good you did or didn’t play it last week. It’s not about your shoes or your hair or the colour of your skin, or where you live or go to school. In fact, it’s not about grades, money, clothes or even about whether that college accepts you or not. Life isn’t about if you have lots of friends, or if you are alone, and it’s not about how accepted or unaccepted you are. Life just isn’t about that. But life is about who you choose to love. It’s about how you feel about yourself. It’s about trust, happiness and compassion. It’s about sticking up for your friends and replacing hate with love. Life is about avoiding jealousy, overcoming ignorance and building confidence. It’s about what you say and what you mean. It’s about seeing people for who they are and not what they have. Most of all, it’s about choosing to use your life to touch someone else’s in a way that could never have been achieved otherwise. These choices are what life’s about.” Word 4U 2Day September 17^th 2009. Available freely from UCB – www.UCB.co.uk

So I urge you today to take that onboard, to use your choices to impact on the lives of others in a powerful, positive way. Don’t go through life focusing on trivial things, but in all things aim to make the main thing (our calling from God) your main thing. And if you don’t currently read the Word4U2day check it out too.

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