Priorities

One thing I've always struggled with is priorities. I like to keep busy - you'll probably find I'm at my best when there's plenty going on in my life, but in terms of putting things in the right order I'm often guilty of prioritising the wrong thing, and neglecting the things which really need my time.


I guess we're always told as Christians that God should be our first priority. Well, yes... And no.


If I make my Uni work a priority over my time in the pub, then that means I completely forgo the pub, and spend time at home working on a design, an essay, a project. If I make my social time a priority over my Uni work, then I'll completely forgo (for a short while at least!) my Uni work, and go to the pub with some friends.


If I'm to make God just one of a set of priorities, then we get one of two outcomes.


If we liken God to my work in situation one - then that leaves very little time for anything else in life. Spending time with him one-on-one, spending time praying, spending time at church - all this is vital. But spending no time outside of this bubble isn't what God wants for us. He wants us embracing his wide world, he wants us to spend time with people who aren't Christians, he wants us to raise families, get degrees, work hard... and play hard too!


If we liken God to my work in situation two, then we're in a very sticky situation. This implies that actually, he comes second, and we only focus on him when other stuff is finished, and is out of the way. Of course, I don't need to expound why this is a bad way to be, although I know it's something I all too easily slip into.


So if God isn't priority one OR two, where do we place him?


Who likes Blackpool rock? Personally I can't stand the stuff - but have you noticed how on the sticks they have the words "Blackpool Rock" running right through them? No matter where you break the rock, you'll read these words, and no what it is you're dealing with!


May I suggest God must be these words, and that the stick of rock our lives? You see, it's not that God should occupy a place on our list of priorities, but he should be the reason each one of those things are on our list. He needs to be present in every area - our work, our family, our friendships, our time in the pub... Only then is this true worship of him. 


This has certainly helped me in recent weeks. Recognising God is far too important to just occupy a ranking in our lives, and that he fully deserves to be involved in everything we do glorifies him, and motivates us to include him in all we get up to. 

Palm Sunday - motivated by love

Someone put an interesting thought to me this week. She referenced the oft-quoted line that Jesus "had to die" and wondered how that worked alongside the fact the Jesus died because he loved us... How can it be that true love is shown by someone forced to do something? Well, it's not.


On Palm Sunday we see Jesus entering Jerusalem on a donkey, knowing that he's going there to die (Luke 18:31-34). Now I don't know about you, but if I knew that entering a certain city would result in my death I'd run a mile. Jesus shows real determination and guts to enter Jerusalem and face his fate.


It's easy to forget that whilst Jesus was fully God, he was also fully man. He'd have felt the same emotions we would have in his position - fear, nervousness, perhaps even anger.


But despite this Jesus walks boldly into Jerusalem. Why? He's motivated by love. There's your "had to die". It's the same feeling I have when thinking of my loved ones. We act not out of feeling we ought, but out of a choice made deep down in our affection for another.

"This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us..." says John. Jesus could have turned and walked away from Jerusalem. He didn't. He could have avoided the Garden of Gethsemane, and thus being arrested. He didn't. He could have, as he was mocked about, come down from the cross and saved himself. He didn't. Why? Love.


Saying "Jesus had to die" makes out that Jesus was purely motivated by what WE needed, which is only halfway true. Yes, he was motivated by our need for a Saviour - but not because we demand it, rather it's because he wants to give it. We don't own Jesus - Jesus owns us by what he did for us and in spite of us. He chose to die for us, and we had no right to expect him to.


So reconciling those two concepts becomes easier when we see that one affects the other. It's my love for my fiancee which motivates me to care for her and to love her sacrificially. It's my parents love for me which motivates them to care for me and to love me sacrificially. Just as it was Jesus' love for us which motivated him to care for us, and to love us sacrificially. What a magnificent God we have.

Acts 9

Last night's study was challenging in a couple of ways - just thought I'd briefly share how I thought we can all be challenged. Feel free to disagree.


Firstly: If God can save Saul, then is there anyone he can't save? There are only a few verses between Saul setting out to "destroy the church" and Saul "proving that Jesus was the Christ". How awesome is that? The challenge to us is to let God be the boss of who can and can't believe, not us. Regardless of our views on the P word, God is far more loving than we often are, and so it makes far more sense for us to trust him in our outreach. Our vision statement is to "give every student on campus the chance to hear about and respond to Jesus". How well do we fulfil the "every student" part of that vision?


Secondly: We chatted for a while in our small group about the impact Saul had on the setting he was in, and discussed what we should learn from that. When we read about people's actions in the Bible, I don't think we're called to copy them to the letter. Rather, we have to identify the ways in which we can mirror the impact Saul had in Damascus and Jerusalem, and replicate that impact on our campus.


I realise this post is slightly different, but I thought throwing a load of questions out there might help us in our thinking, and might spark discussion. Feel free!

Focus Week (part 1)

Whew! What a week. God's been hard at work and so have we. I thought I'd best write about all the things we did, and all the ways in which we have seen God working this week! I'll talk about what went on in Wolves, and get someone from Walsall to follow with what went on there.

Beginning every morning in prayer was an absolutely brilliant reminder that we were reliant on God for everything that we did. Any other non-religious society who were planning a week of events would start each day (I'd imagine) with rushing around, buying things, setting things up... Not so the Christians. What a privilege (and a chance for respite) it is to be able to begin each day by talking to the creator of the universe - the one who gave us our very reason for evangelism!

I guess the week really kicked off with our ever-popular Acoustic Night on Monday. We were able to host some really talented people, all of whom would reference Jesus as a source of that talent, and from the song they sang and the testimonies they delivered, this was evident. It was brilliant for those unfamiliar with Christian ways of thinking to be introduced to it through song.

One of the highlights of the night though, was the drama some of the CU members took part in - a "cover" of the famous Lifehouse skit. Such a powerful message comes through in this drama (see below), and we offered people the chance to discuss it and ask their own questions about it.

Tuesday daytime was spent meeting people and engaging with them over free pancakes (we weren't about to let that opportunity pass us by!). A great team of people were around serving, cooking and chatting to people. We answered people's questions, and made them aware of our movements for the rest of the week - promoting the chance to learn more about why we do what we do... The evening was spent over in Walsall - I won't steal their thunder here...

We'd spent the first few days knowing that Wednesday and Thursday were our hardest days in terms of workload - room and speaker bookings were difficult, getting people onside seemed hard work... But God provided. We were given energy, bodies, money, rooms - thanks you to everyone who made all these things possible!

Some of the best bits over these two days were the conversations had in the mornings whilst promoting our lunchtime events. On Wednesday we promoted "Grill-a-Christian": "Why the gorilla?", "You're cooking Christians?!" "Nah, it's ok, I did Christianity in GCSE RE..."... and a host of more serious questions were asked of us. It was great being out on campus and making the opportunity to talk about Jesus with people. On Thursday we put on a free lunch and had a talk titled "Does God want to spoil our fun?" During the morning we asked people to write things they thought offered their life fullness onto a whiteboard.

This was a great tool in engaging with people, and helped us attract around 30 people to that particular event.

Both evenings were spent in local churches where we invited friends to come and eat with us and watch some bits of film together. We had two speakers who spoke challenging words on choosing either the red pill or the blue pill, and on holding onto the hope of the cross. The fellowship which occurred on these evenings was fantastic - conversations carried on at the pub afterwards, and in terms of making people feel welcome these were very successful.

But that's not just what this week was about, of course. Welcoming is great - it's exactly why Jesus ate with people and shared life with them. What was really exciting about this week was that those people we welcomed in also got to hear about the gospel, and learn that God loves them. And that's what we're all about as a CU - sharing God's love and his good news with the campus we're based on.

We often define success in terms of how many people come, how many turn to faith, how many feedback forms are filled out... But as long as at least one guest was present at every event, then that's success, because they've heard about Jesus! God knows what he's doing - in a small CU such as ours I find that very encouraging.

There's so much more I could say, but I'll leave it there. Thanks again to everyone who reads this and supports us in prayer.

Trust

I for one am not brilliant at being completely reliant on other people. I get impatient easily, and find myself fidgeting to try and get things done myself, rather than leaving it up to other people.


I therefore find it difficult to always completely rely on God's timing - his plan and his ideas. I find myself wanting answers, and wanting God to conform to my ideas of time-keeping.


For Focus Week planning, I've learnt great lessons about how reliant on God we are for things to happen as we might like them to. There's been many obstacles along the way - difficulties booking rooms, booking speakers, getting money... But all these are obliterated when viewed with the context that it's actually God's Focus Week - not ours.

God's timing sometimes means we're waiting for the eleventh hour to get a room, or to get money for food, but ultimately what I've been slowly realising is that this really shouldn't matter. Seeing as everything we're doing next week is for God and his purposes, we need to be able to trust him to bring everything together in the way he wants it to work. Not that this is easy of course.


It sometimes means scrapping ideas and changing tack, it sometimes means moving locations, it may sometimes mean doing things we really don't want to do. For God to have best use of us, his plans and ours must match - and this means being dependent on God for everything. Let's face it - he could plan a much better Focus Week than we ever could!


A friend of mine pointed me to Psalm 40 this week - fabulous words about waiting patiently on God, and the consequences of doing so. Please remind me of this if you see me stressing out about things outside of our control, and please keep praying that next week would be all about God.

Full on love

"John 3:16: the greatest love of all" was written on my timeline on Valentine's morning (along with the picture below - something I've tried numerous times to achieve at work and subsequently failed).

I'm not the world's biggest fan when it comes to V-Day - and Fi knows it. The only way she'd stand a chance of getting a smile out of me would be to reference a love far stronger and far more important than the love we share with one another.

Everyone has times when they feel lonely, unloved, unwanted... But the reminder of John 3:16 that morning seemed so timely that I had to share it. In these times we can take great comfort from knowing the creator of the universe loves us - loves us enough to die the death we should have died.

I can't even begin to fathom love like that. It's so huge, so powerful, so undeserved... And yet it's so real. Jesus, God in human form, was nailed to two planks of wood in the greatest love story the world has ever seen. You don't see too many V-day cards with crucifixions on the front though, do you?

Incredibly, God's love doesn't just stop there! Not only does Jesus take away our death sentence, but he offers us a chance to live in his house forever. It's a complete turnaround! A complete swap!

The Bible is very clear that God loves everyone, but he can't do this swap with us unless we're willing - you can't take someone on a date unless they actually want to go with you!

foCUs week

The countdown begins - 13 days and Wolves CU's "focus week" begins... I wanted to chat about why we refer to it as such - it's not just so we can write it as above, as clever as that may be...

A lot of Christian organisations would refer to a week like this as a "mission week", and there's not really anything wrong with that. I guess we haven't referred to ours in this way so that we avoid the pitfall of treating this as our only week of evangelism. In face, our very reason for existing as Christians (especially in the context of a CU) is mission, and so every week should be a mission week!

Some might opt to call it an "events week", which again is fine, but lacks something in terms of what we want to achieve through the events themselves. Yeah, we're putting on events, but not for the purpose of the event itself. We don't just want to put on a show - we want to meet with people, chat with them, debate with them, and ultimately have the chance to display Jesus to them.

Calling it a focus week is something I've grown to love. It appears a little cryptic, but in terms of explaining it I'd ask you to consider three things in your prayers:

Pray that the Christians in our CU and on campus as a whole would be united in their FOCUS on Jesus. A united front to display Jesus to others is a powerful thing, and so prayer that Jesus would govern in all of our decisions throughout the week would be awesome.

Pray that the FOCUS of both Walsall and City campuses as a whole is the Christian Union. If we're visible, our events are well publicised, and we'r getting people talking, then that's a great tool in order that everyone can have the chance to come and hear what we've got to say.

Pray that God would shift the FOCUS of non-Christians who come towards Jesus. We want God to make disciples! Ultimately that's the reason behind everything we do - we've got a cracking message of love and salvation, let's share it!


I'll blog about specifics of what we're doing when nearer the time. Thank you all for your prayers, they're very much appreciated.