Colin: Heavenly Partnership

There are two contrasting errors we can fall into when we think about how God’s kingdom of love, joy and peace might come. The first is to think it all depends upon us, and that if we work hard enough, smart enough and for long enough, then we’re sure to see revival. The other is to think that it has nothing to do with us, that God has already planned when the next revival will take place and there’s nothing for us to do but wait patiently for Him to work out His plans and purposes, which are mysterious and beyond our understanding.

Within the River Churches, the openness of God is a cherished belief. We have a growing revelation of the freedom that is at the heart of our Father’s will for all His creatures. Therefore we have made openness one of our values, the ‘O’ in GOLD (Goodness, Openness, Love & Dynamic power). We value our own freedom and choose to exercise it in working for good together with our God (Romans 8:28). He’s working for good in all things and we love to join in as we long to be more like Him. Consequently, we work to bless our communities, helping people find freedom through following Jesus. Valuing freedom for all, we serve, refusing to dictate or manipulate to get our own way. We believe that God has given humanity the earth to rule over in order to fill it, make it fruitful and bring out its fullness (Genesis 1:26-28). Therefore He won’t work on the earth without us! At least, that’s what the prophet Amos tells us (Amos 3:7). Indeed, 2 Chronicles 16:9 tells us He is continually looking for men or women through whom He can work signs and wonders on the earth, people who are loyal to Him and trust Him.

On the other hand, Jesus taught us to depend on Him, saying, “Without Me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). Not meaning we can literally do nothing, but that we can’t produce the fruit the Father is looking for. He also taught us to pray, “Your kingdom come. Your will be done” (Matthew 6:10), asking Father to work His will on the earth. It’s a mysterious truth that more of His will gets done on the earth when we pray and ask for it to be done.

Now I would like us to work hard and use all our strength to see the church grow, but I know that, “Unless the Lord builds the house, they labour in vain who build it”, Psalm 127:1. To believe it all depends on us, is to choose independence and to fall into pride. When we think like that, we find God standing in our way because He opposes the proud, but shows favour to the humble.

I feel the Holy Spirit calling us to prayer. I hear 2 Chronicles 7:14, “If My people who are called by My name will humble themselves and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.”

In 1746, Jonathan Edwards wrote “A humble Attempt to Promote Explicit Agreement and Visible Union of All God’s People in Extraordinary Prayer for the Revival of Religion and Advancement of Christ’s Kingdom.” Some say this book sparked a prayer movement that ignited the world in revival. Today, we see prayer movements such as 24/7 Prayer making similar ‘humble attempts’ to unite us in intercession for the world. Surely, revival cannot be far behind!

God seeks partners who will work with Him for good in all things and pray for His kingdom to come on the earth. Let’s give ourselves to work and to pray in His name, trusting that Jesus is building His church and that of the increase of His government and peace there will be no end.

Ceri Francis: Encounter – being intentional about the unexpected

It's fascinating to me that Moses was the first person in the Bible to press in for a deep, one to one encounter with God. And it wasn't just another encounter for Moses – it was the first time God revealed His true nature – His overwhelmingly glorious goodness.

Moses had seen so much leading up to this point that it is all the more interesting to get a glimpse of his hunger for more revelation. Born a Levite, raised a prince of Egypt, he flees Egypt a murderer as a young adult. Then after his burning bush experience he reluctantly returns to Egypt to free the enslaved Israelites.

Ten plagues later he leads two million or so Israelites in a miraculous escape at night straight through the middle of the sea. His story continues with miracle after miracle – water production, manna, quail, healing, God's presence visible as fire and smoke and His voice audible as thunder. It was as if God used all five human senses and more to make Himself known. Moses had enough stories to give awe-inspiring talks and testimonies for a lifetime!

But after all the signs, wonders and miracles he begs God “let me know Your ways that I may know You” and “I pray You, show me Your glory.” Without the fire and thunder of his previous mountain encounter, the Lord calls him up Mount Sinai and allows His goodness, the fullness of His glory, to pass before Moses. It is then that God reveals His true nature and describes himself for the first time as “the Lord God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in loving kindness and truth.”

Moses was described as the man God would speak with “face to face, just as a man speaks to his friend.” Yet what was revealed to Moses was just a foretaste of what has now been given to us in full. We don't have to beg God to reveal His glory or send His presence to be with us and stay with us.

Through Jesus, His glory is fully revealed and He is with us all the time, dwelling in us, changing us to be more like Him and revealing His nature through us wherever we go. His presence doesn't fade as it did for Moses, who had to put a veil over his shining face so the people wouldn't see the effects of being in God's presence diminishing. Paul writes that we have unveiled faces and see His glory as if we are looking in a mirror and being transformed into the same image. The fruits of the spirit are love, joy peace, patience, kindness, goodness etc – us becoming like Him.

This isn't about us striving to get God's attention; it's about how we position ourselves. He is speaking to us all the time, longing to reveal more to us than we could ever desire, and wanting us to make choices that enable us to see, hear and know Him more. The dictionary defines encounter as something unexpected – a chance meeting or something we stumble across. For me the challenge is to make time for Him so I don't miss the encounters He wants me to have, whether in meetings or when I'm alone.

Interestingly, the Israelites heard God speak audibly for themselves but incredibly they opted to hear Him instead through a man's voice. We too can learn so much from others but this can't replace having our own relationship with God.

Let's be intentional about how we invest in our relationship with the Lord, trusting and believing in His goodness whatever our circumstances or feelings and making time to hear Him for ourselves. I hope and pray we see miracles, healing and more as we focus on the one who is “able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think”!

Colin: A Journey With a Purpose

We are often told that ‘Life is a journey’ and in many ways it is an apt description. The two things that mark out a follower of Jesus are the reason for the journey and the destination, the place we are headed.

For Hindus and Buddhists, the journey has begun because of an unfortunate separation of our spirits from the great and universal spirit, so their purpose is to lose themselves by reabsorption. In a way, that is not dissimilar to atheists who see themselves as an accident of evolution from the dust of the ground, returning to dust after a brief walk on the earth.

The Christian view is very different to this: creation being planned by a loving God who made us in His image, though not yet mature, and gave us the mission of filling the world with His glory - that is, a world filled with people who carry his mature image, as seen in Jesus, by truly loving one another. Jews who believe their scriptures and who were entrusted with the first part of God’s mission, have a similar outlook to us. Where they diverge is around Jesus - they don’t recognise Him as their Saviour and as God’s ultimate destination for all men and women to be like Him. It may come as a surprise to some, given recent events in the Middle East, but Muslims have a similar view to the Jews; indeed Mohammed borrowed most of his worldview from Jews and Christians. Again they don’t recognise Jesus as the Godman Saviour, and seek to bring in the kingdom of heaven through other means – some tragically so.

Therefore, as followers of Jesus, we are all on a mission, a journey with a purpose. That makes us all missionaries! Whatever else we do with our lives, what career we choose, where we choose to live, whom we choose to marry and share life with, our goal is always to be fulfilling our mission to become more and more like Jesus and to help others to follow Him.

In River, we have three treasured practices that we are convinced will help us do this. The first is to ‘Look on the face of Christ’, to look at Jesus, to meditate on what He said and did, so that we learn how to walk like Him. He is the Beginning and the End, the source of our life and our destination! We could make following Jesus very religious (and some have!), but our second practice prevents us from doing that: ‘Love everyone we meet’. Love fulfils every law and commandment, it does no harm and always seeks to bless the other person. Only when we love from the heart do we truly carry the image of the God who is love.Our third practice is to ‘Live like heaven is near’. That’s the Good News Jesus came declaring, but it’s easy to lose sight of when we hear such awful news much of the time.

When we live like heaven is near, we take Jesus’ announcement seriously and choose to believe that the kingdom ‘is at hand’, that we can grab hold of heavenly things and bring them into our lives here and now. That’s what Jesus modelled and taught His first disciples to do: heal the sick, care for orphans and widows, raise the dead, treat foreigners well, drive out demons and help the poor.

If our churches are filled with people practising these things, there’ll be a heavenly transformation going on through the Spirit! We’ll be transformed as we look at Jesus, we’ll help transform one another through loving discipleship and we’ll be transforming our communities through being missionminded in bringing heaven to earth! He’s calling us out upon the waters; so I beg everyone, let’s be as filled up with Jesus as we possibly can be, let’s devote ourselves to loving those around us, especially our families and small groups, and let’s give ourselves to the mission of bringing heaven to earth in whatever ways we feel the breeze of the Holy Spirit inspiring us!