Getting to Know You

Getting to Know You

Prayer 8 UCB 

Prayer 8

For UCB

3 Min script

My editor tells me that she likes these talks on prayer because I am not giving a 10 point formula for you to follow to get your prayers answered.  As I’ve said before, prayer is a conversation that we have with God, of both light and serious issues, and the ability to have that conversation develops as our relationship with God develops.  The fact is that the gospel of good news is about a broken relationship being repaired.  It’s not about following a religion, it’s about getting to know a person, Jesus, it’s about a restored relationship with God, father, son and Holy Spirit because of what Jesus has done.

As with any relationship, you can’t treat your relationship with God like a slot machine, you put in a coin and out pops a chocolate bar, you put in a prayer in the right way and hey presto, the answer appears.  It isn’t like that; there isn’t a set of rules or a formula.  Can you imagine a married couple working out their relationship like that – the formula is I have to tell you I love you three times a day because that’s what the manual says.  That would be a terrible relationship on the way to a rapid breakdown.  Relationships don’t work like that, and deep down, you already know that.  Relationships are fluid, they develop and they grow, especially where love is involved and the God we want to have a relationship with is a God of love, and loves us passionately, so that’s a great foundation for building a good relationship, and as we get to know God, our love for him will grow.

I have been married for forty years, and yet my wife Pauline still says she is getting to know me and that I still have to ability to surprise her both by my actions and my words.   That’s what’s so special about relationships; they can go on developing and developing.

In a strong loving relationship, sharing with each other is ongoing and on many levels. Gradually, you understand each other, it takes time but it doesn’t feel like a chore because you are developing a relationship with someone you love.  Over time you even know how each other thinks.  It’s just like that with God, as you talk to him, learn about him and get to know him better, you find that you want to share even more with him, to talk to him more, to hear from him more.  A formula is the last thing on your mind; you just want to talk to your friend.

And have you noticed that in loving relationships people have lovers’ names for each other, names that only they understand.  From my reading of Revelation 2:17, it seems that one day God will give you a name that is only known to you and him. I like to think this name is his deeply intimate lovers name for you, one of those names that only work between two people who are very close.

Yes I know these talks are about prayer, but my goal is to switch on the light of understanding to help you realise that prayer is simply on ongoing conversation with God, it’s all about developing your relationship with him, sharing every detail of your life with him. Asking him ‘What shall I do?’ ‘What do you want me to do?’  Gradually as you get to know him better, you will find that you are thinking like him, you are doing the things that please him willingly because you want to please him.  Eventually what you want to do will be what he wants you to do because you have spent so much time with him and that he has affected your thinking and your actions and your desires. You will find that the communication flows, you are in unity, you want the same things, you think the same things, and he really does know your name and you know him and it’s personal and intimate.

Getting to know a friend is not chore, and having conversations with God will not feel like that either.  Here’s something to think about as I leave you, what is your name? And what does God call you?

Adrian Hawkes

3 min Script on prayer for UCB

Editor : A Brookes

Relationships 4 The Tuesday Blog

Relationships

The Principal of First priority

We have talked about meetings and the reason for them. Now let’s now take a look at what I call the ‘principal of first priority’. What is the most important command for people who follow Jesus? We have discussed other commands, for example the need to love one another. But what is the first priority, or primary command? It is that ‘we seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness’ and with this command is a reward, God says, I know that you need lots of other things, but seek me first, and everything else will follow on.

I used to think that there was no difference between the Kingdom and the church; I have strongly changed by views on that. Seeking the Kingdom is not the same as seeking church. Someone recently said, “The Kingdom is a dynamic greater than the church. If you pursue the church you won’t find the Kingdom, but if you pursue the Kingdom you will find the church.” (Simon Markham with adaptations from Howard Snyder) God is at work in his world; the Kingdom has come, although not yet in it’s fullness, but it is here, and has broken into this time-space world. We have the ability to pull down handfuls of his Kingdom that can impact and change situations.

I appreciate that is a bold statement, that we can grab a handful of the Kingdom. Let me give you a couple of examples to help you understand what I mean. Sometime ago one of our leadership team came home very tired, we were due to go to a meeting together that evening, but when I looked at him closely I could see he had had a bad day. I asked about his day, had it been tough? He told me it had been terrible, one of his colleagues had been sacked, blamed for not completing a task for an important project. I asked, innocently if he believed that his colleague was at fault. My friend told me ‘No, it was not his fault at all.’ I asked ‘Did you speak up for him?’ He told me ‘You don’t understand, if I had done that, perhaps I would have been blamed and I would have lost my job.’ My response was blunt, ‘You missed out on doing what we are supposed to do as first priority, ‘seek first the Kingdom of God’. My friend was not happy with my response, but I needed to say what I believe to be right, I needed to state where it’s at!

What we know as The Lords Prayer gives us a clue to what the Kingdom looks like. That is helpful, as we need to know what we are seeking. The prayer says ‘your Kingdom come your will be done on earth as it is in heaven’ From my perspective, heaven, or where the rule of the Kingdom of God is will be a place where there is justice, righteousness, peace, love goodness and wholeness. Therefore, it follows that if we see those things missing on earth, we need to ‘seek the Kingdom’. My friend could have grabbed a handful of Kingdom, he could then have sprinkled justice and righteousness into the meeting, but he was afraid.

Here is another example, for many years my wife and I fostered children. One of the young ladies we fostered had, due to her lies, caused much trouble for social workers, some had even been dismissed. In one of the meetings that regularly take place with Social Services when you are a foster career, I became convinced that the young lady was on the same tack. I strongly believed that she was on a campaign to get the current social worker dismissed, or at the very least, in serious trouble. I was also convinced that what she was saying was untrue.

During the meeting, out of the blue my wife said to the young lady, ‘Does your boyfriend ever do anything wrong’ ‘Yes of course’ she responded quickly. ‘And do you forgive him?’ my wife asked, ‘Of course I do, he’s my boyfriend’. My wife then put the young lady on the spot, ‘Could you, on this occasion, forgive your social worker?’ The girl fidgeted, aware she was cornered, and then looked at the social worker, ‘Yes, I could forgive you.’ At that the meeting concluded, although I noticed a queue of people lining up to ask my wife about this new method of resolving conflict. But it’s not a new method, it just bringing the Kingdom of God into our space time world.

How does this fit into a series of articles on relationships? It troubles me that there are those who think relationship is the be all and end all. Everything hinges on being together, so a lovely shared dinner, in a cosy environment, is the sum total of life. We meet because we meet and that is all there is, that is the point of everything.

I believe relationships are incredibly important, perhaps the most important thing of all. But surely we ought to be together for something? What about mission? Shouldn’t our relationships be about doing something, seeking The Kingdom? Then we would come together to equip each other, and support each other as we seek The Kingdom. I can already hear some of you retorting ‘Oh how task orientated! How terrible! We just need to chill! We need to learn to be. We are who we are not what we do’ Yes and No. Who we are often leads on to what we do, and what we do together. If you can, imagine a couple who meet every night, but never do anything together. Very boring, and I strongly feel the relationship would flounder.

I think we are in this God relationship for a purpose, his purpose. I think all our other relationships also need purpose, his purpose, which ultimately becomes our purpose. And that purpose? To be doers, not just hearers of his words, to be Kingdom seekers in relationship with God and each other.

Adrian Hawkes

For Ourlab Blog

20^th February 2010
(Editor A. Brookes)

1030W

Relationships 1 The Tuesday Blog

Relationships

First Principals

When I was in college, one of my tasks was to write a thesis. I forget how many words it was, but I remember it was a lot! It is probably still gathering dust somewhere in my loft. My subject was ‘Man Qua Man is a Religious Being’. I won’t bore you with the intricate details of my thesis, which was a very fat tome indeed. I will just give you the fundamental and interesting principal; wherever you look, no matter which country you are in, or which people group you associate with, man has this need to worship, or desire for ‘a god’; the ‘atheist’ is a very small and recent phenomena.

The fact that we need a god to worship is the often considered to be the element that produces religion, but my thesis concluded the reverse, that religion is man’s way of trying to find god, and of course he may not succeed. The reality is that God isn’t into religion; he is into revelation and ultimately relationships. I have no intention of being unkind about different religions, but I do think that sometimes man worships the most bizarre gods, which seem to me more the stuff of fairy tail and legend than anything to do with the rationality of God. I did ask in one country why the god that many people were praying to was in a box, I was told that if the god wasn’t kept in the box he would get dirty!

In our search for God we need more than religion, we need revelation. We need God to say ‘Here I am, this is what I am like, and this is what I am doing in my world. This is how I see you, and this is what I am looking for from you, and with you.’ From my perspective, this is what happened when Jesus came, the word of God became flesh (a man), and the word (Jesus) said “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father (God)” He also said, “I don’t do my own will, but the will of the Father (God) who sent me.” In other words if we want to know what God is like then we need look no further than Jesus.

Jesus shows us how ‘the God who is there’ deals with sin, sickness and most importantly, broken relationships. Ultimately, Christianity, if you want to use that word, is not about religion, but about relationships; and those that are broken cause us pain. The vital relationship that is broken is the one between man and ‘the God who is there’, this fractured because of the sin of rebellion, we wanted to be in charge of ourselves no matter what mess we might make, we wanted to be god. That is why we end up making gods in our own image, rather than looking at what has been revealed by the word, Jesus. We also need to be careful not to make Jesus into who we think he is, rather than who he truly is.

In the beginning it is obvious from scripture that God was in very close communion with mankind, talking, walking, and being in relationship with him. Rebellion said ‘I want to do it my own way’ and thus the unique bond was broken. But God was desperate to mend the fracture and so he took drastic action, to restore that relationship required the death of God.

Ultimately, ‘real Christianity’ is as far removed from religion as east is from the west. The reality is that it’s all about relationship, a restored relationship with ‘the God who is there’ making us aware that he is not far away, and can be within us, listening to us, interested in us, talking with us, guiding us and most humbling of all, asking us for our opinion! He says to us, “What do you think?” Because the relationship has been broken for so long it takes time to get to know him again. Just as any broken friendship takes time to be repaired. The amazing thing is as that key relationship is restored with him, he then helps us to restore relationships with other people.



God extends his grace (undeserved favour) to us; that means he is constantly reaching out to us with forgiveness and blessing, often crediting us for our intentions rather than what we actually delivered. We, in turn, need to learn how to pass on grace to others.

My conclusion of a first principal about relationships is knowing that ‘the God who is there’ is all about relationship and very little about religion. It’s about knowing him, talking with him, being with him, and of course, being with his friends. I like being one of God’s friends!

Adrian Hawkes
14th February 2010
(Valentines Day)
For Ourlab blog
811W
Editor. A. Brooks