What has God done this week?

InDeep is our Wednesday night group for those in years 5-7 who are serious about getting to know God better. It's an exciting place to be and God turns up powerfully each week.

We always start by asking the children 'what has God done this week...' here are two stories from today:

One of the lads in the group injured his wrist a few weeks back, he'd been to the doctors, followed their advice, but it didn't seem to be getting much better. Then he and his mum realised they hadn't prayed for it yet, so they prayed and told the pain to go. The next morning he woke up totally pain free and the wrist has been fine since!!

Another girl told a story of God protecting her mum this week. She had left her car parked on the roadside to go into a doctors surgery. As she was at the reception she heard a massive crash, walking outside she saw her car 100 yards further up the road and smashed into a tree. A moving car had crashed into the back of it and her car was totally writen off. Had the mum been back at her car 1 minute earlier she would have been in the car during the time of the collision. We gave thanks to God for his protection!

What has God done in your life this week?

God uses Ready Salted!

A new Christian at CJC shared an amazing story this week. She's been suffering serious pain recently due to a cyst on one of her ovaries. Having recently come to know Jesus (2 weeks ago...!) she asked her cell to pray for her. As they prayed another lady got a strong sense that she should eat a packet of Ready Salted Walkers Crisps... (random!)

The next day and wanting to do what God had seemingly said the new Christian spent a good amount of time hunting for the specific walkers crisps. Eventually after visiting a few shops she found some and ate them. Two hours later the pain had totally gone!!!....... This isn't the best bit!

Previously her cell had been praying that the cyst would burst so she could avoid an operation. A day or so after the crisp incident the cyst burst of it's own accord. She visited the Dr who sent her for a scan which revealed she was TOTALLY HEALTHY, every trace of the cyst had GONE and she was given a clean bill of health!!!

How good is God?!!

Raised With Christ: How the Resurrection changes everything

Adrian Warnock, arguably one of the most famous Christian Bloggers, has written a book on the Resurrection and it's available to PRE ORDER now!

A whole bunch of people have reviewed it and have nothing but the highest praise for it - check out his blog for some of their comments.

I'm going to read it and so should you!

Here is Adrian talking about it in his own words:

Raised With Christ: How The Resurrection Changes Everything from Adrian Warnock on Vimeo.

Most challenging song of the year award:

I first heard an unmastered version of this song back in May this year. From the start of the song to the end I found myself balling my eyes out - the challenge was plain and simple: everything we do must come from a place of love, that's how Jesus lived His life and we must do the same.

Listen to it and let it challenge you too!

Red coats, green hoodies and stationers!

I was asked to speak a bit about treasure hunting with the youth in Orpington this afternoon which was followed by us all hitting the streets for about an hour. Armed with some notes by seasoned treasure hunter Wendy Mann and plenty of stories from Newday Global and other hunts I've been on I was excited to be spending the afternoon with the guys and girls there.

After a quick briefing we split into 4 teams and headed out.

I think throughout the course of the afternoon I spoke to almost every person on Orpington High Street wearing a red coat! Some were more successful than others. One lady we spoke to didn't match any other clues but asked what church we were from. When we told her it was 'Hope Church' she said 'oh my neighbours go to that church.... do you know the....' One of the team members was able to have a bit of a chat with her about their mutual friends... God is clearly on her case! We later prayed that she would talk to her neighbours about her encounter.

Later on we met another guy who was wearing a red coat. As we approached he said 'it's OK, I've already spoken to two others up there... I don't match any of your clues...' He'd just left another one of the teams. As we chatted he was surprised to see the clue bag pipes on one of the treasure maps... he was from Scotland. We had a quick chat and he exclaimed 'I'm going to tell my wife about this, she's religious you see....' We said goodbye to him, a lovely man who was slightly taken about that he'd been picked out by God twice on a Sunday afternoon!

Another lady wearing a green hoodie asked us to pray about a major job interview she had on Tuesday and we also got to pray with a lady in (another!) red coat with back pain. She said it felt a bit better afterwards but was in a rush so we didn't get to pray again. (doh!)

One of the other teams had the clues purple scarf, WH Smith, stationers and butterflies between them. As they were heading back to the church centre they spotted a lady heading into WH Smith wearing a purple scarf. They patiently waited outside until she walked out of the shop, straight pass them and into Rymans.... another stationers...!!! At this point a double decker bus drove past with butterflies on it. They knew this was God so waited again and were able to chat to her about how God had singled her out this afternoon, she was clearly blessed by their words about God's love for her as an individual.

Another team this afternoon met an atheist guy in the park who spent most of his days there feeding the ducks. They were able to talk about the incredible adventure following Jesus is and were able to pray with him 3 times for various things. Amazingly he wouldn't take a card about Church because he was an atheist... he was however happy to receive prayer and listen to the team explain what Jesus meant to them... awesome stuff!

Again I was struck by how once you get over the initial fear and the first set back, treasure hunting is such an easy way to get out on the streets and tell people about Jesus. It shouldn't be difficult to communicate God's love to a broken and hurting world. Treasure hunting seems to be a great tool God is blessing at the moment to enable His Kingdom to come on earth as it is in Heaven.

picture this: summer 09

Trying to be bit a bit more bold.....

Blogging is quickly becoming something I forget to do...again...!

Anyway, this is a little story from the past week.

Over the past 18 months I've been trying to be a bit bolder at stepping out in what I think God is telling me to do. I've asked God to give me opportunities to step out and sometimes I've bombed and bottled it and sometimes I've somehow managed to put my fears aside and step out. Some of which has been documented on this very blog.

If I'm honest the 'stepping out-ness' had gone a bit quiet, for a vast amount of reasons I'd just stopped expecting to have to step out much, especially publically, with people who don't know Jesus.

Anyway last Friday I was very excited to be purchasing an iphone from the o2 store in Croydon. I'd previously been in there to talk about tariffs etc and as I got into the queue on Friday I caught the eye of the bloke I'd spoken to before. He was so helpful and went straight out the back, picked up the handset I wanted, bought it out, allowed me to jump the queue and just started sorting it all out for me, much to my amazement and probably to the annoyance of the people ahead of me in the queue.

So anyway, I join the o2 bloke and it takes him a while to sort out the paper work etc. We have a jolly old chat about the iphone and various other stuff. He tells me his wife has an iphone etc etc. We're basically chatting like friends. Now all through this conversation I'm noticing he has a brace thing on his wrist. 'He's hurt his wrist' I think to myself. My next thought is 'If I was in a bold mood, I might offer to pray for his wrist..... but I'm not, so I won't.' Then he starts telling me about his wrist, how much it hurts, how the Dr was rubbish and didn't really help at all etc etc... I remember thinking 'OK God, I hear you, I hear where you're taking this, and I'm choosing to bottle it right now...' Our conversation continues and he asks where I work... 'I work for a church I reply, with young people...' He pretty much ignores that and moves on to do a credit check.

It turns out there is a 15 minute wait for the credit check because everyone is getting a new iphone on the same day I am. So there we are with another 15 minutes to talk. He continues to tell me how the pain in his wrist was so bad the night before he couldn't sleep. In my head my conversation with God goes like this 'I can still see what you're trying to do, but I just can't today... I'm still choosing to bottle it...'

Mr o2 continues talking about his wrist and I kind of feel God say something a long the lines of 'we can go on like this as long as you'd like, or you could just offer to pray.' So finally after about 40 minutes I give in and managed to muster some line about the Church I go to seeing people healed and could I pray for his wrist....? His response 'yeah sure, as long as I don't have to, I'm not into the whole religion thing...but if you think it might work.....'

Then the conversation quickly changes and we're back to the nitty gritty of sorting out the iphone. I think I'm off the hook... eventually he hands over the contract, phone and everything else and I think 'oh well, at least I offered to pray, I'll pray by proxy and maybe he'll get healed, he's clearly not up for me praying and I don't want to be pushy...' and then he says to me 'so what do I have to do if you're going to pray for me, do I just take this off (pointing at the brace thing)?' I'm thinking 'hmmmm...there really is no way out of this now, I'm just going to have to go with this....'

I encourage him to do so, I hold his wrist and then tell the pain to go in the name of Jesus. In the middle of a packed o2 shop, with his colleagues looking at me like I'm a loon...something of the fear of man was broken in me.

I don't actually know if he's been healed or not, he thanked me and we shock hands and I said 'let me know if that gets better...' I don't really know why I said that as really he has no way of letting me know....!!! I'm wondering about plucking up the courage to go back in there and ask him.... at the moment though I'm sitting on the 'chicken' side of the fence!

Isn't God good though... he chooses to use frail, nervous, 'chicken' people to bring his Kingdom on earth as it is in heaven... I guess this is just a little story to illustrate that we're all on a journey with this which has mountains and valleys, sometimes we get it right, sometimes we get it wrong, sometimes we're just plain stubborn but God perseveres with us, all of the time God believes in us far me than we believe in ourselves, I'm so grateful I serve a God of second, third, fourth....(and the rest) chances.!