I’m really looking forward to the Wells weekend this Friday and Saturday. It should be a great moment of sharing vision and stepping forward into the future together.
Adrian and I have been preparing a joint talk for the Saturday morning which is coming together really well - should be challenging and inspiring.
See you there!!
Ryan
Man’s chief end
I’ve been thinking a little about the phrase from the Westminster Catechism that says “Man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever”. Not that I’m trying to disagree with a well formed statement, but I’m not sure it quite says everything it needs to.
In the beginning there was nothing but God. All three parts of Him. The Father, source of wisdom, power, knowledge and love; the Word - the spoken expression of who God is, declaring His greatness, His wonder, His majesty; and the Spirit - the guide, the conscience, the breath of God.
Who knows how long the trinity existed before they decided to create everything - it probably can’t even be measured as time was yet to exist! Together the three members of the God head existed as a perfect, beautiful community - each displaying love to the others, and submitting in beautiful reverence to the other roles within the community. Some use the word ‘perikinesis’ to describe this communion - the dance of the Godhead. What a beautiful representation of how community is to work - a dance, a free flowing creative expression of life.
At some point the Godhead decided that the love they had for each other, the community they shared, was overflowing. It is in God’s nature to express creativity, and so using that creativity they created the universe. Out of the very mouth of God all that we know and see - all that we can’t yet see even with our technology and science - was created.
At the pinnacle of creation, after 5 days of God creating and seeing that “it was good” - God formed some dust into a body, breathed life into it and created man. No longer was “good” enough to express creation, no no. Creation was now “very good”. The creation of one man, one life, one flesh took creation from “good” to “very good”. The Godhead had created the purpose of creation - mankind.
But why?
Simple. God wanted to express his love.
Man’s chief end is not just to enjoy God and glorify Him. That is far too one sided. That discounts the entire purpose of creation. Yes we are to bring Him Glory. Yes we are to enjoy Him. But those are side effects - not the core reason.
The purpose of creation was… so that He could love us. Let that sink in.
God created
everything
so that He
could love
You.
How does that make you feel? Does that change how you look at yourself? It should!
Don’t get bogged down in all the wrong, all the sin, all the imperfection you see in yourself. Those things are there, those things are real and need to be said sorry for. But…
God created everything so that He could love you.
So don’t you think he can get past the other stuff, which is pretty small in comparison to the universe, to still love You despite your sin, your wrongdoing, your imperfection?
It gets better still… stay with me.
The Hebrew writers of the Old Testament had no concept of the word perfection. It wasn’t a thought that even existed in their mindset. The progression of God saying things were good, until man came and it became very good was meant to continue. There is no doubt in Hebrew scolars’ mind that things could have become very very good, or very very very good. God’s intention was that in community with man, as he already expressed in the trinity, creation would get even better. So you could say that…
God created everything so that He could love you, and be in communion with you.
That’s why heaven isn’t going to just be a worship party. If we’re going to get back to the restoration of the original plan for humanity, then God has so much more in mind. We’re going to create an ever increasingly more wonderful, more God worshipping, more mind-blowing creation through the expression of our communion with God.
Amazing.
God wants relationship with you. He wants you to be part of his trinity-community. You could say when you join in it becomes a quad-rinity - isn’t that amazing?
He wants this so much, that one of the God-head chose to be human, chose to take upon himself all the frailty and fragility that came with the sinful path chosen by Adam, chose to succumb to death despite living a perfect life, so that He could say sorry for our sin and become the sacrifice that means God no longer sees any sin in us. If we believe in him and what he has done for us, then we are ‘in Christ’ - meaning God looks at us and sees Christ in our place. He sees perfection instead of sin. He sees obedience instead of disobedience. He sees love instead of hate. He sees acceptance rather than rejection…
Jesus didn’t become human for a season, he chose it for eternity. When we see him in heaven we will see the scars that he bore for us, we will see his humanity. God scarred himself forever, so that we can be part of his community. That is how much he loves us. That is how much he wants us to be in communion with him.
God created everything, became human, chose pain and death for himself, so that He could love you, and to be in communion with you.
Please receive that truth. Please let it sink it.
It is freeing. It is liberating. Its is something worth rejoicing over and living for.
God wants to be in relationship with you. Whatever excuse you can think of to argue against that is meaningless in the light of what he has done for you. Nothing you can ever do can take away from the sacrifice he made just to be available to you.
It is totally unfair, it is totally one sided, but that is the expression of God’s love for you.
Your part is to just say yes, accept him - that really is all it takes…
We held our first of four nights in the park on Friday past. With lots of help from some resound-ers and SMW-ers we entertained 70ish people with bouncy castles, football, a magnificent barbeque and amazing kid’s games.
Along the way we all got to have some good conversations with people from the area, and they got to know who we are, find out more about us, and hopefully over the coming weeks they will remember us and want to get to know us more.
As with anything around these parts, there were lots of people standing around the fringes, not sure whether to take part or not - so we would love it if you could pray that over the coming weeks we get the chance to know those people better too. The whole point of these nights is to find the ‘People of peace’ that Jesus wants us to connect with over the coming months - so please pray that we find those people!
Massive thanks to all the people who gave of their time to come down and help us - we REALLY appreciate you and think you are wonderful.
If you’re free - feel free to join us next Friday (5.30 to set up, 6.30 to eat) - we would love to see you there.
Ryan
Not Shankill related at all, but I’ve nowhere else to post this… !
I’ve been working with Fishbone Studios recently to do a bit of Boring Wells branding to have around Summer Madness. We’ve not done anything like this before, so its been good fun exploring ideas and working out a distinctive style.
Despite some last minute printing chaos and quick redesigning, we’ve got some great stuff in time for Summer Madness.
So without further ado, check out:
Hoodies
Pop-up stands
Year out leaflets
See them up close and personal from Friday….
Ryan
My head is still spinning a bit from Martin and the guys coming over, but life continues. Here’s what I feel most challenged by at the moment…
They talked a lot about availability - making and keeping yourself available to God. That means lots of different things - but mainly it means constantly challenging yourself in situations where if God doesn’t do something you will probably end up looking silly. It means things like walking across the pub to prophesy to someone without yet knowing what you are about to say. As I’m a planner I find this whole concept a bit scary and difficult - but I’m willing to try.
I think the other challenge was just to make more time for actually engaging with people - I’ve been guilty of letting life get a bit cluttered with things that aren’t important, and I need to refocus my attention on the Shankill and what God has us here for. As summer is approaching it means I can make a natural break with some committments, and so have more time available (which I still have to intentionally use properly).
More to come as it continues to sink in