I thought I’d try something new in writing up my notes from this morning’s service today. As I was on projector I have the order of service, so I’ve put a YouTube playlist together of all the songs we had today, so if you like, you can listen to that while you read – although I think the music will take much longer to get through…!
“By the humility and gentleness of Christ, I appeal to you – I, Paul, who am ‘timid’ when face to face with you, but ‘bold’ towards you when away! 2 I beg you that when I come I may not have to be as bold as I expect to be towards some people who think that we live by the standards of this world. 3 For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. 4 The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. 5 We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. 6 And we will be ready to punish every act of disobedience, once your obedience is complete.” – 2 Corinthians 10 vv 1-6
The word stronghold is used both positively and negatively:
Positively: “The Lord is my light and my salvation – whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life – of whom shall I be afraid?” – Psalm 27v1.
God is David’s security and protection
Negatively: “Wrong thought patterns and ideas, which Satan and his demons influence, and behind which they hide, that can govern or dominate individuals, communities, nations and even churches. Strongholds need to be taken, otherwise they continue that domination.” – David Devenish
Culturally consumerism is a massive stronghold. We are sent the message that holidays, clothes and leisure give us identity, provide us security, and ultimately make us happy.
These things aren’t wrong in themselves, but when good things become god things, that makes them idols.
Specific strongholds: Pride
The most effective means the devil has to keep believers from being full of the Spirit is to keep us full of ourselves.
Pride can be arrogance and self-righteousness, looking down on others and finding faults in anyone but ourselves.
Pride can also appear in those with low self-esteem. When we wallow in misery we invite pity and essentially ask people to tell us how great we are.
To demolish this stronghold we need to take each thought captive and demolish it with God’s word and prayer in the power of the Holy Spirit.
“God opposes the proud, but shows favour to the humble.” – James 4v6.
This means recognising that we owe everything to God’s grace and mercy, that we can’t ever earn these, that we deserve judgement but Jesus has taken that for us on the cross. We don’t need to push ourselves forward in arrogance because God has given us ultimate status as His children. We don’t need to be miserable for the very same reason!
Specific strongholds: Rejection
Many people suffer from rejection from loved ones, and this damage makes it difficult to believe that God wouldn’t also reject them.
To demolish this stronghold we need to prayerfully meditate on what the bible says about God accepting us.
“Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.” – Hebrews 13v5.
If we receive Jesus as Saviour, then we can’t do anything to cause Him to reject us.
There are many other personal strongholds, for example: fear, negativity, lust, guilt, anger, unforgiveness, bitterness, addiction, despair, rejection, pride, and so many more.
Psychologists say that it takes 6 weeks to make a thought pattern a habit. It’s going to take some pretty persistent prayer!
Each stronghold is a pattern of thinking which is a lie. A stronghold buster takes that lie, and lists verses to contradict it. You read these daily, renouncing the lies that the devil or our sinful nature feed us.
Maybe write a stronghold buster for a stronghold of yours with a friend who can also then keep you accountable.
“Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – his good, pleasing and perfect will.” – Romans 12v2
“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.” – Galatians 5v1
“So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” – John 8v36
I don’t think I’ve ever read a book written in the second person before! I’d thought a while ago how books are always written in the first or third person, but never second – that is not the case.
Jasmine has just lost her job, and her neighbour over the road has just had his wife leave him. He works on the radio and is generally very offensive – Jasmine hates him for something he once said about people with Downs Syndrome, which her sister has, and this book is written as if she is speaking to him.
We follow her year of gardening leave, working out what to do with her time, figuring out what to do at the end of it when she’s allowed to work again, a headhunter called Monday, her relationship with her neighbours who she never really knew before, and her relationship with her sister.
Feel good as Cecelia Ahern’s books always are, this is definitely another one.
I actually got this book much earlier than expected, I normally get the new Cecelia Ahern books when they come out in paperback, and this isn’t due until next summer. But last month I was in an airport, and exclusively they sell books in paperback that are only hardback in shops – expensive, yes, and still bulky in size, but it was very exciting to get it so early. Just means a long long wait for the next one now!
These are my notes from the sermon that was shared at church on this Remembrance Sunday.
Psalm 46 1 God is our refuge and strength,
an ever-present help in trouble.
2 Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way
and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea,
3 though its waters roar and foam
and the mountains quake with their surging.
4 There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
the holy place where the Most High dwells.
5 God is within her, she will not fall;
God will help her at break of day.
6 Nations are in uproar, kingdoms fall;
he lifts his voice, the earth melts.
7 The Lord Almighty is with us;
the God of Jacob is our fortress.
8 Come and see what the Lord has done,
the desolations he has brought on the earth.
9 He makes wars cease
to the ends of the earth.
He breaks the bow and shatters the spear;
he burns the shields with fire.
10 He says, “Be still, and know that I am God;
I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth.”
11 The Lord Almighty is with us;
the God of Jacob is our fortress.
John 15 vv 12-14 12 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command.
A lady called Amy Beechey had 8 sons who fought in WWI. Only 3 came home, one of whom was permanently disabled. She received an honour from the Queen for her immense sacrifice, and replied, “I was no sacrifice Ma’am. I did not give them willingly.”
A man called Rob Young is running a marathon every day for a year. Every day, between 2-5am he runs a marathon, before then going about his normal day at work. He is sacrificing his sleep to raise money for those less fortunate. He’s currently well over halfway through, and hoping to raise £200,000.
Our sin and self-centred-ness as humans has polluted creation. Alongside these acts of sacrifice, we see greed, jealously, hate, violence.
We were created to love and serve God. In the garden of Eden, Adam and Eve walked and talked with God, but they rebelled as they chose to serve their own wants first. In doing so, human kind lost their intimate friendship with God.
Sin is when we love ourselves more than we love God, this cuts us off from Him. Jesus lived a life totally going by His Father’s agenda, He took our sins on Himself, allowed himself to be cut off from God even though he never sinned Himself, and in doing so, restored our ability to have a relationship with the Father.
No one other than Jesus, the only sinless man, could have done this. Our greatest sacrifices are nothing in comparison, they could never have freed us. That said, we are now called to lay down our lives in sacrificial love for others (John 15v12).
Jesus loved us, even when we didn’t deserve His love, and so we are to love others even when they don’t deserve it. Jesus didn’t wait until we were worthy of His love before he died for us in love. He loved us while we were far away.
It’s impossible to humanly love as Jesus loved, but Jesus is the vine, and we are the branches, through which His love can run. We need to remain connected to Him, to draw our love from Him.
In this way, if we love as Christ loved us, we will shine as lights in the darkness.
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” – Edmund Burke
“Pooh may have been a simple bear in profound danger of early-onset diabetes, but what if we were to approach the Bible in the same way he approached the honey?”
This book was my first venture into The Austen Project, where 6 current authors have been tasked with updating Jane Austen’s most famous novels. This is actually the second part of the project, with Sense and Sensibility being published by Joanne Trollope first, but this is just the one I grabbed in the supermarket to read!
I’m a great fan of Austen, but in all honesty, I’ve only read two of her books: Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility. The rest are on my bookshelf and to-read list! But I’ve seen TV and/or film adaptations of them all, and love the stories that she writes.
The premise of the original is a girl who loves Gothic fiction and gets this a bit twisted with reality, being invited to join family friends in Bath for the season, and then making friends with people who live in Northanger Abbey, which sounds like something out of one of her books…. and I won’t spoil it with further details.
But that’s Austen, and this is someone else! For the most part I really enjoyed this book. In this edition, we have a home schooled girl who is into vampire novels, and her neighbours offer to take her to the Edinburgh Festival, and the plot follows similarly, we end up visiting Northanger Abbey and wondering what secrets lie within.
I think on the whole the updating of the book worked really well (although, as with any of these re-writes, it wouldn’t be anything without the story it was based on of course). That said, some bits really irritated me. There was a little too much mention of facebook, twitter, phone apps, and trying to get on the WiFi. Yes, this is a modern book, but it was a little too frequent and distracted from what was going on. Similarly some references to the Twilight series, which I worry might not be long term enough to last in this.
But what really bothered me, was references to other Jane Austen books she’d read. I think that if you’re going to write a Jane Austen based novel, you should probably assume the characters don’t know about the other ones – it’s not like the original novels references each other! Maybe I’m just being picky, but it bothered me when this happened!
ineke.co.uk 