Robert Louis Stephenson once said “I’ve been to church, but I am not depressed”. A cynical comment, or a bit too near the truth?
Here are some other things said by people- millions of them, after they’ve been to church:
“Nobody spoke to me”
“It was mournful and irrelevant – a rigmarole”
“It was too charismatic – can’t stand all that clapping and mindless noise”
“It all went over my head”
“I came away more depressed than when I went in” – which is where we came in with Robert Louis Stephenson.
Now, believe me, I do take all such comments seriously since worship is supposed to be the highest, loveliest, most revolutionary activity of which human beings are capable. If it isn’t, we Christians have got something catastrophically wrong. But the big flaw in all such criticisms of going to church to worship is this: Worship is not for us – it’s for God. It has nothing to do with whether I like it or not! The real issue is, is it what God wants? Worship is for God – for God alone. It’s supposed to change us, not Him. If we worship our preferences, then that has become an idol.
Incidentally, Robert Louis Stephenson was moved to tears once as he, in the street outside a church, heard the great “Amen” rise like thunder from a worshipping congregation within. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshippers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshippers must worship in spirit and in truth. John 4: 23, 24
When I worship you Lord, quicken my conscience by your holiness, feed my mind on your truth, purge my imagination with your beauty, open my heart to your love and devote my will to your purposes (Adapted from William Temple)
Now read Ezekiel 33: 30-33 and see the difference between an audience and a congregation.

Although we use the word ‘religion’ to mean devotion to some deity, on the whole, as one scholar put it, ‘religion is the devil!’. Now before you run away with hands clamped over your ears, try to see what he meant by it.
Anything which can make us feel comfortable in a life of disobedience to God is the devil. Anything which can perform outward religious rituals as a front for power-seeking, lust, or to manipulate of other people is satanic. Yet look at us – our religions have led us into wars – clergy on both sides blessing submarines and bombs, putting little children under the care of those who have exploited and abused them. We have tortured and murdered often over some doctrinal nit-picking – allowed fearful atrocities in the name of our gods. (Look, for example, at the crusaders, and those appalling witch hunts of history). Religion has provided a mask for violent men and women to hide their blood lust under their tribal mascots. Think of contemporary expressions of this taking place today. Religion is the devil, if it leads you and me into a cheap repentance which can say ‘Oops, sorry, I’ll try again’ without any change of heart and direction of will, aware that we’ll just keep on sinning as before (muttering, “no one is perfect!”). Religion is the devil when it permits corruption to wear a mask of respectability, to prattle on about peace, enforced by means of bomb and bullet, when it seeks God’s blessing on what God can never own. In fact the greatest unmasker of the devil’s religious face is Jesus of Nazareth.
“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as you are.” Matthew 23:15
In that chapter Jesus lambastes the most devout and religious men on earth. Read the whole chapter for yourself, and see that religion can be the very devil.
A Prayer of a little child: “Lord, make all the bad people good, and the good people nice.”
Now read John 8: 42-59

Today I want to read and comment on an incident which showed the gap between Jesus of Nazareth and the hidden agendas of his closest followers. It is Matthew Chapter 20 v.20. ‘Then the mother of Zebedees’ sons came to Jesus with her sons (curious phrase that – think about it!) asking a favour’, and pardon my paraphrasing the conversation. ‘Grant that these two lads of mine be given the two top jobs in your Kingdom – your right and left hand men.’
‘You don’t know what you’re asking’, said Jesus. Then, addressing the two lads (he knew who had put mum up to it) asked them, ‘can you drink from my cup?’.
‘Certainly’, they said, thinking it to be a celebration feast and victory drink, an early sort of champagne knock about.
‘Then you certainly will’, he said, but knowing it meant rejection and death for following Him. ‘But to sit on my right and left hand when I’m crowned, are places already assigned.’
(I wonder would they, and their mum, have begged to take the places of the two thieves crucified on either side of Jesus?, for this is surely what he meant.)
Nevertheless, when the other ten heard about this bit of one-up-manship, they were indignant! Why? Because James and John had tried to jump the queue and get in first for the top jobs. So they were all as bad. All their personal and private agendas were showing: the longing for power, for recognition, for fame and fortune. No wonder Jesus told them this:
“You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave – just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and give his life as a ransom for many.” Matthew 20
I have known Christians who gave up careers which promised money, power and popular recognition, in order to follow Jesus, then to take up the same agenda but in His church.
A Prayer:
When you call us to be your servants and followers Lord, we join your servant church and then have to resist the spirit of competition. The seeking of recognition, and our name’s prominence all over again. Help us Lord to deny these selves and their agendas.
Now read Acts 8: 4-24

One of the greatest miracles Jesus of Nazareth ever performs on people’s lives is to rewrite their secret agendas. Many of our hidden motives spring from a deep yearning to be accepted, to be loved, respected and admired. Of course we wouldn’t admit it openly, often because we are unaware of it ourselves – which is why it comes out in our dreams, and even they usually need to be unlocked by somebody else, ‘because we hide the truth from ourselves. ‘Why don’t I love my younger brother?’, for example, or ‘Why am I afraid of the dark?’. I wonder how many people have had their emotional lives damaged by being rejected or hurt when they were too young, even to recognise the fact in their memories, but they kept the memory in their damaged feelings. I wonder why school bullies do it? Is it because inside them there is a frightened little child covering his own fear by attacking others? Many grossly overweight people probably eat as a love, or mother, substitute
filling their stomachs as the nearest they can get to having their hearts filled with love, which was denied them. Some believe that our fears reveal our hidden agendas – like the terror of being buried alive, trapped, unable to move, taking an eternity to die. Now is this fear triggering a birth trauma of which we have no actual memory, only a link to the terror we once felt?
That’s what I mean when I say, perhaps Jesus’ greatest miracles are the re-writing of our hidden personal agendas. The rooting out of deeply buried fears.Paul wrote in Philippians Ch. 3, (7-8, 10-11)
How changed are my ambitions. But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.
A Prayer: Take, O Lord, our wretched self interest, self seeking and fears, and help us count them as garbage, compared with the joy of knowing You.
Now read Galatians Chapter 5

I have been reading a book on spiritual warfare. One of the students at the S.B.A. Open College asked my opinion of it, since he, as a comparatively new Christian, was wondering how much danger he and his wife were in, and how much of their trouble came purely from spiritual attacks. Well, I read it – and was impressed by the author’s knowledge, experience and awareness. he has his finger on the pulse of the spirit of this age. For him the church is bungling along, blind to the intense attacks on its people, and incapable of dealing with them. My main problem with the book was not that it was untrue, far from it: to me it was a problem of balance. There is more to the Christian faith even than training in spiritual warfare. There is the cosmic, massive victory of Christ already won – Jesus Christ is Lord, but we can give the devil too much publicity. We can forget that the devil has no power.He cannot create anything. All he can do is attempt to corrupt what God has made. He does attack directly, but mostly by indirect means, through, for example, the instrumentality of pleasure, or pain, but these invoke our choices. He has no power to invade us – even God doesn’t enter us, without our invitation: and the devil cannot. Thus I counselled a balanced approach, and to examine the discernment of the author through which all his experiences are filtered. The author could be mistaken. No instrument should always play the same tune. Yet I was glad to read it: it had some excellent teaching, reminding us that “the church is powerless because Christians do not live in their inheritance”.
Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith ..” (I Peter 5: 8, 9A)
A Prayer: O God, who art the author of peace and lover of concord, in knowledge of whom standeth our eternal life, whose service is perfect freedom; defend us, Thy humble servants, in all the assaults of our enemies; that we, surely trusting in They defence, may not fear the power of any adversaries; through the might of Jesus Christ our Lord.
Now read Matthew 4: 1-11

I have just read another article on praying together in the Spirit. It repeated over and over that without the Holy Spirit’s presence, no prayer is possible. Amen to that. It went on about our blocking and quenching the Spirit, and of course that is scriptural and right. Then why did I feel a bit frustrated by it, instead of being stimulated to pray more deeply and more often with my fellow Christians, and therefore more effectively? I suppose it was because I could not get past the sense that the writer felt he knew that he could detect and recognise when the Spirit is present and when He isn’t! I had the feeling I was being urged by this writer to ‘do it his way’ or it couldn’t work. Now no one could quarrel with the point of the article that only when the people praying together acknowledged the Lordship of Christ and the sovereignty of the Holy Spirit could there be any praying in the Spirit. My question was, how do we know when a prayer group is Spirit-filled, and when it isn’t? I’ve been in prayer meetings over the decades where the ‘amens’ were loud and fervent, where everyone wanted to pray out loud, also where there was the silence of the cemetery, as well as the silence of wordless awesomeness. But I have never been in prayer meetings where the presence of God was so powerful that “the place was shaken and all were filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly” (Acts 4:31). I have been in meetings filled with enthusiasm, or complacency, or filled with noise, or were empty of anything but our sense of routine under an obligation to pray – but not so filled with the Spirit that everyone present was transformed by holy power and lit with inextinguishable flame, with great signs and wonders following.
So I say to you: ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds;and to him who knocks, the door will be opened. Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” Luke 11: 9-13
A Prayer: Lord, teach us to pray, lest we seek to be led by men into a technique or a formula, or how to say our prayers. Lord, by your Spirit teach us to pray.
Now read Acts Chapter 10.

Here is a question for you today. Since God, who changes not (for that which is perfect cannot change) is always calling his people to change, to draw closer to Him, then (and here’s the question) why do we all resist change so strongly? What’s that? You don’t believe me? Well, look at the Bible ever calling us to continual transformation. Our salvation is an explosion commanding us to repent, to change our direction, our minds, our life-style, to turn and face God. Then to embark on a continual renewal which must resist and remove everything which stunts or prevents our growth in the spirit. God ever calls us to refuse to be satisfied with things as they are in our selves, in our families, in our churches, in our towns, our countries, in our world. Everything around us spirals downward by a kind of spiritual gravity, and the divine call is always to reverse the process of decay, to aim at the restoration of God’s sin-soiled creation. It is our sinful laziness which makes the excuse that ‘not all change is progress’. Of course it is not, but static acceptance of what we are used to, is a form of death. Men and women will kill to preserve what they’ve got used to! See Jesus, the vanguard of God’s progress, the very spear point, radical, renewing, risking, dying, resurrecting, and resisting our gravity to reduce every God-refreshing thing into a routine which we can manage. Today, dare to pray and spiritually to be all shook up. Listen to Jesus: And he said to them: “You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions! Thus you nullify the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And you do many things like that.” Mark 7: 9 and 13
To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” John 8: 31, 32
A Prayer: Lord, by your Spirit, grant me the courage to change what must be changed, patience to accept what cannot be changed, and wisdom to know the difference. Now read Mark 11: 12-26

I’ve decided to come clean and publicly confess that I am an unbeliever ! I have rejected the faith by which most of our culture lives. I don’t believe in good luck, lucky charms, horoscopes, star signs, nor in taking superstitious precautions such as touching wood, throwing salt, avoiding No.13, and not walking under ladders. I don’t believe in blind fate, reincarnation, transcendental meditation, eastern gurus, spiritists, nor in mediums, nor the National Lottery. I do not accept that the devil is a ‘dark god’ with power to create evil mayhem everywhere as he is depicted in so many Hollywood films. I do not believe he has such authority because, at worst, he can only work on corrupting what God created to be good and beautiful. As I said, I am an unbeliever!
I do not believe that good deeds put us right with God, nor that by being good and attending church I accumulate good marks which impress God. In fact, I don’t believe that anything I can achieve,can rescue me from my own ego, no matter how respectable, religious or moral I try to be. After all, self-made men always end up worshipping their creators, don’t they? (Think about it!)
I don’t believe that heaven is like earth, all over again, but with harps and clouds; nor do I believe that we get halos in heaven simply by the act of dropping dead! I don’t believe in a god who is an angry tyrant, a hanging judge, an efficiency expert, a vast senile granddad in a celestial rocking chair, nor in an impersonal humourless, uncaring life-force grinding eternally on and grinding exceedingly small. I do not believe either that everyone’s idea of God is just as valid as everyone else’s, any more than I believe that any old Joe Soap has the right to pontificate on brain surgery.
In short, I’m free from these man-made faiths, including especially the beloved old English folk culture which now and then condescendingly nods at God at occasional attendances at tribal ceremonials, such as weddings, christenings and funerals.
I do believe that God is like Jesus of Nazareth, and to experience the miracle of being in a personal relationship with Him is to be set free from the cultural prison cells of all the world’s DIY religions. Incidentally, I am not alone in this confession, because I’ve discovered that most truly committed Christians are at heart the most unbelieving folk in any town!
A prayer: Thank you Lord for the truth of Jesus, which sets us free. I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life.
Dear children, keep yourselves from idols. I John 5: 13 and 21
Now read: Romans 1: 18-37 and tremble!

I still hear people say that Britain is ‘After all a Christian country’. Not only is it not a Christian country: it never has been. It is possibly a religious country but the religion of our land at the end of the 20th century is a rag-bag of post modernist claptrap. ‘If it’s all right for you – then it’s all right’ seems to be the agreed rule. New-agism is not new at all. It’s a sort of ‘pick & mix’ of beliefs based on a roughly ‘Green’ concept; with it’s main creed ‘It’s OK if it feels OK to you’. Authority, or lack of it, is based on what the individual may feel at the time. Reincarnation, spirits, lay lines, meditation, aroma-therapy, pills, crystals, mythology, healing by magic, spirit guides, all have a place in the mix – you pick what suits you. This is the world in which and by which our children are being formed. Education is the process of the entire society – we are shaped by our total environment in which clear Christian teaching seems to be too rigid, too exclusive, too much of a dinosaur to survive. Yet, in this age, we are urged to teach our children right from wrong, as if morality were a list of dos and don’ts and not personal communal commitments. In an age where anything goes – everything goes. The greatest need our pagan land, in ignorance, displays is the want of a joyful, enthusiastic, Christ-centred loving community, which practices what He preaches and embodies His power of love, of confidence, and a sound mind. In short, if ever there was a time when a nation was dying for want of ‘the fellowship of the Holy Spirit’, it is now. The church is meant to be the home of that fellowship. Meanwhile, across the centuries, the challenge of Joshua still stands. (Joshua 24: 14-15)
Now fear the Lord and serve him with all faithfulness.Throw away the gods your forefathers worshipped beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living.But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.
A fragment of a poem called “Faith”
I can’t stand out. I must take sides. The man who is a neutral in this fight is not a man. He’s bulk and body without breath, cold leg of lamb without mint sauce. A fool. He makes me sick – Good Lord! Weak tea! Cold slops! G.A.Studdart Kennedy “The Unutterable Beauty”.
Now read Mark 8: 31-38

For a few days now we’ve been talking about prayer. Perhaps today we should pray – well, at least you can eavesdrop on a prayer, and if it’s relevant to you, you can make it your own.
Let us Praise God:
Invisible and mysterious lord God, our Father, who cannot be discovered by the reasoned logic of men, but who has shown your very self to us openly in the flesh and blood of Jesus, we marvel at the revelation of:
The Almighty who can be vulnerable
The All Knowing who remains innocent
The Ever Present who is unobtrusive
The All Glorious who is selfless
The Sought after who seeks us sinners
The Author of Life who dies for sinners
The Dying One who lives for sinners.
We marvel, we worship and we adore – for in Jesus we see your heart laid bare:
Perfect peace-yet restless for your rebel children.
Perfect bliss-yet pained by our rejection.
Perfect Joy-yet bearing all our sorrows.
Lord we adore you, and worship you, for in love you made us,in Jesus you redeemed us, in The Spirit you indwell us. Wherefore we bless your Holy Name.
Praise the Lord. Praise, O servants of the Lord, praise the name of the Lord.
Let the name of the Lord be praised, both now and for evermore. From the rising of the sun to the place where it sets,the name of the Lord is to be praised. Psalm 113: 1-3
Now read and pray Isaiah Chapter 12.