Posted by Gareth Matthews | Posted on 23-01-2006
Category : Bible
I heard a great talk this weekend by the pastor of my church which concerned a little known character buried near the start of
1 Chronicles. Amongst the lists of family trees,
Jabez pops up and is singled out by the writer along with his two sentence prayer and God’s approval of it.
So what is so special about Jabez? His prayer goes something like this…
Jabez cried out to the God of Israel, “Oh, that you would bless me and enlarge my territory! Let your hand be with me, and keep me from harm so that I will be free from pain.” And God granted his request.
I find praying prayers like this really hard – I think because I would often rather the attention be on someone else rather than me, even when talking to God. But I think there is something here that I need to get hold of. As a worship leader I believe that it is pretty hard to lead people in worship if worship is something I don’t know anything about. In the same way I think it is pretty hard to be a blessing to others if we do not ask for and experience God’s blessing on our lives.
Now when I talk about asking God to bless us I do not mean it in the ‘pray for it and God will give it to you’, name it and claim it style. How God blesses us is completely up to Him – and to be honest that is His department and I’d rather leave Him to it. However I think this is a whole attitude thing – if we really are serious about blessing other people then we need to ask God for His blessing on our lives. I believe it is an active part of being spitiually healthy – which is a great gift we can give to the people around us.
I think the main point I am trying to convey is that it is not selfish or wrong to prayer for blessing on our lives when the motive for it is to bless other people from it. A little bit of Jabez in my prayer life? I’ll let you know how it goes…
As an aside – does anyone actually know where Jabez comes from? If you read 1 Chronicles 4, Jabez is first mentioned in verse 9 quite separately from the family tree lists! I am sure he must be related to someone in 1 Chronicles 4 – have I just missed it?
Posted by Rob Borley | Posted on 22-01-2006
Category : Bible
This is the famous story of Jesus healing the paralysed man who was brought by his friends to Him. An old favourite with Sunday school teachers because of the great story that; to reach Jesus they had to dig a hole in the roof of the house and lower the man through!
Of course, Jesus heals the man physically after he has forgiven his sins and dealt a cutting blow to the scribes. I must have read or heard this story a thousand times and yet God seems to continually use it stimulate my thinking.
They paralyse man could not bring himself to Jesus. He needed his friends to do this. But his friends could not take him directly Jesus either. They had some obstacles; some barriers to remove first. And this is what has been highlighted for me in my latest reading.
We don’t know if the man wanted to see Jesus or if his friends had just thought that it was a good idea for them to meet. So to me this seemed that the friends were the ones that were trying to instigate this introduction.
The first obstacle in their way was his disability. They had to physically make the effort to take their friend to a place where they could meet Jesus. The second obstacle was the crowd which they successfully negotiated by going to roof. This only created 2 more problems. Firstly they were now high up above Jesus and secondly there was a roof in the way!!
We know that they overcame these two and eventually introduced their friend to Jesus where he received his healing. So what am I babbling on about? Our job is to introduce our friends to Jesus. But to do that we need to remove the obstacles, some of which could be out own making, and lead them to actually meet him. We need to not introduce our friends to our religion, or some other distorted picture but we need to introduce them to Him.
What those obstacles are I’m not sure. They are probably different in each case. And how we remove them is another big question. But I think if we check our thinking to make sure our evangelism is focused on introducing people to the person of Jesus we may go a way to answer some of those other questions.
This is certainly something I’m doing at the moment. What do you think? Am I talking rubbish or does this hit a nerve?
Posted by Gareth Matthews | Posted on 11-01-2006
Category : Uncategorized
As some of you may be aware I am a songwriter and worship leader and have just finished recording a second album of worship songs. In an age of celebrity Christian’s and a desire to be big why would I want to record an album? Isn’t the Christian music scene crowded enough without me adding my two pence worth?
In short – yes. The Christian music scene is packed – pretty much any style you care to name, from most places in the UK. There is a market for Christian music – in the words of the Simpsons ‘Sorry, but there’s profit to be had‘. Worship leaders are also bustling to be heard in this cattle market – desperate to follow in the hallowed footsteps of Martin Smith, Matt Redman or Tim Hughes. So why would I try and follow suit and join the crowd?
I guess for me it comes back to the point of writing songs. I think songs are a way to express a feeling that cannot simply be conveyed by saying it out loud. When considering Christian songs I think these provide us with an opportunity to convey to God something that means something personal to the person writing it – and this often has the effect of meaning something to other people who listen to it. For me, at it’s very basic, this album contains songs that mean something to me and say something about my relationship with God and where it has been heading over the last few months and years.
I see Christian life as a journey which can be played really safe with our feet on the ground. However, I think I am starting to understand that God doesn’t want us to live our lives with our feet always on the ground – indeed He wants to teach us how to fly. This for me means actually putting into practise my faith by living that way God wants me to live, regardless of how stupid the world may tell me that is and striving to be someone who is more concerned with living a life that pleases God rather than a life that pleases man. That for me is the theme of where I am as a Christian and as such the theme of this album.
So what is the point of it? Why make it and sell it? Well for me the answer is two-fold:
Our church resides in an area of Portsmouth called Somers Town. This is a deprived area of the city made up of council owned property and large towerblocks and the area has many problems. However, one thing I have found is that the majority of people who live there are really quality people who are finding life hard and we as a church are really keen to show them something about Jesus, who He is and how much He loves them. I believe that music is a great way to convey this and so I would love to be able to get them to listen to the CD – music that is available for ‘free’ (i.e. radio) can contain such negativity and in my opinion it is a great thing to offer people the opportunity to listen to something that can change their lives for the better. The only problem is that they cannot afford to buy it – so the plan is to give the CD away to people we come into contact with as a church. We are not out to make big bucks out of the CD – but see it as much more worthwhile to get the words of Jesus into their lives. I have strived to make the CD the best that I can make it – not because I want it to be recognised amongst the other worship CD’s out there but because I want people to actually listen to it! Some Christians may give it a sympathy listen because ‘I tried my best’ but I am sure others will not be so forgiving.
My tongue in cheek start to this post may make it sound like either I am jealous of people like Matt Redman and Tim Hughes or I disagree with them producing worship albums for commercial use. This is not the case in the slightest – I have the greatest admiration for them as they have encouraged and facilitated me with their songs and their humbleness has shown me how I would like to be as a person and a worship leader. I have the greatest respect for them and think that God is really blessing them in the extremely difficult job that they have. I do not set out to try and be the next Matt Redman with this album however. I feel that God really needs people who are committed to their local area and committed to using music to reach people in that area. Why should you have to go to Soul Survivor or buy from Wesley Own to hear people gifted in leading worship? I don’t believe you should and so am excited to use whatever God given abilities I have in a local way and see that as something more important that setting my sights on being an international worship star.
So I release this CD with a lot of unknown about what will happen to it, who will hear it and what God will do with it. In my mind though, if one person hears it and it helps them to understand Jesus a bit better or draws them closer to Him in some way then it has been worth it.
