This sermon is a good illustration of the difference between what Ed Stetzer calls an “aspirational charismatic” and one who pursues God for all he has for us today.  I urge you to watch it, and be stirred to enjoy what Jesus has purchased for us.  Downloads are available on the Jubilee site.

Christians in the West are often quite good at trusting in God as our rock. We are taught doctrine, told that God is sovereign. We are taught that he stands behind every event that happens and is working for our good (Romans 8:28). Even when other people do things to us from a bad motive, we may respond like Joseph and say “you meant that for my harm, but God meant it for good.”

God, we learn, is unmovable. He is like a fortress we can hide in. He is unshakeable and faithful. “Ascribe greatness to our God the rock, his work is perfect and all his ways are just, a God of faithfulness and without injustice, good and upright is he!” (Deuteronomy 32:3-4).

God is so dependable that even “if we are faithless, he remains faithful, for he cannot deny himself”(2 Tim 2:13) . He is unshakeable, nothing can move him. Theologians talk about his impassibility. When the nations rebel against him, the one enthroned in heaven laughs (Psalm 2).

And yet. The one who we have said cannot be moved, can in fact be moved. This is no contradiction. How then can you move the immovable?

Faith in the dependable God we have been talking about could be called resting or passive faith. It is peaceful, stilling our hearts, and determining to trust God in the midst of the storm.

There is, however, another kind of faith that we in the West are generally not so familiar with. This is active faith, and this is what moves God. When Jesus met Lazarus’ sisters, he was moved to compassion and provoked by their sorrow, but also by their faith. Active faith lays ahold of Gods promises and cries out to him to fulfil them. Paul speaks of how Elijah appeals to God (Romans 11:2). Daring to believe God and urging him to act turns Gods heart towards us.

2 Chronicles 33:13 tells us that Manasseh “prayed to him, and God was moved by his entreaty and heard his plea.”

Jesus is often described in the gospels as being “moved with compassion” when people entreated him, and as a result he healed them.

Passive faith relies on God as the immovable dependable rock on which we can stand. Active faith causes us to appeal to Gods sense of compassion, justice, mercy, and righteousness. He is able to be moved. He wants us to step out and dare to ask him to act.

There are some who seem to focus so much on asking God for things, that the undergirding trust in his faithfulness is apparently absent. But if we only focus on him as the sovereign immovable king we are in just as precarious a position. To deny Gods power and become fatalistic is not glorifying his name. We need both of these kinds of faith and we need the God who is both movable and immovable.

The ideas in this post came out of a conversation I had with my very wise and insightful wife this afternoon. I pray it will be encouraging to many of you.

I read a fascinating article about the Kiwis observations of some emerging Christian movements. Now, those of you that are regular readers will know that I am passionately committed to Sunday Services especially when a group of believers have grown enough to sustain one. Howeve, in light of my “I want it all” committmet you should not be surprised to know that I found these observations interesting and in some cases challenging. Go read Tall Skinny Kiwi: Practices of a new Jesus movement.

If God can turn the brutal murder of a group of young missionaries around for good, how much more what you are facing today? Go read the rest o this article which begins,
“Today in 1956, five missionaries to the Auca indians in Ecuador were killed. Their deaths brought a sudden end to the project they called “Operation Auca,” but the tragedy became a defining moment in the history of evangelical missions. Hundreds of young people were inspired to take up missionary work, thousands were moved to deeper commitment to Christ, and millions of dollars in resources were mobilized. And the work with the Aucas went on, too”

read more at Today Jim Elliot Was Killed (1956) | The Scriptorium Daily: Middlebrow.

I found this great brief article about slowing down to hear Gods voice:

You and I live in an often crowded and busy world. There are lots of “voices”. I can’t remember the last time I had a day with nothing to do. My home is quieter than it once was when two boys kept the hallway filled with the sounds of football, basketball, and any other sport that Mom will let them get away with in the house, but there’s still plenty of noise and activity.

Often, I find myself surrounded by the “stuff” of life. The idea of hearing from God in the midst of all this clutter seems nearly impossible. Yet, I know that my very existence hangs on my God relationship. I need a word from my Father!

read more at When God Tries to Speak to You | Ron Edmondson.

Twitter trending is a funny thing, and all kinds of things suddenly become popular there for a season. Right now, if you visit http://twitter.com/#!/search?q=%23HowGreatIsOurGod you can read the latest tweets that are helping to tell the world why we believe our God is so great!

This was all prompted by 48000 people at Passion 2012 singing the popular Christian song in different languages.  I hope they are going to put the video online!

Here are some of my favorites tweets about this from today:

• #HowGreatIsOurGod Great enough to be a mother, father, sister, brother, friend, provider, deliverer, comforter, and healer all in one
• There is a world out there who needs us to explain #howgreatisourgod they just don’t get it yet. We are his witnesses
• Nothing you do can separate you from the grace of God. That was all taken care of on the cross. #HowGreatIsOurGod
• #HowGreatIsOurGod that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life
• New mercies each morning. His mercy endures forever! #HowGreatIsOurGod
• For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen. #HowGreatIsOurGod
• There aren’t enough words in our vocab to describe #HowGreatisOurGod
• he loves you when you turn your back on him #HowGreatIsOurGod
• #HowGreatIsOurGod He’s wonderful. He blesses me everyday, more often than I deserve and with more than I can ask for.
• Wondering why #howgreatisourgod is trending? It was sung today at a big conference here is an old video of the song youtube.com/watch?v=doiiH2…

The British Prime Minister’s recent obvious statement that Britain is at root a Christian nation has caused the normal uproar among the aggressive secularists. These people are fast trying to turn this nation into an atheocracy where atheism rules with as much brute force intellectually as any religious dictatorship.  Their opposition to Cameron’s words is not a great surprise.  What is perhaps more surprising to those who don’t understand the allegiance poeple of any faith are increasingly feeling for each other is the support of one of the UK’s leading Muslims:

Muslim Council of Britain member and imam from Leicester, Sheikh Ibrahim Mogra told the BBC  “It’s very seldom I get excited by what our prime minister has to say and this is one of those times. As Muslims we also believe in the Bible. We believe in the teachings of Jesus. Not only that, but in the teachings of all the biblical prophets, including Moses in the Torah. So this is something that we feel is absolutely in tune with the Muslim thinking. We have to base our behaviour according to scripture, God’s revealed message.”For a long time Muslims have been trying to express this idea, that for us as Muslims Islam is not just a religion but a way of life. To divorce politics from religion is not something we are able to do, we cannot leave our religion at home or in the mosques, it comes with us wherever we go. So it’s refreshing to hear the prime minister say Christians should do the same. I agree Britain is the best country for Muslims to live in, at least in Europe.”

More at BBC News – David Cameron on Christianity – views.

Tom Shaw is a great friend of mine.  He is passionate about reaching a lost generation for Jesus.  Mobilise UK exists to help you get caught up with Christ’s mission for a group who go to church less often than any of those that have gone before for centuries. Watch him here, then book in to Mobilise UK.

Trevin Wax has an interesting article on the most controversial issue facing the Church in Western Culture. It  is well worth a read.  No question that this issue will not go away for Christians today:

If you think my position on homosexuality is radical, just wait until you hear what else I believe! I believe that a teenage guy and girl who have sex in the backseat of a pick-up are sinning. The unmarried heterosexual couple living down the street from me is sinning. In fact, any sexual activity that takes place outside of the marriage covenant between a husband and wife is sinful. What’s more, Jesus takes this sexual ethic a step further and goes to the heart of the matter. That means that any time I even lust after someone else, I am sinning. Jesus’ radical view of sexuality shows all of us up as sexual sinners, and that’s why He came to die. Jesus died to save lustful, homo- and heterosexual sinners and transform our hearts and minds and behavior. Because He died for me, I owe Him my all. And as a follower of Jesus, I’m bound to what He says about sex and morality.

Read more at How I Wish the Homosexuality Debate Would Go : Kingdom People.

Check out the great things you can win with October’s newsletter! Sign up at the bottom of this post if you haven’t yet signed up for access to exclusive content, free chapters and the chance to win great resources.

But God by Chris Haines – 5 copies available to win! Available to those in the USA only.

www.butgod.co.uk

Review of “But God” by Lex Loizides…

“The best worship album I’ve heard in years!! Seriously! At last! At last there’s some fresh inspiration out there! Someone pressed this CD into my hands at a conference a couple of weeks ago and I expected the ordinary. But what I got has completely taken me by surprise. This is, without doubt, the freshest, most beautifully crafted, musically as well as theologically, satisfying worship CD that I’ve heard in years. There are no CD reviews on my blog (Church History Blog) but I may break the pattern for this one.

So far I’ve had to play it at least once every day. There is some superb delicate guitar work, great lyrics and brilliant melodies. And just a word of advice: don’t buy it first and foremost to find new songs for your worship team to play in church, buy it to enrich your own soul and then take it from there.

Five stars from me.”

Defiant Grace by Dane Ortlund - 3 copies available to win! Available to those in the USA and UK.

www.epbooks.org

When God-in-the-flesh showed up twenty centuries ago in Palestine, the religious PhDs rejected him and the prostitutes and social outcasts flocked to him.  Why?  Because the open welcome of divine grace that Jesus offered, open to anyone who would simply leave their moral resume at home, is not predictable. It is not safe. It is defiant.

In this book, Dane Ortlund reflects on this defiant grace as it uniquely emerges in each of the four Gospel accounts.

‘Dane Ortlund can flat-out write. He’s is a craftsman of prose, and more: he writes with theological discernment and an eye for heart application. To read this book is to have a surprising encounter with the Savior. Dane walks us through the four gospels, highlighting Christ’s astonishing words and actions-actions never more astonishing than at Calvary. More than anything, as I read these pages I was reminded of the Savior’s stunning love for me and of his defiant grace-grace that is shockingly unmeasured, vast, and free.’  – C. J. Mahaney, President, Sovereign Grace Ministries

Zeal for Godliness – Devotional mediations from Calvins Institutes – 3 copies available to win! Available to those in the USA and UK.

www.epbooks.org

With contributions from Sinclair Ferguson, Ligon Duncan, Carl Trueman, Phil Ryken, Guy Waters, Richard Philips, Derek Thomas and other noteable Christian leaders, this book of modern devotions based on Calvin’s timeless Institutes again gives ordinary people access to the faith building truths of a timeless masterpiece.  Challenging yet easy to understand, they come in a day by day format that will build your faith brick by brick.

‘John Calvin’s Institutes easily stands as the greatest work by the greatest theologian of the Church. Outside of the Bible itself, this magnum opus remains to this day the finest masterpiece of Christian literature ever written. Zeal for Godliness is a collection of some of the finest minds in the Reformed world who write to make Calvin’s work, the tour de force of the Reformation, more accessible to the modern reader with eye-opening explanations and life-changing applications.’  – Steven J. Lawson, Senior Pastor, Christ Fellowship Baptist Church, Mobile, Alabama

Higher by Phatfish – 4 copies available to win! Available to those in the USA and UK.

http://www.phatfish.net/

Phatfish have made an impressive impact on the UK Christian music scene for the last decade. Live they have led thousands in worship at all of the major UK festivals including Newday, Soul Survivor and Spring Harvest, sharing stages with artists that range from Matt Redman to Delirious. They have also toured in the US, Canada and Europe.

In the studio they have clocked up 10 widely acclaimed albums and are responsible for the worldwide hit ‘Holy Holy, Lift Up His Name’ and more recently the anthems ‘There Is A Day’ and ‘Amazing God’. They feature on numerous compilation albums, often in partnership with premier publishers, Kingsway Music.

Since their formation in 1994, Phatfish have held firmly to their original aim: to write, play and record songs that glorify our amazing God and communicate His love and His purpose for us.

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We are already gathering a great bunch of giveaways for next month. If you know a Christian marketer who wants to get involved, please ask them to email adrian@adrianwarnock.com. We are open to give away other free stuff too!

While it is not a requirement, it would be greatly appreciated by our publisher friends if you could review your free book on your blog, Amazon or another site. Please let us know on adrian@adrianwarnock.com if you do review the book, with the URL and we will post a link to your review on adrianwarnock.com.

If you’ve not yet signed up to the newsletter, it’s not too late! You can sign up here:

For severe decades longer than I have been alive Billy Graham has brought definition to the Evangelical movement. Essentially you are an evangelical if you like Billy Graham and applaud his and others efforts at bringing the gospel to the world.

It seems incredible that he is not only still alive, but has just released this week a new book. I have not yet read the book, but I am sure it will be of benefit as his many other books have been. You can order it from Amazon.

I suppose it is inevitable that given the passing of the final Together On A Mission I would be reflecting on my own aging process.  The truth is that from the time that you wear your last nappy (or diaper for my American readers) aging represents a series of losses.  I have attended my last day at school and university.  I have sat my last exam (I hope!)  I have spent my last day as a bachelor. I have attended, I am almost certain, the last birth of a child of mine.  I may even have moved for the last time, as I intend to live in this house for as long as possible!  Perhaps I am already a member of my last church, as I am convinced that I am meant to stay long-term at Jubilee Church.  One day I will spend the last day at work, though that day is probably still a long time coming.  At some point I will preach my last sermon.  And then, one thing at a time I will face a series of losses.  I hope that the last blog post will perhaps be one of the last of these losses, even if I have to dictate them to my nurse!

Looked at in the way above, aging can seem a very depressing thing.  No wonder we live in a world that is so enamored with youth and the latest fad.  But it is not the way God sees aging.  Yes, perhaps we loose many things the older we get.  But we also gain much.  I have much still to look forward to.  I am only 40.  When a man like Terry Virgo was only 40, he was really just beginning!   Indeed. men much older then I am are demonstrating regularly to us that it is not all about the young!  The Bible honors the wisdom that experience can bring if it is well responded to. I might well have more than half of my life yet.

To me the secret of aging well is realizing that none of the things we do are what define us or give us value.  God will still love you and I when there is nothing we can do for his kingdom except sit and graciously accept our frailty.  In fact the very frailty that will eventually grip us is always present with us to a certain extent.  With the bravado of youth we think that we can conquer the world.  The reality is, we can do nothing without God.  We would be nothing without God. His view is that when we are weak then we are strong, and he can be most glorified in us.

Older people can bring wisdom and experience.  True, these are not automatic accompaniments of age, but they are not possible without it. Older people have made lots of mistakes.  Hopefully they have learnt from them.  One of the massive opportunities that is then before them is to look for those younger people who are willing to listen to them.  I recently asked my son what the definition of wisdom was, he replied “learning from your mistakes.”  My retort was, “yes, but I guess even better than that is to learn from other people’s mistakes!”  I suppose that one of the massive and growing opportunities of growing older is the chance to succeed through others.  If never before, you should have the joy of encouraging those younger than you, and perhaps even seeing them go further than before. The example of Barnabas is one for us to meditate on.

Check out the great things you can win with September’s newsletter! Sign up at the bottom of this post if you haven’t yet signed up for access to exclusive content, free chapters and the chance to win great resources.

But God by Chris Haines  – 10 copies available to win!

www.butgod.co.uk

Review of “But God” by Lex Loizides…

“The best worship album I’ve heard in years!! Seriously! At last! At last there’s some fresh inspiration out there! Someone pressed this CD into my hands at a conference a couple of weeks ago and I expected the ordinary. But what I got has completely taken me by surprise. This is, without doubt, the freshest, most beautifully crafted, musically as well as theologically, satisfying worship CD that I’ve heard in years. There are no CD reviews on my blog (Church History Blog) but I may break the pattern for this one.

So far I’ve had to play it at least once every day. There is some superb delicate guitar work, great lyrics and brilliant melodies. And just a word of advice: don’t buy it first and foremost to find new songs for your worship team to play in church, buy it to enrich your own soul and then take it from there.

Five stars from me.”

Community by Brad House – 3 copies available to win!

www.crossway.org

Brad House is a pastor at Mars Hill Church, based in Seattle, where he oversees community groups for the multi-campus church. He has been involved in community groups at Mars Hill since 2003.

Brad House calls on churches to wake up to the possibilities for life-transforming, gospel ministry through small groups. In recent years Mars Hill Church, based in Seattle, has experienced the rich blessings that exist within healthy community groups. In Community, House provides a resource for other churches to experience these blessings.

Bloodlines by John Piper - 3 copies available to win!

www.crossway.org

Bloodlines: Race, Cross, and the Christian

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We are already gathering a great bunch of giveaways for next month. If you know a Christian marketer who wants to get involved, please ask them to email adrian@adrianwarnock.com. We are open to give away other free stuff too!

While it is not a requirement, it would be greatly appreciated by our publisher friends if you could review your free book on your blog, Amazon or another site. Please let us know on adrian@adrianwarnock.com if you do review the book, with the URL and we will post a link to your review on adrianwarnock.com.

Please note that the books are only available for people who live in the USA or UK (and in some cases either).

If you’ve not yet signed up to the newsletter, it’s not too late! You can sign up here:

During Adrian’s month away from the blog, he has hand-picked a selection of the most popular posts of the year so far to re-run.

The Apostle Paul’s Blogging Checklist was a post written during the Rob Bell controversy, but it has an enduring messaage that should guide us in our online writings:

The Apostle Paul’s Blogging Checklist, Hell, and Rob Bell

Now that Rob Bell’s controversial book Love Wins is on sale on both sides of the Atlantic and many other comments have been made, I am feeling like I cannot avoid engaging in the controversy, or at least should read some more material to understand it better. I did not seek out such involvement, as you can see from my post which ironically listed Five Reasons I hadn’t previously blogged about Rob Bell. Since then I have posted a couple of highly relevant articles without directly addressing Bell’s work.  These are:

• Why a belief in hell is so practically important (John Piper)
• The folly of imagining hell is not real and sin is not deadly (Charles Spurgeon)
• Mark Driscoll’s sermon on hell taken from the Rich Man and Lazarus.
• Martyn Lloyd-Jones on the folly of thinking God is only love.

I have now found a very helpful round up post on Gary David Stratton’s blog that lists some of the major posts on each side of this vociferous debate. He says that over 400,000 responses are now available online, so reading every post is clearly not an option! I have been following some of the posts he lists, and have finally succumbed and am in the process of reading the book. If you have been following things more closely, and there are critical posts you think I should read that are not on Stratton’s list, please let me know. There is one additional page that I have found to be interesting, a transcript of an interview by Lisa Miller with Rob Bell.

Finally, also in Stratton’s blog is a suggestion that we should use the Apostle Paul’s blogging checklist…

Follow this link to contiue reading The Apostle Paul’s Blogging Checklist, Hell, and Rob Bell

The Reformed, Charismatic & Missional conference, put on by Acts29 and Newfrontiers was a great success this year.  The speakers for the weekend included Terry Virgo, Jeff Vanderstelt and Eliot Grudem.  Confluence author Bryan Mowrey got a chance to sit down with each of these leaders and ask some questions a lot of people have been asking.

In this video, Bryan speaks with Terry Virgo about roadblocks he has hit in helping people fully embrace charismatic gifts in life and leadership .

Thanks to http://www.confluenceblog.com/

Two new Newfrontiers books on the poor will be released at the TOAM Conference this coming week!

Embracing the Poor
This has been been written by an international Task Team of theologians and practitioners from Newfrontiers churches who worked together for two years to combine an understanding of the theology of the poor with ‘good practice’ in ministry.

Here is what I had to say about this book:
“Those who want to follow the apostollic mandate to ‘remember the poor’ will find in this book a series of helpful articles and testimonies from people who have been at the forefront of Newfrontiers efforts to demonstrate the love of God with the gospel in one hand and practical care in the other”.

The Poor deserve the Best
“I have written this book from my passion to see ministry with the poor carried out to a high standard. It is a manual of Good Practice with three sections on 1) the Key Characteristics which should be included in a ministry, 2) Planning and 3) a Ministry Health Check. In this last section I have provided all the necessary tools to carry out such a check on your own ministries with the poor.

The final section provides examples from ministries around the world and across a range of sectors (education, health etc) which exhibit what I consider to be ‘good practice’.”

Nigel Ring

These two books complement one another and, during the conference, will be available together at a special combined price of £12.00!

Both books may be purchased here

“Heaven is, after all, full of surprises.” says Rob Bell in Love Wins.

Also, in one of the most worrying bits of the book in my view, he lists a whole load of questions which have the effect of undermining any sense we can have of knowing what it is that leads to clear salvation. Do we really know he seems to be saying who will be be in heaven and who not? In this quote he is speaking about who, in his view, will get to heaven at the beginning:

“Is it what you say, or who you are, or what you do, or what you say you’re going to do, or who your friends are, or who you’re married to, or whether you give birth to children? Or is it what questions you’re asked? Or is it what questions you ask in return? Or is it whether you do what you’re told and go into the city?”

The BIBLE is very clear: Paul tells us in Romans 10:10 “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart God raised him from the dead you will be saved” But if he is Lord we must tremble at what he says not sit in judgment on him and decide which of the things he said we can believe and which we must explain away. Jesus spoke about hell and the wrath of God, if we are to follow him as Lord we should take what he says seriously!

BELL says:

“And so there’s a woman sitting in a church service with tears streaming down her face, as she imagines being reunited with her sister who was killed in a car accident seventeen years ago. The woman sitting next to her, however, is realizing that if what the pastor is saying about heaven is true, she will be separated from her mother and father, brothers and sisters, cousins, aunts, uncles, and friends forever, with no chance of any reunion, ever. She in that very same moment has tears streaming down her face too, but they are tears of a different kind. When she asks the pastor afterward if it’s true that, because they aren’t Christians none of her family will be there, she’s told that she’ll be having so much fun worshipping God that it won’t matter to her. Which is quite troubling and confusing, because the people she loves the most in the world do matter to her. “

My reply to this is that we are not meant to judge who is in heaven and who is not. Who knows what happened to those family members? There are accounts of people having encounters with Jesus in their dying moments, to be spared and live a changed life. The point is, we cannot know with confidence that anyone will be saved unless they have truly put their faith in Christ and their life is showing the fruit of that. But that by no means implies that everyone who does not appear to have faith to us either truly doesn’t or wont at some point in the future. We work towards and pray for our family and friends to share in this wonderful salvation. But if they are apparently rejecting God’s offer of salvation that no more invalidates the offer than if those same friends were refusing medical treatment we knew could save them from certain death from cancer.

Rob Bell doesn’t seem to believe in the traditional view of heaven either!

BELL: “Much of the speculation about heaven—and, more important, the confusion—comes from the idea that in the blink of an eye we will automatically become totally different people who “know” everything.”

But, that Idea comes directly from the Apostle Paul in the Bible! “Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed” (1 Corinthians 15:52), and “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known” (1 Corinthians 13:12).

Where is the clarity in Bells writings? Does he ever clearly have an answer to the question Peter was asked on the day of Pentecost, “What must we do to be saved?”

Once again Lloyd-Jones hits the nail on the head! Liberal ideas come and go, wax and wane in popularity but the gospel of Jesus Christ never fails!

Surely we cannot accept . . . Universalistic ideas, because, if we do so, it means that we find ourselves contradicting the plain teaching of Scripture in those places where there is a clear division between the saved and the unsaved, the good and the bad, the redeemed and the lost. In spite of the arguments based upon a philosophic idea of the love of God, the Scripture draws the ultimate distinction between eternal salvation and eternal destruction . . . There is only one salvation—by the blood of Christ—and no-one can enter the kingdom except by belief in Christ. Such is the Universal teaching of the Scripture . . .

The mystic secret which we as Christians are allowed to share is that God will ultimately restore the original harmony, and re-unite again all things in Christ. Christ is over all and the old harmony will be restored . . .these blessings only apply to those who believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. No harmony is promised to others; they are sent to ‘everlasting destruction’; but they will be outside the cosmos, as it were; they will be out of harmony and will not disturb it eternally. As regards the fallen angels it is clear that there is no hope for them. They are ‘reserved in chains’ in the pit until their final damnation comes (2 Peter 2:4; Jude 6). Satan also is to be cast into ‘the lake of fire’ where he and all his followers are to be tormented for ever (Revelation 20:10).

David Martyn Lloyd-Jones, God’s Ultimate Purpose : An Exposition of Ephesians 1, 1 to 23 (Edinburgh; Carlisle, Pa.: Banner of Truth Trust, 1978), 202-07.

Less than an hour ago flight BA6426 from Cape Town to Joburg was coming into land when, just a few meters above the ground, the pilot suddenly accelerated the engines pushing myself and the other passengers back in our seats as he climbed steeply, aborting the landing. We were told that the reason he had done this was that there was another plane on the runway! In all my years of flying I have never had such a close shave. I’m lead to believe that this is a well respected international airport, and I am sure these things can happen anywhere in the world. I wonder how often they go unreported. Perhaps in these days of social media such as blogs, Twitter and Facebook more such incidents will be reported! I must say it didn’t really reassure me much to hear from passengers on a plane from Dubai that they’d also had to abort a landing not long before us, but in their case because cross winds had blown them off course towards the grass!

How much we assume that our lives will go on and on, and that we will be safe. How clearly immediately after an incident like this do we feel glad to be alive! How strongly right now do I want to make the most of the life God has spared. How many are the dangers that each day I may be unaware of. This has been a long, but good trip. I am very glad I fly home tomorrow.

If you read this blog, and if you do not attend a church regularly, I want to extend a warm invitation for you to join us this Christmas at Jubilee Church London.  We will be having our Nativity service this Sunday 12th December at 10am, a Carol Service on the 19th, and a shorter service on Boxing Day.

Perhaps the highlight of the holiday season for us will be our New Years Eve Celebration.  If you want to combine a joyful celebration of the New Year with prayer and praise, join us at the cinema on the 31st December at 10pm.  If your church is not doing anything that night, and many don’t, you are welcome to join us too!  Here is the address you need:

Jubilee Church London,
Enfield Cineworld,
Southbury Road,
Enfield,
EN1 1YQ