September the 18th 2014 the referendum

The referendum on Scottish independence takes place today. As I live in England, I do not have a vote. There are however things that are now of concern to me. If the poles are correct, the outcome is on a knife edge and could go either way on a very small margin. This means the country is deeply divided on this issue and there are already people who are very angry indeed. Whatever the outcome, it means that those who lose are likely to still be very angry. This is not a good thing. We christians need to be magnanimous and be seen to be caring and compassionate peace makers. There are people dear to me who will be deeply affected by this if the YES camp win, and there are people in my family who will be disappointed if the NO camp win. Therefore, I need to assert my primary identity as a citizen of Heaven. I am that before I am British, Scottish or European. There could be families who remain divided for years to come. One only has to look at how bitterly divided some families still are after the 1984 miners strike. Some people do not talk to their fathers who remained on strike when they went back to work and the feelings are still raw. I trust my own family not to behave like that, but I am not so sure about other peoples. When I was in Stornoway, Kathleen said of the referendum that people at the church have all sorts of opinions, so they do not talk about it. I think this wise. However the day of reckoning is here and tomorrow we will know the result.

the first epistle of John chapter one

John 1:1 to john 1:2:1 I went to visit a former member of the team in Stornoway. While I was there, it was communion season. ( Describe it) The speaker was Fred Drummond, a man from my home town but we had never met. He preached for five nights from John’s first epistle I found it good for me, I had not planned on being there during communion season, but I felt that God wanted me there to hear what this man had to say and I found it so refreshing for my soul. It was about getting close to God To touch God He mimicked Fifers. It is getting close to God by dealing with sin that John concerns himself. V1)” That which was from the beginning “, seems to elude to Genesis 1:1 “In the beginning God created etc etc. John is presenting himself as a witness to what God had declared. He had seen, heard and touched the son of God. He now proclaims it to the readers and hearers of his letters in order that they may have fellowship one with another and with God. V 5- 7 This concerns fellowship with God. God is light, he his holy and if we say that we have fellowship with him but walk in darkness we lie. But if we walk in the light with him then we have fellowship with him. We are told in other scriptures that the human heard is deceitful and desperately wicked. If I lie to someone else and they are taken in by the lie then I have deceived them. However the devil is a deceiver. He makes sin look good, exciting and attractive. He also minimises sin and so through his enticing we practice self-deception. In the light of what God reveals, we need to be constantly examining our motives our hearts and asking ourselves the questions such as, am I truly walking in the light and having fellowship with the father, or have I been deceived by a lie. Is my walk with God getting stronger or weaker? We can never stand still. We are either walking forward with God, or we are going backwards and while still serving, perhaps we are colder than we once were. Sometimes it is good, to take time out and re-evaluate ourselves. I started such a process some time ago (Tim Chester’s book) There is nothing new in it, it just made me look at sin afresh and what leads to sin and what sin ultimately will lead to. While in Stornoway, this epistle was preached over five nights and I have read it several times since and experienced anew the forgiveness of God. If we sin, note IF we sin, then we have an advocate who speaks to the father on our behalf. It is this same advocate whom John saw touched and experienced. We to need to touch God. There is an inclination for when we sin to hide. When Adam and Eve sinned the hid from God. We do the same thing. We minimise sin, but our consciences say, you did wrong or you thought wrong and you are guilty. We need to go against that response of hiding and bring it out into the light and allow God to deal with it. Only then can we experience his forgiveness. That process involves confession of sin and drawing close to God and we may still find that there are consequences to what we did, but we still need to expose the sin for his forgiveness and then make adjustments so that we do not go on sinning. Recently in church we read Ezekiel 44 where God punished Levite priests by making them do the lesser tasks in the temple and they were not allowed to draw close to God like the other priests who remained loyal to him. Those who misled the people were not disqualified from serving God, but they were disqualified from being close to him and serving in the way that they otherwise could have and that stood as a stark warning to me. Am I serving as I should. I believe so, but I should not become complacent. I could be held at a distance from God. Still saved, but distant. I do not want that for myself. I need to check myself more and more in the light of God’s word. To do that I need to start by not neglecting his word. I then need to not to ignore his word when it prompts me and I need to take whatever measures big or small to avoid sin. To be close to God is an amazing thing and a costly thing. John is able to say, he saw, he touched and he heard that message that Jesus brought.

Stornoway

The time is Stornoway was good for me. It was communion season and the guest speaker came from my home town. We had never met, but he and I had a lot of people in common including his wife. He spent 5 nights preaching from the first three chapters of Johns first epistle. It gave me a sense of getting closer to God and forgiveness in the aftermath of reading chesters book. It was also good to spend a lot of time in praise of god. the referendum was in full swing. it will be a moment in history no matter what the outcome is. I wish I had a vote,but whatever way I look at it, Scotland is no longer the place that I left and people are expected to vote with their emotions without grasping the implications and being asked the question, "Are you ready, willing and able to live with the consequenses of being a smaller economy and paying higher taxes to support a socialist state?"

Cabin lane.

Yesterday, I preached in Cabin lane church on two verses in mathew, "Judge not that you be not Judged" and where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them. Somehow, judging by the reaction, it seems to have been appropriate.

Early morning trip and holiday.

An early morning trip this morning to the industrial estate following Andrew D who was returning a van that had been hired for New wine. I am off to stornoway in a couple of weeks to see an old friend.

An acknowledgement has arrived

I have an email. It is an acknowledgement of the arrival of the chapters of my book that I sent to them. They say that they will go to the Editorial department and they will get back to me in due course. At least they bothered to reply so that shows that they show respect for those who submit material to them, which is more than some do. Having looked at their web site, I see that they are reformed. They say that authors may not be reformed, but they do not accept material to the contrary. They also use STL to distribute books on the USA. I pointed out to them that I am an OM er and I included the blurb that George Verwer wrote for me. When I sent the chapters, I wrote a covering letter explaining what the book is about and a line or two about each chapter. This is the advice I got from Sinclair Ferguson, whom I knew very slightly a long time ago when he and his wife were attending what is now my sending church.

publish

Today, I am sending a few chapters of my book and a letter explaining what the book is about to a publisher at the advice of Sinclair. I do not expect a quick response, but I am excited that I have got this far.