Shoutlouder

sunday revisited

// March 30th, 2009 // Sunday

It was the week when the Clocks went forward so always fun to see who forgets. The funniest thing had to be a number of iPhone friends who all use it as an alarm clock and changed the time before going to bed – not realising that the iPhone automatically accounts for daylight saving and so they ended up waking 2 hours earlier instead of 1!!!

Anyhow – great Sunday morning in Leeds. This was our 5th Sunday in the building and only my 3rd time preaching on the new stage. I have to say I’m still getting used to it. It feels like the lights are only 2 feet away which makes you feel like you’re preaching in the Sahara – and we still need to work on some of the lighting and sound to make it work best for the entire room. But the experience of being in a new building has been amazing! We’ve had a few people over the weeks arrive simply because they pass the building on the bus or on the way to work in a morning… talk about location, location, location.

Been preaching for the last couple of week on ‘Keeping it Burning’. We’ve entered a great season in the life of the church. Last week one of the girls got healed right in the middle of the service without any special laying on of hands. Plus we’re seeing a couple of decisions to follow Christ every week. But one thing I want to see on everyone’s agenda is the need for us to actually REACH the people in our world and not just have a happy club on a Sunday.

Leviticus 24:1-4 is one of those little nuggets of Old Testament Gold. It talks of the instructions given to Aaron to keep the lamps burning that it up the place where God’s presence resided amongst the Israelites. God’s instructions were that the lamps must be kept burning ‘continually!’ The people of Israel were to know where their God was night and day!

Jesus passed these instructions onto us when he said “you are the light of the world…” It’s our responsibility now to ’shine’ and make known the presence of God on planet earth! And this is not some day job or hobby… but we need to keep on shining continually!

We need to tend the LIGHT OF LIFE that is within us and ensure that we are shining at all times!