Today was a bonanza day for gospel fellowship. Coffee and croissants with the boys as we listened to Chris Ash expounding Psalm 119 (on mp3 may I add… available from here); sharing news, passion, and Jesus with the Drewmeister, and being blessed by the word explained again in the evening with a handful of young people from church. This time it was Rico Tice on 2 Cor 4.1-6 (again, on mp3… available from here).

It is the word of God that brings a foretaste of the glorious future into present Christian experience. So often I am won over as I search for ‘little rescues’, whereas the word of God pulls my longings for the future. A joy to read the promises of 119.150-151, with the nearness of suffering and persecution, yet the closer reality of our covenant God.

It doesn’t matter how many ‘i-words’ we use: inerrant, infallible… unless
we delight in the Word of God, we are practical liberals.
Christopher Ash

Great to get real with the boys and talk about how we relate to each other as Christians longing for the new creation: genuine concern for the battle, leaving room for reality, killing superficial ‘care’, encouraging heaven-mindedness.

Humbled again by the closing words of the Psalmist:

I have strayed like a lost sheep. Seek your servant, for I have not
forgotten your commands.

Psalm 119.176

We are nothing but lost sheep, we fall so short. As Rico said, ‘If our friends knew what God knew about us, they’d never entrust us with anything like what God does’. Life dependent on grace; ministry dependent on grace. It must be a year dependent on grace.