I think this image says so much about how our attitude towards God. You see in the image that God is straining down towards Adam, yearning to touch his creation. Then we see Adam, leaning back almost not bothered by God’s attempts to reach him.

If only we were to be as passionate for God as he is for us. Passion can be conveyed in many different ways – with long intense silence, an embrace, one word or one million words.  However we do it this week, I wonder if we can evoke passion for our God and allow God to touch us in our worship of him.

I guess this about you finding what enables you to be passionate.  We have covered scripture, music, poems, prayer, nature, physical demonstration – there are so many more things, do not limit yourself.  Just create a little time and space for God in your week.

A Blog post from Matthew Thomas – Core Leadership team.

I was sat watching an old movie recently called “Dead Poets Society”, a film where Robin Williams plays an inspiring teacher, and I was left thinking about my school days.  After quickly recognising that I was never really that bothered by school, that I was more than happy to do the bare minimum to get by, I started to think about my teachers: the strict ones, the funny ones, the ones for whom I played up.  A memory of one of my English teachers came to mind, and of one moment in particular.  Now this moment is very simple and may not seem significant to many, but it spoke to me then and it still does now.

We had previously been told we were going to start studying a new book and had been given a copy.  We were expected to read the book ourselves so that we could then discuss the book as a class and draw out any important or interesting points. I remember reading the book on my own in preparation.  It was one of only two that I actually read from the six that we were meant to within the two year course.  As it happens, I only read the other because the same teacher caught me out for having not read it and told me I would be tested on it.

After reading the book I went into the lesson ready to start.  We were asked to give our impressions of the main characters and I duly gave my opinion.  I can remember what I said but I won’t bore you with the details.  At this point the teacher picked up a brand new book out of the box, cracked it down the seam and proceeded to write in the margin the comment that I had made.

Reflecting back this teacher would have known the text inside out, would have had his own annotated copy and been able to think about it at a much higher level than me. He may have thought that my opinion was only partly right, or it may have been a viewpoint that he had heard and taught a hundred times before.  But in that simple moment he made me feel that what I had to say was valued.  I felt like he would be going through the text with us, with fresh eyes, ready to learn and excited by the discussion.

As I was thinking about my English teacher and pondering on Robin Williams’ portrayal of a teacher, my thoughts moved to an even greater example of a teacher. In the Bible Jesus is often referred to as ‘Teacher,’ and that is very much my experience of him. When I read the Bible, I read about people who are basically the same as me; the same failings, the same hopes and dreams. And I read about Jesus the teacher, who walked alongside them, asking questions and listening to their responses, encouraging them, guiding them, making them feel valued. The more familiar I become with Jesus the teacher, the more I want to know and understand what he is teaching.

And finally to quote a line from the film mentioned earlier, “The powerful play (of life) goes on and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?”

We are going to be trying something new in Acts to develop our worship.  Below is an explanation depending on whether you’re a ‘Ready to Eat’, ‘Home Cooked’ or ‘Grow your own’ sort of person.

Ready to eat (“I just want to get on with it!”)

We have put some worship ideas together that we hope will stretch people in their individual worship time and then will facilitate the use of some of those ideas in the following Sunday service. We want to be creative in our worship expression. The links to the resources are below.

Home Cooked (“Tell me briefly!”)

Recently one of the areas that we have really felt God calling us to ‘do better’ is our corporate praise and worship.  We understand that this holds equal importance with all that God is calling us to do in other areas of his church. But when our worship life flows easily, every other area of life seems to flow more easily also. God does not call us to a place where we can adopt an either or position when it comes to living a Christian life, he would have us live “life to the full” and in that we must strive for balance in our lives.

When people visit our Sunday service the praise and worship must reflect how worthy the person we are worshipping is, and that worship is an integral part of every day Christian’s life.  That when we worship God we find most enjoyment in him and he sees most of himself in us.  The weekly resources will hopefully help you  develop your praise and worship life.

Grow your own (“Explain a little more…”)

How someone understands the words that we say is most affected by the things that we do.  If you are a part of Acts, you are contributing consciously or not, to what people understand praise and worship to be – that is quite a responsibility. We need to be modelling relevant and contemporary worship to a community.

To help you understand a little more about praise and worship it may help to take a snapshot of how the Bible sees both those things being demonstrated.

Verses On Praise:

By Him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, this is, the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to His name. – Hebrews 13:15

Sing to him, sing praise to him; tell of all his wonderful acts. – 1 Chronicles 16:8-10

Then David said to the whole assembly, “Praise the LORD your God.” So they all praised the LORD, the God of their fathers; they bowed low and fell prostrate before the LORD and the king. 1 Chronicles 29:19-21

The trumpeters and singers joined in unison, as with one voice, to give praise and thanks to the LORD. Accompanied by trumpets, cymbals and other instruments, they raised their voices in praise to the LORD and sang: “He is good; his love endures forever.” Then the temple of the LORD was filled with a cloud. 2 Chronicles: 5:12-14

You can see from these 4 verses how large the scope of what praise really is. We have:

* A sacrifice of praise

* Singing

* Telling of his wonderful acts

* Bowing – being prostrate

* Musical instruments

That is from 4 verses on praise. However praise is mentioned 351 times in the Bible and gives us a lot more ways to praise God. The reason for this is because of our English language. The English language has one word, praise, for 7 Hebrew words – each giving a different definition for praise. They are:

* Hallal: “to laud, boast, rave, to celebrate” – It is used approximately one hundred times in the Old Testament.

* Yadah: “to worship with extended hands, to throw out the hands” – It is used over ninety times in the Old Testament. (Yad means “hand.”)

* Barak: “to bless, to declare God the origin of power for success, prosperity, and fertility” – It is used approximately seventy times in the Old Testament as praise to God.

* Tehillah: “to sing or laud” – It is derived from hallal and is generally accepted to mean “the singing of hallals.” It is used over fifty times in the Old Testament.

* Zamar: “to pluck the strings of an instrument, to praise with song” – It is used almost exclusively in the Psalms and occurs approximately forty times in the Old Testament.

* Todah: “to extend the hands in thanksgiving, a thank-offering” – It is used only a few times when translated “praise” but occurs many other times in connection with thanksgiving.

* Shabach: “to commend, address in a loud tone, to shout” – This is the exclamatory form of praise in a special sense and is found only about seven times in the Old Testament.

You will notice ‘Yadah’ which actually means to worship with extended hands. Does this mean that worship as we know it is actually just a form of praise?

As we continue to discuss the difference between praise and worship lets take a look what the Bible has to say about worship.

Verses On Worship:

Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual act of worship. – Romans 12:1

Then the man bowed down and worshiped the LORD. – Genesis 24:25-27

God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.” – John 4:23-25

I guess when we are looking at the difference between praise and worship from a worship service perspective that praise seems to be more an outward showing with hands raising, clapping, dancing, bowing and singing. Whereas worship is something much deeper. It is where we are offering our bodies, and ourselves, giving them to God to have his way.

As you can see there are lots of different ways that we can offer praise and worship, I hope that as you go through the weekly resources they will help you develop your relationship with God, and also how you contribute to corporate praise and worship.

Continuing the “eating” theme, having a variety of worship expressions is like having a variety of food. life would be boring if it was porridge every meal.

Resources and activities: week 9

It is 4 months before the Cardiff half marathon, the 8-10 people from the Church who intend to run the 13 miles to raise funds for Christians Against Poverty are beginning to get quite competitive.

My own training has been progressing slowly for 2 months or so until Sunday13th June.

I decided to get a lift to Ferndale which is 5 miles away from my home. I set off on the (mostly downhill journey) and it was going well, to the extent that I decided I may even manage a personal best time over the 5 mile distance. However before I clocked up my first mile I get a pain in my calf, suspecting it was the early stages of cramp I stop running, stop my watch and stretch the calf. The pain continues, I’m over 4 miles from the house – no Mobile phone.

My only option is to risk causing further damage by continuing gently (slower than normal) along my route, until I see a guardian angel in the form of Lisa Codd, driving her Renault Scenic towards Ferndale. I flag down the car and ask if I could use her phone to call for a lift. But instead she offered to give me a lift home.

While I have been feeling sorry for myself over this sporting injury, wondering how long I’ll be out of action and more importantly how much progress my competitors will make I remembered the following story:

An old story is told of a king in Africa who had a close friend with whom he grew up. The friend had a habit of looking at every situation that ever occurred in his life (positive or negative) and remarking, “This is good!”

One day the king and his friend were out on a hunting expedition. The friend would load and prepare the guns for the king. The friend had apparently done something wrong in preparing one of the guns, for after taking the gun from his friend, the king fired it and his thumb was blown off.

Examining the situation the friend remarked as usual, “This is good!” To which the king replied, “No, this is NOT good!” and proceeded to send his friend to jail.

About a year later, the king was hunting in an area that he should have known to stay clear of. Cannibals captured him and took him to their village. They tied his hands, stacked some wood, set up a stake and bound him to the stake. As they came near to set fire to the wood, they noticed that the king was missing a thumb. Being superstitious, they never ate anyone that was less than whole. So untying the king, they sent him on his way.

As he returned home, he was reminded of the event that had taken his thumb and felt remorse for his treatment of his friend. He went immediately to the jail to speak with his friend. “You were right,” he said, “it was good that my thumb was blown off.”

And he proceeded to tell the friend all that had just happened. “And so I am very sorry for sending you to jail for so long. It was bad for me to do this.” “No,” his friend replied, “This is good!” “What do you mean, ‘This is good’? How could it be good that I sent my friend to jail for a year?”

“If I had NOT been in jail, I would have been with you.”

Situations may not always seem pleasant while we are in them, but the promise of God is clear. If we love Him and live our lives according to His precepts, even that which seems to be bleak and hopeless will be turned by God for His glory and our benefit.

Genesis 50:20 (NIV) – - – “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.”

They say that every cloud has a silver lining. Even better than a sliver lining is a promise from God.

“And we know that all things work together for good of them that love God, to them who are called according to His purpose.” (Rom. 8:28)

The picture below shows Mr Thomas, along with Julian Harris and Robert Morgan of Foodbank, standing behind the first of six trolley loads of donated food.

In total, just over half a ton of food was donated throughout the day and can be seen filling our van for transport to our storage facility.

To date, the Rhondda Foodbank team have been called on to provide emergency food supplies for nearly 300 members of our community who were in crisis situations that prevented them having access to adequate food supplies.

The foodbank is alerted about these clients by referral agencies such as Health Visitors, Communities First teams etc.

The customers generous donations help us ensure we have food available to meet these needs.

If you would like more information or details of how to participate, then contact us via:

ACTS Community Church c/o The Old Library, East Road, Tylorstown

Via Communities First Offices.

Via Rhondda Radio.

Or ring : 07928 451374

I recently saw this video clip titled ‘worst miss ever’

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5j3203LC3k

a similar one can be seen here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvYOA4BXIqk&feature=related

however the second footballer manages to score a goal to go some way to redeem his earlier miss.

Watching these videos at a time of the year when people are concerning themselves end of year targets and and reaching goals set either by themselves or by others. It occurred to me that most of us have expectations which we either burden ourselves with or demands put on us to perform at exams, work output or other means. Our self worth and value can sometimes be measured by how well we do when we see how close we are to our goals and targets.

I recently attended my 4 year old daughters parents evening and even though I genuinely would prefer her to have an attractive character, I couldn’t help myself wondering how good or bad she is getting on at school compared with her other classmates.

The Bible has some good news for us on this very issue about standards and acheiving verses value and worth. Romans 3:23-24 says;

Everyone has sinned and fallen short of God’s glorious standard, and all need to be made right with God by his grace, which is a free gift

Without any exception every person has sinned and therefore failed to reach the high standard set by a Holy and perfect God. BUT God offers a free gift to anyone and everyone who has missed the mark. That gift is his grace which can raise us up to his standard and make us ‘right’ with God. There is nothing that can be done to earn this gift of grace, it is a gift.

Isn’t it just as well that when it comes to God that he does not demand that we meet goals and targets because even our best efforts are no more than worthless attempts when compared with such a Holy God. No matter who we are God’s free gift is offered to us – we could accept the gift and be made right with the creator of the Universe.

On Thursday 18th March 2010, fourteen members of the Rhondda Foodbank team including two volunteers from Oasis Church collected food at ASDA Tonypandy between 9am and 7pm. Over the course of the day an impressive 382.6Kg of food was donated by members of the public! ACTS Community Church would like to thank all those who gave generously to help the work of Foodbank within the Rhondda and to ASDA Tonypandy for allowing us to hold a collection day.

Well done to the Foodbank team, keep up the good work!

For more information about the work of Foodbank please click here

Gaynor Morgan, Suzanne Matthews, Wendy Davies and Hannah Bowman with some of the food collected

The Advent Conspiracy asks us to take a fresh look at our attitude to Christmas. The concept is simple - Worship Fully, Spend Less, Give More, Love All. You can visit the website by clicking here and check out the video below to see the difference we can make.

Advent Conspiracy are working with Living Water International to provide clean drinking water for some of the worlds poorest communities from Africa, South America and beyond. Last Christmas ACTS Community Church was able to donate over £450 to this cause and we hope to better that in 2010. You can learn more about the projects by clicking here.

Rob Jones at ACTS Community Church, May 2010