We need to repent

After the service on Sunday two people shared the same word with me, that we need to repent. If it is true that we, at St Andrews, are in a place where we have lost something of our spiritual edge, our desire for the things of the Spirit and our reliance on Him then there has to be one response above all others - repentance.

If we have gone about our lives and our ministries without a deep reliance on the power of the Holy Spirit then what are we saying about our attitude to God and his work? It can be easy with some of the things that we do on a regular basis, that we feel comfortable doing, to do so without referring to God at all. You can turn up for your regular Missional Community activity and get to the end of it without ever turning your heart and mind to God for his power to do it or for his guidance in how to do it. Things like this can become routine and we can become complacent. We get in a rut and as long as the activity takes place reasonably well everyone goes home happy, but we can miss what God might have wanted to have done.

We need to understand just how far from God we can end up if we miss out on the work of his Spirit. Ephesians 4:30 says "And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you." Living without recognising the work of the Spirit can grieve Him or, as some other translations put it, quench his continuing work in us. We need forgiveness for the times we neglect the Spirit's work in our lives or fail to acknowledge our need of His power.

Repentance also requires us to change as well. We need to make the choice to change our attitude to the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, to make a conscious decision to allow him to lead and empower us. That decision needs to change our behaviour but what does that look like? How about making time every morning to ask the Holy Spirit to lead you throughout the day in every decision, activity and conversation. Ask him to empower you in all that you will do. Then before anything you do take a few seconds to be aware of what the Holy Spirit may be saying to you and ask for his power. Making a habit of turning your heart and mind to God before anything, no matter how mundane, is saying that you recognise that without the power of the Holy Spirit you are unable to do anything of any significance in the Kingdom of God in your own strength.

Do you have attitudes towards the work of the Spirit for which you need to ask for forgiveness? What changes do you need to make in your life to start making room for the Holy Spirit to work in you and through you? What can you do to to begin a more conscious reliance on His power? What do you need to stop so that you no longer grieve or quench the Spirit of God? Finally, what do we need to repent of as a church in our attitude to the work of the Spirit?

 

The Church is only ever one generation from death

 



I thought it would be useful to follow up on my sermon yesterday with some further thoughts about what God might be saying to us at St Andrews and how we might respond to it. If you missed my sermon (where we're you!!!) you can listen to it on www.standrewsclubmoor.org.uk/resources/sermons.


I will quickly summarise the sermon now and then the next few blogs will look at how we can respond. The main points of the sermon were based on what I saw in the disciples as they waited for the gift of the Holy Spirit.

• The early disciples recognised their need for the Holy Spirit, without him they would be unable to fulfill the great commission
• They were united and recognise their need of each other.
• They prayed continuously until God poured out his Spirit on them
• Every church is just one generation from spiritual death. We see the evidence in churches around us that we're once alive but have lost the spiritual life and power they once had.

I finished by sharing that I felt the Spirit had been saying to me that at St Andrews we were in danger of being on the slow slide to death. It seems to me that the hunger for the Spirit of God is no there in our Church like it used to be. I can hear it as we worship, I can see it in how few people want receive prayer in ministry times and it is evident when so few people want to be involved in prayer. I pointed to the letter to Sardis in the Book of Revelation where the Holy Spirit says "you have the reputation of being alive but are dead. Wake up!". The problem with spiritual death is that it is slow and the church dying doesn't recognise what is going on.We need to change the way things are going if we are to avoid going the way of so many other churches before us. I ended the sermon by asking the church to pray for an outpouring of God's Spirit upon us once again and to pray for a growing realisation of our desperate need of his power. We need to understand that we can never be complacent about the spiritual life of the church, to do so will lead to death. The next few blogs will flesh out our need for the power of the Spirit a little bit more and will look at what we can do.