The Pursuit of Happiness - Temporary or Eternal
Well I hope you had a great weekend.
If you were there on Sunday morning you'll have heard the start of our four week series on The Pursuit of Happiness, and how we're fooled into living in the reverse of the kingdom as God originally intended it, where we believe that it's the temporary things in life which will bring us happiness. Thus we pursue careers, money, gadgets, physical fitness and fashion believing that those things will bring us true happiness. However, in the kingdom as God originally intended it, and as it will be restored when Jesus returns, then it's the eternal things such as our relationship with God, other people, feeding our own souls and doing Gods will which are the true route to happiness.
One aspect of living with this eternal perspective which I didn't mention on Sunday morning is prayer. With our eyes on what is temporary then prayer makes no sense, with our eyes on the eternal then prayer makes every sense. In the light of that there are a couple of situations I'd encourage us to pray about.
The first is the elections in Zimbabwe. We've seen recently how even a relatively stable country like Kenya can quickly descend into chaos over a disputed election. How much more true is that of Zimbabwe which in recent years has seen incredible hardship as a result of the policies of Robert Mugabe and his Zanu-PF party. But we've also seen in Kenya the incredible impact both the local church and prayer can have, so let's be praying for the same in Zimbabwe. Why not decide every time you see Zimbabwe and the elections there featured on the news to pray for the peacemakers and ask God to intervene. Let's also be looking to support and stand alongside those in the Kerith family who are from Zimbabwe and still have friends and family living there.
Secondly we have a meeting this Wednesday evening at The Kerith Centre where we're inviting local community leaders (councillors, schools representatives, leaders of local charities and business leaders) to let them know about the Hope08 week of social action at the end of August and to start a dialogue about how we could work with them. We're jointly doing this with our friends from Warfield and Easthampstead Baptist. Please pray that it will go well and that it will open even more doors for us into the local community.
I'm feeling the strongest I have all year so a huge thank you to everyone who has been praying for me - I so appreciate it. I'm on my (hopefully ) final course of antibiotics now which finishes in four weeks time which will be great.
More blog entries later this week hopefully - only 4 more and we'll be up to 100 since it started!
Simon.
If you were there on Sunday morning you'll have heard the start of our four week series on The Pursuit of Happiness, and how we're fooled into living in the reverse of the kingdom as God originally intended it, where we believe that it's the temporary things in life which will bring us happiness. Thus we pursue careers, money, gadgets, physical fitness and fashion believing that those things will bring us true happiness. However, in the kingdom as God originally intended it, and as it will be restored when Jesus returns, then it's the eternal things such as our relationship with God, other people, feeding our own souls and doing Gods will which are the true route to happiness.
One aspect of living with this eternal perspective which I didn't mention on Sunday morning is prayer. With our eyes on what is temporary then prayer makes no sense, with our eyes on the eternal then prayer makes every sense. In the light of that there are a couple of situations I'd encourage us to pray about.
The first is the elections in Zimbabwe. We've seen recently how even a relatively stable country like Kenya can quickly descend into chaos over a disputed election. How much more true is that of Zimbabwe which in recent years has seen incredible hardship as a result of the policies of Robert Mugabe and his Zanu-PF party. But we've also seen in Kenya the incredible impact both the local church and prayer can have, so let's be praying for the same in Zimbabwe. Why not decide every time you see Zimbabwe and the elections there featured on the news to pray for the peacemakers and ask God to intervene. Let's also be looking to support and stand alongside those in the Kerith family who are from Zimbabwe and still have friends and family living there.
Secondly we have a meeting this Wednesday evening at The Kerith Centre where we're inviting local community leaders (councillors, schools representatives, leaders of local charities and business leaders) to let them know about the Hope08 week of social action at the end of August and to start a dialogue about how we could work with them. We're jointly doing this with our friends from Warfield and Easthampstead Baptist. Please pray that it will go well and that it will open even more doors for us into the local community.
I'm feeling the strongest I have all year so a huge thank you to everyone who has been praying for me - I so appreciate it. I'm on my (hopefully ) final course of antibiotics now which finishes in four weeks time which will be great.
More blog entries later this week hopefully - only 4 more and we'll be up to 100 since it started!
Simon.