Cloverley Talk 5 – Sunday afternoon - Commitment

I’d like us to look have a brief look at commitment this aftenoon. For example, I’m committed to supporting West Ham FC.
 

This is a photo of the last time they won anything. Amazingly, it’s in colour – the 1980 FA Cup Final. I can remember watching it on TV aged 4 years old. Even though they're rubbish now, from that early age, they were, are & always will be my team. It’s a lifelong commitment.

Part of my commitment to West Ham was aged 13, I joined the St John’s Ambulance Brigade. It’s like voluntary paramedics who get to go to matches for free if they’ll provide medical assistance to the crowd. All that seems like a good deal, until you discover that you have to wear this ridiculous beret & uniform & do parades & marching etc. Now, I was committed enough to West Ham to go through the shame of walking around the East End of London with a beret on my head just to get into the ground to see them play. My commitment led me to do certain things.

Now, in all our thoughts about Community this weekend, I hope we’ve realised that it involves some kind of commitment from us.

We started off looking in, at us being a community of Christians, which the Bible calls the Body of Christ. This involves commitment from us to accept that we have an important part to play, even if we’re a toenail. And that the same applies to everyone else around us – everyone has an important part to play, even if we do think they’re a bit of a … pick appropriate part of the body!

We looked at how to deal with the frustrations of being in community, in that we pray for people & talk about stuff. We looked at how we can be committed to close inner circles of friendships & how these can be great. But also that we need to be aware of how the rest of the community sees us.

We looked at the commitment you make when you go out with someone, but also the commitment we can make to God, that we trust him to put us with the right people when he knows it’s right for us.

We looked out at the communities we spend time with. How we can commit to being consistent witnesses. We examined our conversation, how the way we talk can be both good & bad, how we can commit not to gossip. And not just conversation, how our attitudes to drinking & pulling can speak volumes about our commitment to God & his ways.

We looked up to God, and saw how he is committed to being our friend alongside us. Not only by sending Jesus to live on earth but by the constant presence & company of his Holy Spirit. And because God loves us, because God is committed to us, some of us chose to commit or re-commit our lives to his hands & his care.

And we saw how God is generous with his gifts, how he is committed to giving us special spiritual abilities to help each other grow in our faith & relationship with God & with each other.

And if you’re wondering why there’s a picture of a spider’s web behind me, it’s cos that’s where we came in with Steve Irwin & that nasty spider with the fangs. And hopefully like a spider’s web, you’ve clocked the flow from one session to the next as we’ve looked at what it means to be community in different contexts.

If it seems a lot, that’s cos it is! Quite apart from all the other conversations that you'll have had in discussions with each other both in group times & just generally.

I’d like to thank you for your commitment this weekend, the way you’ve joined in, listened & thought about things. But I know that God is more pleased than anyone that you’ve chosen to be here this weekend. He loves it when we’re in community with each other, & especially when we take time to learn more about him & his love for us.

So, we’ve talked & thought a lot about our commitment to God & to each other. Brilliant.

But the real test comes now, now that we’re coming to towards the end of the weekend. How can we remain committed to God & to our community once we get home, once school or Uni or work starts again?

There’s three things I’ll touch on briefly, and it’s not rocket science!

1.       When you get home tonight, take some time to pray. There’s no Squash tonight, & all you’ll wanna do is crash when you get back. That’s fine. But after a weekend like this, take 10 minutes before you go to bed to thank God for what you’ve learnt & what you’ve enjoyed. Ask him by his Spirit to help you put into practice some of the things we’ve talked about. Let’s use this weekend to be a springboard for us to kick start spending more time, more regularly with God. At Junior Squash a month ago we dished out prayer diaries for people to write down their prayers each time they prayed & see how God answers them in the days & weeks & months to come. Think creatively about how you can stay committed to God. Read your Bibles. Read it with other people & chat about what you’ve read. Get hold of the Message or Street Bible if you find normal Bibles difficult. The Bible is God’s conversation with us. Let’s let God speak to us. And ask for God’s help, cos he loves it when we’re committed to spending time with him & doing his will.

2.     When you meet up with your friends, take the community feel of this weekend into those relationships. Remember what we learnt about our conversation, our witness to other people. Be committed to YF, to Squash, to church, to your Christian Union. Imagine a coal fire, and you’re a piece of coal. A dozen lumps of coal together burn brightly & strongly. But if one piece of coal tries to stay alight by itself, it’ll soon fade & cool down. So it is with us. Meet up regularly, get in good habits. Continue or maybe start to pray together at each others homes, or at lunchtimes. We’ll start of a new lunchtime session at Aldridge School on  Wednesdays after this half term. Commit to coming to that to talk & pray & eat lots of food. And if you’re not in Aldridge School, commit to go to your own CU’s. And if there’s no Christian club thing, then we can start one at your school. You are part of the Body of Christ. Your friends need you to be committed to them, else the Body is gonna look pretty deformed!

3.     Let’s be real. Some bits of life are great, some bits suck. That’s part of being human. Of course life can be dull & school’s a drag. And some bad & sad things will happen. And it’s right that some things make us frustrated & angry, such as poverty & war. But it’s also right that the joy of the Lord is our strength. Let’s not be cheesy Christians where everything is always wonderful, but let’s not be miserable Christians where everything is always a hassle & a chore. It’s not true that God gives us a long list of things we can’t do. Rather most of the time he says, “Look, you’ll enjoy that more if you trust me to tell you when the time’s right”. That’s a release from stress & worry & anxiety. There’s nothing in this life that is better than having a relationship with God. Nothing. It’s not always easy following God, it’s not always simple and  let’s be honest witnesses about that. But let’s also show other people that being in community with God & with each other is the best, most worthwhile, most fulfilling thing we can do.

Our God is a God of commitment. He is so committed to us that he chose to come & live among us in the person of Jesus, to show us the right way to live, yes, but more than that, to show us that he loves us. That he loves you. This afternoon we’re gonna spend some time looking at the time when

Jesus allowed himself to die, when God allowed himself to die so that all the barriers that get in the way of us being able to live in community with him were broken. Jesus was so committed to us that he took the blame for all the rubbish, all the mistakes, all the sin that we’ve done, so that we can be blameless before God. And because we’re blameless before God, we’re able to have his Spirit live within us, because God’s happy to make his home, his community with us.

Take the opportunity this afternoon during communion to thank & praise & worship God for all his goodness to us. And may our lives be so full of commitment to God & to each other that people are falling over themselves to find out more about the God we know & the God that they can know for themselves.