My Baptism testimony - By Jack Lewis

Hello all! In case your interested, I got baptized last weekend, and seeing as Nathan an Daniel put their testimonies up when they did it a few months ago, I thought I'd share mine. (P.S, I'm copying this directly, so apologies for my awful grammar!)

"So to be honest, my testimony isn't particularly dramatic compared to many others, there were no blinding lights or sudden realization type moments; I've always believed in God and I became a Christian at 5, I've grown up in a Christian home and I've always been to Church, so since I accepted Jesus at a young age it's been a case of trying to grow in my faith, which was helped by going to a lot of good Church/Sunday School type groups, and more recently it's been great to have been able to go to older age groups like Flame and A2J, and also events like United Generation and Soul Survivor, where I've been able to see God move with my own eyes; people receiving the Holy Spirit, praying in tongues, and all kinds of weird and wonderful things; rather than just hearing about God. So now I'm at a stage where I feel ready to say publicly that I want to try and live for God by being baptized, which is something I've wanted to do for a little while now, but to be honest I've just been Chickening out of doing it, but I've finally decided that today, with God's help, I'm just going to get up here and do it."  

My baptism verse was 2 Timothy 1:7-8: "For God has not given us a Spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, and love, and self-discipline. So never be ashamed to tell others about our Lord."  This was also the verse that I was drawing on before my baptism, so to find out that it was my baptism verse was amazing! I love the way God moves!

The three stages of knowing God - by Jack Lewis.

We are often asked the question, "How is your relationship with God at the moment?" And more often than not, we often say that we're "not sure," or "Don't know." (Especially if you're a teenager, that's about the only phrase most of us know!) But here's an easy way of knowing where you stand; it's what I call the three stages of knowing God.

The first stage, is knowing about God. Most people, even non-Christians, can be at this stage. It goes right through from just knowing what Christians think about God, right through to having memorized the entire Bible. Essentially, you're on this stage if you haven't experienced either of the others. But don't be discouraged by that, continue to read the Bible as that will help you a lot, and then look at getting together with people and going to the places that will help you move onto stages two and three.

The second stage, and the one I'd say I'm on, is seeing God for yourself. Basically that's when you've been to places and seen the spirit of God move in people, or even things like amazing healings. This is also the place where many people can realize that God is real, because they've seen him move for themselves, they're seen evidence of him. If your not sure about whether you believe in God or not, try and find a event or something where you can see God move with you're own eyes. If you live in England, then I'd advise Soul Survivor*, although if you're in the States I'm not really sure what goes on over there!

The third stage, is knowing God for yourself. In other words, if you've ever received the gifts of the spirit. I think I've written about them before, but it's things like praying in tongues, or perhaps having words of prophecy for someone. That should be the goal for all of us Christians, we should try to know God for ourselves. Given this isn't easy, but we just need to keep asking and praying for the gifts, and in time surely we will receive them. 

The final thing to say, is that I'm not at all saying that these should be three exclusive groups, a strong church can have all three. And if all the people on "stage three" just hung out together, then no one else would ever know God for themselves! So if you'd say your on stage one, then try and talk to and pray with older Christians, and try and get yourself along to places where you can see God move yourself. If you think your on stage two, then ask God to help you experience him in your own heart, and if you're on stage three then why not try and help younger Christians to grow in their faith and get to know God more? If everyone could do their bit then the Church will surely be going strongly until Jesus returns.

*Soul Survivor is a big Christian festival in Britain, with events held in Scotland, (Kinross) Stafford (Between Birmingham and Stoke) and Somerset. The events are coming up over the next few weeks, and for more got to: https://soulsurvivor.com/summer/

God in... the world (2) - By Jack Lewis

The next group of people in the "God in..." series, are perhaps the most obvious ones. They are those who represent God overseas, or in other words, missionaries. No doubt you've probably heard the stories of a few missionaries before, but they're so great that hearing their stories again is surely no trial!

First up is the continuation of the life story of C.T. Studd. I wrote in my last post about how he grew up in a life of luxury and cricketing glory, but what happened next? Basically he proved the very meaning of self sacrifice, by heading out to the heart of the evangelized world. He went first to China, then to India, before going out to Africa where most of his missionary work was done. He left his entire family at home, and he only saw his wife once more before his death. His life included no recreation and no holidays, he just spent his whole life preaching, saving souls, and translating the Bible. Even in his old age when his health was failing, he still carried on, even to the point where he had to be carried to meetings in a chair. In fact he preached right up until the very week of his death! His life is just a great example of commitment and dedication to God, he shirked nothing and did everything God asked him to. Now that's a proper example to follow!

Another perhaps less-well known example that I love, is John Paton. He went to the New Hebrides, (Near Australia if you don't concentrate in geography!) and there he lived among proper, seasoned cannibals. He suffered so much, his house and church were repeatedly torched, people constantly tried to steal from and kill him, and he was blamed for every single natural disaster that happened. (And there were a lot of those on the New Hebrides!) His life was another of sacrifice and dedication, and those two things are probably the main things we can find in mission. Just imagine what the world would be like if we all had that much commitment to God, it would be amazing! So why not ask God now to fill you afresh with a desire to serve him?

God...in sport (1) - By Jack Lewis

As you might have noticed I'm starting to do a lot of series now, and I'm going to start another one. It's basically taking the life stories of a group of famous Christians, and seeing what we can learn from them. The category I'm going to start with, is Christians in sport. These are people who have gone into what is, to be honest, a fairly ungodly environment, where fame and wealth reign, and come out the other side with God's gold medal. Two of the most obvious examples of this are Eric Liddel and C.T Studd. 

Firstly, to briefly tell the story of Liddel, he was a Scottish sprinter about 100 years ago, and he won so many of the races he entered in. To many he was most famous for winning a race from 20m behind after he'd been knocked over! Imagine if Usain Bolt did that in this summers Olympics, he'd be treated as a) a god, or b) a drug cheat! That's what Eric Liddel will often be remembered for by the world, but for Christians there was a more significant event. In the 1924 Olympics, he found out that his specialty, the 100m, was to be run on a Sunday. He therefore decided to withdraw from the race, which he was one of the favorites to win. He instead chose to compete in the 400m, which most thought he had no chance of winning. To the surprise of everyone, he won the race and a gold medal! As he quoted afterwards: “Those who honour Me I will honour." (1 Samuel 2:30)

So the main things we can learn from the life is that if we are faithful to God, he will be faithful to us, and he'll give us back many times more than we gave to him!

The second main example, is C.T. Studd. He grew up with a life of total luxury, and became one of the leading players in English cricket. He was also one of the players in the first ever ashes. After his brothers near-death experience, something changed, and as for the rest of his life... I'll go into all that next week.

There are also more modern examples, Kaka and Daniel Sturridge being examples in the football world. Billy Vunipola is also a rugby ambassador, and Manny Pacquiao is a Christian boxer. Add that to the likes of Kriss Akabusi and it proves that there still are Christians on the mission field that is the world of professional sports.

Representing Christ (3) - Putting it all together - By Jack Lewis

As you might well have noticed, the last two weeks I've gone into detail about parts of being Christ's ambassadors on earth, so this week I'm going to try and do a more general post about representing Jesus. The first thing to say about all this, is that representing Jesus doesn't mean standing in the street, under pouring rain, from 5 in the morning to 11 at night, wearing "I've been saved!" t-shirts, and yelling "You're going to hell if you don't believe" at anybody and everybody that walks past! That's not what we're talking about. The kind of representing that will work is surely to do it the way that Jesus would do it. He would help the people who needed help, welcome the people that needed welcoming, and preach to those who wanted preaching to. Jesus never went up and started grilling someone about their life, so we shouldn't either. Instead we just need to live in a Christlike way, and then answer the resulting questions people bring up. I know I've probably said that in both of the last two posts, but that's the main point I'm trying to get out of this series, so if you only remember one thing I've said, then please remember this: "The best way to represent Christ is by living like him." I know that it's not possible to live exactly like Jesus, and I'm probably really bad at that, but that's not the point, it's not a competition, because none of us could ever win. We can't always live like Jesus, but he knows that, and he's not demanding it; but surely we should do what we can, and when we are faced with a choice, think "What would Jesus do," and then act on it. And I'm not just talking about the big choices like a career, I mean the little choices, i.e. should I go and talk to that new person in my church, or should I talk to this guy about what I believe. It's those little decisions that come together to make up who we are, and it's those little things that God remembers. Hebrews 13:16 "For God is not unjust so as to overlook your work and the love that you have shown for his name in serving the saints, as you still do." So the challenge is, will we make the decision to do what our saviour wants us to do? Or will we chicken out and do the easy thing that we want to do? And when faced with that choice, you might find these things helpful. "God does not want nibblers of the possible, he wants grabbers of the impossible." - C.T. Studd.  

The best way to represent Christ is by trying to live like him.  

Represnting Jesus on Earth (2) - Witnessing - By Jack Lewis

Hello everyone, last week I did a post about representing Jesus here on earth by being welcoming, and this week I decided to continue with the theme of being Jesus' representatives. This week the more specific subject is talking about Jesus, or witnessing. 

First of all, is the "why." Well, imagine it like this, you meet some random guy who gives you £1 million, and also promises that he'll give a million pounds to anyone else who asks. What would you do, surely you want want to let your friends know about the offer so they can share in the money too! When we witness to others, that's exactly what we're doing, except we aren't offering money, we're offering eternal life! Also, if a friend turned down the money, would it matter? No, that's simply their loss. Again it's the same in real life, if someone turns our offer down, God won't think of us as failures, it's quite simply the other persons loss, and so there's absolutely no reason to be scared that they might turn round and say no! So the "why," is really quite simple, you've been offered eternal life and so you should surely go out and offer it to others, it's not like heaven will ever get overcrowded!

The second aspect of all this, is "how". Everyone has a slightly different way of doing it, so I can only really offer my personal advice, but I think there are are a few key things to remember. 1. Don't force it. One of the worst things we can do is try forcing it down people's throats, especially if they don't want to listen. If someone tells you they don't want to know, don't force it, as that can put them off Christianity for ever. In fact they may be way more likely to think that "perhaps these Christians are alright" if you don't go on about it, so instead just try to be a good witness in the way that you live. 2. Rather than talking too much, it's often better to simply answer their questions. I think that ideally, we'll live in quite a godly way, so they'll then start asking questions about why we are like this, and we then have a great platform to build from which will hopefully end up in them coming to know Christ.

Thanks for reading and any questions, please comment below.

The Lord’s Prayer by Nathan Jukes

This, then, is how you should pray:

“‘Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
 your kingdom come,
your will be done,
 on earth as it is in heaven.
 Give us today our daily bread.

 And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
  And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one.’

Here is the Lord’s prayer. This is how Jesus said we should pray. Let’s take a look at what it has in it.

We can praise God with this.

We can ask for his will to be done.

We can ask him for our daily bread.

We can ask God to forgive our sins.

We can ask God to help us not to get tempted to do wrong.

We can ask him to deliver us from the evil one.

Here is everything we need in this prayer. It is the way Jesus said to pray, so why not pray this prayer more often.