Restore2Revive

Author: Gillian Stewart

  • Stronger than the strong

    “To pray in Jesus name is to invoke the name of the Stronger than the Strong; it is to appeal to the one through whom the creator of the world has become king, has taken the power of the world and has defeated it with the power of the cross, has confronted the glory of the world and has outshone it with the glory of the cross.

    When people in Jesus world backed up a request with the Emperors name, people jumped to attention. How much more, when we pray in the name of the true King of Kings?

    When we pray in the name of Jesus, we find, again and again, that what we want to pray for subtly changes as we focus on Jesus himself. Part of the game of readiness, in great things and small, to put our plans and hopes on hold and let God remake them as we gaze upon him, revealed inglorious glory of the manger, the powerless power of the cross.

    But when we allow that to happen, bit by bit, and then come with holy boldness into the presence of our Father, we discover that he really does have, prepared for those who love him, such good things pass human understanding”.

    NT Wright

  • Homesick

    If we only we had eyes to see and ears to hear and wits to understand, we would know that the Kingdom of God in the sense of holiness, goodness, beauty is as close as breathing and crying out to be born both within ourselves and within the world;

    We would know that the Kingdom of God is what all of us hunger for above all other things even when we don’t know its name or realise that it’s what we’re starving to death for.

    The Kingdom of God is where our best dreams come from and our truest
    prayers. We glimpse it at those moments when we find ourselves being better than we are and wiser than we know. We catch sight of it when at a moment of crisis a strength seems to come to us that is greater than our own strength.

    The Kingdom of God is where we belong. It is home, and whether we realise it or not, I think we are all homesick for it.

    Fredrick Buechner