Announced, Confirmed, Testified; Hebrews 2:3-4

Wherever you come down on the question of signs and wonders, the writer to the Hebrews is clear what they were (and are?) for - testimony to the great salvation found in Jesus Christ. I was recently asked "if Acts type miracles don't cease with the closure of the canon, why don't we see them much today?" I rather suspect that the answer is because we don't want to put ourselves in Acts type situations today
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Doing Extravagant Worship

We just had a church weekend conference. In a later session the youth groups were telling the whole church what they had been doing. One lass said "we were doing extravagant worship." I have no idea what the content was (I expect it involved bopping! Why is it that teens bop? Too many E numbers?), but knowing the teens and leaders in question, I bet it was brilliant. I bet God loved it and so did they.

I love the fact that our teens are coming to know God and that the focus of our children's work is helping them be disciples and worshippers and witnesses - as opposed to creating nice, well-behaved, vaguely christianised youngsters who don't do naughty things. One of the (just) pre-teens talked extremely coherently and movingly about forgiveness. 

One of my favourite Bible stories is of the sinful woman in Luke 7. She worships Jesus unashamedly despite the embarrassment - even outrage - of other people at the dinner party. She didn't care. Jesus loved it. She was worshipping in an extravagant and costly way.

I wish I was a teenager again! (VERY wishful thinking!) I am hoping that as a result of our church weekend the teens have even more of a taste for "doing extravagant worship", and so does everybody else. I want to be in an "extravagant worship" church, whatever one of those looks like :-)

The Danger of Drift; Hebrews 2:1-4

You can turn away from God by direct, downright apostasy. But its much more common for it to happen by drift. Drift is so imperceptible - and that is its danger. It usually only becomes apparent when it receives public notice, and by that point it is often too late to do anything about it. Why on Earth would Christians drift from this supreme King Jesus? And how does it happen? The writer gives two reasons: not paying attention - just getting distracted ignoring this great salvation - distraction leads to other things simply being more important and time-consuming, so that people end up simply editing salvation out of their every day thinking That is the pattern of drift. What starts off as not paying attention to salvation ends up as ignoring it. The best list of reasons for drift is given by Jesus in Mark 4: Satan stops people hearing God's word, trouble or persecution make Jesus seem less appealing, the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth, desires for material possessions all choke off our attention through distraction.
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