A storm is coming...
While teaching on Jonah at the recent Elim Network One conference, the Evangelical Alliance’s Gavin and Anne Calver tag-teamed the preaching
GAVIN
This is mind-blowing – Jonah goes on his own and Nineveh repents. With God nothing’s impossible! We need to stretch our prophetic imaginations for what could happen. Where do we need to die to ourselves and to wake up to what God’s saying to us?
ANNE
We’re going on a journey as the church with the Lord waking us up to more of who he is and what he wants to do among us. I find it fascinating that in the middle of a storm Jonah could go below deck and fall into a deep sleep… I feel like the Lord is saying this is what a lot of the church looks like. A lot of them are just letting the world be in a mess, letting all this stuff go on, sleeping their way through it and turning their minds and hearts away from him. I feel like the Lord is saying, “a storm is coming… and my people are running away from me but I’m calling them back.”
GAVIN
There is no social benefit to being a Christian in the UK any more. That’s a good thing. It means you’ve only got Christians who actually are Christians. But those of us who are on fire for Jesus need to burn enough and be brave enough that we set the temperature rather than respond to it. We need to be the influencers, not the influenced.
ANNE
I believe we’re stepping into an hour where we’re going to see reformation and transformation at every level of society, and I’m praying we will stay the course and allow the Lord to do whatever he wants to do in us through this season. Will we allow the potter to reform the clay to make it beautiful and fitting for what he wants to do?
GAVIN
We need to be clear what it actually means to follow Jesus. And right now, it’s the most countercultural thing. We haven’t lost generations of young people because we haven’t entertained them enough; we haven’t challenged them enough! We haven’t pointed them enough to an irresistible Jesus who’s worth giving up everything for.
Gavin Calver is CEO of the Evangelical Alliance. He is married to Anne, who is associate minister at Stanmore Baptist Church, and they have two children, Amelie and Daniel
Time to talk about Jesus more...
“One word of advice for how to avoid getting into trouble talking about Jesus: talk about him more! If you talk about Jesus once every three years, that’s proselytising. If you talk about Jesus loads, that’s a protected characteristic in law, like your sexuality, gender or ethnicity!”
This article first appeared in Direction Magazine. For further details, please click here.
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