This is the first blog in a short series exploring what the elders believe God is saying to the church at the moment.

It's very nearly Christmas!

Throughout this term, we've been "praying for growth" as a church, for upgrades in our maturity, our extent and our numbers.

On the morning of my wedding, I woke up at 8am, had a leisurely breakfast, put on a suit, and headed off to the Church. Caroline, on the other hand, was awoken at 6am to start doing hair and makeup. The photos do reflect the difference in time spent preparing!

The clock of the Stapleton Road chapel in Bristol is permanently stuck at twenty to eight^[1]. Blazoned across its face are the words:

Time
to Seek
the
Lord

This Autumn, I have stripped fruit from more or less every hedgerow in our neighbourhood - no bramble, no elderberry tree was safe! The greatest frustration with foraging is always when you see a promising patch ahead, but as you draw closer you see that only a few of the fruit are ripe, and the rest are still unready. This experience got me thinking about a certain passage in the Gospels...

Father, please send workers into the harvest field, for the harvest is plentiful. Give us compassion and faith LORD as we go. Encourage us to be active in sharing our faith, so that we will have a full understanding of every good thing we have in Christ. (Matthew and Philemon)

I often don’t notice the difference my daily quiet time with God really makes until I fall out of the discipline of having one. Being too busy to “stay still and know that He is God” renders me an easy target for the one who walks around looking to destroy what God has built. Before I know it, I become fearful, doubtful, grumpy and insecure.

I used to think of devotional times as a necessity to ‘please’ God. Something to do, to achieve, to perfect, in the hope that it may earn God’s attention, mercy, perhaps even love.

Something I’ve often been hugely challenged by has been the importance of kneeling in prayer. In fact, I’ve become really passionate about it! I really believe that kneeling can be a really important part of prayer.

When thinking about consistent devotional prayer, location can be very important. I guess you might think that if the Holy Spirit is omnipresent, why should location matter at all? In a sense it shouldn’t: God can be at your desk whilst you pray in the library just as he can be present in your room just before you go to bed. However, I know that I’m a human, and in the hubbub of this world I need consistent time and space in order to focus in prayer, and I want to give you two top tips as to what we can to make sure our devotional locations are on point:

This term, our preaching series is entitled 'Open Heaven, Changing Lives', and through it we're hoping to see our prayer lives flourish and our lives follow Jesus more closely - so 'prayer and discipleship' if you like.