It was the first freshers day in a week of freshers activity.
Brand new students and returning students saturating the city with a fresh blast of life.
We had S21 service at 10.30am.
So we had chaos outside on the street. The police were trying to organize the ever increasing traffic, I saw a new student arguing with her parents, really sending them into a kind of frustrated melt down.
Inside our building, people were arriving out of the chaos in the streets into the Holy chaos that is S21.
I was down to preach, so I retreated with my earphones in place to one of the prayer rooms to kind of quieten my heart and get focused.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the prayer room.
The police brought a guy in who was shaking, and obviously all too familiar to us now in the throws of lack of alcohol. The police asked if we could look after him. So I asked him if he wanted to sit through our service and I would chat to him afterwards.
He agreed to do that.
After the service he was in tears. He spewed out this cacophony of mess that his life had become. He was a former lawyer, but now he was homeless, he was an alcoholic, he was penniless, he was family less, he was dirty, disheveled and he seemed to have lost any sense of spirit and life.
He needed a drink.
He was a chaotic mess.
He wanted to get to another city to try and sort his life out with his family. So after feeding him, praying with him and listening to him, we gave him a bus ticket to this other place.
He kept saying, "I've been an alcoholic too long."
Which was uncanny really.
Because.
In the service I had preached from Deuteronomy 1 which sees the people of Israel after being freed years before from captivity, still hanging around in the wilderness (Mount Horeb) and not having taken possession of what God had promised them, a new land, a new future, a new glory. God gives them a message. "You have stayed in this mountain too long. Break camp and take your journey." Then he says, "Go and take possession of the land that The Lord swore to your Fathers."
When I stood in the chaos of the world last Sunday morning, then sat in the chaos of a broken mans life, another verse from the message bible dropped from my head to my heart.
Psalm 51: 7
God, make a fresh start in me, shape a genesis week from the chaos of my life.
And today as I have reflected on this, genesis speaks of new beginnings, new opportunities, new life.
And this verse became a prayer for the chaotic things we see every day.
I was going to write something else today, but for whatever reason I more than felt God prompt me to write this.
So I guess there maybe people today feeling the heat of the chaotic world.
I guess there maybe people stuck in a rut.
There maybe somebody who has stayed on a particular mountain way to long?
And got a bit comfortable there?
Like Gods chosen people.
Maybe you have got so comfortable you haven't taken possession of all that God has for you?
Hey guys I guess right now you know what that mountain is?
God says break camp!
Get off the mountain, get out of the wilderness.
Following our service on Sunday we had someone give their life to Jesus for the first time.
I saw the dreamy realization of stepping into something new and right.
I saw it in her tearful eyes.
I saw a genesis week beginning in her heart.
So for all of us who have stayed on the mountain too long?
This scripture prayer is for you.
God, make a fresh start in me, shape a genesis week from the chaos of my life (Message)
