3 minute read
Team Talk
YOUR prayers are requested for Jack, who has been homeless for a long time and is seeking help.
The War Cry invites readers to send in requests for prayer, including the first names of individuals and details of their circumstances, for publication. Send your Prayerlink requests to warcry@salvationarmy.org.uk or to War Cry, 101 Newington Causeway, London SE1 6BN. Mark your correspondence ‘Confidential’.
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Becoming a Christian
There is no set formula to becoming a Christian, but many people have found saying this prayer to be a helpful first step to a relationship with God
Lord Jesus Christ, I am truly sorry for the things I have done wrong in my life. Please forgive me. I now turn from everything that I know is wrong. Thank you that you died on the cross for me so that I could be forgiven and set free. Thank you that you offer me forgiveness and the gift of your Holy Spirit. Please come into my life by your Holy Spirit to be with me for ever. Thank you, Lord Jesus. Amen
Extract from Why Jesus? by Nicky Gumbel published by Alpha International, 2011. Used by kind permission of Alpha International
’ talk‘ Team talk TEAM TALK Sometimes we need to embrace the mess
Claire Brine gives her take on a story catching the attention of War Cry reporters
WHEN writer Dolly Alderton took on the role of agony aunt for The Sunday Times Style magazine, she told her editor of her desire to help readers with their problems.
‘I couldn’t and wouldn’t claim to be a sage, or an expert, or even a person who made the right decisions,’ she explains in Dear Dolly, a book containing a number of her columns, published this week by Fig Tree. Rather, her aim was simply to be ‘someone who was trying to better understand life, just like the person writing in to me’.
In the book, one woman writes to Dolly: ‘My friend’s husband propositioned me – should I tell her?’ Dolly admits it’s a difficult problem to tackle. She considers several courses of action which the letter-writer The truth can cause could take. But it was the final sentence of her response that struck me the most: ‘Remember that while the truth will set you free, it might make a bit of a mess first.’ disruption I don’t know whether Dolly is a Christian or not, but I found her choice of words interesting, because 2,000 years ago Jesus told his disciples that if they continued to follow him, they would know the truth – and that ‘the truth will set you free’.
I then found myself pondering the second half of her sentence, with its warning of the potential disruption that knowing the truth can cause.
It brought to mind a preacher I once met who said that his life had been straightforward before he became a Christian, because he had thought only of himself. When he encountered the truth about Jesus, his life was turned upside down. Jesus urged him to love and care for people who were poor – which meant getting to know them personally. Jesus said riches were a dead end – which meant that he had to hold his cash a lot less tightly. Jesus said that loving God had to come first.
The preacher admitted that in knowing Jesus his life had been disrupted in ways that he couldn’t have imagined. But he added that finding freedom from the wrongdoing of his past made it all worth it. He’d uncovered a truth that he couldn’t live without – and it’s one we can all hold dear.
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