Great talk from the heart tonight – Nick leads our CAP outreach as well as helping lead Ivy Fallowfield.

We don’t always see from the outside what’s going on in the inside. In a heart and in a home I wonder why we don’t cry more?
When we see the need
When we see the spikes put up to stop homeless people sleeping there There are 13000 households accepted as homeless this year
What does God think about all the excess in my rooms when they have nothing and nowhere Government and education are part of the answer
Is the church the answer?
God says let there be light
He forms us with a Word
And breathes his Spirit
He never gives up
God chooses a slave nation for freedom
To love him
To love people
To show who he is
He gives his law to recreate them
To restore what was lost
God expected his words to be lived out and embodied
To love God means to obey him
To live consistent with our identity

Israel were meant to play the game of life in a way that would draw a crowd.

Laws about setting slaves free
About limiting violence and retribution
Valuing people over possessions
Protection for the vulnerable
Liberal generosity that would eradicate poverty
Open hands and hearts
Ex 23:22-27

Imagine a people who lived like that

They didn’t
Isaiah tells us they ‘seemed to’ – but did as they pleased. Instead of breaking the yoke and clothing the naked.

What does God do when his people fail to embody him?

He does it himself – the Word became flesh
Associated with the poor and homeless and refugee
So we see him
And see his Father

His life matched his words
He became ultimately vulnerable
Showed us what love is like on the cross

The problem is that my heart is not as soft as his

Please Lord, let your word disrupt my life, do soul surgery, give me a heart of flesh instead of stone.

God has not just saved you enough to be debt free – sometimes that’s as far as CAP can take them and it’s wonderful There is more for you than that!

Lk 4
This is why we are anointed – to be good news to the poor
Freedom for captives

Why? Because we are his living presence in the world. A Jubilee people – liberated to liberate others.

God soften my heart to make this happen.