Utumishi Blog

What does the truly spiritual person look like? Floating two inches above the ground? Always singing and praying? A certain way of walking and talking and holding the head? Bursting with tongues and words of knowledge and spectacular spiritual gifts?

We saw this morning from 1 Corinthians 1:18-2:5 that true spirituality is consumed by the gospel of Christ crucified – that’s where all the spiritual power and the wisdom is.

Then, studying the second half of Philippians 1, we were all very struck by the double privilege granted to Christians – to believe in him and to suffer for his sake. There was quite a bit of discussion about how alien this message is to many Kenyan pulpits.

Greg helped us get a handle on the NT letters, reminding us, that they were originally expected to be read in one sitting (as you would expect a modern email to be read in one go) and so we need to look at the parts in the context of the whole.  We also need to “go to Corinth” – looking at the letter carefully (and maybe Acts as well) to get a picture of what the issues were and how the first recipients would have understood the letter.

But we don’t need to depend on history text books and we mustn’t speculate. “If we can’t prove a point from the text then it shouldn’t be in the sermon.”

In the afternoon Philip prepared us to start working on a passage from 1 Peter in groups. I was very helped by the reminder not to panic (!), to pray and to read the passage (easily skipped steps), and just take time to work and rework and rework an outline in the confidence that by the Holy Spirit and hard work (2 Tim. 2:7) the Lord will make things clearer before Sunday morning.

I was also very struck by Psalm 119:97-100 which Philip drew us to as we closed: the encouragement that chewing on God’s Word is the route to joy and wisdom; the surprise that listeners/receivers may well end up wiser than preacher/teachers; and the challenge that I will only understand if I obey.

 Please pray on:

• Giving thanks for the new participants who arrived this morning including the four pastors and lecturers expected from Munguishi Bible College Tanzania.
• That energy levels would keep high throughout the week, that there would be continued good engagement with the Word.
• That we would have hearts not only wanting to understand but to submit to the Word.