Have a read of the passage.
So just to set the scene because the majority of the time I read a story in the Bible, it takes about 6 times for it to sink in and make sense.
Jesus here is travelling down a road with his disciples one afternoon and they hear this woman crying and they look back behind them. This woman is shouting out for Jesus, to heal her daughter. “Have Mercy on me Lord….my daughter is severely opressed by a demon.” and Jesus just completely ignores her and carries on walking.
So the woman carries on crying and following Jesus and at this point the disciples are kinda wanting to get rid of her and ask Jesus to just give her what she wants because she is embarassing them.
So Jesus stops and tells her about sheep (verse 24) which in plain english Jesus was saying “The blessings of the Lord are not for YOU!”
So as a last desperate attempt the woman falls to her knees worshipping Jesus begging him for healing. Jesus again tells her it is not right for him to help her and uses an example of taking good things and throwing it to the dogs. But she humbles herself even more and says:

“Lord I know I am not worthy but all I ask for is crumbs.”

If there was ever a useful guide to responding to God and how as christians to ask for something we are depserate for then this it. It appears this woman is going through some sort of test. When we ask for something we would probably give up at the first part where Jesus completely ignores her. If not then certainly when the disciples said she was embarassing them and Jesus.

Suppose you came to someone in church and asked someone for something. Not only did they ignore you and then completely forget about it but the people who were around you at the time heard you and all mocked you for asking such a thing. You wouldn’t ask again would you? In fact you would probably never come back to church.

But this woman after being rejeceted and mocked knows she has to humble herself even more and begs for her daughter. Jesus then says:

“O woman, great is your faith!” and her daughter was healed.

 When do you stop asking? The woman knew Jesus healed people all the time so why make this woman wait and PERSERVERE? Jesus deserves all the glory and praise, nothing we do will ever save us. If we want something Jesus may just give it us but thats far too easy. Like this woman, if we want something we have to show God just how great our faith is in him and for him and come before him with a humble heart.

For me the most amazing thing about this passage is that we don’t know anything about this woman or her daugther, not even her name. All we know is how great her faith was.

Jamila spent all summer in Romania being involved in the projects there. Here’s a video  she’s put together to show what she’s been up to!

As you may know our planning application for our new building at Centenary Park was submitted several weeks ago. We were originally given a determination date of August 22nd. Unfortunately as that date drew nearer we were informed that the council would need more time to process our application and the information we had provided. The council advised us to withdraw the application and resubmit it in order to give them adequate time to look at our application fully. We complied with their request and resubmitted the application on Friday August 22nd.

What does this mean? Well simply it gives us more time to pray! It seems appropriate then that our monthly Pray Direct meeting takes place on Thursday 28th August at 7.30pm. We’ve been saying it for months if not years that prayer is key to us succeeding in our move to a new building. Please join with us and add your prayers to the effort! From the council receiving the application to the decision being made normally takes 8 weeks. Please pray specifically that the council will agree to give us a decision within 4 weeks as every week is crucial now!

What a great God we serve and what a wonderful Church we are blessed with. As a church we are blessed with a wonderful leadership team and beautiful worship team. I have never stopped thanking God for bringing me to LCC and enabling me to grow spiritually and as a person through its members, and teachings and preaching. Over the last few weeks we have had some powerful preaching by Ps. Paul on front foot living, only to be re-iterated beautifully by Jo and Alex. What stuck chord with me was that ‘I have opened doors of opportunity AND there are obstacles’. I, for some reason had always substituted the ‘and’ with ‘but’.

All of us in our life are faced with opportunities which are God given. And a Christian there are always two paths for us to choose – the easy one or the one with obstacles. It is the choice that we make, makes the person that we are. Even when we made a choice to follow Christ, we knew that life is not going to be easy. I loved it when Alex said this week – That often when we go through problems of fire, we just jump out. What sort of refined gold would it be, if it keeps popping out? But when we see around, we don’t see many refined people – do we? That is so very true!

This is just an insight into some of the great teachings that we get to feed on at our church. We are at a very important phase at our church. God has opened opportunities AND there are obstacles. At this crucial juncture at our church, let us all join together in prayer so that we come out victorious in the planning application that we are seeking and defeat the enemy. Let the church not only be a blessing to us, but also have the capacity to seat more, reach out more and touch more live as it has done for me and Gaby and for many many others. As Ps. Paul in his prayer said – ‘For Your name and Your cause to be blazoned over this city. A light to the nations in Manchester and beyond.’