Bishop Lee’s Letter
Seeking the God who breathes life
This month Bishop Lee shares a
call to mark Lent 2010 by attentiveness to
God in prayer and fasting
which has come through our deanery leadership.
As someone deeply committed to
our strategic planning and our programme
for growth, there is something
I recognise all too well. Without a move of God’s
Spirit in this Diocese it will
go nowhere. We can do all in our power to
encourage a climate for
growth, to foster and to promote it, but in the end we
are reliant on God.
In that graphic scene
described in Ezekiel chapter 37 we hear how the prophet
was taken into a valley filled
with dry and dusty bones and told to speak to
them in God’s name. To his
amazement the scattered bones began to gather
together - forming skeletons,
developing flesh and sinews, tissues and skin.
There right in front of
Ezekiel a vast army was formed from those bones of the
people of God. Except they
were still lying in the dust – dead or as good as!
God needed to breathe fresh
life into them.
Across the parishes and
deaneries of the Diocese, through our chaplaincies,
councils, boards and synods we
have made plans for growth - and we believe
these have been prompted and
led by the Spirit of God. We have been
encouraged by what has been
emerging – especially whenever it feels like dry
and dusty bones have been
given flesh and sinew. But as for Ezekiel in his
day, God is teaching us to
recognise this is his work and to be more conscious
of our dependence on his
activity. For he is the One who gives growth, his is
the breath which animates our
hopes and plans, and his is the energy we want
to see increasingly released
in people’s lives across our churches and
communities.
I hear the Spirit saying this
to us in the proposal that has emerged through our
deanery leadership that we
should make Lent 2010 a time marked out by
prayer and fasting. As Richard
Foster says prayer is life creating and life
changing - it takes us onto
the frontier of spiritual life. Prayer, as Bishop Mike
wrote last year in the Cycle
of Prayer, is the lifeblood of our relationship with
God and that holds for us both
personally and corporately. We are to seek
God in prayer together and
also in private, through listening as well as
petitioning. Prayer keeps us
ever mindful of what God has done and is doing
now and increases our trust
and obedience to Jesus Christ.
Fasting - traditionally going
without food in order to focus our attentiveness to
God - is a spiritual
discipline which underlines the seriousness of our devotion
and discipleship. It is a
practice which builds spiritual strength and stamina, yet
it is one which has largely
been neglected by us as the body of Christ.
The message coming from our
deanery leaders is that if we truly want to see
the energy of the whole people
of God released in this Diocese then prayer
and fasting ought to be at the
top of our shared agenda for discipleship this
Lent. Bishop Mike and I very
much hope you will join with us in responding to
this call.