Last Saturday, King’s Church organised a prayer breakfast meeting with Tony Lloyd MP in conjunction with Peace Week 2009.

The prayer breakfast was held in our building and saw fourteen members from the community, including three from King’s Church, come to hear from Tony about his work as an MP and to pray for him in his significant role as a politician to bring peace to the streets of Manchester.

Tony represents the Manchester Central constituency, which includes inner city areas like Hulme, Moss Side and Longsight that have known much gun and knife crime down the years.

His views are heard in government, and he has supported many humanitarian causes at home and abroad in Gaza, Burma, Venezuela and Colombia.

The meeting began with a continental breakfast before we heard Paul Keeble from CARISMA speak about their annual project, Peace Week, which is a series of events to express the desire for peace in areas like Longsight and Moss Side.

Others present came from Network Evangelical Alliance, Old Trafford Independent Advisory Group, Mustard Tree, City Church, The Plant Church and Community Church of the Nazarene.

We agreed that peace is an important and recurrent theme in the Bible – that peace is not just the absence of violence, but the presence of wealth, health and prosperity.

Tony spoke on his dismay at seeing war-torn Gaza on a visit to Palestine a few weeks ago, and on refugees in Colombia displaced in their own country due to the drug trade.

Closer to home in Manchester, statistics have shown that gun and knife crime have gone down over the last few years, but our prayers should not cease.

We talked about the need to continue investing in young people, supporting them, changing the negative media perceptions of youths and generating good news in areas of bad news.

We prayed for wisdom and good governance for Tony as he makes decisions as an MP. We prayed blessings for the projects he advocate, that they may be highly favoured in Parliament and be heard all across the nations.

That same morning during Second Saturday, Gavin spoke about submitting to worldly authority and engaging with society as Christians.

There are lots of biblical exhortations to actively involve ourselves with our immediate surroundings, and to go around doing good just as Jesus did (Acts 10:38).

Though we may be citizens of heaven, we are not Christians who live detached from society, but ones who develop a relationship with it in order to transform it.

By inviting Tony Lloyd and Christians in the community for a prayer breakfast, we are doing just that. We are bringing Christ into politics, government, war, poverty and crime.

Let us continue to do more, so that the kingdom of God may invade secular society through the person and power of Jesus Christ.

Wan Phing Lim

In February, I attended a talk by Ken Costa, an investment banker from Lazard International in London, who is also Chairman of Alpha International which promotes the Alpha course. The event was part of the North West launch of the God at Work course, based on the book Ken has written.

The relevance of the Christian faith to the modern workplace is a timely subject for us in responding to the global crisis that has affected many people.

Because God cares and is interested in every aspect of our lives, the workplace is no exception. He is interested in what we do at work everyday. He understands the environment in our offices, boardrooms and meeting rooms where we are under constant pressure and face tight deadlines. God knows that these are hard places to be, and He wants to invest in us so that we can invest into our colleagues.

The credit crunch is a good opportunity for us to shine Jesus in our workplace. It is important to reconcile the financial world with the kingdom of God, because our lives should not be lived within a sacred/secular divide. No market and no stock exchange is outside His rule and reign.

Jesus is Lord of the money market, and the Bible is our prospectus. The Holy Spirit is the deposit and the guarantor that there will be a tomorrow in Christ our Lord. Jesus has risen from the dead, and He has overcome the ‘bear’ market.

Ken equated many examples from the Bible with our present financial status, even reminding us that Jesus was a carpenter and was therefore part of a commercial life.

The kingdom of Tyre in Ezekiel 27 had merchants come from Syria, Damascus, Persia and Libya to trade spices, jewels, gold and embroidery. It was comparable to our present day New York and London Stock Exchange, but Tyre was ultimately destroyed because it had been corrupted with pride, violence and dishonest trade.

But praise God, for those who put their trust in Him will be unshakable, because His kingdom is unshakable! It is the world and those who put their trust in its system who will be shaken.

Ken also gave practical advice on how to overcome the situation, such as:

• restricting problems of the day to the day
• rejoicing in what we receive and thanking God for what we have
• embracing the reality of the situation instead of living in denial
• remaining faithful in tithing and generous in offerings

This, he says, is not optimism but realism.

Ken exhorts us to talk about money openly, corporately and individually. Praise God that during Life in the Spirit meeting last Thursday, Gavin and the elders prepared a report on the church’s finance, discussing our income & expenditure as a church and encouraging us to pray for the increase of heaven in our finances as a church.

Money is a sensitive subject to be openly discussed among friends and family, and we praise God that we have elders who set us an example to follow, to open up our lives so that others can minister to us on money matters that are affecting us.

I am encouraged by Ken and the elders to invest more in the unshakable kingdom of God – to not hold back my tithe, to remain generous and to put my faith firmly in God, who provides for all my needs!

Wan Phing Lim

A few weeks ago, one of our best friends called us from Nigeria wanting to commiserate with us as he had heard about how the credit crunch has hit the United Kingdom. I could genuinely tell him that we have heard of it but we have not experienced it because we chose to believe the word of God that one of our elders had brought to us that there is no credit crunch in the kingdom of God.

One Sunday morning, Gavin White told the Church that there is no credit crunch in the kingdom of God. As he spoke that word, something within my spirit caught hold of the word and it became a reality to me. The immediate effect was that it brought me peace and joy.

I had been slowly saving up to change my car much later on in 2009. However, as I was driving to work from a Life in the Spirit meeting one Tuesday night, a Finglands bus crashed into the side of me and the driver immediately started lying and denying liability. To cut the long story short, both his insurer and mine decided to split the liability because it boiled down to one person’s word against another’s. That meant that after deducting my excess and my premium for the year, I only received about two thousand and seventy something pounds for my car. At that time, I only had about one thousand pounds saved. In the meantime, whilst this was being sorted, I was giving a courtesy car which was almost a brand new Mercedes Benz E- Class so I was cruising around like the princess of the Most High God that I am!

I decided that I was going to go ahead and buy another car and I wasn’t going to borrow any money to do it. For practical reasons, I decided to wait until after Christmas. I was prepared to be travelling around by public transport until that time. However, one of my friends said she could not bear the thought of me travelling by public transport for one month in one of the coldest winters we’ve ever had. So she gave me her car to use until I got my own while she shared with her two sons. On the tenth of January 2009, I bought another car for £7,000.00 without having to borrow one penny and not having had any money put aside for this.

At some point whilst I was trying to gather money together for the car, I thought of reducing my offering but I decided to go ahead and give what I normally gave on the Sunday. The very next day, I received a cheque in the post for twice that amount. Imagine how awful I would have felt if I hadn’t been faithful in my giving only to find out that God had planned a surprise for me.

We have also been able to increase the money that we send regularly to out family in Nigeria. Neither of us has had a recent promotion at work. All these things have happened because we chose to believe the word of God that there is no credit crunch in His kingdom.

I feel that I should share this with you to reinforce the truth that God is continually faithful. He will supply ALL of our needs according to His riches in glory BY CHRIST JESUS.

Shalom!

Sumbo.