in Christ: Andrew Fountain's blog

What does Microsoft have to do with Moses and the burning bush?

Back in the early 90's, Microsoft developed a remarkable piece of software, Windows NT. (Anyone who knows me will know that I am no fan of Microsoft but this product was an exception.)

What was most amazing about this software was that conventional wisdom was that it was impossible to develop something of that size and complexity in the timescale, even with a huge team. In 1994 a Wall Street Journal writer named Pascal Zachary obtained permission to interview all those involved and write a book.

The book is in some places shocking and even a little scary, because it becomes clear that what enables the project to succeed is the cult-like leadership qualities of the project leader, Dave Cutler, and his abilities to motivate his "followers" (employees) to the point where nothing else in their lives mattered, outside of working on his team. Here is a quote from the book:

This evening I preached on The Kingdom and Healing. This wasn't a polemic against cessationists, but an attempt to get a better understanding of how healing worked in the ministry of Jesus and his disciples. It came out of my own desperate study to improve in this area. As I grappled with chapters 9-11 of Luke I found a flow of ideas which was helpful to me. In the (rather short) sermon I simply went through these chapters and pulled out this theme.

My rathier brief notes on the Kingdom and healing as well as the audio are uploaded here.

I just listened to Adrian Warnock's sermon on Reviving prayer which you can download from the Jubilee Church sermons page. It was a tremendous encouragement to me and really connected with my spirit.

Whatever you do, don't miss the ending because there is a real climax as he asks "where is the God of Elijah now?" I won't spoil it for you...

I just listened to a sermon on Revival by Adrian Warnock, preached at Jubilee church, Enfield last Sunday. It is one of the best messages on revival that I have heard for a long time. He gives two definitions of revival. The first is:

"a powerful intensification of the Holy Spirit’s normal activity" (Stuart Piggin)

What I like about this definition, and the way Adrian develops it, is that it doesn't place revival in some strange and unreachable category so that all we can do is pray and wait passively. As Bill Jackson points out in The Quest for the Radical Middle, (a history of the Vineyard) an unheathy emphasis on the anticipation of a great revival effectively killed evangelistic effort. If God works in a different mode in revival, then what is the point of working hard right now?

I am teaching a course on the Psalms right now, so I have been looking around to see what material is available on the internet. There are two excellent resources which I can highly recommend and they are both free.