The name Seeking Shalom comes from Jeremiah 29: 7 "Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.”

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Is something stirred in you when you consider the call to seek the peace and prosperity of Cape Town? 

Join us as we seek shalom for our City together through this series of talk/testimony, interactive group discussions with scripture as our lens. We want to connect with each other, share what God has put on our hearts, and discover God’s call on the church in such a way that moves us to prayer and action.

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From Pastor Bevin: 

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In many ways we could say that the story of the Bible is the story of two cities. We could also view our story as the spirit of the empire of man, versus the Spirit of the kingdom of Heaven. The story begins not really in a city but in a garden.

It’s a long story with many twists, but it's as if the spirit of the city of man enters into the garden, and immediately after Adam and Eve are exiled from it, they have two sons in Cain and Abel.
Cain as we know, kills his brother Abel, and then the Bible says he went away from the presence of the Lord. Then we read in Genesis Chapter 4 that he ‘knew his wife’, and she conceived Enoch, and then we are told Cain built a city – the first mention of a city in the Bible. The Lord had put a mark on Cain to provide security for him, but he didn't trust in God's security. So he built a city of his own to try to create his own security. It was a city in which he intended for God to just stay out.

After this, the story of the city really picks up in Genesis 11. The Bible tells us that the people who are supposed to be spreading throughout the earth, get to the Plains of Shinar and they settled there. They begin to build a city, and then a tower, that would take them up to God, driven by the desire to make a name for themselves (a tenet of the spirit of the empire of man)
This is the spirit of the city of man which says, I don't need God, I don't need his glory, I'll just make my own glory.

We know what happens there, this city becomes the city called Babel...

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Babel is all about human strength, and human glory.  Babel evolves into what becomes Babylon, a city that is set against God and set against God's people. Our story continues, and we are later introduced to another city that is established, called the city of Jerusalem. This is a city on a hill that's meant to be the place of God's dwelling among his people.

But as we trace the story of this city of God on earth, we begin to see another ugly side of our story. This city where God had come down to dwell there in the temple, becomes sullied, and the people of Jerusalem do terrible things, and of course the worst thing that happens is when God comes himself to dwell in the city of Jerusalem in the person of Jesus Christ…what happens?
He is put to death, he is crucified, he is rejected.

So there's a sense in which it's not only just the spirit of the city of Man that is exemplified throughout the Bible as Babylon, but we see it even in Jerusalem itself.

In the New Testament the earthly city of Jerusalem seems to fade from the picture. But over and over again in the New Testament, we are introduced to the New Jerusalem.  In fact, that's how the Bible story ends
In Revelation 21 when John writes that he sees a new heaven and a new earth come down he says, "I saw the holy city, the New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God."

God is clearly at work throughout the Bible story, that is also our story. God has taken this thing called the city that was created to keep him out, and like everything else in the world, he's making it new.
An astounding image is one that God himself is ‘preparing a city’ that he intends to live in forever with his people. It will be a city with high walls as John describes it. A city that will be secure, a city that will be filled with all the people, whose names are written in the lamb's Book of Life.

This is the city that you and I want to have our roots in, and this is the city we want to live in forever.
This new city is a reflection of the heart of God, in the same way that the city we live in, Cape Town, is a reflection of what is in our hearts – a city segregated along the lines of race. A city that still struggles with issues of security, sanitation, transport, electricity, housing, schools, hospitals, jobs, and so much more. 

The question that we want to wrestle with is - How can we, being the ambassadors of God, be used by God to bring shalom to our city? How do we bring the spirit of the Kingdom of Heaven, into spaces where the spirit of the empire of man governs? 
How do we respond to the brokenness within our city, when our city is a magnifying glass that brings out what is in our hearts.
Our Father in Heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come here on Earth, in our city, as it is in Heaven. Yours is the kingdom, the power and the glory, forever and ever, amen.