Category Archives: Christian Life

Seeking God’s presence and walking in His ways as a Spirit-filled believer.

Christian Life, Pursuing Love

Heart and Soul: Doing Everything for the Lord

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“Whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance, for you serve the Lord Christ.” (Colossians 3: 23-24)

What  does Paul mean when he instructs us to do things “heartily?” I like the NKJV, but in this instance the translation doesn’t do justice to the depths of the Greek meaning. We think of heartily as being “full on,” sincerely, genuinely, warmly, enthusiastically, vigorously; sometimes completely or thoroughly. However the Greek word used here is the noun Psyche, usually translated as “soul,” and it’s used in the genitive case which indicates possession ( a random fact I remember from doing Latin at school 60 years ago!), so it means “of the soul,“ or “Belonging to the soul.“

Peter writes: “Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for each other, love one another deeply, from the heart.” (1 Peter 1: 22 NIV) Paul’s words in Colossians 3:23 are an instruction that calls for obedience. To obey the instruction to do everything “heartily“ means that we apply our whole purified heart to whatever we are doing. The heart of a born again child of God is the new heart that our Heavenly Father has given us, the heart of flesh on which He has written His law (Jeremiah 31:33). Peter doesn’t separate “obeying the truth“ (and coming to faith in Jesus) from “sincere Love of each other. ” In other words, the very purpose of the new birth which, by the grace of God, is what purifies our souls, is to direct our new hearts towards loving one another deeply, “from the heart.”

This brings us back to the original verse from Colossians, in which we are instructed to do everything “heartily.” We are to put “heart and soul” – new heart; purified soul – into everything we do, and we do this “because we serve the Lord Christ.” Jesus told us to “love one another as I have loved you.“ We serve the Lord by loving one another: what Paul says to us through his letter to the Colossians is, quite simply, to do everything from a heart of love, because in doing so we are serving the King of Love every minute of the day, and are therefore fulfilling the purpose for which He created us anew.

“Let everything you do be done in Love” (1 Corinthians 16:14), “whatever you do, whether in word or in deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus” (Colossians 3:17) and Colossians 3:23 above are all the same command. Paul reminds us more than once “to put off” the old ways of the flesh that we were born into, and to “put on” the new ways of the Spirit. If you are of a similar vintage to me, you will probably remember the old Steppenwolf song, “born to be wild.“ Indeed we were. But we were born again to love.

And here’s a practical tip to help you check how you are serving the Lord: put a reminder on your phone to come up at any time of the day, asking: “Am I doing what I am doing now heartily?” I wonder what my week’s score will be out of seven …

Knowing God

The Wings of the Morning

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The Clouds
The Lord said: “Look at the clouds. They are full of water, and they are being blown along by my wind, sometimes gently, sometimes fast. But they are moving, they are always moving, just like I am always working, and they change shape as they go. The wind blows where it wishes, and you do not know where it comes from or where it is going. I want you to be like these clouds, lifted high into heavenly places, blown along by my spirit, ready to go where I am blowing, ready to change as you feel my breath, carrying nothing except the water of my spirit which I will cause you to release onto the dry earth where and when I say. Do you see clouds rolling along the ground? No. And so you must let go all that will hold you down, every weight, and let me lift you into the place where you will be blown in the direction that I choose to be moulded by my spirit, releasing what I give you upon the Earth.”

The Air Balloon.
“Lord,“ I said, “My hand reaches down and grips the roots in the soil. Will I be able to let go of the worldly and carnal things that sometimes it seems that I hold so tight? Can I be lifted as you say, or will I stay here below, gripping onto the things of the world?

“Yes,“ He said. “You won’t be able to help it. You are attached, because I have attached you, to my air balloon. And as I rise up into high places, I will take you with me, and you simply won’t be able to hold on because the pull of my presence will be so much stronger than the pull of the ground.”

The Beauty of the Lord
“Consider the beauty of the natural world. From the light reflected in the small liquid Diamond of a teardrop to the grandeur of the mountains, the freshness of a leaf in spring, the rumble of a distant waterfall, the leap of a gazelle, the wings of a seagull. Were not all these things made through me? All that you can see, hear, and feel was made through me. So in me is all the splendour and variety of the natural world, for it has all come out of me. Can I not draw you unto me?”

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
It is high, I cannot obtain it.

Where can I go from your Spirit,
or where can I flee from your presence?

If I ascend to heaven, you are there,
If I make my bed in hell, behold, you are there.

If I take the wings of the morning,
Or dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,

Even there your hand will lead me,
And your right hand shall hold me.

(Psalm 139: 6-10)

Knowing God, Living by Faith, Walking in the Spirit

Bread from Heaven: 3

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And Jesus took the loaves, and when He had given thanks He distributed them to the disciples, and the disciples to those sitting down; and likewise of the fish, as much as they wanted. (John 6:11)

He knew what He would do
In our attempts to bring up our children to say “please,” the parents among us might well have said at times: “And what’s the magic word?” However in the Kingdom it’s not please, it’s thank you. Jesus didn’t ask the Father to multiply the loaves and fishes; he thanked Him for them. This miracle, along with its “twin“ where the 4000 are fed in the accounts of Matthew and Mark, is one of only three occasions in the New Testament where Jesus gives thanks to the Father. The Greek word used for giving thanks is eucharisteo, and Jesus uses it when He feeds the multitude, when He thanks His Father for always hearing His prayers at the raising of Lazarus, and at the last supper, when He gave thanks for the bread and wine.

Eucharisteo: We use the same Greek word ourselves when we remember the cross at the Eucharist, and for me, this is the key to understanding much of the significance of this miracle. Andrew looked at the loaves and fishes with eyes of flesh and asked: “What is this among so many?”, but Jesus looked with the eyes of the spirit and saw the riches in glory that would meet the need of the multitude above all that the disciples could ask or imagine. He could see the limitless creative powers of heaven, and He knew that “all that the father has is mine,” (John 16:15) so it is no surprise that John’s account of the miracle tells us that “He himself knew what He would do.” (John 6:6)

In everything give thanks
In his letter to the Philippians, Paul exhorts us to “be anxious for nothing, but in everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God.“ (Philippians 4:6) We know that Jesus had direct access to the Father’s provision because of who He was, and there are no barriers to our faith in that regard. But it is much harder to believe that we have the same access to that provision, because we know who we are as well. We can, and do, believe that Christ dwells in our hearts through faith, that in Him we are seated in heavenly places, and that all things are possible through Him; but we also know that we have only experienced the boy’s family picnic when faced with a multitude, and not the feast.

When Jesus gave thanks at the feeding of the 5000, I don’t think He was thanking His Father for the loaves and fishes in His hand, but for the provision that was in heaven. Demonstrating what He told His disciples in Mark 11:24, He believed He had received it, gave thanks for it, and it was done for Him. His Father passed the food to Jesus, and He passed it to the disciples to give out.

God wants us to give thanks in everything. Whether we are faced with abundance or lack, and whether or not we are petitioning heaven for something, we are to be thankful at all times. Paul expresses this sentiment in his letter to the Romans:

“… He who eats, eats to the Lord, for he gives God thanks; and He who does not eat, to the Lord he does not eat, and gives God thanks. For none of us lives to himself, and none of us die himself. So if we live, we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord. Therefore, whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s.” (Romans 14:6–8).

Our Inheritance
As I have mentioned, the only occasion outside of feeding the multitudes and giving thanks for the bread and the wine at the last supper, was when Jesus thanked the Father for hearing Him at the raising of Lazarus. His Eucharist there was more about His relationship with the Father than what He was about to do. Our constant thanksgiving to God is not for what we do or don’t eat – or do, or receive -, but it’s for a relationship with Him which we can indeed be thankful for in all things. We can be thankful to Jesus every moment of the day for the fact that we are His, and what we have is His. But more than that, amazingly, what He has is also ours:

“And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham‘s seed, and heirs according to the promise.”(Galatians 3:19)

“And because you are sons God has sent forth the spirit of His son into your hearts, crying out, “Abba, Father!“ Therefore you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son than an heir of God through Christ.” (Galatians 4:6–7)

We are heirs of God through Christ. We have an inheritance to be forever thankful for. Just as everything that the Father has belongs to Jesus, everything that Jesus has is ours in Him. Of course this does not mean that my neighbour’s house, or wife, or goods belong to me because they are His: the key phrase is “in Him.” “In Jesus name” is not just a phrase that turns a request into a prayer, but it’s the declaration that what we are asking for in prayer is something that we are requesting on His behalf because He has told us that He wants us to have it, whether it’s to accomplish His Kingdom purposes through us or for us. Whatever we are doing, we have an inheritance to be thankful for, and which is at our disposal all the time we are walking alongside Him. What is His is ours. If I am sitting at the dinner table with my wife and I ask her to pass the salt, she is not going to question my action: the salt on the table is a shared possession. Of course she is going to let me have it.

Paul makes this clear in his first letter to the Corinthians:

“Therefore let no one boast in men. For all things are yours. Whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come – all are yours. And you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.” (1 Corinthians 3:21-23)

Just as Jesus is the transition from earth to heaven for our spirits, He is also the transition for us from heaven to earth for our inheritance. So whatever the loaves and fishes or the starving crowd may represent, what do we have available to meet the need? Jesus can make our lack into His abundance if we remember to thank Him for our inheritance. Pass the salt, please, Lord. Thank You.

Knowing God, Living by Faith

The name of the Lord is a strong tower.

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“The name of the Lord is a strong tower; the righteous run into it and are safe.” (Proverbs 18:10)

I am not someone who likes to do “actions“ with songs in church, and this proverb is the chorus of a song (“Blessed be the name of the Lord“ by Clinton Utterbach) that is often used (in the UK at least) to get a congregation – particularly children – engaged in praise. Personally, I like to think about the words as I’m singing them, and I can’t do that if I’m running on the spot and waving my arms about, but I guess that’s just me. And there’s actually some great stuff to think about here.

The lyrics of the chorus are slightly different from the proverb. The lyrics are “the righteous run into it and they are saved,“ but the proverb tells us that the righteous run into it and are safe. It’s the word “safe” that struck me when I looked it up. It doesn’t just mean in a place of safety, nor is it specifically just “rescued.” The Hebrew word śāḡaḇ means “too high for capture.” The place of safety isn’t created by the walls, but by the elevation. The person who runs into this strong tower is lifted to a place that is inaccessible to the enemy. And if we know Ephesians 2:6 we know that the place where we have been raised up to is together with Christ in heavenly places. When we are raised up in the spirit, we are inaccessible to the enemy.

I have also just been reading the prayer of Jabez, which is in 1 Chronicles 4:10. He prayed “Oh that you would bless me indeed, and enlarge my territory, that your hand would be with me, and that you would keep me from evil, that I may not cause pain!“ When we pray the Lord‘s prayer, we also ask Him to deliver us from evil. I don’t know about you, but I’ve always thought of this in terms of keeping me safe so that evil things don’t happen to me. Jabez isn’t praying selfishly here: he turns it round to say “keep me safe from evil so that I don’t bring it upon anybody else.” If we bring this reflection to our safety in the name of the Lord, we get an added dimension to the proverb: when we run to the place of safety, the people around us are also protected from any pain that the enemy would seek to cause through us.

So how do we run into the name of the Lord? As I have said elsewhere, (and not just me of course!) to be “in the name” of Jesus isn’t just about a position of faith, but it’s about where we are putting our feet in actuality. The name of the Lord isn’t just what we call him, but it’s who He is, and to be in His name we have to be true to Him. If we have spent the day following our own selfish desires we can hardly expect to pray “in the name of Jesus” at the end of it, because we haven’t been in His strong tower; we have walked after the flesh and not after the spirit, by sight and not by faith. It’s the righteous who run into the strong tower: righteousness is only ours by faith, and “all that is not of faith is sin.” (Romans 14:23).

So when we are walking by faith we are lifted into the heavenly tower of the name of Jesus, out of reach of the enemy who has no access to our spirits, and a blessing, not a danger, to those around us.  Where are you today? Are you up in His strong tower? If not, start running, before anybody gets hurt.

Holiness: You shall be perfect, Knowing God

I Will Build My Church

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The Kingdom Of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness peace and joy in the Holy Spirit (Romans 14:17)

I woke up this morning singing a song we had in church on Sunday:
“Father let Your kingdom come,
Father let Your will be done,
On earth as in heaven,
Right here in my heart.“

It is, of course, one of several settings to music of the Lord’s prayer, and it’s one of my favourites. But it’s got me thinking about the Kingdom Of God (never a bad thing) and how we perceive it. In particular, I’m thinking about our experience of the Kingdom In our church situations, and the relationship between the two. If you are feeling at all disappointed in, critical of, or hurt by what’s going on in your church at the moment, then this is for you. That probably means all of us at some time or another.

We can all get lost in our own imaginings of what the Kingdom Of God is like in heaven, but what do we know about the Kingdom Of God on earth? We know it is within us, we know that it’s eternal, we know it’s wherever we see the rule and reign of the Lord Jesus manifested, and we know it’s “righteousness peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.” if we think about the rule and reign of Jesus in the light of John 10:10, we know that the kingdom is manifested when we see the works of the enemy destroyed and life in abundance established. And if we think of the heart’s desire of the King himself, we have to land on John 17:21 and His prayer in Gethsemane that “That they all shall be one, just as you, my Father, are in me, and I am in you, so that they also shall be one in us.”

Paul is clear about the ultimate purpose of the church and how to attain it in Ephesians 4: 15-16, which is that “speaking the truth in love, (we) may grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ— from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.” When the body of Christ has attained this goal we will have become the answer to the Lord’s prayer in Gethsemane and to the Lord’s prayer that He gave us on the Mount of Olives: His kingdom will have come on earth.

Unfortunately, it can seem at times that some people in our churches are either writing chapter 7 of Ephesians, or have never read the epistle at all. The Holy Spirit reminds us in Isaiah 26:3 that “You will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in You.” To live in the good of this verse, we need to remember Matthew 6:33: “seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness,” whether we are finding it in church or not. Ephesians 4:3 tells us that we find the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace, so if we have peace in our hearts about our bonds with other members of the church, we know that we have done our part to maintain the unity of the spirit with them, and our hearts are prepared for the rule of the Kingdom of God.

The Ecclesia
Jesus is building His church in truth and love, because truth and love are who He is, and the church is His body on earth. My Church isn’t, but His church is. Where there is truth and love in the assembly of the saints we find His body, and when we are in truth and love we are part of it, whether we are in my church, your church, their church, or someone’s church on the other side of the world. Jesus said I will build My church, not My churches. Paul says we are one body, not many bodies (1 Cor 10:17), and that we are being “built together as a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.” (Ephesians 2:22) Peter says: “You also, as living stones, are being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices to God through Jesus Christ…(who) has become the chief cornerstone.” (1 Peter 2:5-7)

The word that is used for this building, the church, is ecclesia. In the Christian context, ecclesia refers to a gathering of believers called out from the daily concourse of society to worship God, but the prime meaning of the word refers to an assembly of people called out of their houses to convene at a meeting place for the purpose of deliberation. So there is an implication of government here: when we meet to worship God, we also assemble to administer the government of His Kingdom. In fact Psalm 149 reminds us that our praise is integral to establishing His rule on earth. When Jesus says that the gates of hell won’t prevail against His church, He is saying that the councils of the powers of darkness won’t prevail against the government that is on His shoulders.

The government of the cross
And here’s the thing: Isaiah ‘s prophecy (Isaiah 9:6) wasn’t just a metaphor: Jesus did, literally, carry the government of His kingdom on His shoulders, when He carried the cross to Calvary. When we carry our cross as Jesus instructed and genuinely die to self, we are also carrying His authority to rule. We are part of the governing ecclesia of His kingdom on earth. Neither the many churches in your city nor the 45,000 denominations on Earth today are meant to be little microcosms of the Church of Christ: they are simply parts of it. More than that, they are only parts of it where they reflect the life of Christ and the government of the cross.  And since, according to 1 Corinthians 13:13,  it’s faith, hope, and especially love, that are the only things that last forever (“remain” or “endure,” depending on your translation), they have to be the three elements that make up the DNA of the everlasting life of Christ. Alongside those three it’s the word of God that endures forever. The cross, the DNA of the life of Christ, and the word of God: if we want to find the ecclesia of Jesus where His kingdom is governed, this is what we look for.

What if we don’t find it, or if or own church seems to be missing the mark? This doesn’t mean we spend our lives in the ranks of the spiritually homeless. On the contrary, God puts us into imperfect fellowship to teach us how to love one another, and to prepare our hearts to be carriers of His Kingdom. Our churches are training grounds for the government of His ecclesia, whether we govern in our local church or not. We can’t cause growth of the body by speaking the truth in love if we have no-one to speak it to, no relationships in which to exercise Kingdom values, and no arteries where the life of Christ can flow.

I was in a meeting the other day when I sensed the Holy Spirit showing me that His church was like an orchestra, with different instruments scattered far and wide, but where all the instruments were in tune with each other, all eyes were on the conductor and everyone was playing the same piece of music. The prophetic word He was giving me was that He was changing the (musical) key to a higher pitch. In my spirit I found myself looking at a violin that was far away. Just at that moment I received a phone call from a friend who pastors a church in East Germany. Not a coincidence, I felt, but a confirmation of what the Lord was showing me about His church.  

Pillars and sandcastles
People are hurt and Churches fail or divide when they become houses of the government of man and not of the government of Jesus, building castles of sand instead of being built as living stones. The church at Philadelphia was clearly of the latter type, and Jesus makes this promise to those that would “hold fast to what they have:”

 “He who overcomes, I will make him a pillar in the temple of My God, and he shall go out no more. I will write on him the name of My God and the name of the city of My God, the New Jerusalem, which comes down out of heaven from My God. And I will write on him My new name.” (Revelation 3:12.)

This is the reward for those who belong to the ecclesia of Christ. By contrast, a sandcastle is recognisable by its turrets and not by its pillars, and in the turrets flags are sometimes planted, where men like to write their own names. When someone seems to be waving their flag in our faces, we don’t want to snatch it out of their hands, but we need to pray that they, and we, will be pillars in the temple of our God where He can write His own name on our lives. If someone tells us how to “eat and drink,” we respond with righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. Because a wave is coming when the sandcastles will be washed away, and only the pillars of the ecclesia will stand.

Knowing God, Pursuing Love

The kaleidoscope of liberty

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“Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” (2 Cor 3:17)
“You shall know the truth and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:32)

We are not just set free from our personal limitations or bondages: we are set free from the limitations of self and released into the understanding that we are one with God in Christ. Truth isn’t what you know; it is not wrapped up in knowledge. Truth will never be found in opinions, however well they are proven and however eloquently they are justified. Truth is a person who is the Way the Truth and the Life. Knowing the truth is knowing Jesus, and understanding that the greatest height and deepest layers of human knowledge are never more than one piece of coloured glass in a kaleidoscope, and cannot even begin to reach the dimension of truth that is only found in Jesus. If our God is the Truth, then truth is a heavenly commodity; we cannot find it through the evidence of science or even the insights of theology, because it exists beyond all things that pass away. Jesus, who is the Truth, tells us that Truth can only be revealed by the Holy Spirit whom we receive from God and whom the world cannot know:

“And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever—”the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you.”

 (John 14:16-17) Knowledge itself will pass away, as well as this world, and in that day all our truth will turn to ashes. But we can speak truth and we can know truth when we speak love and know love, for this is where the truth resides. When we speak the truth in love “we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ.” (Eph 4:15) It is when we love one another that we walk in the truth.

I feel that the Lord is saying this to the Church:

“You are my kaleidoscope. Each one of you is like one of those little pieces of coloured glass. I made you all different, to be different shapes and colours, so that my light can reflect off you in different ways. Just as the mirrors inside a kaleidoscope reflect images off each other to create the appearance of an infinite pattern, so it is that my light reflected off you is creating a pattern in the infinite dimensions of the spirit. As I move the kaleidoscope, so you are arranged differently and the pattern changes. Do not despise or judge those whose shape or colour is different from yours, for I created you that way in order to make my pattern with you. It is my pattern, not yours, and it is more wonderful and beautiful than you could ever imagine. When you love one another and are one with each other, my pattern emerges. When you stand alone in your opinion or ambition, or to fulfil the desires of your flesh or of your minds, you are not part of what I am doing and you create nothing. It is I who sees the pattern, not you; but when I choose to reveal it through you and in you the world will see and they will see me in it.

I am moving the kaleidoscope: some of you will find yourselves with new people in new situations, and they will not be like you. Love them and accept them, and always look to me knowing that I am creating a pattern that you cannot see. But a time is coming soon when it will indeed be visible and many more will come to know me because they will see what I am doing and will want to join themselves to the pattern that I am creating.”

Discipleship and witness, Prophesy and the prophetic

Water what’s fruitful; burn what’s dead.

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“I am the vine and you are the branches. He who abides in me and I him bears much fruit, for without me, you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in me, he has cast out as a Branch and is withered, and they gather them and throw them into the fire. If you abide in me and my words abide in you, you shall ask what you desire and it shall be done for you. By this, my father is glorified, that you very much fruit; so you will be my disciples.” (John 15:5 – 8).

I was in the garden a few weeks ago, burning rubbish in our garden incinerator in an enclosed area that used to be a chicken run. I had a hose pipe to hand in case any sparks jumped from the fire, and was directing it onto the roots of an apple tree on the other side of the enclosed area so that the water was doing something useful. I felt the Lord spoke to me quite clearly as I stepped back, away from the smoke for a moment. He said, “Water what is fruitful, burn what is dead.“ I took the above picture as a reminder to myself.

This is a time of transition. We have heard many times, and we know, that God is doing a new thing. So why do we persist in carrying on with our old ways? I wrote about making disciples in my last post. Jesus says that discipleship is this: abide in Him and let his words abide in us. What does this mean? I think it’s quite simple: Walk with him and do what he says. Forty years ago, before cars were computers on wheels, I rebuilt a car engine (a morris minor, if you remember them) from a DIY manual. You read the information and did what it said. It was tried and tested, and – unless you misread the instructions – it worked. For too long, we’ve been doing it ourselves in the church: repeating strategies that worked in a previous era in the hope that they will work for us today. But it’s time we threw away and burnt our DIY manuals and let Him build His church, because what He is doing today is not the same as it was 40 years ago.

I believe the Lord says:
 “You cry out to me to pour out my spirit and bring my anointing to what you do. But I will not pour my water on that which is cut off from me. I will not water your DIY efforts. Where is there life and growth in your church? Where is there life and growth in your family, in your marriage? Cry out to me for those areas, and I will water them. I will even water one little seedling, I will water a tree that only bears a single fruit. If it is growing, I will water it. Where there is love, I will water it. But I will not water a pile of dead branches, however big and impressive it is, however hard you’ve worked to assemble the pile, and however long it’s been there.

So burn what is dead, abide in me, listen for my word and do what I say. And I will watch over my word to perform it, and I will water what grows when my word springs forth through your obedience.”

Discipleship and witness, Walking in the Spirit

Being disciples; making disciples.

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We all know that Jesus calls us to “go and make disciples of all nations.“ Some of us obey the call geographically and go to other nations to make disciples; some of us find “the nations” in our own neighbourhood or workplace; some of us ignore the call altogether and leave it to the evangelist. But even if we don’t live in a mixed race neighbourhood and everybody at work was born in the same country as we were, our home country is still a nation, and we still have to “go” to it, and the purpose of “going” is to make disciples. So assuming we have “gone” with a willingness to share the gospel, how do we go about the business of discipleship?

“Follow me as I follow Christ,“ said Paul to the Corinthians. (1 Corinthians 11:1)  We can’t really expect to make committed disciples if our own discipleship is flabby and inconsistent. I don’t think it’s enough just to lead people through discipleship courses: the Holy Spirit has to be at work in and through the people leading the courses if the spirits of new believers are going to be impacted and their minds renewed. If we want new believers to grow to maturity and find their place in the Kingdom of God, we need to launch their walk with the power that they will eventually need to carry on without us and be discipling others themselves. The alternative is a church that is bloated with members but lacking in love and power – what Smith Wigglesworth called “leafy trees” that bear no fruit.

“Freely you have received, freely give,” said the Lord when he sent out the twelve. (Matthew 10:8) when we “go” to make disciples, we can only give what we have received ourselves.

In all your ways acknowledge Him
I found a key verse for discipleship in an unexpected place: proverbs 3:5. We all know it: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not upon your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will direct your paths” The first part of this verse tells us clearly where to place our trust, and it tends to be the one that is quoted the most often. But it’s the second part that caught my attention. The word translated – rather weakly, I feel – as “acknowledge,“ is yada. In Hebrew this is the word used for “knowing” in life-giving intimacy, as when Adam “knew” Eve. What the second part of Proverbs 3:5 says to me is that God will “direct our paths” when we take every step in intimate relationship with him. Following this, the word yasar, translated here as “direct“ our paths is the same word used in Isaiah 40:3 for “make straight” a highway in the desert.

The voice of one crying in the wilderness:
“Prepare the way of the LORD;
Make straight in the desert 
A highway for our God.”

When God is with us – not just notionally, but experientially – at every step, he won’t just be “directing” our paths in the sense of telling us where to go, but he will be ‘making them straight’ before us, clearing the ground and removing obstacles so that we can move forward with Him even though it may feel as if we are lost in the desert.

Zachariah 8:23 says this:

 “Thus says the Lord of hosts: In those days ten men from every language of the nations shall grasp the sleeve of a Jewish man, saying “let us go with you, for we have heard that the Lord is with you.”

It is when the men (and the women) of the nations know that the Lord is with us that they will want to “go with us.” Surely this is a picture of how we are to make disciples. As we walk closely with the Holy Spirit and He directs our paths, so we can direct the paths of others; not by weekly meetings following a discipleship course, but by walking alongside new believers who have joined themselves to us because they can see God at work in our lives. But there’s a health warning here, too, especially for people (like myself) who cherish their own space: when revival comes and we have ten people grasping our sleeves, we won’t have a lot of time for ourselves. Are we ready? Am I?

Christian Life, Walking in the Spirit

Those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength

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Have you not known?
Have you not heard?
The everlasting God, the LORD,
The Creator of the ends of the earth,
Neither faints nor is weary.
His understanding is unsearchable.

He gives power to the weak,
And to those who have no might He increases strength.

Even the youths shall faint and be weary,
And the young men shall utterly fall,

But those who wait on the LORD
Shall renew their strength;
They shall mount up with wings like eagles,
They shall run and not be weary,
They shall walk and not faint.

(Isaiah 40: 28-31)

I have always seen “waiting on the Lord” in the context of extended time frames: waiting for the Holy Spirit to show up in a worship service; waiting for an answer to prayer; waiting days or weeks for a word from God before making a decision. In addition, I have never thought deeply about running and not growing weary, or walking and not growing faint, although in my advancing years I certainly look longingly at those verses and hope they will apply to my physical state. Mounting on wings like eagles has been a  metaphor for growth, increase, victory, in fact any undefined superior state that can be attained under God’s blessing: the verse has never had a very practical application for me, just a rather undefined sense of promise that I can’t say I have often known to materialise outside of some worship services where “rising up” to a higher level of worship in the Spirit has been the goal. I have never applied the scripture to short term, immediate contexts.

Until today. When I was a child, my mother used to say to me “Bobby, you’re always rushing.“ (A word to the wise: if you know me, please do not call me Bobby!) It’s a character trait I’ve battled with (or maybe so much not battled as be driven by…) all my life. I’m a “fast adopter“ when it comes to decision-making; I tend to try to do things quickly so I can finish them rather than aim for thoroughness ; I seem to miss significant details on the few occasions when I’m trying to think things through, and – probably most importantly – I tend to say the first thing that comes into my head in conversation without really checking if it’s coming from a positive or a negative place. This is at age 74, after more than 40 years of being a Christian, when I really should know better. Not much about me seems to have slowed down except my body.

But this morning I saw these verses differently. It was in an all too familiar context, where I had gone into something without giving it sufficient forethought, when I realised that “waiting on the Lord“ can also mean waiting for as short a time as a few seconds for my flesh to die and “the wisdom from above” to rule my thinking before responding to words or circumstances. And then I saw the rest of the scripture. Mounting on Eagles wings takes me into the heavenly places where my new man is seated in Christ, where I can draw on all I have been given in the Spirit. When I do this, I renew my strength in the Lord. I can “walk worthy of my calling” (Eph 4:1) and “not grow weary of doing good.“ (Galatians 6:9). I can “run with perseverance to race marked out for us,“ not growing faint, but “fixing my eyes on Jesus the author and finisher of my faith.“ (Hebrews 12:1–2)

When we “mount up with wings like eagles” we take our place in the Spirit, in the Lord who “neither faints nor is weary.” We don’t grow faint or weary because He doesn’t, and we are in Him. Out of His unsearchable understanding comes the wisdom we need, “the wisdom from above,” which is “ first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy. (James 3:17). In our weakness we are strong. (2 Cor 12:10)

Verse 30 says this:
“Even the youths shall faint and be weary,
And the young men shall utterly fall…”

I have always seen this verse as a dramatic contrast with the favourable consequences of waiting on the lord in the rather woolly sense that I have always understood it, but now I understand it more as a contrast between walking ( or running) after the flesh, which always leads to failure, and walking in the Spirit. “Waiting on the Lord” becomes taking the time to step  into the Spirit  – or as Graham Cooke calls it, to “step back into the Lord” – to receive all that there is for our situation from where we are seated in Christ in heavenly places. Yes, we need to wait for Him in our meetings if we want to see the power of God move and His Presence fall. Yes, we need to wait in faith for Him to answer our prayers. But, and just as importantly, we need to wait for Him in the dynamic of our daily walk with God if we want to walk after the Spirit and not after the flesh.

In the light of this, the urgency of psalm 27:14 takes on a new meaning:

“Wait on the LORD;
Be of good courage,
And He shall strengthen your heart;
Wait, I say, on the LORD!”

Let’s do it. It appears to be a recommended route to victory in Christ.

Knowing God, The word of God, Walking in the Spirit

Understanding the Sabbath: Peace in Christ

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“He Himself is our peace.” (Eph 2:14)

“For this reason the Jews persecuted Jesus, and sought to kill Him, because He had done these things on the Sabbath.” (John 5:16)

There is a lot more to the Sabbath law than observance of the fourth commandment, which instructed the Jews to “Remember the Sabbath Day, and keep it holy.” Just as Jesus’s “work” on the Sabbath was emblematic to the Jews of His disrespect for the whole of the Old Covenant law, the sabbath itself looks forward to the New Covenant in His blood that sets us free from condemnation under the Law and into the peace of His Sabbath rest.

The Bible tells us: “And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.” (Genesis 2:2-3) The new testament adds another layer to the Creation account: the specific involvement of Jesus in the work of creation.

“For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him.” (Col 1:16) “All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.” (John 1:3) God rested from his work on the Sabbath, or the seventh day, so the Sabbath was instituted. But it wasn’t only the Father who rested: the Son rested too.

A way of life, not just an observance
God rested when the work of creation was finished. And He rested again when the work of the new creation was finished on the cross. When God blessed the sabbath day and sanctified it under the old covenant, He was looking forward to the time when, in Jesus, His rest would be a way of life, not just an observance. But in the era of the Old Covenant also, God’s rest extended beyond the seventh day. The writer to the Hebrews says:  “To whom did He swear that they would not enter His rest, but to those who did not obey?” (Heb 3:18) For the rebellious Hebrews, who “did not enter because of unbelief,” (Heb. 3:19) entering God’s rest equated to entering the Promised Land, where they would find rest from the toil of slavery.

Just as Canaan represented God’s rest for the Israelites, we enter our rest in Christ when we believe in His promises to us, or as Hebrews 3:14 puts it, “if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast to the end.” The Greek word used for God’s rest is “katapausis,” which means “a calming of the winds.” Katapausis Is the spiritual atmosphere of Heaven. Jesus tells us “My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you” (John 14:7), and when we walk in His peace we walk in the atmosphere of Heaven and find “rest for our souls.” (Matt. 11:29). All the winds are calm, because – as Jesus physically demonstrated – it is He who calms the storm.  As every Christian knows, He famously said, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” (Mark 2:27). God gave us the Sabbath to enshrine in His Law that we need to enter His rest, not that we need to stop working every seven days.

Finished – but still working
Two notions that seem to be at odds with each other are that “God finished His work” on the seventh day, and the words of Jesus to the Pharisees when they confronted Him over healing the man at the pool: “My Father has been working until now, and I have been working.” (John 4:17) What is the difference between the work that the Father and the Son finished on the seventh day, and the work that they were – and still are – continuing to do?

I think the answer lies in the fact that creation was perfected on the seventh day, so all of God’s dealings with Man – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – from then on were from His place of rest. Whether it was Christ’s miracles of healing and deliverance, God’s victories in the reign of David and many other heroes, or His repeated call to His errant people through His prophets to return to Him, the focus of God’s work has always been to restore His people to their Sabbath state of wholeness and relationship with Him. The lame man was healed on the Sabbath so the he could walk in the wholeness that the Sabbath represents. Just as the first creation was finished on the Sabbath day, so the new creation was perfected when Jesus cried out from the cross “It is finished!” And so the writer to the Hebrews says: “We who have believed into that rest.” (Hebrews 4:3) Through faith in the redeeming blood of Jesus that was shed on the Cross, we become “the righteousness of God in Him,” (2 Cor 5:21) and enter into the perfection of God’s rest.

“True righteousness and holiness.”
This perfect state is the condition of the new man, “which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness.”  (Eph 4:24) Peter exhorts us to  “be diligent to be found by Him in peace, without spot and blameless,” (2 Pe 3: 13) while Hebrews 4:9-11 says “There remains therefore a rest for the people of God. For he who has entered His rest has himself also ceased from his works as God did from His. Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest, lest anyone fall according to the same example of disobedience.” The peace of His sabbath rest is the gift of God’s grace through Jesus, yet two new testament writers exhort us to be diligent to “enter” that gift. So while we cannot earn God’s peace by our religious works, we need to “work” at keeping a short account of sin in our lives (“without spot and blameless”) and “work” at remembering who we are in Christ, what He has purchased for us, and that “The Spirit of God, who raised Jesus from the dead, lives in you.” So rest does not come without some effort (Romans 8:11), but if we are diligent to keep these truths foremost in our thinking we will walk away from the paralysis of religion and into God’s rest.

Only in that place we can really access everything that is our promised inheritance in Christ.

(The topic of “entering into God’s rest” is also explored in “Walking in Newness of Life.”)