Category Archives: Christian Life

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

Knowing God, The word of God

The Tree of Judgement

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And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”… And the LORD God said, “It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him. And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam, and he slept; and He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh in its place. Then the rib which the LORD God had taken from man He made into a woman, and He brought her to the man. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed…Then the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings.” (Gen 2: 16-18,  21-22,  25, Gen 3: 4-5, 7)

The healing at the Pool of Siloam wasn’t the first time a man’s eyes were opened.

When I revisted the account of creation recently I was struck by the significance of the forbidden fruit and of what happened when mankind succumbed to Satan’s temptation. I’m not thinking of the general consequences of the Fall in terms of sin and all its implications, but specifically of how we use the fruit that we ate: the knowledge of good and evil. Jesus commanded “Judge not, lest ye be judged.” (Matthew 7:1) In this article I would like to explore the idea that every every time we judge another person we are taking another bite of that fruit, and at the same time putting ourselves under judgement just as Adam and Eve did in the garden of Eden.

Judgement arises from the knowledge of good and evil, which is the forbidden fruit. Before the first man and his wife ate of the fruit, they were allowed access to the tree of life, but not the tree of knowledge of good and evil. We often call that tree “the tree of knowledge,” but we must never forget that its name does not refer to knowledge of information, but to the understanding of right and wrong that brings judgement and shame. In many ways we could call it The Tree of Judgement. We could have life without judgement, but judgement and life we cannot have.    I am not suggesting here that we do not attempt to discern between right and wrong: on the contrary scripture teaches that we “test all things, and hold fast what is right.” (1 Thessalonians 5:21) But to prove what is right – what is the “good and acceptable and perfect will of God,” we need to approach all things with renewed minds, minds that have been “washed with water by the word,” and cleansed of the natural, carnal judgement that infected our thinking in Eden. (Romans 12:2; Ephesians 5:26) The creation account continues:The creation account continues:

And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden. Then the LORD God called to Adam and said to him, “Where are you?” So he said, “I heard Your voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself.” And He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you that you should not eat?” (Gen 3: 8-11)

Judgement started the rot
I’m not a trained theologian, so I don’t know how this sits with those who are; but it seems to me that it wasn’t actually sin that initially separated us from the presence of God, but the judgement that Adam brought upon himself because he had eaten the fruit. God actually spoke the curse afterwards and drove man out of the garden to make the separation permanent, and the consequences have followed ever since: because of our disobedience, the whole of creation was brought under “the bondage of corruption.” (Romans 8:21) But it was judgement that started the rot.

When sin entered the world, God barred access to the Tree of Life, but in Christ access is restored and for the new creation everlasting life is again our inheritance. Ultimately “the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.” (Romans 8:21) When Satan tempted Jesus in the wilderness he obviously thought he could do the same to the second Adam as he did to the first. Because the enemy hoped to see humankind banished forever from the tree of life, I think there may be more than just a scriptural refutation of the tempter’s words when Jesus says to him “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” I think He is also implying something like this: “Man can live, Satan. You thought you’d killed him off at the tree of judgement, but my words are the fruit of the tree of life, and whoever eats them will live forever.”

Cancel Culture
“What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun,” wrote Solomon (Ecclesiastes 1:9). We may think that judgement has reached new depths of depravity in today’s cancel culture, but the Pharisees cancelled the man born blind when they threw him out of the synagogue 2000 years ago. Jesus said “for judgement I have come into this world, that those who do not see may see, and that those who see may be made blind,” (John 9:39) echoing the prophesy of Isaiah recorded in Isaiah 11 3-4:

“His delight is in the fear of the LORD,
And He shall not judge by the sight of His eyes,
Nor decide by the hearing of His ears;
But with righteousness He shall judge the poor,
And decide with equity for the meek of the earth;”

Jesus makes this very plain to the Pharisees, and therefore to the church, when He says to them “Do not judge according to appearances, but judge with righteous judgement.” (John 7:24) Every time we speak our own judgement over someone (including ourselves) because “the sight of our eyes” tells us that they are naked, we are cancelling something of who they are and are cutting ourselves off from the tree of life; but every time we feed on the words of Jesus and “judge with righteous judgement” we are bringing the fruit of Life into our relationships. “Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruit.” (Proverbs 18:21)

Do we “delight in the fear of the Lord,“ or do we let the first words that come into our minds trip off our tongue when we disapprove of something that another person has done (and usually those other people are the ones who are closest to us)? In Christ, the fear of the Lord will always be our delight, and we will eat from His tree; but if we listen to the voice of our flesh, the chances are we will be standing by the tree of judgement and, as God said to Cain, sin will be crouching at the door and we will need to have mastery over it (see Genesis 4:7).

The choice that Moses put before the Israelites is the choice that God puts before us every time we are tempted to judge:

“I have set before your life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that you and your descendants may live.” (Deuteronomy 30:19)

Knowing God, Living by Faith, The word of God

Who are you?

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The Caterpillar and Alice looked at each other for some time in silence: at last the Caterpillar took the hookah out of its mouth, and addressed her in a languid, sleepy voice.
“Who are you?” said the Caterpillar.
This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. Alice replied, rather shyly, “I—I hardly know, sir, just at present—at least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.”
“What do you mean by that?” said the Caterpillar sternly. “Explain yourself!”
“I can’t explain myself, I’m afraid, sir,” said Alice, “because I’m not myself, you see.” (Alice in Wonderland, chapter 5)

“You are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son, then an heir of  God through Christ.” (Galatians 4:17)

I wonder how many people I’ve been today? Alice’s conversation with the caterpillar is justly famous because it addresses the perennial issue of identity. The image of the blue caterpillar blowing smoke-rings from his hookah was a popular one in the hippie culture of the 1970s (and later) when so many young people set out on a journey to “find themselves,” whether through drugs, sex, Eastern mysticism or whatever route seemed to present itself. Many found Jesus in the Jesus Movement, many got irretrievably lost, and many more, like me, never completely lost sight of mainstream society and found our place there before wandering too far. However we got here and wherever we may have looked in the past, those of us who are now in Christ have one identity: we are all “sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus.” (Gal 3:26) This is the reality of who we are in the Spirit. Each one of us has it engraved into our seat in heavenly places. As we live out our lives on earth, however, who we are can be as baseless and unpredictable as the caterpillar’s smoke rings. At different points in the day we may be tantrumming toddlers, moody teenagers, or grumpy old men (or women). Maybe that only applies to me, of course… But to walk in the spiritual authority that is our inheritance we need to be the people who carry that authority, the children of the Most HighGod: more heavenly seat; less smoke rings.

This is what Paul says to the Galatians:
“For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.” (Gal 3: 26-29)

Heirs according to the Promise. These are such big ideas, and they are so often repeated, that it’s easy to read them without their meaning penetrating our hearts. What do we inherit? What was promised, and how does that impact our perception of what it means to be “sons of God?”

What God covenanted to Abraham was land, many descendants, and great blessing. (See Genesis 12) These are the three pillars of the earthly covenant between God and the nation that came from Abraham – the people of Israel – which He later ratified through the Law. The covenant told the people who they were:

“ You are a holy people to the LORD your God; the LORD your God has chosen you to be a people for Himself, a special treasure above all the peoples on the face of the earth,” and it told them who He was: “He is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and mercy for a thousand generations with those who love Him and keep His commandments;” (Deuteronomy 7: 6,9)

On one hand their worship and their adherence to the Law constantly reminded the people of Israel of their identity and their destiny as a people chosen and set apart by God; and on the other hand their continued failure to keep this covenant as they mingled with the people of the surrounding nations and adopted their ways ultimately stripped them of their identity and lost them their inheritance.

The New Covenant
But God never lost sight of having a covenant people of His own, and when Jesus came He “obtained a more excellent ministry, inasmuch as He is also Mediator of a better covenant, which was established on better promises.” (Heb 8:6) In

Jeremiah tells us how the new covenant would be better than the old:

“Behold, the days are coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah— not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says the LORD But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. No more shall every man teach his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.” (Jer 31 31-34)

The old covenant depended on human ability and willingness to keep the Law, and was broken because of human frailness. It revealed the inevitability of sin, the holiness of God, and above all our need for His grace – the grace that He would show by sending Jesus. The new covenant doesn’t depend on our fickle hearts and selfish ways, but on God’s faithfulness and mercy, forgiving our iniquity and forgetting our sins:

“For this is My blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many for the remission of sins. (Matt 26:28)

The Hebrew men had the sign of the old covenant cut into their flesh, and the law was written on tablets of stone. It reminded them of who they were. The new covenant was cut into the flesh of the Son of God on our behalf, and His law is written on our hearts. As much as circumcision reminded (and still reminds) the Jew of his identity every day, the new covenant cut into Christ’s flesh, and the covenant celebration of bread and wine which we take to identify with His sacrifice, reminds us who we are. And because it does not depend on our righteousness, but His; and not on our faithfulness, but His, we know that this precious identity is secure. He will not fail to keep His covenant.

The Household of God
In Christ, we are Abraham’s seed, and so the terms of the original covenant still apply; but now “The Promise of the Father” (Luke 24:49) comes to us directly by the Holy Spirit, and the pillars of the covenant are heavenly rather than earthly: our “land” is the Kingdom of God; the many descendants that we are among is the expanding church of Christ, and the blessing on our lives is the very presence and the provision of our God who “shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 4:19) A verse that has impacted me personally just lately is Ephesians 2:19, where Paul tells us that we “are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God.” Not only are we citizens of the Kingdom of God, and therefore have access to all the benefits of that citizenship; but we are members of God’s household. It’s not possible to be any closer to someone than to be part of their household.

Paul wrote “When the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. 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, then an heir of  God through Christ. (Galatians 4:4-7). However it is that we experience the indwelling Holy Spirit, whether we are praying in tongues, sensing Him illuminate a Bible verse (as He did for me with Ephesians 2:19), receiving or giving a prophetic word, being awestruck by His timing,  getting a “nudge” that you know is His prompting, or simply being overwhelmed by His love, it’s a reminder of our sonship; it’s Christ in us affirming our relationship with His, and our, Heavenly Father. This is our promised inheritance. The seats in heavenly places that are ours have been reserved for members of His household. The enemy will do all he can to get us out of our seats by telling us that we don’t fit, that we have been excluded or passed over, that we need to do more to earn our place, that we aren’t “spiritual” enough or don’t qualify for some other reason, or simply that someone doesn’t like us – any of these, and many more, can cause us to lose that sense of sonship and the authority that it carries. They are all lies: the blood of the new covenant and the Holy Spirit within us say that we are members of the household of God, and we belong. And because we belong, we are seated in a place of authority.

Discipleship and witness, Holiness: You shall be perfect, Living by Faith, Walking in the Spirit

Seated in Heavenly Places

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“But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.” (Ephesians 2: 4-7)

It’s easy enough to read these words and tell ourselves that we believe them, but speaking personally, I wonder how much I really understand what it is to be seated in heavenly places when I don’t even know what they look like? Paul had been there (see 2 Cor 12: 2-4), and I have friends who have had visions of them, but so far that hasn’t been part of my walk with Jesus. But Jesus said to Thomas: “Because you have seen me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed,” so that tells me that those of us (i.e. most of the Body of Christ) who haven’t had any visionary experience of heavenly places, can be blessed in our lack of experience just as we are blessed with eternal life by believing in the Saviour that we haven’t seen. So my question is this: if I am blessed for believing what I haven’t seen, how do I live out of that blessing? Among other things, being seated in heavenly places is our position of spiritual authority, and that is my focus here, because the devil will do all he can to get us out of our seats in the spirit and running around, weakened, in the flesh. Here are three keys that may help us to stay in our seats. I plan to post some more in future articles.

Remain in the atmosphere of worship.
If we know one thing about heaven it is that it rings with worship. When John first looked through the door into heaven and beheld “a throne set in heaven, and One sat on the throne,” (Rev 4:2) the scene before him is ablaze with the beauty of the Lord and resounds with unending worship:

“The four living creatures, each having six wings, were full of eyes around and within. And they do not rest day or night, saying:
“Holy, holy, holy,
Lord God Almighty,
Who was and is and is to come!” (Rev 4:8)

Heavenly places echo with constant worship, so we too must keep our hearts tuned to this atmosphere. As we know, God is looking for true worshippers: “The hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him.“(John 4:23) However this isn’t easy, as we know. But I think Paul gives us some help here:  his exhortation to the Thessalonians to “give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” (1 Thess 5:18) is a reminder to remain thankful for the wonder of our salvation and the abundance of God’s mercy in lifting us into those heavenly places, whatever may be happening around us. Whatever we are doing, we can always seek God’s face in the midst of it: “When You said, “Seek My face,” My heart said to You, “Your face, LORD, I will seek.” (Psalm 27:8) If we seek His presence we will find it (Matthew 7:7), and when we do, our hearts will be stirred to worship, on earth as it is in heaven. It was “because of His great love with which He loved us” that God “made us alive together with Christ,” so that He could have us in His presence and we could share the wonders of heaven with Him. We have been lifted there because God wants us with him. I have a precious pair of pictures of my son-in-law with my 4-year old grandson. In the first picture, he is standing behind his son, with his arms outstretched, but the little boy is looking in the other direction and is unaware of what is about to happen. In the next picture, he has been scooped up, and his happy face is close to the smiling countenance of his loving dad. The God of the Universe, in all His glory and majesty, has scooped us up because He wanted us close to Him. If we can keep our hearts aligned with this truth I think the rest will follow; and spiritual authority, alongside the capacity to love, will become a reality in our lives. (Eph. 2:4-5) God doesn’t need our thanks: giving thanks in all circumstances is for our benefit, not His.

Maintain holiness and consecration.
Heaven is a holy place. Jesus has qualified us to be there, but He wants us to take what we have been given in heaven and bring it to earth. As well as keeping our flame of worship alive, we need to keep our mind renewed and empty of carnality and selfish ambition. Talking of those “by nature children of wrath,” Paul writes “among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, … just as the others.” (Ephesians 2:3) How much of our thought life and activity revolves round gratifying the flesh? In Christ we “walk after the spirit and not after the flesh,” but it’s also true that “the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another.”(Gal 5:17) Suffice to say that there is a battle going on, and we can’t expect to be spiritual without being vigilant.

So why focus particularly on “selfish ambition?” Because Satan’s selfish ambition brought about his downfall and consequently introduced sin into the world, by tempting man with the thought that he, too, could “be like God, knowing good from evil.” (Genesis 3:5) Satan’s selfish ambition became Man’s: it is at the very root  of all sin. James writes: “Where jealousy and selfish ambition exists, there will be disorder and every vile practice,” (James 3:16) and Paul teaches us to ”Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves.” (Phil 2:3)

King Jesus, the Lord of Lords, was “meek and humble of heart.” Philippians 2:3 tells us that our pathway to this humility is not to try to fight a battle against conceit in our heads, but quite simply to make a practice of putting the interests of others before our own. When we are unselfishly loving others we are pulling up roots of sin in our own hearts. Holiness and consecration are a consequence of a decision to love instead of being the lofty goal of a priestly lifestyle, and love begins with humility. Peter writes, “Love covers a multitude of sin.” (1 Pe 4:8) Not only does our loving forgiveness of others cover the sin in their lives, just as Christ’s forgiveness covers ours, but it also covers “a multitude of sin” in our own hearts so that we can indeed “be holy, just as I am holy.” (1 Pe 1:16)

It’s notable that Paul partners “selfish ambition” with “vain conceit.” They have the same root of pride: both exalt self. Conceit tells me that I am better than others, and ambition makes a career path out of that belief. Since it was selfish ambition that caused Satan to be cast out of heaven, we can’t sit in heavenly places with any in our hearts.

Stay free of condemnation.
We are blameless before Him; His adopted sons. We know the scripture, of course: “there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.” But knowing the words doesn’t always mean we know the truth in our hearts, and many of us can be all too ready to listen to the enemy when he whispers condemnation over us, because it’s an area where he has often started building strongholds during childhood. A “naughty” child becoming a rebellious teenager who comes to faith in their early 20’s can carry a lot of baggage into the Kingdom, and it’s not always easy to leave at the cross – until we grasp the dimensions of Christ’s sacrifice measured against our condemnation. Paul writes:

“Who can lay a charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, Who also makes intercession for us.” (Romans 8:33–34).

If we measure a pebble against Mount Everest, even that is not enough to even begin measuring the value of God’s gift to us against the weight – or lack of it – of condemnation that the enemy would try and lay on our shoulders. What is the devil’s pebble against us when we have a mountain of freedom in Christ? Who can lay a charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Hebrews 12:2 says “Jesus endured the cross, despising the shame, for the joy set before Him.” If our Jesus despised Calvary’s mountain of shame, who are we to catch and carry the pebbles that the devil tosses in our direction? “He who believes in Him will not be put to shame.” (Romans 10:11, 1 Pe 2:6)

Condemnation that hurts us is only part of the picture, however, because “out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.” (Luke 6:45) If we feel condemned in ourselves, we will be prone to condemning others. If we can truly walk in the freedom that Christ has given us in this area, we will be less likely to be judgemental of others; less likely to be open to the enemy using us to put other people to shame. Even when we work at not allowing the critical words to be formed on our lips, what is in our hearts will always leak out. If there is no shame in our own hearts, there will be none to spill over others.

I want to look at one more aspect of this topic before we leave it. Paul writes “I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God to salvation to everyone who believes.” (Romans 1:16) If we are vulnerable to condemnation and the shame that it brings, it will affect our witness: if we are ashamed of ourselves, we will also be ashamed of the gospel. If we are confident in who we are in Christ, we will be more likely to be confident in sharing what He has done for us. I think this makes it one of Satan’s favoured weapons against God’s people: if there is one thing he must want more than just about anything else, it is to close down our effectiveness in sharing the victory of Calvary. We need to keep in mind the words of Jesus to the woman caught in adultery: “Woman, where are those accusers of yours?  Has no one condemned you?” She said, “No one, Lord.” And Jesus said to her, “Neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more.” (John 8:10-11) There is no condemnation in Christ Jesus; there is no condemnation in heavenly places.

Where we are seated in the Spirit is our place of authority. The devil works hard at trying to make us get up out of our seats: we mustn’t let him.

Next: our sonship, not our business card.

Christian Life, Walking in the Spirit

Bone of my Bones: Headship in the Church

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“And the LORD God said, “It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him.” Out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them. And whatever Adam called each living creature, that was its name. So Adam gave names to all cattle, to the birds of the air, and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper comparable to him. And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam, and he slept; and He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh in its place. Then the rib which the LORD God had taken from man He made into a woman, and He brought her to the man. And Adam said:

“This is now bone of my bones
And flesh of my flesh;
She shall be called Woman,
Because she was taken out of Man.”

Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.” (Genesis 2:18-25 NKJV)

“To the woman He said…Your desire shall be for your husband,
And he shall rule over you.” (Gen 3:16 NKJV)

I’m going to jump straight in here. Is headship, particularly in the church, exclusively the province of the men, or can headship – and especially church eldership – be female as well? As we know, opinions are divided. The following opinion is mine. I think it’s an important topic at the moment, because if Smith Wigglesworth’s 1947 prophesy is true, the move of God that is coming on the earth is going to be unlike anything seen before. And I don’t think the Holy Spirit was just talking about the scope of the revival as it spreads worldwide; I think He was also referring to what the church in revival will look like. It’s going to be different.

So what does it look like now? As far as we can see, the elders of the early church were all men, and Paul’s teaching on the place of women in the church certainly seems to put them below men in the hierarchy. He says to the Corinthians that women should “Keep silent in the churches,” (1 Cor 14:34), and teaches that “the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God.” (1 Cor 11:3) In my experience at least, women are not expected to keep silent in church any more, any more than they are generally expected to cover their heads (although there are exceptions): the societal norms of the first century don’t apply today. More difficult to dismiss is the “headship hierarchy” that Paul gives: God over Christ, Christ over man, man over woman. Many (but again, not all) evangelical denominations hold to the “complementarian” view that men and women are equal before God in value and worth, but have distinct roles in the home and church, one of which is the role of headship that falls to the man.

The previous verse says this: “Now I praise you, brethren, that you remember me in all things and keep the traditions just as I delivered them to you.” The word translated here as “traditions” (Greek paradosis, if you are interested) is literally rendered as “ordinances,” and was used particularly to describe the body of precepts that illustrated and expanded the written law particularly as it applied  to ritual. Strong’s defines the word as “transmission, i.e. (concretely) a precept; specially, the Jewish traditionary law:—ordinance, tradition.” (Strong’s G3862) Paul was establishing a new culture in a society of Roman licentiousness and temple prostitution, where women without a head covering were communicating a message of sexual availability; where women drawing attention to themselves by speaking out in public again signalled a desire to be noticed for more than just their words.

Paul was a Pharisee, a passionate keeper and self-appointed guardian of the Law, who had had a life-changing encounter with Christ, the fulfilment of the Law. He had exchanged his vision of the law for his vision of Christ, but he still would have had some of the ways of of a pharisee: his intention was that the church of Christ should not be brought into disrepute in the society of his day, and I imagine he would have given weight to the “traditions” he delivered because of the importance of tradition in his past. Ordinances, or traditions (paradosis), were an integral part of Jewish law, and carried its full weight. But the church is not under the law, as Paul is repeatedly at pains to remind us. By his own description, Paul’s instructions were the commands of a man: just because he shows an authoritative manner in applying them to a situation that could affect the reputation of the church within its community does not necessarily mean that we can infer from those instructions a timeless principle that Jesus applies to building His church today.

Principles of headship
Such principles can be found elsewhere: in Ephesians 4, for example, where we read how 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.” (Ephesians 4: 15-16) There is no hierarchy of headship here: men and women together, the whole body, grow up in all things into the one Head. In fact “joined and knit together by what every joint supplies” has an echo of Adam’s joyful “bone of my bones” – the original creation reflected in the new. Again, Colossians 1:18 tells us that Christ has supremacy in all things, and specifically that He is “the head of the body, the church.” In Ephesians 1: 22-23 we read that God has put all things under His feet and appointed Him as “head over all things to the church,” and again in Ephesians 5:23 Paul states that “Christ is the head of the church, His body, of which He is the saviour.” There is no reference in any of these verses to Christ’s headship of women being delegated through men. God has “raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” (Eph 2:6) Finally, Paul spells out this equality – this complete “togetherness” – in his letter to the Galatians: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Gal 3:28) In Christ, there is neither male nor female. To infer from Paul’s instructions on maintaining order in the early church that men and women are anything other than “together” under the headship of Christ seems dangerously close to falling into the same trap as the religious leaders of his day, whom Jesus castigated for “teaching as doctrine the commandments of men.” (Matt 15:9)

A help meet for him
Finally, if headship was male we could expect to see evidence of this in how God ordered His creation before the fall, yet it seems (to me at least) that the opposite is the case. His intention to create Eve is stated in Genesis 2:18, where He says He will make a helper, or literally a help, suitable for Adam. The  KJV translates the original Hebrew words ezer kenegdo as a “help meet for him,” which is rendered variously in different translations as “a helper suitable for him” (NIV, NASB), “a helper comparable to him” (NKJV) “a helper who is just right for him” (NLT) etc. The KJV translation reads “a help meet for him” (“meet” meaning “suitable” in the English of the time), and the two have become combined into a single noun, “helpmeet.” If we read this with a male-headship mindset, we can, if we aren’t careful, see God creating a sort of sous-chef for Adam’s kitchen; someone who “helps out” with the jobs he can’t manage on his own in his task of tending and watching over the Garden of Eden. But the Hebrew phrase “ezer kenegdo” literally means “a helper corresponding to him,” or “a matching counterpart.” And if we look at how and where else the word ezer is used in the Old Testament, we find that it occurs many times in the book of Psalms. Well known verses include

Psalm 46:1: “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.”

Psalm 121:1-2: “I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.”

Psalm 33:20: “Our soul waits for the Lord; he is our help and our shield.”

Psalm 124:8: “Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth.”

In the New Testament, the original language is different, but the concept carried into our English translations is the same: “But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me.” (John 15:26)

Jesus called the Holy Spirit “the Helper.” In other words, God used the word “Helper” for Himself, and He made man in His image. God made woman for man so that man wasn’t alone, not because he could not manage. She was the helper that was kenegdo, corresponding to him like a mirror image. He created Eve to work in the garden alongside Adam, not under him. Just as God had made Adam in his own image, so He also made Eve in his own image. Just as God is one who helps, so is Eve. Just as God is our companion who strengthens us and provides succour, and is the one who rescues and protects us, Eve can do the same. Ezer kenegdo means all of that. Yes, she can carry Adam’s tools in the garden; and at the same time no doubt God intended that Adam should also give help to Eve. Eve was not created to be Adam’s assistant: she was his ally. And just as we are only complete in relationship with our Helper, so Adam was only complete in relationship with his. You can’t have an incomplete head. The text suggests to me that the man and the woman were created to be side by side in the Garden, tending it in relationship, and that neither was head over the other.

And it was good… until the Fall
The fact that Eve was “taken out of Man” is sometimes construed as suggesting an innate superiority in the male; that woman was derived from Man and therefore is in some way secondary; that Man came first in creation and is therefore at the top of the hierarchy. But when Adam saw Eve, I think his reaction was entirely different. “This is now bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh” tells me that he saw his helper as someone who was the same as him, equal in every way. God was not establishing a hierarchy; He was establishing an equality. If it wasn’t “good” for man to be alone (remembering how the word “good” when used in the creation narrative describes the perfection of creation before the fall), it certainly was “good” for man to have an equal helper who would tend Creation in relationship, one flesh, with him. It was this relationship that Satan destroyed at the Fall.

We know the story of course. Eve listened to Satan, Adam joined in, they disobeyed God, and creation came under the curse of sin and death. The equality between man and woman was ruined at the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

“To the woman He said…
Your desire shall be for your husband,
And he shall rule over you.” (Gen 3:16)

So male headship didn’t begin at creation but was written into the curse, and enshrined into human traditions thereafter. But just as the curse of sin and death destroyed the relationship that God had originally created, it all changed again when Jesus went to the cross to set us free from it (Romans 8:2). Seated together in the heavenly places that Jesus paid for on our behalf, the original “good” relationship of Eden is restored. Paul’s instructions to the Corinthians addressed situations that could arise as men and women gave in to their carnal nature. But we walk after the Spirit and not after the flesh, and surely the question of headship in the church should be decided according to the truth of where men and women sit in heavenly places, in the Spirit, and not according to what Paul said to the church at Corinth that clung to the flesh. And I think we should be guided by what Genesis 2:18 seems to say about Eve being Adam’s “matching counterpart,” not by the consequence of their sin and the curse that ensued.

“The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.” (Romans 8:2) This is the only law that we should be applying when we think about headship in the home and eldership in the church.

Discipleship and witness, Living by Faith, Walking in the Spirit

Pressing on – or being pressed?

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“Now when evening came, His disciples went down to the sea, got into the boat, and went over the sea toward Capernaum. And it was already dark, and Jesus had not come to them.” (John 6: 16-17)

Getting on with the Mission
I love this story: I don’t think there are many cameos in the Bible that point the contrast between the life of the spirit and the life of the flesh as well as this one. While Jesus was up on the mountain, the disciples headed for the boat. There are “big picture” examples of the flesh taking matters into its own hands and the consequences that are brought about – Saul’s hasty sacrifice when Samuel was delayed, narrated in 1 Samuel 13, comes to mind – but the disciples in their boat seems to speak particularly eloquently into our lives as disciples today. Unlike Saul, they were they were not disobeying any of God’s commands (1 Samuel 13:13): there is no record of Jesus telling them to wait until He came back. They were just getting on with their mission as well as they could.

Feeling Compelled
The main parallel with the story of Saul’s sacrifice is that, like him, they would have “felt compelled.” (1 Sam 13:12) Saul had picked a fight with the Philistines and now they were gathered against him in their numbers; and the people, trembling, were hiding in caves and pits and “were scattered from him.” (vs 6-8) The disciples knew they had to go to Capernaum and “it was already dark.” Although they didn’t know where Jesus was, there were plenty of people around with boats, so they probably assumed that He had either gone on ahead or would soon follow in someone else’s boat. He would either be at the house in Capernaum waiting for them, or would turn up a bit later, but wherever He was it was time to get moving. It’s also quite possible that they were exhausted and wanted to get away from the demands of the crowd. So the situation was compelling, and all very human. And all very plausible: have you never lost contact with someone in a group and thought: “Well, we’re headed for the same place. We’re bound to catch up with them there.” I certainly have.

Lost Authority
So it’s easy to be critical of the disciples for setting off without the Lord, but actually what they did was very natural, and it’s the naturalness of their action that makes it such a valuable lesson for us. And although they were not disobedient to God in the way that Saul was, there is a similarity in the consequence: they both resulted in a loss of authority. Saul lost his authority to rule Israel (1 Sam 13:14), and the disciples lost their authority to rule their circumstances. Sudden squalls were common on Lake Galilee, so whether or not this particular one was whipped up specially by the enemy to destroy them, or whether it was a natural occurrence, the disciples knew the risk they were taking and were confident that their skills and experience as fishermen would take them safely to Capernaum. It’s when we assume we are in control that the opposite is often the case.

Recognising the Difference
After three or four miles with the waves buffeting their boat and “a great wind blowing” (v.18), that confidence was probably ebbing away, and they were still only a little over halfway to their destination (Bethsaida to Capernaum was about six miles). Just as the disciples will have agreed with the Lord that they would go over to Capernaum, we too can have objectives that we have prayed over and been in agreement with the Holy Spirit about, but we can still set off without Him in the boat. We can employ all the natural resources we have at our disposal to act on a word, but we can leave out the presence of God and be following our own agenda. Smith Wigglesworth said this: “I must recognise the difference between my own spirit and the Holy Spirit. My own spirit can do certain things on natural lines, can even weep and pray and worship, but it is all on a human plane, and we must not depend on our human thoughts and activities or on our own personality. If the baptism (in the Spirit – my parenthesis) means anything to you, it should bring you to the death of the ordinary, where you are no longer putting faith in your own understanding; but, conscious of your own poverty, you are ever yielded to the spirit. Then it is that your body becomes filled with heaven on earth.“ (For transcripts of Wigglesworth’s sermons and other material relating to his life and ministry, see http://www.smithwigglesworth.com)

The Valley and the Mountain
How much of our worship and our mission, are “on natural lines,” rowing stalwartly towards God’s objectives without His presence in the boat? We pray for the wind and waves to abate but to no avail, because, whatever our gifting or our position in the church, we have no spiritual authority in our own strength. And when we are drenched, exhausted and storm-tossed, the enemy whispers into our hearts: “What do you think you are doing in this boat anyway? You’re never going to get to your Capernaum: you might as well give up now…” Yes, we are able to silence that voice and we row on through the storm, pressing on towards the goal as we shout Philippians 3:14 into the wind. We stay afloat but Capernaum doesn’t seem to get any nearer. But the “goal” that Paul is referring to is “the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” Lake Galilee is at the bottom of a valley, 200 ft below sea level. The mountains that surround it rise to 2000 ft. And here, for me, is one of the central points of this story: While Jesus was up on the mountain, the disciples were down in the valley.

The Upward Call
What are our goals, as individuals and as churches? Where is our Capernaum? I think in many cases we can get into the boat and start rowing, but never actually get there, and the dream of seeing the Kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven becomes seeing the Kingdom of God in heaven when our ship has finally sunk on earth. But although it’s true that the Old Testament heroes of faith “did not receive the promise,” (Hebrews 11:39), the next verse starts with the words “God, having provided something better for us…” God has provided something better for us than rowing through the storm until our ship has sunk. God has given us His son, He has given us the Holy Spirit, and He has given us a choice: do we stay lower than sea level and do what circumstances and our natural thinking dictate, hoping we’ll meet God when we’ve arrived; or do we go up the mountain to seek His face first (Psalm 27:8), and not move until we know He’s coming with us?

The way Up is Down
We need to remind ourselves that we can no more climb the mountain through our own strength and abilities than we can row to our destination. In his sermon “Keeping the vision,” Smith Wigglesworth says this: “There are two sides to this Baptism: the first is, that you possess the Spirit; the second is that the Spirit possesses you. This is my message at this time – being possessed by the Baptizer, and not merely possessing the Baptizer… I believe that God’s ministers are to be flames of fire; nothing less than flames; nothing less than mighty instruments with burning messages, with a heart full of love, with such a depth of consecration that God has taken full charge of the body and it exists only that it may manifest the glory of God.” Later in the same message he says: “It seems to me that the way to get up is to get down.” In his book “Pride versus Humility,” Derek Prince says the same thing: “The way up is down; the way down is up. If we want to go up, we must start by going down.” The only thing we can be certain of is that we don’t know where Jesus is going at all, unless we are with Him: He might not even be to Capernaum; and if He is, the chances are that it won’t be when we think, because His thoughts are not our thoughts. If we want His plans, we need to be dead to our own. Our abilities, our understanding of what God has done in the past, our ideas of what His next move is going to be: these all need to be at the bottom of the lake before we start out, because we don’t actually ask Him to come with us: we go with Him. We’ll find Him up the mountain.

If we want to press on, we need to respond to the upward call of God, and start by going down.

Knowing God, Prayer and Spiritual Warfare, Walking in the Spirit

The Anointing

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Jesus is the Messiah: the word messiah means “Anointed one.” In the Acts of the Apostles, Luke tells us that “God anointed Jesus with the Holy Spirit and Power. He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, because God was with him.” (Acts10:38). In our church contexts we often talk about people “moving in the anointing,” or we might say that “the anointing was on such-and-such today.” When we use the term, what we are saying is that the power or the presence of the Holy Spirit was evident at the time, just as Acts 10:38 tells us that He was present with Jesus, but this is a generalised statement. What more specifically does Scripture tell us about the Anointing?

In Luke 4:18,  where Jesus quotes from  Isaiah 61:1-2, we read specifically what His anointing was for:

 “The Spirit of the LORD is upon Me,
Because He has anointed Me
To preach the gospel to the poor;
He has sent Me to heal the broken hearted, 
To proclaim liberty to the captives
And recovery of sight to the blind,
To set at liberty those who are oppressed;

To proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD.”


As the called and chosen followers of Jesus, we, His disciples can – indeed, should – expect this anointing to be upon us as well if we are to do the Works that He did, as He promises in John 14:12. If we aren’t doing the works, it seems to me that it’s because we aren’t in the Anointing. If the Church is the body of Christ on earth, then it’s true to say that His body carries the anointing that was poured upon it when the Holy Spirit was given at Pentecost. But no one individual walks in the fullness of the ministry of Christ: Ephesians four teaches us that different individuals carry different ministry gifts, 1 Corinthians 12 and 14 speak about the gifts that the Holy Spirit imparts as He wills, and Romans 12 talks again about the Grace gifts of God. These are all aspects of God‘s anointing on the Church, expressed in the specific contexts that relate to our walk with Him.

The anointing of the Holy Spirit is modelled in the Old Testament through the anointing with oil, and this model has been retained in the New Testament church. James 5:14-15 makes this statement: “Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.” Will save the sick … will raise him up… What has happened to that certainty? Why is healing just a possibility today, and not a given as it was then? I think the answer lies in our understanding of what the anointing means.

Anointing for Authority
In 1 Samuel 16:13 we read “Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him  in the midst of his brothers, and the spirit of the Lord came upon David from that day forward.” David was anointed to be King. It was the anointing for authority. (There is another anointing in the Old Testament, where a different oil was prepared, and this was the oil used to anoint the priests and sacred objects. This was the anointing for consecration, which, though connected, is a separate subject.) Previously the authority to rule had been with Saul, but we read in the following verse: “The spirit of the Lord departed from Saul.”  Authority had been transferred to David with the anointing that was now on him. When David killed Goliath, he had already been anointed as King: he carried that anointing in the sphere of influence that he had been given at the time, although he wasn’t crowned for about another fifteen years. Just as David was set apart and anointed many years before he sat on the throne of Israel, we too can know the call and the anointing of God for ministry long before moving into the full sphere of our authority.

As well as the anointing on David, another notable passage on the subject in the Old Testament is when Elijah received this instruction from the Lord after he had met with Him on the mountain: “Go, return on your way to the Wilderness of Damascus; and when you arrive, anoint Hazael as king over Syria. Also you shall anoint Jehu the son of Nimshi as king over Israel. And Elisha the son of Shaphat of Abel Meholah you shall anoint as prophet in your place. It shall be that whoever escapes the sword of Hazael, Jehu will kill; and whoever escapes the sword of Jehu, Elisha will kill.” (1 King’s 19: 15–17)  In fact, Elijah only fulfilled the last of his three tasks, anointing Elisha as his successor; Elisha himself carried out the other two. It’s notable that this anointing was for a very specific purpose: the destruction of the enemies of God. Elijah lived in the days of the idolatrous king Ahab. Hazael of Syria was a ruthless king whom God raised up to punish Israel and Judah for their apostacy. The “sword of Jehu” killed Jezebel and the priests of Baal, and ended the dynasty of Ahab. Jehu was so thorough that Elisha didn’t have to kill anyone.

Destroying the works of the devil
Exactly how and when these commands were fulfilled is not the subject here, but what is clear is God’s purpose. Two men were to be anointed as King, and Elisha was to be anointed as prophet. Their authority is both secular and spiritual, and God‘s plan here is explicit: He has chosen all three men to destroy His enemies. Moving now to the New Testament, we see that the purpose of the anointing on Jesus is summarised in1 John 3:8: “For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil.” The anointing on Jehu, Hazael and Elisha pointed to the anointing on Jesus, and this in turn  was poured out on the church at Pentecost: the anointing to destroy the works of the devil. These may be the poverty, broken heartedness, bondage, blindness and oppression of Isaiah 61, or any other works of the enemy that we confront as we go out in Jesus’s name to “proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.”

Places to Walk
However, there are two considerations that we need to remember. All authority in heaven and earth was given to Jesus, so the anointing that He carried was limitless and universal. We are in Him, but we are not Him, so any anointing that we carry is limited to the sphere of authority that we have been given in the Kingdom of God. God said to Joshua, “I will give you places to walk among those who stand here.“ (Zachariah 3:7). We too have “places to walk;“ that define our spheres of authority. Whether it’s our home, our workplace, our church small group, our entire church or our nation, it has been given to us to exercise spiritual authority in that realm. God may expand that realm, just as He moved David from the sheepfold to Saul’s court to the cave of Adullam to the throne of Israel, but we don’t presume to take upon ourselves authority that hasn’t been given to us. And by the same token, if we are in a place of “crowning” others, for church eldership, for example, we must remember that a physical anointing and calling out for leadership has to be a confirmation of what God is already doing. Samuel was instructed to anoint David; Elijah was instructed to anoint Jehu, Hazael and Elisha. The human act of anointing is just a physical expression of what is doing in the spiritual realm: it carries no real authority in its own right. Proverbs 27:8 says “Like a Bird that wanders from its nest is a man who wanders from his place.” If the anointing ministered by the elders always healed the sick in the time of James and only occasionally heals the sick today, it’s not the anointing that has changed, but the authority of those seeking it: they may not be walking in the places that they have been assigned in heaven.

Peace
The second consideration is this. In John 20: 21- 22, Jesus passes on the anointing to his disciples: “So Jesus said to them again, “Peace to you! As the father has sent me, I also send you. And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, receive the Holy Spirit…”  As we know, the substance of that breath did not land upon them until Pentecost, but the anointing and sending took place in that moment shortly after the resurrection. And preceding the sending and the anointing was His peace. If we are to go and His Power, we must go in His Peace.

Peace comes with certainty, the certainty of knowing that we are seated in heavenly places, that the power that raised Jesus from the dead is at work in us, and above all the certainty that we are in God‘s will. We don’t gain authority over the power of darkness by shouting at demons or at circumstances: If we are to do the works at Jesus did, the powers of darkness will be overcome “with a word“, but it will be a word that carries the weight of the anointing, spoken in the peace of knowing where we stand in Christ, and knowing that we are operating within the sphere of authority we have been given. I hear a lot of people making scriptural declarations over negative circumstances, or “binding the enemy“ with their voices raised, and I’m sure I do it myself, but Isaiah 42:2 says “He will not cry out or raise his voice, nor make his voice heard in the streets.“ He did not need to: the anointing did the work, and the words He spoke carried the light of  life themselves. If we have God‘s word for a situation, and we are standing in the peace of knowing our authority, we don’t need to add to it with our flesh.

The Rema Word
Finally, I think that it is this certainty that brings faith in ministry situations. A rema word is a word spoken by God into a specific context, usually for a specific purpose. Often it comes through a gift of the Holy Spirit or through prophetic ministry, but not always: God speaks to each of us differently and in innumerable ways. Everything that Jesus did was in response to a rema word from His Father, brought to Him, presumably, by the Holy Spirit. Occasionally I get a word of knowledge for healing, for example; and when I do I can pray in faith for God to do the miraculous because I know God is with me.. Sometimes I see it happen; often I don’t. I would say that the times when I don’t see healing are probably the times when the “word of knowledge“ hasn’t been a rema word of God at all, but a figment of my imagination; it’s not that God’s word hasn’t born fruit. God’s word won’t return to Him void: it’s only mine that will, because it hasn’t been released under the anointing. Again, If God has revealed demonic activity through a gift of discernment of spirits, it is because He is about to destroy that particular work of the enemy; but if we see a work of the enemy and have no particular revelation on how to approach it, we can bombard it with every scripture in the Bible and the devil will just laugh at our efforts. When we move in the Anointing, God is with us to do His work. When we don’t, we are not only wasting our time but we are sowing seeds of unbelief – in our own hearts and in the hearts of those we are ministering to. God wants relationship with us, and we must always operate in the power of the Spirit out of the dynamic of that relationship.

Jesus knew who He was. He knew He was Lord of heaven and earth, and for that reason even the wind and the waves obeyed Him. He knew He could walk across the stormy Sea of Galilee in the Peace of His complete authority, but even then He only did what pleased the Father; He only did what He saw His Father doing (John 5:19). After He had fed the crowds, He left them behind and went up the mountain to spend time with His Father. I can imagine the Father saying something like this: “My son, you know you have authority over that storm down there: now is the time to go and use it, because the enemy is trying to destroy your friends.”

Dynamic relationship with the Holy Spirit; knowing who we are in Christ and being within our sphere of authority, hearing and applying the rema word of God: I think these are keys to staying in the anointing that will enable us to walk in peace through the storm, and to bring its work to an end.

Discipleship and witness, The word of God

Feeding on the Bread of Life

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When we talk about “feeding on the word of God,” I would say that most of us tend to think of this in terms of reading the Bible and listening to teaching in order to increase our knowledge of God and our understanding of what it means to walk with Him, so that we can grow in our faith. Paul writes to the Corinthians (1 Cor 3:2) about feeding them with milk because they were not ready for solid food. A search on “spiritual milk and solid food” will bring up website links like the following: “We are to grow and mature in the faith, moving from milk to solid food. May we feast on God’s Word, savor its taste, and hunger for it all our days.” The word of God is presented as a feast that we sit down to and linger over. Which of course it is. But that’s not all it is. If we are to be built up in our faith by “eating solid food,” what is our faith for? Jesus didn’t send us into the dining room to enjoy being disciples; He sent us into the world to make them. Food, whether material or spiritual, exists to be converted into energy, so for us as Christians we eat the food God gives us so that we can be energised to do His work.

Jesus came “that they may have life and that in abundance.” (John 10:10) He is the bread of life. Bread is food. Jesus said to His disciples: “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to finish His work.” (John 4:34) He tells the crowd in Capernaum: “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.” (John 6:29) To believe in Him is to do His work: that is our food. Later, He tells His disciples – that’s us- “As the Father has sent me, so I send you. And when He had said this, He breathed on them, and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” John 20:21)

When we do His work, we eat the bread of life. When we drink His blood, we partake of the covenant by which He promises us His life, the power and the provision to do His life-giving work. And as the Father sent the Holy Spirit on Him at His baptism to equip Him to do the works He was sent for, so Jesus equips us in the same way. Our work is to believe in Him and trust Him, so we can do His life-giving work, because that’s what He came for, and that’s what He sends us for: for His life to irrigate the desert, for His light to shine in the darkness, for the glory of His love to fill the Earth. When we do His work we add to His glory, and we take His kingdom back from the enemy who stole it. This is what we labour for: “Do not labour for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.“ (John 6:27)

John 6:53 says “Unless you eat the flesh of the son of a man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.“ To eat His flesh is to do what He says. As I have said, our food, the bread that came down from heaven, is to do His work and believe in Him. When we do, we enter into the promises of His covenant which He has opened up to us on the cross where He shed His blood for our sakes, so that we can have access to our Father in heaven and receive all that He wants to give us. The blood pays the price of all our sin and it secures our inheritance and our access to the promises of His covenant.

“He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in me, and I and him. As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who feeds on Me, will live because of Me. This is the bread, which came down from heaven – not as your fathers ate the manna and are dead. He who eats this bread will live forever.” (John 6: 56-57))

When we do what He says we live, because His word is alive in us. He has the words of eternal life. He reinforces this in John 15, where He talks about abiding in the Vine:  “If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you’ll ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you. By this, My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit, so you will be my disciples.“ (John 15, 7 -8)

Finally, in John 15:10, Jesus says: “if you keep my Commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Fathers commandments and abide in His love.“ The word “if” here does not denote a condition; it denotes a consequence. When, rather than if. Because when we do what He says, His love flows through us, since everything that He says is an expression and a manifestation in some way of His love.

I want to hunger for His bread, which is to hunger for His commands. Because when I do what He says, I live in His love, and I eat His bread, the bread of eternal life. In this, I walk in the spirit, where all of His promises are yes, and amen.

Discipleship and witness, Knowing God

What can I give You, Jesus?

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In our small group recently, one of the members was telling us about a book she and her husband have been reading: “Humility, the journey towards holiness,“ by Andrew Murray. I had heard of him and knew he lived at the beginning of the last century, but that was it, so I looked him up. He lived from 1828 to 1917, was a South African pastor and Bible teacher. He believed that “the chief end of Church is mission,“ and wrote about 50 books and many more tracts and pamphlets. He had a notable influence on other ministers around the turn of the century, including Rees Howells.

As I scanned through the bibliography, I was struck by the journey that the books he wrote suggest that he was on at around the time he wrote about humility. The particular sequence of titles that stood out was this: “Have mercy on me,” “Absolute surrender,” “Humility, the journey towards holiness,” “The deeper Christian life“ “Waiting on God,“ “The divine indwelling,“ and “Lord teach us to pray.“

I haven’t read any of these books, so this is purely conjecture, but there seems to be a picture here of a spiritual journey that speaks powerful truth for all of us. It goes like this: When we recognise how desperately we need God’s mercy we give our lives to Him completely, and in doing so we learn the meaning of true humility. In that place we can go much deeper in our relationship with God, which is where we learn what it is to really wait on Him. It is only when we spend time seeking His presence that we start to grasp something of the reality of “Christ in us, the hope of glory,” and that is when we begin to learn the true power of prayer.

Murray was a prolific writer, and all these titles were written within two years. “Humility, the journey towards holiness,” gives us a window into the intensity of the journey he was on. He writes about how God was dealing with pride in his life, and how the Lord told him to spend a month shut off from all communication with others, including his wife and the family, reading nothing (I don’t know if this included the Bible or not, but certainly nothing else) and writing nothing; communing only with the Lord while He dealt with Murray’s pride.

Did Andrew Murray have such a mountain of pride in his life? Or do we all have mountains that need  months on our knees before God before He can deal with them, and only spiritual giants like Andrew Murray and Rees Howells – who had similar extreme dealings with the Lord – have the commitment and devotion to really allow God to have His way?

I was turning this over in my mind and was wondering how far I actually fell short of being a “good and faithful servant“ in the light of what He had asked of Andrew Murray. So I asked Him: “What do you want from me, Jesus?” His answer came straight back, and of course it was full of grace, yet deeply challenging at the same time. “What can you give me?“ He said.

Immediately I started going through different things in my life that I hold dear or that seem important, but everything I looked at seemed to be either indispensable or to have significance to other people as well as for myself. I can’t give him that, because… And I certainly can’t give him THAT, because… You can guess how it went.  Then I thought of Christina Rosetti’s words in her beautiful Christmas hymn “In the bleak midwinter:“  “What can I give Him, poor as I am? If I were a shepherd I could bring a Lamb. If I were a wise man, I would play my part, yet what I can I give him: give him my heart.” Yes, I could do that, I thought; except I already have – when I became a Christian more than 40 years ago. How can I give him my heart again? Then the thought struck me. It’s not just a one-off moment. Well yes, in a sense it is, because when we are born again God gives us a new heart, a heart of flesh instead of a heart of stone.  But the heart represents the centre and the driving force of our lives. It’s the seat of our will, our emotions, our reactions. It’s where the rivers of living water flow from when we are moving in the Spirit. It’s where His law is written. I have to give Him my new heart on a daily, moment by moment, basis. If He has got my heart, I am able to take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ, so I won’t dwell on negatives. If He has got my heart, the fruit of the Spirit will show in my life because it won’t be controlled by the flesh and by my circumstances. And if He got my heart, I think I’ll be able to loosen my grip on the things that I hold tight, so at least I’ll be able to put them down sometimes when He asks me to, without feeling that I will have to lose them forever.

I think that this is what Paul means when he implores the Romans to “present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.” (Romans 12:1) And how can we then “be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God?” (Romans 12:2) By quickly giving Him our hearts when they are beset by negatives and lusts, and receiving what is on His heart instead – that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.

So what can you give Him? Give Him your heart. You don’t need to be a spiritual giant.

Discipleship and witness, Knowing God

Bread from Heaven (5): The Food that endures to Eternal Life

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“Do not labour for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give you, because God the Father has set His seal on Him.” (John 6:27)

We have seen how Jesus used the sign of the loaves and fishes to model a fundamental principle of His economy, which is, as the couriers sang way back in 1978 (thanks, for the link, CA!) that “God cannot put His riches into hands already full.” In addition, this sign demonstrates the management structure of the Kingdom of God: through Jesus, the bread of Heaven is passed on to the disciples for distribution. “Freely you have received, freely give,” He said when He commissioned the disciples to “Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out demons.” (Matt 10:8). We receive in order to give.

Sent to multiply
I think we can sometimes come to Jesus in gratitude and love for making a way at the cross for us to approach the Father, but then run there to soak up Father’s love and forgiveness without looking back to Jesus to ask Him what He wants us to do with it. But Jesus stands between us and the Father not just to represent us to Him, but to represent Him to us. “As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you,” He says in John 20:21, and when He is referring to Himself as the Bread of Life, He says: “As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who feeds on Me will live because of Me.” (John 6:57) As His life on earth was the Father’s life, so our life on earth is His life in us. And life, in the natural order of God’s creation, has one purpose and one only, which is to bear fruit and multiply. Everything that grows exists to reproduce itself. Just as the first natural man and woman were told to “go forth and multiply,” (Genesis 1:28) the same mandate rests on spiritual man:

“I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. “Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit. You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered; and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned.” (John 15: 1-6)

We have one purpose in Christ, and that is to bear fruit. We have the life of Christ in us so that we can impart it to others. It may be through salvation, through healing, prophesy or other spiritual gifts, it may be through material or financial blessing, it may be through all of these and more (1 Corinthians 12:11), but however the Spirit of God wants to use us, we live to give. Just as Jesus gave the loaves and fishes to His disciples to give to others, so we come to Him for “the food which endures to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give you” in order to share it with others. And in doing so, we find life for ourselves.

Feeding on Jesus
Central to this passage is the idea of “feeding on Jesus.” What it means to eat His flesh and drink His blood is so crucial to the Christian faith that the Church split over its meaning in the 16th century, with the Council of Trent in 1551 solidifying the dogma of transubstantiation and declaring that the elements of the Eucharist became the actual body and blood of Jesus. As a Protestant, I don’t hold to this doctrine, so this leaves me free to ask the question: what did Jesus really mean?

I think we can find strong clues in this passage, and if we examine them in the light of a few other sayings in John’s gospel I believe we can move towards an understanding of what Jesus may be saying to His Church. The starting place is the relationship between Jesus the Son and God the Father. Looking at verse 57 again, He says; “As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who feeds on Me will live because of Me.” What does it mean to “live because of the Father?” One answer is of course that this is true in a very real way: the Son of Man was actually begotten of the Father. God sent Him from Heaven by creating a natural body for Him on earth. As Hebrews 10:5 says, “when He came into the world, He said: “Sacrifice and offering You did not desire, But a body You have prepared for Me.” However, although this is true, I don’t think it’s what Jesus meant by living because of the Father. If He says that we will live if we feed on Him, just as He lives because of the Father, I think we have to look and see if He too lives by “feeding on the Father.” If He does, it will complete the equation which He uses more than once, that says “as it is between my Father and Me, so it is between me and you.” (e.g. John 20:21 above, also John 5:21, and John 15: 9-12.)

Living in the Vine
And He does. The loaves and the fishes are not the first time Jesus refers to food as being more than a meal for the stomach. After the meeting with the Samaritan woman, He says to His disciples: “I have food to eat of which you do not know… My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to finish His work.” (John 4: 32-34) He says again in John 6:38 “I came down from Heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of the one who sent me.” Jesus feeds on the Father by doing His will. In fact He did nothing else: “Most assuredly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He sees the Father do; for whatever He does, the Son also does in like manner.” (John 5:19) Because this was completely true, He could say to Philip: “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father.” (John 14:9) Jesus feeds on the Father by doing His will all the time, so He only lives because of the Father. Nothing in His life is directed by anything other than the Father’s will. And so it is true for us: if we feed on Him by doing His will, we will live because of Him. In doing so we abide in Him ((John 15: 1-6  above) We live because of what the eucharist remembers (Luke 22:19) but we don’t live because we eat it. Only He has the words of life (John 6:68) but we don’t live because we devour them: we live because we do what He says. As Jesus did nothing without the Father, we can do nothing without Him (that equation again). And when we do what He says we remain in the vine, the life of the vine within us multiplies, our prayers are answered (John 15:10 “You will ask what you desire and it shall be done for you”)  and we “bear much fruit.”

Servants of Christ
Jesus pointed to this with the parable of the unprofitable servant (Luke 17: 7-10) when the disciples asked Him to increase their faith: “So likewise you, when you have done all those things which you are commanded, say, ‘We are unprofitable servants. We have done what was our duty to do.” There are many references to our status as servants of Christ, such as Ephesians 6:5, 1 Cor 7:22, and 1 Peter 2:16. I think Col 3:23-24 is particularly rich in meaning, (I have written about it recently in “Heart and Soul, Doing Everything for the Lord”): “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.” Ephesians 2:10, which I’m sure I quote more than any other verse in the Bible, tells us that “We are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” (NIV) As it was with Jesus, our food is to do the will of the One who sent us, and to complete His work.

So we come back to our opening reference, “Do not labour for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give you, because God the Father has set His seal on Him.” (John 6:27) A transaction took place at the cross: we exchanged our lives for the life of Christ, which we received by the grace of God alone. But this is only His part of the transaction: our side is the manner of our response. We respond in love and worship, of course; but Jesus makes it clear that love is more than a feeling, and worship is more than singing: “He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him.“ (John 14:21)

God’s Seal
Jesus puts the food that endures to eternal life into our hands when we respond to His grace with our faithful obedience. He tells us that He can give us this bread because the Father has set His seal on Him. As we have seen, He gives it to us so that we in turn can give it to the world. Again we see here the “as with me, so with you” equation, because God’s seal on Jesus came in the form of a dove when the Holy Spirit descended on Him in the Jordan, and we too have received the same seal through Him: “In Him you also trusted, after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation; in whom also, having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, to the praise of His glory”. (Eph 1: 13-14) It is by the Spirit that we receive the life of Christ, and it is by the Spirit that we impart it. Peter wrote: “As each one has received a gift, minister it to one another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God. If anyone speaks, let him speak as the oracles of God. If anyone ministers, let him do it as with the ability which God supplies, that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom belong the glory and the dominion forever and ever. Amen.” (1 Peter 4:10-11) God’s seal on us isn’t just a promise of our future inheritance: it is the mark of our authority and empowering to do the works that Jesus did, and greater. (John 14:12)

So we give out our bread with the ability that God supplies, handfuls feeding thousands. Those who operate in prophetic or healing ministry know what this looks like. A line of people, maybe two or three deep, maybe even more, depending on the size of the meeting, have all responded to an altar call and have come forward for ministry. Like the disciples standing there with a handful of crumbs you see the hopeful faces, all looking to the Lord to receive something from Him through you. Maybe you have a few crumbs of a word; maybe nothing at all. But you know Jesus is there, like that day on the hillside, so you look to Him, empty-handed, because that is all you can do. Then as each person comes forward for prayer, He puts fresh bread into your hand, and you see God’s abundance flow in the power of the Holy Spirit.

I’ll finish with a story of how this worked out in a taxi recently, and it is particularly relevant here because it features the dove. A good way of keeping the mindset of serving Christ is to quite simply ask Him this: “Lord, have you got any jobs for me today?” Anne (my wife) prayed this while she was in a taxi not long ago, and felt that she was being asked to share her faith with the asian taxi driver. Wondering how to start the conversation, they drove past a church and she commented on the architecture. That proved to be the opening that the Lord had provided, and soon the conversation turned to spiritual matters. The driver said that he had given his life to Jesus as a young man many years ago, had been prayed for to be filled with the Holy Spirit, and had a real experience of the presence of God. He went home and told his parents, and they said: “Did you see the Dove?” to which he answered “No.” They said “It’s all rubbish then. You were just imagining it. If you didn’t see the Dove, it wasn’t the Holy Spirit.” Disheartened, He believed them, and went back to his old life without giving Jesus any further thought. But God had a work prepared beforehand for Anne, and He wasn’t letting the taxi driver go. She explained that the Dove had been specifically for Jesus, and that his experience of the Holy Spirit was real. She prayed for him in the taxi, and the Holy Spirit came on him again. When she got out of the taxi, the driver jumped out as well, ran round to her, and gave her what she says was the biggest bear hug she had ever received in her life.

“Lord, I’m your servant. Have you got any bread for me today?”

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 …