Category Archives: Knowing God

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?”

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.”

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.”)

Knowing God, Walking in the Spirit

The Pool of Bethesda (2): the paralysis of religion

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After this there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, which is called in Hebrew, Bethesda,  having five porches. In these lay a great multitude of sick people, blind, lame, paralyzed, waiting for the moving of the water. For an angel went down at a certain time into the pool and stirred up the water; then whoever stepped in first, after the stirring of the water, was made well of whatever disease he had. Now a certain man was there who had an infirmity thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there, and knew that he already had been in that condition a long time, He said to him, “Do you want to be made well?” he sick man answered Him, “Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; but while I am coming, another steps down before me.” Jesus said to him, “Rise, take up your bed and walk.” And immediately the man was made well, took up his bed, and walked. And that day was the Sabbath. (John 5: 2-9)

God’s house of mercy
The healing at the pool took place on the Sabbath. In the sequence of signs as John recorded them, this was the first time that Jesus challenged the religious order by “working” on the designated day of rest, and John records it as the opening skirmish of His battle with the pharisees that ended at Calvary. “For this reason the Jews persecuted Jesus, and sought to kill Him, because He had done these things on the Sabbath.” (John 5:16) “Bethesda” means “house of mercy,” or “flowing water,” and it was by the Sheep Gate. This is not just a place in Jerusalem: it is a picture of the church. The healing at Bethesda was certainly a sign pointing to our need for an encounter with the living Christ, but it also tells us that there are many sheep in God’s house of mercy and flowing water who are immobile on their beds by the pool, and that one of the main types of paralysis is the paralysis of religion.

Paralysed by religion
The dictionary definition of religion refers to worship of a God or gods and the activities surrounding that worship, and in a broader sense to “enthusiastic and repeated engagement” in a particular pursuit. Avid sports fans are often referred to as making a religion of their sport, for example. However, I worship the Christian God, enthusiastically and repeatedly, yet if someone asks me the question “are you religious?“ I say, “No I’m not religious; I have a living faith.“ So in the church many of us now see the term religion as not so much describing our worship of the living God, but the practice of those who, in the words of Paul to Timothy, have “a form of godliness but deny its power.” (2 Timothy 3: 5–7). The question for those of us who say we have a living faith is this: is it possible for us also to be paralysed by religion?

We tend to Pillory the Pharisees today as archetypal examples of everything we want to avoid in our worship of Christ. And so we should: they lived by the law and missed Jesus. There is no need to quote here any of the many things that Jesus said against them: the important point is that we don’t follow their example and find ourselves as paralysed and lifeless as they were. They too were lying by the pool on their bed, the bed of the law, waiting for the waters to be stirred by the Messiah – who was standing right in front of them.

Flowing in the spirit?
The Bible tells us, “Whatever was written in the past was written for our instruction so that we could have hope through endurance and through the encouragement of the scriptures.”  (Romans 15:4) The Holy Spirit hasn’t just made it clear how tragically fruitless the religion of the Pharisees was so that we could feel superior in our relationship with Him: those scriptures are also there for our instruction so that we can take care not to follow any of their practices. How much of this instruction are we actually taking on board? For example – and I know I’m far from being the first person to say this – I was born again In 1984, when the charismatic movement was surging through the established church. We used to think of ourselves as “flowing in the spirit,“ and (I’m ashamed to say) how superior we were to the church down the road whom we saw as ossified in their “hymn– prayer sandwich“ format. I now belong to one of the larger modern evangelical Charismatic/Pentecostal networks. We consider ourselves to be free in the spirit, and to be hosts of the presence of God during our meetings. But before I go to church on a Sunday, I know that we will start with a couple of fairly lively praise songs, the host for the day will do the notices, the children and teenagers will go out to their respective groups, we will continue with worship for about another half an hour, then there will be a preach (we used to call them sermons, but that was  too religious) for about 30 minutes, and then a closing song and an appeal for ministry at the end. We will start at 10:30 and finish around 12:15; gather for refreshments after the meeting, and will be out of the building by about 12:45. We do make room for the gifts of the Spirit during the worship time, so three or four people might bring a word of encouragement, a prophecy or a word of knowledge; maybe a tongue and an interpretation – but how different is this really from the “hymn-prayer sandwich?“ The fillings might be a bit different, but it is no less predictable, and I suspect that we are not very different from many modern evangelical churches.

The Spirit of God does graciously meet with us in the little box that we give him, and we rejoice in the fact that we have been in his presence, even though it may have just been the hint of a reflection of a glimmer. We say, and pray, that we want more of him; we long to see healings and deliverance; yet how much more of ourselves will we give? Would we know more of His presence and His power if we gave him more of our time? Or even if we took the compartments out of the box and, for example, allowed the allocated time for worship to eat into the allocated time for the sermon? Or even – shock horror – not have a sermon (sorry, a preach) at all?


The mountain and the chocolate box
I think we can be very easily satisfied with the experience that we describe as “entering the presence of God.“ When the presence of God came into Solomon’s temple at the time of its dedication, the priests were unable to stand. When the Roman soldiers came to Gethsemane to arrest Jesus, they fell to the ground when He identified himself with the words “I am He.” (John 18:6) In our own church we had a half night of prayer a couple of months ago (we should have them more often…), from 8 pm to 2 am. People came and went as they pleased; not many stayed for the whole six hours. But it wasn’t until about 1:30 that the presence of God really came, so powerfully that most of the few of us who were there had to fall to our knees; and then someone gave a prophetic word that brought a long awaited breakthrough in the life of one of those present. When the presence of God came to Toronto, He changed lives and impacted people like Heidi Baker, (Iris Global) Che Ann (Harvest International Ministries) Bill Johnson (Bethel Church) and Nicky Gumbel (the Alpha Course) whose ministries have brought the Kingdom of God into millions of lives. A hallmark of Toronto Airport Vineyard meetings in the 1990s, as well as of other revivals, was daily meetings that went by the clock in heaven and not the clock in the kitchen. I think we can package the presence of God in a chocolate box when He wants to take us up a mountain. God has a much bigger space to move in than we often allow Him. If the dimensions of our box are so far away from His, it’s because our religion keeps it small and keeps us too easily satisfied.

The dynamic of Life
Jesus said , “For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself,” (John 2:26) and that He had come to “give life, and that in abundance.” (John 10:10) I love to go out and take photographs of birds. One of the great difficulties in bird photography is the fact that the subjects rarely keep still. Life is always on the move. When the cells in a body become motionless, that body is dead. When Jesus told the paralytic to pick up his bed and walk on the Sabbath day, He was giving him life: He was asserting the dynamic of Life over the inertia of religion.

So how much are we really free from the constraints of religion that we see in the Pharisees of Jesus‘s day? Anne and I lead one of the small groups in our church (we call them “life groups.“ What do you call yours?) This Summer each life group is  leading an evening midweek meeting for the whole church. Everyone in our life group comes to the school of prophecy that we host at our house, and our vision is to encourage the other groups to pursue the presence of God more actively in their gatherings. I had planned how I felt our meeting should flow, and who should contribute what. Anne was most dismissive. “And where exactly is the Holy Spirit in control of all of this??“ she asked. And she was right. How easy it is to operate in the flesh when we think we are being spiritual. When man controls he brings religion. When the Holy Spirit controls, he brings liberty.

A living, breathing bride
Jesus comes to give life. His words are words of life. Walking is not doing the same things the same way, but doing what He says, when He says it. Life is movement. When He speaks, the life He speaks brings into us movement. We can be walking in the Spirit while we have a meal out with friends because we can be responding to His promptings between mouthfuls in the conversation, and we can be walking in the flesh every Sunday at our Church meetings because we are following our prepared format and not His dynamic instructions. When He returns, He will coming back for a living,  breathing bride that He has perfected and made beautiful in His presence, and He is longing for us to run to meet Him, however our theological lens views that moment. We may not fully understand how we will be caught up in the air (1 Thessalonians 4:17), but one thing we do understand is this: He will not be pleased with a bride who sits in her pew and recites the litany of the wedding service without even looking into His face.

Knowing God

Sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise

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“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.”

If you drop a container of liquid on the floor from a height of about five feet, what will happen to the liquid? Stupid question. It’s going to part company with the container and make a mess on the floor. Unless of course it’s got a lid on, or something else that is sealing it in. Or unless there is something unseen going on…

A friend of mine regularly takes communion at home as part of her morning prayer time. A few weeks ago she had got her little communion glass balanced on the back of her phone (don’t ask – I didn’t) and dropped it on the floor. The photograph shows how it landed.

It made a bit of a splash, then landed upside down, with the rest of the wine inside the glass on the floor. Not only that, but it didn’t leak around the rim: it was sealed inside. Is this even possible? If you want to do a lot of mopping up try it yourself. I just can’t see it happening – except that it did.

The only explanation we can give is that God was involved. Or an angel maybe, but it had to be a supernatural force of some sort. The Lord was giving us a supernatural sign that He wanted to speak through, both to my friend and to everyone else who sees the photo. So what is He saying? I passed the picture round a group that meets at my house, and people had different interpretations. Bearing in mind that it was the cup of the new covenant upside down on the floor, what it says to me is this:

“I have made my covenant with you, and it is sealed with the Holy Spirit of Promise. Even when you mess up and let go of me, I will never let go of you. Even when everything is upside down, it will never leak or spill because my seal is eternal and the blood that I shed for you will always be enough to keep you in me, even though you feel as though you have fallen onto the floor. I have loved you with an everlasting love, and will never leave you nor forsake you. Your inheritance in my Kingdom is guaranteed. This promise is sealed forever by my Spirit which I have given to you.”

What does it say to you?

And if you aren’t sure if the covenant of Calvary is for you, give your life to Jesus now and you will be sealed in His forever.

Knowing God, Walking in the Spirit

The Diffuser

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A poem by Konna Thompson

Father,
You are the diffuser
that I don’t need to switch on
all I need to do
is ask
and receive your aromatherapy

which is not simply a pleasant scent
that merely calms my nervous system
but saturates my soul
your spirit is gentle
yet is a highly concentrated
fragrance of love

please don’t refrain
from pouring your purest oil
on my head
please don’t let my hands
become too soft
please make my feet walk worthy
of the calling I receive

I receive your b r e a t h
of life
I want to inhale your aroma
and for my bloodstream
to be infused by you
every cell carrying your DNA
so that I can leave a scent of Jesus
wherever I go

Anoint me