Category Archives: Christian Life

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

Discipleship and witness

Let Your Light Shine Before Men

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(Transcript of sermon Bob preached at Wildwood church 2 august 2020)

To watch the video CLICK HERE. It’s about 15 minutes.

“You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven” (Matt 5: 14-16)

The Light of the World

John’s gospel begins like this:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.
In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.

The life of men is the light of Jesus, nothing else.

Darkness is what is outside of God’s light. Jesus talks about “the Outer Darkness” three times – it’s the place where there is “weeping and gnashing of teeth” because you are regretting forever what you know you could have been enjoying. There aren’t degrees of darkness: you’re either in the light or out in the darkness. Forever.

Jesus is the light that God gave to the world because He loved it so much. God doesn’t want anyone in the outer darkness. He gave us His Son to live a perfect life in the form of a man full of light, full of the Spirit of God, to achieve perfection on behalf of the Human Race and then give His life willingly to pay the price for all of our darkness. God gave light for darkness, life for death. No-one can say He isn’t just.

His life is The light of Men

This isn’t mortal life that comes to an end; this is eternal life. What Jesus had in Him was eternal life, and He wants to give it away. When He was praying to the Father just before his crucifixion, He said this of Himself:

“You have given Him authority over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as you have given Him. And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.” (John 17:3)

Do you want eternal life? Here it is. You will never find a better free gift.

Romans 1:4 says that Jesus was “declared to be the Son of God in power according to the spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead.“ The light that’s in us is the power of God to everlasting life. And that’s not all: when we put our faith in Jesus we get to know Him and the Father, because the same Holy Spirit that raised him from the dead comes and lives in us. Because He lives in us we get to know God; not just know about Him. It’s a relationship. And what’s more, there’s no divorce; just grace. Do you know Him?

When Jesus talks about John the Baptist, He says “he was a burning and shining lamp, and you were willing to rejoice for a while in his light.“ (John 5: 35). The Greek word He uses here is the same as the one for “light” in our opening scripture. Our light is the burning flame of God’s love for you and me, it’s the power of the Holy Spirit in us. Jesus tells us that WE are the light of the world, because we have Christ’s eternal life within us, which is the light of men. Church: are we burning and shining lamps? Are we on fire? Do people rejoice in our light? Do they even see it? Or is it under a basket?

Good works are the Father’s works

Jesus gave us a reason for not hiding our light: it is so that people would “see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.” We need to understand that these good works are not our good deeds. Our good deeds don’t glorify the Father: it’s His own works that glorify Him. Jesus spent his entire ministry demonstrating that He was the Son of God because the Father was in Him and doing His works. Jesus said “if you don’t want to believe that God sent me because I say so, believe it because of the works that He’s doing through me!” He says this twice in slightly different ways, once in John 10: 38, and again in John 14:11; so it’s important that we grasp the point: good works are God’s works. They are demonstrations that the Kingdom of God is at hand.

 Jesus was filled with the Holy Spirit so that the Father could do His works through Him, and he sent us the Holy Spirit so that the Father can carry on doing His works through us, because He doesn’t have another body on Earth – we’re it. We are the light of the world. The torch has been passed to us.

Paul tells us in Romans 14: 17 that “the Kingdom of God is righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.” We cry out to see these things in our communities; we know that they are the fruit of the Holy Spirit and that they only come from God, but we can’t expect our communities to turn to God unless we show them who He is in all His majesty. They can’t pick the fruit unless we plant the tree.

And if you’re still not sure about what I’m saying consider this: Jesus said, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone.“ (Luke 18:19) Good works have to be the Father’s works because nothing is good outside of Him. Acts 10: 38 says:           “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, who went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him.”

We are His disciples. That should mean that we are cast in His mould, not following from a distance out of instructions in a book. The Bible says that Jesus “revealed His glory” when He did the first of His signs, which was turning water into wine. Romans 8: 18-19 tells us:

“I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God.”

Among other things, glory means radiant light. Creation is waiting. We can give it water, or we can give it wine. If we want to show the world good works, we need the Holy Spirit and power no less than Jesus did. God is with us too, but we keep hiding Him under a basket.

Two basket cases: fear and pride

So what are the baskets that we can use to stop this life from spreading? What makes us basket cases?

I’ll look at three. Two are old chestnuts and one might be a surprise. The first old chestnut is fear. We are scared to spread the light because of what people might think. We are scared to pray for healing in case God is not listening. We are scared to prophesy in case we get it wrong. If this is you, God says, and hear Him: “I’m with you! Yes, you will mess up sometimes, and end up on your backside. But I’m still with you! And the more you walk, the less you’ll fall.” And if you’re not a Christian and you’re scared of what bits of your life might get burnt, you need to know this: it’s the burning flame or nothing. You can jump into it, preferably now, or you can regret it in the outer darkness for eternity.

The second old chestnut is pride. It’s wonderful to be involved in seeing other people come into the light of God, but the minute I start congratulating myself or seeking praise from others, or seeking to advance my position and status in my church, I may as well just tip a bucket of water onto the flames, because they won’t last. It’s God who must get the glory because He won’t give it to anyone else. This isn’t because he is selfish or egotistical, but because the world needs to know that the only good works are His works. We all need to know the meaning of good.

The third basket case: what we have done to church

So fear and pride are baskets of flesh. They need to go onto the fire, because that is all they are good for. And what is the third basket? It’s church! Not the church of Jesus that He talked about, that the gates of hell won’t prevail against; but the Sunday slot that we’ve invented to suit our Western lifestyle. The apostle Paul does say that we mustn’t stop from meeting together, but the point of meetings is to equip us to take the light out into the darkness. We seem to have turned it on its head, and now we ask people to come into the light in order to go to meetings. But guess what: God has allowed the baskets to be taken away…

The model Jesus gave us is to be living Spirit-filled lives and discipling others to do the same. And it’s not a quick fix: little flames need to be shielded and fed with stuff that burns, or else they are likely to go out. Jesus said that the Father is always working. Not just in our meetings. When the church began, the light of the gospel spread in public places wherever and whenever ordinary people burning with the flame of the Holy Spirit went out into the darkness and set it alight. Whoever we are, now is the time to seek that living light like never before, and take it out with us into the darkness in the name of Jesus, so that the Father can do His good works through us and the world can see how much He loves it.

God’s bonfire

Right now, in the Church of Jesus all around the world, the match has been struck. There was a Cindy Jacobs post a couple of weeks ago saying “Baptisms in New York City! The revival has begun!” However it’s not going to keep burning at our convenience. Isaiah 60: 1-3 says this:

“Arise, shine;
For your light has come!
And the glory of the LORD is risen upon you.

For behold, the darkness shall cover the earth,
And deep darkness the people;
But the LORD will arise over you,
And His glory will be seen upon you

The Gentiles shall come to your light,
And kings to the brightness of your rising.”

That is for us, now. God is lighting a bonfire: if you’re not on fire yet let Jesus come: he is holding his match to your heart. And leaders – if we want to get with the programme we don’t waste time handing out sparklers. There was a song in the nineteen eighties to the tune of Chariots of Fire. It never made it into Songs of Fellowship, but it went like this. If you’ve been touched by what I said, say it as a prayer:

“I rise up to worship, I stand to proclaim.

The Lord of all glory, Christ Jesus His name.

Come ride on my life, Lord Jesus Christ, My Lord and my Master;

Come ride on my life, and I will be a chariot of fire.”

And if Jesus is not your Lord and Master, he died on the cross for you so that you could receive his spirit, and enter life, to know Him and the Father right now. Say those last two lines again, to Him, from your heart. He will show you what to do.

Christian Life, Prayer and Spiritual Warfare

Prayer Time

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School of Prophesy 25 July 2020.

“Likewise the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.” (Romans 8:26)

We are weak, and we need the Lord’s help
How can we presume to know how to pray, when God has an infinite variety of ways to respond to a situation? We so often rush into prayer, either in conversation with somebody, or in a meeting, without recognising that we are weak and we need the help of the one “who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is.” We need to learn from King Asa, who prayed “Lord, there is no one besides Thee to help in the battle between the powerful and those who have no strength.” (2 Chron 14:11) Every time we pray we are in Asa’s position, as the enemy will be at work to hinder our prayers. We cannot expect to overcome the enemy without the Lord’s help.

Unity of purpose
When the disciples prayed “of one accord” in the Book of Acts, the earth shook. Being of one accord is not just saying “Amen” to another’s prayer, but being committed to seeing the same answer. When we pray together we would often to better to put more time and more openness to the moving of the Holy Spirit into fewer prayer topics. We do not know what we should pray for as we ought – but when the Lord starts to guide us it is an opportunity to strengthen the bond of our unity in the Spirit by standing together in fervent (see below) spirit-led prayer.

Effective prayer comes from a heart that is wholly after God
David’s constant cry was to be pure. The last three verses of psalm 19 encapsulate his attitude:

Who can understand his errors?
Cleanse me from secret faults.
 Keep back Your servant also from presumptuous sins;
Let them not have dominion over me.
Then I shall be blameless,
And I shall be innocent of great transgression
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart
Be acceptable in Your sight,
O LORD, my strength and my Redeemer. (Psalm 19: 12-14)

Solomon did not have David’s passion for purity of heart, and in the end he fell.

After Asa’s great victory he enjoyed a period of peace, then he faced another attacking army. This time he took the gold from the Temple and paid the King of Aram to come to his aid: instead of turning to the Lord again, he acted on his own. From that time he went into decline.

“The Eyes of the Lord Range Throughout the Earth to Show Himself Strong on Behalf of Them Whose Heart Is Fully Committed to Him” (2 Chron 16:9)

We can see the gold in our temples as an image of our commitment to keeping our hearts pure before God. If we want to be effective prayer warriors this is pivotal to our lives: we must not give away our gold for the sake of expediency.

The effective fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much (James 3:5)
Prayer must be fervent – wholehearted, earnest, desperate (Jonah would have been quite desperate in the whale, for example). How fervently do we seek God’s purposes, for the church, for other people? How desperate is our intercession? Revival tends to start when a small group of people cry out to God in desperation, and push through in prayer until they see the answer, which may be delayed because of God’s timing or because of enemy opposition, as in Daniel 10:12.

Thirst for God
“As the deer pants for the water brooks,
So pants my soul for You, O God
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
When shall I come and appear before God? (Ps 42:1-2)

John Lake (Healing evangelist, Founder of the Healing Rooms, saw thousands saved and healed) said that our starting point has to be a thirst for God. The 1904 Welsh revival started with three young ministers being driven by an unquenchable thirst for God, and as the revival spread the meetings always began with a prayer for God to send His spirit, and then send more of His Spirit. 90 years later the outpourings at Toronto began with the same prayer: “More, Lord!”

God has so much more – but if we want God’s more, there must be less of our agendas and our assumptions. Holiness requires sacrifice. Do we have time for More – or is it time for dinner? Or bed? Life in the Spirit is not convenient for the flesh.

Fire and Wind combine (A word given to Jake on 22nd July)
“Only once my people’s hearts are on fire, will I send my wind. It’s my breath that will spread the fire, but my people’s hearts have to be set on fire first. Remember, fire isn’t a selective force, so anything that is not of me will be burnt up. What I am doing is dangerous and uncontrollable, unlike any wildfire you have seen or head of.”

Effective, fervent prayer is born out of the fire.

Discipleship and witness

Two Trees in the Garden

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God put two trees in the garden of Eden: the tree of knowledge of Good and Evil, and the Tree of Life.

Jesus spent His ministry demonstrating and preaching on the Kingdom of God, and He founded His Church to begin the work of establishing it on Earth, under His authority and by the power of His Spirit. Where there is Kingdom rule, the law of sin and death is nailed to the cross; healing overcomes sickness; the truth of God’s word directs our lives, and love prevails in our relationships.

Our first glimpse of the Kingdom of God is right back in the Garden of Eden, where two trees grow. One is the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil. God didn’t put it there for Adam and Eve to be caught out; He put it there because its existence is central to the Garden where He wants us to walk with Him. Knowledge of good and evil was always designed to be part of our relationship with God: It grows in the garden of His presence, and it is His to give. Adam’s sin was to eat of it and make it his own. Because Man has eaten of that fruit, he has taken ownership of it, saying “The difference between right and wrong is now mine to decide.” Cast out of God’s presence, Man still takes knowledge of good and evil with him, but now he makes up his own mind about where the lines are drawn.

On the other tree grows the fruit of life. Figuratively, this is the tree of the Spirit: John 6:63 tells us “It’s the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing.” We don’t read about any fruit on the Tree of Life in Genesis, but we do read about it in Galatians 5 22-23, where Paul lists the different attributes of the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. All of this abounds in the kingdom of God, which Romans 14: 17 tells us is “Righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.” This fruit grows on the Tree of Life, not on the Tree of knowledge. God’s fruit only grows on God’s tree. Anything that passes as the fruit of the Spirit but is grown from the flesh is counterfeit and profits nothing.

As Jesus longs to builds His church, the Father longs to restore His garden in the lives of the generation of the second Adam, so He can walk with us again there. For our part, we long to see the beauty and the fruit of the Kingdom of God in our communities. But what I felt the Lord showed me, and the reason I’m writing this post, is this: so often we preach the gospel of salvation and tell people about the Tree of Life, but what we give them is our version of the Tree of Knowledge. Without the Tree of Life, they can’t pick its fruit, and all they are left with is a sense that they are coming under the judgement of our knowledge of good and evil. This is why, I believe, so many people say that they feel judged by Christians: not that we are intentionally judging them, but we are only showing them one tree in the garden, and it’s the tree that tells them that they are wrong.

If we want people to know the fruit of the Tree of Life we need to make sure it is growing in our churches, and we need to make sure that it is planted securely in their own lives so that they can pick from it themselves. Otherwise all we are doing is giving them information. Worse than that, what we are telling them about is something that they cannot have.

Christian Life, Prayer and Spiritual Warfare

Going against the Flow

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Which direction are we facing?

I was at a retail park recently: it was first thing in the morning so there were hardly any cars around, and I felt the Holy Spirit start to speak to me through the arrows that designate the one way system.

Very often we are called to move in the opposite direction to the world. Jesus tells us (Matt 7:14) that the way that leads to life is narrow, and not many find it; whereas the road to destruction is a broad one and many travel along it. Just to move along the path to Life runs contrary to nature: by believing in Jesus we set our faces squarely against the one-way system that leads to death.

Most of Jesus’s teaching turned accepted values and practices on their heads. We bless those who curse us. If we give, it will be given unto us. The value of the greatest riches in the world cannot compare with the pearl of the Kingdom of God. The path of faith in Jesus calls us to turn our backs on our previous direction of travel, and we have a word for this: repentance. By definition, a Christian is someone who has turned round and is heading towards the Kingdom of God and its promise of eternal life instead of the realm of sin and inevitable death.

The New Testament is clear that we are to obey the laws of the land that we live in, so there is a set of arrows that we are all required to follow. Romans 13: 1 makes this clear: “Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God.” There is another set of arrows too, a set that was literally set in stone when it was first given, and that is the set of instructions given to us by God in the Bible. These are basic principles of Christian living, and they are arrows that we follow.

But having accepted that we are now facing in the “wrong direction” according to the one-way system of sin, how often do we still accept the arrows that are painted on its roads? Who put them there? Who said, for example, that a terminal cancer diagnosis is a one-way street? God didn’t. Jesus healed all who came to Him, and multiple thousands have been healed through faith in His name since He walked the streets of Galilee. We don’t understand why it is that so often the arrow of sickness still takes our lives, and the lives of our friends and loved ones, down a shortened and unexpected cul-de-sac; but we can start by believing that God didn’t put it there, and at least we can do what James 4:7 says, which is to “resist the devil.”

Jesus said: “The thief (that is, the devil) does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.” (John 10:10) One of David’s noted victories is recorded in 2 Sam 5:22. In this instance, the “thief” is represented by Philistine raiding parties in the Valley of Rephaim. The Rephaim were one of the tribes of giants that scared the Israelites out of the promised land when they were first delivered from slavery. Sometimes the devil will attack us just out of hatred and malice, but sometimes he sends his raiding parties into places where “giants” still cast a shadow over our lives. Before he went into battle, David “inquired of the LORD” for his battle plan. We cannot receive the abundant life that Jesus offers unless we ask Him for His direction.

“Then the Philistines went up once again and deployed themselves in the Valley of Rephaim. Therefore David inquired of the LORD, and He said, “You shall not go up; circle around behind them, and come upon them in front of the mulberry trees. And it shall be, when you hear the sound of marching in the tops of the mulberry trees, then you shall advance quickly. For then the LORD will go out before you to strike the camp of the Philistines.” (2 Sam 5: 22-24)

Sometimes the arrow of God’s direction is unusual and unexpected. To see it, we first have to resist the devil, and then we have to prepared to look. To look, we have to believe that it is there strongly enough to “ask, seek and knock” until we see it. And if we are being raided, we also need to ensure that we don’t have any valleys of giants where the thief is welcome. Current sin or past occult practice are common “Rephaim” today. Faith is “the evidence of things not seen” (Heb 11:1), whereas Proverbs 14: 12 says “There is a way that seems right to a man, But its end is the way of death.” So let us not accept the arrows of seeming inevitability that let the thief have his way, but let’s remember which direction we are supposed to be facing and go against the flow. If we look hard enough we might see a signpost pointing to the front of the mulberry trees.

Discipleship and witness, Prayer and Spiritual Warfare

Search and Rescue

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Who do you know who has left the church, or doesn’t seem to have been around lately?

There have been two prophetic words recently from different people about helicopters rescuing people from a battlefield. We are in a time of spiritual battle. This isn’t limited to this present time, because it has been true ever since Satan was cast out of Heaven; but it seems to be intensifying now. Jesus won the war at the cross, but there are still battles to fight and sometimes the Holy Spirit gives us specific strategies for victory, just as He did in the Old Testament with Joshua, David and others.

He is giving us a strategy now: we know this because two people (Jake, and John Groves who is a prophet in the New Frontiers church at Winchester) have had basically the same word. The strategy is Search and Rescue. Who do you know who seems to have disappeared from church? Not specifically gone from our church to a different one, but gone from church altogether. Maybe technology for online meetings is a problem, or maybe there have been other issues. Search for them in your mind, and in prayer. Ask the Holy Spirit to remind you of people who need rescuing. And when you have found them, pray that they are restored; and pray that whatever problems or temptations have caused them to fall away are dealt with.

The enemy comes to rob, kill and destroy; Jesus comes to bring life, and that in abundance (John 10:10). Search and rescue. Let’s do it.

Discipleship and witness, Walking in the Spirit

The Works of the Father

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The heart of the Son was, and still is, always to reveal the Father. His expressed desire throughout His ministry was for the world to know that the Father sent Him, and was in Him, doing His Works, bringing Heaven to Earth. He tells the Jews “If I do not do the works of My Father, do not believe Me; but if I do, though you do not believe Me, believe the works, that you may know and believe  that the Father is in Me, and I in Him.” (John 10:38) He says the same thing to the disciples: “Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father in Me, or else believe Me for the sake of the works themselves.” (John 14:11)

Jesus is clear; He is also emphatic. He says that the works He does by the power and in the authority of the Father who is in Him demonstrate the truth of the words He speaks.  There are not many instances where He repeats Himself in one gospel account, and nowhere else does He say the same, privately, to His disciples as He does openly to the Jews. So this is not just a footnote to the New Testament that we can choose to skip over or ignore; it is a headline statement that defines our understanding of our call to make disciples of all nations.

It is often repeated: we are not just called to preach the Gospel; we are called to make disciples. Jesus made disciples; His disciples made disciples, and disciples have kept making disciples for 2000 years. As cells of natural life multiply, so too do cells of eternal life. God’s principles work on every level, on Earth as in Heaven. Each cell reproduces its own DNA for life to continue. “And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.” (John 17:3) When the Holy Spirit fell, the DNA of Jesus was passed on to His disciples so that they could continue to reveal the Father through His works (John 14:12). As disciples make disciples it continues in all who are born again into the Kingdom of God, “of water and the Spirit” (John 3:5).

To teach that Christians should not expect to reproduce the works of the Father not only denies the importance of the various scriptures that refer to signs and wonders following the preaching of the Word; it ignores the fact that Jesus Christ Himself validated the message of the Kingdom through them. If Jesus needed miracles for people to be convinced that He was the Son of God, how much more do we? The works of the Father are not an option; they are a necessity. They are in our DNA.  Ministries that deny the gifts of the Holy Spirit through which these works are accomplished “have a form of godliness but deny its power,” and Paul’s instruction is specific: we must “stay away from them.” (2 Tim 3:5) Their incomplete gospel is missing a gene and breeds a sick church.

I believe that the Bible is clear: we, as the brothers of Jesus (Romans 8:29), born of the same Father and filled with the same Spirit, are made of the same spiritual DNA; and one of our genes is the one that reproduces the works of the Father as proof that “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16) Without that gene we are incomplete. So let’s ask, seek, and knock; let’s wait on the Lord to renew our strength; let’s pray fervently; let’s repent of the unbelief that tells us that the miraculous would be nice, but isn’t really what we are looking for right now: whatever it is, let’s just get on our knees like Paul on the Damascus Road and say, “Lord, what would you have me do?”

Because if we want to convince the world that God loves it so much that He gave Jesus for its salvation, we need to see the works of the Father in our churches.

Christian Life, Prayer and Spiritual Warfare

Effective Fervent Prayer

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There are a number if situations at Wildwood that we are praying for at the moment. James 5:16 tells us that “the effective fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much”. Whatever and whoever we are praying for, we want our prayers to “avail much,” so if we want to see our prayers answered we can do worse than take on board what the apostle is saying in this verse.

What is effective in us is the Word of God (1 Thess 2:13). God has magnified His word above His name (Psalm 138:2). This can be interpreted on many levels (just look up a few sermons on google!), but a literal understanding is always a good place to start. Without exploring any other possible implications, Psalm 138:2 tells us that praying in the name of Jesus is obviously good, but praying the Word of God in the name of Jesus is even better.

Any word of God? No. Any relevant word of God? Maybe sometimes. The specific word of God that is given to us by the Holy Spirit as we are praying? Yes. We don’t know how to pray, but the Holy Spirit helps us. (Romans 8:26) The Word of God is the sword of the Spirit, as we know from Ephesians 6. It’s the sword that belongs to the Spirit, and He is the one who knows best how to wield it. This word is “living and active” (Heb 4:12), so it isn’t going to be the same every time. If we take the word that He gives us, and not just the one that we think fits the occasion, we can expect it to be effective.

Fervent is passionate, burning with God’s love. We can’t be passionate if we just repeat a formula. We can’t be passionate if we pray just because we feel we ought to. When the Israelites cried out to God in the Old Testament, He often said, usually through one of His prophets, “I have seen your tears,” or “I have seen how you have humbled yourself.” I believe God wants to see us emotionally engaged with Him over the people we are praying for, and above all to seek His love for them. The Shunammite woman had to make a journey to seek the man of God (Elisha) for her son, and sometimes we have to make a journey as well before we have truly taken hold of Jesus and cried out to Him to see a need met.

So if want our prayers to avail much, they have to be guided by the Holy Spirit, rich in the word of God, and inflamed with His passion. Jesus prayed differently for every situation he was in: He put mud on eyes, stuck His fingers in ears, told people to get up on their feet and told demons to leave. He was the living active Word Himself, He was guided supernaturally by the Holy Spirit, and was always demonstrating the love of the Father. If we can learn to do this too,  I think we will start to see some significant results.

Bob Hext

Christian Life, Walking in the Spirit

Reflections on John 17: Glory and Unity

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In “Story Time” I wrote about the longing of Jesus to be with us. This longing is nowhere expressed more deeply than in John 17, His final prayer time before going to Calvary, where He says:

“Father, I desire that they also whom You gave Me may be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory which You have given Me; for You loved Me before the foundation of the world. (John 17:24)”

Any moment now the footsteps of the mob would come tramping through the darkness and the betrayer’s kiss herald the crux of history and the culmination of Messiah’s mission. Jesus Christ, Son of God and Son of Man, is pouring out his heart to the Heavenly Father that He has walked with throughout His life on Earth. Before the world was made, Jesus had been there with the Father, sharing the perfect unity of the overflow of love between them, outside of Time, in the Courts of Heaven. And at the creation of the world the Son had been there with the Father again, as the Holy Spirit moved, light and Dark were separated, the land and the oceans were formed, and life was born. Now He was the Life, and the light: the darkness that had entered the hearts of men soon after that glorious time was coming in the belief that His light was about to be extinguished, with one of the most horrific deaths imaginable. The hour had come (John 17:1). And what He is thinking about, and praying to His Father about, is the Glory.

What is this glory, this mysterious manifestation of the presence of God that is on his mind during His last prayer time on Earth? What does it mean to us? It meant so much to Jesus that He specifically asked His Father that we would behold it: “Father, I desire that they also whom You gave Me may be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory which You have given Me; for You loved Me before the foundation of the world.” (John 17:24) This is actually His last request. He wants us to be with Him, in His presence, so we can see it. Not so we can just gaze on it in wonder, but so that we can partake of it ourselves, be filled with it, and through it accomplish His purposes as they are expressed in the following verses, and which I return to further into this article:

“And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one: I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me.” (John 17: 22-23)

The hour had come. This is the moment when we see the Son of Man – the Word made flesh, and the One who, after the resurrection, would be the Firstborn of the New Creation –  speaking to His Father intimately and passionately as the Son of God. This was the moment when the virus of sin that had kept God and Man apart since the fall was finally being dealt with. The Saviour is about to enter the birth canal of the new creation. As He goes to the Cross, one of the least glorious experiences in all of human life, He asks His Father to give Him again the same glory that He had before flesh even existed, and which is also the same as that which He, Jesus, had already given to His disciples. He gives us something of the nature of this glory in verse 5, where He prays: “And now, O Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was,” and we get another clue about it in verse 22, where He refers to: “the glory which You gave Me I have given them.”

What could the Son of Man have given to His disciples that He had possessed when He was just the Son of God, “before the world was?” As He talks to His Father, Jesus reviews what the Son of Man has accomplished. He says He has given eternal life, which is knowing the Father, to those whom the Father has given to Him (vs. 3). He has glorified the Father (vs 4), manifested his name (vs 6) – in other words made it clear that the Father is the one true God whose power and authority are sovereign, and He has declared repeatedly that the Father sent Jesus and is the source of everything that He, the Son of Man, has said and done (vs 3, 7). He has given them the Father’s words, to which they have been faithful (vs 14). And of course He has given them His love: even before He went to the Cross, he demonstrated this love by washing their feet (“Having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end” John 13:1).

What Jesus had as the Son of God He gave to His disciples: the Name, and all that goes with it; the words, the life and the love of the Father. The glory that Jesus had before the world was made was His untainted eternal relationship with His Father; the outpouring of love that completely united them. And this glorious relationship is His gift to us. The cloud that falls, the tangible magnificence of His presence, the blinding light, the life-giving power: these are not the glory itself, but are just expressions of it.

The purpose of Jesus passing the Father’s glory on to us is threefold. The first is for the Body of Christ to be in unity “ that they may be made perfect in one”; the second is that the world will know that Jesus is the Son of God, sent by the Father “ that the world may know that You have sent Me”, and the third is that the world will know that the same love of the Father is waiting for everyone who comes to Jesus: “and have loved them as You have loved Me.” (vs. 23)

We long for the glory of God to fill the church, for the shekinah glory, the shining cloud of God’s presence, to be manifest in our meetings. This does sometimes happen, and  I believe it will happen more often as the heavenly timer winds down; but I think in this, as in many other things, we have understood no more than the disciples who asked Jesus if He was going to return the Kingdom to Israel just before He ascended into Heaven. We tend to believe  – at least I always have – that if the Glory would come in our worship times, we would fall on our faces and get closer to God. I think the truth is actually more along the lines that if we lived more of our lives on our faces getting closer to God, the glory would fall in our worship times. It would be a manifestation of our love relationship with the Father, the Son, and with each other.

Jesus longs for us to be with Him where He is, so that we can see and partake of the glory that He shares with the Father and the love that binds them in perfect unity. Where He is now is in the Spirit, in Heavenly places, where we are already seated with him (Eph 2:6). Our unity with the Godhead, and through that with each other, is a spiritual reality that we apprehend by faith and which cannot be attained in the flesh by tweaking how we “do church.” Unity comes when denominations fade, not when they are bolted together. When Christians from different churches believe the same words, are baptised in the same Spirit, burn with the same passion for Jesus and serve each other with the same love, denominations will disappear in all but name and the world will see the Glory of God in the church. Why? Because the church will be seeing the Glory of God in the Spirit.

Christian Life

Story Time

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This morning I was reading “The Gruffalo” to Isobel, my 2 yr old granddaughter, over zoom, and my heart was breaking because I couldn’t have her on my lap and read to her properly. All I wanted was to be there with her and scoop her up. I felt the Lord spoke to me afterwards. He said something like this: “That’s just how I feel about you. All I can do is read you my story. But my heart is aching for the time when we can be together properly.”

We can think about being prepared for the return of Christ in terms of the events that will take place on Earth before He comes; what it means for the church; and what it will mean for us if we are around on that momentous Day. How often do we think about what Jesus feels; about His longing and His anticipation?

This morning was the first time we had done this little zoom meeting, and already I can’t wait for the next one. Isobel loved it: Lisa has just sent me a video of Isobel reciting  the beginning of the story. Apparently she has been doing it all afternoon.

Jesus can’t wait till He finally returns and scoops up His bride. There’s some time until that finally happens, and only the Father knows how long that will be; but meanwhile He is already looking forward to the next time you sit down with Him and He reads you His story, and He is absolutely thrilled whenever you spend your time reciting bits of it. Make it last as long as you can, and look into His eyes as you do.

Christian Life

At the crossroads

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What God has shown me during lockdown is that I have to make a choice at every turn. It’s like a crossroads, or a T junction. Which way do I go? Do I choose the Lord’s agenda, or do I choose mine? So throughout the day, we come to many T junctions, and have to make a choice – for God, of for ourselves.

I have a craft hobby, which could take up all my time if I let it. There’s nothing wrong with the hobby, but sometimes it’s as if the Lord is saying to me, “Do you want this time for you, or for me?”  Sometimes He want us to give Him our time, and if we wait on Him, sometimes spending as long as an hour or so at a time in His presence, He will show us His heart for other people as well as what His agenda is for us. And just being in His presence like that is always a blessing.

I listen to a lot of podcasts and you tube videos. I’ve just been listening to one by Tim Keller, talking about the dangers of letting things take over our lives. God is giving us the opportunity to focus on Him right now, not on things which could easily take over.

From Sue Simmonds

(Note from Bob – Tim Keller is a well-respected pastor of a big church in New York, and author of many books. I’ve read a couple, including “Counterfeit Gods” which is  an excellent account of modern idolatry.)