Category Archives: Christian Life

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

Knowing God

The Good Shepherd and the lost sheep

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Jesus said: “for the son of man has come to save that which was lost.“ (Matthew 18:11), and continued with the parable of the lost sheep (verse 12). So when we read about the lost sheep , we tend to focus on the sheep and the miracle of salvation – the rejoicing in heaven – when one is returned to the fold. Another translation actually puts it: “to find lost people and to save them.”

As true as this is, I think there is a bigger picture as well. The Greek word translated as “lost” means much more than just wondered off track; it means killed, ruined, destroyed. Matthew quotes Jesus as saying this in the context of children being corrupted, but when Jesus talks about coming to save the lost  in Luke’s Gospel He is referring to Zacchaeus the tax collector, who clearly was not a little child. Jesus’s statement is far more powerful and explosive than we tend to make it. I don’t think He is only talking about people who are lost to their Father’s love, but He is talking about the creation that the Father lost when Adam handed it over to Satan in the garden of Eden. He is talking about the heart of the Shepherd, not just the condition of the sheep. John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that He sent His only son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but receive everlasting life,” is about lost people, but verse 17 is about the lost world: “For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might him through him might be saved.“

Jesus left his Father’s side and the sheep fold of heaven, that through Him the ruined creation might be saved. Talking figuratively of Elijah, He says (Matt 17:11) that the Holy Spirit “will restore all things.” When Peter preached the gospel after healing the lame man at the Gate Beautiful, he said that heaven must receive Jesus “until the time times of restoration of all things, which God has spoken of by His holy prophets since the world began.” We can pick apart the phrase “restoration of all things“ to make it fit our theology until every Greek cypher is dust in our hands, but surely the restoration of all things means the restoration of all things. All things. Jesus came from heaven to gather the lost sheep into His arms to bring it back to the Father’s fold. Having completed the work of salvation at the cross, He and the Father sent the Holy Spirit to make it fit for heaven again. When Jesus comes for His bride all of creation will be restored: “For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God. … because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.” (Romans 8:19,21)

Sometimes we have to remind ourselves that God’s Geography isn’t the same as ours. The Kingdom of Heaven isn’t a place that we travel to; it’s a dimension that our spirits move in. Jesus told us where it is in Luke 17:21 “Nor will people say, ‘Look, here it is,’ or ‘There it is.’ For you see, the kingdom of God is in your midst.” When the miraculous happens in our lives the Kingdom of God crosses dimensions and comes to us, restoring another ruined corner of creation to God’s perfection. Jesus said, “The thief 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.” The Holy Spirit is longing to restore every ruined area of our lives: it’s what He has come here for. Habakkuk gave us these wonderful verses at the end of his prophesy:

“Though the fig tree may not blossom,
Nor fruit be on the vines;
Though the labour of the olive may fail,
And the fields yield no food;
Though the flock may be cut off from the fold,
And there be no herd in the stalls— Yet I will rejoice in the LORD,
I will joy in the God of my salvation.

The LORD God is my strength;
He will make my feet like deer’s feet,
And He will make me walk on my high hills.” (Habakkuk 3: 17-19)

We may have been a Christian for many years and still find ourselves wandering in the midst of the devil’s ruin. Our spirits can feel a long way from the fold where they belong. When that happens we need to take our eyes off the barren fields and the empty stalls and focus them on the Good Shepherd and the abundant life of His Kingdom. Then He will come, gather us bleating in His arms, and make us ‘walk on our high hills’ again.

Christian Life, Knowing God, Living by Faith, Walking in the Spirit

Between the Chapel and the Damned

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The Parable of the pectoral sandpiper

The Chappel Hide
The pectoral sandpiper (shown above) – or “Pec” as it is known in the birding community – is a wader that is scarce in the UK. (Waders are long legged, long billed birds that feed mostly around water margins.)   One had turned up in our local bird reserve, so  I decided one night I would go there before work if I got up early enough. Pecs are usually “passage migrants” – they stop by somewhere for a few days before moving on to their breeding or wintering grounds somewhere hundreds of miles away- so when there is one around, most birders make an effort to go and see it if they know where it is. According to the bird club blog, this one seemed to favour one particular part of the reserve, conveniently just in front of one of the hides. All the hides have names – this one is called the Chappel Hide.  I woke at 5 am and said: “No that’s too early. Lord, if I’m going birding, please wake me at 6 o’clock.” ( Nothing like spiritualising one’s hobby) But God seemed clearly happy with my hobby on this occasion, because I woke at 6 am exactly, practically to the second. What I didn’t realise at the time was that what He got me up for was rather more important than the bird…

I set off after coffee and a quiet time and got to the reserve at about 7.30. There are two very experienced and dedicated birders, Steve and Mark, who are often on the dam wall at one end of the reservoir at that time of day, scanning the whole reserve with their telescopes. The Hide is towards the other end. I felt quite strongly that when I got there, I had to go straight to the hide, and that I would see the pec if I did. However when I got to the end of the path and reached the edge of the water where the path forked I saw my two friends on the dam wall, and instead of turning left to go to the hide, I turned right to go and talk to them. I thought that they would probably know where it was, so it was worth checking with them first. But when I got there, Steve said, “it’s at the Chappel Hide!“ I knew what he was talking about of course. I stayed and chatted for a couple of minutes then set off for the Chappel Hide. However, when I got there, the pec was nowhere to be seen. I waited half an hour for it to show again but to no avail. Then the door to the hide opened and Steve walked in. “Have you seen it? he said.
“No.”
“It was just there,” he said, pointing to a very open spot just in front of the hide, where it would have made a perfect photograph. He scanned the whole area expertly with his binoculars and said, “No it must be skulking in the undergrowth again. But when you came up onto the dam it was there in front of the hide. I could see it with my telescope!”

Confluence of circumstance
When I had decided to go and talk to Steve and Mark where the path branched, it was about equidistant between the dam and the hide. If I had turned left, as I felt the Holy Spirit, who got me up at 6 o’clock practically to the second to go there, had told me, I would’ve seen my bird. But instead, I had decided to go and listen to man, as if their advice would be better than the Lord’s. Chappel? Chapel? Is that a coincidence? And what about the Dam wall? I was between the chapel and the damned, and I chose the damned. And when you start thinking about how God organized that confluence of circumstance the mind slowly explodes…

Driving home I was kicking myself for my stupidity. But the Lord made it clear that He knew what I was going to do, and that it was an important lesson for me that He wanted me to learn. It might only have been about a bird that I didn’t photograph or even see on that particular occasion, but the principal was one that had to be applied in much more important situations. It can be drawn from a number of scriptures, such as

The wisdom of this world is foolishness to God (1 Cor 3:19)
Blessed is the man who has not walked in the counsel of the ungodly (Psalm 1:1)
There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit (Rom 8:1)
We ought to obey God rather than men. (Acts 5:29)
There is a way that seems right to a man, But its end is the way of death. (Prov 14:12)

There is one more, too, because this isn’t quite the whole story. Isaiah 30:21 says “Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, “This is the way; walk in it.” The path that I took was path B (below). But there was another path, path A, which is the one that I had intended to take and which I had seen myself taking as I drove to the reserve. If you are going along with my “leading of the Spirit” assumption, this is the one that I felt God was showing me. Path A was the way I should have been walking in. When I decided to take B instead – “just to see if Steve and Mark are on the dam” – I had actually already decided to go and talk to them if they were there. When I took that path I was already  in “the way that leads to death.” But what do we all pray? “Lead us not into temptation…” If I had gone the way I had been shown at the beginning, when I “heard the voce behind me,” I would not have been led into temptation…

The Valley of Decision
Is this all ridiculously over-cooked? Well, maybe; but it worked for me. Because when I got to work the same day (I am CEO of an educational supplies business when I am not writing or birding) there was a very important financial decision to be made. All “human” thinking pointed strongly in one direction, but we (myself, my wife Anne, and two other Christians in senior management) chose to seek God instead of doing what circumstances seemed to dictate. Anne had already felt that the Lord had told her not to “go down to Egypt,” which represented the obvious choice in the particular circumstance where we found ourselves, but if it hadn’t been for the pectoral sandpiper I would have been inclined to override her. Then as we prayed, we received a very clear course of action that no-one had seen before, which has turned out to be the wise choice, for a number of reasons. God is faithful, and His sheep hear His voice. But we have to be prepared to go to the chapel…

There will be more decisions for us all to make: as darkness covers the Earth and world systems tremble and collapse we will need increasingly to follow the paths that God shows us, and not the ways “that seem right to a man.” We need to be yoked to Jesus, because in that day there will be “multitudes in the valley of decision;” and if we can listen to that voice behind us – and obey it –   we will be following the right paths ourselves, and many will follow us to the chapel instead of going to the damned.

(The photo is the only other pectoral sandpiper I have seen. I took the picture in 2021, at Titchwell Marsh, in Norfolk UK.)

Christian Life, Prayer and Spiritual Warfare, Pursuing Love, Walking in the Spirit

Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven

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“Assuredly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. Again I say  to you that if two of you agree on earth concerning anything that they ask, it will be done for them by My Father in heaven. For if two or three are gathered together in my name I am there in the midst of them.“ (Matthew 18 : 18 – 20)

Symphony
To agree is to be an accord, in harmony. The Greek word is where our “symphony“ comes from: sum (together) and phoneo (to sound), so to sound together. This is more than just intellectual assent: it is hearts in harmony. We regularly quote verse 20 at our gatherings as evidence that Jesus is “in our midst,” particularly if only “two or three” have turned up at the prayer meeting; but I think we also have to remember the significance what it is to be in His name. The Greek word onoma means a lot more than what is written on our birth certificates. Strong’s defines it like this: “the name is used for everything which the name covers, everything the thought or feeling of which is aroused in the mind by mentioning, hearing, remembering, the name, i.e. for one’s rank, authority, interests, pleasure, command, excellences, deeds etc.” It doesn’t mean we’re in His name because we’re Christians or church members: to be in His name because is to be sharing in His identity. We are part of who He is. He is love and truth and grace. If, on earth, we are not gathered together in love and truth and grace we are not in His name.

I can’t say I really understand the dynamics of just how Jesus is more in the midst of us  when we are gathered in love and truth in this way, because Jesus is in each of us anyway. Maybe our unity in some way allows the Holy Spirit to transcend the limitations of our flesh so that He really does become “the fourth man in the fire“ (as in the story of Shadrach, Mishach and Abednigo): however it happens there has to be some connection between this Scripture and the words of Ps 133 that declare “the unity commands the blessing.“ But I also think these are the conditions for verse 18. I can’t imagine that anything happens in heaven without the Father’s authority. Anything that is bound or loosed in heaven has to be so because the Father decreed it. As well as the physical and metaphorical sense, the Greek words for binding and loosing can also be much more generic such as preventing and allowing, obliging or releasing. The Son and the Father are one so when we are in agreement on earth, in love and in truth, Jesus is agreeing with us too; and if Jesus agrees with us, then so does the Father. John 17:21 is fulfilled: “that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me.” And then whatever we ask on earth, whether it’s binding or loosing, is authorised in heaven, it shall be so, and the Father is glorified. (See John 14:13)

Unanswered prayer
I think one of the answers to the thorny question of unanswered prayer may be found here. We may be praying God will and God’s provision, and quite probably quoting God’s word;  but if we are not at the level of unity needed to be genuinely in His name we cannot really expect Jesus to be “in the midst” in the way that He expresses it here. We may well quote the Truth from Scripture, but Truth needs to be spoken in Love. Prayer is always about God’s will being done on earth as it is in heaven, and thus extending His Kingdom among and through us. We all know what Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount: “But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.” (Matt 6:33). God is Love, and “Love is the Fulfillment of the Law” (Romans 13:10), so both God’s Kingdom and His righteousness are expressions of His love. I think God’s kingdom must be real among us before it can be extended through us.  It cannot be without significance (nothing in Scripture is!) that these verses are sandwiched in the middle of Jesus teaching, then answering Peter, on the subject of forgiveness. If we really want to be in agreement when we pray, with all that this means, I think it’s important that we examine our hearts towards each other and ask God to reveal any areas of criticism or unforgiveness that we may be harbouring, before we say “amen.” If there isn’t genuine unity, we can’t expect the blessing.

The Courts of Heaven
The other aspect of binding and loosing is the one most commonly used among charismatics (I use the term loosely: I’m sure I mean Pentecostals as well, and I have a suspicion that Jesus doesn’t use either of them…), and refers to “binding” spiritual forces of evil, and “loosing” people from their bonds. Jesus healed a woman whom He said Satan had bound for 18 years, (Luke 13:16) Her healing is often used as a template for spiritual warfare, but if the truth were told how often do we see a change in someone’s condition when we make these decrees?

In Zechariah 3:7, the Lord says to Joshua

‘If you will walk in My ways,
And if you will keep My command,
Then you shall also judge My house,
And likewise have charge of My courts;
I will give you places to walk
Among these who stand here.”

In Christ, we too walk in those places of spiritual authority. It was when Jesus gives Peter the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven (Matt 16:19) that He first made the promise that is repeated, word for word in Matt 18:18: “Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed  in heaven.” Those keys are symbols of authority. I think we often have the mindset that our “binding and loosing” on earth are words of authority that release actions in heavenly places, but if that is true what is going on in heaven isn’t happening on the earth, at least in most cases that I have seen. But what if we turn it round and say that whatever is bound or loosed in heaven is bound and loosed on earth? In other words, we can only bind/loose on earth what has already been bound/loosed in heaven? That actually makes a lot more sense to me, and it means that we have to know what is bound and loosed in heaven before we can see it happen on earth. Jesus only did what He saw the Father doing, so He loosed the woman that Satan had bound for 18 years because He saw the Father do it in Heaven.

Kingdom Authority
Joshua was a prophetic type of Jesus. Jesus did on Earth what He saw the Father doing in heaven, because he was walking there.  I think that the occasions when we see binding and loosing actually happen are when we’ve seen it or heard it in the place where we too have walked “among those who stand” in the courts of heaven and have seen what the Father is doing. The earthly realm has been given over through sin to the control of the evil one, but we are no longer under that control; we are above it, and we are taking it back for the King. If we want to at least have the opportunity to see what the Father is doing, we need to “Set (our) mind on things above, not on things on the earth.” (Col 3:2)  Jesus tells us (Matt 28:18) that  “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me.”  In Christ, we are in the place of all authority.  To bind and to loose is to express that authority on earth as it is in heaven, whether it is over demons, sickness, finance, or any other circumstance, great or small. We will see it happen more often when we keep His command (Love one another) and walk in His ways, with our minds set on the places that He has given us to walk among those who stand in the courts of heaven.

Knowing God, Pursuing Love, Walking in the Spirit

Yes and No: Life and death in the power of the tongue.

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Jesus said: “By your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.” (Matt 12:27), and Proverbs 18:21 reminds us that “Life and death are in power of the tongue.” Every  time we open our mouths we release life or we release death.  Paul wrote the following to the Corinthians:

“The things I plan, do I plan according to the flesh, that with me there should be yes, yes, and no, no? As God is faithful, our word to you was not yes and no. For the son of God, Jesus Christ – who was preached among you by me Sylvanus and Timothy- was not yes and no, but in him was yes . For all the promises of God in him are yes, and in him amen, to the glory of God through us.“ (2 Cor 1: 17-20)

In Christ there is only Yes
“In Him was yes.” There are no negatives in Jesus. He only spoke words of Life. There are negatives in the flesh – “yes, yes, and no, no” – but in Christ there is only “Yes.” In the realm of the Spirit, where all the promises of God are ours and where we are called to live, there is only Yes and Amen, and for every yes and amen God receives the glory. Whatever context Paul was referring to here when he talks about his plans, the statement he makes is absolute and so I think we can rightly apply it to our own lives. In Christ there is only Yes. Does this mean that we say yes to every request or agree with every suggestion made by others? Of course not. But it does mean at the least that we remain affirming of the people whose requests or suggestions we refuse; at the most it means that what looks like a “no” to our flesh is actually a massive “yes” in the Spirit; and always it presents an opportunity to release something of the promises of God into the circumstances where we find ourselves.

So how do I move from the flesh, with its yes yes and no no, to the spirit of Jesus Christ and the life affirming faithfulness of God that is always Yes?

The answer begins with a question. When we read the account of the woman with the issue of blood in Luke (Luke 8: 43-48) we see Jesus on a mission, pressed by the thronging crowds, to raise to life the dead daughter of one of the local rulers of the synagogue. Here indeed was one of the “lost sheep of the house of Israel“ coming to worship him in faith. Surely nothing could be more important than to demonstrate the sovereignty of the Son of Man to one of the religious hierarchy? But a woman in need touched his cloak, He put aside his urgent agenda, and He stopped to asked the question “Who touched me?”

We know what follows. Power had gone out of him. The Holy Spirit was responding to the woman’s need as she came to him in  faith.

The dynamic of the miraculous
This was the moment of choice. The disciples saw only the agenda of the flesh, which was to say no in response to the pressing crowds; but the Spirit had a different agenda, which was to respond with a life affirming Yes to the sick woman’s need. Jesus ignored the pressing of the flesh and the negativity of His disciples to stop and see where the Holy Spirit was flowing.

We see the same contrast at work when Jesus fed the multitudes. Faced with His compassion for the 4,000, the disciples only saw the impossibility of feeding them:  “Where could we get enough bread in the wilderness to fill such a great multitude?” (Matt 15:33), whereas Jesus saw the limitless resources of Heaven and “commanded the crowds to sit down.” The flesh said No, the Spirit said Yes. The blind, the deaf, the lame, the demon-possessed – yes, yes, yes, yes.

This dynamic of the miraculous is available to us in the details of our everyday lives, where we can choose to release life or death into every situation that we face. We may not be ministering healing on every street corner and in every conversation, but if we pay attention to the exhortation of James to be “quick to hear, slow to speak,” (James 1:19) we never know when those opportunities might arise, our eyes can be open to avenues that only the Holy Spirit can reveal, and even our objections and refusals can be clothed in Grace.

To walk after the Spirit and not after the flesh we need to silence the “No!” that rises up when the negative voices are clamouring in our ears and circumstances are pushing us along their road, and we must be open to the touch of need and  ready to stop to ask the question that will connect us to where Jesus is saying yes.

(See also “Pursuing Love” for more around the story of the woman with the issue of blood).

Be prepared; hold on., Christian Life, Prayer and Spiritual Warfare

Count to ten and wait on the Lord

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Wait on the Lord I say! (Psalm 27:14)

We often read and hear testimonies about how someone (quite often a parent praying for their children) trusts in God’s faithfulness to answer their prayers for many years before they see that answer manifest. A well-documented example is Saint Augustine, whose mother prayed for his salvation from his infancy, and yet who seemed to wander further and further off the narrow way in a dissolute lifestyle until his dramatic conversion at 31 years old.

One of the unchangeable attributes of God is His faithfulness. In the midst of his darkness Jeremiah testifies of it in Lamentations 3:22-26:

“Through the LORD’s mercies we are not consumed,
Because His compassions fail not

They are new every morning;
Great is Your faithfulness.

“The LORD is my portion,” says my soul,
“Therefore I hope in Him!”

The LORD is good to those who wait for Him,
To the soul who seeks Him.

It is good that one should hope and wait quietly
For the salvation of the LORD.”

 We know that God’s word will not return to Him void (Isaiah 55:11), and many of us have held onto that truth in the middle of an empty place for many years before God has filled it with what He has promised – often in a completely unexpected way. We know that “those who wait on the Lord will renew their strength…” (Isaiah 40:31) and again many of us have personal or apocryphal stories of how God’s power and provision have carried them on an impossible journey as He has answered their prayers.

But I have been thinking about waiting for much short periods of time, and in a different context. The theme I’ve come to a few times on these pages is the need to tame the tongue. I probably keep returning to it because I keep finding that I still don’t succeed in that area! But there is a very simple strategy we can use to tame our wild tongues. What’s more we have probably all seen, read, heard and even spoken of it ourselves more than once. Quite simply, it’s “count to 10 (or three or five).”

Waiting a few seconds before we open our mouths in an emotionally charged conversation is in itself good advice,  and you can find it on Wikipedia and wherever else you might look for worldly wisdom. But Christians just have to add two words – “and pray“ – to take it to another level, where we have a practical and powerful example of waiting on the Lord. Because along with the advice comes the promise, as Jeremiah says in the verses quoted above: “The LORD is good to those who wait for Him.”

The Holy Spirit doesn’t need Long if we open the door to him: He will immediately start to bring peace, transforming negatives into positives, curse into blessing. He will always be good. “Cypress trees will grow where now there are briers; myrtle trees will come up in place of thorns.” (Isaiah 55:13

Paul exhorts us to take every thought captive, (2 Cor 10:5) but  if our thoughts are running away down negative tracks, we can’t take them captive unless we stop.  When we do, that simple act of stopping and waiting on the Lord is enough to let the Kingdom Of God take seed in even the most rancid situation.

Try it. Stop, count, pray. Wait on the Lord, I say!

Knowing God, Living by Faith, Pursuing Love, The word of God

Ask, Seek, and Knock: Living the Sermon on the Mount.

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Jesus introduces the sermon on the mount with the statement: “”Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” It’s easy to miss the full meaning of “poor” in this context. The Greek word used here is ptochos – which Strong’s defines as “ reduced to beggary; asking for alms, destitute of wealth, influence, position , honour.” The Kingdom of Heaven belongs to those who know, deep in their spirits, that they have absolutely nothing of their own that could deserve it. As evangelicals we know that of course – or at least, we certainly should – which is why we have to come to the Cross for forgiveness and be born again. But what struck me is the connection between this opening statement of the Lord’s ministry and these verses in the middle and towards the end of the sermon:

 “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.” (Matt 6:33)

“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. Or what man is there among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!” (Matt 7: 7-11)

Maybe it’s my own carnality at work here, but when I’ve thought about the “good things” that my Heavenly Father has in store for me I have tended to think more in terms of earthly “things” than heavenly ones. I think that this is mainly because it comes after verse 33 of the previous chapter, quoted above, where Jesus makes it very clear that we should trust our heavenly Father for our material needs, and keep our focus on the Kingdom of God and His righteousness. But in the context of this verse, what we surely “ask, seek and knock” for is the Kingdom and the righteousness of God, not our material provision. In fact Jesus tells us specifically not to worry about the other stuff that the Gentiles – the people who don’t know God – seek. He doesn’t say don’t ask for it at all, because He teaches us practically in the same breath to ask for our daily bread, but what He wants us to do is to trust our Father, Jehovah Jireh, as the faithful source of our provision and not to worry about it and “seek” it because we don’t know where it is coming from. We do know.

Manna from Heaven
The tense of “Ask, seek and knock” is the present continuous: “ask and keep on asking…”  If God gives us good things from the storehouses of Heaven when we ask for them, Jesus is telling us not only to seek, and keep seeking, the Kingdom of God; but also that He will give us what we ask for: “Ask, and it will be given to you, seek and you will find…” as indeed Luke adds in his rendering of this passage: “Do not fear, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” (Luke 12:32)

This is where we return to our opening verse: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Those who receive the blessing are the spiritual beggars, continually crying out to God for His Kingdom and His righteousness, but also knowing that it is His good pleasure to keep answering their prayers. God wants relationship: He want us to keep coming and receiving from His hand, not helping ourselves, like hopper-fed chickens, to the provision that he has downloaded and left for us. Manna from Heaven only lasts one day.

Therefore…
Bible Teacher Andrew Wommack famously says, “Whenever you see a therefore, you must ask what it is there for.”

Verses 11-14 of Matthew 7 go like this:

“If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him! Therefore, whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets. Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.”

So what is this therefore there for? Jesus seems to jump completely from one topic to another. But if we work backwards through this statement  I think we can see where He is going. To obey the Law – to do God’s will – we have to enter the narrow gate, and not travel the broad way. We can only enter by the narrow gate if we are poor in spirit and ask Father to give us what we need to live a Kingdom life. Only when we ask for His Kingdom provision can we truly achieve the love for others that the Royal Law demands. It is difficult; we have to keep asking for the Kingdom of God to be a reality in our lives (“Your Kingdom come..) to stay on this path. Like the hero of Pilgrim’s Progress, it is easy to wander off track. A comparison with Luke’s rendering is again useful here: instead of saying our Father will give “good things” when we ask, Luke says: “If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!” (Luke 11:13)

Good Things
The “good things” we need from the hand of God to love others as we love ourselves only come by the Holy Spirit, and we have to keep asking for them. Another well-know present continuous tense in the New Testament is Eph 5:18: “Be filled (keep being filled” with the Holy Spirit.”  To keep being filled with the Holy Spirit isn’t just so that we can walk in supernatural gifting: we need to keep being filled because if we don’t we are spiritually destitute and lacking in the righteousness of the Kingdom of God. “Blessed are they who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.”

As Jesus comes to the end of His message He makes it clear that it is not the gifting that we receive by the Spirit but our love –the love of God –  “that has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us” (Romans 5:5) – that qualifies us for Kingdom entry. When He tells us that it is “by their fruits” that we can tell the difference between true sheep and “ravenous wolves”, He says: “Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name? And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!” (Matt 7:23)

Building on the rock
Those who ‘do many wonders’ but whom Jesus says He never knew are the ones who don’t obey “ the Law and the prophets,” which is to love others by our actions, doing to them as we would have done to ourselves.  This is how we enter by the narrow gate. It is not our gifting that brings us into the kingdom of heaven, but our obedience to the Royal law, which produces our fruitfulness. (Matt 7:17) The great themes of this introduction to the Kingdom of God cascade right through the New Testament – abiding in the vine (John 15), bearing the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5), the deception of spiritual pride (The Church in Sardis, Rev 3) and much, much more.

The Sermon on the Mount ends with the picture of the house built on the rock. We build on the rock when we are obedient to God’s word, seeking Him continually for the “good things” of the Kingdom that are the foundations our house, being filled with the Holy Spirit to satisfy our hunger and thirst for righteousness. “Let your waist be girded and your lamps burning; and you yourselves be like men who wait for their master, when he will return from the wedding, that when he comes and knocks they may open to him immediately,” He says. (Luke 12: 35-36) By living in obedience to His Kingdom message today, we prepare ourselves for when He comes back tomorrow.  It is possible to build a house with gifting alone, but it will be built on sand; and when trials and temptations come it will fall. We don’t have to look far across the landscape of the church to see the houses of gifted leaders in ruins on the sandy ground of their unsubmitted lives.

More houses will fall as God continues to shake heaven and earth and purifies His bride to prepare her for His return. How do we make sure we are building on the rock? Recognise that without Him we are destitute of the good things of the Kingdom that will enable us to love others as we are commanded, and have the faith to keep asking God to fill  us with those things by His Spirit, trusting Him for our daily provision, which we keep second in line to our great spiritual need.

Christian Life, Prayer and Spiritual Warfare, Walking in the Spirit

Through a glass darkly

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“And as I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon them, as upon us at the beginning. Then I remembered the word of the Lord, how He said, ‘John indeed baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ If therefore God gave them the same gift as He gave us when we believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could withstand God? When they heard these things they became silent; and they glorified God, saying, “Then God has also granted to the Gentiles repentance to life.” (Act 11: 15-18)

In this passage, Peter is describing to the church at Jerusalem the events of Cornelius’s house that Luke had narrated in the previous chapter, when the gospel was preached to the Gentiles and they received the Spirit and spoke in tongues (Acts 10 : 44-46). This morning, I happened (happened?) to have been reading a little bit about a very well-known author and preacher who calls himself a “moderate cessationist;” wondering, as I often do, how somebody who talks and writes about prayer (and other aspects of Christian living) can leave out what to me is fundamental to my communication with God. Because I often “don’t know how to pay as I ought,” I am really grateful that ‘the Holy Spirit is helping me in my weakness,’ (Romans 8:26) so in my own opinion leaving Tongues out of one’s prayer life is like not putting the yeast in the bread machine when you are baking a loaf. Something comes out alright, and it is no doubt just as nutritious; but it’s heavy and flat, and just not something you want to go to for sustenance.

The cessationist position in the article I read taught that the whole counsel of Scripture provides a more solid and secure foundation for our Christian life that subjective experiences of the supernatural, be it “prophesies” that are products of the imagination, “healings” that are psychosomatic in origin and not at all miraculous, or “tongues” that are the product of the language centres of the human brain and not utterances of the Holy Spirit, so aware of that I found myself reading the passage that I am studying at the moment with this issue very much in my mind.

This episode in the Book of Acts is of course a frequently used justification for the Pentecostal/charismatic position on speaking in tongues: they got saved, the Holy Spirit fell as at Pentecost, and they spoke in tongues; therefore it follows that the gift of Tongues is there for everyone who gets saved. I fully believe this myself, but what struck me when I read the passage this morning was Peter’s comment that he “remembered the word of the Lord, how He said, ‘John indeed baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit,” and that he related this experience of the Holy Spirit among the Gentiles to “the word of the Lord” spoken by Jesus. Pentecostals and Charismatics make this connection frequently enough, and I remember Reinhart Bonneke preaching on this text many years ago; but this was the apostle Peter. Jesus Himself was the Word, the Logos; and the “word of the Lord” referred to by Peter was the “rhema” word, the “now” word spoken by Him into a specific context. So the baptism of the Holy Spirit by the laying on of hands with the evidence of speaking in tongues is as grounded in the scriptural foundations of our faith as it is possible to be: referenced by the apostle  Peter to a rhema word spoken by the Logos Himself.

It is essential that our experience always lines up with the Word of God, and that we always worship in Spirit and in Truth; and because of this our assemblies must be churches of the Word and of the Spirit – whether or not Smith Wigglesworth’s famous prophesy of the great revival based on the Word and the Spirit ever comes to pass. But even if some of our “spiritual” experiences are not supernatural at all, I would embrace them every time for the sake of not missing the ones that are, as long as it is always our trust in the truth of the Word of God, and not our (or other peoples’) personal experience, that is the basis of our faith.

To close, prayer is not often something I find difficult. I often come across articles or book extracts that suggest all sorts of props to one’s prayer life, whether they are Bible study programmes, or pathways through the Psalms, or daily notes whatever else, and I think to myself, “Why?” Isn’t it enough to have the Holy Spirit helping me to pray?” Maybe some of these people are “moderate cessationists” as well, avoiding the gifts of the Spirit for the sake of keeping their faith in the Word unsullied by untrustworthy experiences. Maybe they find prayer difficult at times because they have left the yeast out of the bread mix and find the loaf heavy and indigestible as a result. I don’t know, and it’s not for me to judge. Maybe my own prayer life is full of yeast bubbles and has little substance…

But I know this: when I was a baby Christian in a charismatic church in the 1980s I used to doubt that people who didn’t pray in tongues were even saved, never mind just missing out on one of the God’s many blessings for His children, and by the grace of God I am wiser and less arrogant than that now; but I still think It is better see through a glass darkly than never to look in the mirror at all.

NOTE: Material on the power of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer is (loosely) grouped under “Spirit without Limit.” A useful starting point is “The Name of the Father,” which looks at the baptism in the Holy Spirit in the context of the beginnings of the Ephesian church.

Christian Life, Discipleship and witness, Holiness: You shall be perfect, Knowing God

The Mind of Christ: Approving What is Excellent.

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“But we have the mind of Christ” (1 Cor 2:16)

“Therefore if there is any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and mercy, fulfill my joy by being like-minded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind. Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself. Let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others. Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus…” (Phil 2: 1-5)

It’s easy to allow these verses to be eclipsed by the famous passage that comes next, in which Paul lifts Christ as our pattern of “lowliness of mind,” of doing nothing out of selfish ambition or conceit, of looking out for the interests of others. Love and Unity, writes Paul, will result If we have “this mind” in us; that to be like-minded is to have the mind of Christ, the mindset that took Jesus to the cross and brought Him glory. When we read this, our own witness to His light in our lives can seem like a flickering candle against the blazing sun of Calvary. But is this what Paul means?

The Starting Point
Let’s look at verses 1-2 again:

“Therefore if there is any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and mercy, fulfil my joy by being like-minded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind.”

Paul wrote in Greek, not English. These are the words he used:

 “consolation“ is paraklēsis. It has the same root as the word paraklētos, which is the name that Jesus gives to the Holy Spirit in John 15:26 and is variously translated as the Helper, the Comforter, the Advocate, depending on which emphasis the translators of the different versions have given to the word. Basically “consolation” is everything that the Paraclete brings.

“Comfort” is paramythion. Whether this is translated as “comfort” or as “consolation” (not to be confused with the paraklēsis brought to us by the Holy Spirit), this has one meaning in Greek: it means “persuasive address.” This is about the impact on our lives by God’s love. Are we touched by it, or not?

“Fellowship”, as we may know, is koinonia. It means intimacy, communion, close fellowship, joint participation. It marked the lives of the early church communities, and we seek for it to be the same for our churches today.

Affection (splagchnon ) and mercy (oiktirmos)  are related: affection means “bowels” and is translated as such in the King James version. The “bowels“ were considered the seat of the tenderer emotions such as mercy, kindness and compassion that also characterise much of the fruit of the Spirit, and is the same word that Jesus uses for the place within us from which the living waters of the Spirit flow. Oiktirmos describes the emotions that flow from the splagchnon.

Basically verse one is saying “If there is actually is  any expression of the Holy Spirit in Christ… if love has any impact on you at all, if there is any mercy in your heart , then the very least you can do is be one mind, care about each other, set aside your own ambitions and pride, and have the same mindset as Jesus when He went to the Cross.” When we look at what Paul has actually said rather than what our translations have made of it, one thing is clear: true unity, the unity of the Spirit, is the starting point of our Christian walk, not the destination. Wow.

The way forward
Fortunately Paul gives the Philippians, and ourselves, a way forward as his letter unfolds, that enable us to ”press on toward the goal of the upward call of God in Christ.” (Phil 3:14) It is not a series of ministry sessions or intense or prolonged Bible study; and it is not an expectation to spend an hour and a half from 5:30 every morning seeking the presence of God before going to work- although all of these may well have their place at times.  They start in Phil 1: 9-11:

“And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in knowledge and all discernment, that you may approve the things that are excellent, that you may be sincere and without offence till the day of Christ, being filled with the fruits of righteousness which are by Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.“

The “things that are excellent” that our love will abound in when we let the mind of Christ fill our thinking are defined towards the end of the letter, in chapter 4:

Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things. The things which you learned and received and heard and saw in me, these do, and the God of peace will be with you. (Phil 4:8-9)

Pressing out
In Pentecostal/charismatic circles we often talk about “pressing in” to the presence of God, and seeking His peace. The challenge to us in these verses is different, though. 1 John 1:5 tells us this: “This is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all,”  and Jesus tells his disciples: “the ruler of this world is coming, and he has nothing in Me.” (John 14:30) There is nothing in the mind of Christ that is not excellent. The challenge to us is also a promise: if we fill our minds with the sort of things that Christ has in His, and if we live our lives out of them as he (Paul) did, God’s presence, and His peace, will manifestly be with us.

This is how we “approve what is excellent.”  This is the filter for our lives. This is the place where we take our thoughts captive; where, along with pressing into God, we press out what isn’t of Him. It is how we “renew our minds,” and is central to seeing the fruit of the Spirit (“The fruits of righteousness which are by Jesus Christ”) abound in our lives. When Paul wrote this letter to the Philippians, he is returning to a theme he had already expressed to the Romans three or four years earlier, when he wrote: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” (Romans 12:2)

If we want to know the transformation that will result in us shining as lights to the world in this crooked and perverse generation, we start by filling our thinking with the light of Christ.

Discipleship and witness, Knowing God, Walking in the Spirit

Children of Light: the attributes of jasper.

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“For once you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as Children of light.” (Ephesians 5:8)

The New Self
Ephesians 4: 17-24 give us some clear principles of how to walk in the spirit as new creations:

“This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their mind, having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart; who, being past feeling, have given themselves over to lewdness, to work all uncleanness with greediness. But you have not so learned Christ, if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus: that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness.”

Paul sums this up in a single verse in the next chapter of this letter:

“For once you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as Children of light.“ (Ephesians 5:8)

Human thinking and the philosophy of the world tells us that what is natural grows and develops; it may become more complex and it may grow bigger, but in essence it remains the same: the genes of the baby are the genes of the adult. We might seek to improve the self, but we still keep the core.

The Bible gives us a different model: we “put off” the old self because everything that it grows in is based on desire and deception – “deceitful lusts” –  and we “put on” a new self entirely. The first principle of the Christian life is that this old self dies at the cross and is replaced by a God-given new spiritual self that is born from heaven, “created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness.” While our human brains cannot adequately conceptualize the spiritual realm that we belong to, God has given us some revelation of heavenly realities through the Apostle John, including a glimpse of the details of something in particular that that comes down from heaven: the construction of the new Jerusalem.

“The construction of its wall was of jasper; and the city was pure gold, like clear glass. The foundations of the wall of the city were adorned with all kinds of precious stones: the first foundation was jasper, the second sapphire, the third chalcedony, the fourth emerald, the fifth sardonyx, the sixth sardius, the seventh chrysolite, the eighth beryl, the ninth topaz, the tenth chrysoprase, the eleventh jacinth, and the twelfth amethyst.” (Revelation 21: 18-20)

These are not just building bricks, they are stones of a different order, whose purpose is not just construction, but the reflection of light. And we are told unambiguously what is the nature of the light that shines there:

“The city had no need of the sun or of the moon to shine in it, for the glory of God illuminated it. The Lamb is its light. And the nations of those who are saved shall walk in its light, and the kings of the earth bring their glory and honour into it.” (Rev 21:23-24)

Since we ourselves are “light in the Lord“, and our call is to “walk as Children of light,“ born from above and walking in the spirit that comes from above, and since “the nations of those who are saved” will also be walking in this light, then it makes sense to consider in a little depth the nature of the heavenly light that shines in the dimension of the spirit and which God has chosen us to reflect into the world.

Pure Light
It strikes me every time I read that description of the stones of the new Jerusalem that there are some notable gems missing: specifically diamonds and rubies – those that are probably the most highly prized on earth. In an attempt to understand more of the nature of those 12 foundation stones in the walls of the new Jerusalem, scientists took very thin slices of each of them, along with other precious stones not listed there, including diamonds and rubies, and shone pure light through them. To achieve “pure”  light they polarised it twice, the second time at a 90° angle to the first. The result was astonishing. When this pure light was shown through the 12 “heavenly” stones it refracted into brilliant colours all around, irrespective of the angle that it shone through. In scientific language, the heavenly stones have isotropic properties. Diamonds and rubies however are anisotropic: when the pure light was shone through them there was no refraction at all. It was black – which is why they have to be specially cut so that a prism is created.

Paramount among the heavenly stones is Jasper. It was the first foundation Stone of the wall of the city, the wall itself was constructed of Jasper, and in Revelation 4:3 we read that the One who sat on the throne – God Himself – was “like a jasper and a sardius stone and appearance.“ In the world, “diamonds are a girl’s best friend.” But Jaspers?? When I was a boy, Jaspers were what were used to call wasps (don’t ask me why. But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise…)   The Lamb was the light that filled the new Jerusalem with glory and indescribable colour refracting from the wall made of a material that compared in beauty with the appearance of God Himself, and from the twelve isotropic gemstone settings of its foundations. The heavenly light that surrounds us where we are seated in spiritual realms turns the Kohinoor Diamond into a lump of coal.

Jesus said, “If … the light that is in you is darkness, then how great is that darkness!” (Matt 6:23)

The world’s values of success and prominence tempt us, whether in the church or out of it, to walk in the light of diamonds, but  to walk as children of heavenly light we must be renewed in the spirit of our minds. Not the diamonds of success but the Jaspers of heaven, revealing the light of God whose children we are.

The Light of the World
Jesus makes it clear that not only is He the light of the world, but so are we. (Matt 5:14) If our minds are filled with heavenly light, it will be revealed in our words and our deeds. David knew this when he prayed “Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight,” and in Philippians 4: 8 – 9 we read:

“Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things. The things which you learned and received and heard and saw in me, these do, and the God of peace will be with you.”

When we make it our focus to “meditate on these things,“ we are setting the foundations of our wall with God’s chosen gemstones. Furthermore, we are assured that if we do this, “The God of Peace will be with us.” If we are hungry for the presence of God, it seems that we begin with the renewal of our minds.  Paul writes to the Corinthians “Imitate me, as I imitate Christ,“ (1 Cor 11:1)  and in the above verses he tells us explicitly how to go about it. “The things which you learned and received and heard and saw in me, these do.” The more heavenly stones that we set into the walls of our thinking, the more easily their light can reveal the ones that don’t belong. Not diamonds, but jaspers.

My own “finally brethren,” is this: being renewed in the spirit of our minds is not just about being right with God in our thinking, although of course this will be the case. But the takeaway has to be the sheer rainbow beauty and brilliance of the heavenly light that Jesus has given us to walk in. This is His glory, and is no less than He deserves. I think it is when we truly put on our new self and walk in the light of who we are in Christ that Isaiah 60:3  can start to become a reality in our lives:

“Nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your rising.”

The material about the 12 foundations stones is from an In Depth Interview by David Aldous of GOD-TV (with David Pawson 2000) on The New Heaven and The New Earth. To watch the extract, click here: https://youtu.be/HFMrQUjp-Aw

Christian Life, Discipleship and witness, Knowing God

Heavenly Glory

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“Most assuredly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain.” (John 12:24)

When Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, the crown gathered in the belief that their King was arriving. As the Pharisees themselves put it: “the world has gone after him.“ The story gives us a stark contrast between how the world sees kingship, and the kingship of heaven; earthly glory against heavenly glory. When Philip told Jesus that some Greeks wanted to speak to Him, Jesus explains what  heavenly glory means:

“But Jesus answered them, saying, “The hour has come that the Son of Man should be glorified. Most assuredly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain. He who loves his life will lose it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.” (John 12:23-25)

True glory is the multiplication of life. Jesus was glorified when He gave His life on the cross so that it could shine across the world. He calls us to do the same: to lay down our lives so that His light can be released for others.

Jesus says: “If anyone serves Me, let him follow Me; and where I am, there My servant will be also. If anyone serves Me, him My Father will honour.” (John 12:26)

To serve Jesus we have to be where He is and not follow our own inclinations. This always seems like a tough call, but the blessing is that when we die to ourselves we step into resurrection life. It is only when we do this that His life in us can be released for others. The relevance of our status to the Kingdom of God is zero. A friend pointed out to me the other day (which other day depends on when you read this, of course) that Paul endured a beating and imprisonment before revealing that he was a Roman citizen – which would of course have spared him the suffering. But it was when he was in the prison that God was glorified.

We have all seen pictures and videos of crowds gathering at an evangelistic rally, and there is always a temptation for us to wave our palm fronds before the evangelist. And there is also a temptation for the evangelist to count the palm fronds as a measure of his success, and to glory in the brightness of the fire that the people flock to. But while the fire may be spectacular, the glory is not in the flames but in the life that they bring.

Talking of John the Baptist, Jesus said: “He was a burning and shining lamp, and for a while you were content to rejoice in his light.” (John 5:35) The fact that the Jews “were content to rejoice ” in the light of John the Baptist didn’t make them followers of Jesus, and today people can warm themselves in the flames of a powerful ministry without letting it impact their lives, particularly when it shines across the internet; and it is tempting to desire that others will warm themselves in our flames as well. But we are neither performers nor applauding spectators: we are unprofitable servants (Luke 17: 7-10), and our job is to be close to Jesus and serve Him in all that He is doing so that only He gets the glory. We neither seek nor give applause. But if we lay down our own lives to serve and follow Jesus, the Father himself will honour us. When you walk in resurrection life, you don’t need palm fronds.