Category Archives: Pursuing Love

Jesus commanded us to love one another. The pursuit of love is the highest priority in our Christian lives: without love, all our achievements are worthless.

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.

Living by Faith, Pursuing Love, Walking in the Spirit

Seeing Jesus

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“A little while longer and the world will see me no more, but you will see me. Because I live you will live also. In that day you will know that I am in my Father and you in Me and I and you. He who has my commandments and keeps them it is he who loves Me, and he who loves Me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him.” (John 14:19)

Everyone wants to see Jesus. Whether we are believers or unbelievers, we are drawn to the presence of the Son of God. Here, Jesus promises His disciples – that’s us – that we definitely will see Him, even though this privilege isn’t granted to the world. I do know a few people, and know of others, who have had visions of Christ, but I haven’t, and I think it’s true that my experience (or, in this case, lack of it) is common to most of the Church. So why is that? How do we square this circle?

Just to repeat the last sentence of the above verse, Jesus says “He who has my commandments and keeps them it is he who loves Me, and he who loves Me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him.” He had just said, a few minutes earlier (verse 15) “If you love Me, keep My commandments,” so He is really emphasising the point here: loving Him is not singing worship songs; it’s doing what He says. He goes on to add “And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever— “the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you. I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you,” (vs 16-18) then He continues with the verses I quoted above.

I have separated the verses like this to emphasise the context in which the promise to see Jesus is set, which has basically got two aspects. One is obedience: He says He will love us and manifest Himself to us (so that we see Him) when we love Him by “keeping His commandments;” and the other is the timing of this experience – “on that day” – which is the coming of the Holy Spirit. For the men He was talking to at the time this would be Pentecost, but for every believer who turns to Jesus in repentance and faith “that day” is the day when the Holy Spirit comes to dwell in us and brings the Father and the Son with Him, the day when we “know that I am in the Father and you in me and I in you.”

Jesus returns to this point when Judas (not Iscariot) asks him (verse 22): “How is it that you will manifest yourself to us, not to the world?” and He replies: “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and We will come to him and make our home with him.” But when I read this it seems that there has been an elephant creeping into the room, which suddenly trumpets very loudly. The elephant is this: it seems from these words that the presence of the indwelling Holy Spirit, and indeed the very love of the Father, depends on whether or not we love Jesus by “keeping His word.” This seems to fly in the face of everything we understand about the grace of God, and puts us back under law. Or does it? He says His yoke is easy and His burden is light – this can’t be the yoke of the law.

Jesus says specifically that we are to keep HIS commandments. We can all repeat one of them, the “New commandment” that He has given us to love one another. Jesus gives us plenty of teaching, which is the “word” (logos) He refers to elsewhere in this passage , but I think He only gives us one other commandment (Greek: entole) He commands us to believe in Him. At the beginning of this chapter, He says “You believe in God, believe also in Me.” The easy yoke that the Son lays upon us is to love one another and to believe in Him. This is the essence of Christian discipleship, which Paul captures in Galatians 5:6  “For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything, but faith working through love.” The conditions for the Father and the Son to move in by the Spirit and make their home in us are that we love one another and believe in Jesus.

In the same breath as the promise that we will see Him, Jesus makes another astounding statement: “Because I live you will live also.” When He comes to live in us, we aren’t just alive for a while; we have life itself, life without death, flowing through our veins. Each new creation, filled with the Spirit of God, is a vessel of eternal life in a dying world. In His prayer to the Father, Jesus says “This is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” (John 17:3) To love one another and to believe in the Son of God is to know eternal life, and if we aren’t loving and believing (faith working through love) we aren’t really alive.

He said “If anyone walks in the day, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world. But if one walks in the night, he stumbles, because the light is not in him.” (John 11:9-10) We can see by the Light of the World when the light is dwelling in us. To see Jesus can’t just mean to actually see His form, because that is granted to such a small number of people that it would make nonsense of the Cross. I don’t think it can mean seeing Him in Heaven, because this passage is all about knowing Him on Earth. Paul prays “the eyes of your understanding  being enlightened; that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints and what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of His mighty power which He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places,” (Eph 1: 18-20) Giving light to (enlightening) the eyes of our understanding is, I think, part of the picture, in that the Holy Spirit can enable us to see the wonder of all that He has done for us. But most of all I think we will “see Jesus” when we visibly see the “greatness of his power” manifesting in the works that the Father will do when we walk in the obedience that He has spelled out, and pray in His name for the Father to do those things that He shows us.

If we love Him we will do what He says: not because of a joyless obligation to obedience, but because in our love for Jesus we will be actively seeking His will; we will be wanting to please and delight Him just as we would want to please and delight any loved one. More than that, we will want to simply spend time in His presence without asking anything of Him, simply because He is who He is. But what sort of love is it if we disregard even his most fundamental commandment, which is that we love one another? How can we say we love Him if we don’t trust Him? How can we expect the Father and the Son to come an make their home where there is criticism and division? What sort of intimacy would there be with a loved one if we only met once or twice a week, with a group of other people, and then just for half an hour or so every morning? If we love someone we want to meet with them, walk with them and talk with them, and involve them in our lives as much as possible. And so it is with Jesus: if we love Him, not only do we find out what He wants and do what He says, but we spend time with Him for no other reason than, quite simply, because we want to. Our delight is to “Be still and know that I am God.”

I think it’s in the light of this love that we start to see Jesus. And when we see by His light (John 11:9-10 above) we will, just as Jesus did, be able to see what the Father is doing (John 5:20): if the Father was “always working” when Jesus walked in Galilee (John 5:17), He is still working when He is walking in His body today. Jesus promised that we would do “greater works” than He did in those days because he was “going to the Father,” and as He tells us “My Father is Greater than I” (John 14:28) We can do greater works than Jesus because the Father who is greater than Jesus is dwelling in us by His Spirit. When we love and trust Jesus enough, the Father will show us what He is doing, we will ask in the name of Jesus for those works to be done, the Holy Spirit will carry them out, and we will see the revival that we have all been waiting for.

Pursuing Love, The word of God, Walking in the Spirit

The Bread of Life

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“Unless you eat the flesh of the son of a man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise Him ap at the last day.” (John 6:53)

When Jesus said this to the Jews and the rest of the crowd that was following him, his listeners were variously puzzled or scandalized, and at that point the gospel account said “From that time many of His disciples went back and walked with Him no more.” (v 66) Verse 60 quotes many of his disciples as saying “This is a hard saying; who can understand it?”

Taken literally and out of context it’s not hard to understand; it’s impossible. But pieced together with other verses I think the meaning is clear, and as we shall see at the end, carries a wonderful promise.

We’ll start with the idea of eating. This discourse follows the feeding of the 5,000. We must remember that John refers to the miracles of Jesus as “signs.” Jesus actually says to the crowd:  “Most assuredly, I say to you, you seek Me, not because you saw the signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled.” This particular sign points to verse 51:  “I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is My flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world.”

If Jesus is the bread of Life, and his flesh “is food indeed” (v 55), how do we eat it? He has given us the clue already, when he was talking to the disciples after his meeting with the Samaritan woman; “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to finish His work.” (John 4:34)

If His food was to do the work of the Father and to finish it, what is ours? Again, He tells us. John 6:29 says “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He sent.” His food is to do what His Father says; our food is to do what Jesus says. Jesus came that we “may have life, and that in abundance,” (John 10:10) and His words  “are Spirit, and they are life.” (John 6:63). When we obey His words our actions and decisions are imbued with His life. So it’s worth repeating: to eat His flesh is to do what He says. That is our food, that is the bread that came down from heaven. Our food is to do His work and believe in Him. Just as the Son didn’t do anything unless he heard it from the Father, we need our spiritual ears to be attuned to the whisper of the Holy Spirit so that we can hear everything the Son is saying to us; and, even more importantly, we need our hearts and our wills to be submitted and committed to Him so that we can obey what He says when we hear it.

But Jesus wasn’t just talking about eating His flesh; he also said that we need to drink His blood.  As we know from 1 Cor 11:25, the cup is the New Covenant in His blood. To drink His blood is to partake of the covenant by which He promises us His life, and the power and the provision to do His life giving work, because that’s why He came, and that’s what He send us to continue: for His life to irrigate the desert, for His light to shine in the darkness, for the glory of His love to fill the Earth. When we drink His blood, walking in the forgiveness and access to the throne that His covenant  promises – “remembering His death until He comes” – we can have faith to receive everything we need from Heaven in order to do His work and to take His kingdom back from the enemy who stole it. So we “do not labour for the food, which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.” (John 6:53)  The blood has paid the price of all our sin and it secures our inheritance and our access to the promises of His covenant.

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

Now we need to flick through a few chapters and land on John 15:7-10, because here the Word circles back to the same teaching, and here is where we find that wonderful promise that I mentioned at the beginning of this article:

“If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you. By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit; so you will be My disciples. As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love. If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love.”

The word “if” here does not denote a condition; it denotes a consequence. When, rather than if. It doesn’t mean that Jesus will love us as long as we obey Him, because He loves us all the time. But I think  He is saying that when we do what He says we stay (abide) in the place where His love is focussed at that moment for us to operate in – the person we are talking to that He wants to bring into His Kingdom, the person in the congregation whose broken heart He wants to heal, the prisoner He wants to set free –  the specific “works prepared beforehand for us to walk in” of Ephesians 2:10. When we do what He says and abide in His love we become the agents for that love to flow into the situations that He is leading us into. He shines the spotlight of His love on a need He wants to meet, and when we obey His instruction we remain in that circle of light ourselves.

So if we want to be active agents in His Kingdom, we need to hunger for His bread, which is to hunger for His commands. Because when we do what He says, drinking also the blood of His covenant and remembering His death and all it means for us until He comes, we move in the sphere of His love and truly walk in the Spirit, where all of His promises are yes, and they are amen.


Key scriptures from John 6 and John 15

Jesus answered them and said, “Most assuredly, I say to you, you seek Me, not because you saw the signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled. “Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give you, because God the Father has set His seal on Him.” (John 6: 26-27)

“I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is My flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world.” (51)

Then Jesus said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. (John 6: 53-54)

“He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him. As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who feeds on Me will live because of Me. (John 6: 56-57)

“It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life.” (John 6: 63)

“If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will [fn] ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you. “By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit; so you will be My disciples. “As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love. If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love.” (John 15 7-10)

Living by Faith, Pursuing Love, Walking in the Spirit

You’ll Never Walk Alone

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If you know me you will know that Anne and I are supporters of Liverpool Football Club. On 4th September we drove up to Anfield Stadium to watch a match. As you can imagine, parking is an issue. There is quite a lot of match day parking – official and unofficial (people open up an area of private land for the night and charge about £10) – about a mile ( 1.5 kms, ish) from the stadium, and after that the parking thins out considerably. I wanted to head for one particular car park just under a mile away, which I had entered into google maps and was quite prepared to accept the walk; Anne didn’t want to walk more than half a mile. That’s the background: this is where the story begins.

First, I agreed to look for somewhere nearer. We drove past one car park, then another. The satnav said we were ¾ mile from the stadium. Any time now, I thought, and watched carefully for handwritten “Match Day Parking” notices. Anne was asleep – she was very tired, hence the lack of desire for anything more than the minimal walk. Not a car park in sight. Half a mile; still nothing. Fans were streaming towards the stadium along the paths and pavements, but we must have been on a different road from our usual approach because all the match Day Parking that I was familiar with around Anfield seemed to have vaporized, and needless to say every roadside parking spot was occupied. Soon the stadium itself was in sight at the end of the road. I kept driving, Anne kept sleeping, we came to the “Road closed” signs that are all around the stadium on match nights, and Anfield reached up over the rooftops in front of me. “LORD!”  I said as I turned away from the road block, “Where’s our parking??”

Then there it was. On a side street just in front of me ending less 100 yards from the stadium concourse was one parking spot – probably the only one within a mile radius of Anfield. (I’m not exaggerating – you just don’t see them on match nights). I swung right and parked the car, and Anne woke up with the stadium not a mile away, but just a couple of hundred yards.

I’m not just writing this to demonstrate that God really does sometimes give parking spots to His children, but to show how much it illustrates some well-known scriptures. The first is 1 Cor 16:14 – “Let everything you do be done in love.” I like the security of knowing where I am going to park, I don’t like uncertainties mixed with deadlines (in this case, getting into the stadium before the beginning of the match and enjoying the pre-match atmosphere which is part of the fun of the trip.), and I was quite happy to pay the price of a one mile walk to gain that security. However Anne was very  tired and didn’t feel like walking, so I laid down my own preference for her sake, and trusted God  (point 2) to ‘supply my every need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus’ (Phil 4:19)

Point 3 is this: not only did God supply that need, but it was according to Eph 3:20 – more than I could ask or think: “Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.” I was thinking that I might find a parking space somewhere in the vicinity of the stadium if I just kept driving around, and I was hoping that it would be near enough to walk to before it closed after the match, as well as near enough not to miss too much of the pre-match build-up; but 2 minutes walk from the iconic entrance gate was not in my wildest dreams. And free as well: no £10.00 parking charge. Which is point 4: “you who have no money come, buy grain and eat.” (Isaiah 55:1)

I could go on and talk about faith in the context of thanking God for His provision before we can see it – “Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them.” (Mark 11:24), and of our loving Father’s willingness to bless His children out of the bounty of His goodness: “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 7:11), but I’d like to land on John 14: 2-3 “In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also.”

Jesus has gone and prepared a place for us in Heaven: we have this and other precious promises that it is so. But I think we can see another truth in these verses as well. The word “mansions” here is the Greek monē, meaning “dwelling place;” the same word that Jesus uses later in the same conversation with his disciples when He says “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home (monē) with him.” (John 14: 23). God in Christ went to the cross so that He could prepare a place for us to be with Him where He is in Heaven, and He came to the church at Pentecost and comes again whenever we ask Him (Luke 11:13, Eph 5:18) so that we can also be where He is on Earth.

A friend of mine in the prophetic ministry tells a story of a meeting where he had been invited to speak, when he became aware that the anointing of the Holy Spirit was on the woman with a flag and not on himself at the podium. Instead of delivering his message he called people forward to stand under the flag. Visions, healings and deliverance followed. Scores of people had powerful encounters with God that evening.    Jesus only ever did what He saw the Father doing (John 5:10), and since He sends us just as He was sent (John 20:21: “As the Father has sent Me, I also send you“) we can only do what He is doing if we want our ministries to be fruitful. We need Him to receive us where He is if we want to do what He is doing.

The free parking place that He had prepared for us was just a couple of minutes’ walk from the Anfield gate, where the words (from the Broadway musical “carousel” and sung by millions of Liverpool fans all over the world) of the Liverpool anthem are written: “You’ll never walk alone.” When we obey His words, walking in love and trusting in His provision, He will always give us a parking spot in the place where He is working, however unlikely it seems and however removed it is from what we had planned, because we never walk alone.

(We won the match, incidentally!)

Pursuing Love

The Joy Set Before Us

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Last week Anne and I went to the South of England with our friend Michael for a short holiday. Like me, Michael enjoys watching and photographing birds. The purpose of the holiday was for all of us to have a break in some beautiful countryside, for Anne to see some of the rare butterflies that can be found in certain places down there, and for Michael and me to do some birding in the bird “hotspots“ that are unique to that part of the UK. We decided to spend the last day of the holiday with Anne‘s sister and her family, who live down there, and with them to visit a large area call Knepp Estate, which has become a major centre (not only in the UK but internationally) for rewilding – the process of allowing an area of land to be restored to its original ecosystem and habitat.

Knepp was beautiful. It is a special experience to walk through a large area of land that has been rescued from the ravages of artificial over-cultivation and allowed to become at least something closer to what nature, and therefore God, intended. There are a number of paths marked out on the estate: one of them went down to the lake, another went through some woodland to an observation point, and yet others went round to different areas. We chose the yellow path, (marked out by yellow paint at every junction,) which was the one to the observation point, because that was the one the family wanted. I would’ve preferred to go to the lake because it has a bird hide and looked more interesting from a birding point of view, (that was the red path) but yellow it was. Initially.

However, after about quarter of an hour, Michael and I were getting increasingly frustrated by the fact that there was very little to point our cameras at on the yellow path, and the walk was just taking us through more of the same scenery, beautiful though it was. So at my instigation we decided to separate from the family, head for the bird hide on the red path, and to meet up with the others at the café at lunchtime.

So off we went with our cameras and their big long lenses, like two little boys running out to play. Unfortunately, by the time we had retraced our steps to the car park we realised that we would not have time to walk down the red route to the lake, let alone spend some time in the hide down there, and still be back at the restaurant in time to meet the family for lunch. So we decided to just stay in the restaurant, put down our cameras, sit and have a coffee, and wait for the family to arrive.

It wasn’t long before they came back, smiling and chatting about their lovely walk. My niece, who loves the Lord, told me all about the observation point, which is set quite high in a big tree, and which you reach by a series of steps up through the branches. From the observation point you have a panoramic view over a large area of the estate. As we heard all about it, I realised what a mistake I had made in leading Michael along the red path: not only had we failed dismally in any birding objectives, but we had missed out on one of the highlights of the Knepp experience, which is to climb up to that observation platform and see the panorama of nature spread out before us.

So what is this story about? I had a choice. It was to walk with my family on the yellow path, or to go and take pictures for myself on the red path. Although I covered the decision with the justification that Michael would also prefer the red path, really it was about me and what I wanted. Hebrews 12 1-2 says this: “And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”

God has put us into His family, and Jesus has told us very clearly that His desire is for us to love one another. If our eyes are fixed on Him we will have His desire in our hearts and His example before us. Do we choose the yellow path or the red path? Which is the one marked out for us? Surely it is to walk with our family and not to run after our desires: that is basic new testament faith, after all. But there’s more to my story than the call that is upon us to make the choice to love, which clearly I hadn’t followed. Because if I had made that choice, I would’ve actually gone up into the real place of observation, the place where we have the high perspective, God’s perspective. I will never know what He wanted to show me there – maybe I would’ve come away with a wonderful picture of a bird of prey winging over the treetops, or maybe I would’ve simply come away with the same glow that I saw on the faces of the others, emanating from their shared common experience of beauty from the treetop. But whatever God did have for me at Knepp, it was to be shared with the people that He has given me to love, not to be grasped with the apparatus of my pleasure: standing with family in the presence of God in His creation, not hiding from them, and Him, like Adam in the Garden of Eden, on the path that was not marked out for me.

If you are like me, you will love the high places of spiritual experience in the presence of God. The quest for the presence of God is, after all, the theme of this website. But also, if, like me, you are someone who likes to get away from it all, and hide from the noises and voices of all the people who want to take your attention off whatever it is you are looking for, we need to remember that the highest revelation will come in the place of love; and if we are going to attain it, we need to put down our cameras at the cross, because that is where the joy is set before us.

Discipleship and witness, Holiness: You shall be perfect, Pursuing Love

The City on a Hill

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“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)

There is much in the New Testament about building. Jesus said He would build his church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. The New Testament writers encourage us repeatedly to build. Jude wrote: “But you, dear friends, must build each other up in your most holy faith” (Jude 1:20), Peter says that we “as living stones, are built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ,” (1 Pe 2:5), and Paul picks up the same theme when he writes to the Ephesians  “in whom (Jesus)  the whole building, being fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.” The Greek word used for building up and edifying are the same: oikodome. Speaking of our church gatherings, Paul writes “ Let all things be done for edification.” (1 Cor 14:26) but this doesn’t just apply to our church meetings: it applies to everything that we say to one another: “Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, but what is good for necessary edification, that it may impart grace to the hearers.” (Eph 4:29) Every time we open our mouths, we are to release the Grace of God. In fact the whole of the Christian life has a single purpose, which is to “grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ— from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.”

So the Big Question is, how do we actually build this city set on a hill? What does it mean to actually be builders in God’s kingdom, to be a body that edifies itself (builds itself up) in love? I think the key is simple enough: we don’t build for ourselves, but for others. Jesus is clear about this: “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Whatever we build for someone else is never going to be lost or spoilt through our own carnal failings, but remains our treasure forever – whatever happens to it in the recipient’s hands. Agape love has no vested interest in what it has given. It’s building a house for someone else to live in and walking away without being paid.

When Paul exhorts us to us to “let no corrupt word proceed from our mouth, only what is the necessary edification“ – in other words, only speak words that build other people up – he continues with these words: “And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamour, and evil speaking be put away from you, with all malice.” (Eph 4: 29-30). I think many of us read this and just take it that Paul has moved onto another subject. But I don’t think he has. I think what grieves the Holy Spirit is not our negative emotions in themselves, but the fact that their presence among us stops Him releasing the pure love of Jesus Christ that is expressed through the Holy Spirit’s ministry and which will build the City on the Hill. He is grieved because He loves us so much and yet we ourselves prevent Him from fully expressing His love within the very body whose purpose it is to reveal it. Nobody longs for revival more than Jesus.

So just as moth and rust corrupt any treasure that we lay up for ourselves on Earth, corrupt words will spoil God’s spiritual house and prevent it from being built through us.  When Paul writes “let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamour and evil speaking be put away from you, along with all malice” he pretty well covers the whole gamut of the rubbish that we can carry in our uncleansed hearts. But what is so encouraging here is the word that is often translated as “put away.” The Greek word literally means to be lifted up. He doesn’t say that we must somehow rid ourselves of everything that can corrupt our words. He isn’t standing over us with a pointing finger: he says that they have to be lifted off us, because we can’t just put them away by ourselves.

And this isn’t just in church meetings: it is all the time. If our words are corrupted by piqued egos, unsatisfied longings and  unforgiven bitterness during the week, we will not speak words that will edify others on a Sunday morning or whenever we meet. We might even say all the right things, but we can’t really impart grace if we aren’t full of grace ourselves; if we are just putting on a show. But in the grace of God all this rubbish can be lifted off us. As I said, we may not be able to get rid of it ourselves, but Jesus can lift it off us. Indeed, unless we do take it to the cross the Holy Spirit will continue to be grieved, because we are preventing Him from letting His love flow among us as much as He would like.  

The little church  at Azuza street where the Pentecostal movement was birthed  was characterised not so much by the amazing miracles and the gifts of the Holy Spirit that took place there, but by the selfless love that filled the church and struck everybody who came in. The place was, metaphorically, full of houses that had been built for others. It was the home of Psalm 133 vs 1; “Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell in unity,” and because of this, the anointing flowed “like precious oil poured on the head, running down on the beard.” (Ps 133: 1 cont.) Where the Holy Spirit isn’t grieved, He builds. It is this Love that builds the church, and  that will shine the light out of the city on the Hill.

Discipleship and witness, Living by Faith, Pursuing Love

Pictures from China: 3) The Narrow Way

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Trust in the LORD with all your heart,
And lean not on your own understanding;

In all your ways acknowledge Him,
And He shall direct your paths. (Prov 3:6)

Along with John 3:16, these are probably two of the best-known verses of the Bible: we all want God to direct our paths- especially if it is along the Psalm 23 route of quiet waters, with the table that He has set before us somewhere along the way. When we visited the Great Wall I knew I would write something about it, as it is such an iconic monument, but I didn’t know what it was going to be. What I’ve got is a few thoughts on the paths that He directs us on.

The paths of righteousness

The verb translated as “direct” our paths is to maintain the straight and right, from the same route as the word used to describe Job, who was an upright and blameless man. This verse doesn’t just mean God will tell us what to do, and where to go; it means that if we acknowledge Him in all our ways, He will lead us in His paths – the paths of righteousness. And not actually for our own benefit, but for His name’s sake, as Psalm 23 (v3) also tells us. The blessings and benefits do come our way of course, but it’s always when we seek His path and not our own…

Lifted up

Before walking along the path you have to reach it. And the way up is by cable car. We have to be lifted up to start the journey. Cue Eph 2:6 “And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” Or, if you want a more active version, Hab 3:19 “The LORD God is my strength, and he will make my feet like hinds’ feet, and he will make me to walk upon my high places.”

We can try and lift ourselves up of course, and indeed we can achieve a lot: in China and all over the world the testimony to mankind’s efforts to re-create the Tower of Babel is multiplied in taller and taller concrete towers, like these office blocks in Dubai.

Or, we can let God lift us up and build with His stones. We need to be lifted up to walk this path. God’s kingdom doesn’t go up towards Heaven; it comes down from it. What we build in the spirit is always in the higher place, and when the work is complete, the New Jerusalem will come down from Heaven.

The Unprofitable Servant

So what the Great Wall has left me with is a picture of discipleship. The paths that God will direct us in are the paths of righteousness. Righteousness is by faith (Romans 3:21), but living faith is evidenced by works (James 2: 14-24). To walk in the works that God has prepared for us (Eph 2:10) we obviously have to do what He asks us to do, just like the “unprofitable servant” of Luke 17:7-10; and it is this obedience to Jesus (not the words we sing on a Sunday) that is the evidence of our love for Him: “If you love me, you will do as I command.” (John 14:15). And we all know what He has commanded us to do. When we love Jesus, we love one another. Unless we do, there is no walk of faith.

It’s not about you

Faith can be a lot closer to home than the stories in the Bible or the books we read. In fact it needs to be, because without faith in our hearts that recognises that God has a plan that we cannot see but that we nonetheless desire to serve, we do not have the ability in ourselves to lay down our lives and die to self. It is Faith that says “I can’t see the point of this, and I don’t want to do it, but if it will bless somebody else that the Lord loves I won’t think about what it costs me. Instead I will rejoice in the blessing it is bringing to the other person and will trust that God is going to look after me as well.”

To apply faith to our daily life like this is difficult, and the path along the Great Wall is also difficult at times: you don’t go far before you reach a flight of steep steps. But the word that Jesus brought to Nabeel Quereshi (author of “Seeking Allah, finding Jesus”) at his moment of revelation was: “This is not about you.“ It is faith that keeps these words alive in all our hearts, and when we can walk in their truth we are walking the narrow way.

Prayer and Spiritual Warfare, Pursuing Love

Pictures from China: 1) The confluence.

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A Pattern of Heavenly Things

Anne and I have just arrived in China, where we’re going to be for the next three weeks.  Our hotel window looks out onto the confluence of the two rivers that join to become  the Yangtze Qiang, one of the world’s greatest rivers. Before we left the UK, a friend commented that this will be a time of attack and a time of revelation; and indeed it is, because what is on earth is “a shadow and a pattern of heavenly things.” (Heb 5:8) Every time the Lord takes His people to a new place, it is an opportunity to learn new things from Him and take new steps on the path of faith. So whenever God takes us to new places, the enemy will have a contingent targeting our movements and briefed to keep us out of  God’s purposes for as much of the time as possible. This is an article about relationships and warfare.

Swirling currents

Where the two rivers join, the currents swirl around one another before they merge into the greater stream. For every Christian couple seeking looking to move forward in unity, the enemy will seek to pit one partner’s flesh against the other, aiming always for a clash of interests, arguments, and fruitless discord. His plan is for the currents of the two rivers to keep swirling around each other and never to become one, and he has his forces constantly on the lookout to goad us into self-centred and unsubmitted decisions that will ensure that this happens for as long as possible.

God’s Way

But where the Yangtze is flowing, the other two rivers have ceased to exist: you cannot pick out their identities anymore. They have died. We cannot choose God’s direction and still maintain our own. When we die to self and pick up our cross we have to let go of our personal agendas. But when we do, we are free to flow in God’s direction as one, it is His current that carries us, and we can rest in His peace, knowing that we are flowing His way.

Being sober and vigilant

It is no use deceiving ourselves that the battle is only raging at key moments in our lives: it is all around us all the time, whether we are getting in the car, putting the children to bed, washing up, or just going out in the garden.  Unless we are “sober and vigilant,” as Peter writes, the enemy is always prowling around, seeking to divert our attention from the purposes of Love and the Kingdom of God onto the purposes of self, the flesh, and ultimately destruction. If the devil shoots us down while we’re clearing away breakfast, we’re no use to the Holy Spirit when we’re leading worship. And Peter knew from his own experience with Jesus how easy it is to be taken unawares in the most well-meaning moments…

Epistles of Christ

Walking in the Spirit is not just about seeking spiritual experiences and looking for opportunities to preach the gospel, prophesy, or bring healing; it is about winning the battle at the confluence of streams and applying the words that are spirit and life to everyday actions, moment by moment, so that we become the gospel ourselves, or as Paul puts it  living “epistles of Christ.“  (2 Cor 3:3) It is  actually when we are carrying our own cross  that other people can see the cross of Christ most clearly.

Pursuing Love, Walking in the Spirit

One heart and soul

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“Now the multitude of those who believed were of one heart and one soul; neither did anyone say that any of the things he possessed was his own, but they had all things in common. And with great power the apostles gave witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And great grace was upon them all.” (Acts 4:32-33)

In the edition of the Bible that I use (the Spirit filled life Bible, published by Nelson), there is a thread of annotations called “kingdom dynamics.“ One of the kingdom dynamics themes is the power of unity, and in the commentary on acts 4:32 it says this:

“it is reported that the growing multitude of believers were experiencing a profound dimension of spiritual unity. First, they were “of one heart,“ which is a description in the original Greek meaning “in tune“ or “In sync“ with one another. To put it another way they were all going in the same way, spiritually together. Second they were of “one soul“ (Sometimes translated as “one mind”). This has a wonderfully deep meaning in the original Greek. It literally means “to breathe“  or “to breathe spiritually together.“ The results of this quality of spiritual unity were both powerful and practical. They had all things in common (shared everything they had); they witnessed “with great power“; and “Great Grace was upon them all.“

The backbone
Jesus made it clear – and through many of the New Testament writings the Holy Spirit abundantly reinforced – that the backbone of our life in the Spirit is that we love one another: without this backbone, the church simply does not stand up. When we love one another, the world can see that we are disciples of Christ.  Yet when we think about evangelism we can (and I frequently do) easily head down the exciting track of power evangelism, and all the miraculous works that it implies, and leave behind the main road of love. We can detach the hand that reaches out from the backbone it is connected to. But in these verses, it is clear that the context of revival in the early church was that the multitude of those who believed were are one heart and one soul. In other words, they lived out, in depth, the practicalities of loving one another: the life of Christ that flowed among them was the same Life that reached out to the lost with healing and salvation.

When, Lord?
It is clear that a wave of revival is starting to break on the shores of the nations as God fulfils His declaration of Hebrews 12:26: “Once again I will shake not only the earth but the heavens also.” Those of us who long to see the power of God move in our churches and on our streets follow the news with an expectation that cries out ”When, Lord?” But God will give to us as many as we can keep. If we want to witness with great power, and experience an outpouring of great grace, we need to be of one heart and one soul. We need to demonstrate the rule of God’s Kingdom in our lives if we want others to respond to an invitation to meet our King. So before we see God’s power break out among us I think we are going to see a re-awakening of genuine love in the church, because if we don’t love one another in the grace of God, how can we love the needy who join us? I think it is when we have truly learned to stretch out our hands to each other that God will stretch out His hand, through us, to the world.

Pursuing Love

Pebbles on the Beach and The Mind of Christ

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I’m not the only pebble on the beach. Sometimes I think I am: I see a situation or a person through my eyes, and consider what I see is the truth. I may be standing with someone or even a group of people who are looking at the same situation. What do they see? Do they have the same view and the same perspective as me? Do they bring the same history, the same thought processes and the same perceptions? No. So why and how can I possibly believe that what I think about a situation – or, even worse, a person – is the whole truth? Yet so often this is what I do. And we know what the book of Proverbs says about the man who is wise in his own eyes: “There is more hope for a fool than for him.” (Prov 26:12)

There is only one person who sees the whole truth, and that is the person who is the Truth. There are millions of pebbles on the beach – billions even. Each one of us is different, each one of us is unique, and each one of us sees through a different pair of eyes. Only God can see the real truth. One day we will “know as we are known,“ but until then what He wants us to do is to love one another, serve one another and submit to one another – and look to Him for the truth. If we succeed in this, and at least achieve some degree of unity in whatever little group we belong to – two or three gathered in his name – then we are in a position to look together to see the truth that the Truth reveals to us. If we are not in this place, we are forever in danger of arrogant opinions and warped imaginings that do not reveal the beauty of the Giver of Life.

I was recently discussing with someone how animals and birds “think.” We were considering the behaviour of different animals and birds and how complex their thought processes can be in their specialist areas, and also how alien they must be to our own. How much further beyond ours, then, are the thought processes of the One who says “my thoughts are not your thoughts?“

So how easy it is to think we know the truth, and how far our “truth“ can be from what is in the mind of Christ. Yet as Paul says, we actually have the mind of Christ. I think that we, His body, will be able to access more of  those thoughts that aren’t our thoughts that are flowing through our wonderful mind, when each of us remembers that we are not the only pebble on the beach.