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.

Be prepared; hold on., Discipleship and witness, Pursuing Love

The Parable of the Dragnet

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“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a dragnet that was cast into the sea and gathered some of every kind, which, when it was full, they drew to shore; and they sat down and gathered the good into vessels, but threw the bad away. So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come forth, separate the wicked from among the just, and cast them into the furnace of fire. There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth.” (Matthew 13:47-50)

When Jesus compared the Kingdom to a dragnet he was talking to people for whom they were central to their daily life: if they weren’t fishermen themselves, they were dependent on what the  nets brought in for their daily sustenance. In a very real sense, the dragnet was part of the very fabric of their lives. And  since the King said that His Kingdom is like one, we can expect the image to speak into our lives as Kingdom people today.

The strength of a net is in its connections. Peter wrote: “If anyone ministers, let him do it as with the ability which God supplies, that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom belong the glory and the dominion forever and ever.” (1 Peter 4:11) We are part of the dragnet when we are reaching out and making connections with others. Since we can only operate fruitfully “with the ability which God supplies,” in His strength and not our own, the connections themselves – the knots in the net – have to be made by the Spirit of God and not by our own selfish desires. Put simply, we either reach out to others to give them something that we have got (Kingdom, Spirit), or to take something that they can give us (self, flesh).

“What I have I give you,” said Peter to the cripple at the Gate Beautiful. (Acts 3:6) What I have may be a Holy Spirit gift of healing or prophesy, it may be my time, my skills or (what Peter and John didn’t have) my money; but if it’s a connection made in love it will glorify God and it will add to the net. If I am just reaching out to take – your knowledge, your resources, your reflected status, your companionship, your approval – I am not making a Kingdom connection; I am actually doing nothing more than the beggar at the Gate who was reaching out his hand for whatever he could get. Spiritually I am as crippled as he was.

The Law Jesus gave us is to love one another, and when we obey His law we build His net. He said to his disciples: “Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ “And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’ (Matt 7:22-23), and He clearly defines what He meant by lawlessness in Matthew 25:41-43, where, put simply, it’s another word for lovelessness:

“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.  For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink,  I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’

So we can even be moving in the power of the Holy Spirit and yet not be making Kingdom connections. God is sovereign and can use the results of what we do for His purposes, whatever our motivation; but if our hearts are not in the right place and we are seeking our glory and not His, looking after our own needs and not those of others, we are not adding to the dragnet. The context of this parable is the principle of fruitfulness: a good tree bears good fruit, He tells us in verse 17. If our “mighty works” are not grounded in Love, they will be a flash in the pan and will not bear fruit that endures. A local revival may be birthed in power, but starved of love the flames die out, and the net finishes no bigger than when it started.

“As the body is one and has many members, but all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ. (1 Cor 12:12)

There are many squares in the dragnet, many connections. All the squares are the same size, there are no greater or lesser  squares, and they all do the same job, which is to catch fish. A strong thread in many messages coming from the Holy spirit to the church through prophetic ministers today is that God is, and will be, pouring out His anointing on unknown members of the Body of Christ who have no status in their churches, no public platform ministry and no website or You Tube channel, but who are full of the compassion of God and are wholly submitted to His will. As they believe the Word of God and trust the power of the Holy Spirit, these, the unknown brothers and sisters who lay down their lives for love, will be the ones who make the connections and cause the net to spread out across the oceans of the world.

The dragnet is a parable for the end times. The devil clearly tried to use the Covid pandemic to pull apart our connections right across the globe in an attempt to weaken our love, but God “turns a curse into a blessing” (Neh 13:2) and now not only do we seem to value our relationships more than we did pre-Covid; but church networks are growing in an unprecedented way through the use of virtual meetings. The time of the dragnet is approaching. How are our relationships? Will they break when the dragnet is drawn to shore, or are we giving what we have “with the ability which God supplies, that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom belong the glory and the dominion forever and ever?”

Living by Faith, Pursuing Love, Walking in the Spirit

The hole in the wall, or the windows of Heaven?

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“Bring all the tithes into the storehouse,
That there may be food in My house,
And try Me now in this,”
Says the LORD of hosts,
“If I will not open for you the windows of heaven
And pour out for you such blessing
That there will not be room enough to receive it.“(Mal 3:10)

Although cashpoints are beginning to disappear from our High Streets, the idea that there isn’t somewhere fairly close by where we can feed our card into the “hole in the wall” and walk away with some cash is still relatively untenable. Even more untenable in today’s world is the idea that the hole in the wall is still there, but is no longer delivering the goods because the money has run out.

But how much longer will the economic systems of the world carry on? In 2008 there was a hiccup in the flow of credit and many people lost their homes and their livelihoods as loans were called in and money ran out. But soon the wheels that had come off were rolling again and (unless you were one of the victims of course) everything was back to normal. Was it though? World systems are on thin ice covering a lake of debt. When cracks appear behind us we don’t head back to the shore, but run further out into the middle of the lake…

One day the ice will break and the banking system will go spinning down into chaos. But God has another system, another bank. It’s the bank of Love and Faith – the Kingdom Bank. In this system we love others and give to them, and God, who loves us far more than we could ever love anyone, gives to us out of the measure of His love:

“Give, and it will be given to you: good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be put into your bosom. For with the same measure that you use, it will be measured back to you.” Luke 6:38

This, along with the passage from Malachi, is a familiar scripture. We often hear one or the other of them when we are being exhorted to give into ministry, and as Jesus said of His words “they are spirit and they are life” (John 6:63). Yet, as can often be the case with some familiar scriptures, they can have the effect of inoculating us against the life they deliver rather than encouraging us into the radical lifestyle change that they hold out. If we hear the words of the Spirit with the mind of the flesh we will respond according to the flesh, so ‘they will not be mixed with faith and will not profit us.’ (Heb 4:2) We will either ignore them completely (“Yeah, yeah, yeah…”), or we will just give the small amount of money, time, energy, personal space etc. that our flesh can afford. We will be giving out of the resources of the hole in the wall.

But if we have bought into the Bank of the Kingdom we give out of God’s supply. If we receive those scriptures with the mind of the Spirit, ‘as a doer of the word, and not a hearer only’ (James 1:22), we draw on the life that is in them and walk in the blessing that they promise. Giving is like dieting: for it to be meaningful, it needs to be a lifestyle and not an exception to our norm. If we “go on a diet” for two weeks then resume our previous eating habits, we very quickly ‘find’ the weight that we had lost; the sacrifice of the two weeks was meaningless, and we have to do it all over again to enjoy the benefits of that fitter, healthier body. But if we adopt a new regime to replace the old eating habits for good (I speak from experience here), we enjoy all the benefits on a daily basis and no longer crave what we used to fill ourselves with. It is when we habitually look for opportunities to give, that we become the cheerful givers that God loves:

But this I say: He who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and he who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. So let each one give as he purposes in his heart, not grudgingly or of necessity; for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that you, always having all sufficiency in all things, may have an abundance for every good work. (2 Cor 9: 6-8)

Just like prayer, worship, and operating in ministry gifts, giving is an expression of life in the Spirit. When giving is part of our lifestyle we have moved away from the hole in the wall and are standing under the windows of Heaven. If we can grow our faith in this area while the cashpoints are still loaded we will find it much easier to rely on the Lord when they are empty.

(I was talking about “Two Seconds to Midnight” on UCB – a Christian radio station in the UK – recently, and used this image when asked by the presenter to sum up the message of the book. If you want to listen to the interview it is here: https://ucb.lightcast.com/player/31342/427999)

Holiness: You shall be perfect, Pursuing Love

If the body were an eye, where would the hearing be? (1 Cor 12)

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Paul’s teaching on the gifts of the Spirit in the church and the diversity that He has placed within the body of Christ is a well-known passage. In the first part Paul shows how the Holy Spirit distributes supernatural gifts among His people when they meet together to reveal Jesus, the second part shows how each born again believer is a unique gift to the body of Christ that helps enable the kingdom of his Love to  be established on the Earth.

The world and worldly culture celebrate diversity. However the politically correct emphasis on diversity that we see in today’s society is not an expression of the rich variety that God has put into His creation, but is a worship of diversity for its own sake. Diversity in the world has become an idol: worshippers gather round it In abandonment to their lusts just as the children of Israel gathered round the golden calf and “rose up to play.” (1 Cor 10:7)

The devils’ idols are always a substitute for God’s truth. If the Lord is doing something in Heaven, the enemy will try to set up his copy on Earth, so where the Kingdom of God is advancing there is often an idol to be pulled down in order for God’s will to be done. If we look at the counter culture that the enemy is seeking to establish on Earth, we can often see the emphasis of the heavenly culture that the Holy Spirit is bringing to the church. Diversity is an example of this. The devil is seeking to establish his doctrine of diversity in the flesh, according to which every divergence from God’s created order is to be not only accepted, but celebrated. There are many bodies, but no membership.  In fact membership of any one group is often regarded as sectarian.

In God’s kingdom there is one body, and we are all members of it. Like the snowflakes, each one of us is different and each one of us is beautiful, and each one of us is a unique expression of God’s perfect order. But we are all made of water. “For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free—and have all been made to drink into one Spirit.” (1 Cor 12:13)  The devil, on the other hand, would have us celebrate snowflakes made of plastic, rubber, bronze…

How does this translate into Gods kingdom purposes today? I believe that the enemy is parading his version of diversity in front of our eyes because he wants to blind the world to the beauty of God’s Kingdom truth. Jesus is calling His body to unity, but in that unity is the essential principle that we recognise the diversity and beauty that He has put into each individual. A prophetic theme currently being expressed is that God will be removing many leaders from the platforms and podiums where they have become exalted, and raising up the unknown and lowly to minister in the power of his Spirit when he sends the next great wave of Revival. We will no longer gather around denominational flags and banners; we will just gather around Jesus under his Banner of Love, honouring and serving Him as we honour and serve one another. The Unity won’t command the blessing because we all sing the same songs, have all read the same books, or all agree with the same teachers; and not even because we all pray in tongues and prophesy (or not!): the unity will command the blessing when we love, serve, and prefer one another.

We will all be one when we have recognised that we are all different. If you are an ear and I am an eye, we may look like we have nothing in common, but the same blood flows through us, we both serve the same body, and we both have the mind of Christ. I’m not inadequate because I can’t hear like you, and – even more important – I’m not superior because you can’t see like me. When we really celebrate each other’s uniqueness I believe those beautiful snowflakes will fall more and more thickly, until the glory of God covers the Earth as the waters cover the sea.

Living by Faith, Pursuing Love, Walking in the Spirit

“God told me…” The question of divine guidance.

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“My beloved put his hand
By the latch of the door,
And my heart yearned for him.
I arose to open for my beloved,
And my hands dripped with myrrh,
My fingers with liquid myrrh,
On the handles of the lock.
I opened for my beloved,
But my beloved had turned away and was gone.
My heart leaped up when he spoke.
I sought him, but I could not find him;
I called him, but he gave me no answer.” (Song of Songs 5: 4-6)

As the Lord’s plan for the ages unfolds, and we appear to be drawing towards the closing stages of this generation, the separation of the Kingdom of God from the kingdoms of the world is becoming increasingly apparent and necessary. As I wrote in “Not by Might nor by Power” lawlessness is abounding and “the love of many” is already “going cold.” If we are to separate ourselves from the world and its ways we also need to be separating ourselves from its direction. To follow after Jesus in the labyrinth of deception and destruction that surrounds us we have to be able to depend on his voice and his guidance, and we know that we, His sheep “hear His voice (John 10:27); that He promises to “lead us in the Way everlasting” (Ps 194:24); and that He to give us His counsel (Psalm 16:7). The question is: do we hear it, and even more significant: if we do hear, do we heed it?

Jesus is constantly calling to His bride, encouraging her to prepare herself for the time when He comes to take her to be exclusively His own, forever. Like The Beloved with His hand on the door latch (Song of Solomon 5:4) He draws close: His heart is for us to arise from our sleep and seek Him diligently. But sometimes we open the door to Him, and He isn’t there. Does that mean that the bridegroom isn’t speaking to His bride? Certainly not. What this passage (and the ensuing chapters) tells me is that maybe the voice of our beloved isn’t speaking to us as often as we might like to think, especially when we are metaphorically lying on our beds and ‘can’t get up;’ that when He speaks to us it is a special and a wonderful experience that He wants us to cherish and to seek out because we long for His presence more than for anything else.

So how do we distinguish the voice of our beloved from the voice of our own desires and imaginings, or, even worse, the deceiving voice of the enemy? Here are a few signposts that I think may be helpful. They relate specifically to how we receive counsel and guidance from the Lord in our own lives rather than words of knowledge or wisdom that we feel we may have for somebody else.

God doesn’t drive; He leads.

God is never in a hurry. Patience is a fruit of the spirit; haste isn’t. He is more interested in what He is doing for us and in us and what we are doing for Him. He builds with gold, silver, and precious stones: lasting minerals that are purified and refined, not hastily thrown together with “wood, hay and stubble.. that will burn up with fire.” (1 Cor 3:12) This doesn’t mean that God doesn’t want us to move quickly sometimes: He may prompt us to act quickly over a particular situation, and if that is the case we will feel a repeated prompt in our spirit that won’t leave us alone until we have acted on it. But this is very different from rushing to put something together that doesn’t bear the hallmark of beauty and perfection that identifies it as a Kingdom project. When God created the heavens and the Earth it was good. When we create something in His name – because everything we do, if we are His brothers, is in His name – He wants it to be good as well. So if you feel that God is telling you to do something, He’s not likely to be saying you have to rush it. And while you’re doing that thing for Him, He will also be doing something in you. God doesn’t drive; He leads.

Love, Life and Fruitfulness

Because God is love, His words are words of Life, and His desire for us is that we are fruitful. His plans always lead to love, life and fruitfulness. If the plan that you feel is from the Lord is taking you away from the people that He has given you to love, it is very likely that those plans are from your fleshly nature, not the heart of God. Always ask yourself: where is the love in what I’m doing? I have mentioned elsewhere that I enjoy birdwatching and photography. One day I was praying about my hobbies; in particular I was saying to the Lord that they seem very self-centred and not very “Kingdom”, and what did He think? His answer was very clear: “Why don’t you share them with others?” So I have started taking people from church on birdwatching excursions that they have really enjoyed. Love, life, and fruit. He didn’t take away my enjoyment: He actually expanded it by adding love.

Opportunity – or temptation?

God is creator and master of the universe. And because that’s true, He can arrange circumstances to speak to us, just as He speaks to us through all of creation. But that doesn’t mean every time events line up in favour of something that we desire to do that it is the Lord who is arranging them and giving our plans a green light. Yes, an opportunity can be a confirmation, but it can also be a temptation. Anne and I come from a new age background and we have seen the powers of darkness line up events to further the devil’s plans for us, not Gods. God saved us out of that, and in doing so He has allowed us an insight into the workings of the spiritual domain that we were in. It isn’t pretty.

God doesn’t lead us into temptation, but He allows it so that we can recognise it for what it is. And He doesn’t allow any temptation without also providing the means to escape (1 Cor 10:13), and very often that means of escape is provided through other people. An important scripture in the context of guidance, again given to the Corinthians, is 2 Corinthians 3: 1 “in the mass of two or three witnesses shall every word be established.“ We may feel God is guiding us in a particular direction: that would be a “word“ that we have. A door of opportunity appears to open that confirms that word. But that opportunity is only one witness: on its own it confirms nothing. In fact It may actually be a temptation. But if a brother or sister also confirms the “word“ that we have received, we can possibly start to think that God is indeed leading us – as long as that leading also fulfils the requirements of Love life and fruitfulness. God put us into a body so that we can be carriers of His love. As we love one another the world can see we are His disciples, yes; but also as we love we can support one another in our discipleship walk. God puts us alongside people so that we can hear His through them and likewise so they can hear Him through us. It is through the body that God often provides that second or third witness which may be the way out of temptation.

Two or three witnesses

Scripture refers to “two or three” witnesses. When is two enough, and when do we need the third? If we need to step out in faith and rely on supernatural resourcing for a certain course of action, I think we need to hear supernaturally that those resources will be available from the One who supplies them. Faith comes from hearing and hearing from the word of God: the word that we step on has to be irrefutably from God before we put our foot there. Generally speaking that would mean a confirmation being brought through a prophetic channel that has no natural connection with the plans we are considering. In this context I would say that even “godly conversation” with a trusted brother or sister is not enough. David said to Nathan that he wanted to build a temple for the Lord. Although David obviously had the resources available, such a project clearly would need Gods approval. Nathan encouraged David to go ahead, but the Lord corrected Nathan’s words in a dream that night to change David’s plans. God spoke supernaturally into the situation.

So “the eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you”; nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” (One Corinthians 12: 21) We need each other. Again, “In the multitude of counsellors there is safety.“ (Proverbs 11:4) God is not interested in a loose assembly of Mavericks all pursuing their own ends and saying that God told them what to do, even though He didn’t tell anybody else. He loves us too much for that. He wants – and we need – a temple of living stones that are “fitly framed,” (Eph 2:21), set alongside one another and depending on one another for support, to be effective channels of His love and carriers of His presence.

Building the Temple

Zechariah 6: 12-13 says:
“Behold, the Man whose name is the BRANCH!
From His place He shall branch out,
And He shall build the temple of the LORD
Yes, He shall build the temple of the LORD.
He shall bear the glory,
And shall sit and rule on His throne.” (Zech 6: 12-13)

He shall build the temple of the Lord. This is God’s master plan. I think that this may be the only place in the Bible where a phrase is directly repeated in this manner, emphasising it within the whole canon of scripture as a statement written in red letters, bold and underlined. Alongside this in importance is the beautiful obsession of the Bridegroom for His bride-to-be. The closing chapters of the Song of Solomon are rich in detailed descriptions of the lovers’ attributes as the dialogue switches between The Beloved and His bride while they speak of their knowledge of each other. Jesus, The Beloved, longs for the time when “We shall know Him even as we are known.” (1 Cor 13:12) In the divine scheme of things, knowing Him has surely to be more important than knowing what to do.

And so we return, finally, to the two Great Commandments: we love the Lord our God, and we love each other. In one way or another, everything that the Holy Spirit does on Earth in the name of Jesus is connected to His master plan and with our relationship with Him, the Master. If our guidance isn’t, then we have to assume it is not from the Holy Spirit.

Pursuing Love, Walking in the Spirit

The Unity of the Spirit

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“All these men of war, who could keep ranks, came to Hebron with a loyal heart, to make David king over all Israel; and all the rest of Israel were of one mind to make David king. And they were there with David three days, eating and drinking, for their brethren had prepared for them.” (1 Chron 12: 38)

When David was at Hebron, the men of Israel came to make him King. We too are going into battle, to see our King installed. The commander of our army is calling us, too, to “keep ranks.” But our unity is not of the flesh, and as we prepare for war we need to understand what it is in the Spirit:

Unity is the garment that covers the body of Christ when we love and serve one another in meekness and humility. It is held out to all who are of one mind to make Jesus King. It is the psalm 133 anointing on the royal priesthood that comes when the Father sees our love and answers the prayer of His son in John 17. It does not come about by preaching or prophetic utterances or by doctrinal argument; it is not a work of the law but of the Spirit; it is spoken in a gentle whisper and not a strident shout. Unity is in the heartbeat of the Holy Spirit joining the hearts of every believer who understands that we love and serve the Lord when we love and serve one another (Matt 25:40), and that we can’t draw near to Him when we close our hearts to our brothers and sisters. Unity is  not a robe that we can put on with our own hands and parade in our churches and our streets: it is the wedding gown of the bride of Christ, and the bridegroom will see it reflecting His glory when He comes to receive His own.

“As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in you all.”

(Eph 4: 1-6 NIV, except NKJV adds in “you” all)

Be prepared; hold on., Pursuing Love

Strengthen the things that remain

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From a model of the molecular structure of DNA

“And to the angel of the church in Sardis write, ‘These things says He who has the seven Spirits of God and the seven stars: “I know your works, that you have a name that you are alive, but you are dead. “Be watchful, and strengthen the things which remain, that are ready to die, for I have not found your works perfect before God. Remember therefore how you have received and heard; hold fast and repent. Therefore if you will not watch, I will come upon you as a thief, and you will not know what hour I will come upon you. You have a few names even in Sardis who have not defiled their garments; and they shall walk with Me in white, for they are worthy. He who overcomes shall be clothed in white garments, and I will not blot out his name from the Book of Life; but I will confess his name before My Father and before His angels. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.” ’ (Rev 3: 1-6)

I include the whole message to the church in Sardis here to put the heading in context. I do believe that the Spirit is saying to the churches today to “strengthen the things that remain;” I don’t believe He is saying that every church today is as dead as Sardis was. (Having said that, I believe that we all need to be humble enough to say, “Lord, is that me?” For if David could say: “I will be more lightly esteemed than this and will be humble in my own eyes,” (2 Sam 6:22) and if Jesus described Himself as “meek and humble of heart,” (Matt 11:29) then the precedents are there, and it can only bring us blessing if we are open to the possibility that the whole of the message to Sardis is for us. However I want to focus here on just the one line.) So what does it mean to strengthen the things that remain?

I used to think, particularly when I Iistened to Bob Dylan’s rendering of these words in his song “When you gonna wake up?” that the things that remain were the things that were still left when everything else had died. In a sense of course they are, but I believe that the focus of these words is the context given to them in 1 Cor 13:13:  “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. … But the greatest of these is love.” The church at Sardis was “dead” because it was weak in these three things. The foundations of church life – the molecular structure of its DNA – are our faith in Jesus, our hope of eternal life, and our love for one another. As we know, the greatest of these is the final one. And since we know from 1 Corinthians 13:2  that if we “have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and … have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love”  we are nothing, I think we can reasonably guess that it was the third  and greatest of the “things that remain” that was most lacking at Sardis. Are our churches alive because of the worship, because of the prayers, the preaching and the prophesies, and even the manifested power of the Holy Spirit in signs and wonders – or are they alive because we are loving one another?

It’s only God’s love that connects Heaven to Earth, and it’s His love that connects us to one another. I think that Jesus is saying to His church today – certainly His church in the West – that we are fragile in the “things that remain,” and that we need to be stronger in them to face the challenges ahead. The picture above is of a model of the molecular structure of DNA, the carrier of life. If each molecule is an individual within the Body of Christ, it is the “things that remain” that are the connectors which hold us together. Without them there is no life – it is “without form and void,” (Gen 1:2) in fact. Jesus promised, more than once, that persecutions would come upon the church. When they do, it will be the connectors that are going to be important. When it seems that our provisions are threatened, we will need to encourage one another in faith in the God who keeps His promises of provision. If we find ourselves in a situation where our life itself is threatened, we will need to tie ourselves to the anchor of our souls, the promise of eternal life in Christ, to face that threat. And to hold each other up in that faith and that hope we need to love one another. Without the connector of Love, the promise “For where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there in the midst of them.” (Matt 18:20) loses meaning, because His name is Love. If we are not gathered in Love, we are not gathered in His name, as I have written in the article “The testimony of Jesus (2): when two or three are gathered in my name.”

James writes: “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. (James 1: 2-4) And Peter writes: “Beloved, do not think it strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened to you; but rejoice to the extent that you partake of Christ’s sufferings, that when His glory is revealed, you may also be glad with exceeding joy.” (1 Peter 4: 12-13) Unless we are strong in faith, hope and love we will miss that joy through times of trial which comes from perseverance. I think our faith, our hope and our love are tested in different ways, but one thing is sure throughout: we will need to be connected to one another if we are going to persevere.

Sometimes it can seem as though we are on an express train that rushes through a mixed landscape of pressures and of pleasures: there are demands and deadlines to meet, places to go, people to see, texts to write, things to buy, stuff to do, fun to have – and the train doesn’t stop to allow us off. But Paul writes: “the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. For he who serves Christ in these things is acceptable to God and approved by men. Therefore let us pursue the things which make for peace and the things by which one may edify another.” (Rom 14: 17-19). Paul is exhorting the Romans not to prioritize that which feeds the flesh, but to pursue the things that feed the Spirit. The Kingdom of God – “Righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” – is built in the places where we connect with one another and strengthen the faith, hope and love that we share.

Jesus teaches us that if we “seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, … all these things shall be added to you.” (Matt 6:33) If we are fragile in the “things that remain” we need to pursue the Kingdom of God in order to strengthen them. I think that means above all that we have to strengthen the love that connects us to one another: not because God will judge us if we don’t, but because we will break if we don’t. Seeking first the Kingdom of God means putting our relationships above our needs, our deadlines,  and our ambitions – even, and for some, especially – our ministry ambitions; it means that we “pursue the things which make for peace and the things by which one may edify another,” as opposed to chasing after those things on the express train by which we feed ourselves. Sometimes we have to jump off the train, as dangerous as it may seem, in order to seek His Kingdom. But when we do, we find everything that we were looking for, and most of all we find Jesus waiting for us when we land.

“When you gonna wake up?” from Slow Train Coming, by Bob Dylan

Holiness: You shall be perfect, Prophesy and the prophetic, Pursuing Love

Our eyes will see the King

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The river of God’s mercy flows from Cross, and because we stand in that river we are able to come before a holy God. But as we stand there God is doing a new thing in us: He is bringing us to a higher level of sanctification. He is bringing us to a place where He will say “Take off your shoes, for the place where you stand is holy.” Our shoes have walked in the dirt of the world, but His presence in us will become so strong that we will be able to separate ourselves from the sin that has stalked our lives and so often overpowers us.

When that time comes we will be able to say with David: “I was also blameless before him, And I kept myself from my iniquity,“ but it will not be because of our own righteousness, but of the righteousness of the God that dwells within us.  Our eyes will see the King, and conviction of sin will be strong in all who are submitted to Him, as it was in the days of Azuza Street; but the Lord says that Azuza Street was just a forerunner of what is to come: as we stand in that place of sanctification He will lift our eyes to new heights of love that only a very few prophets and apostles have known until now. What a few have just glimpsed, many will grasp, and those who do will know His power going before them and into the fallen world to establish His Kingdom.

We are standing before the walls of Jericho, and He says to us now “I am drawing you into the Holy Place, where I will give you your instructions and prepare you for moving into the land ahead.” For when we obey the commander of the Lord’s army we will see the walls come down.

“In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of His robe filled the temple. Above it stood seraphim; each one had six wings: with two he covered his face, with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one cried to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts;
The whole earth is full of His glory!” And the posts of the door were shaken by the voice of him who cried out, and the house was filled with smoke. So I said:

“Woe is me, for I am undone!
Because I am a man of unclean lips,
And I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips;
For my eyes have seen the King,
The LORD of hosts.” (Isaiah 6: 1-4)

“And it came to pass, when Joshua was by Jericho, that he lifted his eyes and looked, and behold, a Man stood opposite him with His sword drawn in His hand. And Joshua went to Him and said to Him, “Are You for us or for our adversaries?”
So He said, “No, but as Commander of the army of the LORD I have now come.” And Joshua fell on his face to the earth and worshiped, and said to Him, “What does my Lord say to His servant?” Then the Commander of the LORD’s army said to Joshua, “Take your sandal off your foot, for the place where you stand is holy.” And Joshua did so” (Joshua 5: 13-15)

“For I have kept the ways of the Lord,
And have not wickedly departed from my God.
All his judgements were before me,
And I did not put away his statutes from me.
I was also blameless before him,
And I kept myself from my iniquity.“ (Psalm 18:21-23)

Discipleship and witness, Living by Faith, Pursuing Love

“The testimony of Jesus (2): when two or three are gathered in my name…”

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We often quote the words of Christ: “where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the mist of them.“  (Matt 18:20) I don’t think that this is just a reference to the presence of the Holy Spirit manifesting Jesus in the body of Christ, although of course it is that. But I think it also points to the underpinning of truth found in the law, where a matter has to be established by two or three witnesses. (2 Cor 13:1) Where two or three witnesses are gathered in His name, His presence is a proven reality and is a fulfilment of the law.

But we cannot just leave this as an article of faith. “The just shall live by faith.” (Habakkuk 2:4) Our faith is not just a given set of principles that we believe: it is the source and fabric of our lives. Faith colours and directs what we do. It’s a reality: “the evidence of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1) The presence of Jesus “in the midst”  when two or three are gathered in His name is a reality to be experienced, evidence that testifies to the truth of His existence. It is the testimony of Jesus.

The qualifier that I think we can pass over rather too easily is the need to be gathered in His name. The ancient idea of “name” is so much more than an identifier or a label: it is the whole of a person’s identity, it is the reality of who they are. To be gathered “in the name”  of Jesus is not to be together in one place that has the name of Jesus on a plaque outside; it to be gathered in submission to His will, open to His power, and as vessels for His love. If we gather in the name of Christ it is with our desires and our agendas laid at His feet.

When we fulfil these requirements the Holy Spirit can come and make Jesus an experienced reality among us: we are gathered in unity, the blessing is commanded (Psalm 133), and the prayer of Jesus quoted in John 17 is fulfilled. The spirit of prophesy is evident. If we do not lay down our agendas we are being double-minded, and cannot therefore “expect to receive anything from the Lord.” (James 1:7) If we bring them to the gathering with us, the only requirements that are fulfilled are ultimately those of “confusion and every evil thing” (James 3:16) and of religion that “has a form of godliness but denies its power.” (2 Timothy 3:5) And we know what the Scriptures say about that.

Christian Life, Pursuing Love

Follow the ancient paths

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I was driving along a country road the other day when I saw a buzzard perched in a tree top. It was the classic image of the bird on a dead branch high in a treetop surveying its surroundings. I decided to turn the car around and drive towards it again to take a photograph, if there was somewhere suitable where I could pull the car in. Two minutes later I was approaching the tree again and the bird was still there; what’s more there was a little place at the side of the road where I could park the car close enough for a decent shot. So far so good. And then came the stupid moment: instead of just pointing my camera through the windscreen, I decided to open the door and step outside. It won’t notice me, I thought.

Wrong! As soon as the door moved, the bird opened its beautiful huge wings and flapped slowly away. And away with it glided my classic close-up (with my zoom lens) photo of the buzzard on the high dead branch.

But I felt God spoke to me as I dove away in disappointment and anger at my stupidity, and spent much of the morning reflecting on the lesson I felt that the Lord was teaching me. It was this: when I looked at the buzzard I only saw the photograph I want to take and the actions that I could carry out in order to take that photo. I did not look at the buzzard and see what it was and what it was doing. The buzzard wasn’t a photo for my collection , it was a wild bird with far keener eyes than my own, perched on a vantage point where it had sight of all that moved within its range of vision. That included me and my car door. I gave no thought to the impact that I would have on the buzzard; only the impact the buzzard would have on my collection of photos.


We cannot love others unless we consider the impact that we have on them, and we can only do this when we understand who they are, what they are doing and why they are doing it; what is going on in the world that they were in before we turned up. We achieve this is by approaching gently, with consideration and understanding. If I am approaching a bush where a warbler is singing I will approach as gently as I can because I don’t want to scare it away: why do I barge into the “bushes” where other people are and expect them to welcome my disturbance of their world? “Let your gentleness be known to all,” wrote Paul (Philippians 4:5). Jesus told us to learn gentleness from Him when we take His yoke (Matt 11:29). Gentleness is an essential characteristic of love and part of the fruit of the Spirit. If I had included gentleness in my approach to that buzzard I would have taken a picture through the car windscreen instead of scaring it off by opening the door. Instead, without love, I ended up with nothing (1 . Cor 13…)

Jeremiah 6:16 says: “This is what the LORD says: “Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls.”

Jesus Himself is the ancient path: He is the Way, the “good way.” And when He speaks to us about taking His yoke and following Him, He quotes the very words that the Holy Spirit speaks through Jeremiah: “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls, For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Matt 11: 29-30)

Every moment in any relationship is a crossroads. We have a choice. We either charge across in the direction that we have in our minds, open the car door and scare away the bird; or we can stand, which means we have first have to stop. And having stopped, we look, which means we consider the other person, who they are and the circumstances they are in. And having looked, we seek Jesus, the good way, and look for those ancient paths of His that He wants us to walk in. If we don’t have an immediate revelation, we can’t go far wrong with following the guidance of 2 Tim 2:22, which is to “pursue righteousness, faith, love, peace.”  If we do that, not only will we proceed with gentleness and find rest for our own souls, but we will bring Jesus into the other person’s situation and we might help their soul to find rest as well.

Don’t rush to open the car door… (this one was much further away, and is much enlarged.)

(Note for readers in the USA: the bird in this story is a european common buzzard; not a turkey vulture, which is often called a buzzard in the USA).

Christian Life, Discipleship and witness, Pursuing Love

Rescuing Bertie: The Fields Are White Unto Harvest…

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Yesterday evening Anne and I went for a walk at a spot about half an hour’s drive from our house. We parked the car and were only about 20 m down the path when I saw something that looked like a dead bird. When I approached it though, I saw that it was actually very much alive: it was a young pigeon, but it was lying on its back and flapping around hopelessly in the dirt. It couldn’t seem to turn over. At first I thought it might just be stranded because it was on its back, so tried to put it right; but it immediately flopped back upside down and continued to flap its wings around to no effect other than to make desperate circles in the dirt. I picked it up, and saw that one of its wings had some sort of injury. It had been bleeding, and it was caked in dirt around the wound. We didn’t know how to look after it if we took it home, but we knew that if we left it there it had zero chance of survival. Two friends of ours at church are vets and live very close to us, so we decided to take it home and ask their advice. However when I rang on the doorbell there was no reply. I had decided to call the pigeon Bertie. From that moment Bertie’s life was in our hands.

Fortunately Google knows all about what to do with injured baby pigeons, and even more fortunately Google also knew that there happens to be a wildlife rescue centre about 10 minutes drive from our house. And even more fortunately still, the centre was open from 10 o’clock this morning (Sunday – church starts at 10.30). I also “just happened” to have the perfect sized empty box, with everything necessary to make a warm comfortable bed for Bertie (as you do), in the car. It definitely seems as though God was on the case.

We had everything that Bertie needed

So we made Bertie comfortable in the box, and went to bed hoping that we wouldn’t find a dead Bertie in the morning. We didn’t: in fact he was a lot more perky then he had been, having recovered from the obvious state of shock he had been in. So I took him to the rescue centre, they had a quick look at him and confirmed that his wing was injured, said he would be fine, that they would look after him and would “put him with all the other pigeons.” I even managed to arrive at church in time for the beginning of the service.

I left Bertie in the hands of the wildlife centre, happy that our little rescue mission looked like having a good outcome. But then I began to think about what a powerful metaphor the whole story was for God’s love and our mission to share it with others. Before God reaches down for us, we are just like Bertie, wounded and flapping around desperately in the dirt that is caked on wings that were made to fly. Unless we are rescued, our chances of survival are zero: we would flap around upside down in the dirt and into a lost eternity without ever knowing the freedom of flying into God’s eternal purposes. God in Christ left the heavenly realms and came to us; He parked his car here on Earth where He walks down the path where we have fallen, and if we will let Him He will step down lovingly and rescue us from the dirt, clean us up, heal our wounds, and release us to fly with “all the other pigeons“ that He has taken into his House.

We thought we needed our friends the vets to look after Bertie, but that wasn’t the case: we had everything that we needed for our part of the rescue mission, including the box and a warm soft lining him to lie on, as well as the availability of all the necessary information. And what I found even more amazing was that there is a specialist wildlife rescue centre just down the road, which has been there for years but that I knew nothing about, even though I call myself a wildlife lover. I can even top that: the first picture on their website of the work that they do was of a baby pigeon very similar to Bertie. All that was needed from us was the willingness to take that first step, to reach out, pick him up and bring him home.

The (slightly younger) “Bertie” on the rescue centre website.

We are on God’s rescue mission. There are “Berties“ all around us, created by their loving father to spread their wings and fly, but broken, wounded and upside down in the dirt where they will stay unless we reach out to rescue them. We don’t need an “expert“ to do the job: it has been given to you and me. And we don’t have to carry out the whole rescue, just our part; but everything that we need for us to do that part has been made available to us since before time began. God has already got their pictures on His website.

The fields are white unto harvest. Will we go?