Category Archives: Walking in the Spirit

God gives the Spirit without limit. Jesus gave the Holy Spirit to the church to equip us to be His witnesses and carry on the work that He started by that same power. To deny that the power and gifts of the Holy Spirit are available to the believer today, or to say, as some do, that God does not speak supernaturally to His people today, is effectively taking Christ out of Christianity.

Pursuing Love, Walking in the Spirit

By Himself Alone

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“Therefore, when Jesus perceived that they were about to take him by force and make him King, He departed again to the mountain by himself alone.

The fifth sign in the gospel of John is when Jesus walked on the water towards the disciples. The narrative account of this really begins while He was still on land, after distributing loaves and fishes to the 5000. They wanted to make Him King, but He went off to the mountain to be alone. While the feeding of the 5000 speaks to us of God’s kingdom provision, we see a demonstration of Christ’s authority – and our authority in Him – in the account of the sign that immediately follows. It begins with the enemy inciting the crowd to offer Him the same temptation that He faced in the wilderness, when Satan offered to give Jesus all the kingdoms of the world in return for his Worship.

The crowd had seen the power of God at work through Jesus before the miracle of the loaves and the fishes, but it was when they saw His ability to produce food out of thin air that they wanted His kingship. As He said to them in Capernaum, after He had taken the disciples across the stormy lake, “You seek Me not because you saw the signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled.” John 6:26). They weren’t interested in Jesus because of what the sign said about who He was, but because He conjured free food.
The transition from distributing the loaves and fishes to walking across the stormy lake demonstrates the truth of His famous statement to Pilate, that His Kingdom is not of this world (John 18:3), even though He brings the abundance of His kingdom into it. Like Jesus, we are no longer of this world, but we are called to bring His kingdom into it. We too need to “see the signs,” not seek to eat and be filled.

John’s narrative tells us that He departed “by himself alone.” He uses two words – autos monos in Greek – when one would have made the meaning clear enough. So why is the scripture so emphatic? I think there are two sides to this. The first one is clear enough: the authority of Jesus came from the mountain and not from the world; from the Father and not from men; the Spirit, not the flesh. His kingdom was “not of this world.” Satan could tempt Jesus with “all the kingdoms of this world and their glory“ (Matthew 4:8) because he had stolen them from Adam; but in Christ, the second Adam, we, “the violent,” seize them back from him “by force.” (Matt:11:12) Sometimes the glory of the kingdoms of this world can clutch at us like the hands of the crowd were clutching at Jesus; and if we are to walk after the spirit and not after the flesh we have to resolutely turn away from them, as Jesus did, to reach the mountain where we stand in His authority and power.


The second aspect is not so much about Christ Himself and our position in Him, but it’s about us; however the manifestation of what we receive on the mountain is dependent upon it. Much has been written about the connection between our authority in Christ and the quality of our relationship with Him, but I believe there is less on the connection between our relationships with one another and our authority in Him, so my focus here is more on that second aspect. Because in the place where we meet with God, we receive from Him the grace to meet with one another.

Each one of us stands before God, “by himself alone.”  God loves each one of us and Jesus died for each one of us as individuals, and He wants us to love each other as individuals as well. The truth of His great love applies to everyone, but my experience of His love is not the same as yours: we work out our own salvation in fear and trembling. (Phil 2:12) We love one another for who they are ‘by themselves alone,’ we don’t try and make them into somebody else – especially not replicas of ourselves. Even if I disagree with your theology, that is ultimately between you and Jesus. If I think you are an error, I can share what I believe, and whether it’s truth spoken in Love or my own error spoken in love, what is important before God is that it is spoken in Love.

Paul refers to this as being “like-minded.” When he exhorts the Philippians to “have this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus” (Phil 2:5) he introduces his famous passage on Christ’s humility and exaltation like this:

 “If there is any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and mercy, fulfill my joy by being like-minded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind. Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself. Let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others.” (Phil 2: 1-4)

You and I are like-minded when we both see each other standing before the majesty and mercy of the cross, and this, the mark of true unity, is a Work of the Holy Spirit in our hearts: we cannot achieve it and our own strength. Paul makes this clear in the letter to the Romans: “Now may the God of patience and comfort grant you to be like-minded toward one another, according to Christ Jesus, that you may with one mind and one mouth glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (Romans 15:15) The world‘s version of like-mindedness is tolerance, but tolerance is empty of Love.

The apostle Peter tells us that “judgement begins at the house of God.“ Personally, I don’t think this means that I judge you because I think you walk in error, but that God judges me if I’m not walking in love. When we, the body of Christ, become practised in taking every critical and judgemental thought captive to the obedience of Christ and can learn to truly embrace our differences, the love of God will break through and bring unity where the judgement of man has previously brought division. Unity between you and me doesn’t come when we both think the same as each other, but when we understand and accept that the mountain you are climbing does not look the same as mine.

Having been up on the mountain, Jesus headed out across the waves towards His friends. We can only walk on water in the dark when we have stood on the mountain in the Light.

Pursuing Love, Walking in the Spirit

By Himself Alone

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“Therefore, when Jesus perceived that they were about to take him by force and make him King, He departed again to the mountain by himself alone.” (John 6:15)

After Jesus had fed the 5,000 He walked on the water towards the disciples. The narrative account of this really begins while he was still on land, after distributing loaves and fishes to the crowd. They wanted to make Him king, but He went off to the mountain to be alone. If we look at this miracle through the lens of what it demonstrates of Christ’s authority and our authority in Him, we can see here the enemy  inciting the crowd to offer Jesus the same temptation that He faced in the wilderness, when Satan offered to give Him all the kingdoms of the world in return for His Worship.

The crowd had seen the power of God at work through Jesus before the miracle of the loaves and the fishes, but it was when they saw His ability to produce food out of thin air that they wanted His kingship. As He said to them in Capernaum, after He had taken the disciples across the stormy lake, “you seek Me not because you saw the signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled.” John 6:26). They weren’t interested in Jesus because of what the sign said about Him, but because He conjured free food.

John’s narrative tells us that He departed “by himself alone.” He uses two words – autos monos in Greek – when one would have made the meaning clear enough. So why is the scripture so emphatic? I think there are two sides to this. The first one is clear enough: the authority of Jesus came from the mountain and not from the world; from the Father and not from men. His kingdom was “not of this world.” Satan could tempt Jesus with “all the kingdoms of this world and their glory“ (Matthew 4:8) because he had stolen them from Adam; in Christ, the second Adam, we, “the violent,” seize them back from him “by force.” (Matt: 11:12) Sometimes the glory of the kingdoms of this world can clutch at us like the hands of the crowd were clutching at Jesus; and if we are to walk after the spirit are not after the flesh we have to resolutely turn away from them, as Jesus did, to reach the mountain where we stand in His authority and power.

The second aspect is not so much about Christ Himself and our position in Him, but it’s about us. However, the manifestation of what we receive on the mountain depends on it. Each one of us stands before God, “by himself alone.”  God loves each one of us and Jesus died for each one of us as individuals, and He wants us to love each other as individuals as well. The truth of His great love applies to everyone, but my experience of His love is not the same as yours: we work out our own salvation in fear and trembling. (Phil 2:12) We love one another for who they are ‘by themselves alone,’ we don’t try and make them into somebody else – especially not replicas of ourselves. Even if I disagree with your theology, that is ultimately between you and Jesus. If I think you are an error, I can share what I believe, and whether it’s truth spoken in Love or my own error spoken in love, what is important before God is that it is spoken in Love. The apostle Peter tells us that “judgement begins at the house of God.“ (1 Pe 4:17) This doesn’t mean that I judge you because I think you walk in error, but that God judges me if I’m not walking in love. When we, the body of Christ, become practised in taking every critical and judgemental thought captive to the obedience of Christ and can learn to truly embrace our differences, the love of God will break through and bring unity where the judgement of man has previously brought division. And we all know Psalm 133 and what it is that unity commands. 

So our spiritual authority rests in the power of Love and the mercy which triumphs over judgement, and it comes from the mountain, not from the crowd. Because it’s just as important not to seek the approval of others as it is for us not to disapprove of them. Our spiritual authority has a dual core: it rests in our relationship with God and the love for our neighbour that we receive from Him. We do not love for the power, the influence or any other reward that we can receive from people, but only out of what we receive from God. He is our very great reward. We don’t run to the crowd; we run to the mountain, by ourselves alone. But having been up on the mountain, Jesus headed out across the waves towards His friends. We can only walk on water in the dark when we have stood on the mountain in the Light.

Walking in the Spirit

Word and Spirit

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“They willingly received Him into the boat, and immediately the boat was at the land where they were going” (John 6:21)

We know the story: the disciples were battling the storm, Jesus came walking over the water towards them, then as soon as He was in the boat with them they had reached their destination. I’ve always seen this as a wonderful demonstration of Jesus’s divinity, but I believe there is a further application for us, because what was true for the disciples on Lake Galilee can be true for us as well. When Jesus is in the boat with us, we are immediately at the land where we are going. We know where we are going: heaven. I can see two ways of looking at this. The first one is the “now and not yet” aspect of the Kingdom of God: the fullness of the Kingdom will be seen on earth when Jesus returns in His glory, yet the Kingdom of God is among us now (Luke 17:21), wherever the rule and reign of the King is manifested today. The second perspective is this: when we are in the presence of Jesus, we are there; we have reached our heavenly destination. It’s easy to bandy around phrases like “in the spirit,“ and “by faith,” but the inescapable reality is that when we are in the presence of Jesus we really are “at the land where we are going,” the promised land of the Kingdom of God, and all the provision and power of that Kingdom are there for us. In a message he preached nearly 100 years ago (in 1927) Smith Wigglesworth said this:

“I must recognise the difference between my own spirit and the Holy Spirit. My own spirit can do certain things on natural lines, can even weep and pray and worship, but it is all on a human plane, and we must not depend on our human thoughts and activities or on our own personality. If the baptism means anything to you, it should bring you to the death of the ordinary, where you are no longer putting faith in your own understanding; but, conscious of your own poverty, you are ever yielded to the spirit. Then it is that your body becomes filled with heaven on earth.“ (From “Smith Wigglesworth: the Complete Collection of His Life and Teachings” compiled by Roberts Liardon)

Jesus in the boat
I think the big question for Bible-believing Christians who are rowing through a storm is often this: “Lord, why aren’t I seeing your promises (for healing, provision, the miraculous, for ourselves or for others) fulfilled? Maybe the answer is that he’s not really in the boat. We know the promises of the land; we look to them and declare them, but we ignore the fact that the best way to receive their fulfillment is to have Jesus in the boat with us. Yes, He is with us all the time, just as we are seated in heavenly places all the time, but I don’t mean those statements of faith; I mean the experienced reality of His presence, when we know our body has become “filled with heaven on earth,” that only comes with a commitment to Psalm 27:8:

When You said, “Seek My face,”
My heart said to You, “Your face, LORD, I will seek.”

Unlike anything the world has known
I believe that we are on the brink of the move of God prophesied by Smith Wigglesworth in 1947: “A revival that will eclipse anything that has been witnessed within these shores, even the Wesleyan and Welsh revivals of former years.” When this wave hits, it will be a tsunami, unlike anything the world has known, and it will be characterised by the word and the spirit coming together. “When the new church phase is on the wane, there will be evidence in the churches of something that has not been seen before: a coming together of those with an emphasis on the word and those with an emphasis on the Spirit. When the word and the Spirit come together, there will be the biggest move of the Holy Spirit that the nation, and indeed, the world has ever seen.”.

The word brings His promises; the spirit brings His presence. I think “the word and the spirit coming together” that Wigglesworth prophesies refers to more than churches who accept the baptism and gifts of the Holy Spirit and who preach, and teach, the word of God – although this is an important and essential part of the picture. I think this might also apply to us as individual believers. If we prioritize seeking His presence and willingly receiving him into the boat (spirit) when we pray His promises (word), I think we might find ourselves at the land where we are going.

Walking in the Spirit

The Supply of the Spirit (and the great grey shrike)

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“Now to him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we can ask or think, according to the Power that works in Us, to him be glory in the church to or generations, forever and ever, amen.” (Ephesians 3: 20–21)

I just love it when God completely blows my mind with something that reminds me of this verse, the “exceedingly abundantly above all that we can ask or think“ aspect of who He is. I went on a birding trip last week and had an experience that gave me a memorable picture of the difference that can exist between our expectations and God‘s supply.

The bird in the picture is a great grey shrike. They are rare winter visitors to the UK: there have only been about 60 individuals in the whole country over this Winter, mainly in the south and the east. Twitchers will travel halfway across the country to see one if it is reported on a birding blog. So last year I got very excited when one decided to stay for a few weeks on the edge of the woods about 4 miles from my house. I did get to see it, perching in a distant tree, and treasured the photograph below that I got – as you can see, it was hardly one you would put in a frame and hang on the wall. (The bird is about a quarter of the way down, slightly left of centre.)


When these birds find an area that they like they tend to stay there until they leave for their breeding grounds, so when one was reported in Lincolnshire (a county in England on the east coast, if you aren’t in the UK) last week, I made sure that the site was my first stop on a trip to that area that I was planning. My expectation was framed by my previous experience, so when we reached the spot where this bird had made its temporary home, I was expecting to scan the distant trees with my binoculars to get a sight of it.

There was another birder there when my friend and I arrived. “There it is! Just there, on top of the hedge!” he said. I started scanning the distant hedge with my binoculars. “No,” he said, “THERE!” And there, no more than 20 metres away (as opposed to the 200 or so that I was expecting), set a beautiful great grey shrike, posing for my camera. But that is not all: these birds have a habit of hovering like kestrels when they are hunting for prey. This little bird did not disappoint: it repeatedly flew down from its perch and hovered a few feet from the ground, looking for insects and worms in the mud. It was one of the most precious birding moments that I have ever experienced.


So why am I writing about it? I’ll put the answer as a question. What are your expectations of an encounter with God? Is it like the first time I saw a shrike, a distant grey spot on a treetop a couple of hundred yards away or more? What is your idea of “the presence of God?” Is it the cosy feeling of gathering with other believers and a good band, singing a few worship songs together; or could it be that God has more for you, a lot more, an intensity of love and peace that causes you to fall to your knees because standing has become impossible, where the shrike is hovering in front of your face and not perching in the dim distance?

Of course it is good to gather and worship, and it is true that the spirit of God is present among us when we do, because if we are believers He is within us all. But let us not be sold short into believing that this is all we can expect, because “God is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we can ask or think, according to the Power that works in us.”

Paul wrote this to the Philippians:

What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is preached; and in this I rejoice, yes, and will rejoice. For I know that this will turn out for my deliverance through your prayer and the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, according to my earnest expectation and hope that in nothing I shall be ashamed, but with all boldness, as always, so now also Christ will be magnified in my body, whether by life or by death. (Philippians 1: 18-20)

Paul’s “Ernest expectation and Hope“ was for an abundant “supply of the spirit,” a deluge, not a trickle. What about us? Surely God, who “gives the Spirit without measure,” wants the supply of the spirit in our lives to lead us to a place of submission that is real because we know that we have met with Jesus and have experienced something of His love and power? Yes, our experience must be rooted in the truth of God‘s word, but I don’t think God has given us the supply of His Spirit for us to only experience Him through the printed page. And yes, when two or three are gathered in His name He is there in the midst of us, but that is the beginning of the journey and a statement of faith; it’s not our destination. We don’t rise on eagle’s wings just by believing that we are eagles, but we need to wait for the wind to lift us, because that is how eagles soar. It’s “those who wait on the Lord” who renew their strength. The wind might not come for hours or even days, but we strengthen our faith through exercising it in the wait. The words of Christ are words are words of life, and He wants us to feel that life “according to the Power that works within us” as well as knowing the words that release it.


God honoured Paul’s expectation with such abundance that he personally started at least 14 churches probably 20, possibly more (see www.churchplanting.com) as well as fostering the growth of many of them, including the “hub“ church at Ephesus, through his letters and direct apostolic influence. You and I may not be Paul, but we have the same spirit who dwells within us, and it’s the spirit who raised Jesus from the dead. If we want to see Him really work among us, we need to raise our expectations, lift our wings and face into the wind – remembering that “the wind blows where it wills,” and not according to our plans.

Knowing God, Living by Faith, Walking in the Spirit

Bread from Heaven: 3

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And Jesus took the loaves, and when He had given thanks He distributed them to the disciples, and the disciples to those sitting down; and likewise of the fish, as much as they wanted. (John 6:11)

He knew what He would do
In our attempts to bring up our children to say “please,” the parents among us might well have said at times: “And what’s the magic word?” However in the Kingdom it’s not please, it’s thank you. Jesus didn’t ask the Father to multiply the loaves and fishes; he thanked Him for them. This miracle, along with its “twin“ where the 4000 are fed in the accounts of Matthew and Mark, is one of only three occasions in the New Testament where Jesus gives thanks to the Father. The Greek word used for giving thanks is eucharisteo, and Jesus uses it when He feeds the multitude, when He thanks His Father for always hearing His prayers at the raising of Lazarus, and at the last supper, when He gave thanks for the bread and wine.

Eucharisteo: We use the same Greek word ourselves when we remember the cross at the Eucharist, and for me, this is the key to understanding much of the significance of this miracle. Andrew looked at the loaves and fishes with eyes of flesh and asked: “What is this among so many?”, but Jesus looked with the eyes of the spirit and saw the riches in glory that would meet the need of the multitude above all that the disciples could ask or imagine. He could see the limitless creative powers of heaven, and He knew that “all that the father has is mine,” (John 16:15) so it is no surprise that John’s account of the miracle tells us that “He himself knew what He would do.” (John 6:6)

In everything give thanks
In his letter to the Philippians, Paul exhorts us to “be anxious for nothing, but in everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God.“ (Philippians 4:6) We know that Jesus had direct access to the Father’s provision because of who He was, and there are no barriers to our faith in that regard. But it is much harder to believe that we have the same access to that provision, because we know who we are as well. We can, and do, believe that Christ dwells in our hearts through faith, that in Him we are seated in heavenly places, and that all things are possible through Him; but we also know that we have only experienced the boy’s family picnic when faced with a multitude, and not the feast.

When Jesus gave thanks at the feeding of the 5000, I don’t think He was thanking His Father for the loaves and fishes in His hand, but for the provision that was in heaven. Demonstrating what He told His disciples in Mark 11:24, He believed He had received it, gave thanks for it, and it was done for Him. His Father passed the food to Jesus, and He passed it to the disciples to give out.

God wants us to give thanks in everything. Whether we are faced with abundance or lack, and whether or not we are petitioning heaven for something, we are to be thankful at all times. Paul expresses this sentiment in his letter to the Romans:

“… He who eats, eats to the Lord, for he gives God thanks; and He who does not eat, to the Lord he does not eat, and gives God thanks. For none of us lives to himself, and none of us die himself. So if we live, we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord. Therefore, whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s.” (Romans 14:6–8).

Our Inheritance
As I have mentioned, the only occasion outside of feeding the multitudes and giving thanks for the bread and the wine at the last supper, was when Jesus thanked the Father for hearing Him at the raising of Lazarus. His Eucharist there was more about His relationship with the Father than what He was about to do. Our constant thanksgiving to God is not for what we do or don’t eat – or do, or receive -, but it’s for a relationship with Him which we can indeed be thankful for in all things. We can be thankful to Jesus every moment of the day for the fact that we are His, and what we have is His. But more than that, amazingly, what He has is also ours:

“And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham‘s seed, and heirs according to the promise.”(Galatians 3:19)

“And because you are sons God has sent forth the spirit of His son into your hearts, crying out, “Abba, Father!“ Therefore you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son than an heir of God through Christ.” (Galatians 4:6–7)

We are heirs of God through Christ. We have an inheritance to be forever thankful for. Just as everything that the Father has belongs to Jesus, everything that Jesus has is ours in Him. Of course this does not mean that my neighbour’s house, or wife, or goods belong to me because they are His: the key phrase is “in Him.” “In Jesus name” is not just a phrase that turns a request into a prayer, but it’s the declaration that what we are asking for in prayer is something that we are requesting on His behalf because He has told us that He wants us to have it, whether it’s to accomplish His Kingdom purposes through us or for us. Whatever we are doing, we have an inheritance to be thankful for, and which is at our disposal all the time we are walking alongside Him. What is His is ours. If I am sitting at the dinner table with my wife and I ask her to pass the salt, she is not going to question my action: the salt on the table is a shared possession. Of course she is going to let me have it.

Paul makes this clear in his first letter to the Corinthians:

“Therefore let no one boast in men. For all things are yours. Whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come – all are yours. And you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.” (1 Corinthians 3:21-23)

Just as Jesus is the transition from earth to heaven for our spirits, He is also the transition for us from heaven to earth for our inheritance. So whatever the loaves and fishes or the starving crowd may represent, what do we have available to meet the need? Jesus can make our lack into His abundance if we remember to thank Him for our inheritance. Pass the salt, please, Lord. Thank You.

Discipleship and witness, Walking in the Spirit

Being disciples; making disciples.

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We all know that Jesus calls us to “go and make disciples of all nations.“ Some of us obey the call geographically and go to other nations to make disciples; some of us find “the nations” in our own neighbourhood or workplace; some of us ignore the call altogether and leave it to the evangelist. But even if we don’t live in a mixed race neighbourhood and everybody at work was born in the same country as we were, our home country is still a nation, and we still have to “go” to it, and the purpose of “going” is to make disciples. So assuming we have “gone” with a willingness to share the gospel, how do we go about the business of discipleship?

“Follow me as I follow Christ,“ said Paul to the Corinthians. (1 Corinthians 11:1)  We can’t really expect to make committed disciples if our own discipleship is flabby and inconsistent. I don’t think it’s enough just to lead people through discipleship courses: the Holy Spirit has to be at work in and through the people leading the courses if the spirits of new believers are going to be impacted and their minds renewed. If we want new believers to grow to maturity and find their place in the Kingdom of God, we need to launch their walk with the power that they will eventually need to carry on without us and be discipling others themselves. The alternative is a church that is bloated with members but lacking in love and power – what Smith Wigglesworth called “leafy trees” that bear no fruit.

“Freely you have received, freely give,” said the Lord when he sent out the twelve. (Matthew 10:8) when we “go” to make disciples, we can only give what we have received ourselves.

In all your ways acknowledge Him
I found a key verse for discipleship in an unexpected place: proverbs 3:5. We all know it: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not upon your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will direct your paths” The first part of this verse tells us clearly where to place our trust, and it tends to be the one that is quoted the most often. But it’s the second part that caught my attention. The word translated – rather weakly, I feel – as “acknowledge,“ is yada. In Hebrew this is the word used for “knowing” in life-giving intimacy, as when Adam “knew” Eve. What the second part of Proverbs 3:5 says to me is that God will “direct our paths” when we take every step in intimate relationship with him. Following this, the word yasar, translated here as “direct“ our paths is the same word used in Isaiah 40:3 for “make straight” a highway in the desert.

The voice of one crying in the wilderness:
“Prepare the way of the LORD;
Make straight in the desert 
A highway for our God.”

When God is with us – not just notionally, but experientially – at every step, he won’t just be “directing” our paths in the sense of telling us where to go, but he will be ‘making them straight’ before us, clearing the ground and removing obstacles so that we can move forward with Him even though it may feel as if we are lost in the desert.

Zachariah 8:23 says this:

 “Thus says the Lord of hosts: In those days ten men from every language of the nations shall grasp the sleeve of a Jewish man, saying “let us go with you, for we have heard that the Lord is with you.”

It is when the men (and the women) of the nations know that the Lord is with us that they will want to “go with us.” Surely this is a picture of how we are to make disciples. As we walk closely with the Holy Spirit and He directs our paths, so we can direct the paths of others; not by weekly meetings following a discipleship course, but by walking alongside new believers who have joined themselves to us because they can see God at work in our lives. But there’s a health warning here, too, especially for people (like myself) who cherish their own space: when revival comes and we have ten people grasping our sleeves, we won’t have a lot of time for ourselves. Are we ready? Am I?

Pursuing Love, Walking in the Spirit

The Passion of Agape: Love and Fire in Revival

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“Oh God of burning, cleansing flame,
Send the fire!
Your blood-bought gift today we claim,
Send the fire today!”
(William Booth)

Before Jesus saved me back in 1984, I was a New Ager. An old friend who knew me then – in fact he was one of the people who were praying for us at the time – has just sent me the following email: “Thought this might grab you.  Two New Agers moved to Stroud because they thought that’s where they’d find the answers.  Eventually, they turned up at John Street Baptist Church saying, “The New Age hasn’t worked.  What have you got to offer?” They became Christians and brought lots of friends along so that the New Age enquirers started to outnumber the members…”

God is clearly starting to move. People are hungry. But unless we are hungry for God ourselves we cannot expect to share our bread with others. The following is an extract from Wheat in The Winepress: I wrote this passage in 2017, but I’ve been feeling for the last couple of days that it’s appropriate to release it again now.

Our element
The zeal of the Lord of Hosts, the fire of the Holy Spirit which Jesus sends onto the world, and the perfect love, the agape, that casts out fear are all bound together: zeal expresses agape, agape sends zeal. Together they express the passion of the heart of God that yearns for the restoration of His Kingdom and the marriage of the Lamb. This is the Love that Jesus tells us to abide in. Like water to fish, as I’ve already said, the “sea of pure divine love” that they experienced at Azuza Street is actually the element in which we are called to live. It is no coincidence that the greatest miracles happened there when the fire was visibly present.

It is often said that in the developed, “free” world we don’t see the miracles of healing that seem to be much more the norm in third world countries and the persecuted Church. I, for one – and I think I speak for many here – have always explained this by saying “we think we don’t need faith: we have medicine!”   But as we know, Paul tells us that what counts – the only thing that counts – is “faith working through love” (Gal 5:6). Even if I have the faith that moves mountains, without love I am nothing (1 Cor 13:2). I don’t think it’s the faith that sets these churches apart, so much as the love through which it is working. They “love each other fervently, with a pure heart.” They need each other, are committed to each other, and are contemporary expressions of the Church of Acts 4. They are one as the Father and the Son are one. Their unity commands the blessing. Because they are obedient to the command to “love one another” they receive what they ask from the Father. They are swimming in that sea of perfect Love; they are abiding in Christ, immersed in the river of Ezekiel 47; they are in their element. Am I? Are you? Or are we fish out of water, flapping about on the deck, gasping for Life in the Spirit, knowing that there should be more but somehow unable to reach for it? 

The longing of the Bride and the Groom
Wherever it is that we see the fire burning today, or if we look into history and see where it has been, we find the same initial spark: Christians who are hungry for more of God. Not just a little bit more – “If I clear the cluttered desk of my life – actually no, just my church meeting as long as You don’t stay too long – a bit, I can fit a bit more of you on this corner, God” – but really MORE; the more that will take us from our dimension into His. “Lord, I’m sweeping everything off my desk. Will You come and fill it? Nothing else will do!”

The cry of the heart, a two-word prayer, that went out from Toronto in 1994 and still goes out today was “More, Lord!” Another two-word prayer that I remember singing as a worship song in a UK Catch the Fire meeting in 1995 was “Yes, Lord!”. If we want More, first we really need to be hungry: it’s “the effective fervent prayer of a righteous man (that) avails much” (James 5:16); and second: God wants our total Yes.

The story of Gideon shows us how we can respond when God’s fire begins to take hold. If we want to see in the Word how the fire starts we need to look elsewhere: not to a New Testament treatise on the Holy Spirit, or to an Old Testament prophesy of Holy outpouring, but to the love poem on the longing of the bride and the groom for one another. As the unfolding of the intimacy between the Shulamite and The Beloved draws to a close, the bride says, in words that encapsulate the essence of the zeal of the Lord:

 “Set me as a seal upon your heart,
As a seal upon your arm;
For love is as strong as death,
Jealousy as cruel as the grave; 
Its flames are flames of fire,
A most vehement flame” (Song, 8:6)

The jealous, passionate love of the Father and the Son, burning in the fire of the Holy Spirit: for the bride of the Bible, nothing else will do. Before the Beloved comes to her, He asks for one thing:

“You who dwell in the gardens,
The companions listen for your voice –
Let me hear it!” (Song 8: 13)

And the bride responds, to end the poem:
“Make haste, my beloved,
And be like a gazelle
Or a young stag
On the mountains of spices.” (Song 8: 14)

Not even Jesus could tell us when He is going to return, but we know two things. One is a collection of signs of the end of the age that He gives us in Matthew 24 – signs which many would say are being fulfilled in our day. The other thing that we know is that He will come in response to hearing our voice. “Let me hear you call me!” says Jesus, the Beloved. ‘Let me hear you say the words “Make Haste, my Beloved!” I want you to be hungry for Me!’ At the very end of the Bible we hear the echo of the Shulamite’s response: “And the Spirit and the Bride say, ‘Come!’” And we hear the Beloved say: “Let him who hears say, “Come!” And let him who thirsts come. Whoever desires, let him take the water of life freely.” (Rev 22:17)

It’s not just the Bride who calls out; it’s the Spirit and the Bride. Just as Jesus completed the work that the Father gave Him to do at the cross, the Holy Spirit will one day complete the work that He has been given to do on the earth: the preparation of the Bride for the marriage of the Lamb, and the handing over of the kingdoms of the world to the kingdom of our God and His Christ. And as individuals and churches, we are ready when we hear Him ask us to call out to Him. We are ready when we acknowledge that we are thirsty. We are ready when we desire to freely take the water of life. According to the Song of Songs, this will be when we say “More Lord, Yes Lord, nothing but the most vehement flame will satisfy!” 

The Fullness of God
One final thing we can be sure of is this: when holy fire does bring revival to our street, it won’t be anything like what we expect. However in the parable of the ten virgins (Matt 25: 1-13) Jesus does make it clear what we have to do: we need to be ready for Him with our lamps trimmed and full of oil. This isn’t just about trimming wicks: it’s about the whole lamp. The Strong’s definition of the Greek word for “trimmed”, kosmeō (from which comes our word “cosmetic”) means to arrange, decorate, adorn, or put in order. In the book of Revelation the seven lampstands represent the seven churches that the risen Lord is walking among (Rev 1:20). Jesus wants our churches to be brimming with the oil of the Holy Spirit, and beautified with all the fruit of lives laid down, hungry for Him.

The last words of Christ’s prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane were this: “I have declared to them Your name, and will declare it, that the love with which you loved Me may be in them, and I in them” (John 17:26). The Greek word onoma, name, means more than just the epithet by which a person is called – it refers to everything associated with the name, including character, rank, and all attributes. Jesus is saying that He has revealed the fullness of the Father to His disciples: as He said, “If you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father.” And He says He will reveal the fullness of the Father in the future: “I will declare it.” How? By the Holy Spirit, whom He will send to bring the same revelation that the twelve had when they were with Him. Why? So that His agape may be in us. The agape of God being poured out into our hearts by the Holy Spirit who is given to us is the fulfilment of John 17:26. Jesus tells us that it is by our love that the world will know we are His disciples. I don’t think that this is about the world looking at us and just seeing how much we love each other, or even looking at our humanitarian efforts and seeing how much we love the world. It means that when we truly walk in His agape WE WILL DO THE WORKS THAT HE DID, and revival will follow. This was Heidi Baker’s experience in Mozambique, and surely this is true discipleship.

Paul prayed (Eph 3 14-21) that we would be filled with all of God – the “fullness” of God, meaning that no aspect of the Divine nature (see 2 Peter 3-4) would be missing from our lives. This fullness comes from yielding our vain understanding to the truth that the Agape of Christ goes beyond anything we can humanly grasp; that it surpasses or goes beyond anything that we can call knowledge. Paul begins by praying that, with all the riches of His Glory at His disposal, God would give us the supernatural ability, the dynamis power, to enable the faith to rise in our hearts that Christ will make His home there as He promises (John 14:23). Paul uses the word katoikeō, meaning to dwell, inhabit, be always present. This prayer, for them and for us, is that the indwelling Christ would become a present, manifest reality in our lives so that agape can become the foundation for all we are and all we do; that Jesus would hold our gaze with that most vehement flame, reaching out through us with supernatural gifts to the people we are with, lifting our hearts into heavenly glory as we worship, and opening the storehouses of Heaven to all our needs as we bring His fire to the earth.

We are rooted and grounded in agape when the manifest presence of God is a reality in our lives and we walk in intimacy with Him, and this can only happen when we fully die to ourselves and yield our hearts to the mighty power of the Holy Spirit. Without dynamis there is no Gideon’s army and there is no agape; and without agape there will always be wheat in the winepress.

A picture has been with me as I have been thinking about this over the last few days, and it’s that of a bonfire that has burnt down from its original intensity and where the burning sticks have been scattered on the ground, charred black in places, still glowing red in places with a few small flames licking around them. I believe this is a picture both of the Church – where the sticks are individual congregations – and of churches, where the sticks are individual believers. For centuries the devil has been poking and scattering, isolating people, isolating congregations, always working to destroy unity and weaken the Church. I believe that God is gathering those burning pieces of wood together. He is leaning over them, His heart bursting with love, the marriage of the Lamb bright in His vision, blowing, blowing, blowing. As He rearranges those embers and burning brands new relationships will be formed and old structures broken. To be an army of Gideons in these last days we need to let Him gather us where the flames are and let His agape fill our lives: then we can set our world on fire.

(Adapted from “Wheat in the Winepress,” MD Publishing 2018)

Pursuing Love, Walking in the Spirit

Walking worthy of our calling

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“I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called, with all lowliness and gentleness, with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love, endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” (Ephesians 4:1)

“I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.” (Romans 12:1)

I’ve been reading Romans 12 alongside Ephesians 4 recently, and I was struck by the similarities in both Paul’s messages. They both begin with the same entreaty: “ I therefore beseech you.” Paul beseeches the Romans to “present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service,” and goes on to encourage them “not to think of himself more highly than the ought to think but to think soberly…“ In essence this is very similar to “walking… with all lowliness and gentleness, with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love.” To the Romans he explains that this is necessary because “God has dealt to each one measure of faith,“ whereas to the Ephesians he writes “to each one of us grace was given according to the measure of Christ’s gift.“ The Romans are taught that “we, being many, are one body in Christ, and individually members of one another,“ whereas the Ephesians are encouraged to “keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one spirit, just as you were called in one hope of your calling…“ (3 to 4). In both letters Paul considers how different grace gifts perform different functions. For the Romans Paul focusses on the functions (sometimes called “motivational gifts”) themselves, whereas to the Ephesians he looks at the different types of people performing them – the “(fivefold) ministry gifts.” However both passages essentially have the same message:

“Don’t think of yourself as special: the identity and purpose that you have has been given to you as a gift by the grace of God and is yours by Faith. Your life isn’t about you. It’s about the point you play in the Kingdom of God, which is the rule and reign of Christ through his body on earth. It has meaning and value when it is used for the benefit of others out of a motivation of love for the Lord and love for others. If you can put your flesh and your self-importance on the altar and get hold of the glory and majesty of the Kingdom we are being called into, and concentrate on using what it is that God has given you to do to equip and build up others, not in your own strength but in His mighty power that can move mountains with mustard seeds, the whole body of Christ will grow in love and maturity and God will be glorified.“

The Hope of our Calling
In the light of this, what is “the hope of our calling,” and the ”calling with which we are called?” Paul says “I press on towards the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 3:14) Our call is from Heaven. It’s a prize. Bible teacher Andrew Wommack says: “When you see a therefore, you’ve got to find what it’s there for!” Romans 12 begins: “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.” What’s the therefore there for? Read the last verse of the previous chapter, which is all about the unsearchable wisdom of God in His plan for “all Israel,” Jew and Gentile, to be saved. The last verse reads: “For of Him and through Him and to Him are all things, to whom be glory forever. Amen.” When we offer our lives to Jesus as a living sacrifice because we realise there’s nothing else we can reasonably do in the light of all that He is, we are pressing on for that goal.

In Philippians 3:12 Paul also talks about pressing on, “to lay hold of that for which Christ has laid hold of me.“ Jesus got hold of our spirits on the cross and has taken them to heaven with Him, and now he’s calling us to live lives that will manifest on earth the amazing truth of who we have become. We are called to leave our own bodies behind and humbly join ourselves to the spiritual body of Christ. That is the calling which we are to walk worthy of. A hand isn’t a hand for its own sake; it’s only a hand in as much as it serves the body. My call isn’t my ministry: it’s the coming perfection of the body of Christ – “a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ;” (Eph 4:13) – that it serves.

Measuring Mustard Seeds
Paul introduces his passage to the Romans on gifts with the explanation “God has given to each of us a measure of faith,” (Romans 12:3) whereas the introduction to the parallel passage in Ephesians four is “but to each of us grace was given according to the measure of Christ gift.”  This leads me to the final point of this teaching. If indeed these two texts are expressing the same truths in the way that I suggest they are, then the “measure of faith” corresponds to “the grace that has given according to the measure of Christ gift.” The point is this: what measure does God use? I have always understood these passages as saying that God gives each one of us a particular measure of faith to correspond with the gift in which we are operating, and every translation I have seen seem to imply the same thing – ie that God deals, or assigns, different measures to different people. However Jesus Himself says “God does not give the Spirit by measure.” (John 3:34) Christ’s gift to us is the power that raised Him from the dead (Romans 8:11), and “the power to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we could ask or think.” (Eph 3:20) If we only need a “mustard seed” grain of the faith that comes from God to move a mountain, is God really going to measure our mustard seeds depending on the size of the mountains He want us to move? I think not. God didn’t give me more, or less, grace than He gave you: we both received His grace according to the measure of Christ’s gift, which is actually beyond measure. As we know from 2 Cor 12:12, when we are weak, we are strong. It’s when we operate in our weakness but in His measure of grace that God is glorified. Peter puts it like this: “If anyone ministers, let him minister as with the ability that God supplies, that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ.”

The Perfect Man
Paul gives us this vision of the Body of Christ in Ephesians 4:16 “from whom (ie Christ, the Head) the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effectual working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.”

The phrase ”effectual working” is the Greek “energeia”, which is only used in the New Testament for superhuman power. “Share” is metron, the same word as the measure (metron) of Christ’s gift. We are called to participate in God’s plan by devoting ourselves to laying hold of His superhuman power to fulfil our assignments. We aren’t going to access His energeia unless our walk is aligned with His will, and to align with His will we have to lay down our own. There is no such thing as compromise in the service of the King: our sinful nature is such that we can’t walk  “with all lowliness and gentleness, with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love,” unless we’ve left our flesh on the altar and stepped away as the new creations that we are in the Spirit. I believe that it’s only when we succeed in this that Ephesians 4:16 is fulfilled in our lives.

The “perfect man” that the body of Christ is being called into is the mature bride of Christ filled with a love that matches His own. To play our part in that high calling our lives must display a love and desire for unity that is worthy of the goal we are pressing on to attain.

Christian Life, Walking in the Spirit

Those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength

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Have you not known?
Have you not heard?
The everlasting God, the LORD,
The Creator of the ends of the earth,
Neither faints nor is weary.
His understanding is unsearchable.

He gives power to the weak,
And to those who have no might He increases strength.

Even the youths shall faint and be weary,
And the young men shall utterly fall,

But those who wait on the LORD
Shall renew their strength;
They shall mount up with wings like eagles,
They shall run and not be weary,
They shall walk and not faint.

(Isaiah 40: 28-31)

I have always seen “waiting on the Lord” in the context of extended time frames: waiting for the Holy Spirit to show up in a worship service; waiting for an answer to prayer; waiting days or weeks for a word from God before making a decision. In addition, I have never thought deeply about running and not growing weary, or walking and not growing faint, although in my advancing years I certainly look longingly at those verses and hope they will apply to my physical state. Mounting on wings like eagles has been a  metaphor for growth, increase, victory, in fact any undefined superior state that can be attained under God’s blessing: the verse has never had a very practical application for me, just a rather undefined sense of promise that I can’t say I have often known to materialise outside of some worship services where “rising up” to a higher level of worship in the Spirit has been the goal. I have never applied the scripture to short term, immediate contexts.

Until today. When I was a child, my mother used to say to me “Bobby, you’re always rushing.“ (A word to the wise: if you know me, please do not call me Bobby!) It’s a character trait I’ve battled with (or maybe so much not battled as be driven by…) all my life. I’m a “fast adopter“ when it comes to decision-making; I tend to try to do things quickly so I can finish them rather than aim for thoroughness ; I seem to miss significant details on the few occasions when I’m trying to think things through, and – probably most importantly – I tend to say the first thing that comes into my head in conversation without really checking if it’s coming from a positive or a negative place. This is at age 74, after more than 40 years of being a Christian, when I really should know better. Not much about me seems to have slowed down except my body.

But this morning I saw these verses differently. It was in an all too familiar context, where I had gone into something without giving it sufficient forethought, when I realised that “waiting on the Lord“ can also mean waiting for as short a time as a few seconds for my flesh to die and “the wisdom from above” to rule my thinking before responding to words or circumstances. And then I saw the rest of the scripture. Mounting on Eagles wings takes me into the heavenly places where my new man is seated in Christ, where I can draw on all I have been given in the Spirit. When I do this, I renew my strength in the Lord. I can “walk worthy of my calling” (Eph 4:1) and “not grow weary of doing good.“ (Galatians 6:9). I can “run with perseverance to race marked out for us,“ not growing faint, but “fixing my eyes on Jesus the author and finisher of my faith.“ (Hebrews 12:1–2)

When we “mount up with wings like eagles” we take our place in the Spirit, in the Lord who “neither faints nor is weary.” We don’t grow faint or weary because He doesn’t, and we are in Him. Out of His unsearchable understanding comes the wisdom we need, “the wisdom from above,” which is “ first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy. (James 3:17). In our weakness we are strong. (2 Cor 12:10)

Verse 30 says this:
“Even the youths shall faint and be weary,
And the young men shall utterly fall…”

I have always seen this verse as a dramatic contrast with the favourable consequences of waiting on the lord in the rather woolly sense that I have always understood it, but now I understand it more as a contrast between walking ( or running) after the flesh, which always leads to failure, and walking in the Spirit. “Waiting on the Lord” becomes taking the time to step  into the Spirit  – or as Graham Cooke calls it, to “step back into the Lord” – to receive all that there is for our situation from where we are seated in Christ in heavenly places. Yes, we need to wait for Him in our meetings if we want to see the power of God move and His Presence fall. Yes, we need to wait in faith for Him to answer our prayers. But, and just as importantly, we need to wait for Him in the dynamic of our daily walk with God if we want to walk after the Spirit and not after the flesh.

In the light of this, the urgency of psalm 27:14 takes on a new meaning:

“Wait on the LORD;
Be of good courage,
And He shall strengthen your heart;
Wait, I say, on the LORD!”

Let’s do it. It appears to be a recommended route to victory in Christ.

Knowing God, The word of God, Walking in the Spirit

Understanding the Sabbath: Peace in Christ

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“He Himself is our peace.” (Eph 2:14)

“For this reason the Jews persecuted Jesus, and sought to kill Him, because He had done these things on the Sabbath.” (John 5:16)

There is a lot more to the Sabbath law than observance of the fourth commandment, which instructed the Jews to “Remember the Sabbath Day, and keep it holy.” Just as Jesus’s “work” on the Sabbath was emblematic to the Jews of His disrespect for the whole of the Old Covenant law, the sabbath itself looks forward to the New Covenant in His blood that sets us free from condemnation under the Law and into the peace of His Sabbath rest.

The Bible tells us: “And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.” (Genesis 2:2-3) The new testament adds another layer to the Creation account: the specific involvement of Jesus in the work of creation.

“For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him.” (Col 1:16) “All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.” (John 1:3) God rested from his work on the Sabbath, or the seventh day, so the Sabbath was instituted. But it wasn’t only the Father who rested: the Son rested too.

A way of life, not just an observance
God rested when the work of creation was finished. And He rested again when the work of the new creation was finished on the cross. When God blessed the sabbath day and sanctified it under the old covenant, He was looking forward to the time when, in Jesus, His rest would be a way of life, not just an observance. But in the era of the Old Covenant also, God’s rest extended beyond the seventh day. The writer to the Hebrews says:  “To whom did He swear that they would not enter His rest, but to those who did not obey?” (Heb 3:18) For the rebellious Hebrews, who “did not enter because of unbelief,” (Heb. 3:19) entering God’s rest equated to entering the Promised Land, where they would find rest from the toil of slavery.

Just as Canaan represented God’s rest for the Israelites, we enter our rest in Christ when we believe in His promises to us, or as Hebrews 3:14 puts it, “if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast to the end.” The Greek word used for God’s rest is “katapausis,” which means “a calming of the winds.” Katapausis Is the spiritual atmosphere of Heaven. Jesus tells us “My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you” (John 14:7), and when we walk in His peace we walk in the atmosphere of Heaven and find “rest for our souls.” (Matt. 11:29). All the winds are calm, because – as Jesus physically demonstrated – it is He who calms the storm.  As every Christian knows, He famously said, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” (Mark 2:27). God gave us the Sabbath to enshrine in His Law that we need to enter His rest, not that we need to stop working every seven days.

Finished – but still working
Two notions that seem to be at odds with each other are that “God finished His work” on the seventh day, and the words of Jesus to the Pharisees when they confronted Him over healing the man at the pool: “My Father has been working until now, and I have been working.” (John 4:17) What is the difference between the work that the Father and the Son finished on the seventh day, and the work that they were – and still are – continuing to do?

I think the answer lies in the fact that creation was perfected on the seventh day, so all of God’s dealings with Man – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – from then on were from His place of rest. Whether it was Christ’s miracles of healing and deliverance, God’s victories in the reign of David and many other heroes, or His repeated call to His errant people through His prophets to return to Him, the focus of God’s work has always been to restore His people to their Sabbath state of wholeness and relationship with Him. The lame man was healed on the Sabbath so the he could walk in the wholeness that the Sabbath represents. Just as the first creation was finished on the Sabbath day, so the new creation was perfected when Jesus cried out from the cross “It is finished!” And so the writer to the Hebrews says: “We who have believed into that rest.” (Hebrews 4:3) Through faith in the redeeming blood of Jesus that was shed on the Cross, we become “the righteousness of God in Him,” (2 Cor 5:21) and enter into the perfection of God’s rest.

“True righteousness and holiness.”
This perfect state is the condition of the new man, “which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness.”  (Eph 4:24) Peter exhorts us to  “be diligent to be found by Him in peace, without spot and blameless,” (2 Pe 3: 13) while Hebrews 4:9-11 says “There remains therefore a rest for the people of God. For he who has entered His rest has himself also ceased from his works as God did from His. Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest, lest anyone fall according to the same example of disobedience.” The peace of His sabbath rest is the gift of God’s grace through Jesus, yet two new testament writers exhort us to be diligent to “enter” that gift. So while we cannot earn God’s peace by our religious works, we need to “work” at keeping a short account of sin in our lives (“without spot and blameless”) and “work” at remembering who we are in Christ, what He has purchased for us, and that “The Spirit of God, who raised Jesus from the dead, lives in you.” So rest does not come without some effort (Romans 8:11), but if we are diligent to keep these truths foremost in our thinking we will walk away from the paralysis of religion and into God’s rest.

Only in that place we can really access everything that is our promised inheritance in Christ.

(The topic of “entering into God’s rest” is also explored in “Walking in Newness of Life.”)