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.

Be prepared; hold on., Walking in the Spirit

Jacob and the Cube

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And He said, “Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel;  for you have struggled with God and with men, and have prevailed. Then Jacob asked, saying, “Tell me Your name, I pray.” And He said, “Why is it that you ask about My name?” And He blessed him there. So Jacob called the name of the place Peniel:  “For I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved.” (Gen 32: 28-30)

Jacob had a problem. His brother, Esau, whom he had tricked out of his inheritance, was advancing in his direction with 400 men: threats to him, his family, his flocks, and his possessions. True to his nature, Jacob devised a cunning plan to appease his brother by sending delegations ahead of him with gifts, until eventually he was left alone with his family. Finally, he sent his family ahead, and was left alone for the night.

That night, the story tells of how a “man“ – whom we take to be God – came and wrestled with him until the morning, when Jacob famously says “I will not let you go until you bless me!” Bless Jacob He did, giving him a limp in the process that would always remind him of the encounter..

For many of us, it often seems as if the night is dark, and Esau is approaching. We might feel that we have prayed many prayers, just like Jacob sending his gift ahead, but we don’t know if they are making any difference. We are left on our own with God, which of course is exactly where He wants us. Jacob knew the promises that God had made, but now it wasn’t enough for them just to be in his head: he needed them to become a reality; he needed to get hold of God until the words became flesh for him personally.

This is where the Rubik’s cube comes in. Sometimes the things we are desperate for just don’t seem to happen, and no matter how hard we try, how much we pray, how many gifts we have sent in advance, Esau keeps coming and the cube just doesn’t line up. God wants us to know that He can see what we can’t see, and that only He has the solution to the cube. The promises that He’s made us are real but only He can bring them about. It is He who hold the cube, not us: all things really do work together for the good of those who love the Lord, and are called according to His purpose (Romans 8:28), but we need to hold onto God until He blesses us, not try to grab the cube to make it line up.

Whether it’s the nations or our own lives, God has got the cube in His hands. Jacob wrestled until he prevailed: not only did he remember God’s promises, but he held onto the promise keeper until they became part of his life. And here is the great encouragement for us: Jacob named the place of this encounter Peniel, “For I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved.” (Gen 32:30) Peniel means “Facing God.” God wants us to hold onto Him because He wants us to seek His face, and when we do we know His life and we see His promise fulfilled in the outpouring of that life. The eventual meeting with Esau was a time of reconciliation, not enmity. Jacob was born in the flesh as a human baby, but spiritual Israel was born when he clung to God and would not let him go until he received the blessing of fruitfulness.  When we meet with Esau as Israel, we find that the victory has been won, and the Rubik’s cube has lined up.

Holiness: You shall be perfect, Walking in the Spirit

Spirit of Truth

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I took some photographs recently of a bird flying over a lake. It was a long way off, but I could see that it was a tern, as occasionally it hovered over the water then dived in to catch a fish. When I got home and looked at the pictures on my computer, I got very excited, because I saw that it had mostly black plumage. A black tern! We don’t see many of these in the UK, and they are a species to get excited about if you are a birder over here. But when I looked at it more closely, I realised that the colouring wasn’t quite right: there was too much white underneath even though the rest of it looked right. So I boosted up the brightness and reduced the shadows on my computer, and this is what I found: it wasn’t a black tern at all that I had seen fishing by the lake, but one of the more widespread species, a common tern. My “black tern” just been created by the shadows on its plumage  cast by the morning sun.

Thinking about that, it made me realise how easily shadows can occur in what we look at, so that what we see is not the truth, but just a creation of our own self. In the afternoon Anne and I went to a local nature reserve with a friend. There are three ways of getting there that are roughly equidistant: it’s about 25 minutes away. In the car we took the route I usually take, down a country lane, and I said to Anne that I found this way slightly quicker. Michael agreed, adding that it could depend on the traffic as well. On the way back we found ourselves behind a tractor, so at the roundabout I chose the motorway route instead because I didn’t want to be behind a tractor – even though I would have quickly overtaken it on the dual carriageway. I said: “actually this way is probably just as quick.” Anne said: “That’s interesting, because on the way here, you said the lane was the quickest, and now this way is just as quick. They can’t both be true!“ She was right. They couldn’t both be true. My words were not about the truth, but about what I was trying to prove. This wasn’t even an emotionally charged situation: they were both just throwaway comments about driving choices. But that’s the point: I was justifying my choices, not expressing truth. My focus wasn’t the driving distance at all, but my decisions. In other words, my shadows were colouring what I was looking at. I was seeing a black tern.

As even many atheists know, Jesus said: “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” Truth is found in Jesus. When He first introduced the notion of the coming Holy Spirit to His disciples,  Jesus said this: “And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever— the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you.” (John 14: 16-17) The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Truth. We call Him Holy Spirit; Jesus calls Him, emphatically, “Spirit of Truth.” (John 14:17, John 15:26, John 16:23.) Without the Holy Spirit, whom the world doesn’t know, reality will always be obscured. Just like I had to boost the brightness on my computer to see the real bird, it is only when the brightness of the Light of the world is turned up that we see the reality of life.  “Whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.” (John 3:19)

James said: “All good and perfect gifts come down from above from the Father of lights, in whom there is no shadow of turning.” (James 1:17) God doesn’t change. He is the Father of lights: He created the lights in the universe, and by His word – “Let there be light” – He created material light itself. In His light, we can see the truth; without His light, we only see our own shadows. The Light of the world never changes: He is totally faithful to His word, He is always love, He is always truth. Every turn in our emotions and our agendas casts a shadow: only in Jesus, by the light of the Holy Spirit, are there no black terns, no shadow of terning.

Discipleship and witness, Prophesy and the prophetic, Walking in the Spirit

The Dance

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The other morning I switched on the car radio and a piece of music came on that is a favourite of mine:  it was waltz no 2, from Jazz suite no, 2, written by the Russia composer Dimitri Shostakovitch in 1938. I felt the Lord say “Pay attention to this,” so I listened more thoughtfully than usual. It’s a lilting, melodious piece, with the melody repeated on different instruments. It was written in a harsh and chaotic time, when Russia was in the grip of Stalin’s harsh and brutal regime, yet it is peaceful and melodious. It leads the listener in a dance, even though the world around it was running and cowering in fear and deprivation when it was composed. The orchestra are in a building apart, intent on working together and following the cues of the conductor, while outside the building purpose and direction are either held in the iron grip of the dictator, or are the disassociated hopes and dreams of people trying to escape that grip.

Today the grip of another dictator is tightening around society. Subtly and deceitfully, Satan is taking control of life, in different ways and in different parts of the world, but all with the aim of strengthening his position against his hated enemy, Jesus Christ, and the army of His followers, before whom he knows he will one day fall. But separated from the screaming and the pounding of feet is a building, the Church of Jesus Christ, where those within are working together in peace and harmony as they follow the cues of their conductor, the King Himself, who leads them by His Spirit as they play His tune. I felt that the Lord spoke to me through this piece of music, saying something like this:

“You play my tune on your instrument. Now you, over there, play my tune on your different instrument. Now altogether, now in twos and threes, now individually, my tune on the different instruments you have been given. And the result is joy, and peace and harmony. Whatever is going on outside the door, there is peace and harmony as you stay in my presence. But you must concentrate on me, and as the noise around you gets louder, and it will, you  will need to concentrate harder. While you pay attention to me there is harmony, but if you start getting distracted by what you perceive the others in the orchestra to be doing you will lose the beat, you will play out of tune, there will be discord, and you will not only get left behind yourself, but you will cause others to fall out of step as well. So listen to me and follow me, your conductor, and I will lead you in my dance. Do not get left behind because you are listening to others and not to me. And as you dance those outside will see and wonder, and many will come and join in, because it is the victory dance that my Spirit is conducting in preparation for my return.

So watch out for my baton: I am not just in your churches, but in your market halls, your workplaces, your railway stations. There are many more who will come: watch out for them. When you obey me and play your instrument when and how I say, sometimes on your own, sometimes with others, the souls that I am calling will stop and listen, and they will come and join in the dance.”

“But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumphal procession in Christ, and manifests through us the aroma of the knowledge of Him in every place.” (2 Cor 2:14)

Discipleship and witness, Living by Faith, Walking in the Spirit

Pictures from China: 2) Sojourners and Pilgrims

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As we often remind ourselves, we are no longer of this world if we are born again of the Spirit of God; we are merely in it. We are sojourners and pilgrims (1 Peter 2:11), looking for that heavenly city which is to come as we walk after the spirit and not after the flesh. At least, that is how it’s supposed to be. What is true is that our spirits have been born again into the spiritual dimensions, but our flesh still lives in the world that it was created for – or indeed that was created for it. Our challenge as Christians is to respond to the messages that come to us in the Spirit, and not override them with the signals from the world and the flesh.

Another missed call

Sometimes though, spiritual life is like walking along that street in China, shown above. We are there by faith, but we don’t understand much of what is going on, and if we are getting any signals we often don’t recognise them or understand what they mean until the moment has passed and they are like another missed call on our cellphone. How often do we lament, “Oh, I knew the Lord was telling me (not) to do that! If only I’d listened!” The signals that we follow the most faithfully are the ones generated by our own bodies and our own minds. We might be spiritual beings, surrounded by spiritual realities, but often we might as well simply be creatures of the flesh for all that we are responding to the spiritual dimension.

Our Guide

What we need of course in an alien environment is a guide, and Jesus has given us just that: a guide to walk with who will make sense of the spiritual world that we have become citizens of. I mean the Comforter of course, the Holy Spirit. But He is a gentleman: He won’t translate for us unless we ask Him. And as well as being a gentleman, He is love, so He won’t guide us in His purposes unless our purposes are committed to His. I have a feeling that God is dealing with many of us as individuals to set us free from our self-centred agendas and align our hearts with His own, so we can be prepared for whatever He is about to do on the Earth. We need to be walking with our Guide.

Solid Food

Because I think the Lord wants to lead us into far greater revelation that we have been accustomed to – the “greater things” He spoke of – and He is saying to many of us that the season of spiritual milk is over. We’re  no longer babes, and we need solid food. We have had plenty of lessons in how to operate in the gifts of the Holy Spirit and we have seen something of the reality of the power of God, but these have mainly been school days and now it’s time to grow up. Classes will always continue for those who need them, but the solid food of living in this world as citizens of the kingdom of God is the same food that Jesus spoke of to His disciples, which is to do the will of the One who sent us. As He sent out the 12 and the 70, He sends the Church out today. To graduate from the classroom requires faith and sacrifice, but it is when we are in touch with the reality of love that we can expect the truth of love to guide us in spiritual realms, and the Power of Love to quicken our lives and flow into the lives of others. We will start to read the signs all around us as we walk: “Reach out here. Touch there. Speak these words. Bring my healing to this sick person. Intercede for this city.  Cast out this demon…”

“Mercy and truth met together.
Righteousness and peace have kissed.
Truth shall spring out of the Earth,
And righteousness shall look down from heaven.

Yes, the Lord will give what is good;
And our land will yield its increase.
Righteousness will go before Him
And shall make His footsteps our pathway.”

(Psalm 85, 10–13).

Pursuing Love, Walking in the Spirit

One heart and soul

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

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

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

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

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

Christian Life, Living by Faith, Walking in the Spirit

Rainbows and chickens

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“For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by us—by me, Silvanus, and Timothy—was not Yes and No, but in Him was Yes. For all the promises of God in Him are Yes, and in Him Amen, to the glory of God through us. Now He who establishes us with you in Christ and has anointed us is God, who also has sealed us and given us the Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee.” (2 Cor 1: 19-22)

We have two chickens, called Jessica and Roadrunner. They they live in a Summer house that has been converted to a chicken run: it has a door, which normally stays shut except when we go in to collect the eggs or clean them out etc, and it has a little chicken door the size of a catflap, which opens and shuts automatically on a timer. One morning I looked up the garden and noticed that the door had been left open all night, yet Jessica and Roadrunner hadn’t come down to the house for their morning treat. (They have a little bit of crumbled cheese every morning, mixed with a soaked slice of bread. Don’t ask.) I feared the worst, and began to gear myself up to go into the chicken house and find a pile of feathers left by the visit of Mr Fox. Then as I looked up the garden I saw Roadrunner, then Jessica, emerge from the Summer house through their little door that had just opened on its timer. They had ignored the wide open door, and waited until the timer lifted their flap before coming out. Photos and laughing emojis soon circulated on the family WhatsApp group.

Moving on to rainbows, that glorious symbol of God’s covenant promises, I saw one yesterday and was blessed by a new (well, new for me, anyway) awareness of how  the rainbow is created: the sunlight combining with water can represent the light of the Sun of Righteousness combining with the water of the Holy Spirit affirming the faithfulness of God the Father to keep His promises. And now I’m coming to my point, because it’s with healing in His wings that the Sun of Righteousness arises (Malachi 4:2). Yet how often do we pray for healing for people and see them go away disappointed? Yes, we encourage them, and ourselves, with the promise of Mark 16:18 – “You shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover-” yet we know that as often as not they don’t, and won’t. Instead of faith arising, disappointment niggles. Our prayers feel like they are hitting that little chicken flap before the timer lifts it: it is firmly shut.

And yet as full gospel Christians we know that the promise of healing is there in the Word of God. “You shall lay hands… and they will…” Why don’t we see it as part of our normal Christian experience?

I think it’s because we are waiting for the flap to open and we are missing the door. The context of Mark 16:18 is this: “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature… And these signs will follow those who believe: … they will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover.” The sign of healing follows the preaching of the gospel. It’s the gospel that is “the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes,” (Romans 1:16) and as we know, the Greek word translated as salvation means healing of the whole person; body and mind as well as spirit. I had the blessing a couple of weeks ago to spend some time with an evangelist who has seen countless miraculous healings, including six people being raised from the dead. Is he a “better Christian” than me or anyone else that I know? I don’t think so. He is certainly a man of faith and fervent prayer, but I don’t think that is the main point. I think the main point is this: he believes; he preaches the gospel, and signs and wonders follow to confirm the word he preaches.

I think there’s been a separation the Church between healing and preaching the gospel, to the extent even that many evangelical churches who don’t operate in the gifts of the Holy Spirit give a call to salvation at all their services, and many churches who do believe that the gifts of the Holy Spirit are at work in the Body of Christ today will pray for people to be healed but don’t make a habit of preaching the gospel at all their meetings. You need to turn on the switch (preach the gospel) for the light to come on (the power of God to heal). You can’t have the power without the switch, and the switch without the light achieves nothing.

I’ll bring this to land with the rainbow: the water of the Holy Spirit combined with the Sun of the Word of God affirm the promise of the Father to heal. If you know that Jesus Christ is your Lord and Saviour you  have the Sun, and if you are baptised in the Holy Spirit you have the water. Romans 10:8 tells us that ‘“The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart”  (that is, the word of faith which we preach).’ The very experience of being baptised in the Holy Spirit, especially with the evidence of speaking in tongues, is itself the “guarantee” that God will honour His promise to heal, as Paul writes in 2 Cor 1:22 above. The mustard seed of faith is another subject of course, and only you know whether or not you really do believe yourself, or if you have only fed off the faith of other people when it comes to healing. But if you do believe, and if you know that you are baptised in the Holy Spirit, go out and do what Jesus has commissioned us to do: preach the gospel, lay hands on the sick, and they will recover. It’s a promise. The door is wide open; don’t be a chicken. Go out and turn on some lights.

(On the topic of faith – there are a lot of articles in the “Living By Faith” section – “Resurrection Life” isn’t a bad place to start.)

Discipleship and witness, Walking in the Spirit

Lazarus: the grave and the glory.

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“Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is- his good, pleasing and perfect will.” (Romans 12:2)

The following material is from a message I preached in Liberia, so it’s more a collection of bible verses arranged under headings, mostly from John 11: 1-44, than a lot of my own thoughts. Which has to be good, really…

The purpose of Jesus’s ministry was to see  the Kingdom of Heaven established on earth through the church, and the account of the raising of Lazarus from the dead is a picture of exactly that: the Kingdom coming on earth; life overcoming death. In it we see two ways of thinking : the earthly way, represented by Martha and Mary, the disciples, and the Jews; and the Kingdom way of Jesus. We’re going to consider these two, remembering that the Word tells us that if we want to see the “good, pleasing and perfect will” of God, we need to be renewed in the spirit of our minds…

“Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is- his good, pleasing and perfect will.” (Romans 12:2)

Some aspects of earthly, or carnal thinking.

1) Earthly thinking wants to hold on to circumstances as they are

Verse 21: “ Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died.” (Martha)
Verse 32: “ Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died.” (Mary)
Verse 37 “And some of them said, “Could not this Man, who opened the eyes of the blind, also have kept this man from dying?” (Some of the jews)

2) Earthly thinking sees the problem

Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of him who was dead, said to Him, “Lord, by this time there is a stench, for he has been dead four days.“ (Vs 39)

“Rabbi, lately, lately the Jews have sought to stone you, and are you going there again? (Vs 8)

3) Earthly thinking cannot believe the word of God

“I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, that you may believe. Nevertheless let us go to him.” Then Thomas, who is called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with Him.” (vs 15-16)

4) Earthly thinking knows the doctrine, but it’s all head-knowledge

Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” Martha said to Him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.” (v 24)

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this?” She said to Him, “Yes, Lord, I believe that You are the Christ, the Son of God, who is to come into the world.” (v 25-27)

Martha knows about Him, but hasn’t grasped that the resurrection itself and eternal life itself are standing in front of her.

5) Earthly thinking depends on someone else

“If only you had been there…”
If only xxx was still here…
If only the leaders would sort this out…
If only an evangelist would come to our town…

Some aspects of Kingdom thinking

  1. When earthly thinking sees the problem, Kingdom thinking sees the glory of God:

“Therefore the sisters sent to Him, saying, “Lord, behold, he whom You love is sick.” When Jesus heard that, He said, “This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” (vs 3-4)

2) Kingdom Thinking walks in a different dimension; the dimension of the Spirit:

 “Are there not twelve hours in the day? If anyone walks in the day, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world. (v9)

“But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” (1 Cor 2:14)

3) Kingdom Thinking knows Gods protection
Again, “Are there not 12 hours in the day …” (v. 9 – in response to the threat of being stoned)

4) Kingdom Thinking knows that Father has heard our prayer:
 “Father, I thank You that You have heard Me. And I know that You always hear Me…” (vs 41-42)

5) Kingdom Thinking operates out of faith
“Did I not say to you that if you would believe you would see the glory of God?” (v 40)

How do we change our thinking and renew our minds?

1) Know “The resurrection and the Life” personally.
“that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection” (Phil 3:10)

This is the most important point of all. It’s one thing to know about Jesus; it’s something else entirely to know Him personally and have a relationship with Him as one of His disciples. So the first question is this: Do you know Jesus yourself? Have you been born again of the Spirit of God? As Jesus put it Himself: “Truly, truly, I say to you, except anyone be born from above, he is not able to see the kingdom of God.”” (John 3:3)

2) Know who He is in you
“But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.” (Rom 8:11)

“Christ in you, the hope of glory” (col 1:27)

Bible hope is the expectation that something will happen; certainty, not wishful thinking. One of the most telling examples of New Testament “hope” is in Romans 8 20-21: “For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that  the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.” God didn’t have His fingers crossed when He brought death into the world: He knew for certain that His plan for redemption would be fulfilled.

Jesus was certain that God’s glory would be manifested at the tomb of Lazarus. ““This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God.” Through Christ in us we have this certainty of coming glory, and through faith we can make this a reality in our present lives.

3) Hear what He says in the Spirit

Know that “my sheep hear my voice.” Not just my leaders, not just my prophets, not just the man who is preaching, but my sheep. All of them. Learn how to recognise His voice and believe what He says, because faith comes from hearing. Jesus knew what was coming because His Father had told Him.

4) Instead of wanting to hold on to what you’ve had, look forward to what God is going to bring.

“Didn’t I tell you that you see the glory of God?”

This is not meant to be an exhaustive list of what we need to do in order to renew our minds and move towards resurrection life, but it illustrates an important principal of discipleship: we can either stare at life’s tombstones, or we can be like Jesus and look for the glory. The decision is ours.





Holiness: You shall be perfect, Walking in the Spirit

What made Jesus angry?

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Then they brought little children to Him, that He might touch them; but the disciples rebuked those who brought them. But when Jesus saw it, He was greatly displeased and said to them, “Let the little children come to Me, and do not forbid them; for of such is the kingdom of God.” (Mark 10:13-14)

We don’t often read about Jesus getting angry. We know what He thinks about the Pharisees and how He addresses them, and what He thought about the money-changers in the Temple, but where else do we see His anger provoked?

We see His anger in Mark 10:14. Children come to Jesus, and the disciples turn them away. How did the son of God react? Anger. “Do NOT turn them away!” (My emphasis, but we can imagine him expressing himself like that), He said, and went on to famously teach: “assuredly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the Kingdom Of God as a little child will by no means into it.“ (v. 15). After declaring this kingdom principle, He received the children in His arms, blessed them, and laid hands on them.

Why did Jesus get angry? I don’t think it’s just because He loved the children and His disciples were hindering them: I think it’s more than that. His declaration was that we need to be like little children to enter the kingdom of heaven, and it was the very attitudes that keep us out of the kingdom that were turning the children away.

As a bit of an aside, the context of this passage is interesting: it is sandwiched between Jesus’s teaching on divorce and the story of the rich, young ruler. Sex and money. Probably the two biggest preoccupations of adult life. Most of the cares and pleasures of the world, the thorns that choke the seed of the kingdom, have their roots in one or the other of them. In between the two, Jesus demonstrates the good ground of entry into the the kingdom of heaven: we come as children, with neither of them on our minds; He receives us in His arms, we receive His blessing, and finally, He lays hands on us and we receive the Holy Spirit so that we can truly come of age…

But what made Him angry? I think it’s not so much because our own “thorns” are keeping us out, but because we mistake our thorns for fruit. His arms are open wide to receive us. He has come to save the world by giving us free entry to the Kingdom Of God. He knows all the things that stand in the way of the door to the kingdom. And He sees those who cannot enter in preventing those who could, because they have totally misunderstood the conditions for entry. It’s the same anger that He displays towards the teachers of the law, who don’t enter themselves and who stop others from coming in. (Matt 23: 13-14) I think He is angry at the self righteousness of sin that keeps us away from the righteousness of God, the justification of self that stands in the way of justification by grace. It’s when we think know better than others that we actually know the least of all: I think the Bible shows us that if anything makes Jesus cross, it’s this.

To be renewed in the spirit of our minds (Eph 4:23) is to renew the childlike attitudes we had before the thorns began to grow. God chooses the foolish things of the world to shame the wise. His strength is made perfect in our weakness. It’s actually when we think we’re being the most grown-up that we are probably being the least mature. Like Benjamin button in the 2008 film, we need to be ageing backwards to grow up in the kingdom of God: we need to take to the cross what made Him so cross, and become like the baby in the manger.

Happy child-like Christmas, everyone!

Be prepared; hold on., Living by Faith, Prophesy and the prophetic, Pursuing Love, Walking in the Spirit

They shall be one…

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A murmuration of starlings – click this link for the 2 min video

The video shows a murmuration of starlings gathering to roost for the night. It is only a portion of the 200,000 or so that will have gathered altogether. You can see waves and waves of birds flying over to join the group. They continued to fly in for probably 20 or 30 minutes. Below them, flying backwards and forwards over the water is a group of other birds (lapwings) which for some reason known only to the birds seem to want to join in the dance. It is an amazing spectacle, and I have felt the Lord speak through it, to say something like this…

The massed groups of starlings represent the body of Christ. In these days, the Lord is gathering together all of those who will flock to him, who know the freedom of movement in the spirit, and to choose to belong to one another and love one another as they belong to Christ and love Christ. God is calling His body away from the groups and identities and differences that we have subscribed to, to join together in a flow and movement orchestrated by His Spirit that the world will see and wonder at. Those who have joined the flock have died to self and are part of its flow and pattern as it moves as one.  There are no individuals who stand out, no leaders pointing the way or driving on the groups: they all move together in perfect unity in response to the promptings of the Holy Spirit. This is a work that has started and is gathering momentum as more and more of His children move into the work that God is doing, which is a work of beauty and love and unity.

This is how our light will come as darkness descends on the Earth.

“Who are these who fly like a cloud,
And like doves to their roosts?

Surely the coastlands shall wait for Me;
And the ships of Tarshish will come first,
To bring your sons from afar,
Their silver and their gold with them,
To the name of the LORD your God,
And to the Holy One of Israel,
Because He has glorified you.” (Isaiah 60: 8-9)

Be prepared; hold on., Living by Faith, The word of God, Walking in the Spirit

You have an Anointing from the Holy One

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It’s all about the river. The deeper we go the more we know of God’s provision and his power. Either we die to self or we don’t: either the flesh is buried with Jesus or it’s walking. Either we are yoked to Jesus in the spirit, in resurrection life, or we are tethered to self, holding on to our own life instead of losing it. I have been thinking recently about “the anointing,” and how we approach the subject in our various church groups. Belonging as I do to a pentecostal/charismatic stream, it is a word I hear and use a lot. Here are some conclusions that I feel that I am coming to.

A lot of teaching today, especially in prophetic circles, would seem to suggest that there is some sort of historical timeline of levels of anointing that God pours out on the church. I have believed this myself. But I no longer think that it is true. We only need to read the accounts of some of the lives of the Saints in the middle ages and the miracles that they walked in to know that full-blown, high octane, resurrection power is not a manifestation of God’s glory that He has reserved for our generation, but is actually something that has been covered by the successive cloaks of religion, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the spread of industrialisation which are only now, in the 21st-century, finally being seen to wear very, very thin. Just as he did with the Amorites, (Gen 15:16) God has allowed – and still is allowing, (I think) for just a little while longer, the sin of civilisation to come to its fulness before invading it with the kingdom that his old covenant people foreshadowed.

The living sacrifice
1 John 2:20 says this: “but you have an anointing from the Holy One, and you know all things.” Anointed teaching – that is teaching from the spirit of God and not the mind of man – brings revelation of truth that the Holy Spirit has already given to us but which we haven’t yet accessed with our renewed minds. The Spirit of Truth brought the full download with Him when He came into our hearts: He hasn’t changed or added anything to who He is because He is already the fullness of truth. Growing in maturity in the spirit is becoming more like Jesus, and since the flesh and the spirit are at war with one another this growth is only achieved when the flesh is taken to the cross – whether we are talking about negative though-patterns, self-centred annoyances, ungodly desires, or whatever else is lurking there to trip us upon our walk with Christ. And as we grow more like Jesus, the greater the revelation of the Spirit of Truth within us.  It’s not rocket science.

“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. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.” (Romans 1:2)

We know from 1 Cor 2: 16 that “we have the mind of Christ,” yet we also know that God’s thoughts aren’t our thoughts. I think it’s as we continually “present (our) bodies a living sacrifice” and are not “conformed to this world,” that we are “transformed by the renewing of (our) mind,” and revelation of what is in the mind of Christ becomes part of our own thinking. To put it another way, I think God’s thoughts become ours by revelation as we learn to walk after the Spirit and not after the flesh. The mind of Christ and the anointing that we have from the Holy One are what we were born into the Kingdom with: we access more of them as we mature in Christ and “come…to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.” (Eph 4:13)

Children of Promise
Of his countrymen “according to the flesh,” the Israelites, Paul writes “to whom pertain the adoption, glory, covenants, the giving of the law, the service of God, and the promises,” (Romans 9:4) Yet not even this rich heritage is qualification for kingdom citizenship. So how much more are we, “the children of the promise“ (Rom 9:8) born into when we turn to Christ? I think that there is enough evidence in the Word of God that has been delivered to us to show that we don’t have to wait for something special to come from Heaven before the Church moves in true revival power. As darkness and light are separated out in these times of shaking and we, the children of the promise, learn to trade in the currency of faith and not the currency of credit, we will be seen increasingly to be standing “in a broad place” (Ps 18:19) by those who are slipping off the narrowing ledges of security that the world affords, and they will want to join us. This is a new experience for most of us living in the West; not so of course for those brothers and sisters in the persecuted Church for whom it has been the norm for decades.

We have all read what Paul wrote to the Philippians:

Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Therefore let us, as many as are mature, have this mind; and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal even this to you. (Phil 4: 13-15)

For two thousand years the Church has been growing up, and now it seems that we are starting to come to maturity, individually and collectively. It’s time to put away childish things, and it’s time to realise that we don’t need to wait for Christmas, because we have already been given the presents.  When we have less of Earth in our lives, whether by choice or necessity, we will start to see more of Heaven: the bride will be ready for the Groom, and we will see His kingdom come.