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

The Lens of Tears

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The Lens of Tears

“Then the other disciple, who came to the tomb first, went in also; and he saw and believed. For as yet they did not know the Scripture, that He must rise again from the dead. Then the disciples went away again to their own homes. But Mary stood outside by the tomb weeping, and as she wept she stooped down and looked into the tomb. And she saw two angels in white sitting, one at the head and the other at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain. Then they said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “Because they have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid Him.” Now when she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, and did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?” She, supposing Him to be the gardener, said to Him, “Sir, if You have carried Him away, tell me where You have laid Him, and I will take Him away.” Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to Him,  “Rabboni!” (which is to say, Teacher).” (John 20: 8-16)

What, Why and Who
The disciples went away to their own homes, but Mary stood outside tomb weeping. We don’t have a film of the scene, but as far as we can imagine from the text, Mary had gone to tell Peter and John that Jesus’s body wasn’t there; Peter and John ran ahead to the tomb to see what had happened, and Mary went back to the tomb with them. We know that John outran Peter, and it seems like they both outran Mary – although since she had run to find them there is nothing to suggest that she ambled back. We don’t know how far they had come or if the men were still in the tomb when Mary arrived, but I think we are safe to assume that they are all within roughly the same time-frame, and there are some things that we do know about the three (human) characters in this scene: Peter and John both saw what had happened and left again, and John not only saw that Jesus had gone, but “believed” –  not just believed that He really had risen from the dead, but presumably believed in Him as the Son of God. And we know that Mary was weeping. Peter saw and recognised what had happened; John saw what had happened and understood why; but Mary was weeping because of who it had happened to. “They have taken away my Lord!” she cried through her tears.

They had taken away her Lord. She said this to two angels sitting by the graveclothes of Christ. Was she so distraught that she didn’t realise that they were angels, or was she so distraught that she didn’t care? Again, we don’t know; but what we do know is that she saw them, and the two men didn’t. Why were they there? Again, we don’t have an answer to that because we don’t need one, but it isn’t wild speculation to assume that the angels had also been there when Peter and John came into the tomb: they had probably been there ever since the dead body of Jesus had been brought in. Mary saw them, then she turned round and saw Jesus.

The Lens of Tears
Mary was weeping because she loved Jesus, and now her last remaining contact with Him, His dead body, had gone. She was crying over her lost relationship with Jesus, and not even the sight of the angels impacted the emotions in her heart. I believe that she saw the angels because she was seeking Jesus with a heart full of love that had just burst: “Where is my Lord?” was her one thought. She was looking through a lens of tears, and through that lens it was Mary who saw the angels that the two men missed, and not only did she see the angels, but when she turned round she saw the Lord she was seeking.

I have never knowingly seen an angel, although I know people who have, including Anne. I would love to, as I would love to see more supernatural manifestations of any sort. But I think this passage may give us a clue as to why perhaps many of us don’t see as much as we would like to in the Spiritual realm. Maybe, like Peter and John in this passage, we accept it too easily and just “go back to our own homes” when the person of Jesus isn’t a reality in our lives, instead of being more like Mary, who stayed by the tomb and broke her heart because He wasn’t there.

Living by Faith, Walking in the Spirit

There is no rush

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Hurry! You’ll miss it!
 If there is one weapon in the devil’s armoury that he uses against us on a daily basis, it is the thought that we have to hurry. We are running out of time. Quick, before the opportunity goes and the window closes! It is embedded in the core language of commerce: “Don’t miss out! Offer ends tonight!“ The thought is always there, lurking, because it’s the language of temptation: make hay while the sun shines, because it could cloud over at any moment  It’s the language of pressure, and the language of manipulation: hurry, we’ll miss the train. Hurry, I’ve got things to do. Hurry, dinner is getting cold. Hurry, Hurry, Hurry. No time to think. No time to look around. No time to just listen, no time to wait for others, no time to love, no time for the Lord.

Be anxious for nothing
I was asking the Lord if he had anything for me to bring to a meeting recently, and after a few minutes he spoke four words very clearly into my spirit: “there is no rush.” I didn’t feel led to share it at the time, as it turned out, and so it has been marinating for a while. The scripture that immediately followed was Philippians 4 vs 6-7: “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus”. If we put the two words together, the Rhema and the logos, we get this: “There is no rush. Be anxious for nothing, but in all things…etc.“

Boundless God
Various Bible passages come to mind very quickly when we consider this. At the top of the list is probably Isaiah 40 vs 31: “Those who wait upon the lord shall renew their strength…“ This is probably closely followed for many of us by the raising of Lazarus from the dead: when Jesus heard that his friend was sick he actually waited two days before he set out for Bethany (John 11:6), by which time Lazarus had already died. Or we think of Saul, who rushed to save his kingdom from the Philistines by making a sacrifice in the apparent absence of Samuel, and actually lost it as a result. (He who seeks to save his life will lose it…) There are many others, but behind them are truths that underpin all of Scripture: God is boundless, and He is love. The biggest thing that limits our capacity to love is what we cling to, because whatever we cling to creates a boundary.

Stinking thinking
An old friend and pastor who is now with the Lord used to talk about our “stinking thinking.” We all have our examples of stinking thinking. Anne and I were out for lunch the other day and the waitress came to take away the plates we had finished with. One of them still had some tasty morsels on it which I thought I would still enjoy, so I told her to leave it on the table. I didn’t enjoy it particularly, and it just put on calories which I didn’t need and which aren’t good for me. I had grabbed what the world was offering because it was about to be taken away. Stinking thinking. God’s thinking says “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights.” (James 1: 17) As we know from Psalm 23, He sets His table before us in the presence of our enemies, so there is no rush to grab at what the world gives. How often we can let our appetites become our boundaries.

The Great Victory
 When Jesus was about to go to the cross, He said “the ruler of this world is coming, but he has nothing in me.” (John 14:30) He could lay down His life because He clung to nothing in the world, not even His own flesh: He just clung to His Father. Because He was free of every limitation, He could give the Spirit without limit. He overcame every boundary on our behalf so that we can enter into His boundlessness. He won the war against the world single-handed, so that we could receive His peace. This was the great victory of the Son of Man.

So there is no rush. We do not need to make hasty decisions that rely on our own understanding, without first seeking the peace that surpasses all understanding; and we do not need to grab the world’s opportunities before they are taken away. We have all the time in the world.

Discipleship and witness, Walking in the Spirit

The Man who Saw the Light

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He was born blind so that the works of God might be revealed in him.

Whenever I have read the story of the man born blind (John 9: 1-39) I have focussed on the unusual details of the miracle itself, its aftermath, its significance as a sign, the blindness of the Pharisees, and the declaration of Jesus that He is the light of the world:  the stuff of countless sermons. But I have never really thought much about the man’s blindness. When the disciples asked Jesus who had sinned to cause it, the Lord’s answer was, as we probably know:  “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but that the works of God should be revealed in him.“

How long, O LORD ?
The thought that struck me when I read the story this time round was simply this: how long has he been waiting in the darkness for the works of God to be revealed in him?  As we know from the account of water being turned into wine, John sees the miracles of Jesus as signs, and his gospel is structured through a progression of signs that bring an unfolding revelation of the deity of Jesus. The work of God that is revealed in this man is centred on Jesus as being the light of the world. The man born blind stands for all mankind, living in darkness until we see the light. Was he aware of God’s plan and God’s timing as he sat begging for scraps by the roadside? I think not. If he prayed, it probably would have been “How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?” (Psalm 13:1)

Transformed to follow
Once God’s purpose was fulfilled his life was totally transformed, and not only was he now able to physically see, but from being a type of Man born in darkness, he becomes a type of Man born again into the Light: he values his testimony above his acceptance by the religious authorities, he is excluded from their system, and he worships Jesus. And from being a nobody by the roadside he becomes probably the best-known man in all of history who ever saw the Light.

Sitting in darkness
God’s ways are so much higher than ours. In His plan, the nations are a drop in the bucket, Isaiah 40:15) and “the glory of a man as the flowers of the grass.“ (1 Pe 1: 24-25) However in the dimension of the Spirit God has plans for us that are of eternal consequence; even though, like the man born blind, we may have absolutely no idea what they could be, and are living off scraps in darkness and uncertainty, unable to see God’s purpose and feeling void of purpose ourselves.

The moment of revelation
Yet the blindness and the scraps were also part of this man’s  calling, as they are of ours: the purpose we were born to was that the works of God should be revealed in us. That roadside is where He has put us, the scraps we receive are from His hand, and that transforming moment of revelation is heading in our direction, walking down the road in Christ.

Caked in mud
With an understanding that God hasn’t just left us in the dark to beg for the rest of our lives but that He has put us where we are for a purpose, it becomes possible to find peace by the roadside. But then the question for all of us is this: when our moment arrives, what will be our response? For the man born blind, an encounter with Jesus began the process of transformation, but it didn’t complete it. After the initial meeting, Jesus put mud on his eyes. Not only were his eyes useless, but now they were caked in dirt as well, and they probably stung. Everything in his flesh would have urged him to wipe it off immediately. Things got worse before they got better. But with the mud came an instruction: “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam.” Jesus said of His words, “Blessed are you if you do them,” (John 13:17). So the man didn’t try and wipe the stinging mud off his eyes, but he did as he was told.

Sent from the pool
First the encounter, then the mud, then the walk to the pool. The transformation only happened after he had walked and washed. What do we do when God finally turns up after have been praying “How long, Lord?” but then we just get mud on our eyes? 1 Thess 5 16-18 says “Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.“  Do we get up and walk in  joy and thanksgiving and recognition of God’s will, or do we stay by the roadside and wait for another encounter?

Walk and Wash
 The man’s life changed when he walked to the pool and washed, not when Jesus first met with him. Siloam means “sent.” The pool of the One who was sent is the pool of forgiveness (His blood) and the pool of the Spirit (the Water). For God’s works to be revealed in us we need to get up and walk, and to be washed in them both.

The roadside, the encounter, and the mud are steps in the preparation of God’s purpose for us; but it’s by walking that we get to Siloam, and it’s from there that we are sent to bring the light.

Christian Life, Prophesy and the prophetic, Walking in the Spirit

The Rope Ladder in the Sky

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Walk on the words that I give you and you will be safe.

“I have called you to walk the narrow way. Some see this as a tightrope, and say: ‘This is too  narrow, too difficult and too high, and I will fall off. I can’t do it. I can’t climb up to it and if I do I can’t stay on it.’

But I say, you don’t have to climb anywhere, because I have lifted you. And it is not a tightrope: it is a rope ladder. The rungs are the words I speak to you. Step on the words that I speak and you cannot fall. A tightrope walker has a balancing pole. To keep your balance you need to have your arms spread out. This signifies two things: one is constant praise to me, and the other is the cross that you carry. If you remember to praise me at all times and remember to carry the cross of death to self you will not stumble or fall. And even if you do, remember my words: “The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord, and He delights in his way. If he falls he shall not be utterly cast down, for the Lord upholds him with His hand.” ((Psalm 37: 23-24)

So be encouraged. I have lifted you into heavenly places to walk on my word. Don’t look down through the spaces between the rungs at what is going on in the world, but concentrate on putting your feet on the words I give you as I speak into your life, step by step.”

I shared this word at Wildwood Church on Sunday. The idea of the outstretched arms representing the cross as well as praise was brought to me by a sister after the meeting, She was absolutely right: we cannot walk one step in the Spirit without carrying our cross. That is our ultimate balancing pole. And as the elder who led the meeting said: “If you walk this ladder it is safer than any concrete path.”

Walking in the Spirit

Walking in Two Realms: Earth and Heaven

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“No one has ascended to heaven but he who came down from heaven, that is, the son of man who is in heaven.“ (John 3: 13)

Jesus spoke these words to Nicodemus, and he was clearly on the Earth. Yes He tells him both that He has come down from heaven and also that He is in heaven. this can only mean one thing: Jesus was on Earth and in heaven at the same time.

Have we really got the significance of this? We are raised up with Him, and we are seated with Him in heavenly places. We know the Scriptures. But as we walk around on Earth, how often do we remember where we are at the same time? Jesus could do what His father did, hear what His Father said and see what His father saw, because He was there in heaven with him. It’s not difficult to hear someone’s words or see what they’re looking at if you are sitting next to them.

Jesus made it clear that the kingdom of heaven is “within us.“  This idea seemed like a mystery to me for many years, because somehow I think I was trying to reconcile earthly dimensions with the heavenly infinite. But now I see it like this: the Kingdom of Heaven is within us because our spirits are within us, and since our spirits are seated in heavenly places, the heavenly places are within us as well. Wherever we are, the Kingdom really is at hand; as much now as when Jesus first told the disciples to preach that message 2000 years ago. This is hardly an original thought, I know; but I suspect for many of us the fullness of the truth that we are the carriers of the Kingdom still has to penetrate our hearts.

So of course, the big question is this: why don’t we see more of the kingdom around us if we carry within us wherever we go? I think one of the reasons maybe found in Matthew 11:12: “ The kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force.” Who are the violent? Certainly not people who start fights and carry weapons. The “violent” are people who are determined and forceful, those who push their way in. You can’t force your way into something  by just reading about it, thinking about it or even writing about it. I think Jesus may have been thinking about the “violent” when He said to the church at Laodicea that they were lukewarm, and that He would rather they were hot or cold. And He told the Ephesian church that they had to regain their first love – the love for Jesus that Paul had obviously stirred in them just one generation earlier. They had lost their violence.

Jesus has given us the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Whatever our understanding of those keys may be, one thing is true: we are not going to grasp hold of them if are holding onto the world. if we don’t actually walk that narrow difficult way (Jesus’s words, not mine – Matt 7:14)  where they are to be found, we cannot really expect the windows of heaven to open in such a way that the treasures held within will pour through and enrich the barrenness of our patch of Earth. We need to be “violent” to stick to the path. We need to be like John Bunyan’s Pilgrim, not the man at the pool of Bethesda (John 5: 2-8) , who saw the water move but only for other people. Like him,  we can lie on our beds (or sit on our sofas) and wonder why it don’t seem to be moving around us and around our churches in the way it is apparently moving in other places. But what did Jesus say to the man who was healed? It wasn’t “Get up and jump into the pool;” it was “Pick up your bed and walk.“ His healing came from walking.

There is only one way that the Bible says God’s children are to walk: that is after the Spirit, by faith, and yes, on water. (See “Stepping out of the boat.”) We can only walk after the Spirit (think of Him in front of us, and we are following after!) if we can see where He is walking, and that is only possible when we have pushed through the distractions and temptations of the world and the flesh to be connected to Him in  the heavenly places that we carry around in our hearts.

The Lord said to Joshua, and therefore to us, in Christ:

“’If you will walk in My ways,
And if you will keep My command,
Then you shall also judge My house,
And likewise have charge of My courts;
I will give you places to walk
Among these who stand here.” (Zech 3:7)

Jesus was on Earth and in Heaven at the same time, and so are we; and it’s when we consciously walk in both places at once that the will of Heaven can be done on Earth. We often ask the Lord in our prayers  and our worship songs to “come down.“ However, this is the prayer of the man who waits by the pool of Bethesda; it’s not for the child of God. We need to remember that we have been lifted up, and start to walk in the place to which we have been lifted.

Christian Life, Living by Faith, Walking in the Spirit

Stepping out of the boat

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“The boat was now in the middle of the sea, tossed by the waves, for the wind was contrary.“ (Matthew 14: 24)

We know what happens next. It was the middle of the night; the disciples were struggling in the boat; Jesus came walking across the sea towards them, and Peter said: “Lord if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.“  (Matt 14:28) And then follows the paradigm of the disciple who steps out on the boat and walks on the water.

This is the story of “stepping out in faith.“ We tend to think of it in terms such as:  moving out on mission, giving on God’s command when we seem to have nothing to give, trusting God for miracles and gifts of the Holy Spirit, believing for supernatural provision, sharing the gospel, etcetera. The “spiritual” works that we walk in (Eph 2:10) that are the exceptions rather than the rule. Most of the time we probably see ourselves in the boat, rowing across the water. But since Romans 14:23 tells us that “whatever it’s not from faith is sin,” it follows that actually every step of the walk of discipleship has to involve stepping out of the boat. Our life in Christ begins when we die to self, and we only “walk after the spirit and not after the flesh,“ (Gal 5:16)  when it is the Holy Spirit and not the carnal self that is leading us. Seen from this angle, the boat, quite simply, is self.

In Matthew’s account, the wind is “contrary,” and they were “in the middle of the sea, tossed by the waves.“ They weren’t about to sink; it wasn’t a storm that was blowing. They just weren’t getting anywhere, they weren’t comfortable, and they couldn’t see where they were going. In John’s account they had rowed “three or four miles” and “a great wind was blowing.” (John 6: 18-19) They had lost their peace and their direction. It wasn’t necessarily a time of life-threatening danger, but it was definitely a time of discomfort and frustration. Instead of Peace, there was turmoil.

What do we do when the wind is contrary? When we can’t make ourselves understood? Or can’t grasp what someone else is asking us? When we just aren’t making headway with the task in hand, or when circumstances just seem to be conspiring to cause the waves to rise and the wind to blow against us? Do we grip the oars even tighter, put our heads down and battle on – or do we recognise that we have lost our peace, rest the oars and look out for Jesus?

John writes: “So when they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and drawing near the boat; and they were afraid.” (John 6:19) 

John doesn’t say that they were afraid of the weather conditions; he says they were afraid when they saw Jesus. How often do we find ourselves like those disciples? The wind and the waves may be alarming, but it’s much less alarming to grip the oars that we know and feel that we control, than it is to let go of them and reach out to Jesus. We may not feel we are in danger, but in truth we will be directionless and there is no peace in a wave tossed boat. And when God is not in control of the boat, who knows what waves might be building up.

The flesh is always contrary to the spirit. (See Galatians 5:17.) And if we are not walking after the spirit and following Jesus, the wind is always contrary, whether we feel the boat is being tossed by the waves or whether we are being deceived into believing that all is well. The kingdom of heaven is where Jesus rules, the one whom the wind and the waves obey (Matt 8:27). Stepping out of the boat isn’t just a matter of the miraculous, but it is a model of everyday discipleship. We cannot walk after the spirit if we are hunkered down in the boat of the flesh.

When Jesus got back into the boat with Peter the wind was stilled and they arrived at the shore. Jesus promises peace and it is an evidence of His kingdom rule, but we have to step out of the boat to receive it from Him. When we do, we find our direction. He is always there, waiting on the water.

Walking in the Spirit

Sit still and count the sheep

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We are the sheep of His pasture
We are the sheep of His pasture

If you were at Wildwood Church with me on Sunday, you will have heard a sister share the following: (I am paraphrasing as well as I remember.)

“I was on a train in the Peak District recently when the Lord spoke to me strongly. It was one of those little tourist trains. It wasn’t an express. It only had a couple of carriages. It went slowly through the countryside and you sat and watched the scenery while you had a cream tea.

We were all on the platform and didn’t know when the train would be coming in, but the station master knew everything and told us what to do and when to do it. He reminded me of the Fat Controller in the Thomas the Tank Engine stories. I felt the Lord say to me: “I am in control. I know the timetable. This is not an express, you haven’t got to hurry. All you need to do is to sit there, look out of the window, and count the sheep.“

Doreen emphasised how the Lord was reminding her, and us, that He is in control. He knows the timetable. He knows our going out and our coming in. We are safe in him and we can relax and be at peace. This was a true “now” word, as the thrust of the sermon that was to follow (and which she obviously hadn’t heard) was, essentially, “be still and know that I am God.” And also I think there are a couple of other details which have prophetic significance, alongside the timely exhortation to rest in Him, which I would like to bring out now.

The first is this. The train was going through the peak district. The peaks are a reminder of all the excesses that we see in the world at the moment: not just the peaks of chaos and anxiety that fill  the news every day, but the peaks of excess that the ruler of this world is consistently seeking to tempt us with. God’s train passes among all of these, untouched by them. In Him we too remain untouched. The only  real peak of human experience is our relationship with God: we do not need to climb out of the train to scale any of the tempting peaks outside, or to run away from the threatening ones, however close any of them seem to appear. If we can be still and know that He is God, we will see them disappear behind us.

Secondly, there were the sheep. Doreen specifically said that we need to “sit there, look out of the window, and count the sheep.” As I was pondering this story I felt the Lord turning it around and saying “the sheep count!“ We are the sheep of His pasture. He is the Good Shepherd. Nothing counts more, collectively and individually, than the sheep that Jesus gave His life to bring into the Fathers sheepfold.

If we rush from one destination to another, all we will see is the peaks. But if we sit still on the Lord’s train, in Heavenly places with Him,  in the seat that He has bought for us, following the timetable that He controls, we will be aware of the sheep of His pasture and they will become more important to us than anything else on our journey. And sometimes He will even bring us a cream tea.

Walking in the Spirit

Of His fullness we have received…

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“Of His fullness we have all received, and grace for grace. For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” (John 1: 16-17)

Any Christian who believes that the gifts and power of the Holy Spirit are available and operational in the Church today will know of, and quite possibly tell others of, the need to be filled with the Holy Spirit, as Scripture exhorts us in Ephesians 5:18. But as I’ve become more aware lately of what it is to be standing under the waterfall of God’s Grace, (see the last article, Mountains and Waterfalls) I’ve been considering what it actually means to be filled with the Spirit.

If all the fullness of God dwells in Jesus (Colossians 1:19), and Christ, the Hope of glory, is in us (Col 1:27), then how much of Christ dwells in us? Do we believe that it is a fragment? A cell? Maybe just a fragment of a cell? Or do we dare to believe that our loving Heavenly Father will answer Paul’s prayer for every Christian of every age, that we would be “filled with all the fulness of God?”

We are called to love one another; to have grace in our dealings. Jesus made in clear in the Sermon on the Mount that Kingdom relationships are characterised by the fact that what we give does not depend on what we receive: “If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that?” (Matt 5:46) On the contrary, if we “love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you,” we have the astounding promise that “You shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.” (Verse 47) We won’t just be good, because we have obeyed the rules, but we’ll be like God – because actually, as far as the rules of the world are concerned, we have broken them.

So a basic principle in the Manifesto of the Kingdom is that what we give to men does not depend on what we receive from them. We don’t love according to the tit-for-tat rules of the world, any more than we are to depend for what we need on the get-what-you-pay-for provision of the world. When Jesus preached repentance unto God, it was more than an exhortation to stop behaving badly: it was a call to throw out man’s rulebook and embrace God’s – whose book consists basically of two sentences: love God, and love one another. If we seek this Kingdom, everything else will be given to us.

“Of His fullness we have all received, and grace for grace.” Just as we have received out of the fullness of God in Christ, so it is only out of our fullness that others can receive grace from us – the grace that rises above the tit for tat of the world, that enables us to overcome negative reactions to damaging words and quench fiery arrows with living water. The Grace that enables us to be perfect, just like our Father in Heaven.” The purpose of being full of the Holy Spirit is not so much to have access to supernatural gifts, but to have access to supernatural love, supernatural gentleness and supernatural generosity. If our Saviour had not been filled with all the fullness of God, Satan would have shown Him a good carnal reason to disobey His Father; but He could say that Satan “has nothing in me” because He was completely full of God.

So two questions. The first is this: how full of the Holy Spirit are we?  Because if we are really full, like Stephen was, we don’t run away when the stones start to fall, but we “see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God.” (Acts 7:55)  It’s often said that we leak, which is why Paul’s exhortation is the present continuous tense – “Be being filled.” But I don’t think it’s true that we leak, and every now and then have to go back to the fountain (often at Church) for a top-up. We can’t fill the flesh with the Spirit. I think we are more like completely broken bottles, and  the only way for Scripture’s present continuous tense to operate in our lives is to stay under that waterfall, standing permanently in the Grace of God, morning, noon and night; work, rest and play. And at church as well. What a blessing we could be at church by just staying soaked all week. And if we can do this, out of our fullness others will receive, grace for grace. At church, in the home, and in the workplace.

And here is the second question: what is our expectation of the “fullness of God” in our lives? I was in a zoom gathering last night, and the word that Father spoke to us by His Spirit was that He wants to bring a new level of creativity to His people: that the atmosphere of Heaven is the Beauty of Holiness, and that He wants us to release that beauty into the world in all that we do – our work, or pastimes, our creative projects, our relationships of course – and that He would bring us new gifts, new resources, new skills, new levels of faith, in fact all that we need out of the infinite unseen storehouses of Heaven to start bringing this about. It was a beautiful, encouraging Word, and I do not do it justice with my single-sentence paraphrase. And it would be so easy for it to remain on the shelf, along with the library of other beautiful encouraging words that I have heard over nearly 40 years in the faith. Except for one thing. If you know me or follow my site, you will know that I am a “birder”: I love watching and photographing birds. I was sitting in the sunshine in my garden this afternoon, enjoying a cup of tea, when I heard a birdsong in the tree that I did not immediately recognise. I managed to get a picture, and I identified it as a female linnet. The linnet is a little finch with a sweet song, which the Victorians used to keep in cages as songbirds.  Linnets are not particularly rare, but I do not recall ever seeing one in my garden before – and we have lived here since 1998. It was something unexpected, beautiful, and new.

This was the linnet: not just a little brown bird, but something beautiful, unexpected and new.

I believe that little bird was a sign from the Lord of all Creation to remind me, and you, that He has so much more for us than we could ever ask or imagine, and that even now, as the world seems to be rushing to pull down its tents, He wants us to stretch forth the cords of ours and enlarge our vision of who He is and what it means to be filled with all of His fullness. If we do this He will fill whatever we give Him with more of who He is so that when the needy come to us they can be filled in turn from our fullness, grace for grace. Whatever your garden is, and whatever those linnets might be for you, watch out for them, because the Holy Spirit is releasing them from their cage.

Pursuing Love, Walking in the Spirit

Mountains and Waterfalls

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The flowers of the grass

“Since you have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit in sincere love of the brethren, love one another fervently with a pure heart, having been born again, not of corruptible seed but incorruptible, through the word of God which lives and abides forever, 
because

“All flesh is as grass,
And all the glory of man as the flower of the grass.
The grass withers,
And its flower falls away, But the word of the LORD endures forever.” 

Now this is the word which by the gospel was preached to you.” (1 Pe 1 22-25)

I was on a mission trip to Switzerland in May, staying at a Bible college up in the hills overlooking a lake, facing some prominent peaks of the Alps. I was walking down a path one morning to check out the bird life, having read the above passage from1 Peter before I left. In all the times I have read that scripture, I had never thought about “the flower of the grass,” until this moment when I found myself standing in it, looking across the valley at the view which the photo above captures a corner of. I took the picture from where I stood with the flower of the grass at my feet, the Bible school behind me, representing the enduring Word of God, looking across the valley at the beauty and majesty of God’s creation, drinking in liquid bird song and the flutter of butterflies among the wildflowers, drenched in peace, and above all feeling cradled in the love of the one who had made it all. After nearly 40 years in the Lord, I felt the Father’s love in a new, intimate way that morning.  And while I was standing there trying to contemplate the majesty of my loving Father through this tiny fragment of His creation the thought occurred to me: the flower of the grass doesn’t even last anything like as long as the grass itself. And this is as much as our glory is worth!

The thoughts tumbled in: how often do we try to elevate ourselves with our opinions, our superior “wisdom,” our spirituality, our ”rightness” – especially our rightness? But our glory is no more than the flower of the grass at my feet compared with the glory of God in all His majesty and the eternal truth of His Word, and my opinions are of no more value by comparison than a used bus ticket buried in the folds of  my pocket. “All flesh is as grass, And all the glory of man as the flower of the grass.” And yet we carry within us the glory of the One who made the mountains. How can I possibly offer people my bus tickets instead of letting them know something of the love, the peace and the glory that has been poured out into my heart by the Holy Spirit of Creator Father God? Why do I even look at them?

Without love, we stand alone, and all we manifest is what is corruptible;  the flower of the grass. When we reach out in love to others we can manifest the glory of God and the incorruptible truth of His word, quickened by the power of His Spirit. Switzerland is full of waterfalls. I was telling a wise friend about my experience on the hillside, and likened the idea of standing in the flow of God’s love to standing under a waterfall (I am hardly the first person to do so…) My friend said “A waterfall pours into a pool, then flows out of it. Our job (actually he said “your job,” but it applies to all of us) isn’t to try and direct the flow of the water, but just to stand beneath it. It will take its own course out of the pool.”

Our hearts are that pool. The love of God has been poured into them (Romans 5:5), and it pours out as rivers of living water (John 7:38). I don’t think we can truly love unless we stand under that waterfall. Jesus came and died to make it possible. The Father’s waterfall carries no negative pollutants; it always brings forgiveness, always drives away hurt. It always renews, always washes away the old, it is always fresh, always new, always clean, always pure. It is the Father’s waterfall that drives the dynamo of His power on the Earth. When we stand beneath it we cannot hold onto pain and disappointment, but letting go we can let the water come, and in our own situations we can be like Jesus, “who, when He was reviled, did not revile in return; when He suffered, He did not threaten, but committed Himself to Him who judges righteously.” (1 Peter 2:23)

“Every good and perfect gift comes down from the Father of lights” (James 1:17), and so the greatest and most perfect gift of all, the love of God, must also come down from above. It can’t return from where the waterfall has already passed. If we look to any other source to meet our deepest need we are looking for secondhand water.

“Deep calls unto deep at the noise of Your waterfalls;
All Your waves and billows have gone over me. The LORD will command His lovingkindness in the daytime,
And in the night His song shall be with me—
A prayer to the God of my life. |(Psalm 43:7-8)

Isaiah exhorts all who are thirsty to “Come to the waters” (Isaiah 55:1). When we do, it is not just our thirst that is quenched, but the thirst of those around us as the Lord commands His lovingkindness with the water that pours out of the pool of our hearts. If we will stand in the Father’s waterfall we will see the glory of the mountains made manifest, not just the flower of the grass.

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

The Key of David

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I was recently at the UK National exhibition Centre (the NEC) where our company was exhibiting and I was a speaker at an event. It’s a while since I have set up our exhibitions stand at a show, but the people I usually delegate weren’t able to do this one, so the lot fell to me, and because I have had other priorities over the last couple of weeks – and because I tend to leave things till the last minute anyway – my preparations were minimal, and I arrived at the exhibitor traffic control entrance for the exhibition hall expecting the procedure to be the same as last time we were there. It wasn’t.

“Have you got a QR code for me, mate?”

“QR code? Sorry, what QR code?” Apparently I should have registered on the (new) traffic control website to be given allocated a timeslot for setting up. I would have been given two hours. There had been road works and a diversion just before the NEC where it had seemed like every access to the centre was closed, and I had gone badly astray,  and with other (more self-imposed) delays I was already over an hour behind my hope-for schedule. I was on my own, and I had a van full of stuff to unload to build my stand and set up my display. This was not what I needed.

 However the gate attendant was very friendly and helpful, and said, “Don’t worry mate. You can do it now.“

So I logged onto the site on my mobile phone, filled in my details, (hassle, hassle!) and pressed register. Nothing. I pressed register again. Still nothing. I could not register on the site. No matter how many times I pressed the “register“ button, the site failed to respond. I called the attendant over. “I can’t log on!“ I shouted through the van window. I had asked the Lord for help with setting up – angels, I was thinking – as it’s a good few years since I have set up a big exhibition on my own, and at this moment I did not see the help that had just come my way.

The attendant grinned. “Ah! Site crash!“ he said. “Don’t worry mate – hold on a minute.“ He went back to his little hut, and came back with a printed form, which he started scribbling on. “ Here you are!” he said. “You’re Dave today! Put this on your dashboard. That will keep security happy.”


He gave me the form he had filled in, and “Dave” was written in the space where my name should have been. Why he didn’t ask my name to fill in I wlll never know, but what I did know straight away was that I am a brother of Jesus, and Jesus was the Son of David. I was very happy for Dave – David – to be my name. Revelation 3: 7 says “And to the angel of the church in Philadelphia write, ‘These things says He who is holy, He who is true,”He who has the key of David, He who opens and no one shuts, and shuts and no one opens,” and right now this was my key of David, and indeed it opened the way into the exhibition hall for me.

But that isn’t the whole story, and of itself would hardly be a tale worth telling. What is worth telling though is that because the traffic control website crashed, I wasn’t allocated a time slot on the system. It took me four hours to set up my stand. A heavenly hand had frozen the system for me because God knew how long I would need, and what the key of David opened for me no-one could shut…

But it doesn’t end there. I left the hall at 7.30 – the last man standing, in fact – and headed for where I thought the hotel was. I found a multi-story car park and a brightly-lit complex called Resort World, but nothing that said The Genting Hotel. I drove round some cones in the road to ask another gate attendant if he could help me (The NEC is full of cones and gate attendants), but all he did was shout at me for driving round the cones and point me to the multi-story car park, where the entrance to the one-way system yawned like the gates of hell I had two suitcases – mine and Anne’s, my laptop, and another large shoulder bag, and I had visions of having to park the car and still go looking for the hotel, carrying all that luggage.

Actually the Genting Hotel is inside Resort World, but I didn’t know this until I had gone to the very top of the multi-story, parked the car, and saw the sign by the entrance to the lift.

When I came out of the lift at the bottom I was in a world of loud music and bright lights: the shopping arcade and the bars and restaurants of Resort World, but I saw the entrance to the hotel off through an archway. So by his time I had got lost in the diversion, been unable to find the hotel – oh yes: I hadn’t been able to find the exhibition hall loading bay  either – had an unwelcoming encounter with a gate attendant, and now found myself in a world of noise and bright lights and shiny people heading for their night out, when all I wanted was rest,  dinner, and my bed. I was supposed to have been at a speaker’s welcome dinner at six o’clock, so that ship had truly sailed. I felt like an alien in Babylon.

However when I finally got to my hotel room it was delightful, and I did manage to find a restaurant where there was no loud music and I could eat a nice meal in pleasant surroundings, and when I went back to the comfort of my room and reflected on the evening I saw a glimpse of the story that the Holy Spirit was writing…

Hebrews 12:23 says that we have “come to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven.” Because I am registered in heaven there was no need for me to register for my limited timeslot, because my Father was going to supply all my need (4 hours) according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus, not just half of it. (Phil 4:19) By Christ Jesus He gave  me the Key of David which opened a door that none could shut. I felt like an alien in Resort World because I am one: I am not of the world, even though I am in it.  And in that world there is going to be opposition – traffic diversions, confusing road signs or lack of them, unfriendly officials, all seeming to conspire against me fulfilling the purpose I was there to accomplish.  But Jesus has overcome the world, and in the midst of that alien environment He didn’t just give me a few scraps that would keep me going, but He looked after me as a child that He loves, and whom he had sent into that place for a purpose.

What was my purpose at the event, as a speaker and an exhibitor? My talk was well-received, and the exhibition of our products was a success commercially. But none of that was really the purpose of my mission: they were just aspects of the marketplace where the Son of David was walking with His key on His shoulder, ministering His truth and love. Because in the course of the social events of the following evening He opened opportunities for me to speak of Him to four different people: a lapsed Baptist, a liberal vicar, and two agnostic academics.

Whatever we are doing, our purpose in the world is to reveal Him through it. Whatever opposition we receive, all things will work together for good because we love the Lord and are called according to this,  His purpose. Because we are his beloved children, registered in Heaven, He will meet our need according to His riches in Christ Jesus and not our poverty; because we are His masterpiece walking in the works prepared beforehand for us in this crumbling world, and because we are His light shining like stars in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, He will make a way where there is no way. (Rom 8:28, Heb 12:23, Phil 4:19, Eph 2:10,  Phil 2:15,  Isaiah 43,  2 Cor 3:3)

We are the epistle of Christ: what is the Holy Spirit writing through you today?