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.

Holiness: You shall be perfect, Pursuing Love, Walking in the Spirit

Be Renewed in the Spirit of your Mind

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Changing the points…

“But you have not so learned Christ, if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus: that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness.” (Eph 4: 20-24)

The verses that follow (Eph 4: 25- Eph 5:5) give the Ephesian church – and the rest of us – a blueprint of what “true righteousness and holiness” look like as we walk in love as children of light and imitators of God. So we read them, maybe underline them in our Bibles; we pray over them, we memorize them and write them down – and yet we find that the old man is stubbornly clinging on like an unshakeable shadow. “O wretched man that I am,” we cry, quoting Romans seven, and maybe go back to our Bibles and our worship, feeling weak and defeated in our personal walk but thanking Jesus for His saving love. But we will have missed a key, though: like changing the points on a railway line, there is a course of action from which all those attributes of godliness can flow, and it’s that little one-liner that makes up verse 23: “and be renewed in the spirit of your mind.” If we can really grasp verse 23, the rest of the verses will follow.

The Blue Letter Bible lexicon defines the word spirit (Greek pneuma) as it is used here as “the disposition or influence which fills and governs the soul of any body.” Paul’s exhortation is quite uncomplicated: instead of letting the “old man” influence our thinking, we allow our minds to be filled and governed by the “new man.” To move the language away from first century male-dominated culture and into the twenty-first, I am going to use the term “new creation” from now on where Paul uses “new man.” The new creation is born of the Spirit, and, just as Adam and Eve before the fall, is made in the image of God. Since God is Love and He is light (1 John 1:5), the disposition of the new creation is always towards love and light. The new creation is a spirit being and has to walk in the light, and will always pursue love: not to do so is not to walk in the spirit. To be renewed in the spirit of our mind is to let our thinking be controlled by the desire to love.

We can get up at 5.00 am and spend three hours in prayer and worship to God, but if at 8.05 our words to the person next to us are negative and unloving, the spirit of our mind has not been renewed by the previous three hours spiritual activity. If we have not love, we are nothing. Jesus hasn’t called us to spend three hours with Him in Heaven and not to bring Heaven with us when we come back to Earth. He taught us to pray “You will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven,” and the Father’s will is always going to be to show His love. In all our communication and all our interactions, this has to be our priority. It is only the thinking of the renewed mind that is in line with the loving purposes of God, which is what Romans 12:2 makes clear: “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.”

Taking the steps
So how do we take the steps to walk in this direction? A few people are called to spend most of their time in prayer and public ministry, but for most of us the majority of our Christian life is spent with the relatively small number of people with whom we live and work. We work out our salvation in the close relationships of our daily lives. Our interactions may involve works of service and may involve prayer ministry, but most of all they are the words we exchange concerning the issues that affect us. These are the conversations that either build us up or break us up. We can either tend towards Ephesians 4: 14 “speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of Him who is the head, that is, Christ;” or Galatians 5: 15 “But if you bite and devour one another, beware lest you be consumed by one another.” It all depends on whether or not we are renewed in the spirit of our minds.

A key to the renewed mind is in the well-known phrase “speaking the truth in love.” There are two aspects to every conversation: the content, and the relationship. The way of the world – that Romans 12:2 says we are not to conform ourselves to – is to “tell it like it is”, to “have our say,” to “tell them straight,” etc., or at a corporate and governmental level to “have talks.” But the purpose is always the same: it isn’t to “prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God,” but for me to prove to you that it’s my will that is good and acceptable, and that you should comply with it. The discussion is about the content; relationship is secondary. If “talks have broken down,” at whatever level, so too has the relationship.

The Kingdom way is the opposite. Relationship comes first. It’s love that endures forever. If we are keeping in mind the law of Love we prefer one another (Romans 12:10); we submit to one another (Eph. 5:21); and through love we serve one another (1 John 4:7). Every conversation is an opportunity to allow the love of God to flow into a situation. Speaking the truth in love starts with considering what the other person wants from the conversation. This is what causes the body to grow “into Him who is the Head, Christ.” (Eph 4:15) “Knowledge puffs up, but love edifies,” writes Paul (1 Cor 8:1), and to the Ephesians he writes “Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, but what is good for necessary edification, that it may impart grace to the hearers.” (Eph 4:29) Corrupt words come from the old creation, which “grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts.” Words that impart grace are what edify, and have their origin in the new creation, “created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness.”

Changing the Points
According to these scriptures, then, the purpose of everything we say should be to build up the other person and “impart grace” to them, releasing something of the love of God into their life. Every time we do this, prioritizing relationship over content, we establish our minds in the new creation rather than the old. Bob Dylan released the Christian album “Slow Train Coming’” in 1979. In one of the tracks he sings: “I’m gonna change my way of thinking, make myself a different set of rules.” When we change our way of thinking, we are renewed in the spirit of our mind; and when we renew our minds, as Romans 12:2 says, we start to “prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.” We do literally change the points, because the purpose of my words is no longer for you to get my point, but for me to get yours. And once we have let go of our own agenda, it is a small step for me to move from trying to consider your agenda to actually being open to hearing God’s agenda for you, and to catch something of His perfect will for your life.

So if we want to impact the lives of others with the truth and the power of God, we start by seeing every conversation as an opportunity to love instead of an opportunity to make our point. And when we do this, we will be built up in our own lives too, because as we give, it shall be given unto us (Luke 6:38).  As Atticus said to Scout in  Harper Lee’s ‘To Kill a Mockingbird,’ “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view […] until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.” Jesus climbed into our skin, walked around in it and was crucified in it so that we could be renewed in the spirit of our mind and live, speak and act out of the new creation, rather than out of the old one that was crucified with Him. “Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God!” (1 John 3:1)

Becoming established
It is because the Son of God did this for us that we can to put off all the corruption and self-centredness of the flesh, and put on the new creation that has been born of the Spirit of God. We do this every time we make the decision to love. The more we do it, the stronger the new creation becomes, and the fainter the shadow of the old. This is what I think is meant by the idea of being “established” in God that we find, for example, in 1 Thess 3:13, 1 Pe 5:10, and Romans 16:25. The more we make it our habit to be renewed in the spirit of our minds, the more the new creation will walk in the love and the power of the Holy Spirit, bringing blessing to others, manifesting the character of Christ in the fruit of the Spirit, and building the Kingdom of God at every step. Who knows what miracles will flow, when we are open to God’s “good and acceptable and perfect will” for the person that we are talking to?”

Christian Life, Pursuing Love, Walking in the Spirit

Peace on Earth

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I was born in 1950, so I was 17 in the “Summer of Love,” as 1967 came to be called. When I went to University I grew my hair and said “Peace, man!” to people, and I spent my 20’s generally identifying with hippie culture and coveting the lifestyle, even though (thankfully!) I was far too fearful to fully embrace it. Peace deals are brokered in the Middle East and across the world, political systems strive to bring a degree of peace to the lives of their communities, and harassed parents and carers crave just “five minutes peace” where they can spend a few moments recovering from the turmoil of their daily lives; but neither the world nor the flesh can find peace, because the old man “grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts.” World peace remains a cliché, an impossible dream forever eroded by the power of sin and death, because the world and the flesh do not enter into God’s rest.

We, however, are no longer of this world. The Kingdom we belong to is ruled by the Prince of Peace Himself, who promises us the very peace that the world can’t give: “Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you.” (John 14:27) If we read the Bible, we will know the words. But what some of us need is for this promise of Kingdom peace to move from the area of theory and mental assent, where they can evaporate so easily into the same misty dream that is shared by the world’s and the flesh’s version, into the place where they are the solid ground under our feet that we walk on day by day; Kingdom minute by Kingdom minute.

Hebrews 13: 20-21 might help:

“Now may the God of peace who brought up our Lord Jesus from the dead, that great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you complete in every good work to do His will, working in you what is well pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.”

The resurrection of Christ is ascribed individually to all three members of the Godhead (For a summary of these scriptures, see https://www.blueletterbible.org/faq/don_stewart/don_stewart_1350.cfm), therefore the God of Peace who raised Jesus from the dead is the whole of the Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. At the cross, the power of sin and death was destroyed forever, and three days later the God of Peace became a living breathing reality on the face of the earth for the first time since it was created. The angels announced “Peace on Earth,” Calvary made it possible, the Resurrection delivered it, and Pentecost made it our own. Peace permeates the being of God and flows into all that He touches: as oxygen is to the Earth, God’s peace is an element of the very atmosphere of His Kingdom, and we breathe it with every step that we take when we walk after the Spirit and not after the flesh.

Paul emphasises the pre-eminence of peace as a characteristic of the Godhead in both his letters to the Thessalonians. In 1 Thess 5:23 he writes:” Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely; and may your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ,” And in 2 Thess 3:16 he writes “Now may the Lord of Peace Himself give you peace always in every way.” To walk in the peace of God is not just about being free of anxiety and fear: God’s peace is the agent of our sanctification, the balm that prepares the bride of Christ for her wedding day. This is made clear in Philippians 4:7 – words that most of us probably know by heart: “And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus,” and again in Col 3 15: “And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to which also you were called in one body; and be thankful.”

I think these scriptures make one thing clear: the peace of God isn’t a bonus, the icing on the cake of our salvation; it is in every crumb of the cake. Jesus Christ brought salvation to the world so that the peace that pervades Heaven can be made manifest on Earth. The peace of God is a reality of the spiritual dimension that can only be accessed by “the new man, which was created according to God in all righteousness and holiness.” (Eph 4:24) If we aren’t walking in God’s peace, we aren’t walking in the Spirit, because the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Peace. When the peace of God isn’t ruling in our lives, Jesus isn’t ruling either. It’s our hearts and minds that the peace of God “guards in Christ Jesus.” Our spirits are seated with Him in heavenly places, but unless the peace of God is ruling in our hearts we aren’t bringing anything to Earth from where they are seated. Peace is the litmus of our spiritual walk.

I will close with one more point, which I will return to in another article. If you feel like the atmosphere of Heaven only exists in a room that you are locked out of, the psalmist has given us a key that will open the door. Psalm 119:165 tells us “Great peace have those who love Your law, And nothing causes them to stumble.” And just as we know the promise of peace, we also know the requirement of the New Commandment, which is to love one another. “To love, then, is to obey the whole law,” writes Paul. (Romans 13:10) If we want to have “great peace” we need to keep God’s law and show someone His love. The converse also applies: if we don’t have the peace of God it could be that there is someone to whom we are failing to show His love…

The enemy took “Love and Peace” and made it a slogan of the hippy movement. It’s time we took it back for the Kingdom of God.

Walking in the Spirit

How often I have longed to gather you under my wings…

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I took these pictures of Juvenile starlings clamouring over a feed tray at the weekend. When I showed them to a Christian friend at work today, he immediately looked at the first one and quoted Jesus saying: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often I have longed to gather you under my wings, yet you would not…” I realised in that moment that there were other pictures in the collection that could also have parallels for some of us today.

If you have ever seen and marvelled at the wonderful synchronisation and unity in a murmuration of mature starlings, you will know how different that sight is from the squabbling rabble of juveniles in these photographs. Sometimes we must seem like these young birds, thinking only of ourselves and our own agendas, with no vision for what we are to become. But one day Jesus will gather His church under His wings, and we will all be one; and on that day we will be like the murmuration in the last picture, swooping and soaring as one in the freedom and the purposes of the Spirit.

Wherever we are as believers today, let us take heart in the fact that our Lord is not going to leave us there: He has a vision for His church, and it will be accomplished in all who will seek His presence and hold onto His word. I offer this series of images in the hope that they will inspire some of us to take another step forward in our journey towards full maturity and unity in the Spirit, when, no longer children, we will “all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ;” (Eph 4:13).

Jerusalem, Jerusalem… How often I wanted to gather your children together,
like a hen gathers her own brood under her wings, and you refused!
(Luke 13:34)
“Do not be like your fathers, to whom
the former prophets preached, saying,
‘Thus says the LORD of hosts: “
Turn now from your evil ways and your evil deeds.
But they did not hear nor heed Me,” says the LORD!
(Zech 1:4)
Beware, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart
of unbelief in departing from the living God; (Heb 3:12)
“Blessed rather are those who hear
the word of God and obey it.” (Luke 11:28)
He who supplies the Spirit to you and works
miracles among you, does He do it by the works
of the law, or by the hearing of faith? (Gal 3:5)
“Be kind to one another, tenderhearted,
forgiving one another, even as
God in Christ forgave you.” (Eph 4:32)
“Not giving back evil for evil, or reviling for reviling,
but on the contrary, blessing, having known that you were
called to this, that you may inherit a blessing; “(1 Peter 3:9)
“And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one:” (John 17:22)

Be prepared; hold on., Living by Faith, Walking in the Spirit

The Weeding Fork

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You look out at the garden and you feel overwhelmed, because it seems so overgrown. But take heart: I have given you a weeding fork. Do you not try to clear the whole garden, but work on the patch that is in front of you. The garden is mine; I will clear it. Yes, I will clear it! All I ask of you is that you take hold of your fork and work with it, for now is the time. If you have not picked it up, pick it up now. Do you not leave it on the table to pick up later, for now is the time to start the work.

The fork has three prongs: the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit. Learn more about each of us, for we are all in you as we are all in one another, yet we are also distinct from each other and we all love you with our own love. Hold onto us and bring us into the patch that is in front of you and work on it. You hold the fork; we penetrate the hard soil, we loosen the roots of the weeds and we remove them. I am not sending bulldozers and mechanical diggers, I’m not sending tractors and crop prayers; I’m sending you, the members of my Body, to clear my garden with your weeding forks. And it will be cleared. Yes it will be cleared, ready for the planting that I have prepared.

So do not be discouraged because everything seems overgrown: now is the time for you to focus on your patch and not put down your fork, for I have given it to you, and I your Lord am with you.

Living by Faith, Walking in the Spirit

Are All Workers of Miracles?

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“Now you are the body of Christ, and members individually. And God has appointed these in the church: first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, after that miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, administrations, varieties of tongues. Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Are all workers of miracles? Do all have gifts of healings? Do all speak with tongues? Do all interpret? But earnestly desire the best  gifts. And yet I show you a more excellent way.” (1 Cor 12: 27-31)

Paul writes these verses at the end of the chapter in which he introduces the list of what are commonly known as the “gifts of the Spirit.” Although Paul writes in verse four “There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit,” he goes on to refer to them (verse 7) as “the manifestation of the Spirit.” I think if we were to use Paul’s phrase “the manifestation of the Spirit” we might have more of a sense of the dynamic working of God in our midst, manifesting His presence, than the term “gifts,” which somehow leaves Him a bit more remote in the process – like a postman who has handed over a parcel and moved on. The gifts of the Spirit reveal the Spirit of Christ manifesting Himself in our midst and expressing His love through His supernatural power: they are not parcels left under the Christmas tree of one person’s, or one church’s, ministry. It is the question of supernatural power that I want to address here.

Paul’s message to the Corinthians in these verses begs a couple of questions that I think we prefer to gloss over if we want to feel comfortable about the level of manifestation of the Spirit that we expect in our churches. “Are all workers of miracles? Do all have gifts of healing?” he asks. I think in many cases we would have to make a slight change to his questions if we applied them to our churches today, where it would probably be more accurate to ask: “Are any workers of miracles? Do any have gifts of healing?”

We can avoid the implications of this question by saying, “Ah, yes; but Paul is talking about the church universal here, not local gatherings.” However, although we can receive the message to the Corinthians 2000 years after it was written, and in many times more than 2,000 places apart from Corinth, it remains true that Paul was writing to a local body – a church that he had founded himself on his missionary travels – and he was exhorting the individual members of that church to “earnestly desire the best gifts.” If he was clarifying to them what the different ministries and manifestations of the Spirit were that God had appointed to the church, it was because the teaching was relevant to that specific group of believers. He wasn’t just giving the Corinthians some theoretical information that had no application in their specific context.

Paul says: “God has appointed these in the church.” The word translated “appointed” is tithemi. It means placed; set down; established. They are not just incidentals. Even if we do take the view that Paul’s list in these verses – itself a summary of what he wrote earlier in the letter – does not have to be applied in its entirety to every local church, the fact remains that we are exhorted to “earnestly desire the best gifts.” What is true from Scripture is 1) that God has appointed them, and 2) that we are to earnestly seek them. Maybe we don’t see them in operation because we don’t earnestly seek what God has appointed. Instead of walking by faith in what God says He has set in place, we walk by the sight of the few supernatural ministries that we know of. But if, like Mary, we believed what He has said, we might see His word made flesh and these ministries emerging among us.

Which gifts he had in mind isn’t specified, but the first four are listed in order (first, second, third, after that), whereas “gifts of healings, helps, administrations, varieties of tongues” all follow on grammatically from a single “then.” A little later in the same letter, he writes “Pursue love, and desire spiritual gifts, but especially that you may prophesy.” (1 Cor 14:1) Whatever principal of ordination we choose to apply, miracles and healings are an integral part of the package of gifts established by the Lord when His Spirit put in place the foundations of the Church that He would build. The Church is a supernatural edifice, a work of the Spirit, the Rock not hewn by human hands. (Dan 2:34) And however much the gates of hell – the seat of worldly, carnal thinking – would strive against this church, they will not prevail. Worldly thinking would dilute apostles, prophets, teachers, miracles, healings, helps, administrations, and varieties of tongues down to intellectual teachers, human helps and practical administrations, and throw away all the rest; and in many cases it has. Mega churches and whole denominations are built on sand. But when the storm comes on the world and the only place of safety is seated with Christ in heavenly places, under the supernatural wings of our supernatural Father, they will all be swept away if they do not repent.

If you want to buy groceries, you go to the store to fill your basket. If you want a drink of water, you go to the tap to fill your glass.  To earnestly seek the best gifts, we have to earnestly seek the giver. If we earnestly seek first to know the fellowship of the Spirit, we are then in a position to ask the Spirit for those gifts. The Lord is the Spirit: (2 Cor 3:17) we can’t divide Him up into His different manifestations. If we aren’t seeking all of Him, His fullness, we aren’t seeking Him at all. Just as the body is not just a foot or an eye, (1 Cor 12: 14-18) nor is the One who fills it. For “He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may have the pre-eminence.” (Colossians 1:18)

Revival is coming. Revival isn’t a new development; it’s the manifestation today of that which was established at the beginning. God is pouring out the same Spirit that was poured out at first, because He wants to do again which He did then. To be part of what He is doing, we need to receive who He is. To his friend Philemon, Paul writes: “I pray that the sharing of your faith may become effective by the acknowledgement of every good thing which is in you by Christ Jesus.” (verse 4) “Effective” in the New Testament, as we saw in “Pressing the Reset Button,” means supernaturally powerful. The Greek word translated as “acknowledgement” is epignosis, meaning precise and correct knowledge, especially of that which pertains to spiritual realities. We need  precise and correct knowledge of all the good things which are ours in Him, and which He has placed in us by His Spirit.

Over the years we have become like a pool of water which has been steadily evaporating away in the heat, and now, in the limitations of his wisdom, the devil has thought that by locking down the activity of the church he would lock down its life and fruitfulness and drain away the water even more. But the wisdom of heaven has declared that the end of activity is the beginning of stillness, and in stillness is the knowledge of God in whom is all life and all fruitfulness. And in the stillness, God is refilling the pool. The water level is starting to rise, even now. It will rise much higher still. Will we drink of its depths, or will we just continue to sip in the shallows?

God has dealt to each of us a measure of faith. (Rom 12:3) But He also gives the Spirit without measure. (John 3:34) So the measure that He’s given us is not a measure of limitation, but a measure of fullness which is dealt to each one of us so that we can operate in our giftings in His strength, and not our own, as Paul writes to the Colossians: “To this end I also labour, striving according to His working which works in me mightily.“ (Colossians 1:29) To your church and to mine, God has appointed workers of miracles and gifts of healings, as well as apostles, prophets, teachers, tongues, administrations and helps. We receive from God according to our faith. The opposite of faith is unbelief; and unbelief is the result of a hard heart that is resisting the Holy Spirit. (Hebrews 3: 12-13, Acts 7:51) Let us therefore turn to the Lord, and say in our desperation: “Lord I believe, help my unbelief,“ so that the measure of our faith can match the measure of who the Spirit is within us.

“For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily; and you are complete in Him, who is the head of all principality and power.” (Colossians 2:9)

It’s time we took God at His word. Otherwise we will still be standing in a puddle when others around us are diving in the lake.

Be prepared; hold on., Discipleship and witness, Walking in the Spirit

Pressing the Reset Button

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 “I have not shunned to declare to you the whole counsel of God. Therefore take heed to yourselves and all the flock, among which the holy spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the Church of God which He purchased with his blood.” (Acts 20 verses 27-28)

“And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ— from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.” (Eph 4: 11-16)

“God is pressing the reset button.” We’ve all heard it in the wider context of the impact of Covid on the world, but it is also a strong theme in many prophetic messages that the Holy Spirit is bringing to the church in the UK, the USA, and elsewhere in the world. A recurring message that is coming through many people in various ways is that God is going to change the model of leadership in the church. There is a great harvest to bring in, and at the moment many of His people are not being equipped for the harvest field in the way that He originally intended. Although none of us, in our earthly life, can be perfect like Jesus, scripture repeatedly encourages us to become “complete” (see 2 Cor 13: 9; 2 Cor 13:11;  Col 4:12; Phil 1:6; 2 Tim 3:17). So how do we grow into “the perfect man,” and what does the Holy Spirit want us to understand by this? I think some of the answer can be found in how the flock is shepherded.

To Shepherd is not to pastor. If this is a surprise, consider this: Jesus is the good Shepherd, and He gave us what He knows we need to carry on His work, which is surely the package of gifts listed  in Ephesians 4:11 quoted above: “And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ.” If this is true, it must the responsibility of eldership to shepherd the flock using the gifts of shepherding that are provided. Arguably two of these gifts, pastor and teacher, can be seen as one ministry, but whether pastor and teacher are one minister or two, the principal of plurality remains the same.

In a prophetic word given to my own fellowship but with a general application, the church was likened to a four-wheel-drive vehicle. It has just been driving on the roads, but while the road has been closed by lockdown God has been getting our attention and telling us that we are an off-road vehicle designed for the mountain, not for the main road at all. In a four-wheel-drive vehicle, each wheel is driven independently, which is what gives it its grip on an off-road surface. Four wheels: apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor/teacher.

Because Jesus has commanded us to love one another he has created a model of leadership that combines independence with interdependence. According to scripture it is the different parts of the body working together that cause the body to grow in love. The word translated as “effective working” is the Greek energia. In it we recognise the word energy. But what is important is that in the new Testament the word energia is only used of superhuman power, whether of God or of the devil. It does not refer to human ability or effort. We mature in Christ through the supernatural operation of all the ministries that Jesus gave to the body as each part “does its share” of His work. The stated purpose of the Ephesians 4 ministries is to “equip the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying (ie building up) of the body of Christ.” As the different  ministries “do their share“ of the work of the Good Shepherd the body of Christ grows in love and unity, and, instead of being children, we grow up “in all things into him who is the head.” Working together, the four wheels take the vehicle up the mountain.

As a rule this is not what we see in many churches today. Although it is not true in every case, church leadership has often rested on the shoulders of a salaried minister who has been to Bible college and is therefore “qualified” to lead. But the purpose of a Bible school is to teach. The ministry gift in operation is primarily that of the teacher. The product of the Bible school will tend to carry the anointing that produced him or her – the anointing of the pastor/teacher. Therefore many churches are led by a pastor/teacher, who received at Bible School an implicit message that it is the pastor/teacher who leads church, and who therefore appoints more pastor/teachers to share the work of leadership as the church grows (if indeed it does grow.) Of course there are many other reasons – going back centuries, even millennia – why the teacher has been put on  leadership pedestal that Jesus never intended (“Do not be called teachers; for One is your Teacher, the Christ.” – Matt 23:10), but the fact remains that the pastor-teacher is just one of four wheels. If only one wheel is driving the vehicle it will probably cope, for a while, on a smooth road; and many churches today have done just that. But they won’t travel very far up the mountain.

Discipleship is supernatural.

The mission of the Church is to go and make disciples. The goal of the disciple is to become like the master, and the more clearly the image of the master is replicated in the disciple, the better equipped is that disciple to carry on with the process and disciple others. If it had been left to the ability of the human brain to interpret the original teachings and copy the examples of Christ and the first apostles,  today’s disciples would be poor matchstick figures by comparison to the original master. But Jesus thought of that, so He told the disciples that “the Spirit will take from what is mine and make it known to you” (John 16:15). Jesus is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow, but by the power of the Holy Spirit His reality can be fresh in the heart of every believer in every generation. Without the power of the Spirit illuminating us, we only have our own understanding to lean on – which Proverbs 3:5 instructs us expressly not to do. So the work of making disciples has to be done supernaturally, through that energia – “the effective working by which every part does its share” – which flows  as a life-force through the body when it is operating in the fulness of the Holy Spirit.

To build and equip the “perfect man” who will make effective disciples all the ministries are needed. As each part does its share the believer is equipped in different aspects of the effective Christian life. Through the evangelist, the believer is equipped to preach the gospel. Not all are evangelists, be we are all called to share our faith. Through the prophet, he is equipped to hear God and speak His words. “All can prophesy,” but many need training and encouragement. The pastor heart brings an emphasis on growing loving relationships, in tandem with the teacher who brings clarity on doctrine and the written word of God. All of these are essential for Christian growth. The apostle – the “sent one” – imparts faith and carries an anointing to build, and nurtures the leadership skills of those who have the gifting to be church planters themselves. Although most of us aren’t called to plant churches (or are we??), we are all involved in building the Church of Jesus. Of course there is only one Lord, and one Spirit, in whom all of these streams flow together, and whose thoughts are not our thoughts anyway; and this is very much a thumbnail sketch of a far more complex picture. However the message remains that five different leadership anointings, carried by four or five different ministers, are referred to in Ephesians four, and each of them is necessary to edify and equip the “perfect man.” The ultimate goal of the “work of ministry” is that we go out and make more disciples. The qualification for the work is not a Bible College degree, but the measure to which the Christian ”graduate” has received from all of the fivefold ministries and  is able, in the power of the Holy Spirit, to build, prophesy, preach the gospel, care for others, and know the Word of God. All of this is achieved through the power of the Holy Spirit, not through leaning on human understanding.

Those of us who have children long for them to become all that they can be and fulfil all the potential that we see in them. We want to see them use their abilities and achieve their dreams. How much more does our heavenly Father want the same for His children? The Good Shepherd longs for all of His lambs to grow and multiply, and has put in place the “parenting” system by which “we should no longer be children” but instead “grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ—” . As we mature in the spirit and come into all that God has put into us, His glory will be reflected in the Earth in as many ways as there are individuals in the church. Surely this is part of  “the manifold wisdom of God” that He intends “might be made known by the church to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places.” (Eph 3:10)  However at the moment there are many churches that are full of overgrown lambs who just expect to be fed and kept safe in the sheepfold, and who reflect very little of God’s glory. They have not grown up in all things, and since they are not mature they are not multiplying, because the flock is not being shepherded according to the shepherding plan that we have been given.

If God is pressing the reset button I think this is what He is working on now. And now that we are starting to move again, are we going to carry on along the road as we were, or will we turn off and head up the mountain that we were meant for?

Prophesy and the prophetic, Walking in the Spirit

The rain is starting to fall (Prophetic word)

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Come up into the hills…

The rain of the Holy Spirit is falling. Even now, it has started; a fine drizzle is beginning to soak the hills. “Come up into the hills,” says the Lord, “And stand in my cloud. Let me soak you. Let your clothes get drenched as the drizzle penetrates through to your skin. And when you are soaking wet, run down into the valleys and announce that my rain is coming. Call my people out of their houses to stand by their doors and wait for my rain. Call those whose hearts are hardened through unbelief to come out in the rain, to believe me enough to let their hearts be soaked and softened again, softened enough for my word to be sown and take root in their lives. For I will soak even the pathways where the world has trampled the soil hard, and where the enemy steals the word as soon as it lands: my word will be sown in some of these places and will bear fruit. So pray for hardened hearts to be softened, for my rain is beginning to fall. And where you struggle with unbelief yourselves, recognise that this is because your own hearts have been hardened too, because it is unbelief that hardens the heart. My fine drizzle is the moist breath of my love, gentle but penetrating: expose your heart to me again and let my rain soften the crusts of your disappointment and feelings of failure, and you will know my word – even that word that you have cast aside in your unbelief – come and bear fruit in your life to my glory.”

Living by Faith, Pursuing Love, Walking in the Spirit

Right or righteous? Sticks in the Fireplace

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Jackdaws have been building a nest in our chimney…

“I find then a law, that evil is present with me, the one who wills to do good. For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man. But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? I thank God—through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.” (Romans 7 21-25)

I have been thinking about arguments and the destruction they cause, particularly the ones that arise out of misunderstandings. Also I am reading Paul’s letter to the Romans at the moment, and I have reached Romans 7. Now I have read Romans 7 many times, but have always tended to move on to the next chapter and the glorious conclusions that Paul draws in its verses. This time though, I asked the Holy Spirit to explain chapter seven to me, particularly verse 8 – “But sin, taking opportunity by the commandment, produced in me all manner of evil desire. For apart from the law sin was dead.” I asked the Holy Spirit to explain how it is that the law brings sin. And while thinking about arguments, I was asking how it is possible to love through false accusations that can arise from misunderstandings. Unrelated questions? God didn’t think so. What He showed me was sticks in the fireplace.

Jackdaws have nested in our chimney, and in doing so have dropped a lot of sticks down the flu, so we have a little pile of dead sticks, put there by the jackdaws, like a fire waiting to be lit, in our fireplace. The sticks in the picture are exactly as they have landed. What I felt the Holy Spirit revealed to me was that those sticks are like little bits of law that I appeal to, in order to try and prove that I am right. But by appealing to them I still live under them; I am still “in captivity to the law.” Carry on reading – hopefully you will see what I mean.

If we argue, I am lost in that pile of sticks. I try and use a stick of mine against a stick of yours. Every attempt at an explanation, every effort to refute an apparently false accusation, is just another stick in the fireplace. My stick is right, I say, and yours is wrong! But which law is at work here – the law of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus, or the law of sin and death at work in my members? There is obviously only one answer to this one. My flesh is trying to preserve itself by appealing to the law that says I am right and you are wrong, and in doing so is delivering itself to death. The sinful passion that is aroused by this law is the desire to justify myself. It only goes one way if I don’t stop trying to prove that I am right, which of course is where the enemy of our souls is trying to guide it – because if I keep going it will get to the point where he can put a match to it all by tempting me to say something intentionally destructive. At which point the whole thing goes up in flames.

Yet there remains a problem. “Lord,” I say, “What if I am right??”

“Yes you may be right,” He says gently, “But that’s beside the point. Being right has nothing to do with being righteous. The point is this. You all sin. You all fall short of my glory. You are all like china shops, where some of the items in the shop are real, and some are imagined. Some are “right,” after the flesh, and some are “wrong.” What do you do? Should you behave like a bull in someone else’s china shop, charging around in your own direction and your own thoughts, and then trying to justify why you broke some of the pieces; or do you love enough to consider all of their china – whether it’s real or imagined – and walk carefully around it?  After all, who are you to judge what is true?”

When we argue, it brings death. Arguing is carnal, not spiritual. The consequence of an argument within a relationship is always in some way the wages of sin. The jackdaws are the flesh; the sticks in the fireplace are the law of sin and death which is served by the flesh. The law of sin and death  is what the jackdaw flesh nests in. Yes, we can spend our time cleaning out the fireplace, going for prayer at every other meeting; and yes we can repent and seek forgiveness of one another. The grace of God makes this provision. But the jackdaws always come back, and they will always drop their sticks. How much better to realise that God has given us a completely different, brand new fireplace where the fire of His love is already burning in our hearts?

Paul ends Romans 7 with these famous words: “I thank God—through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.” (Romans 7:25). If we can use our minds to direct us to the fire of God’s love in every situation, we will not lose ourselves in the sticks of dead wood which the enemy is waiting to put a match to, and which, even if he doesn’t succeed, will only ever be used against each other.

“When we were in the flesh, the sinful passions which were aroused by the law were at work in our members to bear fruit to death. But now we have been delivered from the law, having died to what we were held by, so that we should serve in the newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter.” (Rom 7: 5-6)

I am dead to the Law, for I died with Christ, and I am alive to God. God always wants me to love. He wants me to choose being righteous above being right. To do so I have to look into the china shop before charging in with the first thoughts that are in my head: consider what pieces of china might already be there, and consider what effect my words might have on them. If I do that, I will be speaking in love before I open my mouth. Think how much time is lost in an argument, besides other considerations of the fruit that is borne through it to death. It might take a bit longer to think before you speak, but it wastes a lot less time.

“But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, even the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and on all  who believe.” (Rom 3: 21-22)

The righteousness of God through faith in Jesus is apart from the law; it’s a different fireplace. We need to choose to be righteous, not to be right.

Discipleship and witness, Holiness: You shall be perfect, Walking in the Spirit

The Leaven of the New Creation

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The DNA of the Kingdom of God

“For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything, but faith working through love.” (Gal 5:6)

“For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything, but a new creation.” (Gal 6:15)

When we preach Christ, we preach the new creation. When we receive Him, it is the New Creation that we step into. Jesus is King of the New Creation: in His Kingdom, all things are made new. On his first missionary journey, Paul had preached the gospel to the Galatians, and now the “Judaizers” were trying to lead them away from the Life of the Spirit and back under the law. This was the first of Paul’s epistles, and his message rings clear: the life that is ours in Christ comes by the Spirit, and not by the law. Paul stresses that there is just one characteristic, ‘the only thing that avails,’ in the New Creation, and that is faith working through love. This is the hallmark of their new life in Christ. “Faith working through love” is the very DNA of the Kingdom of God.

In the shortest parable that He gave, Jesus said:  “The kingdom of heaven is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal till it was all leavened.” (Matt 13:33) In the Kingdom of God, the New Man is charged with the same command as was the first Adam: “Go forth and multiply.” We are instructed to go into all the world and make disciples, multiplying this Kingdom that we are part of, as disciples make disciples and pass on the DNA of the new creation until, like the stone that destroys the kingdoms of the world, it becomes “a great mountain and filled the whole Earth” (Daniel 2: 35). The Kingdom of God is like yeast, because yeast multiplies. The yeast that multiplies – this DNA of the Kingdom – is faith working through love.

The writer to the Hebrews tells us that “The word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.” (Hebrews 4:12) The book where I think we can see the Word of God dividing between soul and spirit more than anywhere else in the New Testament is the letter of James, the brother of Jesus and one of the “pillars” of the Jerusalem church. James “divides” heavenly and earthly wisdom, wealth and poverty, trials and perseverance, sensual and spiritual prayer requests, empty faith and fruitful faith, the untamed tongue and “perfect” speech, pride and humility, judgement and grace. He lays out clearly the blueprint of the Kingdom of God, where faith flourishes in the context of a loving, Christ-centred lifestyle, and he succinctly wraps it up in a single verse: “The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much.” (James 5:16) The “works” of faith that are central to James’s message (James 2:18) are both the supernatural results of Elijah-style prayer that this verse refers to, and the grace-filled lifestyle of the “righteous man” who prays them – faith at work in a setting of love.

James makes it clear that a fruitful Christian life requires full commitment to the Kingdom of God, because a “double-minded man” is “unstable in all his ways” and will “receive nothing from the Lord.” (James 1:8). His epistle progresses from portraying various characteristics of the “carnal Christian” whose faith is fruitless, to the picture of Elijah, who “was a man with a nature like ours” and whose faith both stopped and started the rain. In the new creation, where faith works through love, the prayer of faith raises up the sick person, the hungry are fed, and the needs of “widows and orphans” are met.  Elijah is praying in faith, and people are being loved.

The goal of discipleship, as expressed by Paul to Timothy, is “that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.” This is a recurring theme in the New Testament, revisited from different angles. Paul prays that the Ephesians will be “filled with all the fullness of God.” (Eph 3:19). James exhorts his readers to “let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.” (James 1:4) Paul prays that the Corinthians “may be made complete” (2 Cor 13:9), and his final exhortation to them is, again, “Finally, brethren, farewell. Become complete…” (2 Cor 13:11) He tells the Colossians that “Epaphras, who is one of you, a bondservant of Christ, greets you, always labouring fervently for you in prayers, that you may stand perfect and complete in all the will of God.” (Col 4:12) The writer to the Hebrews prays that his readers “may be made complete in every good work to do His will, working in you what is well pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. ”

Finally, Jesus tells us “therefore be perfect, just as your father in heaven is perfect” (Matt 5:48). Throughout the epistles, the Holy Spirit takes these words of Jesus and makes them known to us (John 16:14) so that we can see the goal of His discipleship programme. If the Kingdom of Heaven is like leaven, then faith working through love should be multiplying “perfect”, “complete” believers in our churches, as double-minded, carnal, babes in Christ learn to “crucify the flesh with its passions and desires.” (Gal 5:24)

This is the trajectory of discipleship: the babe in Christ who walks after the flesh becomes complete, like Elijah, and walks after the Spirit, as the DNA of the Kingdom multiplies in his or her heart. It is the bottom line of what it means to make disciples. It is what God will be seeking to restore in the church when He pours our His Spirit in the coming revival. He has been seeking it since Pentecost.

Paul said to Timothy: “Those things you heard from me, commit to faithful men who are able to teach others also.” (2 Tim 2:2.) In one verse, we see the leaven of the Kingdom multiplying three times: from Paul to Timothy; from Timothy to “faithful men,” and from those faithful men to “others also.” I see three questions arising out of this scripture:

  1. Are we training up “Timothys?”
  2. If we are, are they hearing from us the same things as Timothy heard from Paul?  
  3. Does our church model promote multiplication of that leaven as far as the “others also,” who will in turn eventually be reaching Timothys of their own?

The new wine is coming, so that as we drink of it the double-minded babe can become, like Timothy, the complete Elijah. He has poured it out many times before, and every time it has stayed around for a little while, then the wineskin has broken and the wine has drained away. If the next revival is going to be different, it won’t be the wine that has changed; it will be because the wineskins don’t break.

We’ve all had a chance over the last year to inspect our wineskins. Have we got the new ones ready? Or are we going to ask God, yet again, to pour the new wine into our old wineskins? Because we know what will happen if we do.

Discipleship and witness, Pursuing Love, Walking in the Spirit

Choose Life: Love One Another.

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Jonathan said to David, “Whatever you yourself desire, I will do it for you.” (1 Sam 20:4)

The love between Jonathan and David is well known; indeed it is the most elevated example of an actual friendship that we are given in the Old Testament, if not in the whole of the Bible – excluding, of course, the friendship that Jesus offers to all who follow Him. I Sam 18:3 tells us that “Jonathan and David made a covenant, because he loved him as his own soul.” (NKJV) Other versions translate this as “he loved him as himself.” This takes us immediately to the model of love that Jesus teaches when He introduces the parable of the good Samaritan:  “‘You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind,’ and your neighbour as yourself.” If we need to see an example of how Jesus wants us to love one another, we look at how Jonathan loved David.

We could study in depth what details that we are given about their relationship and find spiritual meaning in all of them; but what speaks loudest to me is who – or what – David and Jonathan actually represent in the Bible narrative. Jonathan is Saul’s son, and Saul represents the dynasty of the flesh. However David, as we know, is a man ‘after God’s own heart;’ he is a prophetic type and the human ancestor of Jesus, and he represents the dynasty of the Spirit. The anger that Jonathan’s covenant of loyalty to David provokes in Saul is the anger of the devil himself who knows that it is Christ’s rule, and not his own, that will ultimately be established on the Earth:

“Do I not know that you have chosen the son of Jesse to your own shame and to the shame of your mother’s nakedness? For as long as the son of Jesse lives on the earth, you shall not be established, nor your kingdom.” (1 Sam 20: 30-31)

In “choosing the son of Jesse,” the son of Saul chose the dynasty of the Spirit over the dynasty of the flesh. Prophetically, Jonathan died to self and turned to Jesus. When we love, we make the same choice for God. In the immortal words of Deuteronomy 30:19-20, we “…choose life, that you and your descendants may live, that you may love the LORD your God, that you may obey His voice, and that you may cling to Him, for He is your life and the length of your days.” To love others is ultimately to love God, and there is only one way to do that, which is the way that Jesus tells us to love him. It’s quite simple. He says: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” (John 14:15)

A husband can long for his wife; he can miss her when they are apart; he can love to be around her; he can admire her beauty and her qualities and can enjoy her conversation. He can miss her, desire her, and seek her presence: but unless he does the things that she likes and avoids what she doesn’t like he is not actually loving her. It’s the same with the Lord: we can long for His presence and spend time with Him; we can enjoy His conversation and immerse ourselves in His word, but we aren’t loving Him if we ignore the things that He asks of us and grieve His Spirit by doing what He doesn’t like.

Jonathan said to David, “Whatever you yourself desire, I will do it for you.” In the same way, therefore, we look to Jesus as we make our choices throughout the day and say to Him “Whatever you yourself desire, I will do it for you.”  Colossians 3: 17 tells us: “Whatever you do, in word or in deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father, through him,” This doesn’t mean we tag “in Jesus’ name” onto everything we do and say: it presupposes that we can’t actually do anything in the name of the Lord unless we know that it’s what He desires. We can’t separate loving God from loving our brother, which is what the apostle John makes clear in his first epistle: “He who loves his brother abides in the light, and there is no cause for stumbling in him.” (1 John 2:10)

To love our brothers and sisters, we need to abide in the light, and we achieve that by doing what He says. As we do, the Kingdom of the Son of Jesse is established on the Earth.