Tag Archives: god

Christian Life, Walking in the Spirit

Those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength

2 Comments

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

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

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

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

(Isaiah 40: 28-31)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Knowing God, Walking in the Spirit

The Pool of Bethesda (2): the paralysis of religion

Leave a comment

After this there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, which is called in Hebrew, Bethesda,  having five porches. In these lay a great multitude of sick people, blind, lame, paralyzed, waiting for the moving of the water. For an angel went down at a certain time into the pool and stirred up the water; then whoever stepped in first, after the stirring of the water, was made well of whatever disease he had. Now a certain man was there who had an infirmity thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there, and knew that he already had been in that condition a long time, He said to him, “Do you want to be made well?” he sick man answered Him, “Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; but while I am coming, another steps down before me.” Jesus said to him, “Rise, take up your bed and walk.” And immediately the man was made well, took up his bed, and walked. And that day was the Sabbath. (John 5: 2-9)

God’s house of mercy
The healing at the pool took place on the Sabbath. In the sequence of signs as John recorded them, this was the first time that Jesus challenged the religious order by “working” on the designated day of rest, and John records it as the opening skirmish of His battle with the pharisees that ended at Calvary. “For this reason the Jews persecuted Jesus, and sought to kill Him, because He had done these things on the Sabbath.” (John 5:16) “Bethesda” means “house of mercy,” or “flowing water,” and it was by the Sheep Gate. This is not just a place in Jerusalem: it is a picture of the church. The healing at Bethesda was certainly a sign pointing to our need for an encounter with the living Christ, but it also tells us that there are many sheep in God’s house of mercy and flowing water who are immobile on their beds by the pool, and that one of the main types of paralysis is the paralysis of religion.

Paralysed by religion
The dictionary definition of religion refers to worship of a God or gods and the activities surrounding that worship, and in a broader sense to “enthusiastic and repeated engagement” in a particular pursuit. Avid sports fans are often referred to as making a religion of their sport, for example. However, I worship the Christian God, enthusiastically and repeatedly, yet if someone asks me the question “are you religious?“ I say, “No I’m not religious; I have a living faith.“ So in the church many of us now see the term religion as not so much describing our worship of the living God, but the practice of those who, in the words of Paul to Timothy, have “a form of godliness but deny its power.” (2 Timothy 3: 5–7). The question for those of us who say we have a living faith is this: is it possible for us also to be paralysed by religion?

We tend to Pillory the Pharisees today as archetypal examples of everything we want to avoid in our worship of Christ. And so we should: they lived by the law and missed Jesus. There is no need to quote here any of the many things that Jesus said against them: the important point is that we don’t follow their example and find ourselves as paralysed and lifeless as they were. They too were lying by the pool on their bed, the bed of the law, waiting for the waters to be stirred by the Messiah – who was standing right in front of them.

Flowing in the spirit?
The Bible tells us, “Whatever was written in the past was written for our instruction so that we could have hope through endurance and through the encouragement of the scriptures.”  (Romans 15:4) The Holy Spirit hasn’t just made it clear how tragically fruitless the religion of the Pharisees was so that we could feel superior in our relationship with Him: those scriptures are also there for our instruction so that we can take care not to follow any of their practices. How much of this instruction are we actually taking on board? For example – and I know I’m far from being the first person to say this – I was born again In 1984, when the charismatic movement was surging through the established church. We used to think of ourselves as “flowing in the spirit,“ and (I’m ashamed to say) how superior we were to the church down the road whom we saw as ossified in their “hymn– prayer sandwich“ format. I now belong to one of the larger modern evangelical Charismatic/Pentecostal networks. We consider ourselves to be free in the spirit, and to be hosts of the presence of God during our meetings. But before I go to church on a Sunday, I know that we will start with a couple of fairly lively praise songs, the host for the day will do the notices, the children and teenagers will go out to their respective groups, we will continue with worship for about another half an hour, then there will be a preach (we used to call them sermons, but that was  too religious) for about 30 minutes, and then a closing song and an appeal for ministry at the end. We will start at 10:30 and finish around 12:15; gather for refreshments after the meeting, and will be out of the building by about 12:45. We do make room for the gifts of the Spirit during the worship time, so three or four people might bring a word of encouragement, a prophecy or a word of knowledge; maybe a tongue and an interpretation – but how different is this really from the “hymn-prayer sandwich?“ The fillings might be a bit different, but it is no less predictable, and I suspect that we are not very different from many modern evangelical churches.

The Spirit of God does graciously meet with us in the little box that we give him, and we rejoice in the fact that we have been in his presence, even though it may have just been the hint of a reflection of a glimmer. We say, and pray, that we want more of him; we long to see healings and deliverance; yet how much more of ourselves will we give? Would we know more of His presence and His power if we gave him more of our time? Or even if we took the compartments out of the box and, for example, allowed the allocated time for worship to eat into the allocated time for the sermon? Or even – shock horror – not have a sermon (sorry, a preach) at all?


The mountain and the chocolate box
I think we can be very easily satisfied with the experience that we describe as “entering the presence of God.“ When the presence of God came into Solomon’s temple at the time of its dedication, the priests were unable to stand. When the Roman soldiers came to Gethsemane to arrest Jesus, they fell to the ground when He identified himself with the words “I am He.” (John 18:6) In our own church we had a half night of prayer a couple of months ago (we should have them more often…), from 8 pm to 2 am. People came and went as they pleased; not many stayed for the whole six hours. But it wasn’t until about 1:30 that the presence of God really came, so powerfully that most of the few of us who were there had to fall to our knees; and then someone gave a prophetic word that brought a long awaited breakthrough in the life of one of those present. When the presence of God came to Toronto, He changed lives and impacted people like Heidi Baker, (Iris Global) Che Ann (Harvest International Ministries) Bill Johnson (Bethel Church) and Nicky Gumbel (the Alpha Course) whose ministries have brought the Kingdom of God into millions of lives. A hallmark of Toronto Airport Vineyard meetings in the 1990s, as well as of other revivals, was daily meetings that went by the clock in heaven and not the clock in the kitchen. I think we can package the presence of God in a chocolate box when He wants to take us up a mountain. God has a much bigger space to move in than we often allow Him. If the dimensions of our box are so far away from His, it’s because our religion keeps it small and keeps us too easily satisfied.

The dynamic of Life
Jesus said , “For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself,” (John 2:26) and that He had come to “give life, and that in abundance.” (John 10:10) I love to go out and take photographs of birds. One of the great difficulties in bird photography is the fact that the subjects rarely keep still. Life is always on the move. When the cells in a body become motionless, that body is dead. When Jesus told the paralytic to pick up his bed and walk on the Sabbath day, He was giving him life: He was asserting the dynamic of Life over the inertia of religion.

So how much are we really free from the constraints of religion that we see in the Pharisees of Jesus‘s day? Anne and I lead one of the small groups in our church (we call them “life groups.“ What do you call yours?) This Summer each life group is  leading an evening midweek meeting for the whole church. Everyone in our life group comes to the school of prophecy that we host at our house, and our vision is to encourage the other groups to pursue the presence of God more actively in their gatherings. I had planned how I felt our meeting should flow, and who should contribute what. Anne was most dismissive. “And where exactly is the Holy Spirit in control of all of this??“ she asked. And she was right. How easy it is to operate in the flesh when we think we are being spiritual. When man controls he brings religion. When the Holy Spirit controls, he brings liberty.

A living, breathing bride
Jesus comes to give life. His words are words of life. Walking is not doing the same things the same way, but doing what He says, when He says it. Life is movement. When He speaks, the life He speaks brings into us movement. We can be walking in the Spirit while we have a meal out with friends because we can be responding to His promptings between mouthfuls in the conversation, and we can be walking in the flesh every Sunday at our Church meetings because we are following our prepared format and not His dynamic instructions. When He returns, He will coming back for a living,  breathing bride that He has perfected and made beautiful in His presence, and He is longing for us to run to meet Him, however our theological lens views that moment. We may not fully understand how we will be caught up in the air (1 Thessalonians 4:17), but one thing we do understand is this: He will not be pleased with a bride who sits in her pew and recites the litany of the wedding service without even looking into His face.

Be prepared; hold on., Christian Life

The Great Deception

Leave a comment
(Image generated by AI from its “reading” of my text…)

Every time I ask Google a question read the detailed AI overview of its answer, I think about the Great Deception that Paul writes about in 2 Thessalonians 2 1-12. Is artificial intelligence part of it? Recently I stumbled on a blog on the subject of the great deception and how to be sure not to fall away, and I read it with interest. It was all Bible based and made a lot of sense: basically it was telling us that if we keep our eyes on Jesus and remain grounded in faith and the word of God we won’t be led astray by Satan’s lies. All good stuff, followed by lots of practical applications for family life, similar to material we find across a broad swathe of Christian writings.

I scrolled down the article, and came to other material written by the same guy. But I stopped short when I saw an article that claimed to be “a detailed study of the biblical proof for a flat and motionless earth.“

Is someone who is exhorting Christians to believe the word of God, hold fast to Jesus, and be guided through the complexities of life and the snares of satanic deception by discernment of the truth, suggesting that I believe that the world is flat and that I can find evidence of this in the Bible? I really hope not, yet I believe it’s probably true.

I know the Earth is not flat: I’ve travelled a lot of the way round it, I’ve seen the curved horizon, and I’ve seen photographs from space. I know that none of Magellan’s ships fell off the edge between 1519 and 1522. I’ve got enough experience to tell me that science has got this right.  But it made me think:  what do I do in the areas where the Bible tells me that science is wrong and I don’t have the experience to align with my acceptance of its authority? Did God really create the earth in six days, less than 7000 years ago? Did Methuselah really live to be 969? What about the other end of the Bible: Is there really going to be a rapture? How can the new Jerusalem come down from heaven, for example? And then of course we come to the basics of Christian Faith. Virgin birth? Resurrection? Ascension? Science tells us that none of this is possible, but our faith says it’s true. It’s totally understandable that many people who genuinely ask the question “is there a God?” dismiss faith because it doesn’t make sense. Faith is a “a gift of God, that none may boast,” (Eph 2:9), but it also has to be a gift of God because the human brain simply can’t comprehend it.

I do believe that God is in and through all things, and that he has progressively guided the man that He created through an understanding of the world that He put him in. I think that this is sometimes has been by revelation, and sometimes by exploration. God has given us science. But He has also given us His son, and He has given us the Holy Spirit. He has given us brains, but we also have the mind of Christ. The universe is material and it is spiritual. Spiritual things are spiritually discerned: we can no more understand the mind of Christ with our human reason than we can prove whether or not Christ will return to the Earth in the manner that He ascended, if there really was a worldwide flood and Noah’s Ark, or if we will all be raised up at the last day, and more importantly which eternal existence we will be raised up to – the resurrection of Life or of condemnation. (John 5:29).

Ultimately, truth is neither science nor the printed pages of the Bible, which can be taken at face value to prove almost anything – even, it appears, that the Earth is flat. Truth is a person. Jesus said “I am the way, the truth, and the life.“ We are called to follow His way, walk in His truth, and to share in His life. The truth can’t be separated from the way and the life any more than one can separate the heart from the brain and the nervous system and expect them to carry on functioning. Whatever the great deception ultimately is, its main purpose will be to lead us away from the person who is the way the truth and the life.

I do happen to think that AI will play its part in this, and I think it is part of the fulfilment of Daniel‘s end time prophecy that “there will be a increase in knowledge; (Daniel 12:4) however Paul writes “knowledge puffs up, but Love builds up.“ (1 Cor 8:1)  Knowledge alone, whether we gain it from Google’s AI overviews or from our own intellectual understanding of the Bible, is not the truth. The truth is only in Jesus, the fulfilment and the flesh of the word, and we live in the truth when we walk in Him. And since God seeks worshippers who worship “in spirit and in truth,“ we cannot walk in the truth unless we also walk in the spirit, and none of the fruit of the spirit even marginally hints at the supremacy of the intellect. In fact the Holy Spirit tells us in Proverbs 12:15 that “the way of a fool is right in his own eyes.” One of the most brilliant people the world has ever known, Leonardo Da Vinci, said “The greatest deception that men suffer from is from their own opinions.”

Our understanding of the truth as it is in Jesus will always find its expression in God-given faith and love, and our first rule in gaining this understanding will be to learn from Him and be yoked to His gentleness and humility of heart. (Matthew 11:29) This means that if any of us thinks he is a “better” Christian than anyone who doesn’t share our theology they have missed the point entirely. God’s goodness, revealed to us in Christ, is as far above ours as the heavens are from the earth, so the differences between us are as insignificant as the differing widths of two grass stems in the face of the sun. Paul wrote to the Thessalonians that the Lawless one was already at work in their time, and I believe that a part of the great deception that Satan had been working on since the birth of the church is to convince us that one person’s idea of how to follow Jesus might make them “a better christian” than someone with different ideas.

As for me, I choose to believe the Apostles’ creed over the atheistic writings of Richard Dawkins or the algorithmic manipulations of AI, however convincing their deceptions may be. And whether a brother or sister in Christ chooses to believe that the Earth is 6000 or 6 billion years old, or even that it is flat, there is nothing in the Apostles’ Creed or in what I know of scripture that tells me that I should correct their beliefs. If we build each other up in love we will all come “to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to the perfect man,” (Eph 4:13) whatever views we hold about science or prehistory, or about Great Deception itself; and when we do that we will really know the truth, because we will be seeing Him face to face.

Knowing God

Sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise

Leave a comment

“In Him you also trusted, after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation; in whom also, having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, to the praise of His glory.”

If you drop a container of liquid on the floor from a height of about five feet, what will happen to the liquid? Stupid question. It’s going to part company with the container and make a mess on the floor. Unless of course it’s got a lid on, or something else that is sealing it in. Or unless there is something unseen going on…

A friend of mine regularly takes communion at home as part of her morning prayer time. A few weeks ago she had got her little communion glass balanced on the back of her phone (don’t ask – I didn’t) and dropped it on the floor. The photograph shows how it landed.

It made a bit of a splash, then landed upside down, with the rest of the wine inside the glass on the floor. Not only that, but it didn’t leak around the rim: it was sealed inside. Is this even possible? If you want to do a lot of mopping up try it yourself. I just can’t see it happening – except that it did.

The only explanation we can give is that God was involved. Or an angel maybe, but it had to be a supernatural force of some sort. The Lord was giving us a supernatural sign that He wanted to speak through, both to my friend and to everyone else who sees the photo. So what is He saying? I passed the picture round a group that meets at my house, and people had different interpretations. Bearing in mind that it was the cup of the new covenant upside down on the floor, what it says to me is this:

“I have made my covenant with you, and it is sealed with the Holy Spirit of Promise. Even when you mess up and let go of me, I will never let go of you. Even when everything is upside down, it will never leak or spill because my seal is eternal and the blood that I shed for you will always be enough to keep you in me, even though you feel as though you have fallen onto the floor. I have loved you with an everlasting love, and will never leave you nor forsake you. Your inheritance in my Kingdom is guaranteed. This promise is sealed forever by my Spirit which I have given to you.”

What does it say to you?

And if you aren’t sure if the covenant of Calvary is for you, give your life to Jesus now and you will be sealed in His forever.

Discipleship and witness, Holiness: You shall be perfect

Redeeming the Time: The Biblical Call to Action

Leave a comment

“See you then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil.” (Ephesians 5:15)

The Greek word translated as “circumspectly” is Akribos. It means diligently, accurately, perfectly, not deviating in any way from the set path.  Akribos is how we have to drive a car: “with due care and attention.” It describes doing something in manner that doesn’t ignore some aspects of the situation, checking that everything is in order, that all requirements are met, and nothing is left out. Luke uses Akribos  to describe how he wrote his “orderly account” of Jesus’s life and ministry (Luke 1:3). Paul uses it when he writes to the Thessalonians to remind the them that they know perfectly well (akribos) that “the day of the Lord comes as a thief in the night.” (1Thess 5:2) To walk circumspectly is to pay full attention to every step we take. The scripture tells us it’s how we “redeem the time:” we don’t just skip along n the light; we watch our every step. The question is, what does redeeming the time actually mean?

It’s one of those phrases that I think I have glossed over until now, when I started studying Ephesians. What’s opened it up for me is that word translated here as “time“ is kairos, which is a definite and fixed measure of time, (it could be a moment or a longer period, even an epoch. It is sometimes used today in the term “Kairos moment” to describe a moment of special significance when God‘s kingdom purposes intersect our lives.) Redeeming the time seems to mean bringing God’s purposes into our current situation; in other words seeing God‘s will done on earth as it is in heaven.

The days are evil
The temporal context is also relevant. Paul exhorts us to redeem the time “because the days are evil.” Does he mean the particular days that he is writing in, or does he mean that all days are evil outside of God’s Kingdom rule? I think it must be the latter. The Holy Spirit was addressing the body of Christ through the ages, not just Paul’s contemporaries, therefore the text must mean that all the days are evil. Evil is the default setting until and unless we redeem the time. Microsoft has a default setting called oneDrive where it will save your work unless you choose another folder. You can’t change the setting, but you can override it. I never use oneDrive, so I always choose my own folder. When we redeem the time, we choose to override the default setting and save the kairos into God’s folder and not the devil’s.

In the previous verses, Paul has already shown us that we “find out what is acceptable to the Lord“ when we walk as Children of light (see my previous article, “Walking as Children of Light: Discovering God’s Will”), but he’s reminding us here that we also need to watch our steps as we walk. It is when we are diligent in our walk as Children of light that we redeem the time, and that in doing so we walk in wisdom because we have an understanding of God‘s will. The instruction “walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise“  suggests that we are not being wise when we are not walking circumspectly. If we are not diligent in how we walk, we are actually being fools.

Paul continues his letter to the Ephesians by giving specific examples of applying this godly wisdom to how we conduct ourselves  in the world and in our relationships, and then he returns to the theme to close the letter. I think we tend to separate the famous passage on the armour of God from the rest of the text, but I don’t think this is what Paul intended. “The days are evil” (Eph 5:16) because they are ruled by the powers of evil whenever God‘s kingdom rule is not established. Evil is the fallen world’s default setting. We put on the armour of God in order to “withstand in the evil day.” When is the evil day? It’s today, tomorrow, the next day, and every day that the time is not redeemed.

Putting on Christ
Putting on the armour of God is the same as putting on Christ: He is our armour. To put on God‘s armour is to put on Christ, and to put on Christ is to put on the new man. (Again, see “Walking as Children of Light: Discovering God’s Will.”) The analogy is a practical step-by-step illustration of how to be diligent when we do so. We must put on all the armour, and we must wear it all the time. The picture tells us exactly what we are wearing and why. Unless we are circumspect and make sure we are wearing it all, the new man is incomplete and won’t walk very far before the enemy has tripped him up. But when we wear it, we are walking as Children of light and are in full understanding of God’s will, redeeming the time because the powers of darkness flee before the light.

The conclusion of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians is not an additional section dealing with spiritual warfare for those who have the mettle to take it on, but is a summary of what has gone before. It’s worth repeating his introduction to the armour here:

“Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. Put on the whole armour of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age,  against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armour of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.” (Eph 10-13)

The days are evil because the prince of this world has been given dominion by fallen man, and his wiles are carried out by the “the rulers of the darkness of this age,” and the “spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places” who administer his evil rule. (Eph 6:12) Our calling as the army of God is to seize back that dominion and to place it under the feet of our heavenly Captain, or, has He himself said, to take the kingdom by force. (Matt 11:12) This is what it means to redeem the time. Every day is an evil day unless we redeem the time by walking circumspectly, which means paying careful attention to our Captain, seeing that we are fully equipped as Children of light to carry out His commands, and being careful to watch our every step as we advance through the battlefield.

Christian Life, Discipleship and witness, Holiness: You shall be perfect

Walking as Children of Light: Discovering God’s Will

1 Comment

“Walk as Children of light, finding out what is acceptable to the Lord.” (Ephesians 5:10)

I spent my working life in the world of education and dyslexia, and went to countless conferences where the title revolved round the notion of “putting theory into practice.“ Whether it is learning how to drive and doing our theory test first, or learning how to teach children with learning difficulties, our model is that: first we learn the principles, then we have an examination to get our qualification, then we apply them.

Not so the biblical model of Christian discipleship. We don’t need to get a qualification, because Jesus got it for us at the cross:  we start with the practice straight away, and as we go, we discover the enduring reality of the principles that God has given us.

Paul wrote letters to 6 different churches. They all had specific issues that he wanted to cover, but behind his instruction there was only one body of truth, and one passion for all of the churches (2 Cor 11:28), which was that they grow to maturity in Christ. So sometimes we find him saying the same thing to different churches but using different words. Our English translations of his words can sometimes obscure the meaning rather than clarify it. For example, Ephesians 5:10 in the translation I use (NKJV) says that we “find out” what is acceptable to the Lord by walking as Children of light, whereas in his letter to the Romans he tells him that they will “prove” God’s will if they renew their minds. The word translated as both “find out” and “prove” is Dokimazo, which means to test, to prove, to examine, to scrutinise to see if something is genuine. Here are both passages:

 “For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light (for the fruit of the Spirit  is in all goodness, righteousness, and truth)  finding out what is acceptable to the Lord. (Ephesians 5: 8-10)

“And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.” (Romans 12:2)

Because of how we tend to read the Bible, we will probably approach these scriptures independently and come to different conclusions about what they mean. But actually, they mean the same thing. We Dokimazo the Will of God by walking as Children of light, and we Dokimazo the good and perfect Will of God by renewing our minds,. How do we renew our minds? Not by studying for the qualification, but by walking as children of light, step by step.

Paul instructs the Ephesians as well as the Romans on the theme of renewing the mind, in chapter 4 21-24:

“…  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.”

He explains here that we are “renewed in the spirit of our minds“ when we put on the new man, which he also tells us was “created according to God in all true righteousness and holiness.” The new man seeks the Kingdom and not the self, and so thinks differently. The use of the word “spirit” here refers to the motivating power; what drives our thinking. He expresses the idea in Romans 8:5: “Those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit.” Being renewed in the spirit of our minds is what we do whenever we fix our eyes on Jesus. When we walk as children of light and find out what is acceptable to the Lord, we can’t produce anything except the fruit of the Spirit, which Paul says is in “all goodness, righteousness, and truth.” If we are children of light we are born of the light, what is in us is light, we walk in the light, what we emanate is light, and also that light can bring revelation, because “whatever makes manifest is light.” (Eph 5:13) Light, as the parenthesis in verse 9 explains, is “all goodness, righteousness and truth.” These are the elements of our new nature, which as we have already seen was “created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness.” (Eph 4:24) Light is what comes out of us; it’s the fruit that we bear. We are all familiar with the different attributes of the fruit of the spirit that are listed in detail in Galatians 5:22-23: the verse in Ephesians summarises them well.

Aaron’s Rod
Numbers 17 gives us the story of Aaron’s rod, which budded, blossomed and fruited overnight to confirm Aaron’s appointment as high priest. We are a royal priesthood ourselves (1 Pe 2:9); “Kings and priests unto God” (Rev 1:6), so what applies to Aaron applies to us. So I think that the biblical model for the fruit of the Spirit is actually the supernatural fruiting of Aaron’s rod, rather than the natural development of earthly fruit that matures over time, which is how we tend to see it. If the Spirit is not confined to time, nor is His fruit; and to claim that self-control, for example, is taking its time to develop in my character is like anchoring the work of the Holy Spirit, who makes all things new, to the old man of flesh in the body of sin and death. If I am struggling with self-control it is because I am not seeking the Kingdom of God and I haven’t put on the new man in that situation. The same applies to love, peace, joy and the rest of the Galatians 5 list. To think otherwise seems like natural thinking; a good excuse for bad behaviour.

So we learn from Ephesians 5:9 that we manifest the fruit of the spirit by taking steps as Children of light, and in doing so we discover God‘s will for us. Our new nature is complete from the start: we “put it on“ just like we put on our clothes in the morning. It doesn’t develop gradually, any more than we start the day just wearing one sock and walking around naked until we’re ready to put on another one. Our new nature is “God‘s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, that we should walk in them.“ (Ephesians 2:10) It is raised with Christ and seated in heavenly places, Aaron’s rod waiting to blossom, ready for us to put on at every moment of the day, every day. Walking in the spirit isn’t just about encountering God in supernatural manifestations and impossible adventures of Faith, although it can be both of those; it is about choosing the new creation’s priestly garments in our daily life and our dealings with other people instead of the old man’s rags of selfishness and sin. Paul sums up the immediacy of this fruitfulness in Ephesians 5:14

“Therefore He says:

“Awake, you who sleep,
Arise from the dead,
And Christ will give you light.”

We will obviously fail, a lot, and mess up our new clothes; but when we do we repent, we receive forgiveness, we get up, and we start walking again. Because of God’s amazing grace, our new creation is as spotless again as it was the day it was born, and we will have been renewing our minds, putting on the new man, walking in the spirit, and bearing the fruit of righteousness at every step. “If we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin.” (1 John 1:7)  I don’t think the process of sanctification is about letting this fruit grow in us over time, because according to Ephesians 4:24 it’s all there from the start: I think it’s all about learning to walk for longer in the Light without falling over, as Jesus “sanctifies and cleanses us with the washing of water by the word.”  (Eoh 5:26) And as we walk into those works prepared beforehand we experience the divine appointments, supernatural moments and miraculous provision that we long for.

We often quote Jeremiah 29:11, that tells us that God knows the plans that he has for us. If we want to know what those plans are, we make up our minds to keep walking as children of light, and we will step into them.

Discipleship and witness, Knowing God

The Call of the Dove

Leave a comment

“Your gentleness has made me great.“ (Psalm 18:35)

The aspiration to greatness is probably hidden somewhere (and at times not so hidden) in every unredeemed heart, whereas personal greatness is no longer an attribute that a Christian disciple would want to appear in his spiritual CV. However, seated as we are in Christ with the unlimited power of His Spirit in our hearts, we are all have that greatness, however weak and foolish our actions in the flesh may be. His gentleness has made us great. But if I am great because of His gentleness, it is also true that I am only great in His gentleness, because gentleness is in His very character, as He describes it himself: “take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble of heart, my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”  (Matt 11:29) Gentleness is a characteristic of the fruit of the Spirit that Jesus is looking for in the life of every believer.

Ephesians 2:10 tells me that I was “created in Christ of Jesus for Works prepared beforehand , that I may walk in them,” so if I am not walking in His gentleness, I am not walking in Him, and I’m not fulfilling my destiny in the works that He has prepared for me to walk in. And if I am not walking in His works, I must be walking in my own, and therefore I am walking after the flesh and not after the Spirit.

Gentleness is not weakness, it is enabling power. Gentleness does not push; it leads, because it knows where to go. Gentleness does not argue, but speaks the truth in love or does not speak at all. It does not react to situations and people out of fear, but out of knowledge of the truth. There is no uncertainty in gentleness: Jesus knew where he had come from where he was going, and so do we. We have come from above and will be returning there.

Gentleness is like the wavelets in a sheltered, cove: buoyant and supportive, never overwhelming and never crashing on the beach, yet moving with all the power of the tide.  Those wavelets are seasoned with salt: it’s the salt that is supportive, and so should it be with our speech. (Col 4:6) Gentleness is the dove who baptised Jesus in the power of the Holy Spirit, and characterises the advance of the kingdom of God. Gentleness is the dove who brought the olive branch to Noah, and is a species of bird that can be seen and whose call can be recognised everywhere in the world. 

Whatever may flood our circumstances and our emotions, it is gentleness who brings the promise of landfall in the kingdom of God. It is always at hand. Let us always be ready to hear and respond to the call of the dove.

(A note on the image: I took the picture of the dove in the Middle East. Traditionally we portray the biblical dove as white, but it’s quite likely to have looked more like this one.)

Pursuing Love

Built Together in Christ

Leave a comment

“In whom the whole building, being fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.“ (Ephesians 2:21–22).”

To love another person we must let them into our lives. We cannot love on our own agenda: we can only love by embracing the agenda of the other. This is why the gospel consistently requires us to lay down our lives. This is why walking “worthy of calling with which we are called“ (Ephesians 4:2) involves lowliness, gentleness, longsuffering, and bearing with one another in love.” And of course we have the great model for our walk at Calvary, the demonstration of heavenly submission magnificently expounded for us by Paul in Philippians 2 : 6-10.

However we understand or experience it, an essential principle of Christian life is that “the love of God is poured out into our hearts by the Holy Spirit who is given to us.” (Rom 5:5) But what we don’t talk or read about very much is how Christ’s love for us is demonstrated by the very fact that He laid down His life in order to let us in. If He let us into His life, how much do we let each other into ours?

We are being built together in Him in order for him to dwell in us. What an incredible reciprocation. We love Him because He first loved us. And if He is building us together for the honour and privilege of being in Him we also need to love one another first, letting each other into our own lives with no personal agenda or demand. Our flesh cannot achieve this, because the ultimate goal of the flesh is always self preservation. But when His love for us is expressed through us, and as we allow others into our lives as He has allowed us into His, we can truly “walk worthy of calling with which we are called.“

When we have learnt this, much more will follow; because the dwelling place for His Spirit that He is building in us will have grown.

The word of God, Walking in the Spirit

Walking in Newness of Life

1 Comment

The God  who is Love created man in His image, so we were made in the image of Love. Satan marred that image with sin, so the foundation of God’s design for society was ruined, and love was replaced by the Law. God’s perfection and beauty could be found in His Law (See all of Psalm 119), but for men, even the priesthood and the Levites, the dedicated servants of God, it was impossible for that Godliness to be reflected in their behaviour. As we learn from Romans 7, “The Law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good … but sin, that it might appear sin, was producing death in me through what is good.” (Romans 7:12) Instead of living in the freedom and safety of Love – the fulfilment of the Law – human beings outside of Christ are now only free and safe to the extent that sinful behaviour is held in check by law. The law is like the sign that says “don’t step on the grass:” Since by its nature sin always looks for ways to bypass the law and step on the grass, law is always multiplying to keep pace with sin.

Recently I saw a village primary school with a tree in the grounds. It was the beginning of the school day. Children were climbing the tree and swinging on the branches. There was no visible supervision, although various parents were around, dropping their children off. It was a happy, joyful scene. I thought: “Goodness, this is wonderful. Children climbing the tree, doing what God designed them to do, with no health and safety police wagging their fingers? I must take a photo!” Then a second thought came hard on its heels. “No, you can’t take a picture. The safeguarding police say No.”

In the world, the law of sin and death proliferates, both in fact driven by fear: fear of death (in this case, health and safety) and fear of sin (safeguarding.) But in the Kingdom of God there is a different order, because peace has come to Earth:

“For He himself is our Peace, who has made both one, having broken down the middle wall of separation, having abolished in his flesh the enmity, that is the law of Commandments contained in ordinances, so as to create in himself one new man from the two, thus making peace, and that he might reconcile them both to himself in one body through the cross, thereby putting to death the enmity.”  (Ephesians 2:14–16).

On one level, Paul is writing in this scripture about the enmity between “those who are near and those who are afar off,“ (Eph 2:17) that is the Jews and the Gentiles. The Jews are “near“ because they were chosen by God to manifest Him to the world through their obedience to his law; the Gentiles are “far off“ because they are lost in carnality and enslaved to the world’s thinking. But there is a deeper level, another war, a level of reality in the spirit that is represented by the two people groups. The enmity between Jew and Gentile represents the war between flesh and spirit that Paul refers to in the epistles to the Galatians and the Romans:

“The flesh lusts against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh, and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish.“ (Galatians 5:17) 

When Paul writes to the Romans he says: “I delight in the law of God according to the inward man.” (Romans 7:22), and in verse 23 he calls it “the law of my mind:” “But,” he says, “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.” (Romans 7:23) The “war” between the law of God and the law of sin that Paul describes here is the same as the battle between flesh and Spirit that he writes about to the Galatians. His terminology has evolved (His epistle to the Galatians was the first one written) but the conflict is the same – whether it’s called flesh against Spirit; the law of sin against the law of God, Gentile against Jew.

We (or at least I) tend to polarise our thinking, with the result that our drive is to be “more spiritual” at the expense of the flesh which, as we know, has to die. But the key is not to strive to crucify the flesh, but to recognise that Jesus Himself is our peace because, as Ephesians 2:14 makes clear, “He has broken down the middle wall of separation.” He has put to death the enmity by creating in himself “one new man from the two.” When we step back into Jesus, the Word made flesh, we step into the peace that He has created, where the flesh is no longer captive to sin but merges with the spirit in one new creation, and we are no longer striving against the law of God, but seeking to fulfil it in faith and love.

I was in the Spirit one day; it was sunny outside, and the thought came to me: “I fancy going birdwatching this morning, instead of sitting here having a quiet time.” I said: “Lord, I fancy going birding now. What should I do” He said, “Do what you like.” So I thought about that, and decided that what I liked doing just then, rather than going out looking for birds to photograph, was sitting with Jesus and studying is word with Him. So that’s what I did, and in the few minutes that followed received a revelation that I will share in another post. And I learnt an important truth: whatever we do when we walk in newness of live is going to be in His will.

Paul first explores the idea of the wall of separation in the letter to the Galatians, when he says “In Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avail anything, but a new creation.” (Gal 6:15). We often say/hear/read statements like this; “I keep putting my flesh on the altar, but it keeps climbing off again!” I wonder if this is because we haven’t grasped the reality of who we are as new creations in Christ, where flesh and Spirit have become one in Him? In His Kingdom, religion and carnality are both equally irrelevant, as they play no part in the new creation. If we overlay Galatians 6: 15 with Galatians 5:6, which is “in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avail anything, but faith working through love,” we find an equation that states “a new creation is faith working through love.”

If this is true, and scripture confirms it is – because “without faith it is impossible to please God,” and “unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God,” – our actions must always be not only carried out in a spirit of love, but in a place of faith, if we are to be walking “in newness of life”, living as new creations. Does this mean our actions “avail nothing” in the Kingdom of God unless we are in some way walking on the water and trusting God for the miraculous? I don’t think so. Since “faith comes from hearing,” I think we are walking in faith whenever we hear God directing our steps and do – or don’t do – whatever it is He says. We are in faith whenever we allow Him to guide us with His eye (Psalm 32:8). Our faith is in the person of Jesus: not just because the righteousness of God that is ours by faith is going to clothe us in white and give us a place at the wedding banquet, but because in Him, clothed in Him, we live our lives as new creations in a world that is passing away, “in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation.” (Phil 2:15) And when, by faith, we are in Christ, then our deeds will be directed by love, because God is Love.

One of the leaders at a recent Alpha that we ran at our church bought a little toy bus for a child who loved busses, and left it on the table at the Alpha meeting. A young man on the course noticed the bus, and asked about it. “There’s a kid I often see at work who has got a thing about busses. I saw this and bought it for him.” The young man was so touched that someone would go out of their way to buy a toy bus for a child that he had no real relationship with, just because “the kid loves busses,” that he realised in that moment that the love of Jesus was actually a reality that directed people’s lives, and gave his life to Christ. Buying the bus didn’t require miraculous provision; it just required responding to a prompting from the Lord and doing a small act of kindness. Faith working through love, at the heart of the new creation, availing much for the Kingdom of God.

The scriptures give us many analogies for living out our lives as new creations, as children of the Kingdom and not of the world. Paul likes the image of putting on clothes: “clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the flesh.” (Romans 13:14), or “put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness.” (Eph 4:24) We “put on the armour of God,” and we “put on” Christ’s own character (Col 3:12-17). But to put on clothes we need to go to the wardrobe, and this wardrobe only exists in one place, and that is heaven. We may call it spiritual realms, or heavenly places, or, as both Jesus and Paul do, just “above;” but it’s the place where Christ is seated. “Seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.” (Col 3:1-2) And just like the atmosphere of places on earth are unmistakeable and tell us clearly where we are – be it beach, forest, desert, mountain or city – heaven too has its own atmosphere. It’s the atmosphere of rest.

Rest (katapausis) is a state of the environment. When the Father finished the work of creation He rested. “Rest“ refers to the state of Tranquility, literally a “calming of the winds.” It is the atmosphere of heaven, the atmosphere of the Spirit. God instituted the Sabbath day for men to keep holy, so that His creation could share something of the atmosphere of rest in which He dwells. Peace (eirēnē), however, is a state of the soul. It’s an experience. Jesus gives us His peace. He’s the prince of peace, He made peace when He broke the wall of division between Jew and Gentile, and all they represent, at the cross. Peace is what we experience when we are at rest, when the winds have stopped.

The Prince of Peace is also Lord of the Sabbath. Jesus is lord of our circumstances and Lord of our souls. The writer to the Hebrews exhorts us to “diligently enter into that rest,” (Hebrews 4:11), and affirms that “we who have believed“ have done so (Hebrews 4:3); while Peter, quoting the psalmist, exhorts us to “seek peace and pursue it.” The peace that Jesus gives us, “not as the world gives,“ is our experience of the spiritual atmosphere of heaven.

And here’s the thing: we cannot put on Christ unless we go to the wardrobe, the place of God’s rest, and if we’re not experiencing peace we haven’t entered it, and so we’re in the wrong place. We will either be operating out of our carnality or out of the religion that tries to control it (and religion has many spiritual disguises), but we won’t be where the wall of division has been broken down. To “seek peace and pursue it” is more than just trying to calm down, and more even than trying to seek the face of Jesus: it is to ensure that we are walking in newness of life, because nothing else avails anything for the Kingdom of God.

Pursuing Love, Walking in the Spirit

Rooted and grounded in love

Leave a comment
The great grey shrike on Cannock Chase

“That you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height— to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” (Eph 3: 17-18)

Love is the ground where the word of God takes root.  It’s the foundation where the house is built. It brings stability and strength. Love characterises the “good and noble heart” of Luke 8:15 that keeps the word of the kingdom and bears fruit with patience. The Greek word translated as “Noble” is Agathos. It’s the same word used in Mark 10:18, when Jesus says only God is good. Similarly, the Strong’s definition of Kalos (“good”) relates to every manner of perfection; flawlessness, in a word. A good and noble heart Is one that is flawless and perfect, not one that is corrupted by sin.

By contrast, Jeremiah 17 :9 tells us “the heart of man is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked. Who can know it?” The Hebrew word “anas,” translated as “desperately wicked,“ has the sense of weakness and frailty associated with an incurable illness. If ever there was a word to describe our sinful nature, this is it. It is definitely not good ground, and never will be. The only “good and noble” heart that Scripture shows us is the heart of God Himself. And the wonderful thing is, that when we are born again of the Father and He has given us a new heart, this is the very “heart of flesh” that we receive. It seems to me that the seed of the word of God can only be sown in the heart of flesh that we receive by the Spirit at the new birth. This is the ground of love with the word takes root and bears fruit.

This is not just theology and spiritual ideas: it works. When we choose to build on the ground of love we experience God‘s blessing. “Give, and it shall be given to you“ does not just refer to money or resources: when we choose to give love to others, God gives back to us, even in the small things. In fact, He often teaches us through the small things so we can apply his teaching to the bigger ones. If you know me, or have read some of my other articles, (eg “Between the Chapel and the Damned”) you will know that I am a bird watcher. A hobbyist bird photographer, to be precise. The picture above is of a distant great grey strike. They are very rare winter visitors to the UK, and there has been one this Winter on Cannock Chase, just a few miles from my house. There are apps that pinpoint the location of these rarities, so people in the birding community know roughly where they are. Yesterday morning I went out to try and find the great grey shrike. I only had a couple of hours, because I needed to meet with Anne by 10.30 so we could be on the same page about what to say at the retirement party that was being given in our honour (we have just retired from our business) at 12.00 o’clock. In other words, I had a relational commitment, a commitment to prioritize love.

I spent about an hour walking around and waiting in the area where the shrike had last been seen, but to no avail. My time was running out, and I was going to check one more likely place, but then I felt quite strongly that the Lord said: “No. It’s time you headed back now.“ On this occasion I did what I was told (on many occasions I don’t!) and started back down the path towards the car park. After a couple of hundred yards I turned the corner, and there was a little group of birders with their  cameras and telescopes all pointing in one direction. Yes: it was the great grey shrike. It was a good distance away, but happily I was able to see it and take some pictures. Five minutes after I arrived it flew off. If I had gone to check that other area before turning back, I would have missed it. God wants to bless us, even in our hobbies.

The word from Jeremiah about the heart of man goes on to say: “I, the Lord, search the heart, I test the mind, even to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his doings.“ (Jer. 17:10) He blessed me by allowing me to see that bird, of which there are at the time of writing only three records currently in the UK. But, and more importantly, it blessed Him that I listened to what He said and did what I was told, and put my love for other people before my personal interests.

The point is this. I know full well that my natural heart, my heart of stone, would have gone to check that other place before heading home. I would have said to myself, “It will only take five minutes, and that won’t make any difference to the circumstances of the rest of the day.” And indeed it wouldn’t have: when I got home events had actually been delayed by half an hour or so, so I would have had plenty of time. But my new heart, my heart of flesh, was open to hear the word to prioritise Love, and because I was able to respond to it I walked into the blessing that God had planned. “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be given unto you.”  (Matt 6:33)

Even, in this case, a great grey shrike.