Comfort of the Scriptures

As I read through psalms, I’m struck by how many times over my life, a seemingly small, personal phrase expressed a depth of personal -usually painful- sentiment I was struggling with.

It seemed the phrase or word would lightly, quickly touch my mind and heart with a sense of ‘hey- I know exactly how that feels.’ I’d note it and move on.

Sometimes, even years later, I’d come back and see the note or the phrase, that I couldn’t have even remembered, much less quoted and realise that had been the end of my troubling or fearful thought. That it had been the end of the troubler himself actually stirring my life up.

Psalms certainly isn’t the only book the Lord has spoken to me about my life from but I do think- with quite a bit of surprise- it must be the one He’s used the most to speak about my own, David McGrew, personal weaknesses, fears and brokennesses.

Somehow, the depth of emotion and pain it’s written in, mixed with a simple and enduring faith seems a cure for many ills.

Has God Really Said?

‘Has god truly said’ is the foundational question to be tested in our life. This testing is designed to destroy our allegiance to God and transfer our trust to another and thereby move us into a different kingdom.

A kingdom where reason rules instead of faith. A realm where perception displaces truth.

The question comes in many non-verbal forms too. The greatest of these may be ‘if God had actually said (if God truly loved me, if God was really there) then my life’s circumstances would not appear this way.’

Every life will be tested, and each will be tested in it’s own unique way, designed to take maximum advantage of the tested one’s own weaknesses and fears. There is no corporate, church wide, the whole class passes, way around this.

Do know this though. The God who came looking for Adam in the cool of the day is always and fully present. He has said I will never leave you nor forsake you. He has said that with every temptation, He makes a way of escape that you may bear it.

It’s my sincere hope and prayer, that regardless of your life’s current situation, you find it within yourself- within your walk with him and others, to not judge Him who keeps your soul after your own pain, fears or experiences.

We’re told Jesus kept entrusting Himself to Him who judges justly. We’re exhorted in the same general passage to entrust our own souls, our own personalities, our unique identities, to a faithful creator.

He is not a man, He will not lie. His words will not fall to the ground. He can be trusted.

Beholding

Isa 42:1

“Behold my servant whom I uphold…”

If the Lord Jesus needed to be upheld by the Father, then it’s surely not a small thing for us to accept all of His servant/sons must be upheld as well.

As I pray over my friends and colleagues, the drive-wheels of my mind find different purchase points in believing for that upholding. Some of them require more faith than others. Others require just a bit more honour and love. At any rate, it’s always me that needs the tune up and that tune up always comes with a sober understanding that much in the Kingdom is hinged on how we choose to see each other.

Working backwards in that phrase, I see that sometimes I don’t see people…as the Lord sees them. It’s in the ‘Beholding’ of my friends, my not-so-friends, my colleagues and the body of Christ in general, as His servant/sons, that my adjustments finally take place.

I must Behold what he wants me to ‘hold as being’, that is, that His servants take many forms, shapes and walk in pathways I know not. I must trust Him to hold them up- as He created and ordained them to exist and walk and trust Him to hold them as He designs.

It’s a wonderful and freeing thing to accept that in our flawed and broken diversity, that the great God of Oneness holds us all up for all to behold the Man Christ Jesus.

Son and servant

Praying into Isa. forty-two verse one ( in an unmarked Bible- sometimes, you need to move the flotsam and jetsam in the margins and lines for clear lines of thought) I noticed, even deeper the connection between ‘behold’, ‘chosen’, and ‘delight’.

I’d always presumed with the flow of the thought that He ( me ) was upheld because He (me) was delighted in first. Like…we were all chosen to be His delight so we spend our lives, ever so slowly becoming, hopefully, more delightful to Him above. Presumably, there’s some heavenly inspired upholding taking place as we rock along here towards eternity.

It occurs this morning that I may’ve not considered all the evidence in front of me well. I’m thinking that it’s because the Father was well pleased that He ( us ) was chosen. After all, Luke says in chapter two that Jesus grew in favour and wisdom with God and man as he aged. I’m thinking it was those quiet, mostly nondescript, first thirty years ( remember, the men in town knew him as Joseph’s son) that gave Him opportunity to show that his ear was dug out to hear and that his body had been prepared to prove obedience was completely, humanly, possible.

If this is true, then my obedience- coming through my listening ear, to instruct my prepared body to do His will, is somewhat tied into me being upheld and seen ( behold!) through my expressions of my relationship with Him. I obey, He delights and chooses me to advance more perfectly into His will- upholding me all the way.

There’s a lot of tight corners in that thought I suppose. It’s good then that it’s illustrated in Jesus having come to John for water baptism. Matthew chapter three ends with a reference to Isaiah forty-two, verse one. There are at least two great thoughts alluded to in this last paragraph in Matthew, that time and space only allow mentioning now.

Firstly, that verse seventeen links sonship here with servanthood in Isaiah. Many of us choose from moment to moment whether we relate to the Lord as a son or as a servant. I say this verse directs that it’s both, and always both: Son and servant simultaneously.

Theres a reason for that too. A servant only does what he’s told, a son however, able to anticipate his father’s will and heart is capable of doing more than he’s been assigned. John resisted baptising Jesus. John viewed it as beyond required.

Jesus, in response, said it’s right to fulfill all righteousness. By doing so he went beyond what humanly had to be done and stepped into the realm of doing right for God’s sake. That’s what warranted the divine public affirmation that He received…and that most of us are thirsty for.

By the grace of God, lets choose to live as sons and go so far beyond the minimum requirements of obedience that we can be openly seen and endorsed, as truly living to do all the will of God.

That gives cause for heavenly delight. That delight gives endorsement to our life. That delight grasps our hand and holds us up through all of life’s stumbling spots.

Principle of sin

Sin is in the world. Sin is more than what I do. Or don’t do. The sin principle touching us all; that principle that each individual holds to itself as the final arbiter of right and wrong, working through our lack of understanding that by simply choosing we have usurped God and replaced Him with our own conscience, is universally and impersonally true. It’s the circumstances of each man’s spiritual self-murder that remains intimately personal.

Paul’s epistle to the Romans says in chapter seven that sin took opportunity of my appetites to cause me to hunger and while promising to feed me, deceived me and killed me. Dying alongside was the belief that God would feed me. What sprung up in it’s place was the belief that if I didn’t feed myself, God wouldn’t give me what I deserved. I must strive to be my own source of life.

Paul’s well thought and profoundly insightful theology recorded in these chapters goes largely unheeded by ‘our worlds’ mainstream Christianity.

In one small but densely packed portion of chapter six, Paul gives the guaranteed prescription for all believers to secure freedom from Sin’s dominion:

Count yourself dead to sin.

Count yourself alive unto God, in Christ Jesus.

-that way, Sin can’t make you obey your body’s passions.

Do not yield your parts to Sin as instruments to play an unrighteous and inharmonic tune. Instead, yield yourself to God, as one brought back from death and into life, and then your members as finely tuned instruments, playing your life’s Magnum Opus of grace triumphing over sin for all to see and hear.

Thanks be unto God, He did not leave us without a clear pathway into freedom and life!

Serving

Sometimes I wake praying, but wondering if I’m doing all required of me to be fitted for service in the coming kingdom. The Bible teaches both that the Lord is returning for a people prepared and that there is a position prepared for each of us. Service and servanthood are the key, finding and fitting the matching door, unlocking our life’s reason for existence in this realm. This realm’s life is the doorway into function and placement in eternity.

I wonder, as I look back over an adulthood of service- ambitious service, grudging service, weary and resentful service- occasionally punctuated with moments of great and noble sacrifice- whom I was really serving. What I REALLY need (as far as I know) is the Lord’s help in knowing whom and how to serve. I don’t have to be great in this life to be great in the next. Greatness doesn’t necessarily lead to greatness, just as smallness doesn’t say one’s life has been insignificant. Eternal life, here AND there, is embraced through a life of serving others into their own, enlarging, encounters with Christ.

Dear Lord Jesus, please do keep me ( us) on the right track. Help me (us) to remain engaged in your chosen pathway, not charting my (our) own course; as if I (we) knew where and how my (our) role was to end up. Dear Lord Jesus teach and strengthen us, with all humility, to willingly spend and be spent, without misjudging the value in your expensing of our life’s time and resources.

Thankful

My waking thought today was wondering if Lamentations three, verse twenty-two- ‘the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, His mercies never come to an end; great is your faithfulness.’ - contained the Hebrew word ‘hesed’. You might recognise it as that single word, trying to carry the mass of that full orbed concept of ‘covenant love’.

Anyway, it IS in there but today I want to look, briefly, on this Thanksgiving weekend, at the verses concluding thought- ‘great is your faithfulness.’. (I don’t know how many times I’ve sang that familiar refrain over the decades completely unaware of what I was saying. I don’t even want to think about how often I sang it in a very casual disregard or disbelief.)

Gods faithfulness to Himself, His word and ultimately unto us is indeed what holds us all together and in place. I’m far more thankful for His mercies and His continuation in my life through things seen, things unseen than I’ve ever before been. Through the people around me, what they bring into my life. Through the people around me, what they afford me to grow and gain in.

I’m humbled when I remember how much we all have to be thankful for in each other.

Let’s remember to practice a level of thanksgiving to God, even expressed to the people around us so profoundly, that in the years to come we look back remembering this as one of the most thankful times in our lives.

Even better, let the art and discipline of thankfulness become such a strength in your life that it elevates us as the body of Christ into new arenas of witness and testimony to the breaking world around us.

Discerning

I was thinking about explaining something the Lord said to me to my friends in general and realised I didn’t have a release to do it. That gave me pause.

As I mulled this over, beginning to see who I could ( should ) tell and whom I couldn’t ( shouldn’t) give the benefit of my failures to, a familiar thought reemerged with a bit of a pointed insight.

I remembered, while there was overlap in His messages, that Jesus had a word for the disciples, a deeper message for the inner three and some things were so sharpened they were reserved for Peter’s hearing alone.

He had an even broader understanding He gave for the masses, still. He lived a grace -that’s available to us too- of knowing when and how, to say what. There are certainly times these messages overlapped so that the masses heard him address the disciples but there were most definitely times there were behind closed door only teachings. Those behind the door teachings universally caused turmoil, self-doubts, blame shifting and just general foreboding.

As a young man, I remember reading John G. lake’s material and him stating ‘I determined to preach the highest revelation of Christ I had.’ I took that to mean to share every piece of revelation he had to everyone ( it was convenient) and determined to do this myself. It isn’t exactly what he said though.

Now, I wonder about the wisdom of my ways. It is possible to say too much. It is possible to inadvertently put the requirements the Lord has on you upon others who - can’t carry them now or may not even be intended to carry them, ever. Some stuff is just your stuff.

Oh the wisdom needed!

I’m certain much harm has been done in the body by seeding revelation, before seeding time, on unprepared soil. An unexpected outcome of this is one, seeing his truths are not received, can become so disheartened to the character of his own seed and thereby doubting himself, stop planting.

I suppose some of this is inevitable. We have to learn who we are and the growing requirements for our own life’s message. There’s no regret and shame in that, especially since the naked truth is that we all are responsible for both what and how we hear. Every man remains responsible for his own soul. A hearer can choose and say ‘this is not for me now’ but that has unhappy and unexpected consequences too.

That on the table, I don’t want to be responsible for burdening people with a portion of reality that Jesus isn’t burdening them with either. A wise farmer knows what, where and when to plant.

Lord, give us all eyes and a heart to measure those you’ve given open hearts unto. Let us not drawback from boldly proclaiming truth. But Let us not choke the infants before they’ve had proper season to digest either and beyond all, we trust you to keep, bear up and establish those you’ve brought into our lives.

To appropriate the psalm, let none of those who trust in you stumble on account of me, or my teaching.

This is a soberingly high calling we’ve been entrust with. God give you grace as you do what is just humanly unthinkable, that is speak on behalf of the humanly unapproachable God.

For..

I woke early this morning thinking of the lovely little Hebrew pronoun ‘FOR’, as used in Psalm one Hundred-eighteen, verse one; as in “Oh give thanks to the Lord FOR he is good FOR his steadfast love endures forever! “

Those of you that have looked at this verse in any depth will firstly realise that the phrase ‘love that endures forever’ is a necessarily bland expression, of the deeply theological truth we simply call covenant. One word or phrase can’t carry that Hebrew words mass and in our drive to simplify truth, we often oversimplify- as if it were always a virtue. We do in this case, for sure. If you havent yet, you might want to study it a bit.

At it’s foundation it carries the idea that God’s relationship to His Family is rooted in His ‘loyalty to, or love of, his own covenant’ -loyalty firstly to Himself and thereby to me and you. It’s the model and divine version of ‘even if you’re a disloyal wife, I’m a loyal husband because I’m loyal to my own integrity.’ ( oh Lord, help us to understand covenant, both with you and others!). This thought anchors the verse’s truth and indeed the whole Psalm’s as it is, word for word, repeated as the last verse.

It really is the FOR’s we want to quickly glance at though. Words have meaning. Words have meaning, even when we gloss over the common and small ones-they still carry the freight of truth into others minds.

FOR, in this verses usage, means BECAUSE of. Instead of those clauses all being separate thoughts….give thanks….and He’s good….and, oh by the way, …his steadfast love endures…for a really long time, it’s a progressive thought.

Giving thanks, and praise in general, isn’t intended to be a warm up for church or our daily life. It’s an acknowledgment and extension from that deep truth saying THIS is why I am thankful!

I’m thankful because I’m reminded that Gods covenant with me isn’t based primarily in my response or behaviour. When I stumble, stall or neglect Him or others, he is still faithful because He is loyal to himself.

His loyalty shows itself to me, as I stop and think around my life, in all of these good things happening around me.

I give thanks to Him, not hoping He will prove his love and presence to me, rather BECAUSE of His covenant loyalty that’s there - whether I see it or not.

Somehow, it gives comfort to me anyway, to realise my relationship with the Lord isn’t based on my character primarily- it’s founded in His and for this I am deeply and humbly grateful!

I’m going to try and increasingly live my life as a response FOR who He is and all He has already done.

HONOR to whom HONOR is due

I saw an interesting glimmer of light as I read the second Psalm today . While the Psalm wont be completely fulfilled until the return of the Lord, it’s still pertinent for here and now, especially politically.

The last paragraph, starting in verse ten, exhorts and admonishes the Kings ( Presidents and Prime

Ministers ) and ‘leaders’ of all other sorts to show discernment and worship the Lord with reverence ( I suppose that means that without reverence, it really isn’t worship).

Verse twelve says, very broadly, pay homage to Him for your own sake, as well as the sake of your nation. The Bible here teaches that leaders, are to some measure, responsible for all the well being, of all their citizenry -and, since it’s the resurrected Son of God we know ourselves to be talking about here- I’d think it meant responsible for their spiritual state as well.

Of course I don’t imply that the Queen of Canada, the Governor General or the Prime Minister are intended to take any one else’s spiritual obligations, rather that good ‘kingship’ requires them to encourage and provide for a life of faith in their constituents. To see that it’s done more than do it.

Paying homage, even worship itself, doesn’t really require any theology or deep intimacy. Surely both of those disciplines make the experience more efficient and more rewarding but I see no reason to think Father Abraham knew much of either when he lit his first fire. That knowledge begins to flow into lives once individuals begin to admit there is a power higher than themselves givimg life and provision to all.

I’m going to take some time in my own prayers to invite that same eternal presence, who began pressing me with an awareness of Himself long before I accepted Him as my Lord, to begin to press himself upon and into the lives of all those giving leadership in our land. I’m more interested in who they are than what they do.

It seems to me, once again, that good government of every kind stems from ‘who’ more so than ‘what’.

Counsel

Ps 1:1

Walking in the counsel of the ungodly is far more than walking in ungodly counsel. For that matter, I’ve received ( and probably given) ungodly counsel.

That is, counsel that does not fully, thoroughly, or perhaps rightly, consider God. Yes; thinking now I realise I’m guilty of all these things.

However, since I’ve been a believer I have not done any of it intentionally. And there’s the difference: The Godly can give ill advised counsel and still remain Godly. The ungodly can give good counsel but he cannot give Godly counsel. The un-godly aren’t necessarily bad people. They just don’t have a God, or at least don’t have a god they’d admit -or perhaps not want to admit -was their God when they discovered what it was. ( greed, lust, fear, power- that kind of thing. Anything you think about, talk about and allow to impact your way of life is a god of course. You find yourself wholly devoted to it When it begins to control your decision making beyond it’s proper limits.)

If a soul does not know the Lord, he is incapable of representing the Lord’s mind on any matter. Do not walk in the counsel of an unbeliever. You may have to take an unbelievers advice-I get that- but you cannot safely take an ungodly speakers advice until you test it’s spirit and be assured it resounds in the mind of the Lord. Only He tells the whole truth, always, for The Truth’s sake.

The way we learn….

“The wiser the Speaker became, the more he taught the people knowledge; many a maxim he pondered and examined and arranged. The Speaker’s aim was to find pleasing words, even as he set down plainly what was true. A wise man’s words are like goads, and his collected sayings are like nails driven home; they put the mind of one man into many a life.

Ecclesiastes 12:9-11

-James Moffatt

That passage, as written, is one of my standing favourite portions of scripture. In a world that is absorbed with personal experience and constantly assaulting humanity with electronic arts, this simple lesson in learning gets lost.

Everything we read; all the data we are inundated with has as it’s goal to put the spirit of the authors mind, into ours. It’s not just thoughts either. Like Ephesians chapter four teaches; we are to be renewed in the ‘SPIRIT of our minds .’ It’s not the thought that gets us into trouble, it’s the thinking.

If it’s true ‘we are what we eat’ ( and that’s just common sense) then it’s also true for our entire being; soul and spirit. On a negative side, this is seen plainly when people read ( for example) sexually explicit material. That author’s images have been placed inside of the reader’s soul. And, we all know there are some things you simply can’t un-see or un-know. Suffice it to say, there are many angles and levels to this dark perspective; everything from the nightly news to the internet.

In my own life, I’ve never bought anything online that I didn’t first go searching for; that I didn’t read the seller’s glowing description of and then actively MAKE a decision to BELIEVE the writer.

So it is with the Word of God. In a world driven by personal experience, I’d argue you do have an experience with God every time you look into The Book. I’m more determined to look into the Bible to find raw and unfiltered truth than I am willing to look into another souls interpretation and filtering of it. As helpful as other voices can be, It’s not that other spirit I want in my mind. To spin the passage above, just a bit, it’s That Speaker I want arranging truth in my life.

Purified Conscience

No one would argue against the debilitating effects of guilt and shame’s reality, yet we seldom see the lengths God goes to in order to separate people from them.

Under the levitical priesthood, the High Priest went into the Holy of Holies once a year to offer sacrifices for the sins of the people. Certainly it was the place for God’s forgiveness and His mercy to be poured out but it also created an event and a moment for the people to be aware of this transaction themselves. It was not done in secret.

It was enough-hopefully- for each of them to say ‘if God has covered over my sins then I can forgive myself.’ Freedom from both guilt and shame is essential for us all to be able to walk healthily into our future. In a real way -God’s forgiveness is not enough- it should be. But for some of us, it might not be. We must forgive ourselves.

We all prove capable of tethering ourselves to that one thing we can’t quite forget. The one thing we knew better than to do, and did anyway. Or, the one thing we knew to do, and didn’t.

Scripture goes on to say that the offerings of bulls and goats could not cleanse our consciouses permanently. It goes further saying the blood of Christ, who once and for all, was offered through the eternal Spirit, offered Himself to God and purified our consciouses to serve the living God.

Let us always be mindful that the greatest trust we can ever extend to God is in believing He has completely answered the sin problem in our lives. Let us remain mindful and let us determine to walk forward completely free of guilt and shame, having perfectly forgiven ourselves.

Arriving at thanksgiving

First Thessalonians chapter five tells us to ‘…rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you…’. 

I like to look at those three clauses as one thought instead of three different points. Surely they can all stand on their own and a lot of translations make it a point to separate them as individual thoughts but I think they’re all mutually supporting truths that make a bigger, more complete point when viewed as a whole.  

‘Rejoice always’ reminds me to rejoice in the Lord, not myself, not my circumstances and not in others; in all ways. 

Ceaseless prayer requires more than discipline though. It requires a hope and confidence that the effort is not in vain. By the grace and love of God, many of my prayers have been answered.  But, I have a haunting feeling that many others never came to realization because I just….stopped…praying… and believing.  Confusion, weariness and discouragement are always at work on the edge of our life’s critical issues, vying to stop our prayers. 

Some times, the idea of giving thanks in every circumstance is as if someone were speaking to me in a foreign tongue. I can’t quite grasp the meaning of it. I can see it written here but I can’t make out how to apply it. 

It occurs to me - and I hope I don’t ever forget this- that the larger idea portrayed in this small passage is for me ( us ) to understand that focusing on the Lord; leaning into Him is actually what strengthens my hope, resolve and endurance to continue in prayer. Prayer, without a personal revelation of the Lord, is almost certainly doomed to be stopped short. 

The grace to find God in every circumstance- to see where He’s perhaps hidden in the chaos, ever pointing the way forward though is a great and comforting reward. 

So to remember that rejoicing in Him is what gives faith and strength to our prayers; to know we have been heard- even though things look the same- causes a genuine gratitude to so flow across our lips that everyone and everything around us is forced to bear witness to the open praises of God. 

Good Friday

“ ....making peace by the blood of His cross.”

Colossians 1:20, ESV

As Good Friday approaches, I want to take a minute to remind us all of why it’s ‘good.’  Certainly the picture of an innocent and naked young man, publicly nailed to a cross, an especially cruel and shameful way to die, seems anything but ‘good’ to me. 

But then I remember that Jesus wasn’t just a young man, He was the only begotten Son of God.  He wasn’t an unlucky bystander, murdered by politicians, liars and criminals; He was intentionally sacrificed, by God, for the sins of mankind.  And, while he was innocent in Himself, He was made to be the cumulative sin of all humanity, that we might all be made the righteousness of God in Him.  

This small portion of Paul’s epistle to the Colossians above, holds life changing truths. They’re important enough to think about deeply and often. 

Let’s start with the cross. If we’re not wise we can think the scene I mentioned above, with it’s rejection, shame and death is the entire point; but it isn’t. I can recall my life, before I became a believer, thinking that however misguided this action might seem to me, that it was certainly a proof of a great love.  But that’s just a bit sentimental.  We’ve all heard and probably said ‘Jesus loved me so much’ and then stretched our arms out in reflection of Him hanging on the cross member of a cross. 

He does love us much, but it’s not sentiment only. It’s a legal reality, upheld by the blood that poured out of Him as He hung there. That thorny crown pushed down upon His head certainly caused blood to be shed, but that wasn’t enough for the task at hand. Though he bled, as he bled from the nail wounds in his wrists and ankles, that wasn’t enough either. He was still alive and as long as he lived His body fought to stay alive.  It wasn’t just the spear jab in the side after He had given up His own life to the Father-though all of those things openly demonstrated the great truth: The Life is in the blood and without the shedding of blood- the giving of a life- there is no forgiveness of sins. 

It was the pouring out of that Holy Life that bought us a salvation so full and free, it’s value cannot be measured. 

The scripture says in another place that Jesus, once and for all, sat down at the right hand of the Father, having offered up His own blood.  

But unlike the blood of bulls and goats, this sacrifice went further. There’s not just a temporary reprieve of an almost clean conscience here. This sacrifice was powerful enough that it enabled a change of nature. An exchange of nature’s. Our old nature that was bent towards sin and punishment was replaced by a new life that replicated...was...His own. 

Our spirit, made alive with His Spirit, bears witness within us that we have been reconciled into peace with Him, and if we have peace - that wholeness that comes from being properly re-membered and joined together- then we ultimately have peace and wholeness with all those around us. 

It’s a great truth and a great gift that we’ve received. Let us all remember, especially throughout this week, that this is not just some slick story we’ve been told. This is the drama of the planet’s redemption.  That cross, that blood bought us all an unfading peace strong enough to last for all eternity.

Asking….

As I pray this morning, I’m thinking about the intimate, reciprocal relationship required to obtain answered prayers, at least in the way that I pray them. 

In other words, what do the qualities of the pray- er have to do with being heard? Why would He listen to me?

My first thought went to John’s gospels ‘if you ask anything in my name...’.  ( and that was a pleasant and easy thought. )

My second thought though, right on it’s heels, was that the ‘you’ wasn’t spoken to the crowds. It wasn’t spoken even to the seventy. It was spoken to those who had followed closely. 

Followed closely enough that their faults and weaknesses were seen and addressed. Closely enough that their group dynamics came under the scrutiny of His eye. That group of ‘you’ had eaten, sailed and toiled with Him; they had ran errands for Him and had given up their lives to see His promotion.  

It strikes me today that there’s a favour component required  for my prayers to be heard. A favour component that I receive, not simply because I know His word to other people, but a favour that belongs to me because, like those other people, I’ve chosen to eat, sail, toil and labour with Him. 

I’ve let Him see and address my weaknesses and faults, privately and publicly. I’ve ran His errands, let Him keep me awake- heard His ‘yes’s and felt the sting of His ‘no’’s’.  

I’m certainly not where I want to be. I’m certain I’m not exactly, nor always, where I should be.  But I’m also sure, that over the noise of my life and the crowd around me, that I saw His gaze fall on me and that my own ears heard that ‘you’ when he made the declaration. 

Today, as I think about the reciprocal nature prayer requires, I’m so glad for His invitation to pray. I’m so truly joyful that His written invitation is now to us all to ask and receive. 

I’m so thankful, that you- like me- are called and qualified to move into that intimate place of breath exchange that we call prayer. That place where life is traded for life.

….considering…

Did you ever notice in Paul’s writings that virtually no two lists -of anything -were the same?

Whether he’s defining love, fruit, ministry gifts or graces the concepts are all far more free rolling, yet incomplete, than we like to think.  

In our world, we want closed ended and complete categories. That’s why we always try and combine Paul’s writings to come up with a complete picture.  But he didn’t write all of his letters to everyone, nor at the same time. Maybe, he wrote with an awareness of what each church needed to apply most specifically and when it brought the greatest value. 

Perhaps, he knew the Lord as bigger than we know Him. 

Perhaps he knew that even born again humanity, was so far beneath the full idea that a shotgun blast of truth to get us started was more important than a bulls eye. 

It’s a holy thing thing that we can look at all that remains of Paul’s mind and heart, to contrast, compare and  assemble good doctrine- but I wonder if in our assembling, we sometimes forget the real genius of the vessel: that God was too big for any mind to understand and capture.  

Perhaps Paul knew God as the ultimate Creative and simply refused to close Him.

Maybe the cornerstone of Pauline theology is that the building is never actually complete. There’s always more to see. 

Fear of Death

The twentieth century New Testament in Revelation chapter two, last clause of verse twenty-three states “...and I will give to each one of you what his life deserves.”

It’s evident from this verse’s context that Jesus is speaking of the here and now.  He’s just finished pronouncing a here and now judgment on Jezebel and her children.  Further on in the letter he tells the church of their eternal reward if they’re able to overcome. He’s made it plain that some spiritual rewards -as untraceable as they may outwardly seem- come in this life time. This thought seems to accord with Paul to Timothy in 1Timothy 5:24/25 nicely. 

This also  reminds me of Hebrews 10:26-27 that says something like, if we keep on sinning nothing remains but a certain fearful expectation of judgment. 

And yet, that same epistle tells us believers that by taking on humanities nature, through death, Jesus has delivered us all, who were subject to slavery, all of our life time, from the fear of death. 

Don’t you suppose people living, yet afraid to die, intuitively believe there’s a reason that they deserve to die? Perhaps some vague gnawing of guilt, shame or even a confused uncertainty. 

This is exaggerated today, as the sum of all fears- dying unexpectedly from an unseen and unexpected cause- covid19 for instance, hangs over many weakened souls.

It is inconvenient and even a horrible thing to be sick. It’s worse to be sick unto death, and in some regards, being afraid is even worse than that. Fear doesn’t leave with it’s cause. 

Fear reaches into the core of a soul and claims it as a residence, forever renovating and expanding it’s dwelling until it may be violently rejected and overthrown by faith. 

Perhaps, even worse though, is the allowed guilt, shame and sense of inferiority that opens the door to fear in the first place. Remember the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin. 

All sin....that which has consequences now. That which has eternal consequences. He’s cleansed us from all sin. 

And He’s promised great reward beyond cleansing. We’re not simply washed, in Christ we are restored. 

The reward he has in mind for you, in this life time and the world to come is rich, full and free. 

With your reward in your hand, come quickly Lord Jesus!

Holding the affections of Christ.

As I pray through Paul’s layered prayers for the Philippian church, I’m again arrested by the affections of Christ in chapter 1:8. 

Paul’s longing there suggests he’s put his own affections on the back burner in order to see that the primary relationship has it’s free course in lives. This idea may prove harder to live than it seems, but more on that another time. 

This verse reminds us that the Lord really does have feelings and thoughts toward us, that move Him to action.  He has a greater and better vision for you and I than we can ever personally scrape together. Our paltry sense of being is as nothing when measured by His heart and mind. 

But, we all need people in our lives to believe for us, on His behalf, past the threshold of our own blindness into this glorious and liberating freedom. 

What would our lives reflect if we had the courage to hold ONLY Christ’s affections,ALWAYS Christ’s affections and FULLY Christ’s affections for the loved ones He’s connected to us.

Frankly, I don’t know the personal cost but I do know we would be a church that has rarely been glimpsed on earth. A Body of Christ that showed His fullness of glory to a lost and broken world. 

May the Lord Himself, cause our love to increase and abound towards one another, until that day our heart wakes to realise that His love in us has fully moved in and taken over our own affections.