It seemed like all the anguish and injury of those days swept over me
(St Andrew’s, Cullompton, Devon)
Friday, 21 September 2012
Thursday, 7 June 2012
The heart is a slow learner
I owe an immeasurable amount to human teachers, the ones I’ve heard and the ones I’ve read; but my heart only begins to believe things if it hears them from the Spirit, Who has drawn as close as can be to my heart, as Jesus promised.
This is how I tend to think: ‘If God likes what I do, I don’t have to worry about what someone else thinks.’ But I see that I am selective about thinking like that. I wouldn’t dream of applying such thinking to those I love and respect - that’s a bit of a give-away! It’s obviously not a godly principle, but rather self-serving. To cut to the chase, I love those whom I feel loved by, and ignore those whom I feel I’m not loved by. But these days, God is correcting my course, adjusting my sails a bit so they can pick up breezes from other directions.
Jesus taught this: ‘Love your enemies’. He added no reservations or conditions. He loved people, all the time, and most of all as He faced the Cross. He let His enemies do their will. Although His Mother and other companions were with Him on the road to Golgotha, I believe He went ahead alone without the reassurance of their comprehension, with a faith unique to Himself that to do so would ‘draw all men’ to the Father and to Himself.
So does that still work in the same way? It must! Serving and loving our enemies, adversaries and uncomprehending strangers is what may free them to find salvation: which means their reconciliation with the Father and their resurrection to life. Jesus always intended His followers to do this as well, once He’d gone ahead first in living out love to the unimaginable extent of His humiliation, torture and death.St Paul
Yes, Jesus has finished His one, perfect sacrifice; but that opened the way for us to live like He did. Unless we co-work with Him to do the same things He did, others will not be reached by theKingdom of God
This is how I tend to think: ‘If God likes what I do, I don’t have to worry about what someone else thinks.’ But I see that I am selective about thinking like that. I wouldn’t dream of applying such thinking to those I love and respect - that’s a bit of a give-away! It’s obviously not a godly principle, but rather self-serving. To cut to the chase, I love those whom I feel loved by, and ignore those whom I feel I’m not loved by. But these days, God is correcting my course, adjusting my sails a bit so they can pick up breezes from other directions.
Jesus taught this: ‘Love your enemies’. He added no reservations or conditions. He loved people, all the time, and most of all as He faced the Cross. He let His enemies do their will. Although His Mother and other companions were with Him on the road to Golgotha, I believe He went ahead alone without the reassurance of their comprehension, with a faith unique to Himself that to do so would ‘draw all men’ to the Father and to Himself.
So does that still work in the same way? It must! Serving and loving our enemies, adversaries and uncomprehending strangers is what may free them to find salvation: which means their reconciliation with the Father and their resurrection to life. Jesus always intended His followers to do this as well, once He’d gone ahead first in living out love to the unimaginable extent of His humiliation, torture and death.
Yes, Jesus has finished His one, perfect sacrifice; but that opened the way for us to live like He did. Unless we co-work with Him to do the same things He did, others will not be reached by the
Tuesday, 24 April 2012
Beginning a new season
I greet again all my readers in name of the Father of all Mercies and pray His grace be with you.
Five years ago, God started me on a training programme in His love through the ministry of John and Carol Arnott and the 'Catch the Fire' network they founded. He has brought me into a secret and intimate place with Him, where my heart lies open to His loving gaze and healing, and heaven is open all around me for a thousand loving conversations.
This morning, we talked about what is happening now. Through our intimacy, I know He is my loving Father all the time, and all my value and identity come now from Him. If anyone speaks a different word about me, I know immediately it is not true, and I run to hide in Him in safety.
This intimate relationship with God protects me so that when I encounter damaged people - including myself - I will not be damaged. I will not "return evil for evil" (1 Peter 3:9 ) nor become "spotted by the world" (James 1:27).
But I am sensing a change in season, spiritually. A first stage of my training is over, and I have had a big shock: when training is over and you start doing what you have been trained for, at first you will mostly fail. The overwhelming feeling is the cry: 'What then was it all for?'
But He comes to comfort and reassure. My failures and sins are all necessary and good, to complete everything God loves to change about me.
Five years ago, God started me on a training programme in His love through the ministry of John and Carol Arnott and the 'Catch the Fire' network they founded. He has brought me into a secret and intimate place with Him, where my heart lies open to His loving gaze and healing, and heaven is open all around me for a thousand loving conversations.
This morning, we talked about what is happening now. Through our intimacy, I know He is my loving Father all the time, and all my value and identity come now from Him. If anyone speaks a different word about me, I know immediately it is not true, and I run to hide in Him in safety.
This intimate relationship with God protects me so that when I encounter damaged people - including myself - I will not be damaged. I will not "return evil for evil" (1 Peter 3:9 ) nor become "spotted by the world" (James 1:27).
But I am sensing a change in season, spiritually. A first stage of my training is over, and I have had a big shock: when training is over and you start doing what you have been trained for, at first you will mostly fail. The overwhelming feeling is the cry: 'What then was it all for?'
But He comes to comfort and reassure. My failures and sins are all necessary and good, to complete everything God loves to change about me.
Sunday, 8 April 2012
On the third day He rose again from the dead!
Today, no words - just Piero della Francesca's icon of Christ's resurrection which he painted for the town hall of his native town, Borgo San Sepolcro, in around 1458
Christ has died! Christ is risen! Christ will come again!
Saturday, 7 April 2012
No 49: So that He Would be Crowned with Glory and Honour
All religions worship and glorify their god or gods, and most stress the transcendent and powerful character of their gods and the huge distance there is between them and a human being. What differentiates the Way of Jesus' followers is scandalous to that kind of religious thinking. We carry this revelation in our lives: that God's purpose is to welcome us into His intimate presence, no longer as servants but as sons and daughters. We are to rejoin His family. Jesus will share everything He is and has with us. Our relationship to the Father is to be the same as Christ's. The very Trinity - Father, Son and Spirit - is expanding to include all redeemed humanity. Isaiah and Matthew named Jesus "Immanuel, which means God with us" (Isaiah 7:14, Matthew 1:23); Jesus completed this revelation by saying: "I will take you to be with me that you also may be where I am" (John 14:3). Where we are to be is in eternal communion with the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. St Paul describes this as a mystery, in other words a truth kept hidden: "Christ in you, the hope of glory" (Colossians 1:27).
Jesus taught this mystery over and over again, in parables to crowds and more plainly to His disciples. The parable of the prodigal son has the wayward son returning with the conventional religious attitude of humility and self-abasement: "Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired men"; which his father cuts short and orders the utmost honour and status to be given him: "Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let's have a feast and celebrate" (Luke 15:11-32). On the eve of His passion and death, Jesus spoke at length to His disciples, preparing their hearts and minds for these future spiritual realities: "Before long, the world will not see me any more, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. On that day you will realise that I am in the Father, and you are in me, and I am in you" (John 14:19). Perfect communion.
The Son has His Being in unending glory with the Father and Holy Spirit - forever and ever, world without end, amen. But He left that behind to become one of us: "He made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness" (Colossians 2:7). As a son of man, the glory He was crowned with through His passion, was only ever to be a means to this end: to bring us into the selfsame glory.
In Jesus' great prayer in John 17, He says this to the Father: "I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one. I in them and you in me" (John 17:22). A more fitting title for this chapter, so near the end of Piper's book, might have been: 'So that We Would be Crowned with Glory and Honour'.
Jesus taught this mystery over and over again, in parables to crowds and more plainly to His disciples. The parable of the prodigal son has the wayward son returning with the conventional religious attitude of humility and self-abasement: "Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired men"; which his father cuts short and orders the utmost honour and status to be given him: "Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let's have a feast and celebrate" (Luke 15:11-32). On the eve of His passion and death, Jesus spoke at length to His disciples, preparing their hearts and minds for these future spiritual realities: "Before long, the world will not see me any more, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. On that day you will realise that I am in the Father, and you are in me, and I am in you" (John 14:19). Perfect communion.
The Son has His Being in unending glory with the Father and Holy Spirit - forever and ever, world without end, amen. But He left that behind to become one of us: "He made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness" (Colossians 2:7). As a son of man, the glory He was crowned with through His passion, was only ever to be a means to this end: to bring us into the selfsame glory.
In Jesus' great prayer in John 17, He says this to the Father: "I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one. I in them and you in me" (John 17:22). A more fitting title for this chapter, so near the end of Piper's book, might have been: 'So that We Would be Crowned with Glory and Honour'.
Friday, 6 April 2012
No 48: To Gain His Joy and Ours
A few days ago somebody said I was irrepressible. He spoke it in anger and frustration; but my heart rejoiced at the word and received it as the tenderest encouragement and affirmation from my God, who really knows me. It is a profound experience to see that sudden conjunction of heaven and earth, where the same words express sanctification from God and condemnation from man. St John records an extraordinary instance of just this happening to Jesus: "Caiaphas spoke up. "You know nothing at all! You do not realise that it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish." He did not say this on his own, but as high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus would die for the Jewish nation" (John 11:49-51).
In fact, these moments are glimpses of redemption in operation. Not only spoken words, but events and circumstances may seem at first to be evil, but are then discovered as bringing good. This is so familiar an experience, that everyone knows sayings like 'Every cloud has a silver lining'. Usually, it is only with hindsight and subsequent events that we realise God's hidden plan and intent; but sometimes, as I said, we realise simultaneously what is going on in heaven and earth, and that is amazing. Our relationship and intimacy with God has grown to the point that we are aware of both realms at once.
This was clearly how Jesus experienced things. For Him, it seems to have been a state of constant 'twin-awareness', not momentary gifts like it is for most of us. He testified: "I do nothing on my own but speak just what the Father has taught me. The one who sent me is with me; he has not left me alone, for I always do what pleases him" (John 8:28,29). Even in the confusion and terror of his nightime arrest, He remained totally aware of heaven, saying: "Do you not think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels?" (Matthew 26:53). I believe all of us can aspire to be so changed and renewed in mind and spirit that such awareness and consciousness of God become increasingly normal in daily life. In fact, I think that this is one way of describing what 'faith' is.
In the verses from Hebrews which preface Piper's chapter today, it is clear to me that this is how Jesus experienced His crucifixion. At the same time as his physical and emotional agony on earth, he experienced a heavenly joy. The words chosen by the writer of this letter try to express this profound experience. The Greek word which is translated 'set before' in verse 2, is the same word which is translated 'surrounded' in verse 1: "Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses ..." (Hebrews 12:1). Jesus was surrounded by, caught up in, immersed in, drenched by, the Father's love and joy: at the same time as He was "enduring the cross and disregarding its shame" (Hebrews 12:2).
But not for the entire time. To complete His identification with us, His beloved Bride, as the moment of death approached He suddenly lost all awareness of heaven and all intimacy with His Father. This had never happened to Him before, and it wrenches agonising words from Him: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Matthew 27:46). Of course, His loving Father and our loving Father never had, and never does.
In fact, these moments are glimpses of redemption in operation. Not only spoken words, but events and circumstances may seem at first to be evil, but are then discovered as bringing good. This is so familiar an experience, that everyone knows sayings like 'Every cloud has a silver lining'. Usually, it is only with hindsight and subsequent events that we realise God's hidden plan and intent; but sometimes, as I said, we realise simultaneously what is going on in heaven and earth, and that is amazing. Our relationship and intimacy with God has grown to the point that we are aware of both realms at once.
This was clearly how Jesus experienced things. For Him, it seems to have been a state of constant 'twin-awareness', not momentary gifts like it is for most of us. He testified: "I do nothing on my own but speak just what the Father has taught me. The one who sent me is with me; he has not left me alone, for I always do what pleases him" (John 8:28,29). Even in the confusion and terror of his nightime arrest, He remained totally aware of heaven, saying: "Do you not think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels?" (Matthew 26:53). I believe all of us can aspire to be so changed and renewed in mind and spirit that such awareness and consciousness of God become increasingly normal in daily life. In fact, I think that this is one way of describing what 'faith' is.
In the verses from Hebrews which preface Piper's chapter today, it is clear to me that this is how Jesus experienced His crucifixion. At the same time as his physical and emotional agony on earth, he experienced a heavenly joy. The words chosen by the writer of this letter try to express this profound experience. The Greek word which is translated 'set before' in verse 2, is the same word which is translated 'surrounded' in verse 1: "Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses ..." (Hebrews 12:1). Jesus was surrounded by, caught up in, immersed in, drenched by, the Father's love and joy: at the same time as He was "enduring the cross and disregarding its shame" (Hebrews 12:2).
But not for the entire time. To complete His identification with us, His beloved Bride, as the moment of death approached He suddenly lost all awareness of heaven and all intimacy with His Father. This had never happened to Him before, and it wrenches agonising words from Him: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Matthew 27:46). Of course, His loving Father and our loving Father never had, and never does.
Thursday, 5 April 2012
No 47: To Rescue Us from Final Judgment
To reflect properly upon this chapter, we would need to dig deeply into the Bible's shifting and evolving concept of the wrath of God. For the moment, I have nothing more to add to what I wrote in my very first Lenten post on this theme: 'Whatever His wrath means, we know that love is His abiding and defining attribute - they aren't opposites. God doesn't stop loving, to be wrathful. Clearly, like God's love itself, his wrath lies outside all categories of human experience. The analogy He has taught me comes from His natural order. If I am walking along a cliff and fall off, I will experience violent consequences because of gravity. Nature isn't angry with me, gravity isn't vengeful. But I am being punished for my action.'
Piper quotes a passage from Revelation, describing it as 'the most graphic glimpse of hell'. As I have begun a little bit to experience visions and prophetic pictures, I have realised how we can seize on an expression of the spiritual realm and apply it grossly to our physical, material world. It is rather akin to taking a dream literally - very young children do, but soon learn not to.
There are several occasions recorded in the Gospels where we see Jesus dealing with this wrong way of receiving spiritual truth. One is related in John 6:32-58. Towards the end of a long altercation, Jesus says: "I tell you most emphatically, unless you can eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you" (verse 53), and He goes on to emphasise this message using the same words three more times. Many of His disciples then said: "This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?" No doubt their imaginations were filling with 'graphic' images. Jesus replies: "Does this offend you? The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life" (John 6:61, 63).
It is interesting that we have no record of Jesus ever mentioning God's wrath in proclaiming His good news. He even cut short the reading He had been given to recite in the Nazareth synagogue, omitting "... and the day of vengeance of our God" (Isaiah 61:2). This makes me wonder why we should, either, when telling others our good news. Isn't He our model?
Piper quotes a passage from Revelation, describing it as 'the most graphic glimpse of hell'. As I have begun a little bit to experience visions and prophetic pictures, I have realised how we can seize on an expression of the spiritual realm and apply it grossly to our physical, material world. It is rather akin to taking a dream literally - very young children do, but soon learn not to.
There are several occasions recorded in the Gospels where we see Jesus dealing with this wrong way of receiving spiritual truth. One is related in John 6:32-58. Towards the end of a long altercation, Jesus says: "I tell you most emphatically, unless you can eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you" (verse 53), and He goes on to emphasise this message using the same words three more times. Many of His disciples then said: "This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?" No doubt their imaginations were filling with 'graphic' images. Jesus replies: "Does this offend you? The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life" (John 6:61, 63).
It is interesting that we have no record of Jesus ever mentioning God's wrath in proclaiming His good news. He even cut short the reading He had been given to recite in the Nazareth synagogue, omitting "... and the day of vengeance of our God" (Isaiah 61:2). This makes me wonder why we should, either, when telling others our good news. Isn't He our model?
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