Looking and seeing
What is, and has been,
Of our unbreakable
Oneness;
In deeper love
Made true by
Light’s soft unveiling,
And harsh exposure.
These ten turns of
Life’s changing scene
Have revealed much for
Beholding, and more
To be beheld, as
This shared life grows
Ever upwards, outwards,
From roots in rich soil
Evergrowing the reaches
In deeper love.
(For my beloved wife, on the Xth anniversary of our promise to love each other forever)
Pithy Pearls Oct 17 2012
Study on 1 John 5:14-15
“And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him.” 1 John 5:14-15
Let’s deal with the easy part of these verses.
God has a will. We know this.
God’s will cannot be frustrated or resisted. Our rebellion against His will affects our side of the battle alone. God will always have His way.
So if we can discern God’s will, either through the revelation of His word, the Bible, or through His specific will for our lives through revelation by the Holy Spirit with His word, then we can have full confidence that if we pray according to that will, then God will give us what we ask. No doubt. No possibly maybes. 100% fully assured confidence.
There are things we know are in God’s will for each of us, which also live there as desires in our hearts as we follow Jesus and grow in our relationship with the Father.
“Lord, help me to love you with all my heart, mind, soul and strength.”
“Help me to love my neighbour as myself.”
“Help me not to sin against you or my neighbour.”
“Help me to love my enemies.”
“Give me an undivided heart.”
“Help me to worship you in spirit and truth.”
“Help me to seek first your kingdom and your righteousness.”
All of these, and many, many more, are God’s will for us, so we can know that if we ask, we will receive.
This interpretation fits well with the context in which John gives us these verses.
He firstly assures us of our eternal life, and then speaks to us about sins that will be forgiven (“ask for this, according to His will”, says John) and sin that won’t be forgiven (“don’t ask for this”, says John). He then follows up with a re-assurance of our assurance so we don’t accidentally end up in a place of paranoia that I might sin and not be forgiven.
“Jesus protects you from this!” says John.
(see this blog for our study on John’s assurance and re-assurance of our eternal life
> Assured, re-assured)
So, job done. End of group study…. or is it?
A: “How can we know if we are praying according to God’s will?”
What a great question. I mean, it’s easy to see how the things we know are God’s will are things He will say “yes” to when we pray for them.
And it’s not the case that those things aren’t important to us; they are. In fact we can probably all see how addressing these ‘big’ things, which affect all lives of all people, will also take care of the ‘little’ things of my own specific life.
But our lives aren’t that neat or straightforward.
The Bible does not address myriad of things which we have to make decisions about every single day of our lives.
“How much should I spend on a car/house/clothes/food?”
“How much time should I spend in prayer/reading the Bible/at church?”
“What should I eat for breakfast?”
“Should I go down Flixton Rd or Church Rd?”
And these are just questions that are very mundane, particular and specific to each one of us. What about how we pray for people and situations beyond ourselves?
The situation in Syria? A family member who is sick or dying?
And what happens when we discern that God has brought about a specific ‘bad’ situation to help someone to grow in maturity? Is it right to ask for relief for them – would this be going against God’s will?
Here we need Jesus to help us make sense of this.
“Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!” Matt 7:9-11
Jesus wants us to see two people in a relationship here.
He wants us to see who’s asking, and who’s being asked.
As soon as we realise that our praying, our asking, is that of a child asking their parent for something, it helps us to understand what we can ask for, and how God will respond.
Let’s take an extreme example; one which we may have to face and will therefore benefit from knowing how we could/should respond.
If God shows us that someone is going to die, should we ask Him to extend their life? If it’s in our heart, then yes we should.
This isn’t something I’m making up here. We have examples in God’s revealed word that show us this kind of dynamic.
Abraham interceded for Sodom and Gomorrah even though God had made it clear He had devoted them to destruction. Gen 18:22-33
Moses interceded for the people of Israel and prevented their destruction. Num 14:13-24
Isaiah was sent to announce the death of king Hezekiah, and when Hezekiah called out to God he was given another 15yrs. 2 Kings 20:1-11
And there are more…
So how does this fit in with our view of praying according to God’s will?
What we can see here is that God has set out His will quite clearly, and yet these little human beings, before Almighty God, appear to be changing God’s mind and His will.
This moves us away from the comfort of knowing what God’s will is and praying for it, to a very unsafe place where we can change God’s mind and influence His will.
Hands up all those who prefer this second place? Inasmuch as it might seem like a great thing to be able to influence God’s will, as you think it through you quickly arrive at the devastating question, “what if I ask for completely the wrong thing because I can’t see what God sees?”
Here’s my own thoughts on how we can understand what is going on when Abraham, Moses, Hezekiah, you, influence God’s will, and how we can feel both free and encouraged to ask God for anything and everything which is on our heart.
As I stated at the start of this blog, God’s will cannot be frustrated or resisted.
But God’s will is both, and simultaneously, a ‘big picture’ and ‘little picture’ reality.
God will have His way. How He gets there, and how He does it includes space and capacity for our choices, and our desires and needs as His children.
How else can He justly hold us responsible for our choices within His decisive will?
How else is it possible that ‘He makes all things work for good’ (Rom 8:28) unless there are things that aren’t good that need to work for good?
For His children, it’s only ever ‘Plan A’, as He meets us where we’ve stumbled, picks us up, dusts us down and continues to lead us into the Father’s house. When we wander He doesn’t wait for us to ‘come back’; as we turn He runs to meet us and take us on.
So we can always be confident that God will have His way, and that when we ask – whatever we ask for – we won’t ever break anything, or make things worse.
And we can be confident that whatever we ask for, we’ll never receive a stone instead of bread, or a snake instead of fish. Even if God’s answer to us is ‘NO!’, He will always give us something according to what we’ve asked.
He’s a Father, and those of us with children know that there are times we have to say no, but there are ways of responding positively, and encouragingly – ways of saying ‘I love you even though I’m going to say no’ – so that the end result is still all about the loving, tender relationship between a Father and child.
Our Father wants us to ask. He wants us to care about things, and to believe that it’s ok to ask Him to change His mind.
God is infinite in wisdom, knowledge and power and so it’s zero effort for Him to still accomplish His will whilst changing the original story mid-flow.
And this is where it gets interesting, because we are told, encouraged, exhorted, and commanded to pray throughout scripture, and so it matters to God our Father that we pray. So what if God doesn’t always start off with the ‘best’ story because He wants to join with us, in relationship and conversation, to arrive at the ‘best’ story?
He actually wants us to share with Him in shaping this world, not as passive bystanders, but as active agents and manifestations of the presence of the Divine bodily.
I don’t know about you, but that is really exciting – I can ask my Father for anything and the more I do, the more I am helping to shape and better the story of how God’s will is played out in this world, as a co-writer and actor in this great play.
AND… I can never mess it up!
John says, “this is the confidence we have…” 1 John 5:14
He wants us to grasp that our praying should never be lacking in confidence or have any shred of unbelief, because… “if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him.” 1 John 5:14-15
And we know – with 100% confidence – that His will is that we would be His children, and that we would relate to Him as our Father and ask Him for whatever is on our heart.
JC
Pithy Pearls Oct 17 2012
Study on 1 John 5:13-21
So John ends his letter to the Church.
How would you end a letter which carries the importance and significance of being regarded as Divine revelation, and authoritative in the Church for all time?
John ends his in true John style.
He takes us out of this time and space and drops us in eternity, where God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – 3 in 1 – dwell as the I Am.
His gospel starts similarly, showing us what was going on in the beginning, and revealing to us the eternality of God, not only as I AM singular, but as I AM triune. (Incidentally the word in Genesis 1 which we see as ‘God’ is ‘Elohim’ and is a plural word, even though it is understood as referring to a singular One God, so it’s been there… well, since the beginning!)
And to finish off his letter to the Church – his letter to us – he connects us with that eternal reality.
“I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life.” 1 John 5:13
The tense here is all-important. He does NOT say “you will have eternal life”, he says “you have eternal life”.
John sets us up as believers to believe that we already have it. It’s a done deal. You can’t have eternal life if it isn’t forever, right? That would have been temporary life you had.
John is making a profound promise of assurance to us. More than that, he makes it clear that his purpose in writing to the believers is precisely for that reason; that we may know that we have eternal life.
But then John does another John-classic.
He throws a curve ball at us and starts talking about sins which can be forgiven and sins that lead to death. Or does he?
Why would John set out to make it clear that we have eternal life, fully assured, and then suggest that it’s at risk from “sin that leads to death”? 1 John 5:16-17
If he’s telling us the God-honest Truth, that we have eternal life, then what is he up to by talking about sin that leads to death?
The answer is in the verses that follow:
“We know that everyone who has been born of God does not keep on sinning, but he who was born of God protects him, and the evil one does not touch him. We know that we are from God, and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one.” 1 John 5:18-19
John is not actually revealing something here for the first time in his letter. He has already told us that those who are born of God do not practise sinning.
“No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God’s seed abides in him, and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God. By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother.” 1 John 3:9-10
If we are born of God then Jesus protects us from the power of sin in our lives, and we stop practising sinning and start seeing it, hating it, and moving away from it.
If we stumble in a sin as a child of God, it’s an eternity away from practising sinning as a sinner not born of God.
Believing in Jesus, and knowing Him as God, and hating sin are all assurances that you are one of the ‘known knowns’. You can have assurance because you know that you know Jesus. Perhaps you can’t articulate it brilliantly, or provide concrete evidence, but in your spirit you just know.
If this is you then you have eternal life.
The known unknowns
So John hasn’t included these verses about sin that leads to death for our sake – if we are born of God then we have eternal life, and it will be for eternity.
Who, then, is in view in these verses?
Clearly John is speaking about people for whom these verses would be relevant, and also about people for whom those in the Church would pray for.
Who are these people?
To get a hold of this I think we have to go back to an earlier part of his letter.
“They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us.”
1 John 2:19
As John is writing to the Church he is aware of the feelings of disappointment and confusion about those who were so ‘on fire’ in the church, but have now left.
He’s addressing the rumbling questions like, “He was such a bold Christian, and now he wants nothing to do with the church – can I too lose my salvation?”
Or, “He prays amazing prayers, and has spiritual gifts, but he sleeps around and gets drunk every night – is this the power of Jesus to transform our lives? Am I that vulnerable?”
These are the kinds of questions that still get asked today.
“Can I lose my salvation?” is almost always in the top 3 ‘unanswered’ or badly-answered theological questions that true Christians have. And they ask it because they care about those they see slipping away, and because they want to know if they too are vulnerable.
I think John nails it down for us when he points to the underlying, unseen reality of those who ‘lose their faith’, or walk away from Christ.
He says, “they were not of us.”
More than that he says that their leaving is the confirmation that they are not of us;
“But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us.”
It’s simultaneously true that Jesus protects his own from sin, and that those who practise sinning and walk away are not his own.
And you get BOTH in the Church.
I believe that 1 John 5:16-17 are referring to these people; the ones who walked away.
Within this group there will be some who were, are and will remain spiritually dead and never be born of God.
But there will also likely be those in the group who have simply wandered away like wayward sheep, perhaps because they were influenced in their immature faith by a more ‘mature’ churchman who since left and persuaded him that it’s all bunkum.
I’ve seen the latter. I believe that people very close to me are precisely in that category and so verse 16 speaks to me about how I should pray for them:
“If anyone sees his brother committing a sin not leading to death, he shall ask, and God will give him life—to those who commit sins that do not lead to death. There is sin that leads to death; I do not say that one should pray for that.” 1 John 5:16
When we see someone leave the church we might be able to rightly assume that they ‘were not of us’.
But we might do better to see them instead as one of the ‘known unknowns’ – that maybe they’ve just wandered away for a while and the Lord will bring them back.
God does not make it our business to know what the outcome of ‘their’ life will be. John shows us that at the very end of his gospel when Jesus essentially tells Peter to mind his own business when it comes to John.
God makes it our business to know what the outcome of ‘our own’ life will be. And He wants us to know that if we love Him, and we can see that we love others, and stop practising sinning as fruits of that love, then we can know that we have eternal life.
And in that respect verse 16 also applies to us.
We know that we will sin. Indeed John makes it clear that if we say we have no sin then we are a liar!
But he doesn’t want us to think that those sins will lead to us forfeiting our eternal life, because they won’t, and we can be confident of this for two reasons:
1) we will experience conviction of that sin by the Holy Spirit.
2) we will repent of it and ask forgiveness and receive forgiveness.
There is sin that leads to death. Jesus makes it clear that there is one sin that is unforgivable – blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. (Matt 12:31, Mark 3:29, Luke 12:10)
But John also makes it clear that Jesus protects us from sinning, and if we have eternal life, then Jesus is protecting us from that sin.
In fact Paul says that we can’t truly say, “Jesus is Lord” except in the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 12:3), so it’s not possible for us to blaspheme against the Holy Spirit, and at the same time have Him indwelling that we might proclaim ‘Jesus is Lord!’
So John finishes his letter by assuring us, then re-assuring us, that if we are born of God then we have eternal life.
Looking forward to spending it with you!
JC
PS – I deal with 1 John 5:14-15 in this separate blog – “Who’s asking?”, as we spent a lot of time on this too.
/// Guest blog from David Anderson ///
Pithy Pearls Oct 10 2012
Study on 1 John 5:6-12
‘3… That’s the magic number’
The saying goes that ‘3 is the magic number’, and let’s be honest, a lot of awesome things come in threes (the Trinity, the three musketeers, and the blind mice to name a few). It just seems that idea of a triplet or 3 is somewhat special.
Well today we learnt of another triplet, one which would completely put the blind mice to shame. The water, the blood and the Spirit. #BOOM
1 John 5:6-12
6 This is he who came by water and blood-Jesus Christ; not by the water only but by the water and the blood. And the Spirit is the one who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth.
7 For there are three that testify:
8 the Spirit and the water and the blood; and these three agree.
9 If we receive the testimony of men, the testimony of God is greater, for this is the testimony of God that he has borne concerning his Son.
10 Whoever believes in the Son of God has the testimony in himself. Whoever does not believe God has made him a liar, because he has not believed in the testimony that God has borne concerning his Son.
11 And this is the testimony, that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.
12 Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.
Upon first read you end up thinking “what is this about?!” But in actual fact, if we can get a firm understanding and somehow catch hold of these verses, I assure you that your faith will go up a level. It’ll be as if your faith muscles have grown after a massive workout! #FaithBiceps
It will unleash an understanding within you that you’ve never even thought was a possibility, and the words ‘water, blood and Spirit’ will no longer be just a phrase made up of words.
In the passage, John is contextualising Jesus as the one who came by BOTH water AND blood. The fact it’s both is extremely important. They complement each other, and the third part, the Spirit, is the one who testifies the truth. (As stated in scripture, “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth” John 16:13)
The Spirit doesn’t just bring truth, He is the manifestation of truth. It’s like the way God doesn’t only bring an incomprehensible, undeniable love, but that God IS love.
It’s like this with the Spirit and truth. And though the spirit says ‘I testify this is the truth; Jesus is everything that He claims he is!’, it is not just the Spirit but ALL 3 things that testify this. It is as if each of the 3, the water, blood and Spirit, stand up in front of all creation and say ‘Aye!’ in agreement that Jesus is exactly who He says He is.
John is coming across in such a way that he is effectively saying. ‘I’ve seen it all, I had my head on His chest, I saw Him hanging there on the cross… Yet the testimony of God is even greater!’
God’s testimony is the 3 things mentioned. And these are even greater than any man’s firsthand account of events. There is a massive statement in the passage in v10 that whoever believes in the son of God holds these 3 things. How amazing is that! Has the light bulb gone off? Even though most of us would say that we agree that Jesus is who He says He is, and then give no reason why, John is saying that the reason we feel this way is because this is God in us, and God’s testimony.
In Jewish law (and what stood during John’s lifetime) it was stated that when 3 witnesses agreed on anything it was enough to establish truth (Deut 19:15). John is using these 3 things in this way, to state that God’s testimony being a three, and all agreeing with each other, is enough in itself to say its true.
John isn’t completely clear in what context he speaks of each; it’s as though he’s intentionally given us a mystery to draw us into the mystery.
What is the water? The spear to Jesus’ side which drew blood and water? Or his baptism? John the baptist: “I baptise you with water (alone), but he will baptise you with the Holy Spirit”. Is this what John is referring to when he says, “not by the water only”? (v6).
In fact, John refers to water a lot throughout his gospel e.g. water into wine, Jesus walking on water, the woman at the well (Jesus: “whoever drinks the water I will give to you will never thirst again”).
It could refer to any of these, all of these, and/or another thing.
One important thing we can see though is the link with water and cleansing. ‘Baptism’ existed even before John the Baptist began to baptise people. Even though it wasn’t referred to as ‘baptism’, as this comes from the Greek ‘baptizo‘, but people did fully understand the importance of ritual cleansing in order to come before God, demonstrated by their going to the temple and entering pools of water to get ‘cleansed’.
Interestingly, even the water in the water jars which was miraculously turned into wine was water for ritual cleansing, and specifically ‘Jewish’ ritual cleansing (John 2:6).
It is as if John is writing in the hope that we will ‘join the dots’ from history’s pages and realise it relates to ‘cleansing’, and in turn to holiness. Even in John 3, Jesus says to Nicodemus, “unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.” John 3:5
There is a clear reference here, between two Jewish Rabbis, to Ezekiel 36, right out of the pages of Jewish history and their prophets.
“I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses” v25
“I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you.” v26
The blood is also extremely important, in fact no words can define how important Jesus’ blood is. In 1 John 1:7 it is written, “and the blood of Jesus…cleanses us of ALL sin.”
That isn’t not just some sin, or what we feel are our worst sins, or the ones we don’t want people to know about, but it boldly and clearly says “cleanses us of ALL sins.”
How precious is the blood! And though one of the purposes of the blood is, like water, to cleanse us of sin, this shows us that the importance placed upon the blood gives the impression very strongly that the water of baptism isn’t sufficient on its own to cleanse us of sin, but water AND the blood of Jesus are sufficient.
Now for the final part of the triplet, the Spirit. The Spirit could also be referred to as ‘the Sanctifier’. Sanctification refers to ‘making holy’, by separating ourselves from ourselves; the new self from the old self – like shedding old skin. We are made new and holy before God, free from past sin, as well as current and future sin. Wow!
Therefore, like the water and blood, the Spirit also points us to cleansing. Did I hear someone say ‘SNAP!’
All three are a vital combination of beauty, given to us for total sanctification before our sinless, all-Holy God. I also believe it is no coincidence that I wrote a song called ‘Sanctified by love‘ just two nights ago! God has obviously been working in my heart in the background.
So, do we really understand why we get baptised? Or do we do it to tick a box?
It is fitting for us to be baptised if we are Christians as it is something that’s very important. It is an act of cleansing of the flesh and the body by water. It is indeed symbolism as Jesus set the example, and even though he was sinless, he did it anyway to fulfil all righteousness before His father. Oh, and notice, soon after, the Spirit came down like a dove. Coincidence? I think not!
But it’s more than just symbolism.
The method we use to be cleansed before God may be as simple as a little prayer, such as ‘Lord please cleanse me’. In practise, that would be enough; I am sure God would see our hearts and we would be cleansed.
But, the amazing thing is seeing BOTH the symbolism of partaking in communion and being baptised, AND what goes on in the spiritual realms when we do so. Even that moment you become a Christian, there is something the eyes do not see. As well as a mass of angels in heaven dancing, our worldly eyes cannot see the amazing and unimaginable things happening to our spirit. The moment you commit yourself to God, as you live , there and then, outside of time and space you are nailed to the cross with Jesus and then you rise from the dead with Jesus! (Gal 2:20)
This is something that is continual like a beautiful blanket and presence over you, and around you, enfolding you. Even as you eat your Cheerios, spiritually you are connected to Jesus and the Father by the fact you are intertwined with Jesus into these historical events that saved humanity. It’s a mystery that our human minds cannot understand! The mystery has been revealed and Christ is in you! It is something we have to believe by faith, and have faith in, as our eyes are unable picture it. They are ‘unspeakable’ things. It’s a phenomenon, an amazing, mighty phenomenon!
In baptism you are uniting with Christ when he was baptised; His baptism, and like Jesus you are before God, you and Him alone. Through communion the blood and his body broken are what spiritually cleanse and sanctify you.
Isn’t that an amazing picture? It is as though you are at the feet of Jesus, and as He’s hanging on a cross looking down on you with grace, the blood that runs down the cross falls onto the ground and runs to grace the top of one of your fingers, just a speck on your finger tip, and this amazing precious blood washes away every unholy, disgusting sin that you have and will ever commit. You’re not just eating a piece of bread and drinking wine as you see with earthly eyes; it’s simultaneously a spiritual reality. THAT is how precious our Saviour’s blood is.
It doesn’t matter how we take part on earth in relation to denomination; the fact that we partake in these two things physically and spiritually is what’s important. And as we do, though our earthly eyes don’t see much going on, in the spiritual realm there’s an explosion of grace. We are cleansed and made holy, like Jesus, and we must have faith to know that this happens!
‘For by grace you have been saved through faith.’ Eph 2:8
So, don’t miss out on this amazing gift God has given us, to shake off the bits of grime and dirt that the world throws to cling to us.
It’s like Cilit Bang for our Godly white robes!
Cilit bang; Free (No cash needed)
Supplier: Jesus
Distributed by: John, through scripture
Ingredients: water, blood and the Spirit
Cilit bang; although you may not see immediate effects with your eyes, expect a BANG in the spiritual realms!
David Anderson
The prevailing view in our modern Western society is that sport is good.
In many ways it is, but in one major way sport isn’t good.
What I’m talking about is the way sport clashes with church.
Most children’s sports, especially, have their fixtures on a Sunday morning, presumably to avoid clashing with professional fixtures on Saturday afternoon, and because access to facilities and adult helpers is easiest on Sunday.
Why is this a problem?
Well I think it’s a problem for two key reasons:
1) It is setting up a straight choice between sport and church.
2) It results in physical training trumping spiritual training.
The impact of our children NOT doing physical training, and especially the dynamic of doing it as part of a team, in a ‘safe’ competitive environment is easy to see.
Childhood obesity, a lack of respect for rules and authority, a poor sense of facing challenges and opposition and finding ways to overcome them, and more… these are all easy to see.
The impact of our children NOT doing spiritual training, and especially the dynamic of doing it as part of a church, in a ‘safe’ spiritual environment is NOT so easy to see.
If we read the Bible we can see very clearly that physical training and exercise is vitally important. We were made with bodies that require constant activity to stay useful and functional. We were made to interact socially and to challenge each other into healthy growth (not compete to defeat each other). Physical training makes us better at doing any number of useful things.
But we can also see very clearly that spiritual training is also vitally important, and if anything it is more important than physical training.
This is what Paul says to Timothy:
“while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come.”
1 Timothy 4:8
Through physical training we are mindful of the needs of this present life, but in spiritual training we are mindful of BOTH this present life AND the next one.
It’s difficult when we can’t immediately see the impact of not having spiritual training through regularly and routinely attending church each Sunday morning, but it’s so essential that we do; both for this life and the next!
So, if you are currently choosing sport over church on a Sunday morning, let me exhort you to swap them around and find another time to do sport.
And if you are a parent with a child who plays fixtures on a Sunday morning (or wants to), let me exhort you to put church first for your child, and do sport another time, because your child will be significantly healthier as a result, BOTH in this life AND the next.
Autumn’s show of strength,
Turning once great oaks
In prime of presence
And greenest splendour,
Into frail and wizened
Silhouettes on broken furrows.
Barren fields of harvest
Spent, light waning,
Dropping, pulling down
The leaves to earth, and
Drawing cold down like a
Blanket over scented soil.
Crisp auburn turn,
Spreads a coloured carpet
Of beautiful decay,
And earth’s warm womb
Opens up to incubate
And store, before winter
Steals the day in night.
Warmth, held back, will wait
Until the turn again comes;
When the seed yields its shoot,
And the slumber its sleeper,
When life erupts in softness
With the turn of the weathered
Wheel of time and season.
How the turn of autumn
Comes so beautifully fast,
Relentlessly deconstructing
Nature’s flourish until
Only echo and memory of it
Remain in the remains.
My God specialises in ‘hard’.
When He sweated blood knowing
The cup He must drink from;
When He died there in the
Darkness of the 9th hour,
Abandoned and alone;
When He didn’t stay dead
But broke death’s power, forever;
He showed us what ‘hard’ looks like.
He chose ‘hard’ for us
So that when we face our
Own hard times; when we
Feel we can’t carry the load,
Or manage on our own,
We can look to Him who
Specialises in ‘hard’, and know
That nothing is impossible, and
In Him all things are possible,
If we but dare to believe.
So ‘hard’ for us becomes not
That which we cannot change,
Nor carry, nor manage on our own,
But having faith in the One
Who can change anything,
Who can carry our load,
And who will, in the hardest
Moments of your life,
Carry you through it
With arms that cannot fail.
(On the day of Jack’s stroke)
All of us, without exception, experience an urge deep in our souls to be loved.
So powerful is this urge that we will do all manner of crazy, random, weird, even unhealthy things to secure love.
Depending on our experience of whether we feel loved much or little, the outcome of our lives can take on all sorts of behavioural patterns, because ultimately we will do whatever it takes to satisfy that urge and feel loved.
The tragedy is that most of our behavioural patterns are destructive and self-serving, and therefore, ironically, not love at all.
As with pretty much everything (maybe everything) love has its counterfeits.
One of them is ‘acceptance’. The problem with acceptance is that we only accept people we like, and even then only when they please us and aren’t annoying us. It’s surely true that acceptance doesn’t extend to our enemies, especially if it doesn’t extend to our neighbour.
So we are always treading on eggshells because we must be acceptable to be accepted, and we use acceptance ourselves as currency, accepting more vigorously those we want to accept us, and refusing to accept those we don’t feel we need to be accepted by.
But that’s not love.
Paul sets up a definition of love for us that is hard to deny, even as it is hard to receive into our ‘accepting’ hearts.
“Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.
Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”
1 Corinthians 13:4-7
If we examine our hearts we can all too often find that our hearts aren’t oriented towards these things. We realise that our hearts paint the exact opposite picture to the one Paul is showing us.
But as bad as that may be, or seem to us, Paul is not defining the essence of love but the characteristics of it.
For each of us, our essence – or personality/personhood – and our characteristics are not the same thing.
Who we are is who God made us to be.
Our character is the persona we play out in and around the person God made us to be, like an actor in a play.
Our character can never escape the person, but if we don’t know who we really are then we will look to our character to try and tell us who we are.
This would be fine if, like God, we were perfect. Our character and person would be perfectly united so that one perfectly follows from the other and my characteristics would tell the story of my real personhood.
But we’re not like God, we are sinners who have been separated from God by our sin. Our rebellion has left us out in the cold and now we’re like wretched lost sheep without a shepherd, desperately trying to copy other sheep in the hope that it will lead us to back to the shepherd.
This is the pitiful nature of our love without God.
We have a need to love God deep in our hearts but we’ve rejected Him, and so we place ourselves there, and we simply don’t fit the space.
This affects ALL of our love relationships. Our self-inflected love struggles to express itself outwards to others without first establishing what benefit will come back in return. It is a selfish – not selfless – love.
God’s love is perfect. It is perfect because He is perfect.
God loves Himself first, because He is BOTH the most loving person there is, AND the most loveable person there is. That’s why He is triune; Father, Son and Spirit in perfect relationship within whom perfect love is both given and received, perfectly.
Without this love and this love relationship we wouldn’t exist, because it was out of a desire to share this perfect love with us that God created mankind in the first place.
You exist because God is love; perfect love.
And He made you for that love relationship. He made you to receive and be received, as a continual and perpetual relationship of love between you and He.
What happens when we reject God in our hearts is that this love dynamic gets short-circuited and it just keeps looping in on itself driving us more and more into love of self, fuelled by pride.
And this can take on different extremes in how it is lived out.
The one who is overtly arrogant and vain may display it more obviously, but someone who hates themselves and rejects the very basis of their intrinsic value is still saying, in their pride, “I know the real truth of who I am, and I’m worthless”, when in fact God has made them in His image and placed an innate and irreplaceable value on their life.
When we receive God – when we stop rebelling and stop rejecting Him – God’s love is poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit (Rom 5:5).
More than that… when we are born again we BECOME children of God. We have a total spiritual rebirth, and move from being dead in our sins to being alive in Christ. The change is total. We are no longer orphans but children of God. It’s a status thing, and an actual reality thing.
But even though God has poured His love into our hearts, we haven’t necessarily received it. We have everything we need to love as God loves; we have His love poured into our hearts.
And yet with our hearts full of His love, we still live as though we are not loved. We display all the same insecurities, and we crave acceptance in the same ways, because the love issue must be settled.
Unless, and until it is settled we will have God’s love in our hearts and it will just sit there.
We must receive God’s love. He has poured it out, but we still have to receive it.
Receiving God’s love means we have to receive Him. God’s love has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, not as a tangible ‘object’, but in Him as an expression of a heart which is towards us, and for us.
The Holy Spirit indwells as God’s love.
The Bible teaches us that we are perfected in love.
The Bible also teaches us that we are perfected by the Holy Spirit.
These are not conflicting statements, and they’re not saying two different things.
The first statement is the dynamic of how we are perfected; it is in the context and language of love.
The second statement tells us whom the person is who makes it possible, because love is entirely relational.
It cannot exist apart from a relationship.
If we receive God’s love then we have it.
If we receive God then we have Him.
This is a glorious, inseparable reality, with massive implications for our lives.
If you know you’re loved – if you know you’re fully and entirely a child of God – then you know you are free, and you know you are safe… ALWAYS!
Regardless of what external input you’re receiving about whether you’re loved or not, in your heart the love issue is settled.
This is the freedom necessary to love anyone.
Love God, love yourself rightly, love your spouse, children, family, friends, strangers… even enemies.
Jesus exercised this freedom perfectly.
Whilst we were still far off and enemies of God, Jesus dies for us to make us friends, brothers, sons, lovers.
There wasn’t then, and isn’t now, anything lacking in the love that the Father has for the Son, and vice versa, so Jesus didn’t die for us to fill a gap, or make up for something that was missing. He died for us because He had, and has, God’s perfect love and for Him the love issue is settled.
He knows He is loved when He rises from the waters of His baptism.
He knows He is loved when He is gloriously transfigured atop a mountain.
He knows He is loved when the Father offers Him the cup of suffering in the garden.
He knows He is loved when He is nailed to a cross and dying there with our sins – all of them – killing Him and crushing Him.
If you know you are loved then you know you are safe whatever is going on.
If you know you are loved then you are truly free to respond to the Father’s invitation to do life-giving and self-sacrificing acts of salvation for others.
The love issue must be settled.
For me the love issue was settled one afternoon at work when, for reasons I cannot now recall, I was in deep turmoil.
It was a downward spiral and I was truly overwhelmed, like I was drowning in waves too big for me.
In that moment, as I called out to the Father, He spoke these words into my spirit.
I am dearly loved.
I am intimately known.
I am valued beyond price.
I am precious.
Although the Father was speaking them into my being, they came in the first person, and so I was able to receive His word for me and pray His prayer for me.
In that moment the love issue was settled.
The love issue is settled for me – period.
You are the
Fundamentalest,
Supremiest,
Beautifuliest,
Perfectiest,
Gloriousest,
Holiestest,
Righteousest,
Graciousest,
Mercifulest,
Loveliestest,
Lovingest,
Fatherest,
Self-sufficientest,
Eternalest,
Consistentest,
Divinest,
One there is.
Oh God,
Give us super-superlatives to draw nearer in praising you,
Or may our dumbstruck silence pay the highestest tribute to You.
Amen
Sanctification is a messy business.
This sounds, perhaps, a bit strange, because for most of us our understanding of what sanctification means would frame itself around the belief that the Holy Spirit – a pure, perfect, opposite-of-messy Spirit – indwells in our beings to bring about sanctification.
So why messy?
Well it’s not because God is messy, or even that He prefers messiness. Indeed at the largest and smallest scale points of our known universe there is mind-boggling order.
The physical laws of our universe apply consistently to massive galaxies and new ‘particles’ being discovered in the Large Hadron Collider.
The creation narrative in Genesis describes a state of reality lacking order being brought into order. It describes the passage of night into morning – darkness into light – as each day marks a stage in creation.
No, it’s not because of God that sanctification is a messy business.
It’s because sin is messy.
When I say that sin is messy I mean it in every definition of the word; it’s untidy and unruly, and it’s like mire and filth.
In Psalm 40, David writes poetically of how he has been rescued from his impossible situation as he is surrounded by enemies. Trapped, he has received revelation of the parallel between this and his sin. He is in fact more trapped by his sin.
“For evils have encompassed me
beyond number;
my iniquities have overtaken me,
and I cannot see;
they are more than the hairs of my head;
my heart fails me.”
Psalm 40:12
Sacrifices and offerings don’t cut it, won’t cut it.
Empty offerings and actions, or even sincere ones, cannot separate David from his sin – they can only help him to account for them, and make some form of payment for them.
No. His deliverance requires divine intervention. His deliverance requires sanctification.
David needs to be lifted out of his situation and then separated from his sin, and separated from his sinful flesh which is the dwelling place of all that is evil in man.
“1 I waited patiently for the Lord;
he inclined to me and heard my cry.
2 He drew me up from the pit of destruction,
out of the miry bog,
and set my feet upon a rock,
making my steps secure.
3 He put a new song in my mouth,
a song of praise to our God.
Many will see and fear,
and put their trust in the Lord.”
Psalm 40:1-2
He can’t do it by himself as he is trapped and therefore unable to do it.
We too are trapped in our sin, and we too are unable to separate ourselves from our sin, to sanctify ourselves.
God has to reach down into the miry bog, the filthy darkness full of death and decay, stinking and wreaking of death and rotting. He has to stop us sinking in so deep that we drown in our own sin, like drowning in our own faeces.
He has to do it.
“2a He drew me up from the pit of destruction, out of the miry bog,”
He has to take us out of the bog – He has to separate us from our sin.
“2b …and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure.”
He has to set our life on a new footing where every step we take is secure, away from sin and towards His holiness and light.
“3a He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God.”
He has to teach us to be thankful as the fruit of a heart that has truly received His mercy by His grace.
“3b Many will see and fear, and put their trust in the Lord.”
He has to teach us to live out our holiness publicly so that people will see the change and fear and put their trust in the Lord.
At some point we have to reckon with the truth that sanctification is necessary because we continue to sin. I continue to make myself god and rebel against almighty God.
At the heart of this is not a battle between ‘gods’ but a rejection in my heart of the everlasting Father who loves me and sent His Son to die for me, and whose cross is available to me daily so that His shed blood might cleanse me daily.
Every time I sin I rehearse the cross of Christ in all its gory, deathly horror, and it’s only because I refuse to take a hard look at it, refuse to look Jesus in the eye as he hangs there, that I can merrily carry on sinning oblivious to the poison which is pervading my whole being.
But God is not like me. He is so utterly other… so HOLY.
And His will is that I share His holiness (Hebrews 12:10).
So as I can’t do it, so He does it.
He dives into my miry bog and saves me from myself.
He shows me the cross and holds my heart as I look so that the fruit of my looking won’t be guilt but repentance.
He orients my steps so that my worldview is always through the lens of the cross, and as I walk, singing the new song, I am empowered to remain focussed on the cross and not focussed on me, or the thing in front of me which is utterly limited by the constraints of this world.
This is a daily reality.
Every day I am in need of being lifted out of the miry bog, and every day I need to be separated from my sin.
Every day I need the cross of Christ, and every day I need His shed blood.
Yes I am saved the moment I believe by faith and am born again, but surely I can see that I am in need of continual saving.
And as a newborn in the Kingdom of God, surely I need to learn how to live in alignment with the holiness of God, and not walking by the sinful ways of my decaying flesh, because all I know is the way of sin until the Holy Spirit indwells.
Sanctification is a messy business, but it’s also a glorious one.
I have no faith in my own power to resist the temptations in my own flesh, but I have faith in God who cannot be tempted, which is why I pray “lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil”.
I have no faith that I will continually choose God over choosing me and exalting myself, but I have faith in God who chose me before the foundation of the world and wrote my name in His book.
Even David saw this:
“7 Then I said, “Behold, I have come;
in the scroll of the book it is written of me:
8 I delight to do your will, O my God;
your law is within my heart.””
Psalm 40:7-8
How glorious that even if I fail, which I will, all that I have to do to both be saved and glorify God is to turn to Him and put my trust in Him once more.
How glorious that His law is in my heart and so I know exactly where the boundaries lie, and I know right from wrong, and so can see when I am sinning and confess, rather then grope in the darkness unaware that it is my sin that is killing me.
I cannot do it, but He can do it, and He will do it, because He is faithful to Himself and He desires that I not die in my own filth, but that I sing a song of praise as He lifts me up, washes me down, and sets me off on the right path, solid underfoot.
Sanctification is easier to say than to do, but if we trust the Holy Spirit to do it, and we put down our arms and lower our defensive walls, then He will do it for us, and then our lives will say it (and sing it) as it is being done.
The more He does it, the more we do it with Him, and the less we walk in the way of sinners, and the more we delight in the law of God as children who know how to love through obedience and trust.
Then , and only then, are we fit to obey His command,
“You shall be holy, for I am holy.”
1 Peter 1:16 (cited from Leviticus 11:44)