Secular materialism, the great religion of our age, is the second-hand smoke that we breathe daily, lethally, and unwittingly. Although we may not feel in danger, there is cancer in the air. Therefore, it is of utmost importance that modern Christians analyse the way in which a post-Christian culture threatens our vitality.
Much of the challenge of the Christian life stems from the difficulty of finding a way to follow Jesus in the midst of all of the distraction and temptation of the modern world. The indispensable guide for staying on track is the teaching of the Bible.
It’s an incredible thought that God has projects for each one of us to be involved in. The truth is that the bigness or smallness of these tasks is of little importance. What is amazing is that none of us is overlooked. To be a disciple is to have a role in the mission of God. The implications of this are staggering.
Many of us are in hard places right now. Let me encourage us to follow the example of Abram. Don’t live in the suffocating narrowness of the present moment. Instead, lift your eyes to the horizon of promise and take time this week to explore the breadth, length, height and depth of an inheritance that can only be measured by God himself.
It’s no surprise that I love a good poem. Words have power. We Christians, of all people, should understand this. Strung together, words are not like a pane of glass that simply reveals things as they are in naked fact. A great sentence, or poem, or even novel, is much more like a painting. Words draw out to the surface aspects of reality that demand contemplation and response.
What does it look like to be a faithful member of an “awkward-sized” church? This is something for each one of us to reflect on. The truth is that each one of us contributes something important to the culture and shared life of the congregation.
Let me encourage you to reflect on this poem as you prepare for the Lord’s Table this Sunday. The message of the gospel is that of the poem: “Love bade me welcome.” Hear the voice of Jesus inviting you this Lord’s Day to lay down your shame, to detach from self-reflection, and to taste the sweetness of a food and drink that, among other things, is the voice of God whispering, “I love you.”
And so how do we live? We live with hope, we live with expectancy, we live watching the rays of light break in over the hilltops, watching Christ build his kingdom amongst us. Trusting that when Christ returns in glory, the world will take on colour and shape, that safety and warmth will dispel the darkness.
I’m trying to grow in this myself. But, perhaps we can grow together and, as we do, figure out what it means in an age of relentless distraction to listen well to the Word of God.
We are all aware that one of the functions of a calendar is to divide time neatly into units of years, months, weeks and days, and many of us think that this is all that calendars do. This is shortsighted. The truth is that every calendar performs a secondary, more significant function. They tell us who we are.
It’s easy for us to think that our toils amount to nothing more than the imprint of a wave on sand that is erased by the next surge. Not so, says Paul. Keep your eyes on heaven and you will see the divine eye overlooks no act of charity or kindness. Our works of service are more durable than the stars in the sky.
I must have been only seven or eight years old when my grandmother, who had become a Christian a few years earlier, told me in a very serious fashion that the Bible is not effective if it is closed. The Bible only works if it is kept open, she said.
Only when we start to see our sin as God sees it will we genuinely have “a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart” (verse 17). It is then that we can ask God to create a pure heart and renew a steadfast spirit within us (verse 10) and to restore the joy of our salvation (verse 12). In fact, the more we understand what our sin really is, the more we understand the depths of God’s amazing love and mercy towards us
Jesus’ communion was as clear and unbroken as sunlight on a cloudless day. In the carpenter shop, on the road, or in a boat with friends, Jesus basked in the presence of God. He and the Father were one.
Is such communion possible for us? Not perfectly, but increasingly.
Does your heart feel dry and empty when you try to pray? Do you quickly run out of things to say? Intersperse meditation and prayer. When we meditate, we refill the vessel of the heart so that, turning back to prayer, our heart is filled – not just with words – but affection.
Most of us experience periods of darkness in some form, times when life is particularly difficult, and it can be hard to see a way forward. If given the choice, I suspect that many of us would prefer to avoid dark times and the feelings that go with them. And yet, there are some things that we can only see, learn or experience when we are in the dark – the treasures of darkness.
I find that a lot of Christians (me included) are very bad at receiving compliments. Often, we are downright fearful of them. It is almost as if a compliment is a foreign and dangerous virus.
Christians are often so accustomed to Biblical language that the strangeness of its metaphors is lost on us. A classic example of this is John 7:37 where Jesus says, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink”.
May God help us to learn from the pitfalls these three men fell into, and by his grace enable each of us to finish well, so that we can say, as Paul did, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.”
The stupendous truth is that we are commissioned in secular roles for a spiritual vocation. Our noble challenge is to take up the elements of a mundane life and to offer them as nothing less than a burnt offering to the glory of God.
This holy week, may we be amazed afresh at what Jesus accomplished for us by his death and resurrection and may many people hear and accept the invitation he still gives to follow him.
The primary actor during baptism is not the person being baptised, but the God who is affirming past promises. Baptism is less of a sign of ‘my’ commitment to God than of God’s commitment to ‘us’. What the water of baptism symbolizes is that God will indeed do all that He has promised on behalf of His people. He will take us from death to life, cleanse us of sin, and fill us with His Mighty Spirit.
We are defined most deeply and permanently by a relationship to our Creator. God preceded us, made us, and loves us. Therefore, the only way to know ourselves is to know Him; He alone can tell us who we are.
To be prepared for the spiritual battle, we need to ensure that our loins are girded with truth. Do we have our belts firmly fastened? This is a question it is good to reflect on with God regularly. Are there areas where we need to grow in our understanding of God’s truth? Are there any areas in our lives where we are not actually living out what we know to be true? Then we can be prepared for action.
This is why resurrection is essential to our hope. Our humanity requires that we not just have a mind to contemplate but feet to stand on. Without bodies, we are not ourselves. We are made to dance, eat, and sing, not just reflect, admire, and adore.
I learned an important lesson that day. Although some parts of the Bible may indeed be easier for seekers to understand, God can use any part of his word to speak to people and open their hearts. Rather than focusing on what we want to communicate, it is important to try to understand the needs and questions of the person listening so that we can share in a way that speaks to them.
To walk into a Church is to see a middle class gathering of professional people who are put together, well-dressed, and orderly. The unspoken message is clear: we are not messy people in need of divine grace. To appear this way is to tell the unchurched a lie. The world needs to see that the church today is like the church that gathered around Jesus during his earthly ministry. We are a motley group of sinners who have no hope apart from God.
The key lesson is this: we are not God, and we cannot do everything perfectly. Each of us needs to ask the question, what am I willing to bomb in life so that I can fulfil what Jesus calls ‘the one thing needful’?
I have been wrestling with a sense of conviction. Why, I keep asking myself, do I not feel more of this thirst for the glorious things yet to be revealed? Why is it that I feel myself rooted to the present life as a tree is rooted to the earth?
Our greatest fulfilment does not come by resisting God or trying to become God, but by yielding ourselves completely to God. Although we cannot replicate the unique person of Christ, we can learn from him what it means to be truly human. I am most myself when I am most yielded to God. This is the existential truth of the incarnation.
Psalm 119, in effect, becomes a love poem to Christ. We don’t just rejoice in the law of God as distinct from Jesus; we rejoice in the law of God as an opportunity to show love and gratitude to Jesus.
We face many things in life which shake us emotionally or spiritually. Some only affect us or those close to us; others affect a larger group of people, or even the whole world. Perhaps someone reading this is feeling quite shaken at the moment and longing for the ground to be still again.
One of the great objectives of Community Week: for us to draw together as a single entity so that with one heart and one mind we can serve the Lord as a missional body on Montgomery Street, Easter Road, and wherever else He chooses to send us.
Let’s not place our security in bricks and mortar. Let’s not find our belonging in an address. Instead, let’s remember that ultimately God is our home, and this gives us the unshakable foundation we need as the world changes from generation to generation.
We know that our citizenship is in heaven, but it’s important to ask ourselves whether we are living as if we really believe it. It is possible, even as Christians, to become so comfortable in this world that we do not actually long for the world to come. Are we eagerly awaiting a Saviour from heaven, or do we want to have some more time here?
Can we utilise Halloween without engaging in its unsavouriness? Can we leave the lights on and offer a warm welcome or should we retreat behind the sofa?
Let us be honest, this is a matter of individual conscience and there is great liberty to engage or not engage as each person feels led. However, please read the following suggestions to help guide you in how you might spend the evening of Tuesday 31st October.
What then is the spiritual need of the city today? My opinion is that the primary need is for evangelical churches like us to return to a more locally-rooted, community-centred ministry.
When we are ‘put’ somewhere we don’t like or don’t find comfortable, it can be tempting to ask for a change of location. But what if God wants us in that very place to advance the gospel?
When I was a child, I often walked into churches and wondered why everything felt dead. As I became a man, I realised that the problem was not the church, but my heart. God was present; the aridness did not come from without, but within. Slowly, as I learned what it meant to come to Jesus and drink of His every-flowing grace, my entire experience of church changed. Church shifted from feeling like a desert to being an oasis. Worship became an experience of gulping grace and bathing in love. The shift was transformational.
For us to serve and bear the weight of each other’s burdens, we need be aware of what others are facing, on a personal level. We seek to live out this life together, daily, with the difficulties, and the joys. This takes a high priority because when we love and serve each other as scripture calls us too, we display the gospel to a lost and dying world. The advancement of God’s kingdom is what He commands us to participate in (Matt. 28:19-20), more than the advancement of our own lives.
A sign of authentic faith is when a person stops asking the question, ‘what do I want from life?’ and begins to ask a different question, ‘what does God want from me?’ This shift is a sign that the idol of self has been dislodged and that there is room in the heart for Jesus to be Lord. Only then can life-planning become productive because only then is planning an act of obedience.
Part of the reason why I want us to look at the horizon is because I genuinely believe we are headed in an exciting direction. Last Sunday morning we thought together about the gospel imperative to “enlarge the place of your tent” and “strengthen your stakes” (Is. 54:2). This is a timely word to us.
We find it difficult because it is difficult, but it is worth fighting daily for as being nourished by God’s Word over the long haul will bring vitality, life and joy in the Lord Jesus.
We belong to God and his desire is for us. That is stronger than any desire sin may have. As we seek to heed God’s warnings and avoid the danger of sin crouching at our door, we do not do so in our strength but in his mighty power, knowing that we are his.
Imagine what it would look like for you to live a life consecrated to God – not just in the morning when you have a devotion, or at church on Sundays – but with everything, all of the time. This, after all, is the deep intent and purpose of God. His will is not just that we praise Him occasionally, but that our entire lives are summed up in a single word, worship.
When we think back to Jesus being scourged by the Roman guards, or having to carry the cross-beam to Golgotha, we need to own the truth that he did this so that the curse of sin could be lifted from our shoulders. Jesus was not a victim; he was a sacrifice. He willingly gave his back to the whip of justice so that our guilty souls could be pardoned.
What we need to remember is there are two sides to the tapestry, we might not be able to makes sense of the back, but God is the master weaver who is producing a glorious picture on the front using the good, the bad and the ugly threads of our lives to produce his masterpiece.
We left Malawi when I was five years old, under difficult circumstances and landed on the doorstep of my British grandparents with only the clothes on our backs. Raised in a small rural mining village in Lanarkshire, we were the first black kids that many of the villagers had ever met. It was certainly a culture shock for both parties.
One of the great dangers of being an adult is feigned competence. After having lived several decades, we slip into thinking that we have the wisdom and strength needed to manage our lives. Without being fully aware of what is going on, the attitude of dependence evaporates and we are left in a hardened state of self-reliance.
One of the ways we can avoid this threat is by meditating on Jesus’ words, “I am the light of the world”.
Last week marked 25 years since David and I arrived in Singapore to attend OMF’s Orientation Course before heading to Japan a few weeks later…As Christians we are not just to remember God’s works on special occasions or at the Lord’s supper. We are to meditate on them in our daily lives.
