Not what was expected
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.
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.
One of Satan’s favourite tactics is to convince us that we’ve exhausted God’s willingness to show grace to us. We imagine that the grace of God is a finite reservoir. To draw from it is to deplete it, and to deplete it is, eventually, to run dry. Yet, to think this way is to twist the beauty of the divine nature into a ludicrous gargoyle. With God, grace is not finite, but infinite.
We all land in desperate situations. Sometimes it comes through a diagnosis; sometimes through a surprising tumble into sin; sometimes through a family, social, or even political crisis. Yet, one thing we can be sure of is this: at some point, each of us will ask the question, “Is there still hope for me?”
Our mission at Holyrood is to be a disciple-making community. It’s worth taking a moment to think about the meaning of this statement. The statement exposes two common errors in how a lot of people think about discipleship.
A lot of people don’t know much about Holyrood Evangelical Church. Do you want to know more about us? This will help.
As we live in this fallen world, we are surrounded by brokenness. We experience brokenness in our own lives too. Jars of clay can crack and break easily. Yet Psalm 147:3 tells us that the Lord “heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds”. God is like the master kintsugi artist.
Church life is great until suddenly things go sour. Far too often, silent friction among members is undetected until a fire breaks out. The best way to avoid such interpersonal disasters is to press into the Scriptures again and again in order to glean the wisdom that we need to order to live out an ethic of love in the midst of unavoidable tension and frustration.
The past is filled with hidden treasures. One of these is the Christian tradition of prayerfully following the Stations of the Cross on Good Friday. The idea behind the practice is to use physical movement and a series of gospel readings to slow down time and imaginatively retrace the events that led finally to Jesus dying on the cross.
We do not need to do purification rituals to be made clean. Our faith is not based on what we do, but on what Jesus has done for us. Jesus took our uncleanness and made us clean, acceptable in God’s sight, and to be sons and daughters of the king. And that is worth talking about.
In order to escape the individualist mindset, one type of relationship we ought to pursue in life is that of mentorship. Mentorship is a unique type of friendship that is based on wisdom rather than pleasure or affection. Whereas most friendships are based on a kind of symmetry of status, mentorship is intentionally asymmetrical.
One of the great privileges of being an adopted sibling of Jesus is that the Throne of Glory is for us a Throne of Grace. What a joy to know that we do not need to hide our weakness from our king. His power is not against us, but for us.
Proverbs 12:15 tells us that, “The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but a wise man listens to advice.” If we want to be wise, we must ask for advice, but we must also be discerning about who we listen to. I think there are at least four traps that we might fall into…
Although it is true that the sin of a believer is washed away once-and-for-all through a single act of salvation, there is another sense in which we must bathe our consciences regularly in order to maintain a sense of freedom and intimacy before God. How does a person do this? What is the process that we need to go through in order to be freed from a reoccurring sense of the shame and guilt of sin?
From beginning to end, the Bible mentions peace as one of choice blessings that the LORD reserves for his people. Yet, any honest Christian will admit that each day presents new worries that threaten to disrupt the repose of a heart resting in the love of God.
One of the marvels of the gospel is that it reveals Jesus to be the husband of the church. In saying this, we need to understand just how surprising this insight is. According to Paul, Jesus and the church are the ground, end, and fulfilment of what it means to be bride and groom. All other marriages are a pale reflection, at best, of the covenant between the Saviour and his bride.
In February, we will be heading into a new study as home groups. Our curriculum will be a guide to the book of Acts called ‘Dangerous Faith’, which has been produced by Open Doors. My hope and prayer is that this study will unsettle us in a good and healthy way. In the West, we are too easily surprised by suffering, angered by opposition, and disheartened by cultural friction. We need a shift of perspective.
I hope that in my weekend at Holyrood from the 28-29th January, I will have the opportunity to thank many of you face to face. But even if not, please know how thankful I am to God for all of you and for that special partnership from “the first day”, 25 years ago, until now.
HEC currently enjoys a remarkable spirit of unity and stability as a congregation. We should give thanks for this. As the Psalmist notes, it is a divine blessing when brethren dwell together in unity (Ps. 133). At the same time, we should not be naïve. A ship on the open seas will eventually encounter choppy water.
The danger of this logic is that we begin to think that God’s love is dependent upon our love. If we falter in our feelings toward God, the relationship between us and Him crumbles. Thus, when we adopt this mindset, we lose our ground of confidence before God. Instead of knowing the security of being an adopted child, we feel the anxiety of an employee facing a daily performance review.
Given, then, that there were no positive additions to the experience of the Son, but only negative ones, why would he do it? Why would the perfect joy of divine life be relinquished in order to be publicly executed as a loathed criminal? There is only one answer. Love.
There is one passage that each of us will hear a dozen times over Christmas: ‘For unto us a child is born, for unto us a Son is given…And he shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace’ (Is. 9:6). There is a puzzle in this verse that a lot of Christians never pause to figure out. What does it mean that Jesus is ‘Everlasting Father’?