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About eps992014

a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, a mother, wife, sometime runner, singer, gardener, and proud Scot

Hope…

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Those of us who are strong and able in the faith need to step in and lend a hand to those who falter, and not just do what is most convenient for us. Strength is for service, not status. Each one of us needs to look after the good of the people around us, asking ourselves, “How can I help?”

That’s exactly what Jesus did. He didn’t make it easy for himself by avoiding people’s troubles, but waded right in and helped out. “I took on the troubles of the troubled,” is the way Scripture puts it. Even if it was written in Scripture long ago, you can be sure it’s written for us. God wants the combination of his steady, constant calling and warm, personal counsel in Scripture to come to characterise us, keeping us alert for whatever he will do next….. Just think of all the Scriptures that will come true in what we do!…. Isaiah’s word: ‘There’s the root of our ancestor Jesse, breaking through the earth and growing tree-tall, tall enough for everyone everywhere to see and take hope!’ 

Oh! May the God of green hope fill you up with joy, fill you up with peace, so that your believing lives, filled with the life-giving energy of the Holy Spirit, will brim over with hope!

(Rom 15.1-13 – selection: The Message)

Who is going to harm you if you are eager to do good? But even if you should suffer for what is right, you are blessed. “Do not fear what they fear; do not be frightened.” But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.  But do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience so that those who speak maliciously against your good behaviour in Christ may be ashamed of their slander.

(1Pet 3.13-16)

Jesus commissioned his disciples – and thus all those who would follow him – to go and make disciples, to proclaim that God’s kingdom was near and to call people to saving faith. Do you do that often? I don’t. I am scared of causing offence by speaking about Jesus and his unique position, his claim to be the only means by which we must be saved. I don’t know how to present the need for salvation to people who don’t have any concept of sin. I am scared of getting into arguments and of upsetting those whom I wish to love in Jesus name… I avoid the challenge to be a witness. I am in very real danger of succumbing to the temptation to abandon what God has revealed in scripture about himself and humanity, in order to make the gospel acceptable and attractive.

When it is written down like this, it is clear that this is disobedience to Jesus’ Great Commission; it is to fail in our calling as the Church. And yet, don’t we see it all around us? The pressure to abandon the culturally uncomfortable bits of the bible’s teaching is enormous; the argument that if we just ditch certain doctrines, then the gospel will become madly attractive is insidious… We must resist it, and yet the temptation persists.

In this context, I am encouraged by Paul’s prayer for the believers in Rome – quoted above – and by the picture of human lives so filled to overflowing with divine joy and hope that they shine like lights in the darkness and draw people like moths to a flame. I want that kind of life! I want to be so bright for Jesus that people will ask for a reason for the hope that is within me – not least because if they have asked, then I have full permission to share my own experience of Jesus, my own faith-story, no matter how weird it may sound to their ears! Who knows what God may then do with that story…

This is the hope that drives loving mission, compassionate service, and sustains believers in every trial of life. This is hope in Christ, not in human abilities or innate goodness; it is not arrogant, but humble because it is all Christ’s work which has achieved the solid ground of security we have as believers. It is not mere human optimism, or resilience, but an otherworldly certainty which informs all our choices and values.

O Father God, thank you that you know my weakness and fear; thank you that in Christ, I am strong and when you call me to serve, to witness, to live for you, I can be sure you will enable me in each situation. I pray that you will indeed so fill me with a fire-bright hope that I might shine for Christ my Lord; may I be a channel through which you draw people to consider the claims of Jesus to be the Saviour of the world. In humility, with honesty and also with childlike trust in you, may I live to glorify my Lord and to bear faithful witness to him. Amen.

Am I calling God a liar?

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“I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws,, you will be my people and I will be your God.”

(Ez 36.25-28)

Sing, O daughter of Zion; shout aloud O Israel! Be glad and rejoice with all your heart, O daughter of Jerusalem. The Lord has taken away your punishment, he has turned back your enemy. The Lord, the King of Israel is with you; never again will you fear any harm. On that day they will say…’The Lord your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing’

(Zeph 3.15-17)

But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.

(1 Pet 2.9)

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight… In [Christ] we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding.

(Eph 1.3,4&8,9)

As Jesus-believers, we are warned not to think too much of ourselves, to be wary of arrogance, false pride, a ‘holier-than-thou’ attitude to our neighbours. The whole thrust of the gospel is that of ourselves, we are helpless and dead in our sins, and it is only God’s grace which can deliver and transform us – we have nothing to boast about for ourselves! Rather, our boast is in our Lord and Saviour, in his power, and beauty and love and sacrifice. BUT, there is a place for a proper pride, a genuine assurance in who we are as God’s beloved children, and that is what I want to think about today.

The word of God is absolutely emphatic in its description of those who are saved by faith – we are now alive with divine life; we are purified by the blood of Jesus; we are God’s priestly people, and have free access into His holy presence. We are beloved, accepted, rejoiced over with singing – all the time and forevermore. It may not look like it to the watching world, but our glory is – like Christ’s – hidden from their eyes until his return when it will be revealed in full. We are as believers what God always intended us to be, and we must never be ashamed of that, nor misrepresent it. What God has called good, we must not dishonour by calling bad, shameful or unworthy.

Our awareness of the sin which will persist until we die must not be allowed to overshadow the reality of what grace has done in our lives, and of what God says is true about us. If I insist on dwelling on and bemoaning sin – which God has completely forgiven in Christ – then I am turning my back on God’s grace and insulting him. He does not continually condemn his children, why should we do so? A false humility, an insistence on our unworthiness and refusal to recognise what Christ has accomplished for us is not a good witness. It is a trap of the evil one, a false self-righteousness, when we refuse to live in the joyous freedom of those whose sins are completely forgiven. Yes, we are sinners, BUT we are forgiven and reborn into new life, and to deny this by living with an attitude of resigned embattling against sin is to call our God a liar, to deny the completeness of Christ’s work on the cross. May we be spared such shameful folly!

Almighty God, Holy and Good and altogether worthy of all praise, I thank you today for the power of Christ to save, to re-birth and make new. I rejoice in what you tell me is true about myself as your beloved child; I accept your word as the only real source of truth and stand proudly as your daughter, a royal princess and priestess of the good news. O let me never dishonour or misrepresent your grace by failing to live in the freedom which that blood won for me on the cross! For the glory of Jesus my Lord, Amen.

On being gagged…

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But God’s angry displeasure erupts as acts of human mistrust and wrongdoing and lying accumulate, as people try to put a shroud over truth. But the basic reality of God is plain enough. Open your eyes and there it is! By taking a long and thoughtful look at what God has created, people have always been able to see what their eyes as such can’t see: eternal power, for instance, and the mystery of his divine being. So nobody has a good excuse. What happened was this: people knew God perfectly well, but when they didn’t treat him like God, refusing to worship him, they trivialized themselves into silliness and confusion so that there was neither sense nor direction left in their lives. They pretended to know it all, but were illiterate regarding life.

(Rom 1.18-22)

“I’ve made myself available to those who haven’t bothered to ask. I’m here, ready to be found by those who haven’t bothered to look. I kept saying, ‘I’m here, I’m right here’ to a nation that ignored me. I reached out day after day to a people who turned their backs on me. People who make wrong turns, who insist on doing things their own way…

(Isa 65.1-2)

Don’t overlook the obvious here, friends. With God, one day is as good as a thousand years, a thousand years as a day. God isn’t late with his promise as some measure lateness. He is restraining himself on account of you, holding back the End because he doesn’t want anyone lost . He’s giving everyone space and time to change.

(2Pet 3.8-9)

If our message is obscure to anyone, it’s not because we’re holding back in any way. No, it’s because these other people are looking or going the wrong way and refuse to give it serious attention.. They’re stone-blind to the dayspring brightness of the message that shines with Christ, who gives us the best picture of God we’ll ever get.

(2 Cor 4.3-4)

Jesus commissions his followers to go and make disciples, to share the good news to the ends of the earth and bring glory to God as the kingdom is established. And we know it is the best news that could possible be given! We know how desperately humanity needs to find hope, peace and forgiveness; to find its place in God’s great purposes and to know the deep satisfaction of being fully what we are made to be – God’s people, made in his image to know and delight in him and what he has done for us!

But what do we do when faced with friends and family and colleagues whose lives are without Christ, and who appear unaware of sin, confident in humanity’s potential to improve and overcome challenges, or else despairing of anything beyond this mortal sphere and sure there is no eternity to consider in their life-choices? We remain silent, we defer to their preferences and speak platitudes – why? Because they have made it abundantly clear that they will not even consider the possibility of the gospel being true, or that God exists and has revealed himself in Christ. Their determined assumptions act like a gag, and we are silenced by their confidence.

In this frustrated silence, we surely gain some insight into the grief of God as it is expressed in Isaiah’s prophecy – the inexpressible pain of the rejected parent, watching precious children embrace folly with all its bitter consequences because they will not hear the parental voice of love calling them to safety and hope. And how are we to react? It is not for us to let anger dictate our actions, but love, that love which is to desire the best for the other – God’s sacrificial and bold love which paid the highest price for our salvation. To love those who do not want to hear is to be humble, patient and persevering; to be loyal, and respect their opinions even though we do not agree; to be true friends and to speak honestly of God’s care for them, as the basis for all we do and say. It is only by God’s power at work in their lives that people come to faith in Christ – and we cannot persuade or cajole them into accepting him. What we can do is to speak gently and persistently of our own faith, of God’s work in our lives, of our belief that he is working in the world and powerful to fulfill his purposes which are good.

Heavenly Father, thank you for letting us share in small measure the grief which is yours over the determination of so many people to have nothing to do with your love, to reject Christ in all his glory, and to do life their own way – with all its dark consequences. Let this grief not drive us to despair, but rather to persistent prayer and humble, trusting faith. You call us to bear witness in word and deed; Lord help us to obey and to leave the consequences in your hands. Let us never become numb to the pain of unbelief in others, but let it keep us tender-hearted, and dependent on your Spirit to direct our service. Let us be generous in sharing our faith, and genuine in valuing each individual as your precious child, known and loved and welcome if they will only receive the gift you offer so freely in Christ. For his name’s sake we pray, Amen.

He doesn’t get tired…. ever, even of me!

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I lift up my eyes to the mountains: from where will my help come? 

My help is from the Lord, maker of heaven and earth.

He does not let your foot stumble. Your guard does not slumber.

Look, He does not slumber nor does He sleep, Israel’s guard.

The Lord is your guard, the Lord is your shade at your right hand. By day the sun does not strike you, nor the moon by night. The Lord guards you from all harm, He guards your life. The Lord guards your going and your coming, now and forevermore.

(Ps 121, R Alter translation)

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathise with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are – yet was without sin. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.

(Heb 4.15&16)

“I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me – just as the Father knows me and I know the Father – and I lay down my life for the sheep…… My sheep listen to my voice; I know them and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no-one can snatch them out of my hand.”

(Jn 10.14,15,27-29

I think it is impossible for mere mortals to grasp the passionate tenderness with which our heavenly Father loves us, and which our Lord and Shepherd brings to his care for us his flock. We are not equipped to compass such depths and heights of love, and can only glimpse them, catch brief tastes of his delight in us; discern as if from afar the sweetness of his care and the power which he is continually exerting on our behalf. Those tantalising moments are enough though, aren’t they? We are lifted up to mountain tops for a little time, viewing the great glory unrolling all around us, and basking in the love of the eternal as in the rays of the sun.

Our God never fails in his care for his children; never grows tired of hearing their voices, receiving their petitions and sacrificial praise as they bring all that troubles them to his throne of mercy and grace. Our Saviour in glory bears the remembrance of our weakness and mortality, the way our burdens lie so heavy and our horizons shorten abruptly in the face of fear, illness and doubt. He never, ever, ever grows weary of lifting those burdens, wiping our tears and loving us as tenderly as only he can. I find this unbelievably comforting and it inspires me to worship and praise this loyally loving Shepherd, resting in what he has done and who he is for me and for all that is good, true and eternal. And to think that it is as I rest, as I fling my burdens at his feet over and over again, that I am worshipping and bringing him glory – what a marvellous transaction! The thing I most need to do, is the very thing which best honours my dying and rising Lord in all his glory.

Friends, let this truth be our anchor and rock as we face trials – our own, those of our family and friends, and in our wider world. No matter what is going on, the best thing to do is to bring it to the Lord, rush headlong with grief, pain, fear, doubt, weariness, the lead-weight of inexplicable suffering – and lie before him in complete honest abandonment. He will never abandon his lamb, nor spurn the cries of his beloved; he is never asleep on the job, or bored with our presence, but longs that we share it all with him.

This pattern of life doesn’t guarantee that we will see every trial fade away like dew in the warmth of the sun; even now, I can think of faithful believing friends dealing with the suicide of a spouse, the painful death-before-death of a spouse through dementia, the resurgence of cancer, the abrupt curtailing of health and strength by a stroke, the slow debilitating progress of degenerative conditions, the apparently permanent rejection by beloved children of the faith in which they were raised.. and that is before I look to wider social ills and global uncertainties. We do not become believers to become wealthy or secure in the world’s eyes, but to gain eternal life and the sure hope of a glorious future which nothing can steal from us.

For us, to live is Christ, and to die is gain – and since we must face trouble in this world, surely it is good news that we have the unwearying, loving presence of our Lord as we go, and his assurance that we are ever safe with him, no matter what happens. May He give us grace to walk by faith, day-by-day, trusting him completely, for His name’s sake, Amen.

Seasons…

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Let love and faithfulness never leave you; bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart. then you will win favour and a good name in the sight of God and man. Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight. Do not be wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord and shun evil.

(Prov 3.3-7)

There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain, a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.

(Ecc 3.1-8)

Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Share with God’s people who are in need. Practise hospitality. Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. Live in harmony with one another.. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone… do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

(Rom 12.12-18&21)

Life is feeling more than a little frantic just at the moment… and I am aware that I don’t really have  a strategy for untangling and prioritising all the various demands on my time – not to mention the competing desires of my heart! Perhaps you can identify with this sense of continually being distracted by another thing on the to-do list, or the sense of so much that remains merely a dream instead of becoming reality?

With the blessings of health, strength and prosperity comes responsibility and the need for wisdom in using those gifts, together with the gift of each new day and its opportunities. How on earth am I to know what the pattern of my life should be? And is there an ideal pattern which I have to discern? – perhaps ‘should’ is the wrong word! It is very easy to fall into the trap of worrying instead of praying and asking for wisdom – which as the writer James points out, is given to all who ask for it by God. This wisdom is what I need in this season of life; wisdom to discern where God is calling me to be present, and to whom I should be giving my time and attention; wisdom to use the gifts and skills I possess, and to know where my lack of qualification is not a drawback and that God is asking me to offer my inadequacies for him to transform! 

In the same way as the seasons of nature follow one another in a cycle of life, death and re-birth, so also our lives are seasonal, and in each one we may have different tasks and places in which to serve. Wisdom helps me to recognise those seasons, and to navigate them with faith and in peace. Wisdom can also help me to accept that I am not failing when I lay aside certain activities, or let a relationship slip into a less intense phase – my loving Father knows my limitations, and will grant me peace as I entrust all that I cannot do to his provident undertaking.

Our Lord Jesus always seemed to have time to be interrupted; and yet he was fully focussed on his calling and fulfilled all that God had purposed for him to do. I covet that wisdom and discernment for myself, as my limitations require me to make choices, to let go and to leave undone. 

Heavenly Father, thank you that you know my limitations, that I can’t be in two places at once, or fit more than 24 hours into a day. I believe that you have things for me to do in this season of life, and I therefore ask your wisdom to recognise what I must prioritise, and what I must surrender. Let me trust you for the people and things left aside in this season, as I seek to serve those to whom I am called – to mourn with those who mourn, and rejoice with those who rejoice; to gather or to scatter; to be silent or to speak. Let me live fully present with you in this season, for your glory and the blessing of your people, in Jesus’ name, Amen.

 

Getting out of the valley…

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Who of us can dwell with the consuming fire?… Those who walk righteously and speak what is right… they are the ones who will dwell on the heights, whose refuge will be the mountain fortress. Their bread will be supplied, and water will not fail them. 

Your eyes will see the king in his beauty and view a land that stretches afar… your eyes will see Jerusalem, a peaceful abode, a tent that will not be moved, its stakes will never be pulled up, nor any of its ropes broken. There the Lord will be our Mighty One. It will be like a place of broad rivers and streams.. For the Lord is our judge, the Lord is our lawgiver, the Lord is our king; it is he who will save us.

(Isa 33.14-17,20-22)

Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers, but whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law day and night. That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither – whatever they do prospers.

(Ps 1.1-3)

“It is written; ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.'”

(Matt 5.4)

Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

(Jn 4.14)

In these days I am testifying with a full and grateful heart to God’s keeping and directing of me over these months; for his sustaining grace through struggle and weariness; guarding me from folly and from dishonouring him as I seemed to be walking in a maze of dead ends down in the valleys, hungry for the wide open spaces which I believed to be out there! Thanks be to God, who has led and fed, and kept company with me, through his people and through his word – provided for the feeding of his people, who have the privilege of continually being nourished and learning afresh from it. I have received a revelation of grace, experienced the unravelling of knots and been led up over the foothills to the great ‘high ways’ of God’s people.

I am rejoicing in God’s goodness – with renewed appetite for his word and confidence in its power as I see it bear fruit in my life. I am delighting in prospect of a study group with whom to share in learning, sisters in Christ with whom to grow in faith, to share the sheer joy of learning to know God better, to see Jesus more clearly and to worship him with them. A rich banquet is laid out before us on which to feast, where we will meet God and honour him. Truly, our good shepherd provides good food and clear waters for us!

There is a sense of having left behind the narrow and baffling lanes in the valley with their restricted views and lack of perspective. Now I am walking on the ridges, my vision is far-ranging; I can see where I am and where I am going within the context of God’s great plan of redemption and re-creation. The air is clean and invigorating, the prospect glorious, I have food and drink in abundance for my spirit, and lack nothing.

And by whose agency am I brought to this place? By the One whose righteousness is now my inheritance and secure possession, by Jesus Christ the one who has paid for all my sins and through whom I am adopted as God’s beloved daughter. It is all by his loving sacrifice, and thus to him belongs all my praise and thanks. I see the king in his beauty, and the glorious sight brings me such peace and hope. I see the spacious land to which I now belong, and where I will dwell with God and all the saints, and I am near to bursting point with gladness and praise!

Heavenly Father, I thank you for the lessons which you have been teaching me in the valley; and for your preservation of me in those devious and trying paths. I praise you that your grace is now more fully revealed to me, and I am reinvigorated for my journey. Let me not forget the lessons of the valley – above all let me not forget that I can trust you to be working even when I am baffled, grieved and weak. In the name and for the sake of my precious Lord and Saviour, Jesus, I pray, Amen.

Daring to believe….

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Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has gone through the heavens, Jesus the son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathise with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are – yet was without sin. 

Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.

(Heb 4.14-16)

..he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him…

(Ps 103.10-13)

IF we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.

(1 Jn 1.8&9)

Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him…The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body.. For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace!

(Rom 6.8,10-12&14)

I wrote last week of how a long-standing confusion and trouble in my thinking was being gently removed as God revealed what I have long misunderstood.. perhaps you wondered what that was?! Well, I have long been bewildered by what I – as a mature, well-taught christian woman should think about the fact that I still sin. What should my attitude be? Do I beat myself up for my shortcomings? It has been all-too-often the case that the devil has used awareness of sin as a means to entrap and bind me in self-pity and despair – which then made me feel even worse as that was not godly!!

Anyway, what I want to write about today, and perhaps more in coming weeks, is what God in his mercy and gentle compassion has shown me to be true, and to share something of the transformation which that is bringing. I want to glorify and praise the God who touches his children just where they need healing, and to encourage any reader who might be similarly struggling, not to lose heart..

As a believer, I am new-made and as dead to the power of sin and death as Jesus is in his glory at God’s right hand. The authority of sin over me is broken, and it no longer masters my heart or mind, nor defines my being. I share the life of God, since the Holy Spirit dwells within me; I am learning to recognise sin and to name and view it as God does (this is what confession means) – a blight upon his good creation. As God’s beloved child, my problems are his problems – and everything that troubles me is his business, as every loving parent knows!

The sin which remains active in the life of the believer is not part of their born-again self. It is tied up with the mortal body, which one day will be put off and transformed into a perfect and sinless one. It is removed from the core of our being, detached from our essential new self as Christ-followers. We are now on God’s side against it, and the glorious news is that in Jesus, sin IS already conquered – both past and also future sins which his children may commit before they die. So I am simply being invited to access all the rich resources of Christ in dealing with a problem which is NO LONGER an issue for God. This has been a critical point for me to grasp, and how gloriously, joyously liberating it is to realise that my Father delights to show forgiveness to me for as long as I live.

 Beloved Heavenly Father, how glorious it is to know that I am the object of your love and compassion even as I depend upon your abundant provision over and over again. Thank you that you have shown me that you are not reluctant to pour out all and more than I can ever need, since this is exactly what Jesus died and rose again to make possible! I am now and forever united with you, and the sin that remains is your business to deal with – the more often I come to you for aid, the better pleased you are! Thank you, and all my praise is yours for such grace in Jesus my Lord, Amen.

Not make-believe… truth

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Could it be any clearer? Our old way of life was nailed to the cross with Christ, a decisive end to that sin-miserable life – no longer at sin’s every beck and call! What we believe is this: if we get included in Christ’s sin-conquering death, we also get included in his life-saving resurrection.

We know that when Jesus was raised from the dead it was a signal of the end of death-as-the-end. Never again will death have the last word. When Jesus died, he took sin down with him, but alive he brings God down to us. From now on, think of it this way: sin speaks a dead language that means nothing to you; God speaks your mother tongue, and you hang on every word. You are dead to sin and alive to God. That’s what Jesus did.

That means you must not give sin a vote in the way you conduct your lives. Don’t give it the time of day. Don’t even run little errands that are connected with that old way of life. Throw yourselves wholeheartedly and full-time – remember you’ve been raised from the dead! – into God’s way of doing things. Sin can’t tell you how to live. After all, you’re not living under that old tyranny any longer. You’re living in the freedom of God.

(Rom 6.6-14, the Message)

God brought you alive – right along with Christ! Think of it! All sins forgiven, the slate wiped clean, that old arrest warrant cancelled and nailed to Christ’s cross. So if you’re serious about living this new resurrection life with Christ, act like it….. Your old life is dead. Your new life, which is your real life – even though invisible to spectators – is with Christ in God. He is your life.

(Col 2.13&14; 3.1,3&4)

Isn’t it weird, how the same words which have been spoken to or read by you for years can suddenly become illuminated with new meaning?! These past months have found me experiencing the personal equivalent of shifting tectonic plates, as my understanding of a particular and key aspect of faith has changed.

It has taken years for me to get to this place, a place where I really know just what it is that I have not understood, and can see clearly the problems that stem directly from that failure. I have prayed and talked, and God in his mercy has directed me through so many different  things – books, recorded sermons, public worship and confession, and above all through the study of his word, particularly in Colossians. I didn’t know it at the time, but this book has been absolutely the right one for me just now!

I am rejoicing in a new sense of who I am as a believer – of the difference that it makes to accept Jesus as Lord of my life. I now more fully grasp what it is to be ‘in Christ’, to be a partaker through him in the divine life and a channel for divine power and love to reach this broken and needy world.

It is not merely make-believe to think of myself as a beloved daughter of the Almighty, it is the truth. It is not a case of pretending something until it becomes real, but a case of stepping confidently into a new reality and then living it out to my fullest capacity. When my heavenly Father looks at me, he doesn’t have to pretend that I am acceptable, doesn’t have to pretend that I am beautiful and pure. It.. is.. the truth, the fact, the reality. How marvellous is that!!

Heavenly Father, I thank and praise you for you have rescued me from darkness into light and liberty in Christ Jesus. I praise and exalt my Saviour, who is the source, the foundation of faith and whose redeeming love for me has won my freedom and established your kingdom. I praise Jesus Christ as the object of faith – all that I hope for, all that I depend on is in him and therefore it is only by faith in him that I can live. He is the author and also the perfecter of faith; he is its beginning and its end. O let me continue to work out in my life what it means that for me to live is Christ, and to die is gain!

Let me learn to love my Saviour more, to enthrone him in my life, to worship him and truly to live in all the riches which he has won for me, and which are my inheritance in him. O Lord, teach me! In the name and for the sake of my Lord Jesus, Amen.

When love seems baffled…

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The first thing I want you to do is pray. Pray every way you know how, for everyone you know. 

Pray especially for rulers and their governments to rule well so we can be quietly about our business of living simply, in humble contemplation. This is the way our Saviour God want us to live.

(1Tim 2.1-3, the Message)

Woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees, to deprive the poor of the rights and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people, making widows their prey and robbing the fatherless. What will you do on the day of reckoning, when disaster comes from afar? 

(Isa 10.1-3)

Seek the Lord and live, or he will sweep through the house of Joseph like a fire; it will devour, and Bethel will have no-one to quench it…. You [who]turn justice into bitterness and cast righteousness to the ground.. you hate the one who reproves in court and despise him who tells the truth. You trample on the poor.. you oppress the righteous and take bribes and you deprive the poor of justice in the courts. Therefore the prudent man keeps quiet in such times, for the times are evil.

(Am 5.6,7,10,11-13)

As followers of Jesus, we are called to be peace-makers – most particularly exhorting others to find peace with God through Jesus, but also pursuing peace in personal relationships and between communities. To this end, Paul encourages his readers to pray for rulers and those in authority, that we might all live quietly and free from lawlessness and the appalling destruction of war. It is out of love for God and for others that we pray and pursue peace, and yet all of human history is stained deepest red with violence, conflict, oppression and the abuse of power – so deeply has human rebellion against the way of God broken us.

This rebellion has its roots in human pride, and in the failure to submit to and trust in God – at all levels of society. This is why so many of the prophets were absolutely vicious in their denunciation of the authorities and rulers in Israel and Judah – because the very people who ought to be creating conditions for peace were abusing their power to acquire wealth, extend their dominion, and caring nothing for the cost. The love of God was expressed through the prophets as righteous anger against those responsible. In our day and generation, nothing has changed and humankind continues to suffer at the hands of those whose authority was given to them to be exercised in love.

Ultimately, the bible assures us, these abusers of power will answer for what they have done – as we will too, on the day of Christ’s return. We ought therefore to be praying all the more urgently that they might recognise their position of stewardship and behave as trustworthy and loving under-shepherds over God’s creation.

But how can we respond individually as we see the outworking of human sin and brokenness, when our media is full of unspeakably distressing images of suffering and devastation? For myself, I feel baffled and powerless – ought I to join protests, to flood my social media with outraged and frantic posts about what is happening? Or ought I to be bombarding my elected representatives with messages demanding action? It seems that nothing is making any difference, and so I mourn in private, praying for those in need and for those with the power to make a difference. Is this a sin of omission? Are those who judge me for my silence right to do so? I don’t know.

Our Lord assured his disciples that for as long as God ordained the earth to remain, we would endure war and rumours of wars – and all the grievous consequences thereof. No nation has a divinely-ordained ‘right’ to exist, and all humankind are here purely by the gift and grace of God. He is not the particular possession of any political creed, or people group, but is Lord of the nations, and it is not wise to misrepresent or appropriate him for any human cause. He is working through all things for the exaltation of the Lord Jesus and the coming of the Kingdom. Human evil, in war and oppression is – and always has been – the context in which He perfectly expresses his love, justice and holiness.

It is simply unbiblical to assert that, in this world, we will be free from this evil, but I long to know how best to conduct myself as a believer in the face of injustice, gross abuse of trust, and the insidious complicity of my own nation and therefore of myself in the ongoing destruction. I can take courage from the prophets, knowing that it is right to confront our leaders with the injustice which their actions have caused or permitted; I can use my small resources to make a difference to perhaps one or two lives – each one eternally precious to the Creator. Above all, I pray and exhort others to pray, since only the Almighty, All-knowing, All-loving God can truly make the difference which we long to see. To bring all the troubles of his world to God in prayer is surely the priority, and we must not lose faith in His power and goodness.

To choose one, is to reject all other….

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God said, “It’s not good for the man to be alone; I’ll make him a helper, a companion.”.. God.. presented her to the man. The man said, “Finally! Bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh!..” Therefore a man leaves his father and mother and embraces his wife. They become one flesh.

(Gen 2.18,22&23; the Message)

Find a good spouse, you find a good life – and even more; the favour of God!

Lots of people claim to be loyal and loving, but where on earth can you find one? God-loyal people, living honest lives, make it much easier for their children.

A nagging spouse is like the drip, drip, drip of a leaky tap; you can’t turn it off, and you can’t get away from it. You use steel to sharpen steel, and one friend sharpens another… Just as water mirrors your face, so your face mirrors your heart.

A good woman is hard to find, and worth far more than diamonds. Her husband trusts her without reserve, and never has reason to regret it. Never spiteful, she treats him generously all her life long.

(Prov 18.22, 20.6&7, 27.15-17, 31.10&11; the Message)

Out of respect for Christ, be courteously reverent to one another. Wives, understand and support your husbands in ways that show your support for Christ… Husbands, go all out in your love for your wives, exactly as Christ did for the church – a love marked by giving, not getting… They’re really doing themselves a favour – since they’re already “one” in marriage,

(Eph 5.21&22, 25&27)

A number of things have combined recently to prompt me to think again about the gift and privilege which is marriage – that unique unit created by a man and a woman promising to share life and build family for as long as God grants them breath. A gift ordained from the beginning; a gift designed to maximise our thriving as God’s image bearers and stewards in his creation. A gift sadly abused, scarred, and rejected by so many as a result of what human sin has done in and with it.

The exclusivity of marriage – the fact that in choosing one, I reject all other possibilities – is for my protection, so that in giving myself freely for the good of my spouse, I can trust that I will not be exploited. He too has promised to be faithful to me, rejecting all other possibilities. With God’s help, we continue in loyal love, growing in that mutual dependence and trust which is one of the most beautiful characteristics of mature marriage. With God’s help, I am enabled to seek the good of my husband, I have the privilege of being closer to this human being than anyone else will ever be – and the responsibility of not abusing that privilege.

To love within marriage is to be utterly vulnerable, and I am constantly aware of how easily I could forfeit his trust by careless, thoughtless behaviour and cutting words. I depend on his forgiveness, daily, and thank God for the divine provision of love which helps both of us as rescued sinners to keep on loving one another, to forgive and to forget(as many times as necessary!). I am the custodian of his weaknesses and wounds – will I cherish them privately, pouring the balm of my love and gentleness into his life, or will I choose to expose them and to dishonour him? The enemy of our souls delights to undermine marriage, and tempts us to use all means within our reach to retaliate when we are hurting, but thanks be to God who provides strength and wisdom even in the moment, to resist such temptation. To love as a believer is not to seek vengeance, not to sulk, not to manipulate or plot. It is to speak truth gently, to offer love continually, and to never lose sight of the glorious privilege which I have to be married to this man, for this life.

In the new creation we are told there is no marrying and giving in marriage. I only have this life, this one marriage in which to serve my God by faithful, loving and loyal investing of my best efforts in the good of my husband. That is a sobering thought, as I cannot know how many more days or years remain to me.

Heavenly Father, author of our lives and sustainer of this marriage, I praise and thank you for the privilege of serving you here. I thank you for the honour of loving this one man, and no other. I thank you for the enabling which you provide to us, your children, as we share life, seeking to be obedient to your calling and serving the Kingdom. Lord, help me to continue in faithfulness to my vows; to love him better than anyone else – except you!; to appreciate and cherish all that he is, not boasting of his weakness, but of his strengths, of his character and all the ways that you have gifted and blessed him. Let me do him good, and not harm, all the days which you grant us together. In Jesus’ name, Amen.