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[The brothers] left Egypt and went back home to their father Jacob in Canaan. 'Joseph is still alive!' they told him. 'He is the ruler of all Egypt!' Jacob was stunned and could not believe them.
When the Lord brought us back to Jerusalem, it was like a dream! How we laughed, how we sang for joy! Then the other nations said about us, 'The Lord did great things for them'. Indeed he did great things for us...
[Jesus] said this and showed them his hands and his feet. They still could not believe, they were so full of joy and wonder...
So Peter was kept in jail, but the people of the church were praying earnestly to God for him... Peter knocked at the outside door, and a servant-girl named Rhoda came to answer it. She recognised Peter's voice and was so happy that she ran back in without opening the door, and announced that Peter was standing outside. 'You are mad!' they told her. But she insisted that it was true. So they answered, 'It is his angel'. Meanwhile Peter kept on knocking. At last they opened the door, and when they saw him, they were amazed.
...the Son of God, who loved me and gave his life for me.
I do have faith, but not enough. Help me to have more!
(Genesis 45:25 and 26; Psalm 126: 1-3; Luke 24:40 and 41; Acts 12: 5, 13-16; Galatians 2: 20; Mark 9:24 -- all GNB)
It was the first lecture of the diploma course and I was briefly surveying the history and religion of Israel. When I recounted the story of God's decisive intervention at the time of the Exodus, there was a sudden exclamation of 'How marvellous!' from one of the forty or so students crowded into the class. Startled by such an unusual occurrence in a normally sedate group, I traced its source to a frail-looking young man -- he looked as though the proverbial puff of wind would blow him over. A few minutes later, when we came to the point where God, in his grace, made a covenant with Israel, he exclaimed, 'That's terrific!'
Back in the staff common room I confided to my colleagues that we had something of an oddity in the first year diploma class. That was when I discovered that Richard -- his name -- was in fact an acute asthmatic who was so frail that he had never attended school; his entire education had been by a personal tutor who had encouraged dialogue and interaction.
Sadly, Richard quickly adapted to the 'hallelujah-less, take-it-for-granted' atmosphere so characteristic of so much of our Christian community. We know the story, perhaps too well, and it fails to excite us. But God is a God of miracles; all things are possible with him (Luke 1: 37) and he does surprise and delight us. So often he works for us in ways that appear almost too good to be true.
It was so with Jacob. There was nothing he could have wished for more than to know that Joseph, his long-lost son, was alive. The joyous assertion of the brothers (Genesis 45: 26) was, for him, too good to be believed. But Joseph was alive!
Or consider Israel in exile in the iron grip of a conqueror who had devastated its land, destroyed its capital and decimated its population. It seemed like a dream when God moved the heart of a heathen king (Ezra 1) and the captives, their long exile over, were back in Judea once more (Psalm 126). But it was not a dream and the God who controlled events on the international scene then is the same today.
Even our prayer life can be permeated by a strange mixture of faith and unbelief. Picture that prayer meeting in Jerusalem (Acts 12) when Peter was under sentence of death: the earnest petitions, the remembrance of God's miraculous interventions in the past. Yet when Peter, very much alive and well, arrived on the doorstep, those godly prayer-warriors were incredulous, unable to accept what God had done! Knowing how often we pray without any conviction of a divine response, we are hesitant to criticise those disciples, but God does work in answer to prayer!
Think, too, of the bleak despair and hopelessness of the disciples after the death of their Master. They were shattered men. How they must have longed for the tumultuous events of those days to be reversed and for their Lord to be restored to them! If ever there was a thing too good to be true, this was it! Luke 24:41 (RSV) has the strange, almost contradictory statement -- 'they still disbelieved for joy'.
But it did happen! Jesus was alive! He had broken forever the bonds of sin, death and the grave! He had answered decisively that age-old question, 'Is there a way out into the unknown -- a bridge into eternity?' Yes, there is. Jesus has pioneered that way and we may travel it.
All these miracles are well documented historical facts. But there is a miracle which takes place in our personal experience, the miracle of Christ's redeeming love for the individual: 'the Son of God loved me and gave his life for me' (Galatians 2:20). How impossible that must seem! I can comprehend that 'God loved the world' (John 3: 16) -- the world is a big place, with millions of people. But for the Son of God to love me -- just one amongst five thousand million people in the world today -- in a universe so immense! It seems too good to be true. But this is the glory of the gospel and its message of redeeming love. It reaches right down to the individual, it is personal and we can both accept it and rejoice in it. 'What is man, that you think of him; mere man, that you care for him?' (Psalm 8: 4, GNB) P.S. And Richard? He longed to serve Christ amongst young people, but in a few brief years after leaving college his flail body gave up the struggle. I can well imagine what he has been exclaiming since! 'How marvellous! That's terrific!' There is so much morel
The validity of the Christian faith rests on one supreme miracle: the cornerstone upon which the whole superstructure of Christianity rises or fails, depends on the truth of this miracle -- the resurrection of Jesus Christ...
No other religion has ever dared to put forth this challenge, has ever dared to make its appeal to miracles, and rest its appeal on a miracle.
Kathryn Kuhlman, I Believe in Miracles
So often we pray with such little belief in the efficacy of prayer that we are 'astonished' when the answer comes. How we need the word of Mark 11: 34, 'When you pray, believe that you receive... and you shall have...' Other conditions being satisfied, this believing before receiving is a mighty prayer secret.
Guy H. King, A Day at a Time
Each of us is created in God's own image, and it means that, though we are creatures and full of sins and defects, there is the deep-down likeness between us and God, and our destiny is to be with him. When we say that God loves us we mean that he cares for each single one of us as if there is no-one else for him to care for.
He cares for you in all that unique individuality which is yours. He wants you to be with him forever, to share with you all that he has to share.
The wonderful thing about man is that he is described as being in God's own image. Not that God and man are identical in all respects -- far from it. God remains the Creator, and we always remain creatures, utterly dependent upon him. Yet there is a true affinity between God and man. Man has powers of memory, thought, consciousness, purpose, appreciation of beauty, appreciation of truth, moral distinction between right and wrong, and a rare potential of freedom. Above all, he has the possibility of really knowing God, and having fellowship with God.
Michael Ramsey, former Archbishop of Canterbury
It is a thing most wonderful, almost too wonderful to be, That God's own Son should come from heav'n, And die to save a child like me. And yet I know that it is true...'
William Walsham How
God commends his love - Greater could not be - While I was a sinner, Jesus died for me.
George Goodman
Why did he love me? I never can tell. Why did he suffer to save me from hell? Nothing but infinite grace from above Could have conceived such a story of love
G.R. Harding Wood
Here might I stay and sing, No story so divine; Never was love, dear King! Never was grief like thine! This is my friend, In whose sweet praise I all my days Could gladly spend.
Samuel Crossman
What can I offer the Lord for all his goodness to me?
Psalm 116: 12, GNB
Love so amazing, so divine, Demands my soul, my life, my all!
Isaac Watts
We may have as much of God as we will. Christ... bids us take all we want. If a man is admitted into the bullion vault of a bank and told to help himself and comes out with one cent, whose fault is it that he is poor? Whosefault is it that Christian people generally have such scanty portions of the free riches of God?
Alexander Maclaren
Lord, I thank you for the gift of love; indeed I am fearfully and wonderfully made. I praise you for all that goodness and tender mercy which have surrounded me all the days of my life; for those divine interventions, both great and small, which have marked out the days and years of my pilgrimage.
Above all, I thank you for the miracle of the new birth in your Son, my Saviour, Jesus Christ, that in him I am a new creation. Like Paul, I confess myself to be the chief of sinners, but you loved me and you have bound me to yourself, eternally, by your love and grace. I cannot fully understand such love, but I can and do rejoice in it; I cannot begin to comprehend why you should choose such a person as I am to serve you, but I gratefully accept that role as your servant -- and the servant of all, for the sake of Jesus Christ.
Help me never to take you for granted; never to lose sight of the wonder of your love; never to cease to respond sacrificially to your love; never to lose the hope of seeing the miracle wrought out in my life worked out in the lives of those about me, however unresponsive they may seem to be.
A Benediction
Go into this day in the consciousness that the Lord God Almighty invited you to walk with him. May the humility which marks out the person who walks daily with God be accompanied by a sense of your thrill and wonder at the way in which the Almighty works in your life and in his world -- today.
High Mountains, Deep Valleys, by Rowland Croucher ed., Albatross/Lion, chapter 5
Suppose a brother or a sister is in rags with not enough food for the day, and one of you says, 'Good luck to you, keep yourselves warm, and have plenty to eat', but does nothing to supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So with faith; if it does not lead to action, it is in itself a lifeless thing.
Religion that is pure and genuine in the sight of God the Father will show itself by such things as visiting orphans and widows in their distress, and keeping oneself uncontaminated by the world.
At the beginning God expressed himself. That personal expression... was God. So the word of God became a human being and lived among us.
Let what you say be simply 'yes' or 'no'; anything more than this comes from evil.
How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of one who brings good news, who heralds peace, brings happiness, proclaims salvation, and tells Zion 'your God is King'.
(James 2:15-17, NEB; James 1:27, Phillips; John 1:1,14, Phillips; Matthew 5:37, RSV; Isaiah 52:7, JB)
Communication is the first essential ingredient in any relationship: between marriage partners, parents and children, labour and management or in international affairs. Failure to communicate lies at the root of all tension, friction and fear. Mankind's objects -- to achieve peace and reconciliation -are possible only through real human communication. Communication is a bridge fashioned out of words, feelings, gestures, 'body language' and attitudes. Words are the most common vehicles of communication.
Words are amazingly powerful. They can sway crowds for good or ill. They can bring relief, hope, encouragement. The gospel is couched in words -- the greatest words in the world: love, forgiveness, grace, reconciliation, faith. It is the good news about Jesus which has the power to save and dignify human life.
But words, rather than being a vehicle of deep communication, can be a barrier to effective communication. Words are too often substituted for action. They can be offered instead of sacrificial and loving involvement in another's needs. Words can be the world's most devalued currency.
The most powerful temptation to beset the preacher -- or any Christian who wants to communicate the gospel -- is to offer words (however true and orthodox those words may be) instead of offering him/her self. Great Christian words of faith all too easily become mechanical formulas.
Words are a cop-out whenever they are cheapened.
God's means of person-to-person communication extended beyond the words of the law and the prophets, to incarnation -- the Word becoming flesh!
Christians dare not forget that incarnation lies at the heart of the gospel and its communication. There is no escape for the Christian who takes Christ's commission and method seriously.
The whole anguish of religious broadcasting is that we are transmitting a message of love and it is costing us nothing. It costs us nothing to say 'I love you' or 'God loves you' except the breath it takes to speak into a microphone. There is a powerful missionary movement being built up around the use of private satellites and cable television, based mainly in the United States. From these sources, electronic missionaries placed 23,000 miles in the air will preach the gospel to the people of Africa, Asia, and South America. But you see, it costs nothing. In terms of personal cost -- of the real giving of self -- it doesn't cost a thing. Therefore it is a ghost, a distortion of what Christianity is about. Unless I actually stand alongside you -- not as an electronic ghost, but as someone who shares your life, who sweats, fears and hungers, and who risks the same diseases, it is not what Christianity is all about.
Colin Morris, Head of Religious Broadcasting, BBC
The most immutable barrier in the world is between one person's thoughts, and another.
William James
That blackguard who uses the science of speech more to blackmail and swindle than to teach.
Henry Higgins, in Lerner and Lowe's My Fair Lady
Words are, of course, the most powerful drug in the world.
Rudyard Kipling
The finest possible communication... (brings another) into a relationship instead of isolating him.
Berthold Brecht, Radio as an apparatus for Communication
In the beginning was the Word. The Word was made Flesh. His word was his bond. He was true to his word... And it is startling to discover that 'the word', whose possession marks man off from the rest of creation, whose employment is the key to his self-knowledge, his relationship with others, and his intellectual, spiritual and material evolution, leads his understanding as far as it can go into the inmost nature of the Trinity. The word plies between heaven and earth, has application to both God and man, and is the sign through which each, in that many-layered expression, gives himself away...
The Word which is Christ is the most translucent window opening onto the inner nature of God. And the words we use in everyday life are in similar fashion windows through which we know each other. The word is not our only means of communication. But since the dawn of language -- and how awesome and mysterious must that dawn have been -- words have been the most universal, most serviceable and most flexible vehicle of human communication.
Words are hard to pin down. Far worse is the damage we human beings inflict upon words by negligence or malice. Words are the coin of mutual trust. When we use them carelessly, twist them out of shape, force them into the service of falsehood and half-truths, we debase that coinage and undermine the trust that keeps society functioning. Christ tells us that he is Truth. It is the Devil who is the father of lies. To be a follower of Christ entails being a servant of the truth; and that service requires that we keep the vehicle of truth, our language, our words, in good repair.
John Harriott, 'Words and the Word', The Tablet
Words and magic were in the beginning one and the same thing, and even today words retain much of their magical power. By words one of us can give to another the greatest happiness or bring about utter despair... Words call forth emotions and are universally the means by which we influence our fellow creatures. Therefore let us not despise the use of words.
Sigmund Freud
In Hebrew the term debar means both 'word' and 'deed'. Thus to say something is to do something. 'I love you.' 'I hate you.' 'I forgive you .' 'I am afraid.' Who knows what such words do, but whatever it is, it can never be undone. Something that lay hidden in the heart is irrevocably released through speech into time, is given substance and tossed like a stone into the pool of history, where the concentric rings lap out endlessly.
Words are power, essentially the power of creation. By my words I both discover and create who I am. By my words I elicit a word from you. Through our conversation we create one another...
God never seems to weary of trying to get himself across. Word after word he tries in search of the right word. When the Creation itself doesn't seem to say it right -- sun, moon, stars, all of it -- he tries flesh and blood... Jesus as the mot juste of God.
Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking
Lord, give us grace, and give us the spirit of adventure and sacrifice that will transform each of us from being a mere vehicle of words, to becoming living words of life and hope, a word of God to others.
0 Lord, I know that men and women in past ages have heard your word, for it is so true today; it changed their lives and made them feel part of a great purpose. Grant that I may relate the truth of your word in the past, to life today. I pray also to speak to me anew, new things under new conditions, for the sake of him who was the word made flesh and is the eternal word, revealing meaning and truth, even Jesus Christ, my teacher and my Lord.
George Appleton, Journey for a Soul
Lord, never once did you substitute words for actions. You achieved the perfect balance between what you said and what you did. Of all people who ever lived, you are the only one whose actions were the personification of his words. And whose words were the commentary on his actions. You did not shrink from total involvement with individuals in their need, nor even humanity in its suffering and lostness. And the word you brought was yourself. Offering words, even good words, is so often for us a way to avoid offering ourselves. Help us to follow your paths of costly caring and true communication, because it is in the same way as the Father sent you -- the way of incarnation -- that you send us. It frightens us, but we know it is the only way to touch, heal and save others. Lord give us this grace. Amen.
A Benediction
Go forth into the world in peace; be of good courage; hold fast that which is good; render to no one evil for evil; strengthen the faint-hearted; support the weak; help the afflicted; honour everyone; love and serve the Lord, rejoicing in the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Still Waters, Deep Waters ed. By Rowland Croucher pp. 269-273
God is a righteous judge, a God who expresses his wrath every day... He who is pregnant with evil and conceives trouble gives birth to disillusionment. He who digs a hole and scoops it out falls into the pit he has made. The trouble he causes recoils on him; his violence comes down on his own head.
Though grace is shown to the wicked, they do not learn righteousness; even in a land of uprightness they go on doing evil and regard not the majesty of the Lord. O Lord, your hand is lifted high, and they do not see it. Let them see your zeal for your people and be put to shame; let the fire reserved for your enemies consume them.
The Lord... is righteous; he does no wrong. Morning by morning he dispenses his justice, and every new day he does not fail, yet the unrighteous know no shame... 'Therefore wait for me,' declares the Lord, 'for the day I will stand up to testify. I have decided to assemble the nations, to gather the kingdoms and to pour out my wrath on them -- all my fierce anger. The whole world will be consumed by the fire of my jealous anger.'
Do not fear those who kill the body and after that have nothing more they can do. I will warn you whom to fear; fear him who, after he has killed, has authority to cast into hell.
... our Lord Jesus Christ is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in blazing fire... he will do justice upon those who refuse to acknowledge God and upon those who will not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will suffer the punishment of eternal ruin, cut off from the presence of the Lord... Destroyed they shall be, because they did not open their minds to love of the truth, so as to find salvation.
Therefore God puts them under a delusion, which works upon them to believe the lie, so that they may all be brought to judgment, all who do not believe the truth but make sinfulness their deliberate choice.
... there were loud voices in heaven, which said: 'The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign for ever and ever.' And the twenty-four elders, who were seated on their thrones before God, fell on their faces and worshipped God, saying: 'We give thanks to you, Lord God Almighty, who is and who was, because you have taken your great power and have begun to reign. The nations were angry; and your wrath has come. The time has come for judging the dead, and for rewarding your servants the prophets and your saints and those who reverence your name, both small and great -- and for destroying those who destroy the earth.'
(Psalm 7:11,14-16, NIV; Isaiah 26:10-11, NIV; Zephaniah 3:5,8, NIV; Luke 12:4-5, NEB; 2 Thessalonians 1:7b-9; 2:10b-12, NEB; Revelation 11:15-18, NIV)
The prospect of a judgment that is final and a condemnation that is irrevocable causes distress to all sensitive persons. The understandable recoil of mind and emotion has led many to ignore or deny these teachings. Yet for those whose knowledge of God and of final reality are derived from divine speaking rather than human speculating, there is no possibility of denying judgment and hell, which are all too clearly attested in the teaching of Jesus and of scripture generally. Moreover, they are not found there as an extraneous or unassimilated extra, but as an integral part of the whole biblical portrayal of the nature of God and of the reality he has made and is making. Seen in this light, some of our distress at the prospect of judgment is a measure of the discrepancy between the biblical revelation of the character of God and our own more sentimental notions. Here, as in so many other things, the revealed reality of God cuts across our preferences.
Yet there is a distress at the inevitability of judgment that is both valid and necessary (see, for example, Luke 19:41-44). Such pain is both an index of the momentous, even awesome character of human choice and responsibility and a measure of the horror. of grace spurned and destruction embraced.
In the Bible the certainty of judgment to come evokes joy as well as tears. Most honest readers of the Bible would have to feel dismayed by the way in which some passages rejoice in this prospect. Yet closer inspection shows that the authors are not motivated by the almost ghoulish pleasure at the terrors of judgment that has been evident all too often in Christian history. Rather, their joy is the result of a passionate devotion to the honour of God and a zeal for the triumph of his purposes. His judgment is prayed for and rejoiced in because it means both the vindication of his truth and holiness in the face of all that is false and wicked, and also the renewal and restoration of the creation, eliminating all that is rebellious and fully implementing his righteous rule. They know that the alternative to judgment is a creation which becomes a labyrinth of evil, in which all fixed points are finally obscured by layer upon layer of duplicity or wiped away in the escalating spiral of violence. (Any good spy novel will provide you with a glimpse into such a world.)
It is no light thing, therefore, to pray regularly for the coming of God's kingdom, for to do so is to pray for the execution of final judgment. The believer faces this prospect with tears and yet greets it with joy.
It is no light thing, either, to relate daily to persons who are being prepared for glory or who are preparing themselves for destruction!
There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, in the end, 'Thy will be done.'
C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce
The love of God, with arms extended on a cross, bars the way to hell. But if that love is ignored, rejected and finally refused, there comes a time when love can only weep while man pushes past into the self-chosen alienation which Christ went to the
cross to avert.
Michael Green, The Empty Cross of Jesus
Hell is not like a gaol where prisoners are longing to be free but like a sit-in where the protesters have barricaded themselves in.
Hugh Silvester, Arguing with God
The agents of hell disappear, the human, they shrink and dissolve Into dust on the wind, forgotten, unmemorable; only is here
The white flat face of Death, God's silent servant,
And behind the face of Death and Judgment
And behind the Judgment the Void, more horrid than active shapes of hell;
Emptiness, absence, separation from God;
The horror of the effortless journey, to the empty land
Which is no land, only emptiness, absence, the Void,
Where those who were men can no longer turn the mind
To distraction, delusion, escape into dream, pretence,
Where the soul is no longer deceived, for there are no objects,
no tones,
No colours, no forms to distract, to divert the soul
From seeing itself, foully united forever, nothing with nothing,
Not what we call death, but what beyond death is not death,
We fear, we fear.
T.S. Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral
... God's judgments alone stand between us and a universal tyranny. If the effects of original sin were allowed to work themselves out unchecked, man's inhumanity to man would know no bounds. Such elements of stability, freedom, mercy and goodness we enjoy, we owe to the operation of God's righteous judgments among us.
J.W. Wenham, The Goodness of God
Heaven and its happiness are wrongly conceived as immunity from judgment instead of joy in the consummation of judgment in righteousness and holiness for ever.
P.T. Forsyth, The Work of Christ
It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations.
C.S. Lewis, Screwtape Proposes a Toast
Lord, have I over-reacted? Have I been so conscious of the 'so heavenly-minded, no earthly use' danger that I have lived too much as though there were no deadline and destination ahead of us all? You know how hard I have to fight in my work against the 'tyranny of the urgent', seeking to prevent the immediate from crowding out the important. Have 1, in the midst of all this, succumbed to the same tyranny in another way by now allowing the immediate to shape the ultimate ? Have I been so concerned to distance myself from ghastly caricatures of biblical teaching that the reality and finality of judgment have no real place in my working theology? Have I related to individuals only in terms of the day and its needs, and not also in the light of the eternal destiny to which we are moving? I have tried hard not to allow my capacity for compassion and grief to be dulled by constant exposure to news and pictures of human suffering. Have 1, in the midst of all this, allowed my capacity for grief and outrage to be dulled by constant exposure to the human wickedness that slights the honour of your name, spurns your grace, and rebels against your wise and righteous rule? Do I long for the end of physical evil more than I long for the end of moral evil? Lord, you know me. Give me grace to know myself.
Lord, correct me. Restore the balance and perspective I need, not so that I may pride myself on my neat, orderly theology, but so that I may live in line with your truth, allowing each day to be shaped in the right way by the last Day.
Lord, renew me. Give me a new sense of awe at the burning purity of your holiness, and a fresh sense of zeal for the honour of your name.
Lord, use me. Help me to live and serve in a way that alerts people to the reality and finality of the ultimate horizons by which all our lives are bounded. Give me grace, where there is opportunity, to give bold but gracious testimony to the One who rescues us from the coming wrath.
A Benediction
May God himself direct and protect you this day. Approach your work this day in such a way that the last Day will show that you did not run or labour in vain. Approach your decisions this day as someone who is to appear before the judgment seat of Christ. Approach your relationships as one who is dealing with those who will be 'immortal horrors or everlasting splendours'. Above all, approach the throne of grace with awe and with confidence, to receive from the God who is a consuming fire both mercy and grace to help in time of need. Amen.
Still Waters, Deep Waters ed. By Rowland Croucher pp. 251-256
For whoever would save his life, will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's will save it.
Master... I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground.
A grain of wheat remains a solitary grain unless it falls into the ground and dies; but if it dies, it bears a rich harvest.
So do not start worrying: 'Where will my food come from, or my drink, or my clothes? (These are the things the pagans are always concerned about)... Instead, be concerned above everything else with the kingdom of God and with what he requires of you, and he will provide you with all these other things.
I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.
The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such there is no law.
If one of you wants to be great, he must be the servant of the rest; and if one of you wants to be first, he must be the slave of all. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
(Mark 8:35, RSV; Matthew 25:24-25, RSV; John 12:24, NEB; Matthew 6:31-33, GNB; Galatians 2:20, RSV; Galatians 5:22-23, RSV; Mark 19:43-44, GNB; 2 Corinthians 12:10, RSV)
The various forms of our first Bible sentence (Mark 8:35) occur often enough in the gospels for us to regard it as expressing Jesus' basic law of living. The other sentences group themselves around two aspects of that profound saying.
The primary meaning is the folly of trying to 'play it safe' in the face of Christ's call to a radical adventure of faith, in which we risk losing what we most want to preserve. Second, there are many things we seek which do not seem to yield to a direct approach, one that is self-defeating. They are, rather, a kind of by-product of something else altogether.
This latter is a principle of very wide application. Its relevance to many human quests is well-known, such as happiness, security, freedom, peace and so on, but its operation in other areas may not be so well recognised. Personal influence, for example. The harder we try to accomplish this, the less we succeed. Few things get our hackles up more quickly than the suspicion that somebody is trying to set us a good example.
Another example is the common quest for ecstatic spiritual experiences for their own sake. This so easily becomes a form of self-indulgence, and is subject to the law of diminishing returns. The truly great moments come unbidden, and are unpredictable.
The cultivation of personal character by means of devotional exercises is another example. Character, in our use of the word, is not really a biblical word at all. Goodness is not the aim, but the result of our dedication to God's will. 'Man's chief end is to glorify God, and enjoy him forever,' and goodness is a by-product of that.
It could be a valuable devotional exercise to try to identify other areas where this principle applies.
The man, says Jesus, who is always trying to 'save' his life, to ensure security, material, intellectual, spiritual, to keep his personality sheltered from the risks and hardships which are an essential part of the discipline of life, will find at the end that he has lost it: there is nothing there to save, nothing but a handful of dust, the dust of withered opportunities. The man who sees the truth of this eternal law of life... and is therefore ready to take risks, to throw away security and hazard life itself, will find that he has discovered its secret, and entered into the fulfilment of it.
F.A. Cockin, in The Christian Faith
The more a man goes out from himself, or goes beyond himself, the more the spiritual dimension of his life is deepened, the more he becomes truly man, the more he grows in likeness to God, who is Spirit. On the other hand, the more he turns inward and loses himself in self-interest, the less human does he become. This is the strange paradox of spiritual being -- that precisely by going out and spending itself, it realises itself. It grows not weaker, but stronger, for it is not a quantifiable thing.
John Macquarrie, Paths in Spirituality
I cannot emphasise the element of risk too strongly. To embark on a change of milieu, a change of habit, always feels like a 'little death'. Every step forth into a new dimension of life is a kind of dying. It must have been that, quite literally, for birds that lost their forest feeding-grounds, and ventured into the edge of the lake, initiating a habit that was to launch a new species of spoonbill. Certainly ,for us who are so much more conscious of the choices we make and the habits we change, real advance never seems like self-fulfilment, though that is what it is; it is always experienced first of all as self-
surrender.
John V. Taylor, The Go-Between God
Friendship can only occur when we give ourself to the other, and to offer ourself to someone else is the most risky of all
human endeavours.
Andrew M. Greeley, The Friendship Game
War knows no power; safe shall be my going, Secretly armed against all death's endeavours; Safe, though all safety's lost, safe where men fall; And if these poor limbs die, safest of all.
Rupert Brooke
True attention is an involuntary self-surrender to the object of attention. The child who is absorbed is utterly relaxed. The adult mind, also, must be unstriving, receptive, expectant, before there can be any creative insight. Again and again this is the state of mind in which new truth dawns. We do not work it out or think it out; rather, we have the sense of waiting for the disclosure of something that is already there.
John V. Taylor, The Go-Between God
... truth, like love and sleep, resents
Approaches that are too intense.
W.H. Auden, New Year Letter
Writers on ethics have often spoken of 'the paradox of hedonism' -- the fact that the quest for happiness defeats itself. But they have not so often noticed what I call 'the paradox of moralism' -- the fact that the quest for goodness defeats itself.
D.M. Baillie, God Was in Christ
This whole concern about our own effort, moreover, is hostile to the spirit of peace. The faith which does not rely wholly upon God, but partly on exciting or disciplining its own soul, lives in valetudinarian anxiety about its spiritual health. To be perpetually feeling our own pulse is the surest way to rob ourselves of the self-forgetting vigour in which health is displayed.
John Oman, Grace and Personality
Only those who are generous to the limits of self-loss can hope to be channels of the generosity of God. In that crisis the I, the separate self, with its loves and hates, its personal preoccupations, is sacrificed and left behind. And out of this most true and active death to self, the spirit is reborn into the new life: not in some transcendental world, but in this world, among those who love us and those we love.
Evelyn Underhill, The School of Charity
In his poem (Song of a Man Who Has Come Through), Lawrence has deliberately used biblical imagery to suggest the mysterious depths of human life: the irresistible wind, the bubbling inner fountain, a knock on the door in the night. We can, if we give ourselves in surrender to God and our fellows, travel fast without movement; reap what we never sowed; be refreshed from the deep fountain welling up from the heart; find our deepest friend in the one who frightens us by coming in out of the night. And all this, provided we do not say to Christ, the Spirit-bearer: 'Ask of me and you will not receive; seek and you will not find; knock and I will not open the door.'
Peter de Rosa, Not I, not I, but the wind that blows through me
Seeking and losing life belong together so closely that any one prudently trying to save his life might as well be intent on losing it. But, turned around, the connection between losing one's life and actually saving it breaks apart on the words, 'For my sake and the gospel's.' Whatever else these words may mean, they certainly direct a man's whole intention and attention toward another goal than in the end saving his own life.
Paul Ramsay, Basic Christian Ethics
Show me, Lord, what all this has to do with me, and the service I am trying to render in your world. Am I too much of an activist? Am I trying to take over in areas where you are trying to say to me, 'Move over, and let me be God'?
Keep me from becoming obsessed with what I see as success, and to be more concerned with doing your will as I discover it; and from being too discouraged by what seems to me failure, knowing how ambiguous these two words are in Christian affairs. Save me from the fear of losing what I prize, not realising that by giving it to you I gain and enhance it.
Help me truly to understand the paradox of '1, yet not 1'. l seem to drive myself too much towards certain goals, overlooking the fact that they are the fruits of the surrender of my will to you and your purposes in the world. Help me to understand what is happening when what I want most seems to elude me at every turn, and what I have surrendered comes my way unbidden, and strangely enriched.
So many of your words seem a little hard to understand, but, if I am to be quite honest, my confusion often arises not from my lack of understanding but from my lack of willingness. Remind me of what I so easily allow myself to forget: that this world is full of situations which call for courage and the taking of risks. Let me know the joy, the 'creative ecstasy' of really losing myself for your sake in some enterprise for the help and liberation of others.
A Benediction
May the grace of Christ uphold you,
And the love of God enfold you;
May the Holy Spirit guide you,
And all joy and peace betide you,
Now and always. Amen.
Still Waters, Deep Waters ed. By Rowland Croucher pp. 213-217
For as the lightning comes from the east and flashes to the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.
'Men of Galilee,' they said, 'why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.'
Be patient, then, brothers, until the Lord's coming. See how the farmer waits for the land to yield its valuable crop and how patient he is for the autumn and spring rains. You too, be patient and stand firm, because the Lord's coming is near.
The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare. Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be?. You ought to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming... But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness. So then, dear friends, since you are looking forward to this, make every effort to be found spotless, blameless and at peace with him.
Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as he is pure.
And now, dear children, continue in him, so that when he appears we may be confident and unashamed before him at his coming.
(Matthew 24:27; Acts 1:11; James 5:7-8; 2 Peter 3:9-12a and 13-14;
John 3:2-3; 1 John 2:28 -- NIV.)
The world may end tonight or earth could be attacked by aliens. Whatever happens, only one man can save us. Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. 7.30 tonight.
Television Commercial
Dr Margaret Mead, the late anthropologist, has asked the question: 'Are we going to survive?,' She said, 'The major struggle of marriage is not who takes out the garbage. Does it matter who takes it out if we are not going to be here?,' She asks again, 'Are we going to be here?, It is very doubtful. The whole world is in terrible danger. We could go tonight.'
Ray Stedman, from a printed sermon entitled 'Are These the Last Days?.'
Why is God landing in this enemy-occupied world in disguise and starting a sort of secret society to undermine the devil?, Why is he not landing in force, invading it?. Is it that he is not strong enough?, Well, Christians think he is going to land in force; we do not know when. But we can guess why he is delaying. He wants to give us the chance of joining his side freely. I do not suppose you and I would have thought much of a Frenchman who waited till the Allies were marching into Germany and then announced he was on our side. God will invade. But I wonder whether people who ask God to interfere openly and directly in our world quite realise what it will be like when he does. When that happens, it is the end of the world. When the author walks onto the stage, the play is over. God is going to invade, all right: but what is the good of saying you are on his side then, when you see the whole natural universe melting away like a dream and something else something it never entered your head to conceive -- comes crashing in; something so beautiful to some of us and so terrible to others that none of us will have any choice left?, For this time it will be God without disguise; something ,so overwhelming that it will strike either irresistible love or irresistible horror into every creature. It will be too late then to choose your side. There is no use saying you choose to lie down when it has become impossible to stand up. That will not be the time for choosing: it will be the time when we discover which side we really have chosen, whether we realised it before or not. Now, today, this moment, is our chance to choose the right side. God is holding back to give us that chance. It will not last for ever. We must take it or leave it.
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
Strange to say there are four very evident attitudes manifested in the professing church towards this blessed hope: aggressive hostility, listless apathy, fearful apprehension and loving expectancy. Some hate it; some are totally ignorant of it; some are afraid of it; and some love it.
Ruth Paxson, Life on the Highest Plane
The centring of the Christian hope on the personal return of the Lord Jesus Christ needs to be underlined. It is possible to become so involved in the intricacies of prophetic fulfilment or with a study of the accompanying events that we can miss the central event... the Christian hope for the future is not a timetable of events. It is not concerned finally with a series of impersonal happenings. Its heart is nothing other than the expectation of the personal appearing of the Lord. If we find our interest in the last things is centred elsewhere than in the Lord himself, then we are already out of step with scripture.
Bruce Milne, The End of the World
An ocean liner leaves New York bound for Liverpool. Its destination has been determined by proper authorities. Nothing can change it. This is at least a faint picture of sovereignty. On board the liner are several scores of passengers. They are not in chains, neither are their activities determined for them by decree. They are completely free to move about as they will. They eat, sleep, play, lounge about on the deck, read, talk altogether as they please; but all the while the great liner is carrying them steadily onward toward a predetermined port... The mighty liner of God's sovereign design keeps its steady course over the sea of history. God moves undisturbed and unhindered toward the fulfilment of those eternal purposes which he purposed in Jesus Christ before the world began.
A.W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy
An eleven-year-old boy, engrossed in an adventure book, protested when told to go to bed. He pleaded to no avail that he must find out whether the hero would escape from an impossible situation and would rescue the heroine from the clutches of the villain. Later, with the aid of a flashlight beneath the bedcovers, he read the final chapter of the book. Sure enough, the hero rescued the heroine, and the villain was captured and put in jail. However, because he could not imagine how such a turnabout had happened, he began reading again at the place he had been forced to stop. Each time the villain did something wrong the boy said, 'If you knew what I know, you wouldn't be acting like you are.'
Avery Willis Jr., Biblical Basis of Missions
When the drama of history is over, Jesus Christ will stand alone on the stage. All the great figures of history, Pharaoh, Alexander the Great, Charlemagne, Churchill, Stalin, Johnson, Mao Tse Tung -- will realise that they have been but actors in a drama produced by another.
Helmut Thielecke, The Waiting Father
J. Hudson Taylor, founder of the China Inland Mission wrote: 'Well do I remember the effect when God was pleased to open my heart to the great truth that the Lord Jesus was coming again, and might come at any time. Since he might come any day, it is well to be ready every day. I do not know of any truth that has been a greater blessing to me through life than this.'
J. Oswald Sanders, The Incomparable Christ
D.G. Barnhouse was once asked what he would do if he knew Christ was returning tomorrow. He replied that he would do what he had planned. He knew he was doing God's will and that's all that mattered.
(Unknown)
Finish then thy new creation:
Pure and spotless let us be;
Let us see thy great salvation,
Perfectly restored in thee,
Changed from glory into glory,
Till in heaven we take our place,
Till we cast our crowns before thee,
Lost in wonder, love and praise.
Charles Wesley
Lift up your heads
to the coming king.
Bow before him and adore him, sing.
To his majesty
let your praises be
pure and holy, giving glory
to the king of kings.
Steven L. Fry
At the name of Jesus every knee shall bow
Every tongue confess him king of glory now;
'Tis the Father's pleasure we should call him Lord,
Who from the beginning was the mighty word.
Caroline M. Noel (Philippians 2:10-11)
Thank you, Lord, for the days in which we live. What exciting, what frightening days they are. Thank you for the assurance that you are still in charge, that we do not determine our own destiny nor set our own schedule.
Thank you that you are working out the events of earth according to your own programme and nothing can stay your hand.
Thank you for letting me live in these days.
Help me to keep sane and sober,
alert and watchful,
expectant and hopeful,
labouring while it is still day
in the fullness and power of the Spirit
to accomplish your purposes for a time
such as this.
Lord, the first time you came so quietly;
The next time there will be shouting and the trumpet of God.
The first time you came in poverty and humiliation;
The next time you will come in glory.
The first time you came in weakness;
The next time you will come in power.
The first time you came to loneliness;
The next time you will be accompanied by the heavenly hosts.
I get a little nervous when I really think about it.
After all, you're the king and I'm not exactly court material.
And I'm going to be like you, for I shall see you as you are.
Therefore Lord, will you accept the adoration of my heart
and the devotion of my life in order that I might always live
for that which is eternal and be found faithful.
Until you come again
In your name, Amen.
A Benediction
And now may the dying Saviour's love
the risen Saviour's power
the ascended Saviour's blessing
and the returning Saviour's glory
Be the joy and comfort of your hearts
Now and forever. Amen.
Still Waters, Deep Waters ed. By Rowland Croucher pp. 204-209
As you worship, so you serve - (Calvin Coolidge)
Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth. Serve the Lord with gladness; come before him with joyful songs. Know that the Lord is God. It is he who made us, and we are his; ... we are his people, the sheep of his pasture. Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name. For the Lord is good and his love endures for ever; his faithfulness continues through all generations.
Bless Yahweh, my soul, bless his holy name, all that is in me! Bless Yahweh, my soul, and remember all his kindnesses... Yahweh has fixed his throne in the heavens, his empire is over all. Bless Yahweh, all his angels, heroes mighty to enforce his word, attentive to his word of command. Bless Yahweh all his armies, servants to enforce his will. Bless Yahweh, all his creatures in every part of his empire! Bless Yahweh, my soul.
And what is faith? Faith gives substance to our hopes, and makes us certain of realities we do not see. It is for their faith that the men of old stand on record. By faith we perceive that the universe was fashioned by the word of God, so that the visible came forth from the invisible. By faith Abel offered a sacrifice greater than Cain's, and through faith his goodness was attested, for his offerings had God's approval; and through faith he continued to speak after his death. By faith Enoch was carried away to another life without passing through death; he was not to be found, because God had taken him. For it is the testimony of Scripture that before he was taken he had pleased God, and without faith it is impossible to please him; for anyone who comes to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who search for him.
(Psalm 100, NIV; Psalm 103, 1-2, 21-22, JB, Hebrews 11:1-6, NEB)
From ancient times people have sought another being before whom to bow in honour. There has been a constant searching for an object to worship. The Bible records many ways in which people have sought their gods. People have made gods of almost anything.
For Christians, basic ideas of worship come from the Jews' traditions of worship. They believed in one supreme being they called Yahweh. So awed were they by this supreme being they would never utter his name.
The Jews knew they were before the Almighty when they worshipped. They knew he was aware of exactly what was happening at such times. God was the witness of their worship and upon this historical foundation our present-day worship is laid. If we wish to worship in sincerity and truth, we need to recognise exactly who God is. Once his role is clear, our role becomes clear. If we fail to understand these things, while we may appear to worship we will not be worshipping. For our public worship to be in order, our private worship must be meaningful.
Alas, in regard to things spiritual, the foolishness of many is this, that they in the secular sense look upon the speaker as an actor, and the listeners as theatregoers who are to pass judgment upon the artist. But the speaker is not the actor -not in the remotest sense. No, the speaker is the prompter. There are no mere theatregoers present, for each listener will be looking into his own heart. The stage is eternity, and the listener, if he is the true listener (and if he is not he is at fault), stands before God during the talk.
Soren Kierkegaard, Purity of Heart
In worship we retell and act out a story. The story has to do with what God has done for us and what our response is to his work. It is an enactment of the event that gives meaning and purpose to life. It aligns the believer with the Christ-event and with the community of the faithful throughout history. Therefore when worship is acted out in faith, the believer experiences again the refreshment of his or her relationship to God and spontaneously experiences the joy of salvation.
Robert E. Webber, Worship Old and New
You tell me nothing new: you are not the only one that is troubled with wandering thoughts. Our mind is extremely roving; but as the will is mistress of all our faculties, she must recall them, and carry them to God, as their last end. When the mind, for want of being sufficiently reduced by recollection at our first engaging in devotion, has contracted certain bad habits of wandering and dissipation, they are difficult to overcome, and commonly draw us, even against our wills, to the things of the earth. I believe one remedy for this is to confess our faults, and to humble ourselves before God. I do not advise you to use multiplicity of words in prayer; many words and long discourses being often the occasions of wandering: hold yourself in prayer before God, like a dumb or paralytic beggar at a rich man's gate: let it be your business to keep your mind in the presence of the Lord. Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God
Instead of complaining that God has hidden himself, you will give him thanks for having revealed himself so fully; and you will give him thanks also for not having revealed himself to proud scholars, who are not worthy to know so holy a God. Two sorts of person know him; those who have a humble heart and love lowliness, whatever their degree of intellect, high or low; and those who have enough understanding to see the truth, whatever objections they may have against it.
B. Pascal, The Pensees
The great fact of life is the human soul confronting the transcendent holiness of God. No person is ever left alone without God. An individual may try to ignore God but he cannot have peace without him; he may deny or reject him but not without a consciousness of judgment. God claims every creature. Worship is the loving response of the creature to his Creator. There is no sovereign right but God's... Christian worship is God-centred. God took the initiative in worship by creating man for fellowship with himself. As the ground of being, he is the source and sustainer of life. As sovereign ruler, God confronts us. He comes to us as the one worthy of worship, and because he is worthy he stands in judgment over us and makes demands upon us. As we respond in worship God allows us to experience new manifestations of his goodness and his love.
Franklin M. Segler, Christian Worship
First, let us fling wide the doors and windows of our minds and make some attempt to appreciate the 'size' of God. He must not be limited to 'religious' matters or even to the 'religious' interpretation of life. He must not be confined to one particular section of time nor must we imagine him as the local God of this planet or even only of the universe that astronomers have so far 'discovered'. It is not, of course, physical size that we are trying to establish in our minds. (Physical size is not important. By any reasonable scheme of values a human being is of vastly greater worth than a mountain ten million times his physical size.) It is rather to see the immensely broad sweep of the Creator's activity, the astonishing complexity of his mental processes which science laboriously uncovers, the vast sea of what we can only call 'God' in a small corner of which man lives and moves and has his being.
J.B. Phillips, Your God is Too Small
Most holy God, Maker of heaven and earth, I acknowledge that you alone are worthy of worship. May your Holy Spirit make my worship more meaningful. Lift me out of my selfish ways, lift me up until like Isaiah I see the Lord 'seated on a throne, high and exalted'. Then may I exclaim like Isaiah, 'Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.'
Heavenly Father, help me to keep the focus of my personal worship away from self and on Christ as the one who has revealed God to me and through whom I am able to celebrate your glory. Make me wise in my worship so that I may shun anything which will distract me and turn my thoughts away from you.
A Benediction
Gracious Father. help me to take with me a sense of your powerful presence, knowing that wherever I go you will be there ahead of me, that whenever I need your strength it will be available to me through the tremendous power of your mighty Spirit and that I can live boldly in your name every moment of the day ahead of me. Amen.
Still Waters, Deep Waters ed. By Rowland Croucher pp. 186-190
It is better to be faithful than famous - (Theodore Roosevelt)
Daniel made up his mind not to let himself become ritually unclean by eating the food and drinking the wine of the royal court, so he asked Ashpenaz to help him, and God made Ashpenaz sympathetic to Daniel.
Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego replied to the king, 'O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and he will rescue us from your hand, O king. But even if he does not, we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.'
Then the other supervisors and the governors tried to find something wrong with the way Daniel administered the empire, but they couldn't, because Daniel was reliable and did not do anything wrong or dishonest. They said to one another, 'We are not going to find anything of which to accuse Daniel unless it is something in connection with his religion.'
Anyone who starts to plough and then keeps looking back is of no use to the kingdom of God.
Be faithful to me, even if it means death, and I will give you life as your prize of victory.
Your conduct among the surrounding peoples in your different countries should always be good and right, so that although they may in the usual way slander you as evildoers, yet when disasters come they may glorify God when they see how well you conduct yourselves.
My footsteps have followed dose in him, I have walked in his way without swerving. But I reckon my own life to be worth nothing to me; I only want to complete my mission and finish the work that the Lord Jesus gave me to do, which is to declare the Good News about the grace of God.
(Daniel 1:8-9, GNB; Daniel 3:16-18, NIV; 6:4-5, GNB; Luke 9:62, GNB; Revelation 2:10b, GNB; 1 Peter 2:12, J.B. Phillips; Job 23:11, JOB; Acts 20:24, GNB)
Those Sunday School pictures of Daniel must be wrong. The ones showing a virile, macho 30-year-old in the lion pit. Either they are misleading or my calculations are awry. Or the dates are not meant to dovetail.
Let's assume that Daniel was, at the age of seventeen, a member of the transportation contingent of 605 BC. Then let's assume that the lion pit episode occurred at the beginning of the rule of Cyrus/Darius in 538 BC. That makes Daniel eighty-four! At an age when many of us can no longer walk at all, he is still treading on hot coals!
All the indications are that he had delivered exceptional service to Babylon. Early promise and outstanding college results led to promotions, responsibility and authority.
More importantly he combined astute public service with loyal divine service. For seventy years Daniel had been loyal to his real King -- the Lord of Heaven.
His courageous faithfulness was part of a well-rounded godly lifestyle: his gracious courtesy, his commitment to solidarity with his friends and to disciplined prayerfulness, his willingness to participate fully in the life of Babylon, his patient caring for Nebuchadnezzar during the king's dark humiliation, his squeaky-clean reputation in civil life.
But above all his unswerving loyalty to God placed patriotism, ambition, job security and even his life on the line.
What an inspiration to the hard-pressed Jews during the centuries that followed. What an example today to Christians in public life, in a secular environment or under an alien regime.
We are pilgrim people, a people who have decided never to arrive, a people who live by hope, energised not by what we already possess but by that which is promised: 'Behold, I create new heavens and a new earth.'
Sure, it's tiring; and it's tough. Imagination comes harder than memory, and faithfulness is more demanding than success. But so what if we fail? Remember, we are not required to finish the task -- any more than we are allowed to put it aside.
William Sloane Coffin, The Courage to Love
What will it mean in practice for me to put God first? This much, at least. All the 101 things I have to do each day, and the 101 demands on me which I know I must try to meet, will all be approached as ventures of loving service to him, and I shall do the best I can in everything for his sake -- which attitude, as George Herbert quaintly said, 'makes drudgery divine; who sweeps a room, as for thy laws, makes that and th' action fine.'
And then I shall find that, through the secret work of the Spirit which is known by its effects, my very purpose of pleasing God gives me new energy for all these tasks and relationships, energy which otherwise I could not have had. 'I could not love thee, dear, so much, loved I not honor more,' said the poet. Put 'God' for 'honor', and you have the deepest truth about the Christian's love of his neighbour. Self-absorbed resentments dissolve, the zest for life, happiness in doing things, and love for others all grow great when God comes first.
J.I. Packer, I Want to be a Christian
'I was going to say I wished we'd never come. But I don't, I don't, I don't. Even if we are killed. I'd rather be killed fighting for Narnia than grow old and stupid at home and perhaps go about in a bath-chair and then die in the end just the same.'
Jill in The Last Battle by C.S. Lewis
When we are called to follow Christ, we are summoned to an exclusive attachment to his person. The grace of his call bursts all the bonds of legalism. It is a gracious call, a gracious commandment. It transcends the difference between the law and the gospel. Christ calls, the disciple follows; that is grace and commandment in one. 'I will walk at liberty, for I seek thy commandments' (Psalm 119:45).
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship
It is helpful to remember that some of God's greatest saints and responsible leaders have not always been clear what to do, and because actions and decisions could no longer be delayed, they have had to move forward in the dark, hardly knowing whether the Lord was with them or not. Both Hudson Taylor and D.E. Hoste had such experiences in their leadership of the China Inland Mission.
The more I became involved in increasing responsibilities in Christian service, the less I found myself thinking of guidance and the more of duty.
John Laird, No Mere Chance
But it was precisely this persistent loyalty to the old ways of Judah, this constant refusal to cut himself loose from 'Jerusalem', this repeated claim that the truth and salvation for the world lay there and nowhere else, that made many powerful people in Babylon hate Daniel. They hated him not merely because he was a foreigner and stranger, not merely because they were jealous of his extraordinary ability, but mainly because, in spite of the fact that he was so impeccably loyal and helpful to Babylon, the whole orientation of his outstanding life tended to point not to Babylon but to Zion.
Too often he stood simply for what Jerusalem alone stood for. Too clearly his talk and his way of life bore witness to his strange belief that salvation for mankind could come only from the God who had chosen Zion as his dwelling place.
Ronald Wallace, The Lord is King
Christ has many services to be done; some are easy, others are difficult; some bring honour, others bring reproach; some are suitable to our natural inclinations and temporal interests, others are contrary to both. In some we may please Christ and please ourselves, in others we cannot please Christ except by denying ourselves. Yet the power to do all these things is assuredly given us in Christ, who strengthens us.
I am no longer my own, but Thine. Put me to what Thou wilt, rank me with whom Thou wilt; put me to doing, put me to suffering; let me be employed for Thee or laid aside for Thee, exalted for Thee or brought low for Thee; let me be full,
It is better to be faithful than famous
Let me be empty; let me have all things, let me have nothing; I freely and heartily yield all things to Thy pleasure and disposal,
John Wesley, from the Covenant Service of the Methodist Church
'Eighty and six years have I served him, and he hath done me no wrong; how then can 1 blaspheme my king who saved met
Bishop Polycarp, when urged to 'curse the Christ'.
He was subsequently burnt at the stake.
We have each day to be faithful for the one short day, and long years and a long life will take care of themselves without the sense of their length or their weight ever being a burden.
Andrew Murray
And believing must lead to obedience. Christians have constantly been in trouble for defying human authorities and challenging consensuses. Peter would not stop evangelising when told to (Acts 4:19f; 5:27ff) and was in and out of prison as a result. Christians risked persecution in the early days by refusing the formalities of Roman state religion, just as latter-day African Christians have courted martyrdom by rejecting tribal rites. Athanasius sentenced himself to exile by standing against the Arian world. Luther jeopardised his life by refusing to recant at Worms.
Christians today make themselves unpopular by opposing such social realities as the pornography trade and such social conveniences as abortion on demand. These are samples of the costly nonconformity which Christians have practised down the ages.
Why do they behave so awkwardly? Because standing under God's authority, they are sure that his revelation requires them to act as they do at whatever personal cost. Luther said at Worms, 'My conscience is captive to the Word of God; to go against conscience is neither right nor safe; here I stand, there is nothing else I can do; God help me; amen.' The privilege of knowing God's truth with certainty and precision carries with it the responsibility of obeying that truth with equal precision. Christianity is no armchair faith, but a call to action.
J.I. Packer, Freedom, Authority and Scripture
The ploughman who looks back is the would-be disciple whose mind is still partly on the life he left to follow Jesus. The work of the kingdom of God requires singleness of purpose.
F.F. Bruce, commenting on Luke 9:62 in The Hard Sayings of Jesus
Beloved, it is morn!
A redder berry on the thorn,
A deeper yellow on the corn,
For this good day new-born:
Pray, Sweet, for me
That I may be
Faithful to God and thee.
Emily Henrietta Hickey, 'Beloved, it is Morn'
Who would true valour see,
Let him come hither; One here will constant be,
Come wind, come weather;
There's no discouragement
Shall make him once relent
His first avowed intent
To be a pilgrim.
John Bunyan
'You haven't got it right!' says the exasperated piano teacher. Junior is holding his hands the way he's been told. His fingering is unexceptionable. He has memorised the piece perfectly. He has hit all the proper notes with deadly accuracy. But his heart's not in it, only his fingers. What he's playing is a sort of music but nothing that will start voices singing or feet tapping. He has succeeded in boring everybody to death including himself.
Jesus said to his disciples, 'Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven' (Matthew 5:20). The scribes and Pharisees were playing it by the Book. They didn't slip up on a single do or don't. But they were getting it all wrong.
Righteousness is getting it all right. If you play it the way it's supposed to be played, there shouldn't be a still foot in the house.
Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking
Lord, when I place myself in Daniel's shoes I wonder how I would have reacted. Knowing me, I would have rationalised each situation and looked for a 'both/and' rather than the 'either/or' option.
I find the example of Daniel inspiring. It's good to have a hero figure even though I'm not very heroic myself. I feel the let-down of knowing I don't perform consistently as a Christian. When I do manage to stand up or stand firm for you, I end up seeming stand-offish and pompous. That only makes things worse. I begin to feel that lifelong loyalty to you is an impossible dream. How can I ever imagine that I will be able to look back at the end of the journey and feel satisfied?
Save me from being depressed about yesterday’s lapses. Reassure me of your forgiveness and acceptance. Make me wiser today. Help me to see the way through, which will bring honour to you.
Teach me that the only step I should be concerned about is the next step.
Help me to wake up each day with a heartfelt gratitude for your many mercies and a deep desire to please you above all others.
Grow courtesy, warmth and gentleness in me so that unnecessary confrontation can be avoided. But, when it's clear that fidelity to you demands a dangerous, unpopular or embarrassing path, help me to tread it with gracious courage.
A Benediction
Go forward in the sure knowledge that such qualities as faithfulness, patience and self-control are gifts of the Holy Spirit. Keep your eyes fixed on Jesus, the author and perfector of our faith. Keep running; do not lose heart Amen.
Still Waters, Deep Waters ed. By Rowland Croucher pp. 179-185
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