BECOMING MORE LIKE CHRIST

Dr. John Stott: Sermon delivered at the Keswick Convention July 17th 2007.

I remember very vividly, some years ago, that the question which perplexed me as a younger Christian (and some of my friends as well) was this: what is God’s purpose for His people? Granted that we have been converted, granted that we have been saved and received new life in Jesus Christ, what comes next? Of course, we knew the famous statement of the Westminster Shorter Catechism: that man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever: we knew that, and we believed it. We also toyed with some briefer statements, like one of only five words – love God, love your neighbour. But somehow neither of these, nor some others that we could mention, seemed wholly satisfactory. So I want to share with you where my mind has come to rest as I approach the end of my pilgrimage on earth and it is – God wants His people to become like Christ. Christlikeness is the will of God for the people of God.

So if that is true, I am proposing the following: first to lay down the biblical basis for the call to Christlikeness: secondly, to give some New Testament examples of this; thirdly, to draw some practical conclusions. And it all relates to becoming like Christ.

So first is the biblical basis for the call to Christlikeness. This basis is not a single text: the basis is more substantial than can be encapsulated in a single text. The basis consists rather of three texts which we would do well to hold together in our Christian thinking and living: Romans 8:29, 2 Corinthians 3:18 and 1 John 3:2. Let's look at these three briefly.



Romans 8:29 reads that God has predestined His people to be conformed to the image of His Son: that is, to become like Jesus. We all know that when Adam fell he lost much – though not all – of the divine image in which he had been created. But God has restored it in Christ. Conformity to the image of God means to become like Jesus: Christlikeness is the eternal predestinating purpose of God.

My second text is 2 Corinthians 3:18: ‘And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed into his likeness, from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.’ So it is by the indwelling Spirit Himself that we are being changed from glory to glory – it is a magnificent vision. In this second stage of becoming like Christ, you will notice that the perspective has changed from the past to the present, from God’s eternal predestination to His present transformation of us by the Holy Spirit. It has changed from God’s eternal purpose to make us like Christ, to His historical work by His Holy Spirit to transform us into the image of Jesus.

That brings me to my third text: 1 John 3:2. ‘Beloved, we are God’s children now and it does not yet appear what we shall be but we know that when he appears, we will be like him, for we shall see him as he is.’ We don’t know in any detail what we shall be in the last day, but we do know that we will be like Christ. There is really no need for us to know any more than this. We are content with the glorious truth that we will be with Christ, like Christ, for ever.

Here are three perspectives – past, present and future. All of them are pointing in the same direction: there is God’s eternal purpose, we have been predestined; there is God’s historical purpose, we are being changed, transformed by the Holy Spirit; and there is God’s final or eschatalogical purpose, we will be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. All three, the eternal, the historical and the eschatalogical, combine towards the same end of Christlikeness. This, I suggest, is the purpose of God for the people of God. That is the biblical basis for becoming like Christ: it is the purpose of God for the people of God.



I want to move on to illustrate this truth with a number of New Testament examples. First, I think it is important for us to make a general statement, as the apostle John does in 1 John 2:6: ‘he who says he abides in Christ ought to walk in the same way as he walked.’ In other words, if we claim to be a Christian, we must be Christlike. Here is the first New Testament example: we are to be like Christ in his Incarnation.

Some of you may immediately recoil in horror from such an idea. Surely, you will say to me, the Incarnation was an altogether unique event and cannot possibly be imitated in any way? My answer to that question is yes and no. Yes, it was unique, in the sense that the Son of God took our humanity to himself in Jesus of Nazareth, once and for all and forever, never to be repeated. That is true. But there is another sense in which the Incarnation was not unique: the amazing grace of God in the Incarnation of Christ is to be followed by all of us. The Incarnation, in that sense, was not unique but universal. We are all called to follow the example of His great humility in coming down from heaven to earth. So Paul could write in Philippians 2:5-8: ‘Have this mind among yourselves, which was in Christ, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God some thing to be grasped for his own selfish enjoyment, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.’ We are to be like Christ in his Incarnation in the amazing self-humbling which lies behind the Incarnation.

Secondly, we are to be like Christ in His service. We move on now from his Incarnation to His life of service; from His birth to His life, from the beginning to the end. Let me invite you to come with me to the upper room where Jesus spent his last evening with His disciples, recorded in John’s gospel chapter 13: ‘He took off his outer garments, he tied a towel round him, he poured water into a basin and washed his disciples’ feet. When he had finished, he resumed his place and said, “If then I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet, for I have given you an example’ – notice the word – ‘ that you should do as I have done to you.’

Some Christians take Jesus’ command literally and have a foot-washing ceremony in their Lord’s Supper once a month or on Maundy Thursday – and they may be right to do it. But I think most of us transpose Jesus’ command culturally: that is just as Jesus performed what in His culture was the work of a slave, so we in our cultures must regard no task too menial or degrading to undertake for each other.

Thirdly, we are to be like Christ in His love. I think particularly now of Ephesians 5:2 – ‘walk in love as Christ loved us and gave himself up as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.’ Notice that the text is in two parts. The first part is walk in love, an injunction that all our behaviour should be characterised by love, but the second part of the verse says that He gave Himself for us, which is not a continuous thing but an aorist, a past tense, a clear reference to the cross. Paul is urging us to be like Christ in his death, to love with self-giving Calvary love. Notice what is developing: Paul is urging us to be like the Christ of the Incarnation, to be like the Christ of the foot washing and to be like the Christ of the cross. These three events of the life of Christ indicate clearly what Christlikeness means in practice.

Fourthly, we are to be like Christ in His patient endurance. In this next example we consider not the teaching of Paul but of Peter. Every chapter of the first letter of Peter contains an allusion to our suffering like Christ, for the background to the letter is the beginnings of persecution. In chapter 2 of 1 Peter in particular, Peter urges Christian slaves, if punished unjustly, to bear it and not to repay evil for evil. For, Peter goes on, you and we have been called to this because Christ also suffered, leaving us an example – there is that word again – so that we may follow in His steps. This call to Christlikeness in suffering unjustly may well become increasingly relevant as persecution increases in many cultures in the world today.

My fifth and last example from the New Testament is that we are to be like Christ in His mission. Having looked at the teaching of Paul and Peter, we come now to the teaching of Jesus recorded by John. In John 20:21, in prayer, Jesus said ‘As you, Father, have sent me into the world, so I send them into the world’ – that is us. And in his commissioning in John 17 he says ‘As the Father sent me into the world, so I send you.’ These words are immensely significant. This is not just the Johannine version of the Great Commission but it also an instruction that their mission in the world was to resemble Christ’s mission. In what respect? The key words in these texts are ’sent into the world’. As Christ had entered our world, so we are to enter other people’s worlds. It was eloquently explained by Archbishop Michael Ramsey some years ago: ‘We state and commend the faith only in so far as we go out and put ourselves with loving sympathy inside the doubts of the doubters, the questions of the questioners and the loneliness of those who have lost the way.’

This entering into other people’s worlds is exactly what we mean by incarnational evangelism. All authentic mission is incarnational mission. We are to be like Christ in his mission. These are the five main ways in which we are to be Christlike: in His Incarnation, in His service, in His love, in His endurance and in His mission.



Very briefly, I want to give you three practical consequences of Christlikeness.

Firstly, Christlikeness and the mystery of suffering. Suffering is a huge subject in itself and there are many ways in which Christians try to understand it. One way stands out: that suffering is part of God’s process of making us like Christ. Whether we suffer from a disappointment, a frustration or some other painful tragedy, we need to try to see this in the light of Romans 8:28-29. According to Romans 8:28, God is always working for the good of his people, and according to Romans 8:29, this good purpose is to make us like Christ.

Secondly, Christlikeness and the challenge of evangelism. Why is it, you must have asked, as I have, that in many situations our evangelistic efforts are often fraught with failure? Several reasons may be given and I do not want to over-simplify but one main reason is that we don’t look like the Christ we are proclaiming. John Poulton, who has written about this in a perceptive little book entitled A today sort of evangelism, wrote this:

‘The most effective preaching comes from those who embody the things they are saying. They are their message. Christians need to look like what they are talking about. It is people who communicate primarily, not words or ideas. Authenticity gets across. deep down in side people, what communicates now is basically personal authenticity.’

That is Christlikeness. Let me give you another example. There was a Hindu professor in India who once identified one of his students as a Christian and said to him: ‘If you Christians lived like Jesus Christ, India would be at your feet tomorrow.’ I think India would be at their feet today if we Christians lived like Christ. From the Islamic world, the Reverend Iskandar Jadeed, a former Arab Muslim, has said ‘If all Christians were Christians – that is, Christlike – there would be no more Islam today.’

That brings me to my third point – Christlikeness and the indwelling of the Spirit. I have spoken much tonight about Christlikeness but is it attainable? In our own strength it is clearly not attainable but God has given us his Holy Spirit to dwell within us, to change us from within. William Temple, Archbishop in the 1940s, used to illustrate this point from Shakespeare:

‘It is no good giving me a play like Hamlet or King Lear and telling me to write a play like that. Shakespeare could do it – I can’t. And it is no good showing me a life like the life of Jesus and telling me to live a life like that. Jesus could do it – I can’t. But if the genius of Shakespeare could come and live in me, then I could write plays like this. And if the Spirit could come into me, then I could live a life like His.’

So I conclude, as a brief summary of what we have tried to say to one another: God’s purpose is to make us like Christ. God’s way to make us like Christ is to fill us with his Spirit. In other words, it is a Trinitarian conclusion, concerning the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

http://www.langhampartnership.org/2007/08/06/john-stott-address-at-keswick/

IF GOD IS LIKE JESUS, NOTHING IS TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE!

For a child has been born for us,
a son given to us;
authority rests upon his shoulders;
and he is named
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
'Look, the virgin shall conceive and
bear a son,
and they shall name him
Emmanuel,'
which means, 'God is with us.'

I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

I am the bread of life...

I am the light of the world...

I came from God and now I am here.

I did not come on my own, but he sent me.

I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved...

I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.

I am the good shepherd....

I know my own and my own know me... I lay down my life for the sheep.

The Father loves the Son and has placed all things in his hands. Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life. Indeed, just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whomever he wishes. The Father judges no one but has given all judgment to the Son, so that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. Anyone who does not honor the Son do es not honor the Father who sent him. Very truly, I tell you, anyone who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life, and does not come under judgment, but has passed from death to life. Very truly, I tell you, the hour is coming and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live. For just as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself.

To all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God.

Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ... These are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name... He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers - all things have been created through him and for him.

God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come.

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.
I believe that You are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.

Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.

Isaiah 9:6; Matthew 1:23; John 14:6; John 6:35; John 8:12; John 8:42; John 10: 9-15; John 3:35,36; John 5:19-26; John 1:12,17; John 20:31; Colossians 1:15-16; Ephesians 1:20-21; Hebrews 13:8; John 11:27; John 14:23.



Ask almost anyone, anywhere, which individual has done most to change the course of history, and the answer will almost invariably be, 'Jesus of Nazareth.'

Who was this Jew from an ancient, frontier province of the Roman Empire who has left such an indelible mark upon the earth? Well, first let's get one thing straight: the man Jesus actually lived, and the histories describing his life (mainly the four gospels in the New Testament) are regarded by the overwhelming majority of scholars - Christian or not - as reliable.

And he was a real person: an extravert who enjoyed the company of others, but who also spent hours and days and weeks in solitary prayer; an angry man who would not tolerate hypocrisy and injustice, but also a tender, compassionate friend of the downtrodden; a brilliant teacher and debater, but also 'down-to-earth'; a man who was tempted in every way others are, but, his friends asserted, remained sinless; a man who was truly masculine (prepared to take the fight up to his enemies) and also in touch with the feminine in his personality (there is no woman in the Gospels who was ever his enemy).

But Jesus said he was more than a man: he claimed divinity. Now that's not odd: psychiatrists counsel many people who have delusions of grandeur. But this man was different: he was not a 'nut-case'. In fact, he comes across to his contemporaries and to us as a very-well-put- together person indeed.

Now if Jesus was God, a lot follows. He was God's Word that caused the cosmos to come into being; he is God's Life that holds everything together; he will the Resurrector and Judge of the living and the dead. He offers us eternal life, and a deep peace, and forgiveness of our sins, and trouble. You'd better not ignore him.

Athanasius, a great church father, said that when Jesus became one of us he did not subtract deity but rather added humanity. Jesus wasn't less than God, but became something in addition to God, a human being. Byron the poet put it succinctly: 'If ever a man were God or God were man, Jesus was both.'

What was he like? Artists depict him with a sad, pained expression, or with piercing eyes, or with a 'lean, hungry look' or as a wan, 'pale Galilean'. The gospels give us a picture of a sometimes joyful, sometimes weeping, sometimes compassionate, sometimes angry person, a brilliant debater with intellectuals but also down- to-earth, fearless in the company of the powerful, but tender with the down-trodden.

Jesus is Lord. What does that mean? For the first Christians, who lived under the rule of the Roman Empire, the statement 'Jesus is Lord' was a fast ticket to trouble. The empire already had one lord - Caesar - and he didn't want to share his sovereignty with some prophet from a far-off Eastern colony.

To say Jesus is Lord means he's the boss. He has the right to give orders. Your and my response is either to rebel or obey: we make that decision every hour of every day of our lives. So being a Christian isn't just doing what's right: it's doing what Jesus the Lord wants you to do.

'Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in his wonderful face; and the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace.' This old gospel song is still very meaningful. When you 'surrender' to Christ you do not cease to be a fully-functioning person. You are still fully active. You choose to do his will, not because you are forced to, but because you want to. You realize his will is 'good, pleasing and perfect' (Romans 12:2). Surrender to Christ is the only way to a complete, full life.

When the great theologian Karl Barth was asked 'What's the best thought you've ever had?' he would customarily reply, 'Jesus loves me, this I know for the Bible tells me so.' That's the best motivation of all for following Jesus. 'Jesus loves even me!'



Nineteen wide centuries have come and gone and today He is the centrepiece of the human race and the leader of the column of progress. I am far within the mark when I say that all the armies that ever marched and all the navies that ever were built, and all the parliaments that ever have sat, and all the kings that ever reigned put together have not affected human life upon this earth as powerfully as has that one solitary life, Jesus of Nazareth.

Anon, quoted in Bill Bright, A Handbook for Christian Maturity, San Bernadino, California: Here's Life Publishers, 1982/1990, p. 28.

A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic - on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg - or else he would be the devil of hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon; or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, New York: Macmillan, 1960/1978, p. 56.

Deity is not an easy term to define... But it is not impossible to imagine a line which separates God from all God's creatures, so that on one side is God, and on the other is everything less than God. If we ask on which side of this line Jesus Christ is to be found, the answer given by all the New Testament writers is 'God's side'. They differin their terminology and their habits of thought. They are writing independently. They are not simply copying from one another... Nowhere in the New Testament do we find any such thought as that Jesus is like one of the angels, or that he can be fully explained in purely human terms. With one accord the New Testament writers insist that Jesus must be thought of as God in the fullest sense... This is all the more remarkable in view of their convinced monotheism.

At the same time the early church did not waver in its thought that Jesus was a man. It is not easy to hold this in conjunction with his deity... How these two... are related, or even how they could co-exist in one person, we do not know. The evidence does not indicate that Jesus was partly God and partly man, that he did some things as God and others as man. Rather he was one person, albeit a person with divine and human characteristics.

Leon Morris, The Lord from Heaven, London: Inter-Varsity Fellowship, 1958, p. 109.

I say, the acknowledgement of God in Christ
Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee
All questions in the earth and out of it.

Robert Browning, 'A Death in the Desert', quoted in Margaret Pepper (ed.) The Pan Dictionary of Quotations, London: Pan Books, 1989, p.76.

Apart from Christ we know neither what our life nor our death is; we do not know what God is nor what we ourselves are.

Blaise Pascal, Pensees, quoted in Margaret Pepper (ed.) The Pan Dictionary of Quotations, London: Pan Books, 1989, p.77.

The much-maligned doctrine of the Trinity is an assertion that, appearances to the contrary withstanding, there is only one God.
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit mean that the mystery beyond us, the mystery among us, and the mystery within us are all the same mystery. Thus the Trinity is a way of saying something about us and the way we experience God.

Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking, London, Collins, 1973, p.93.

After the severe storms and floods which Holland suffered in 1952... the dyke had to be strengthened one Sunday. The pastor... found himself is a religious defficulty. Should he call out the people of the parish... and set them to work if it meant profaning the sabbath? Should he, on the contrary, abandon them to destruction in order to honour the sabbath? He... summoned the church council to consult and decide. The discussion went as one might suppose: We live to carry out God's will. God, being omnipotent, can always perform a miracle with the win and waves. Our duty is obedience, whether in life or in death. The pastor tried one last argument, perhaps against his own conviction: Did not Jesus himself, on occasion, break the fourth commandment and declare that the Sabbath was made for [humankind, not humankind for the Sabbath]? Thereupon a venerable old man stood up: 'I have always been troubled, pastor, by something that I have never yet ventured to say publicly. Now I must say it. I have always had the feeling that our Lord Jesus was just a bit of a liberal.'

Ernst Kasemann, Jesus Means Freedom, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1972, p. 16.

Jesus does not offer an opinion for he never uttered opinions. He never guessed; he knew, and he knows... To accept Christ is to know the meaning of the words 'as he is, so are we in this world.' We accept his friends as our friends, his enemies as our enemies, his ways as our ways, his rejection as our rejection, his cross as our cross, his life as our life and his future as our future....

A W Tozer, in Harry Verploegh (comp.), Signposts: A Collection of Sayings from A W Tozer, Wheaton, Illinois: Victor Books, 1988, pp. 23,25

Christianity began with an encounter. Some people, Jews, came into contact with Jesus of Nazareth. They were fascinated by him and stayed with him. This encounter and what took place in Jesus' life and in connection with his death gave their own lives meaning and significance. They felt that they were reborn, understood and cared for. Their new identity was expressed in a new enthusiasm for the kingdom of God and therefore in a special compassion for others... in a way that Jesus had already showed them. This change in the direction of their lives was the result of their real encounter with Jesus, since without him they would have remained as they were, as they told other people later (see 1 Corinthians 15:17). This was not something over which they had taken the initiative; it had happened to them.

This astonishing and amazing encounter which some people had with Jesus of Nazareth, a man from their own race and religion, becomes the starting point for the view of salvation found in the New Testament. This means that grace and salvation, redemption and religion, need not be expressed in strange, 'supernatural' terms; they can be put into ordinary human language, the language of encounter and experience, above the language of picture and image, testimony and story, never detached from a specific liberating event...

Edward Schillebeeckx, in Robert Schreiter (ed.), The Schillebeeckx Reader, New York: Crossroad, 1987, p. 129.

We have an interesting problem in Spanish with the word lord. Lord is senor (squiggle above n), the same word we use for mister. [So] Senor Lopez runs the gas station on the corner, Senor Rodriguez drives a city bus, and Senor Jesuscristo listens to your prayers.

The result in Spanish is that we have lost the 'lord' concept. To call Jesus the Lord (Senor) doesn't really say anything very strongly.
But since I have come among English-speaking people, I have found that you have the same problem, even though you have two separate words, mister and lord, in your language... The Bible presents Jesus as King, as Lord, as the maximum authority. Jesus is at the very centre.

Juan Carlos Ortiz, Disciple, Carol Stream, Ill.: Creation House, 1975, pp. 11,12.

A ship's captain was once guiding his vessel along a rocky coast on a cloudy night. He peered ahead and saw a faint light. He ordered his signalman to send this message by radio: 'Alter your course ten degrees south.'

Soon a message came back: 'Alter your course ten degrees north.'

The captain was a little disgusted. He sent a second message: 'The captain says, "Alter your course ten degrees south!"'

A second message message came back: 'Seaman Third Class Jones says, "Alter your course ten degrees north."'

The sent the captain into full-scale fuming. 'Alter your course ten degrees north; this is a battleship!' he thundered.

One more reply came back: 'Alter your course ten degrees north; this is the lighthouse.'

Our modern world is full of voices shouting orders into the night, telling others how to live, what to do, how to change. And there is one Voice whose directions seem opposite to the rest... He is the one voice who knows what he's talking about. He is the Light of the world. He is the authority on this treacherous coastline. He is Lord.

Dean Merrill, 'Jesus is Lord' LaVonne Neff et al (eds), Practical Christianity, Wheaton, Illinois: Tyndale House Publishers Inc., 1988, p. 139.

Picture a gloved hand. The glove is a limp piece of leather until the hand moves into the glove and begins to mobilize it. When the hand does something, the glove could say, 'I just picked up my coffee cup,' but it really is not the glove doing it. In a sense, Jesus' living in us is like the hand in the glove. Jesus Christ clothes himself and uses me for his purpose. I want to allow the indwelling Christ to mold me and use me and bend me any way he pleases as long as he accomplishes his will.

Luis Palau, 'The Indwelling Christ', Neff, pp. 149-150.



Arise, shine, for your light has come.
The glory of the Lord is risen upon us...

Great beyond all question is the mystery of our religion; Christ was manifested in the body, vindicated in the spirit, seen by angels.

Christ was proclaimed among the nations, believed in throughout the world, glorified in heaven...

Jesus, you are the good shepherd, you are willing to die for the sheep.

You are the good shepherd; as the Father knows you and you know the Father, in the same way you know your sheep, and your sheep know you; you are willing to die for us.

The Father loves you because you are willing to give your life; no one takes your life from you; you give it up of your own free will; you are the good shepherd.

Jesus is the Good Shepherd who understands our frailty, and knows each one of us by name.

A New Zealand Prayer Book, Auckland, Collins, 1989, pp.114, 107, 128-129.

Almighty ever-living God, our Father, you enlighten all who come into the world. You have given the human race Jesus Christ our Saviour: born of a woman and to die on a cross. In him we see you as you really are. Your Holy Spirit comes into our lives to confirm your reality and teach us your truth.

Jesus fulfilled your will; he was a model of humility; he loved us, even giving his life for us.

Father, Son and Holy Spirit,

Fill my heart with the light of your gospel, that my thoughts may please you, and my love be sincere.

Help me to bear witness to you by following Jesus' example of suffering and make me worthy to share in his resurrection.

Guide my mind by his truth and strengthen my life by the example of his death, that I may live in union with you in the kingdom of your promise.

Amen.



A Benediction: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ (Philippians 1:2).

Further reading: Bill Bright, A Handbook for Christian Maturity, Josh McDowell, The Resurrection Factor, Evidence That Demands a Verdict, More Evidence That Demands a Verdict, Josh McDowell and Bart Larson, Jesus, a Biblical Defense of his Deity (all published by Here's Life Publishers, Inc, San Bernadino, California).

Rowland Croucher, GROW! Meditations and Prayers for new Christians, JBCE, 1992, chapter 7

WORSHIP

Christianity: If God Is Like Jesus

How I love your temple, Almighty Lord! How I want to be there... With my whole being I sing for joy to the living God.

Glory and majesty surround him, power and joy fill his temple.

Praise the Lord, all people on earth praise his glory and might. Praise the Lord's glorious name; bring an offering and come into his temple: Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.

The Lord is in his holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before him!

Happy are the people who know the festal shout, who walk, O LORD, in the light of your countenance; O come, let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the LORD, our Maker! Worship the LORD with gladness; come into his presence with singing. Glory in his holy name; let the hearts of those who seek the LORD rejoice. Seek the LORD and his strength; seek his presence continually. Let those who fear the LORD say, 'His steadfast love endures forever.' 'Let us go to his dwelling place; let us worship at his footstool.'

But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth.

To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, together with all those who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours: After the secrets of the unbeliever's heart are disclosed, that person will bow down before God and worship him, declaring, 'God is really among you.'

Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us give thanks, by which we offer to God an acceptable worship with reverence and awe.

The twenty-four elders fall before the one who is seated on the throne and worship the one who lives forever and ever; they cast their crowns before the throne, singing. He said in a loud voice, 'Fear God and give him glory, for the hour of his judgment has come; and worship him who made heaven and earth, the sea and the springs of water.'

Christ's message in all its richness must live in your hearts. Teach and instruct each other with all wisdom. Sing psalms, hymns and sacred songs; sing to God with thanksgiving in your hearts.

Worship the Lord your God and serve only him. Whatever you do... do it all for God's glory. Everything you do or say should be done in the name of the Lord Jesus, as you give thanks through him to God the Father. Offer yourselves as a living sacrifice to God, dedicated to his service and pleasing to him. This is the true worship that you should offer.

Psalm 84:1,2 GNB; 1 Chronicles 16:27-29 GNB, KJV; Habakkuk 2:20; Psalm 89:15, 95:6, 100:2, 105:3-4, 118:4, 132:7; John 4:23; 1 Corinthians 1:2, 14:25; Hebrews 12:28; Revelation 4:10, 14:7; Colossians 3:16 GNB; Matthew 4:10 (GNB); 1 Corinthians 10:31 GNB; Colossians 3:17 GNB; Romans 12:1 GNB;



Praise God from whom all blessings flow
Praise him for one hour here below;
Praise him with nickel and with dime,
Praise God we're getting out on time.

'It's dead, a mechanical routine. I don't get anything out of it.' 'My friends have voted with their feet and stay away.' 'Our church services are so cold, they're like mournful funerals: everyone is so sombre and distant.' 'Ours are like a fowl-yard: so much chattering and giggling and irreverence.' 'We'll have to rescue ours from show business!' 'Why not cut the preliminaries and have a better sermon? ' 'Let's liven it up with happier singing.' 'Let's be more experimental.' 'Our vicar has the liturgical fidgets; you don't know what to expect.' 'Let's give people what they want or we'll lose them.' 'It's people's duty to attend worship, no matter how dull and boring it may be.'

Something is happening to people's expectations of worship in this television age. They want the stale water of liturgies-as-usual turned into the wine of celebration. Worship services for many are a morose experience. As the Devil says in The Brothers Karamazov, 'Everything would be transformed into a religious service: it would be holy, but a little dull.'

Worship is the sublime and awesome key to everything the church does. The mission of the early church was the fruit of worship. We too cannot meet the world until we have met God. According to the often-quoted words of William Temple, to worship is to quicken the conscience by the holiness of God, to feed the mind with the truth of God, to purge the imagination by the beauty of God, to open the heart to the love of God, to devote the will to the purpose of God.

Worship is a contraction of the old English word 'worth-ship'. It's recognizing that which is worth most, in the ultimate sense. In the old marriage service a man and a woman promised to 'worship' each other; to accord value and worth to each other. Divine worship is a love affair too! The Westminster Shorter Catechism asks 'What is our chief end?' It's 'to glorify God and enjoy him forever'. So the worshipper's key question is 'What can I offer the Lord for all his goodness to me?' (Psalm 116:12).

Worship is the appropriate response to the God who gives everything life, to the Holy One, who inhabits eternity, to the King of kings and Lord of lords, who is God our Saviour. Worship is meeting -- God with us, to which we respond with wonder, amazement and awe.

Saint Benedict founded an order with the motto 'laborare est orare', 'to work is to pray'. Worship is service (it's the same word in the New Testament): serving the Lord in our praises, praising the Lord in our ministry to others, ministering to the Lord in prayerful solitude -- it's all worship. Worship is both individual and corporate, done both in 'the secret place' and in the redeemed community. For a devout Christian worship is all of life, and is life-long.

So worship isn't quite something 'observed' or 'attended', it is something we are and do. As 'we are what we eat' so 'we are what we worship' and we become like the God we worship. So we step back from the rush of life and ponder its realities at an ultimate level at a special time each week. But for true worshippers every time and every place is special.

The inward imperative as we 'come to worship' is to 'take the shoes from [our] feet, for the place on which [we] stand is holy ground' (Exodus 3:5). Remember the solemn warning in Ecclesiastes: 'Guard your steps when you go to the house of God' (Ecclesiastes 5:1). 'Let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire' (Hebrews 12:28,29). We had better be careful, then: the way we worship could be hazardous!

Worship in Old Testament times was sometimes liturgical, sometimes free. There we seem to have two worship traditions. One was priestly, cultic, authoritarian and dynastic, the other more congregational, democratic, prophetic and ethical. Worship was both ritual and hearty service (Deuteronomy 11:13, Psalm 40:6-8, 50:12-15, Micah 6:6-8). Christian church history has similarly seen worship move from one extreme to the other.

The New Testament nowhere prescribes a detailed order of worship. The worship of the early church comprised teaching, fellowship, breaking of bread and prayers: God meets his people in the Word, in each other, in holy communion, and in prayer (Acts 2:42), and also in the more formal Jewish worship in the Temple (Acts 2:46, 3:1, 5:12). Paul chose a close fraternity with the synagogue. The synagogue service consisted of an invitation to prayer, the prayer itself, the reading of scriptures, a homily based on the scripture reading and concluded with the benediction. (2) At the end of the first century there was a move toward a more structured and formal service of worship (most churches move in this direction over time).

Building on the legacy of the New Testament, the Protestant Reformation's emphasis was on the Word and inner reality rather than the sacraments and formality. So churches in the Reformation tradition devote about half -- or more -- of their time to the sermon. The Age of Reason ensured a highly rational content in worship, with eloquent sermons of high literary and intellectual merit. For Calvin's followers the Sunday service became primarily a preaching service, with communion observed infrequently.

Biblical worship was sometimes active. So we should involve the whole congregation in worship: not just singing hymns, but with responsive readings, litanies, united prayers, times of community sharing, bringing the offerings forward, moving to greet one another etc.

Biblical worship was also sensual: appealing to eye, ear -- and nose! Do a checklist of your worship-service: what is there for the eyes (form, light, colour, architecture, dress etc.), the ear (besides voices of leader, congregation, musical instruments [see Psalm 150] and choir, recorded music, voices, special effects), taste and smell in the holy communion: what else? Touch is important: we all have 'contact need' since separation from the womb. In the gospels physical contact was important for Jesus as he ministered to people: so, when it is appropriate, we may hold hands to sing or pray, or clasp arms, or share an embrace as an expression of genuine Christian love.

However worship is not just a subjective, ecstatic, 'feeling' experience. It is more than 'self-expression'. Corporate worship ought not to be an emotional tool for producing 'conversions'. The Bible does not use the word 'worship' as simply a description of experience. Worship is something you do, it is a reponse to God's word and God's ways and God's will, however you feel about it (although this does not mean there is no place for feelings and sensory experience).

Rudolf Otto explored the importance of the non-rational in religion and attempted to analyze the feeling which remains where the concept falls short. Otto coined the word numinous to describe 'the holy' after words have failed. The numinous cannot be taught; it can only be felt. It is 'thanking God for his unspeakable gift' (1 Corinthians 9:15). The numinous, says Otto, encompasses both boundless awe and boundless wonder, both fear and fascination. This deep, awesome aspect of all sincere religious emotion he called the mysterium tremendum (from tremo, tremble; also tremor, dread). So we must resist the temptation to 'domesticate the holy', whereby our solemn assemblies become informal social gatherings, our deep communion with God litle more than friendship with one another. (1)

A lot of our worship is intellectual, moving too exclusively in the realm of thoughts and words and ideas. It is addressed to the ears rather than the eyes. Our world is 'word-weary'. We are slaves to the printed word. Perhaps we need printed guidance for worship -- the middle-classes are comfortable reading -- but let us not forget the less well-educated persons who may not be. For them particularly we should encourage 'folk arts' which open new avenues to express worship and praise, provide new methods of teaching and instruction, and draw people more into an atmosphere of enjoyment and festivity. In charismatic/pentecostal churches where the Holy Spirit is invited to take over the worshipper, we have moved sometimes from the rational to the mystical. Worship needs to be rational (Romans 12:1-3) and spiritual (John 4:23), both.

We worship as whole beings: our 'self' is psychological, cultural, biological. We worship with mind and heart and will. We involve the emotions, genuine feelings of joy and desolation, exaltation and bereavement. Worship ought to be a living event, to which we bring our human, frail, brokenness. The Spirit helps us in our infirmities... so we can come to God with our fears, joys, guilt, anger, affirmations, tensions and loneliness. In his presence we renew our lives which are mixed up in work, conflict, love and creation. We worship with 'all that is within us' and 'all that is around us' (the wonders of creation too are an incentive to praise the Creator: see Psalm 19).

Above all, authentic worship is always Christ-centred.

The early Church remained in the apostles' teach- ing because Christ taught his disciples; they had fellowship because they all belonged to the Church, Christ's body; they celebrated communion because Christ ordained it; they prayed because Christ taught them how to pray. (2)



Name him, [Christian], name him with love as strong as death, but with awe and wonder and with bated breath: he is God the Saviour, he is Christ the Lord, ever to be worshipped, trusted and adored.

Caroline Maria Noel Caroline Maria Noel, 'At the Name of Jesus', The Australian Hymn Book, Collins, 1977, no. 170.

We worship not because worship benefits us (although it does), not because we need to (although we do), nor because it is relevant to our daily lives (although it is), but because God is.

Richard John Neuhaus, Freedom for Ministry, San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1956, p. 120.

Where it is emptied of this unearthly element, this awe-struck and creaturely sense of the Holy and Immortal, worship loses its most distinctive characteristic. The seraphic hymn gives its very essence: 'Holy! holy! holy! Lord God of Hosts, heaven and earth are full of thy glory. Glory be to thee, O Lord Most High.' That is worship.

Evelyn Underhill Evelyn Underhill, quoted in Stuart A. Frayne, What is Worship?, booklet, publisher and date unknown, p.20.

The biblical passage which says of Abraham and the three visiting angels: `And he stood over them under the tree and they did eat' is interpreted by Rabbi Zusya to the effect that we stand above the angels, because we know something unknown to them, namely, that eating may be hallowed by the eater's intention. Through Abraham the angels, who were unaccustomed to eating, participated in the intention by which he used to dedicate it to God. Any natural act, if hallowed, leads to God, and nature needs us for what no angel can perform on it, namely, its hallowing.

Martin Buber, 'Heart Searching and the Particular Way', in John Garvey (Ed), Modern Spirituality: an Anthology, London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1985, p.7.

Religion, as von Hugel loved to say, is adoration; our humble acknowledgment of the Transcendent, the Fact of God - the awestruck realism of the seraphs in Isaiah's vision - the meek and loving sense of mystery which enlarges the soul's horizon and puts us in our place...

Adoration, as it more deeply possesses us, inevitably leads on to self-offering: for every advance in prayer is really an advance in love. `I ask not for thy gifts but for thyself' says the Divine Voice to Thomas a Kempis.

Evelyn Underhill, 'Spiritual Life' in John Garvey (Ed), Modern Spirituality: an Anthology, London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1985, pp. 21, 22.

Vladimir [pagan prince of Russia] wanted to unite the people under one religion, so around 988 he sent envoys to examine the major religions... The story of Vladimir's choosing Orthodox Christianity is part legend, part fact... what impressed the grand prince was the dazzling worship his ambassadors described seeing in the great Cathedral of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople; 'We knew not whether we were in heaven or on earth, for surely there is no such splendour or beauty anywhere upon earth. We cannot describe it to you. Only we know that God dwells there... and that their service surpasses the worship of all other places. We cannot forget that beauty.'

'The 100 Most Important Events in Church History', Christian History, [Mary Ann Jeffreys, editorial coordinator, Christian History, 465 Gunderson Drive, Carol Stream, IL 60188], Issue 28 (Vol. IX, No. 4), n.d., p. 19.

It happened one high holy day when the king was in attendance at the Temple and grew impatient with the way the priests were handling the incense. If it were today, we might surmise he was in the habit of eating in a cafeteria after church and anxious to get in line ahead of the Methodists. However, for some reason on this particular day the monarch became annoyed with the handling of the service, so he got up out of the royal pew and went straight into the altar area itself and with his own unconsecrated hands placed the incense on the altar as if to say, 'Let's get this over with so we can get on to something more interesting.' Even in that day of carelessness, such an act had a ring of shocking presumption... By his actions the king implied there was nothing going on here except a human process and he could do the 'hocus-pocus' as well as a priest. But he was soon to learn differently! While he was still in the altar area, a gasp went up from the whole congregation, for there on Uzziah's forehead and hands the dread white splotches of leprosy suddenly appeared... Uzziah fled from the temple never to return - or even to his palace. He who had occupied David's throne was relegated to a leper's cottage and there he died a few weeks later.

John Claypool, 'Worship as Involvement', unpublished sermon preached at Broadway Baptist Church, Fort Worth, Texas, September 23, 1973.

Most Protestant church attenders act as if the church was a theatre, where they are the critical audience and where the minister is the actor whose art they are expected to enjoy and criticize. The situation in the church where the atenders have found their real relationship is a very different one. The stage is still there, but the attenders are now upon it. They are the actors. The audience is there too - God is the audience. The pastor is there also, but he is inconspicuous in the scene. He is only the prompter. He is behind the wings whispering the text that they, the actors are speaking aloud before God. Here is a new attitude towards worship. It has become an occasion for coming more consciously into the presence of God and of reviewing our lives under his loving scrutiny.

Soren Kierkegaard, from an essay 'Purity of Heart', quoted by Principal-Emeritus B.G.Wright, 'Some Thoughts on Worship', Australian Baptist, June 24, 1981.

A striking feature of worship in the Bible is that people gathered in what we could call only a `holy expectancy'. They believed they would actually hear the Kol Yahweh, the voice of God. When Moses went into the Tabernacle he knew he was entering the Presence of God. The same was true of the early church. It was not surprising to them that the building in which they met shook with the power of God. It had happened before (Acts 2:2, 4:31). When some dropped dead and others were raised from the dead by the word of the Lord the people knew that god was in their midst (Acts 5:1-11, 9:36-43; 20:7- 10). As those early believers gathered they were keenly aware that the veil had been ripped in two and like Moses and Aaron they were entering the Holy of Holies. No intermediaries were needed. They were coming into the awful, glorious, gracious Presence of the living God. They gathered with anticipation, knowing that Christ was present among them and would teach them and touch them with his living power...

Your pastor and the services of worship need to be bathed in prayer. Paul prayed for his people; he asked his people to pray for him. C.H.Spurgeon attributed his success to the prayers of his church. Frank Laubach told his audiences, `I am very sensitive and know whether you are praying for me. If one of you lets me down, I feel it. When you are praying for me, I feel a strange power. When every person in a congregation prays intensely while the pastor is preaching, a miracle happens.' Saturate the services of worship with your prayers. Visualise the Lord high and lifted up filling the sanctuary with his presence.

Richard Foster, Celebration of Discipline, Sevenoaks: Hodder & Stoughton, 1980, pp. 140-141, p.38.

When we worship as a congregation, we are really united with all of God's people everywhere and at all times. Indeed, we may not realize our affinity with the strict Calvinist when we sing 'Rock of Ages, cleft for me', or with a Unitarian ('Nearer my God to thee'), with a Roman Catholic ('Lead Kindly Light'), with a Quaker ('Dear Lord and Father of mankind'), as well as with ancient psalmists and modern poets.

Ken Manley, 'Baptist Worship Past... Present', The Australian Baptist, March 3, 1971.

This is the shining principle embedded in the Benediction. All the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ - all of it - is for each of us. And all the love of God - all of it - is for each. And all the helpfulness and instruction and consolation of the Holy Spirit - all of it - is for each. All the sea for every fish; all the air for every bird. It is not that each of ten million believers has one ten-millionth share of the grace of Christ, and of the love of God, and of the fellowship of the Spirit; but the whole, in its indivisible and perfect entirety, is for each individual among them. Let us make the most of it.

F W Boreham, The Tide Comes In, London: Epworth Press, 1958, p.53.



Leader: The Lord be with you.
Response: And also with you

For the greed which exploits others and wastes the good earth
Lord forgive us

For wanting more and more while so many have less and less
Lord forgive us

For our indifference to the suffering of the poor: the hungry, the homeless, the tortured and the oppressed
Lord forgive us

For the lust which misuses others for our own selfish desires
Lord forgive us

For the pride which leads us to trust too much in ourselves and not in You
Lord forgive us

We confess that we have sinned - in thought, in word, in deed; and in what we have not said or done.
Father forgive us.

If we confess our sins to God, he will keep his promise and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all wrongdoing. God has forgiven us... Thank you Lord... We can now make a fresh start. Renew us Lord. Create in us a clean heart. Fill us with your Holy Spirit. Re-engage us in your service. We commit ourselves to forgive others as you have forgiven us. We're yours, Lord: we're all yours.

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as in heaven. Give us today our daily bread, Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours, now and forever. Amen.

Holy One, holy and eternal, awesome, exciting and delightful in your holiness; make us pure in heart to see you; make us merciful to receive your kindness and to share our love with all your human family; then will your name be hallowed on earth as in heaven.

Support us, Lord, all the day long, until the shadows lengthen, and the evening comes, the busy world is hushed, the fever of life is over, and our work done; then Lord, in your mercy, give us safe lodging, a holy rest and peace at the last.

God our judge and our companion, We thank you for the good we did this day and for all that has given us joy. Everything we offer as our humble service. Bless those with whom we have worked, and those who are our concern. Amen.

We have come to the holy mountain and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem; before myriads of angels, before the full assembly of the first-born citizens of heaven.

We have come to God who is the judge of all, and the spirits of the good, made perfect; we have come to Jesus, mediator of the new covenant.

Let us give thanks, and worship God with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire...

God, you are our beginning and you will be our end; we are made in your image and likeness. We praise and thank you for this day. This is the day on which you created light and saw that it was good. This is the day in whose early morning light we discovered the tomb was empty, and encountered Christ, the world's true light. For us your acts are gracious and your love endures for ever...

A New Zealand Prayer Book, Auckland: Collins, 1989, pp. 113, 112, 108.



Charge & Benediction: You have worshipped the Lord in the community of faith. Now go and worship him in your work in your homes and in the world. And as you go, remember: The Lord, in his great mercy, will enrich you with his grace and strengthen you with his word and his Spirit. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Rowland Croucher

LIKE THE CORNERS OF MY MIND

Like the corners of my mind - (Alan and Marilyn Bergman)

This day shall be for you a memorial day, and you shall keep it as a feast [Passover] to the Lord: throughout your generations you shall observe it as an ordinance for ever.

You shall remember that you were a servant in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out thence with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm.

By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion... How shall we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land? If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither! Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I do not remember you.

And when he had given thanks, he broke it and said: 'This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance Of me.'

'Why do you seek the living among the dead? Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and on the third day rise.' And they remembered his words.

As I remember your tears, I long night and day to see you, that I may be filled with joy.

(Exodus 12:14; Deuteronomy 5:15; Psalm 137:1,4-6; 1 Corinthians 11:24; Luke 24:5-8; 2 Timothy 1:4 -- all RSV)



The totality of our experience is stored in our memories, but, paradoxically, most of us spend an inordinate amount of energy trying to forget some of our past. We're prepared to linger over 'happy memories' but many of our memories appear to be too painful to recall. They remind us of past grief or loss; they evoke feelings of guilt or failure -- so we repress them.

To a certain extent, this way of dealing with painful memories is probably necessary. Without the use of defence mechanisms such as repression, the burdens of the past may become too difficult to bear. But indiscriminate repression is unhealthy. If we never come to grips with our hurtful memories, we fail to learn from the experiences which caused us pain, stunting our growth and development as persons. We become enslaved by the tyranny of our past and don't really live in the present. Feelings of anxiety and pain lie embedded in our subconscious and because we have suppressed the memories associated with them, we have forgotten the cause of those feelings. Unidentifiable painful feelings are more crippling than their original cause. They can even cause us to become afraid of the future, in case the future brings us further pain.

Henri Nouwen (The Living Reminder) points out that whilst good memories are visible in outer signs such as trophies, decorations, diplomas, gifts and portraits, painful memories tend to remain hidden, even from ourselves, in the corners of forgetfulness. It is only as we're prepared to make a conscious effort to remember them, as part of our life-story, that they again become available to us. Only as they are available to us can they be confronted and healed.

The Jewish concept of remembrance stressed that creative memory is able 'to make present' the past so that it could become contemporaneous. Normally, the closest we Christians come to acknowledging the validity of this concept is in our celebration of the Lord's Supper. Perhaps it's time to apply it to other aspects of our Christian lives. Perhaps it's time to use our God-given talent for creative memory, recalling our hurtful memories so that God can heal them.



When I use my memory, I ask it to produce whatever it is that I wish to remember. Some things it produces immediately; some are forthcoming only after a delay, as though they were being brought out from some inner hiding place; others come spilling from the memory thrusting themselves upon us when what we want is something quite different, as much as to say 'Perhaps we are what you want to remember?'... All this goes on inside me, in the vast cloisters of my memory. In it are the sky, the earth, and the sea, ready at my summons, together with everything that I have ever perceived in them by my senses... In it I meet myself as well. I remember myself and what I have done, when and where I did it, and the state of my mind at the time... The power of the memory is prodigious, my God. It is a vast immeasurable sanctuary. Who can plumb its depths? And yet it is a faculty of my soul.

Augustine, Confessions

Most of our human emotions are closely related to our memory. Remorse is a biting memory, guilt is an accusing memory, gratitude is a joyful memory, and all such emotions are deeply influenced by the way we have integrated past events into our way of being in the world. In fact, we perceive our world with our memories.

Henri Nouwen, The Living Reminder

Enter into yourself, then, and see that your soul loves itself most fervently; that it could not love itself unless it knew itself, nor know itself unless it remembered itself, because our intellect grasps only what is present to our memory.

Bonaventure, The Soul's Journey into God

The personal unconscious contains lost memories, painful ideas that are repressed (i.e. forgotten on purpose).

Carl Jung, 'On the Psychology of the Unconscious'

Remembering is the beginning of freedom from the covert power of the remembered thing or occurrence.

Max Scheler, On the Eternal Man

Now there are some men who resemble the animal known as the lynx: according to Saint Jerome, they remember only what is before them, and once they turn their backs, they forget everything they cannot see. Then there are some we call idiots and fools because they wander about unaware with their mouths open wide to catch flies. Seneca says of them that they waste their lives because they do not think of the past... Memory is the place wherein is stored the treasure of the wise; it is the ark of truth, the living book of man, the womb where the soul cherishes her sons so that they are not killed by forgetfulness... Do not be a sickly stomach unable to digest what it has eaten, for if you are you will not retain the food of good teaching in the stomach of your memory and spiritually your life will be depleted.

Francisco de Osuna, "The Third Spiritual Alphabet'

For the past which we remember through Jesus Christ is not the serial but the enduring past. When we speak of the past in internal history we do not refer to events which no longer have reality in the world... Our past is what we are... Our past is our present in our conscious and unconscious memory. To understand such a present past is to understand one's self and, through understanding, to reconstruct.

H. Richard Neibuhr, The Meaning of Revelation

What is the ground for such faith in God's sovereignty and deliverance? As throughout the biblical record, it is memory. Remembrance of what God has done in the past gives rise to hopes for what he yet shall do to deliver his people. Just as Old Testament experience and faith grew out of reflection on memories of the exodus and covenant when God's mighty arm delivered his people from bondage to Egypt, so here God's great gift of himself and his forgiveness in Christ is the sufficient ground for confidence about what is really happening in present and future... Faith is grounded in memory but lives in hope.

Gordon D. Kaufman, commenting on Romans 8 in Systematic Theology: A Historicist Perspective

Memory came to my aid and made me feel God's presence; my heart, taking comfort, sought to embrace the cross.

Jacopone da Todi, The Lauds



Almighty God, right now I'm allowing my memory to wander haphazardly through the past events of my life. Its like retracing my footsteps through a long corridor, occasionally stopping outside a closed door, having forgotten what was in that particular room.

Somewhat timidly I'm opening the first door, Lord... I'm looking upon the experiences of my childhood... The next door is slightly ajar and as I peek in memories of my adolescence and young adulthood come flooding back... I had forgotten that those people ever existed. They were so much a part of my life then... How could I have forgotten?

I'm savouring the happy moments, Lord -- but one or two memories are a little painful. I'm not sure if I want to open any more doors, especially not the one in that dark part of the corridor. I have the feeling that it leads to a room with very hurtful memories. See, there's a big padlock with chains on that door!

Lord, give me the courage to open that door after all. I want you to help me to deal with whatever I have to confront... Where forgiveness is called for, may I have the assurance of your forgiveness. Where reconciliation needs to be effected, grant me your strength to approach the person whom I have allowed to become estranged. Where the loneliness of grief is re-awakened, may I be comforted by the knowledge that you share my grief.



A Benediction

Seek the Lord and his strength, seek his presence continually! Remember the wonderful works he has done, his miracles and the judgments he uttered. Have no anxiety about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be known to God.

(Psalm 105:5; RSV; Philippians 4:6, RSV)

Still Waters, Deep Waters ed. By Rowland Croucher pp. 264-268

AH! WILDERNESS

The Spirit immediately drove him into the wilderness. And he was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels ministered to him.

The tempter came to him and said to him, 'If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.'

I will allure her and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her. And there I will give her vineyards and make the valley of Achor a door of hope.

As the Holy Spirit says, ‘Today, when you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, on the day of testing in the wilderness.'

Great multitudes gathered to hear and to be healed of their infirmities. But he [Jesus] withdrew to the wilderness and prayed.

I will make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land springs of water.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

(Mark 1:12-13; Matthew 4:3; Hosea 2:14-15; Hebrews 3:7-8; Luke 5:15-16; Isaiah 41:18; Matthew 5:6 -- all RSV)



The wilderness is an ambiguous place. The prophets speak of it as the setting of God's and Israel's shared intimacy of love and duty. But it was also the occasion of God's fierce disappointment: 'for forty years I loathed that generation.' It is a place of ambiguity for us also. It is the time in our lives when we are separated from our working, where disappointment and failure get to us and yet from which we return clearer in mind for having heard the unwelcome truth, refreshed in spirit in having been alone with God. We perceive the truth also that you cannot lead people out of the wilderness unless you have been there yourself (Henri Nouwen). It is the time of trial, of temptation, and so important to God is it that Jesus was led there, or was 'driven' there. He sees to it that we have times there also.

In the wilderness illusions are tested and destroyed, true motives, real weaknesses made plain; when our busyness, for which people praise us and in which we may feel secure, is revealed as flight. We fly from suspected fractures of integrity, the declaiming of large, round home truths and the suspicion that we are more hollow than we appear. When we are by ourselves, left to ourselves, do we experience ourselves as dry, restless, impatient? Do we fear the risk of shame before God? This is the wilderness. What can we learn from it?

Jesus had prophetic hope for his ministry, so movingly declared at Nazareth (and so thoroughly rejected by the congregation there). The adversary tested these hopes, sounded the disappointment. He probed for the falsities of illusion. Was there in Jesus desire, ambition, self-confidence enough, to draw him away from his centre in the Father? Did he really live in God? Did he really love the Father more than the mission? Might he be led to consider that the end might baptise the means? Could he be persuaded to by-pass disappointment and loss? Would he always wait for God? We hear echoes of these questions in our wildernesses.

Physical hunger is not an illusion, but the belief that it is the chief of our hungering is. Risk is not an illusion, but the belief that we can create risks for which God will then deliver us is. It is possible to gain the whole world and lose our soul. Yet God means that our desert experiences shall give us opportunities of looking for him beyond our darkness, feeding upon him in our hunger, resting on him from our labours, looking at the bones he shows us to be broken, that they may rejoice (Psalm 51:8).



The Father said, This is a stone. The Son would not say, That is a loaf.

George MacDonald, Unspoken Sermons

I have discovered that all the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact, that they cannot stay quietly in their own chamber... We do not content ourselves with the life we have in ourselves and in our own being; we desire to live an imaginary life in the mind of others, and for this purpose we endeavour to shine. We labour unceasingly to adorn and preserve this imaginary existence, and neglect the real. And if we possess calmness, or generosity, or truthfulness, we are eager to make it known, and so attach these virtues to that imaginary existence... We are so presumptuous that we wish to be known by all the world, even by people who shall come after, when we shall be no more...

Blaise Pascal, Pensees

The reward of the good man is to be allowed to worship in truth.

Soren Kierkegaard, Purity of Heart

Stanley Spencer has painted his 'Christ in the wilderness' in such a way as to bring out, in an unexpected key, the tone of Mark's 'and the wild beasts were with him'. Jesus sits on his heels in a desert empty of all life except a scorpion, which he holds in his hands and looks upon, meditatively. Isn't it a marvellous way of bringing to us both the value of solitude, of reflection, and the need for companionship in pilgrimage?

Yes, there is a sense of shame that is favourable to the Good, woe to the man who casts it off. This sense of shame is a saving companion through life. Woe to the man who breaks with it. It is in the service of sanctification and true freedom... Each one who is not more ashamed before himself than all others, if he is placed in difficulty and much tried in life, will in one way or another end by becoming the slave of men. For to be more ashamed in the presence of others than when alone, what else is this than to be more ashamed of seeming than being? Soren Kierkegaard, Purity of Heart

A man does not live by his feelings any more than by bread.

George MacDonald, Unspoken Sermons

A most imposing gate led out on the north side, and beyond this, as far as the eye could reach, was an undulating desert over which the wintry wind was blowing... The scene was desolate beyond all words, and if ever human sorrow has left an impress on the atmosphere of a place it is surely at Kiayukwan, through whose portals for centuries past a neverending stream of despairing humanity has filed. Disgraced officials, condemned criminals, homeless prodigals, terrified outlaws, the steps of all these have converged to that one sombre portal and through it have forever left the land of their birth. The arched walls are covered with poems wrung from broken hearts, nor can anyone leave China by this road without peculiar pain, and even tears... Among all those tragic inscriptions, from the day of our visit, one message of hope now hangs, printed in crimson letters so large and clear, that every tear-filled eye can see it:

'Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners'.

Mildred Cable and Francesca French, Through Jade Gate and Central Asia



Father, in my imagination I sit with Jesus in his wilderness experience. I allow the silence and the solitude to come to me, become part of me. I let go all distractions, yesterday's profits and loss, tomorrow's plans and expectations. What I spend minutes in doing, my Lord spent days. Such a long time, Father, to pray and meditate, such a long time being tried, discovering your will freshly and making it his own with joy. Let me wait before you Father, surrendering my gifts and strengths and experience so as to find your strength perfect in my weakness. I should be afraid, Father, of learning of my hidden weaknesses, my flights into busyness, my sometimes testy virtue, if I did not realise that you know me through and through, and love me dearly. Teach me, Father, and let me always be learning about the way you see me -- your desire to reach the real me, hidden from myself but coming to be, becoming more and more a blessing to those you give me to care about.



A Benediction

Christ be with me, Christ within me,
Christ behind me, Christ before me,
Christ beside me, Christ to win me,
Christ to comfort, and restore me,
Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,
Christ in hearts of all that love me,
Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.

St Patrick, tr. By C.F. Alexander

Still Waters, Deep Waters ed. By Rowland Croucher pp. 259-263

More Devotions

BETTER THAN JEWELS

Wisdom is supreme; therefore get wisdom. Though it cost all you have, get understanding.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight.

If any of you falls short in wisdom, ask God for it and it will be given to you, for God is a generous giver who neither refuses nor reproaches anyone.

The wisdom from above is pure first of all; it is also peaceful, gentle, and friendly; it is full of compassion and produces a harvest of good deeds; it is free from prejudice and hypocrisy.

The child (Jesus) grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favour of God was upon him... And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favour.

That they may have the full riches of complete understanding, in order that they may know the mystery of God, namely, Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

We ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will,with all the wisdom and understanding that his Spirit gives. Then you will be able to live as the Lord wants and will always do what pleases him. Your lives will produce all kinds of good deeds, and you will grow in your knowledge of God.

Christ's message in all its richness must live in your hearts. Teach and instruct each other with all wisdom. Sing psalms, hymns, and sacred songs; sing to God with thanksgiving in your hearts.

(Proverbs 4:7, NIV; Proverbs 9:10, RSV; James 1:5, NEB; James 3:17, GNB; Luke 2:40, RSV and 52, NRSV; Colossians 2:2-3, NIV; Colossians 1:9-10, 3:16, GNB)



It is probably easier to recognise wisdom than it is to define it. It is more than intelligence or know-how and it cannot be produced by education or the collection of data. A peasant might have it and a professor might lack it or vice versa.

Wisdom is obviously moral as well as intellectual. It is a kind of spiritual shrewdness, the ability to see deep into the heart of life and to know what to do. It is 'the practical side of moral goodness' (J.l. Packer).

God is the source of wisdom. But because his wise rule comes to us through the distorted screen of a fallen world his wisdom is often strange and paradoxical. He uses the devious and diabolical plans of humanity to save the world! When sly Herod, weak Pilate, hostile Jews and callous Romans conspired to exterminate his son they opened up a fountain for the washing away of sins (Acts 4:27-28).

Reverence for God is the key that opens the door to wisdom. A humble teachable spirit, a healthy distrust of our own cleverness, will put us where God can share his wise will with us. His word will also show us the way: in a world where the intellectual and moral atmosphere is polluted by anti-God thinking we constantly need to 'oxygenate' our minds with God-thoughts. And, of course, if we are short of wisdom we can always ask for it! God gives it very liberally to those who sincerely and earnestly request it.



This is the way of wisdom. Clearly, it is just one facet of the life of faith. For what underlies and sustains it?. Why, the conviction that the inscrutable God of providence is the wise and gracious God of creation and redemption. We can be sure that the God who made this marvellously complex worldorder, and who compassed the great redemption from Egypt, and who later compassed the even greater redemption from sin and Satan, knows what he is doing, and 'doeth all things well', even if for the moment he hides his hand. We can trust him and rejoice in him even when we cannot discern his path.

J.l. Packer, Knowing God

Deep in unfathomable mines of never-failing skill
he treasures up his bright designs, and works his sovereign will.

Judge not the Lord by feeble sense, but trust him for his grace;
behind a frowning providence he hides a smiling face.

Blind unbelief is sure to err, and scan his work in vain;
God is his own interpreter, and he will make it plain.

William Cowper, in the hymn 'God moves in a mysterious way his wonders to perform...'

This universal Voice of God was by the ancient Hebrews often called Wisdom, and was said to be everywhere sounding and searching throughout the earth, seeking some response from the sons of men. The eighth chapter of the Book of Proverbs begins, 'Doth not wisdom cry? and understanding put forth her voice?'... This universal Voice has ever sounded, and it has often troubled men even when they did not understand the source of their fears. Could it be that this Voice distilling like a living mist upon the hearts of men has been the undiscovered cause of the troubled conscience and the longing for immortality confessed by millions since the dawn of recorded history?

A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God

Do you so love the truth and the right that you welcome, or at least submit willingly to, the idea of an exposure of what in you is yet unknown to yourself -- an exposure that may redound to the glory of the truth by making you ashamed and humble?.... Are you willing to be made glad that you were wrong when you thought others were wrong?

George Macdonald, The Final Unmasking

If thou shouldst say, 'It is enough, I have reached perfection,' all is lost. For it is the function of perfection to make one know one's imperfection.

St Augustine

These Sages had the character of freelances but none could doubt their unswerving loyalty to the heritage that had made Israel the people of God. And the Sages believed that heritage was for everyone... They represented the finest education of their period in combination with the pious spirit of their religion. They shared fully in the international exchange of ideas and their viewpoint was ecumenical. They counted nothing human alien to them. In a day when foreign fashions were threatening to overwhelm the moral and spiritual life of their people they stood forth to 'reprove, correct, and equip men for salvation'.

John Paterson, The Wisdom of Israel

If Folly speaks to a young man's passion, Wisdom speaks to his idealism. A generous-hearted youth with his life before him may gladly offer all his powers of mind and body to the highest cause he knows. If that is the cause of God and His wisdom, how happy the man will be! We sometimes speak in metaphor of a man being 'in love with' his work, or a student 'wedded' to his books. So the wise use the language of love and marriage to show how one should give himself to wisdom: Say to wisdom, 'you are my sister', and call insight your intimate friend. Prize her highly and she will exalt you; she will honour you if you embrace her. (Proverbs 7:4; 4:8)

John Goodwin, Divine Wisdom

That low man seeks a little thing to do,
Sees it and does it: This high man, with a great thing to pursue,
Dies ere he knows it. That low man goes on adding one to one,
His hundred's soon hit: This high man, aiming at a million,
Misses a unit. That, has the world here -- should he need the next,
Let the world mind him! This, throws himself on God, and unperplexed,
Seeking shall find him!

Robert Browning

You have to be good to be wise -- though Proverbs is particularly concerned to point out the converse: that you have to be wise to be really good; for goodness and wisdom are not two separable qualities, but two aspects of a single whole. To take it further back, you have to be godly to be wise; and this is not because godliness pays, but because the only wisdom by which you can handle everyday things in conformity with their nature is the wisdom by which they were divinely made and ordered.

Derek Kidner, Proverbs

A retrospect of my whole life, from the earliest period of my recollection down to the present hour, leaves me with this impression, that I have been, and am being, guided by a gracious and mighty Hand, which has made, and is making, that possible to me which otherwise to me had been impossible. Oh that I had at all times unhesitatingly trusted and yielded myself to its guidance!

Richard Rothe, Still Hours

So when Paul prays that his friends may have wisdom and understanding, he is praying that they may understand the great truths of Christianity, and that they may be able to apply these truths to the tasks and decisions which meet them in everyday living. A man can quite easily be a master of theology and a failure in living. He may be able to write and talk about the great eternal truths, and yet be quite helpless to apply these truths to the things which meet him every day. The Christian must know what Christianity means, not, as it were, in a vacuum, but in the business of living from day to day.

William Barclay, commentary on Colossians 1:9

Give me my scallop-shell of quiet,
My staff of faith to walk upon,
My scrip of joy, immortal diet,
My bottle of salvation,
My gown of glory, hope's true gage,
And thus I'11 take my pilgrimage.

Sir Walter Raleigh, His Pilgrimage



Lord, in this world of getting and spending there are a whole lot of good things going unasked for. You say that wisdom is better than anything, worth any price, and yet there for the asking. O generous Father, give this great gift to your needy child, and keep on giving it. The choking atmosphere of this self-centred, God-denying society shuts off the air that my mind and spirit needs. I can't think straight. I can't act right. I leave you out of decisions. I bungle my relationships with others. Lord, give me wisdom lest I go on making a hash of things!

Help me to see life as you do, to make my calculations from the top down not from the bottom up. Help me to see deep into the heart of life -- my own life and the lives of others -- and help me to use that as a compass point to steer in the right direction. Make me humble, happy and holy; make me teachable, correctable, reversible; make me wise, make me wise, make me wise.

Lord Jesus, you were filled with wisdom. Fill me with your wisdom and help me day by day to learn to face life as you faced it. Lead me on step by step to unlearn my unwise ways, and to be re-educated into your sensitive and loving insights, into your strong and gentle ways.

A Benediction

The immortal, invisible, only wise God go with you, going before you, behind you, around you and within you; the God who made all things, who sustains all things, rules all things, sees all things, give you insight and understanding from this time forward and forevermore. Amen.

Rowland Croucher, Still Waters Deep Waters, (Albatross/Lion) chapter 14.