From paralysis to hope

At times of discouragement in my life, I felt it harder and harder just to keep going. One awful day I remember so well, all I could do was put one foot ahead of another while I put the garbage out. At its worst, discouragement will lead you into paralysis. You can’t even make a decision or do the most basic things. Why? Because you have lost hope. There just doesn’t seem to be any point to doing anything. Hope is so incredibly important. Hope alone breaks the power of discouragement and the paralysis that comes with it, revives your strength and makes you bold instead of powerless.

On one level, hope is a gift that a friend can give us. “Come on Dave, you can do that!”  Maybe, just because somebody cheered you on, you actually went on that perpendicular rollercoaster at the theme park (though that’s definitely out of my league). Or maybe one chilly night last autumn you jumped into the freezing North Sea just because a crazy friend said you could do it (that one I actually did).

But on a far more profound level, hope is something that we desperately need in order to live. Hope is the dividing line between surviving and living. Hope is not a luxury, it is a necessity. The good news is this: hope is available to us. Listen to what Paul says: “Since we have such a hope, we are very bold, not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face” (2 Corinthians 3:12). The hope he talks about here is not something that has to be or can be created in our mind or emotions. No, this hope is totally supernatural and it comes as a gift. It is based entirely on the power of the Holy Spirit: “But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is destroyed. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Corinthians 3:16-17).

The veil is what came between the glory of the Lord and the people of Israel. That veil is still over the face of people who are so full of religion they cannot see who Jesus is. But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, Jew or Gentile, male or female, young or old, the veil is not only removed, it is destroyed! God wants to destroy everything that comes between you and his glory. What is his glory? It is his manifest presence in your life. It is his Spirit coming to you and breathing supernatural life into your weary spirit. The old hymn puts it in the form of a prayer: “Breathe on me, breath of God, fill me with life anew.”

Religion brings slavery, but the Holy Spirit brings freedom. This is freedom to enter into the very presence of God. It is freedom from the need to earn our salvation. It is freedom from the penalty of the law that brings death. It is freedom from the stranglehold of sin. It is freedom to behold the glory of God without interruption, without the veil of religion in between. What amazing kind of freedom is that? But how often do we take advantage of it?

The breath of God rushing on you will break your paralysis. It will give you power to live and not just survive, to do things you never believed you could do. The power of the Spirit is designed to transform us into a bold people, ready to go out to war in the confidence that God is with us!

There are no extraordinary people in the kingdom of God, only ordinary people touched by hope through the power of God’s Spirit.

“Since we have such a hope, we are very bold.”

May this boldness and this hope come to you today.

The only way to unity

Some feel unity comes through believing the same things. If we create a common statement of faith and get everyone to agree to it, we will have unity. Others think worship styles are the basis of unity. If we get everyone under one roof who likes the Hillsong style or the Bethel style we will find unity. Or forget all that and go back to traditional hymns and liturgy. Still others tell us the answer is to build churches with homogenous groups of people -- the same age group or social group or ethnic group. Or sometimes we think that if can build a movement with a “brand,” that will do the trick. Redeemer, Hillsong, Harvest, Bethel, Acts 29 and so on.

But in truth none of these things will create unity. It is not that doctrine or worship or church order is unimportant. It is just that they don’t constitute the foundation.  Ironically, we find the answer in going to the most divided congregation in the New Testament world. Paul teaches those fractious and difficult believers at Corinth that there is only one way to unity. Why are we one body in Christ, he asks in 1 Corinthians 12:12? The answer comes in verse 13: because we have been baptized in the one Spirit and given the one Spirit to drink. What makes them one is their common experience of the Holy Spirit.

Only the Holy Spirit can create unity. There are lots of ways we can hinder unity, but there isn’t a single way we can create it. Only the Spirit can do that.

When you are born into a family, there’s nothing you can do to make yourself part of that family. By virtue of birth, you are part of it, whether you like it or not. And even if you try to leave your family, you will never cease being your parents’ son or daughter, or brother or sister to your siblings, or grandson or granddaughter to your grandparents. Birth places you into family.

Human families can fracture. But something stronger than flesh and blood holds the body of Christ together. And that is the presence of the Holy Spirit. Birth places us into natural family. New birth places us into spiritual family. And the new birth occurs through the Holy Spirit: “Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God” (John 3:5). The Holy Spirit has the incredible ability to join people together who otherwise would have nothing in common with each other, and to create one family out of them. The Holy Spirit enables us to travel to the farthest corners of the world and encounter fellow believers with whom we feel instantly at home. What we have in common is always far more than our outward differences.

We need a strong and real experience of the Holy Spirit. Christianity does not depend on an experience. It depends on the work of Jesus Christ on the cross. But we are meant to have a tangible experience of the Holy Spirit when we submit to what Christ did on the cross and receive its benefits for ourselves. The Holy Spirit changed Peter from a coward who denied the Lord three times into a man who stood up to testify to his faith in front of thousands, went into the Sanhedrin and rebuked the religious leaders publicly, wound up beaten and in prison and never turned back.

How this comes to you or to me is not something that can be programmed. After all, you never know where the Spirit is coming from or where he is going (John 3:8).  How the Spirit met you last year or last week may not be how he is going to meet you today. How the Spirit met your friend is not necessarily going to be how the Spirit meets you. What are the signs of the Spirit’s presence? The knowledge of the love of God (Eph. 4:14-19). The peace that passes understanding (Phil. 4:7). The joy of the Lord, unspeakable and full of glory (1 Peter 3:8). The presence of a clear conscience (2 Cor. 4:2). And the assurance that the Lord is with you and will never leave you or forsake you (Heb. 13:5).

The purpose of our common experience of the Spirit is not so much that we all get along with each other. No, Paul teaches in 1 Corinthians 12:12-13 it is above all that we be formed into one body. Why is this so? Because only in the one body is the fullness of the reality of who Jesus is made manifest to the world.  Only when we are all working together is the fullness of who Jesus is in the midst of us made visible.

That’s why unity is so important. The world will only know the love of God when they see it manifest in the unity of his people with him and with each other (John 17:23). Seek a fresh encounter with his Spirit each day and let your joy spill over into the lives of those around you. Then unity will come.

What do you do when you fear you're falling?

Many times I have felt weak, faltering, about to fail. Circumstances look insurmountable. Fears arise on every side. Yet I have to keep going. I have a family to support, a church to lead, people in various places who are dependent on me in one way or another. Most of all, I have a Lord I want to honour. I don’t want to fail anyone, and more than anyone else, I don’t want to fail the Lord.

When I feel like this (which is thankfully not all the time), I am encouraged by the fact I have not walked this way alone. “Afflicted in every way, yet not crushed; perplexed but not despairing; persecuted but not forsaken; knocked down but not knocked out.” Those are Paul’s words, not mine. And yes, before anyone points it out, I admit that his trials were in a whole different league to mine. But still, it’s comforting to know others we respect have gone through the same range of emotions. Christians do not go through life with a bullet-proof coating guaranteeing immunity from every negative experience and emotion.

But whatever my struggles are or yours, how do we get through them? One good answer comes from Paul himself, writing to Timothy, his spiritual son, at a difficult time in Timothy’s life: “You, my child, be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 2:1).

“Be strengthened” in Greek is a present passive imperative. What does that mean, you ask? Well, the most important part is the passive. We cannot strengthen ourselves. We haven’t got the ability or the power to do it. We need someone else to strengthen us. There’s no point whipping yourself when you’re down because you can’t turn your world right side up again. No amount of will power, emotional energy or mental concentration will do anything for you. You can’t think your way out of trouble. You can’t will your way out of trouble. You need to be rescued from it, and right here he tells us exactly how that happens. Our strength does not come from within, it comes from somewhere else. It comes from the grace of God.

Grace is not firstly a theological concept. It is not firstly a doctrine. It is not firstly a principle or a truth. No, grace is an energy. Grace is the power of almighty God sent to set you free. Yes, we can (and must) explain grace in the words of a doctrine or teaching or principle or truth. But we can never reduce it to any of those things, for it is something much greater. Grace is God’s rescue mission at work by the power of his Spirit in your life.

And Paul’s command “be strengthened” is a present imperative. The “present” part refers to something happening in this very moment. It does not refer to something that happened a long time ago or every so often. We need to find the power of the grace of God on a present, continuous basis. The grace of God that delivers me today is an amazing thing, but today’s grace will not deliver me tomorrow.

I need to stay in a living relationship with the Lord so that his mighty strength will flow into my life today, tomorrow and the next day. Without it, I will dry up. But the good news is, even if you feel dried up, you can still go back to the well. There is always grace for you. Ask, and you will receive.

Go somewhere and cry out to God until he meets you. It’s as simple as that. Take my word for it -- I’ve been doing it for decades! God’s grace will not solve all of life’s difficulties. But it will get you through them.

And in the end, here is a rock we can all hold onto: God will never call you to do something or be something or endure something without giving you the grace to get through it.

Let me leave you with one final thought. The goal of being strengthened by grace is not to rise above everything that would unsettle or disturb our comfortable lives. Jesus came to draw us into an adventure. This adventure is never without risk. It will cost us. But the price is always worth paying because of the reward. The reward is to walk alongside God and experience his great power and love. And then one day to hear those words, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

Don’t lose heart -- his grace will get you there.

When leaders are going through tough times

Here is a passage takes us right into the heart of an intimate conversation between father and son: “You then, my child, be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus... Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 2:1-3).

Paul is teaching Timothy. Teaching in the body of Christ is meant to take place in the context of relationship. That’s why our main source of teaching is supposed to come from the elders and leaders of our local congregation. Why? Because they are spiritual fathers we know and trust. You can read good books and listen to great recordings, but your basic spiritual diet should come from the leaders of your local church.

Paul had appointed Timothy to lead one of his greatest churches, the congregation at Ephesus. Though that church had previously seen a great move of God (Acts 19), Paul was writing at a time of great difficulty in the congregation. A substantial number of the people had left (2 Timothy 1:15). Some who remained were openly promoting false doctrine (2 Timothy 2:17-18). Still others were using the church to take advantage of some of its weakest members (2 Timothy 3:6-7).  It seems hard to believe that people could walk away from such a church, yet they did. Perhaps the days of city-wide revival recorded in Acts had died down. Perhaps persecution had arisen. It’s easy to be part of something riding the crest of a wave, but it takes faithful people to hang on when things get tough.

Timothy as a pastor must have felt a total failure. If he knew a letter from Paul was on the way, what would he have felt like? He had presided over the decline of a great work Paul had built. Would Paul rake him over the coals because the numbers were down, or remove him from his position? No, not at all. Paul was many things, but above all he was a father. In Paul’s day, there was a shortage of fathers in the body of Christ (1 Corinthians 4:15). That was perhaps understandable, given the church was so young. There is no excuse for a similar situation today, yet sadly the shortage remains. There are far too many administrators, managers and bureaucrats in the higher ranks of church leadership, but, at least in my experience, very few fathers.

Paul had had his own share of disappointments as well. This was far from the first time people had taken what he had to offer and then cast him aside. So now he comes to strengthen Timothy. He believes in Timothy. When we believe in people, we don’t cast them aside even if they have made mistakes.

So Paul did not arrive with a rebuke, but he did come with an answer, and it was a very simple one: “You, my child, be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus.”

When we see Christian leaders suffering or their church going through a rough time, what is our response? Too many people jump ship at the earliest opportunity. Others become critical. Few understand the spiritual dynamic of what is going on. Timothy’s church was suffering not because God had deserted Timothy or because he had done something wrong. No, Timothy was suffering because of his faithfulness to God. Religious consumers out for their own benefit leave the moment trouble arrives. But faithful people see tough times as an opportunity not to leave but to serve, so that the church is preserved and its leaders are strengthened.

We need to learn from Paul. He knew that Timothy did not need criticism -- he was probably beating himself up already. He knew that Timothy did not need to attend a church growth seminar or try a different strategic plan -- he already had a plan the great apostle himself had laid down. He knew that Timothy did not need people giving stupid, superficial opinions on what had gone wrong. No, Timothy needed one thing and one thing only: the grace of God.

Grace is an amazing thing. It is not a concept or a doctrine, though it can be described in those terms.  Above all grace is the power of God.

When your leaders or pastors are going through tough times, and they are faithful folk, come to them with grace. Ask God for his strength to flow through you to serve and strengthen them. Call on God for him to meet them in their valley and bring them out the other side. Don’t be critical. Be graceful.

Timothy knew his call would bring suffering, and in the last words we quoted above Paul reminds him of that. The suffering should come from the wounds inflicted by the enemy, not from supposed Christians. What a tragedy -- yet how often it takes place -- when Christian leaders are shot from behind.

Come with grace. The future of your church may depend on it. Not to mention the health of your own relationship with God.

And pray God would raise up more fathers. We need them.

The real meaning of faith (part 2)

In the last post, I started to explain the real meaning of faith using Paul’s account of Abraham’s faith in Romans 4. This post picks up where the last one left off.

In Romans 4:19, Paul tells us that Abraham “considered his own body.” The Greek verb for “consider” means this: “to direct one’s whole mind to an object, to study, examine, consider reflectively, ponder, or to apprehend something in its fullness by immersing oneself in it.” That means one thing: Abraham was not afraid to face the human facts. Yet somehow he did this “without weakening in his faith.” Faith does not run away from what is there in front of us. Faith does not deny that the problem exists. Faith does not say it is a “negative confession” to admit we are sick. That is not faith, that is deception. And it’s a deception born of fear. Faith states that, in spite of the undeniable reality of the physical evidence, the evidence of the word of God is stronger still. The word of God is the only evidence faith needs. When faith comes up against the brick wall of circumstance, it does not pretend obstacles do not exists. It does not pretend we have the ability to do anything to change the circumstance other than to cry out to the God who can change everything.

Paul understood what the nature of Abraham’s faith was. It was not a mind-over-matter arrogant declaration of the person who believes they have the power within themselves to make anything happen. No, it was the same faith which had enabled Paul himself to move ahead in obedience at the darkest hour of depression and despair. That was the time when he wrote to the Corinthians admitting that he felt the sentence of death had been passed upon him (2 Corinthians 1:8). That was the time he felt afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing; hunted, but not killed; struck down, but not struck out (2 Corinthians 4:8-9). That was the time he felt he was carrying about in his body the dying of Jesus (2 Corinthians 4:10). Like Abraham, Paul knew that the key in such circumstances was to look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are unseen. Those things can only be seen with vision given by the Holy Spirit on the basis of the revelation of the Word of God (2 Corinthians 4:18).

Paul continues: “With regard to the promise of God he did not waver in unbelief, but was strengthened in faith, giving glory to God” (verse 20). The man or woman of faith, like Abraham, has an undivided heart. Whatever the state of their emotions or mind, they will trust God and obey him. But notice this: it was “with regard to the promise of God” that Abraham did not waver. The most crucial thing here is not Abraham’s faith, but the promise of God upon which that faith rested. Abraham’s faith was directed toward something entirely independent of him: the promise of God.

Genuine faith has nothing to do with mind over matter or positive thinking or speaking. Such a “faith” is human-centred. It is not the faith of the Bible. Abraham’s faith was based on and controlled entirely by the divine promise. Faith does not contain its own power, as some preachers seem to suggest. Such a “faith” would be a form of magic or even witchcraft – an attempted manipulation of God by human efforts. Instead, the promise on which faith rests is its power. Faith exists, Charles Cranfield wrote, because a person has been “overpowered, held and sustained by God’s divine promise.”

So many fall into condemnation, frustration or disillusionment because they feel their act of believing is the critical part. They discover that their “faith” does not work, because in truth it is not Biblical faith so much as human positive thinking. And what is the promise that holds us? The promise is the Bible in its fullness, as that Word is understood and applied through diligent study, prayer, discipleship, submission to godly wisdom, and expressed in a commitment to live not for oneself but to walk in the way of the cross. As we walk in obedience to the Word, its promises take hold of us.

Abraham “was strengthened in faith.” He did not strengthen himself by his own “positive thinking”, will-power or emotional self-control, all of which were entirely inadequate. He found his strength only and entirely in God. God himself will come alongside the one who is attempting to move forward against all the heavy currents of doubt, fear and despair the world and the enemy can stir up against him. Abraham made a choice to believe God, but that opened the door for God to help. Where everything is ranged against the promise, faith is “being enabled” by God to rest on the promise alone, refusing to demand any visible proof or evidence. People of faith are not strong people, they are weak people with faith in a strong God.

Faith begins the minute we believe what God says. Once we have believed what he has said about salvation, the big decision of faith is accomplished. The heavy lifting is over. It should be easy, by comparison, to believe him for anything which comes after that.

Then the promise of verse 21 will come up under our feet: whatever God has promised, he has power to do. This faith of Abraham – our father – is available to every one of us today.