The Success of the Early Church

Reflecting on the growth of the early church, Gerald Sittser offers some thoughts to explain its success:

Christians had to guard the newness of the message without isolating themselves from the culture or accommodating themselves to the culture, which required them to form people in the faith and thus grow a movement of genuine disciples who could survive, and even thrive, in such a world. Rome would have ignored Christianity if Christians had been too isolated; it would have absorbed it if they had become too accommodating. For the most part it did neither.

Resilient Faith - Gerald L Sittser - Brazos Press, p.6

Augustine and A Well-Read Life

Augustine’s Confessions bears rereading because its story is the human story, a story that—with time and contemplation—I can also make my own. Like the prodigal’s tale, it shows me how I can return home. Like the Psalms it echoes, it gives me laments with which to confess my sin and praises to sing the faithfulness of God. And like the gospel it embodies, it teaches us all how to read and live our way into God’s great story of love.

from A Well-Read Life

Approaching God with freedom and confidence

If Ephesians 3:12 was a statement in isolation it would still be splendid, conveying such warmth and hope: that being joined to Jesus, by faith in him, people like us can come to the living God “with freedom and confidence”. The freedom of children entering our Father’s presence, knowing that we belong there and belong to him. And doing so with a proper sense of confidence - that his love and power are such none can ever ask too much. Confidence that asking for bread will not yield a stone.

You can read the whole piece over at The Waiting Country.

There is a river....

‘There is a river’ - the most powerful statement, definitive and decided. Set within a psalm that exhorts us to stillness because God reigns supreme, that offers the greatest comfort in the midst of calamity and hostility, these words lead into a place of calm and confidence.

You can read the whole piece over at The Waiting Country.

On Suffering (Jayber Crow)

Where did I get my knack for being a fool? If I could advise God, why didn’t I just advise Him (like our great preachers and politicians) to be on our side and give us victory and make sure that Jimmy Chatham had not died in vain? I had to turn around and wade out of the mire myself.

Christ did not descend from the cross except into the grave. And why not otherwise? Wouldn’t it have put fine comical expressions on the faces of the scribes and the chief priests and the soldiers if at that moment He had come down in power and glory? Why didn’t He do it? Why hasn’t He done it at any one of a thousand good times between then and now?

I knew the answer. I knew it a long time before I could admit it, for all the suffering of the world is in it. He didn’t, He hasn’t, because from the moment He did, He would be the absolute tyrant of the world and we would be His slaves. Even those who hated Him and hated one another and hated their own souls would have to believe in Him then. From that moment the possibility that we might be bound to Him and He to us and us to one another by love forever would be ended.

And so, I thought, He must forebear to reveal His power and glory by presenting Himself as Himself, and must be present only in the ordinary miracle of the existence of His creatures. Those who wish to see Him must see Him in the poor, the hungry, the hurt, the wordless creatures, the groaning and travailing beautiful world.

I would sometimes be horrified in every moment I was alone. I could see no escape. We are too tightly tangled together to be able to separate ourselves from one another either by good or by evil. We all are involved in all and any good, and in all and any evil. For any sin, we all suffer. That is why our suffering is endless. It is why God grieves and Christ’s wounds still are bleeding.

But the mercy of the world is time. Time does not stop for love, but it does not stop for death and grief, either. After death and grief that (it seems) ought to have stopped the world, the world goes on. More things happen. And some of the things that happen are good. My life was changing now. It had to change. I am not going to say that it changed for the better. There was good in it as it was. But also there was good in it as it was going to be.

(Jayber Crow, Wendell Berry, pp. 311-312)

Other boats

New post over at the waiting country on Substack...

"There were other boats with him."

Don't be like the mule

Psalm 32 is justly famous, both within the Bible and in the lives of Christians, for its plain and powerful statements about the blessings of forgiveness and the LORD’s amazing willingness to not count our sins against us. For those who confess their sins and put their trust in God’s provision for mercy - his own Son - the outcome is bold and stark:

And you forgave the guilt of my sin. (verse 5)

No closure could be more blessed nor more secure. The guilt of our sins taken away, no longer counted against us.

You’d think we would all simply bow our heads in worship and live continually in the freedom of such favour, taking the greatest pains not to be careless or capitulate to sin. But there is a recognition here that we are far from straightforward people, that the twisted nature of our hearts will take much unravelling. Thus, the psalm pleads with us:

Do not be like the horse or the mule,

which have no understanding

but must be controlled by bit and bridle

or they will not come to you. (verse 9)

It appears that there is a tendency in each of us to deny the depths of the issues we face, that our tendency to wander is more than a passing phase. Horses and mules are well-known for their potential to be obstinate (some, not all) but they aren’t the only creatures known to be so. People like us fall into the same category.

In her poem, Six Recognitions of the Lord, Mary Oliver bears eloquent witness to the shock of discovering the obstinacy of remaining sin:

…When I first found you I was

filled with light, now the darkness grows

and it is filled with crooked things, bitter

and weak, each one bearing my name.

The Christian life demands that we slow down our responses and become willing to learn. The Lord’s love for us is such that he will not allow us simply to career off into territory that is dangerous and harmful, both to ourselves and others. If need be, he will act to restrain us, to use bit and bridle, tides and time, turning us away from judgement and disaster. It won’t be pretty - we may well find our strength sapped as in the heat of summer (verse 4) - but it will be effective.

The reluctance of horse or mule to “come to you” is perhaps echoed in the willing diversion of our hearts away from the Lord’s presence. We carry upon us both the burden of unresolved shame as well as the poundage of a pride that does not relish correction. And so we dig our heels in, refusing to “Come to the waters…[to] buy and eat…without money and without cost.”

You really don’t need to carry that weight any longer. In coming to the LORD we are not coming to a faceless rider, as simply another mount for him to use. We are those he dearly loves. He will not exploit our weaknesses.

Nor are we hopeless captives to the folly of our pride and to the fear of exposure. The Spirit is able to help us calm and quieten our souls, so that we no longer fret fitfully like children who have not been weaned (Psalm 131). Instead, we can truly find rest in the joy of knowing that “the LORD’s unfailing love surrounds the one who trusts in him” (verse 10), trusting in the God “who justifies the ungodly” (Rom. 4:5).

When the day closes, our confidence is this: he will not let the rising of the mighty waters reach us. He himself is our hiding-place, the strongest protection from trouble, even the self-inflicted pain of stubbornness. And he will ever surround us with songs of deliverance.

************

Rock of Ages, cleft for me,

Let me hide myself in Thee;

Let the water and the blood,

From Thy riven side which flowed,

Be of sin the double cure,

Cleanse me from its guilt and power.

Not the labours of my hands

Can fulfil Thy law's demands;

Could my zeal no respite know,

Could my tears for ever flow,

All for sin could not atone;

Thou must save, and Thou alone.

Nothing in my hand I bring,

Simply to the cross I cling;

Naked, come to Thee for dress;

Helpless, look to Thee for grace;

Foul, I to the fountain fly;

Wash me, Saviour, or I die.

While I draw this fleeting breath,

When my eyelids close in death,

When I soar through tracts unknown,

See Thee on thy judgment throne;

Rock of Ages, cleft for me,

Let me hide myself in Thee.

(Augustus Montague Toplady, 1740-78)

a love theme for the wilderness

On the same album that yielded the title of this blog, The Blue Nile also penned a song that has the words, “I write a new book every day - a love theme for the wilderness”. That life can be thought of as, at times, a wilderness experience is something the Bible doesn’t simply endorse but lays down as a regular feature of the Christian life.

Wilderness is where the people of Israel spent 40 years after the exodus from Egypt. Freed from slavery, they spent the next 40 years wandering, in almost aimless circles, in the desert (as John Starke notes, Moses had “a lot to communicate to a people who are called to live free when they’ve known only slavery”). What sort of release from captivity is this turning out to be? Where is the freedom, where is the fulfilment of hope? Where is the love?

And we experience the same struggles. “I write a new book every day”? Hardly. We sketch out a rough draft and then fill the waste-bin with rejected scripts. Even the most accomplished among us remain complete amateurs at penning a tale that makes sense of life, that holds out hope as a validated reality.

We need far more than our own words, our own designs. That book looks ready to be pulped before it’s even been written.

Our great confidence is that the Lord is the divine Author and the overarching theme of his tale is love, a love that persists even in the wilderness of our own choices. It’s the story of a love that seeks and saves, that keeps and guards, that sanctifies the heart and clarifies the hope. A love that doesn't wilt in the burning heat of a shade-less noon at the foot of a Cross. When all around and within our soul gives way, he then, in great covenant love, is all our strength and stay.

And his pen is filled with indelible ink. There can be no erasing of his declared promise to take and make a people for himself, the commitment to melt their hard hearts even as they endure the wilds of the wilderness.

In the book of Hosea, his love to a wayward people - people just like us - is expressed with deepest compassion:

I am now going to allure her;

I will lead her into the wilderness

and speak tenderly to her. (Hosea 2:14)

In the most unexpected and dramatic twist in the tale, the wilderness experience was for the sake of winning his people’s hearts back to him, saving them from the destruction of their sins. The cold light of their exilic day would expose the decay of their waywardness, even as the rising sun would declare the Lord’s unfailing love, its heat beginning to thaw their obduracy.

Has he been softening your heart, to bring you back to himself? Or opening your eyes to see that what you thought was paradise is, in truth, the badlands? If he is doing that it is an act of tenderest kindness. He wants to bring you home.

In his novel, Jayber Crow, Wendell Berry describes young J Crow’s days in an orphanage after his adoptive parents’ deaths. He would wake in fear but slowly grew accustomed to where he now lived - but he knew it wasn’t what he longed for:

After I quit waking up afraid, feeling that I might be nowhere, I began getting used to the place. I began to take for granted that I was somewhere, and somewhere that I knew, but I never quite felt that I was somewhere I wanted to be. Where I wanted to be, always, day in and day out, year in and year out, was Squires Landing and all that fall of country between Port William up on the ridge and the river between Sand Ripple and Willow Run. When I heard or read the word home, that patch of country was what I thought of. Home was one of the words I wrote in my tablet.

Home, his heavenly home, is what the LORD writes on the tablets of our hearts. Soon enough, our wilderness days will close and its love theme finally fulfilled. The waiting country will be exchanged for eternal dwellings and our dear Lord Jesus, the one who suffered in a wilderness and overcame, will speak his words of heartiest welcome.

************

Instead of a hymn to close this email, here’s a link to a new song by the super-talented Rob Halligan, where he has put some words I wrote to music and I could not be more chuffed!

This item was first published on the waiting country newsletter - to subscribe see below:

On metaphors (Lackoff & Johnson)

The most fundamental values in a culture will be coherent with the metaphorical structure of the most fundamental concepts in the culture. (Metaphors We Live By, p.22)

That is so worth thinking about.

'the waiting country' newsletter

When the UK was on the cusp of lockdown, back in mid-March 2020, I wrote an email to our church members to encourage them in the Lord Jesus for the coming days. I wrote a second email that week and from there it settled into a twice-weekly mailing. Each one was reflections either on a specific Bible verse or passage or perhaps a biblical theme more generally. Each email concluded with the words of a hymn.

As the pandemic and the lockdowns continued, so did the emails. Other friends asked to be added to the mailing list.

Here we are, some 15 months and over 120 email articles later. The emails were posted to this blog under the Joy in the Journey label (a title for the emails chosen in relative haste, referencing the song by Michael Card).

I’ve chosen to continue writing but to reduce the frequency to weekly, on a Wednesday, from 30th June (except for when I’m away on holiday). And I’ve decided to do so via a Substack newsletter with the same name as this blog, the waiting country. 

Where’s that phrase from? Well, for those who know me it will come as no surprise that it’s part of a line from a song - “and starting out we find the waiting country”. The song is called Rags to Riches by The Blue Nile and was on their first album, A Walk Across The Rooftops, released in 1983. I loved the line and the phrase seemed to me to be an apt way of thinking of the Christian life - we start out and find the waiting country, a country that was already prepared and waiting for us, and also a country in which we are waiting, for our Lord Jesus to return from heaven and for the fulness of God’s healing reign to be known throughout a renewed creation.

If you find these articles helpful to you I will be more than glad. It was a joy to me - a joy in my journey - to write the original pieces over the past year. I’ve been very thankful for the encouragements received from a number of people and their expressions of appreciation. If these help you to lift your eyes in hope and worship of the Lord Jesus Christ then the effort in writing them will be more than repaid.

You can subscribe below if you'd like to do so.

Enthroned over the flood (Joy in the Journey)

Have you ever seen a sign that warns you a certain footpath is liable to flooding? It’s a great candidate as a sign to write over your life: the onrushing waters of chaos, the riptides of panic and alarm, the swirling currents of temptations, the overwhelming waves of desolation. Not just in the parlance of a pandemic but simply life in a fallen world where sin still exercises a malign reign.

Psalm 29 has words that are not just suited for such times but establish a framework for all our days, whatever they contain: “The LORD sits enthroned over the flood” (v.10). He is unfazed by it; more, he is sovereign over it. The waters cannot overflow the boundaries he sets for them (Jer. 5:22), not in creation, nor in your soul.

Talk of the flood is perhaps a reminder of the cataclysm of judgement and salvation that came to pass in the days of Noah. The LORD was enthroned then, too. The violence of a humanity drowning in sin would not be determinative for the future of God’s world. He acted to judge and to save, in a rescue that arcs forward to its true realisation in the Saviour who was submerged under the waters of death so that we might know “the pledge of a clear conscience towards God” (1 Peter 3:21).

The earlier part of the Psalm proclaims, even celebrates, the voice of the LORD in the terrifying storm that sweeps in from the sea and makes landfall, devastating the forests. There is the most peculiar combination of terror and calm in knowing that the clashing cymbals of the storm are the declared might of the LORD. There is no higher reality.

But it is also more than that. The God who speaks through the storm is the same Lord who can, therefore, speak to the storm, to still it for the sake of his distressed disciples (Mk. 4:35-41). A stilling so powerful that their fear of the raging wind is translated into a reverent fear of the Saviour that is deeper still and far more acute. In life’s storms and in its stillness, Jesus is Lord.

How are we to respond to such might? The psalm tells us that “In his [heavenly] temple all cry, 'Glory!'” And in the temple being built with living stones, our highest calling is to join that chorus of acclamation. Where worship and wonder replace fear and alarm; where the breath-taking sight can hush the hurtling heart into being still and knowing that he is God. Majesty - worship such majesty.

When we reach the end of all our journeying, when our boat is safely harboured and the storms past, our joy will be complete as we take our place among the heavenly choir, extolling the one who is radiant with uncreated, unmediated glory. The one who gives strength to his people through all their days, who blessed and blesses them with peace.

************

Like a river glorious

Is God’s perfect peace,

Over all victorious,

In its bright increase;

Perfect, yet it floweth

Fuller every day,

Perfect, yet it groweth

Deeper all the way.

    Stayed upon Jehovah

    Hearts are fully blest,

    Finding, as He promised,

    Perfect peace and rest.

Hidden in the hollow

Of His blessed hand,

Never foe can follow,

Never traitor stand;

We may trust Him fully,

All for us to do;

They who trust Him wholly

Find Him wholly true.

(Frances Ridley Havergal, 1836-79)

Into the Valley (song)

Some words that I wrote a few years back have now made it into song, courtesy of Rob Halligan.

I can't begin to say how thrilled I am by this!

Did you speak too soon? (Joy in the Journey)

Have you ever felt you spoke too soon? That you were too hasty and if you’d only listened to James’ exhortation to be “slow to speak” things could have turned out very differently? You’re not alone.

Sometimes we can feel that on behalf of others, too. We watch them, listen to them, and wish they’d taken things slower. That they'd draw breath and wait. Maybe that’s how you feel about Paul in the book of Acts - with his back firmly against the wall, he exercises his right as a citizen and appeals to Caesar. He asks for his case to be heard in Rome by the emperor (Acts 25:11). But did he speak too soon? Is his imprisonment in Rome, with which Acts ends - and where in all probability Paul’s life ended too - a tragic waste of potential, of usefulness and service to God? Has he rashly blown his inalienable right to freedom?

It can feel like that, and especially so when we overhear Agrippa telling Festus that if Paul hadn’t appealed to Caesar he could have been set free (Acts 26:32). If only he’d been more patient and played a longer game, his life would have been extended and his freedom put to good gospel use.

But that emotional ride on the roller-coaster of Paul’s life forgets the most significant fact: it was the Lord himself, before any appeal by Paul to Caesar, who told his servant to “Take courage! As you have testified about me in Jerusalem, so you must also testify about me in Rome.” (Acts 23:11) Had Paul jumped the gun? Not at all. He took the step he did in complete assurance that to go to Rome was in God’s purpose for him, either by this means or another. The climactic statement by Luke in Acts 28:14 only serves to underline that: “And so we came to Rome.” Journey's end; in the place of God's choosing.

This wasn’t a simple but tragic twist of fate. Nor was it the folly of speaking in haste and repenting at leisure. Paul’s confidence remained in the Lord and he was secure in his hands.

We might agonise and lament on his behalf, that if he’d only waited things could have been so different but, in doing so, we betray our own limited view as to what usefulness means and how deep the wisdom of God goes into life’s circumstances. That holds as true for our lives as it did for Paul’s. And we'd be denying Paul’s dearly-held conviction, expressed when faced with the tears of those who will see him no longer: “I consider my life worth nothing to me; my only aim is to finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me,” (Acts 20:24) His forthright, passionate commitment is a perennial challenge to us, shining its searching light on our choices and stances.

When push came to shove, when under house-arrest in Rome, did Paul have a more limited usefulness? He sees his role, his calling, in terms that transcend the means by which it had previously been carried out: “the task of testifying to the good news of God’s grace.” He could faithfully continue doing so in whatever circumstances he found himself. Our lives change; our options might seem to be narrowing, our effectiveness tapering. But wait: is that really true? Are the Lord’s hands tied?

Did Paul speak too soon? Clearly not. But we might, when we close-off avenues of service simply because we haven’t considered them. Or when our eyes are not open enough in faith to see ways in which the Lord might choose to be at work in our present and our future. And, always, his hands are safe, our lives secure.

************

Hast thou not known, hast thou not heard

That firm remains on high

The everlasting throne of Him

Who formed the earth and sky?

Art thou afraid His power shall fail

When comes thy evil day?

And can an all-creating arm

Grow weary or decay?

Supreme in wisdom as in power

The Rock of Ages stands;

Though Him thou canst not see, nor trace

The working of His hands.

He gives the conquest to the weak,

Supports the fainting heart;

And courage in the evil hour

His heavenly aids impart.

Mere human power shall fast decay,

And youthful vigour cease;

But they who wait upon the Lord

In strength shall still increase.

They with unwearied feet shall tread

The path of life divine,

With growing ardour onward move,

With growing brightness shine.

On eagles' wings they mount, they soar--

Their wings are faith and love;

Till, past the cloudy regions here,

They rise to heaven above.

(Isaac Watts, 1674-1748)

Even At Night (Joy in the Journey)

Everything is worse at night - or so it seems. But there are good reasons, both psychological and physiological, for believing it’s true. The influence of the body’s circadian rhythm on the immune system and its relation to inflammation; the quieter hours, when fewer distractions can mean an inflated awareness of symptoms; a mind that refuses to be quiet; or simply the different posture involved in sleeping - all can contribute to a sense of dread as night approaches.

In Psalm 16, verse 7, David says that “Even at night my heart instructs me” - even when things are stacked against him, when anxieties rise and the body is seemingly at its weakest, even then David’s heart teaches him. He is helped by the truth about God that has been embedded in his soul during long years of discipleship and fellowship with the living God.

He has just described in verse 5 something of the truth to which he clings and in which he rejoices. That the LORD, alone, is his allotted portion - everything that David has, and everything he will ever need, finds its central reality in God. The LORD has chosen to give himself to David - and to every believer in Jesus Christ. He is our portion - by his own choice, not by any external compulsion, nor by anything meritorious in us. He chooses to be our God, our Father, our Friend and Saviour. He is our cup - the celebratory symbol of joyous fellowship and intimate communion.

And this lot - the appointed fullness of salvation - is completely secure. Nothing can damage or destroy it. Nothing will cause the Lord to revoke his love; it was set upon us before the foundation of the world and is not open to revision. The cross of Jesus and his complete victory over all the forces of sin and chaos makes every blessing that we have in him immovably fixed and settled - “not for the years of time alone but for eternity”. What David has - in common with all Christians - is “a delightful inheritance”. Life itself may be tough and decidedly not a bed of roses, but what is given in Jesus, what is gifted in the down-payment of the Spirit, is delightful beyond all hope and expectation: ‘the life of God in the soul of man’.

But it isn’t all David’s doing. This isn’t self-generated wishful thinking on his part. His heart is able to instruct him, in the depths of night, only because “the LORD…counsels me”. This is not homespun wisdom that David is purveying; he is testifying to the sheer goodness of God in making himself known to us, consoling and counselling our hearts, that we might make much of that, applying its wisdom and power to our needs in the darkest of nights.

In the long hours of the night, when distress and anxiety attempt to do their worst, David puts the playlist of truth on repeat and offer his praise to God. He keeps his eyes always on the LORD (v.8), even during the night. With such a God at his right hand, David is assured that he will not be shaken. We’re invited to share that same solace.

***********

O Lord, Thy touch hath stirred my soul
And caused my heart to love;
My quickened mind hath been made whole
To seek those things above.

There is a path of thought so true
That brings me to Thy throne,
And there my heart may mercy sue
And claim Thy grace my own.

Eye hath not seen, nor ear hath heard
Those things that thou hast there:
For every promise of Thy Word
Awaits my soul to dare.

O why should I let sorrow reign,
When such a God is mine,
Who gives to me and gives again,
And tells me, ‘Mine is thine’?

The riches He hath stored for me
No measurement can tell;
For in the love of Calvary
All with my God is well.

Thy Holy Spirit now hath taught
My being to adore;
The blessings Jesus Christ hath wrought
Shall cause my soul to soar.

(William Vernon Higham, 1926-2016)

For Such A Time (Joy in the Journey)

Does your life count? Does it really matter what you do and how you do it? It’s easy to think it doesn’t - we’re ordinary people, living ordinary, unremarkable lives. Our influence is limited, our voices often unheard. We’re like shadows on the landscape from the scurrying clouds above.

The book of Esther offers us a different perspective. Despite not once speaking about the Lord, and even though it moves in the realms of kings and queens, it nevertheless portrays life as suffused with the presence of God and woven with his gracious plans.

When trouble loomed for the Jews, Esther's uncle, Mordecai, saw that a potential solution lay with his niece. Her rise to prominence had not been accidental and it was not without meaning or hope. And so he calls her to consider the possibility that she was there “for such a time as this.”

Mordecai’s rhetorical question also forces us to stop and consider a similar construct: that despite being unknown and without national significance, our lives bear meaning and value in the hands of God. Where we live, what we do, who we know - these are not random details. They are not there by mistake, nor by default. The God who orders our days does so with wisdom and insight and always with his longing to bless others through his people uppermost in his heart.

You are where you are because the Lord has put you there, even through the whole time of the current pandemic. We might play down the significance we bear but our God never does so. The same Saviour who was able to multiply a few pieces of fish and small loaves of bread is more than capable of taking us, with all our inadequacies, and making much, feeding many.

The greatest example of his creative genius, bringing life and order from chaos and darkness, was seen “on a hill, far away…where the dearest and best for a world of lost sinners was slain”. The God who can work wonderful redemption through such squalor and shame, through depths of agony and loss, can enter your situation and do something in you and through you that will leave you in awe of his wisdom.

But the extent of that wisdom is likely to be unseen by us, as the larger part of an iceberg remains submerged. Esther's story had meaning and power not simply for the Jews of her own day but helped to sustain her people down many centuries, reminding them of the Lord’s care and compassion for them and his willingness to come to their aid.

The same is true, in a climactic way, of the cross of our Lord Jesus - and it will also be so in the lives of all whose destiny has been secured by his sacrifice. We do not know what impact our words, our deeds and our prayers may have, when they are offered in worship into the nail-pierced hands of our Lord Jesus.

However much your circumstances may change, however unvaried they might be, you have been brought into the kingdom for such a time as this. Knowing that means living by faith, not by sight, with confidence and joy in the one who is your companion along each and every road he calls you to travel.

************

Nearer, my God, to Thee,
    Nearer to Thee!
E’en though it be a cross
    That raiseth me,
Still all my song shall be
Nearer, my God, to Thee,
    Nearer to Thee!

Though, like the wanderer,
    The sun gone down,
Darkness be over me,
    My rest a stone,
Yet in my dreams I’d be
Nearer, my God, to Thee,
    Nearer to Thee!

There let the way appear,
    Steps unto heaven;
All that Thou send’st to me
    In mercy given;
Angels to beckon me
Nearer, my God, to Thee,
    Nearer to Thee!

Then, with my waking thoughts
    Bright with Thy praise,
Out of my stony griefs
    Bethel I’ll raise;
So by my woes to be
Nearer, my God, to Thee,
    Nearer to Thee!

Or if, on joyful wing
    Cleaving the sky,
Sun, moon, and stars forgot,
    Upward I fly,
Still all my song shall be,
Nearer, my God, to Thee,
    Nearer to Thee!

(Sarah F. Adams, 1805–1848)

Where are the other nine? (Joy in the Journey)

“Where are the other nine?”

Those words of our Lord Jesus search our hearts and press us about our own response to all that he has done for us. They come at the conclusion of his encounter with ten men who had leprosy. The incident in Luke 17:11-19 takes place on the border between Samaria and Galilee. A liminal place, a hinterland from which little of significance may be expected. But that is far from being the case.

They call to the Lord in loud voices, pleading with him, “Jesus, Master, have pity on us.” A recognition of his status and power; putting themselves in his hands. Their plight is desperate and they take the only possibility of healing with both hands.

He tells them to go show themselves to the priests - those who had the authority to verify any healing from the disease. They set off as lepers, clearly believing that, somehow, they would be healed as they went. They all do as he says. They trust him enough to go with his instructions. That kind of faith is notable and commendable and receives its vindication.

But it isn’t sufficient.

As they go, they see that their pleas have been heard; they are freed, cleansed from their leprosy. And it is at this point that a difference becomes visible between the nine and the one. One - only one - on seeing he has been healed, turns back, full of praise to God and thanking Jesus as he kneels before him. Only one makes the connection between his healing and the person of Jesus. That God was in this place and he hadn’t seen it, but now that he has he delights in offering his worship at Jesus’ feet.

The difference between him and the other nine is underlined by Jesus. This man alone, of the ten, is a Samaritan. An outsider. Rejected by the mainstream. Devoid of their privileges and opportunities. And yet he saw, he made the connection. And this man alone, of the ten, has experienced not simply healing of his body but the salvation of his soul: the Lord makes that so plain - all ten were cleansed (v.17) but this man’s faith has saved him (v.19).

The others had taken the gift and hurried on. Having demonstrated a kind of faith in Jesus they then fail to join the dots and unite their heart to him in worship. They received much - but squandered the opportunity to take it to its higher source. Their bodies were healed but their hearts were not changed.

Can you see how this calls us to face our own response? Are mercies received and blessings enjoyed translated into genuine worship of the Lord Jesus, for who he is and all he has done? Is our faith sufficient for receiving the gift but not the Giver? Is he more than a friend in need to you?

This incident shows us that we can be familiar with God’s kindness but remain strangers to a genuine relationship with him. It doesn’t have to be that way. We don’t want our knowledge of his saving power to be only skin deep. Even now we can do as the one did - turn back and fall before the Lord in worship that is larger than simple gratitude for his latest gift.

Where, indeed, are the other nine?

************

Out of my bondage, sorrow, and night,

  Jesus, I come; Jesus, I come;

Into Thy freedom, gladness, and light,

    Jesus, I come to Thee.

Out of my sickness into Thy health,

Out of my want and into Thy wealth,

Out of my sin and into Thyself,

    Jesus, I come to Thee.

Out of my shameful failure and loss,

  Jesus, I come; Jesus, I come;

Into the glorious gain of Thy cross,

    Jesus, I come to Thee.

Out of earth’s sorrows into Thy balm,

Out of life’s storm and into Thy calm,

Out of distress to jubilant psalm,

    Jesus, I come to Thee.

Out of unrest and arrogant pride,

  Jesus, I come; Jesus, I come;

Into Thy blessed will to abide,

    Jesus, I come to Thee.

Out of myself to dwell in Thy love,

Out of despair into raptures above,

Upward for aye on wings like a dove,

    Jesus, I come to Thee.

Out of the fear and dread of the tomb,

  Jesus, I come; Jesus, I come;

Into the joy and light of Thy home,

    Jesus, I come to Thee.

Out of the depths of ruin untold,

Into the peace of Thy sheltering fold,

Ever Thy glorious face to behold,

    Jesus, I come to Thee.

(William True Sleeper, 1819-1904)

Guard your heart (Joy in the Journey)

“Above all else, guard your heart,
for everything you do flows from it.” (Prov. 4:23)

There’s no beating about the bush, no hedging your bets or sitting on the fence: Above everything else, you need to - you must - guard your heart. Put an unassailable fence around the centre of your soul, a fortress around your heart.

Living carelessly is all too easy to do. To give little serious thought to how we think and feel, to how we react and respond to others, to the impact that circumstances and culture are making upon us, to the toll that is being taken on our sensibilities.

Proverbs urges us to guard against that, to solemnly listen to its implicit warning. The outcome could not be more significant: “everything you do flows from it.” Our hearts, the deepest recesses of our being, have the most directive, shaping impact upon our lives.

Living a godly life is not a matter of emotional intuition; it needs thought and reflection and a humble determination to search our heart and seek the help of God. Guarding your heart is not slight working, it is intensely demanding.

And, often, it feels like we’re working in the dark - it has recesses we are barely aware of. It has been shaped in sin by all manner of life experiences and traumas and habits of thinking and behaving that possess captive power. Shaped by a past that, as William Faulkner said, "is never dead, it isn’t even past.” It keeps intruding on the present and insists on shaping the future.

These are the hearts that are deluged by the cares of life, by the weight of insecurity and anxiety, pummelled by the tides of trial and temptation. How can we hope to guard a place of such significance when it is assaulted by forces we cannot see and have no answer to? When we feel the force of Jeremiah 17:9, that our hearts are deceitful and unknowable in their truest dimensions?

The psalms express the experience of so many when they speak of our hearts being overwhelmed by torrents of destruction (18:4), by our guilt (38:4), by horror (55:5), by sins (65:3) and troubles (88:3). Such admissions make Proverbs 4:23 seem a world away.

But from that place of recognised vulnerability, a prayer ascends to the God of all grace:

“I call as my heart grows faint;
lead me to the rock that is higher than I” (Ps. 61:2)

Our hearts need to be guarded; the stakes are too high not to do so. But that shielding has to begin at the point we feel ourselves most vulnerable and from which we look to the one who alone can keep us, re-shape our hearts and begin to transform us by the renewing of our minds.

The one who is able to garrison our hearts through faith, whose mercies are the motive power for offering ourselves to him as living sacrifices.

************

Sweet the moments, rich in blessing,

Which before the cross I spend,

Life and health, and peace possessing

From the sinner's dying Friend!

Here I rest, in wonder viewing

All my sins on Jesus laid,

And a full redemption flowing

From the sacrifice He made.

Here I find the hope of heaven,

While upon the Lamb I gaze;

Loving much, and much forgiven,

Let my heart o'erflow in praise.

Love and grief my heart dividing,

With my tears His feet I'll bathe,

Constant still in faith abiding,

Life deriving from His death.

Lord, in ceaseless contemplation

Fix my thankful heart on Thee!

Till I taste Thy full salvation,

And Thine unveiled glory see.

(William Walter Shirley, 1725-86)

Like perfume poured out (Joy in the Journey)

As the greatest of songs buds and opens, like a flower in the life-giving rays of the sun, the Beloved says to the Lover, “Your name is as perfume poured out…”. The heartfelt recognition and celebration of the supreme delight he brings.

You likely know that in the Bible ‘name’ is not simply a combination of letters and sounds. It denotes far more, especially as it relates to the Lord himself. ‘Name’ is about the person, their character and ways, their inner being, the fundamental realities of who and what they are.

The Lord’s name conveys everything that he is in his divine nature and in his engagement with all he has made. The Lord who is holy and good. The God of all mercy and compassion. The Lord, the Lord, the everlasting, all-wise God. Jesus, the lover of our souls.

This name - his name - is “as perfume poured out”. Beauty bestowed and diffused for the delight of those who know that name. It is sweet, intoxicating; heady and refreshing, lifting the soul into a realm that is at once both real and scarcely imaginable in the weight of its glory. Page after page of the Gospels declares that name to us - as we read, so the air around us is infused with the fragrance of his loving heart and the scent of his supreme worthiness.

He proclaims his name to us, in the pages of scripture and by the gift of his Spirit indwelling our hearts. He is the Rock whose work is perfect, whose ways are entirely just. The God who is love and who is light, in whom is no darkness and whose presence banishes the deepest gloom. The Maker of heaven and earth, the one who has numbered all our days, recording them in his book before a single one came to pass. He is the Author of Life, the Champion of our salvation.

And that is only the beginning.

When the Lord adopted us as his own, he named us with his own name. We are not simply spectators to the display of his name but we live within its reality, enveloped in his character and being. When we meet together, pray together, we do so ‘in his name’. Gathered under the banner of his love, owned and cherished as those who are named with his name. Governed by grace, decorated with the designs of his loving-kindness, the family crest of covenant love that will never fail.

In Psalm 9, David writes that “those who know your name trust in you”. Having tasted and seen that the LORD is good, that the goodness inherent in his name has been lavished upon us, what would move us to not trust him? We know his name - it is near and so we praise him and tell of his wonderful deeds, the revelation of his Name.

************

How sweet the Name of Jesus sounds
In a believer’s ear!
It soothes his sorrows, heals his wounds,
And drives away his fear.

It makes the wounded spirit whole,
And calms the troubled breast;
’Tis manna to the hungry soul,
And, to the weary, rest.

Dear Name! the rock on which I build,
My Shield and hiding-place,
My never-failing treasury filled
With boundless stores of grace.

Jesus! my Shepherd, Brother, Friend,
My Prophet, Priest, and King,
My Lord, my Life, my Way, my End,
Accept the praise I bring.

Weak is the effort of my heart,
And cold my warmest thought;
But when I see Thee as Thou art,
I’ll praise Thee as I ought.

Till then I would Thy love proclaim
With every fleeting breath;
And may the music of Thy Name
Refresh my soul in death!

(John Newton, 1725-1807)

It's re-fill time

 

No Shifting Shadows (Joy in the Journey)

Dislocated from its context, James 1:17 sounds so comforting: the God we know in Jesus is the giver of every good and perfect gift. We’d like some of that, please. If there’s a queue, where do we join it? We’re happy to wait in line for our turn.

But set within its context, these verses appear to make little sense at first glance. Because they’re the final part of a jigsaw that begins by telling us to “Consider it pure joy…whenever you face trials of many kinds” (1:2), that warns against being double-minded and unstable in our faith (1:8) and lays bare our innate weakness, being tempted when we are dragged away by our own evil desires and enticed (1:14).

Where have all the good gifts gone?

James wrote as one of us - just as Elijah was (5:17). A man who knew his own fallibilities and tendency to sin and failure. And he wrote as one who had seen up close and personal the sheer goodness of God in his Son, Jesus, the half-brother of James. Somehow all these words hang together, we just need to see how.

Often the most helpful thing to do when we come across that kind of perplexing teaching is to ‘park it’, to let it just lie there, in our hearts and minds, and to wait - to wait on the One whose wisdom and timing are not suspect. On this occasion, the help we might so much need is perhaps only a few verses away.

The jarring opening call to consider trials as pure joy is partly offset by the reminder that God is not absent from them but has a purpose for us within them, that he is working perseverance in us, that we might be mature and complete (1:4). The statements of verses 17 and 18 then develop that thought in significant ways:

“Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of first-fruits of all he created.”

James sets our experiences in life, even - and perhaps especially - our struggles, within the larger frame of God’s purposes and God’s character. His work, that which we can see clearly as well as those aspects that remain hidden from us, is defined by his goodness and by an unhindered, unblemished completeness. There is no lack in all he has planned for us and no aspect of it is ‘shady’. We must not allow our pains to deceive us into thinking he is somehow less than the God he is. All that he allows into our life will ultimately contribute to the completing of the grace that saves and beautifies us.

All this is because the gifts, the opportunities to trust him and lean into his ways, come from the One who is the Father of the heavenly lights. The One who orders all our days, the One who ordains times and seasons for our benefit. Seasons may change - indeed, they must - but throughout every moment of all the changing scenes of life, be they trouble or joy, he does not change like shifting shadows. There is not the slightest hint in his being of any movement away from utter faithfulness, no capitulation to force of circumstance.

No storm, however severe, will compel him to change course and downgrade his commitment to be our God and for us to be his people. We are, and ever will be, his treasured possession, a first-fruits of all he created.

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Loved with everlasting love,

Led by grace that love to know,

Spirit, breathing from above,

Thou hast taught me it is so.

O this full and perfect peace!

O this transport all divine!

In a love which cannot cease,

I am His and He is mine.

Heaven above is softer blue,

Earth around is sweeter green;

Something lives in every hue

Christless eyes have never seen:

Birds with gladder songs o'erflow,

Flowers with deeper beauties shine,

Since I know, as now I know,

I am His, and He is mine.

His for ever, only His;

Who the Lord and me shall part?

Ah, with what a rest of bliss

Christ can fill the loving heart!

Heaven ad earth may fade and flee,

First-born light in gloom decline,

But while God and I shall be,

I and His and He is mine.

(George Wade Robinson, 1838-77)