What Does It Look Like?

I mean church.

A big grey building with strange windows and a steeple?

I wasn’t thinking of that in fact.

A meeting of people in a large building, led by one person, singing led by a band, teaching by the main person, notices, money taken to help run the church. Mid week activities, prayer meeting, kids group, youth group. I wasn’t thinking of that either.

Of course God can often be found in both, but starting from first principles what should church look like? The first principle is the new commandment that Jesus gave his followers – love one another. And that command became the law of Christ, the law of freedom and the royal law. So if we start with just that, what should church look like? People loving one another. Looking out for each other, meeting each other’s needs, sharing practically and heart to heart. All visibly in a neighbourhood. And all in the name of Jesus.

Next, what did the first churches look like? They didn’t own buildings for ages and they were mainly from the poorer end of society. Each church was independent, though apostles and prophets visited occasionally to help them, at which time a larger place might be rented to all fit together. Romans 16 gives a glimpse of groups of believers sharing houses or forming extended family groups, all kinds of mix. Church was fairly loose by the look of it, meeting in homes to share bread and wine, worship, and use spiritual gifts. Collection of money might be taken to contribute to other churches in need and the like. Leaders were just those who taught and looked after the flock as shepherds and examples, not bosses and with no privileges.

Now how could anything like that work out in Western society – because on the whole it doesn’t?

A friend told me recently that years ago he was with a number of fellow church leaders from his city and he proposed this: That they could release their members to meet with other believers in their immediate locality, regardless of denomination, to pray and worship together, and share both spiritually and practically. Isn’t that the same as New Testament churches? But there was no take up of his suggestion. Am I surprised?

So is there another way that NT church could happen? It seems strange to say no, after all these decades of western society, dominated by cars and sectarianism.

Well Jesus did say that he would build his church. I reckon that he has always done that through the centuries, and today he still does so in abundance in poorer societies. How about if the Holy Spirit works in a local area, bringing both Christians to new powerful life, and non Christians into the faith, so that they naturally gather in each other’s homes and behave like church? Is that just wishful thinking, or might we persist to ask him to do just that, where we are? I dare you to.

Clear a space for God

Why don’t we see God working many miracles? After all, he is doing it around the world all the time; why not here?

Why is church rather disappointing?

We feel good when we sing, we’re encouraged or challenged by teaching or what others say, we are busy doing our bit with the church. We even do outreach, witness to friends, live decent Christian lives as much as we can while spinning all the plates of modern life.

But we’re still rather disappointed and nothing changes very much, few are baptised, we’re not changing the world. In Acts it was so dynamic, but our Christianity can almost feel a bit boring, a bit predictable, and our God doesn’t seem the same as God in Africa or other places where miracles happen and many are converted, rejoice and suffer just like in the new testament.

Why is it different here? We even have prayer meetings where we pray for a lot of sick people and problems, we pray about the church programs and services, we thank God for all his goodness – but it’s all a bit low key and again nothing much really changes.

Question: Why couldn’t Jesus do many mighty works at Nazareth? (Matthew 13.58)? It was their unbelief; they were familiar with him. He had no room to work; they had him all worked out.

Are we like that then? Modern western society has certainly chosen science over faith, technology over faith, pleasure over the joy of God. But we Christians have also settled for a Christianity without much of God, a disappointed faith, church life that does the stuff but God doesn’t do much of it. We’ve worked him out, this is how it is, some blessings, some encouragements, but that’s it. He has no room to show us what he can really do.

Revivals have always started as a result of prayer. But we have prayed for revival and it didn’t happen, we say. Well we weren’t empty handed, just adding more to the already full agenda. We gave God no room to do what we asked for. He had no space to move.

So – clear a space for God, wait for him together, and refuse to substitute our normal stuff for God himself coming and doing everything we can’t, doing everything that he did in the new testament, here; the kingdom coming (which is what he told us to pray), Jesus coming among us, while we keep the space clear for him to come. Stay there, wait, cultivate faith in the God who does the impossible, wait again and invite him to come. And he will.

The Ten Tonne Chair

A chair lying on its side. Empty balloons lie around it. A person is looking at it, goes over, tries to lift it upright. It weighs ten tonnes so they can’t.

They look round and ask the Lord to come and help. He comes over, holds their arms as they try and lift the chair, but their grip breaks. The Lord goes away, the person sits on the floor in despair.

They look up and see some friends and ask them to come and help to lift the chair. They come and each holds a part of it, but together they cannot lift ten tonnes.

They all ask the Lord to come and help. He comes but cannot reach the chair because they are in the way. He goes away, they all sit down despairing.

The Lord calls and tells them to stand up and hold hands. They do, rather puzzled. He tells them to step back from the chair. They do. He comes over and parts two of them, steps through and goes and easily sets the chair upright.

They all applaud. He goes away and they scatter.

The chair is on its side again and the person approaches. They try and lift it and fail. They call their friends and they all join hands around the chair. They together invite the Lord to come, and they make an opening for him. After a minute he comes and lifts the chair. They join hands again and watch as he also blows up the balloons, inviting them to help which they do, and the balloons have verses on them about faith, agreement in prayer, waiting for God, no confidence in the flesh, etc. He leaves, they applaud and hug each other.

The beginning.

Musings on law and grace

God made humanity and they chose their own way (as he ordained for his higher purpose).

He gave them the law with sacrifices to both restrain their self destructive nature and teach them that sin costs life.

Even pagans can work out that the almighty God must be good and also must be gracious, because he both puts an awareness of love in our hearts and somehow stops short of killing us for sin most of the time.

Fallen humanity prefers fallen gods, so Israel proved wayward all the way, and most people today default to self seeking naturally, pleasure and escapism, survival.

But also law carries the risk of becoming an idol, and Jesus was opposed by the law’s very keepers, who thought themselves superior because of their correctness and lost sight of their heart sickness; being right is lethal.

Jesus said mercy triumphs over judgement, because God’s love seeks other hearts that love, and so finds a way to forgive us and give us repentance. It’s the only way humanity can escape its fallen state of lostness from God.

Law restrains but grace wins. Law kills and boundaries sin, but grace replaces sin with love. Law is a negative Don’t but love is Do. Law condemns but grace forgives, law casts down but grace lifts up, law demands a price, grace pays it, law prevents ruin but grace builds love.

Law was never the point, the purpose, the destination – that was humility, admitting our helplessness, feeling our need, reaching out to God.

Love and grace through faith were always the purpose, the point, the aim, the kingdom coming, via giving up on myself, my efforts, my ideas, and reaching out for God’s salvation, finding that he had always provided for my sin, my crime, my guilt under law, and being born all over again in the spirit, in my heart, to walk with him, by his Spirit, with his people likewise redeemed.

Oliver and the silver key

Chapter 1 – The sixth tree

Once upon a time there was a boy.
The boy was four and he was brave.
He lived in a forest far away from anywhere.
He lived there in a little house with his mummy and daddy and little sister.#
The boy’s name was Oliver and his sister’s name was Frances. She was nearly one and not walking yet.

It was a nice day in the forest and Oliver was making an aeroplane out of sticks while his sister was out of the way. If she saw it she would crawl over and grab the plane and spoil it, which would be annoying. Oliver knew that she was only being a baby but that didn’t stop it being annoying, so he made sure she wasn’t nearby when he made things.

The aeroplane was looking good. He tied sticks together with grass and used a twirly seed off a sycamore tree for a propeller. It was nearly ready to fly. Well it wouldn’t really fly, it wasn’t that good, but he could hold it and run with it and pretend it was flying. 

He looked round again to see if Frances was coming – no. Here goes then. Vroom! he said, as the engine burst into life and Oliver started slowly with the plane on the ground, then gradually picked up speed as it rolled along the runway and lifted off into the air and soared into the sky. Over the flower bed, past the kitchen window where mummy was feeding Frances, past the shed where daddy piled up wood for the winter, over the compost heap – and then it banked steeply and headed for the woods on its long journey to the other side of the world. Oliver ran out of the gate with the plane held out nice and level and ran along the path into the woods.

Oliver’s mummy and daddy had told him that he could go into the woods but only as far as five trees away, so he always counted carefully. There were lots of creatures in the forest and some of them were dangerous. He always remembered the time when daddy was shouting one night that there was a wolf outside and he had gone out with a fiery torch burning to frighten it away. Oliver had sometimes had dreams about the wolf after that but mummy said it was alright, we’re safe in our house and wolves were usually much further away. It had been a hard winter that time and the wolf had been looking for food in new places. Anyway, Oliver had never forgotten the howl and growl of that wolf.

So Oliver flew his plane past the first three trees, and it was such a nice sunny day that the forest wasn’t scary at all, so he went as far as the fifth tree and paused with his plane going round in circles. Time was lovely and slow and he saw insects flying and flowers of different colours among the tree trunks, and he could hear the stream running behind the rocks at the back of their little house. 

Then as he turned round again he glimpsed something bright at the foot of the next tree, the sixth tree, and it caught his attention. He hesitated – then walked over to where he had seen the flash of light and bending down he saw among the grass a large shiny silver key. At once he knew that it could not be from his home because they had no locks on the doors that needed keys, and the front and back doors were locked with wooden bars at night time. He picked the big key up. It felt heavy and it had a strange light about it. Oliver looked at it, turning it round in his hand for a while. 

Then he started back towards the fifth tree – but suddenly out of the top of his eye he glimpsed something over towards the house. A large grey thing. With eyes. A wolf! It was standing still and he felt it was looking at him. Was that a growl? Oliver froze with his hair standing up on the back of his neck. The wolf was between him and home. His heart beat fast and he just wanted to hide, so very slowly he moved one leg backwards. The wolf moved a foot forwards. Oliver did not look directly at the wolf but slowly moved another foot backwards, feeling the tree trunk brush his leg. The wolf moved again and this time Oliver distinctly heard a growl.

Oliver just wanted to hide behind the tree, even though he knew he would not be safe there. Another slow step and then a quicker one sideways and he was out of sight of the wolf. Would it start running towards him? As he moved there behind the big tree he felt something hard against his side, and looking down he saw the most unlikely thing, a door handle. On a tree? He looked again and saw a keyhole by the handle, and without thinking he lifted the silver key and put it into the lock. He turned the key, his heart beating fast, and the lock clicked. He pulled the handle down and a door opened in the tree; Oliver slipped into the doorway, just glad to get away from the wolf, and pulled the door shut after him. It was dark inside but he could just make out the door in front of him and he put the key in the lock on that side and locked the door. At that moment he heard the frightening sound of wolf claws scratching at the door outside. It had been very close.

He turned round and noticed two things at once. One was that the key was giving off a glow. Then in that glow he could see another door right in front of him, and this door also had a handle and a keyhole. He didn’t hesitate to put the silver key into the second door. When he opened it he saw steps leading downwards and curving to the right. He was still getting away from the wolf so he started down the steps with the glow of the key showing the way ahead. There were about 25 steps – he didn’t actually count them – and at the bottom he saw a tunnel ahead. 

As he looked into it he noticed two things. First there was a light wind blowing in his face; it was warm and he also noticed that it had a fragrance of oranges. He liked oranges and it settled his worries about exploring the tunnel, so he set off along it. The silver key gave off enough light to see some way ahead, but after a little way the tunnel turned right and then left, and Oliver saw another light ahead. As he got closer it became very bright until he was dazzled and he stopped at the end of the tunnel, because something had changed. As his eyes got used to the light he found himself looking out at a beautiful countryside with hills and fields, houses with red roofs, and orange trees full of oranges! 

There was one orange tree very close to him on his left and after looking around in wonder he went over to the tree. Yes the oranges were real and he picked one just above his head. He peeled it by biting into the orange and then using his thumb and fingers to get the peel off. He was squirted in the face with juice but he didn’t mind, and it didn’t go in his eye. Then he put a piece into his mouth and wow! It was really juicy and yummy delicious. He sat down on the grass and ate the rest, just enjoying the lovely fruit. He had never eaten an orange off a tree before and it was so much better than the oranges at home from the shop.

As he ate the orange he looked around again. He was on a hillside and the sun was high in the sky and shone hot on his skin. He wondered if there were any wolves here but somehow he didn’t think so. 

Then suddenly he heard a voice behind him say ‘Hola!’ and he jumped. It was a man’s voice and not really scary. He looked round and saw a man walking towards him with a brown face and white teeth in a friendly smile. He said ‘Olá garotinho, o que você está fazendo aqui?’ which Oliver didn’t understand at all. He paused and then said ‘What? Do you speak English please?’

The man laughed and said ‘Ah, you are Ingles. How you get here?’ 

‘I came out of that tunnel’, said Oliver, and pointed the way he had come. There was a rocky hillside but no tunnel. He stood up and looked harder.

‘Eh?’ Said the man.

‘But there was a tunnel!’ said Oliver, worried, and ran towards the rocks. When he got close he saw it – behind a big rock there was a hole a bit bigger than his own height. 

‘There!’ He pointed for the man to see, and the man came and looked.

‘Ah!’ He cried, ‘How you find that?’

But Oliver thought that he had better go back. His parents had told him not to talk to strangers, and also he felt it was time to go back before they started to worry about him. So he ran into the hole and found himself back in the tunnel, which was bigger inside. He ran along it with the breeze behind him, round the corners, then up the winding steps to the door that he had left open, and then the first door where the wolf had scratched outside. 

He listened hard and heard nothing, and because he wanted to get home he used the silver key to unlock the door and very carefully he pushed it open. No wolf. He crept out as quietly as he could and looked and listened very hard. No wolf. He crept slowly round the tree with his heart beating fast and saw his home six trees away – and he saw his mummy holding Frances in the garden – and he ran as fast as he could and shouted ‘Mummy!’

She looked round and as he ran up to her she said ‘Oliver! Where have you been? I was beginning to worry that you had gone into the wood too far.’

Oliver panted ‘The wolf saw me, I was scared! I don’t know where I’ve been but it was bright and hot and I ate a yummy orange off a tree!’ He didn’t mention the man or the key.

‘What, you saw a wolf!? Where?’ said his mummy.

‘There’ he said pointing, ‘But I got away.’

‘How?’ she said, then ‘There aren’t any orange trees around here!’ But then she noticed the yellow stain round his mouth and on his sleeve. 

‘Show me your hands’, she said, and when he held them out she felt them. ‘They’re sticky’, she exclaimed, and her eyes were wide with surprise. 

‘Where did you really get the orange?’ she asked. 

‘I told you, from a tree’, said Oliver, who always tried to tell the truth because he got into more trouble for lying than being honest. ‘There were lots and lots of them there.’

‘Well I don’t know’, said his mummy. ‘But come on, it’s time for lunch and you need more than a magic orange in your tummy’. So they went indoors. 

That night Oliver thought about his adventure and decided to go back to the sixth tree as soon as he could. His mummy told his daddy and they decided to say nothing more but to keep an eye on Oliver to see what he was up to.

So nothing else happened that night. It was two days later when Oliver was alone again, playing outside, and he decided to go to the sixth tree again with the silver key.

Having Tasted

Proverbs 24.13 My son, eat honey, for it is good,
    and the drippings of the honeycomb are sweet to your taste. 14 Know that wisdom is such to your soul;
    if you find it, there will be a future,
    and your hope will not be cut off.

Psalm 19.10 (of the wisdom, precepts and law of the Lord) More to be desired are they  than gold,
    even much fine gold;
sweeter also than honey
    and drippings of the honeycomb.

Hebrews 6.4 For it is impossible, in the case of those who have once been, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, 5 and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, 6 and then have fallen away, to restore them again

– enlightened – seen with spiritual eyes, the kingdom, the world, the beauty of Jesus and the church
– shared in the Holy Spirit – the common flow, his leading and speaking and our obedience to promptings, his presence,
– tasted the goodness of the word of God – the word alive, speaking to one another in the spirit, prophecy
– (and) the powers of the age to come – gifts, miracles, answers to prayer, vision

Do you recognise these experiences?

Do you recall times when it was all especially real, when grace was moving in a palpable way, times of blessing?

Are you still tasting?

Are you still longing to taste it all again more?

Then we’re on the same wavelength my friend.

Life Is

Enjoying the little, the middle and the big.

Helping her to hold her sleeve while getting dressed.

Our brief holiday in February, walks up hills, marking low tide on the sand. Birthdays approaching.

A great page turning over seven years towards April, turmoil and falling and more; hold on.

Reading stories, the lost sheep fell in the pond. Little sheep – familiar stories – timeless truth.

This morning, present moments.

This month, second half term, sow tomatoes.

This year, a page turning, a journey into the almost unknown.

We have all this and more

We have nature that teaches us order, and beauty, time, chance, death, life, and love.

We have conscience, we have spiritual experiences, we have evil.

We have good and bad people, victims and haters, lovers and friends, family and other people, generations, strangers, animals, society.

We have the bible as well as other holy books.

We have Jesus, as well as other holy people. And believers and unbelievers and not sure.

We have stories, songs, poems, dreams, music, art, memories, fears, hate and love.

We have history, ugly, boring, gripping and wonderful.

We have intelligence, pain, joy, purpose, love and tears.

We have miracles, coincidences, cleverness, lies and truth.

We have knowledge, the internet, questions, evidence, choices.

We have atheism, we have faith, we have today, we may have love.

The Currency of God

Money is terrible stuff, but used with love and sacrificially it becomes spiritually valuable.

Grace is the opposite of selfish material acquisitiveness. It is God’s own outflow of his life, his love and even his faith, which runs into and through the new spirit of a saint and on in giving and worship.

His life in your spirit is what makes you truly alive, inspired, awake to spiritual realities, and moved by faith and love. Mere doctrine or opinions are death otherwise. The things of this world are dry dust that chokes the infrastructure of heaven and you can’t see clearly any more.

Faith connects with God in your spirit; it is the connection, the flow. The channels are open, the inflow and outflow can run, the body lives as each limb and organ pulsates with the common life and wellbeing is enjoyed by the whole, a holy wealth and prosperity without the slightest complacency or self interest.

Faith, hope and love cannot be destroyed but stream from God through you and circle back to him with your fragrance.

Profit accrues to your account every time his life flows through you by love in self giving, though it is not your first motive, only an effect. Just as receiving back spadefuls of grace and provision are not the reason you give, only an encouragement, and a proof every time that the fear was safe.

Our poverty is ironic in a rich country, our dryness is tragic beside the ocean of grace. My preferring dust to the riches of Jesus a shame, but drawing from them is sweet water and a fresh waking, a chance to give again.

(Philippians 4.14-20)

We Christophers

2 Corinthians 4.7 But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.

It places great demands upon our bodies, souls and spirits to carry the Holy Spirit in this life, to walk in him, to work out his word and will, to keep ourselves clean or cleaned up again, to be ready to serve each demanding day, to interpret his nudges and glimpses, to sometimes be the word acted out, to be puzzled, humbled, trained and tested, to make your body get up and press on, to be conduits of his love.

To keep seeking more, to be surprised every time at how he does it, to get in the Spirit by faith, the place of faith where all things are possible.

To see through a glass, a dark enigma, searching for his face his voice; there he goes upon the mountains, always ahead further up.

To share this life together, tending the flames, the joy, and warming our hearts at each other’s hearth. Letting the flames dance as we worship and minister as one and the treasure sparkles. Aching for others, reaching out. We are your children, born of grace to own you here, we Christophers.

To keep a peaceful mind and heart through the storms of the word or of life. The cares of life that wear you out or the temptations and distractions that drain your life, or the pride that deceives and poisons.

Guarding the flame despite sickness and mental struggles, injustices; falling in love or relationship pain. Despite ageing, parenting, work pressures, or rumours of wars. Despite sleepless nights or fun parties, thrill rides and swimming in the sun, winter’s depth and death’s agonies, suffering’s nightmare.

Hating dullness, accepting ordinariness, waiting and waiting again. Yet he is always close beside your heart and thoughts. Swimming up against the gravity of natural life, gasping the air above, drinking the light, basking in his love again. Ready to obey.

Lord I need you today so much. I accept the responsibility to carry you in my very human being, scary though it is – but also the most amazing gift of love, you in me. Here is my body offered for the task today. Jesus your name, my hope, my all. Help me get a right mind, illuminated by your word till I know your life within and faith’s expectancy that all is well and all will be well whatever comes, because I am your child, your servant.

House of Cards with Resilience

The Roman empire had a resilient infrastructure and governance. But it was morally rotten and God brought it down like a house of cards. It took a long time to end completely because of that resilience, but finish it did.

I think the Western empire is a house of cards that will fall at God’s hand very soon. There is resilience in its systems – infrastructure, governance, knowledge, which will keep a lot going, but basically it has been weighed in the balance by God and found gravely lacking in its morality, oppressions, a parody of Christianity, greed and arrogance, so he is calling time and the house of cards will fall.

He has raised up enemies against it that are harrying it now. The order of things in the spiritual realm and invisible powers are changing, and the West’s day has come to be humbled.

It is time to look to God and his kingdom that cannot be shaken. The lowly Lamb of God offers forgiveness and the caring love of God in the midst of frightening events and uncertain futures. His children hang on to each other and are safe in the ark that is Jesus. Then watch out for his presence and miracles…

If you think I’m bonkers, overheated, or simply wrong, fine. It’s only my take on things, so take it or leave it, but please don’t be abusive. Bless you.