Stripping Away Familiarity Proverbs 3 v 5&6

Trust in the Lord with all your heart
And lean not on your own understanding
But in all your ways acknowledge Him
And he will direct your paths

Yes, of course, this can read like religious mumbo jumbo to agnostics or atheists, and an over-familiar verse to Christian believers.

Is there any need for comment? The words are plain enough. It’s not a parable or a prophecy. It’s not written poetically (although I do like the two words ‘lean not’…for me, that’s poetic). Putting it bluntly, it’s a radical challenge: the question is not whether it’s true, but whether, having believed the bible is God-breathed, you have found it to be true in your experience?

This morning, I read this verse for the umpteenth time and nodded with approval. Like an old friend, it possesses a comforting familiarity, but before I could sit back and relax, I was taken back to school for two further lessons.

I have never been to a striptease joint, but one is blessed with an imagination! And to be fair, don’t we all strip at least once a day, if not twice, minimum?

One piece of clothing followed by another is taken away, revealing the truth.

Truth 1. Heart. Trust in the Lord with the core of your being. It’s deeper than emotion, or thought, or motivations. Those are the surface waves of the soul. The heart is like the deep. It ignores thoughts that may conflict with the heart. It relegates raging emotions or numbness to a lower division. It stills the will, the terrible need to do something. The heart is trusting in the Lord when and only when, as in Psalm 23, He has made me lie down. ‘The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me to lie down…’

Truth 2. In all your ways, John. ‘I have ways, Lord?’ ‘Yes’. I sense a divine chuckle. He’s taken almost 68 years to show me this. I have ‘ways’. Here are some of them: Loud and confident people make me shrink. I have a multitude of ways of avoiding them, finding quieter places, going to the loo, sitting quietly, waiting for the storm to pass. I’m not a party animal. Almost as a contradiction, I have an instinct for leadership and form teams to accomplish a task. I make a cup of tea in a certain way; pronounce scones correctly (!); prefer to run into the sea than step in, toe by toe. Observational self-deprecating humour makes me laugh. I love Billy Connolly, but I also have a poetic/prophetic streak that demands some inner switch to flip – some might say left to right brain. I’m not sure. I have my ways.

Two pieces of familiar clothing stripped away.

It’s not simply that ‘acknowledging the Lord in all your ways’ means His direction comes first, even if it takes us beyond our comfort zones, but that the Lord has been with us all, in the formation of all of these things. ‘Our ways’ are what make us ‘us’ and not the next person. Our uniqueness. And, in Christ, there is a new ‘us’, a new creation…the essential you formed in the core of our being, our new hearts, being formed as the Spirit of Christ witnesses and communes with our new spirit, given to us in the New Covenant.

And he will direct our paths.

This is not some SatNav divinity, a guidance system from above the earth, from heaven as if heaven is a long way off. Or via a set of commands that we gird ourselves up to follow, come what may.

No, we are being discipled to live like Jesus. Relying on His voice within: ‘My sheep know My voice’, so that we end up being able to say to family, friends, work colleagues, neighbours, and a watching world ‘I only do what I see my father doing in heaven’. Well, we might not put it quite like that, or we’d appear to be religious nutters only capable of quoting scriptures like automatons or cult-like clones!

To any agnostics and atheists reading this, I challenge you to ask a believer or two about their experience with this verse. You may discover some intriguing stories! To any believer reading this who’s struggling, I struggle. I fail. I go off-piste. I’m often like a dog that hasn’t learnt to heel. But I know who has bought me and who is at work in me. It’s all grace. He calls me back, and on we go.

Last point. Trust is trust. It never changes. It’s standing at a bus stop waiting for the bus. It’s believing that what God has spoken is trustworthy and will come to pass. It’s swimming, knowing the water will support you. It’s believing the seasons will continue, or that tomorrow the sun will come up. ‘Trust in the Lord with all your heart’ when He says ‘He will direct your paths’.

Rolos

In the winter playground
The boy delves
In his pockets
Grey shorts over
Pink chapped thighs
As had all the others

December: break,
Ice and snow
Toggles and duffle coats
And bare shins
His thin gloves
Locates the target

A packet of Rolos

He unfurls the silver foil
Exposing dark brown circles
And, hand thrust out,
The Rolos are offered
To scraped knees
Footballs and wellington boots

In return
Impenetrable silence

No matched fingers
Extended to the silver foil
No swaps for sugar cigarettes
No words, no nods
A rebuff so irreversible
And dense as a vacuum

His first taste
Of estrangement
Of invisibility
Of finding the others
The shunned ones
Made rich with less

The Rolo lovers, those of
The Cave of Adullam
Dwellers to the East of Eden
Lepers with perfect skin
A kingdom of includers
Thawing the ice

Gifts

Become like little children?
Infants? Really?
So, on with the shorts
Sit cross-legged, for hours
Or lie on your back, feet
Up on the sofa
Pick your nose if you must
And daydream

Make faces
And odd noises
Plop your cheeks
And play hide and seek
Try so hard
To stay quiet and hidden
For five long seconds
Become three again

At the sight of wrapping paper
Be bubbly with excitement
And use your perfectly-formed
Three-year-old fingers
To prise up and away
All that Sellotape
Let your eyes
Grow larger than the Moon

And learn joy, learn love

Learn Amazing Grace
Learn that sweet sound
The music of heaven
That longs for you
Not to be stiff-necked
But let the tears fall
As you collapse

Back through the griefs
The broken-heartedness
The shields
That have not saved you
Hold your hands out
And see you are three again
Three at last! Three at last!
Thank God Almighty, we are three at last!

John the Baptist – a reset for 2026 Part 4: Prison

John the Baptist is often overlooked. The warm-up act before the entrance, stage-left, of the Messiah: Jesus of Nazareth, and eclipsed, as we all are, by the Word made flesh.

He is mentioned in all four gospels, but here’s Luke’s account, which is the fullest.

John said to the crowds coming out to be baptised by him, ‘You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. The axe is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.’

The people were waiting expectantly and were all wondering in their hearts if John might be the Messiah.

John answered them all, ‘I baptise you with water. But one who is more powerful than I will come, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptise you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.’

But when John rebuked Herod the tetrarch because of his marriage to Herodias, his brother’s wife, and all the other evil things he had done, Herod added this to them all: He locked John up in prison.

Part 4: Prison

John, of course, was beheaded. But this was only made possible due to his arrest and imprisonment. So it is the cause of his arrest that we end this short series.

The authorities kept a watchful eye on John the Baptist. They sent Pharisees and Sadducees to spy on this growing movement, but did not make any move to thwart his ministry.

Spiritually, though, their position was quite clear, ‘The Pharisees and the lawyers rejected the purpose of God for themselves, not having been baptised by John’ Luke 7v30

The domestic political power structures in Israel existed within the framework of the Roman Empire, headed by Pontius Pilate. Under Roman rule, the Jewish ruling council, the Sanhedrin, consisted of chief priests, elders, and scribes belonging to one of two religio-political streams: the Pharisees or the Sadducees.

Herod Antipas, son of Herod the Great, had jurisdiction over part of Israel, and it was Antipas who arrested John. John was permitted to preach to the people in general about sins and forgiveness and carry out baptisms. The promise of a Messiah to arise was somewhat disturbing, but this wasn’t the first time a Messiah figure had been heralded. None of this unduly moved Herod, or the Sanhedrin, or Pilate.

However,

‘Herod arrested John and bound him in prison for the sake of Herodias, his brother’s wife, for he had married her; John had said to Herod ‘It is not lawful for you to have your brother’s wife’’ Mark 6v17,18 

The general morals in Roman and Jewish society at the time may have excused Herod, or they may have turned a blind eye, or shrugged and said quietly, ‘the rich and powerful make their own rules’, and so on. Divorce was commonplace. It happens. Why object?

Is good judgement formed around the prevailing moral fashions of the age we live in, or by the law of Moses?

What is the basis of our sense of right and wrong? Our moral standards – where do they originate?

Paul, when considering the Law of Moses, wrote ‘the law is holy…and just, and good’ Romans 7v12

This is not the place to write at length about the replacement of the law with the ‘newness of the Spirit’ v6. Suffice to say, however, the law is good, but it can’t produce the righteousness it demands of us; it really serves to highlight our inability, through sin, of keeping to any moral code, especially the law (of Moses).

In Britain, for some years, the phrase ‘British values’ has been used as a precis of our uncodified constitution built around ‘fair play, common decency, free speech, democracy’ and so on. This is a mirage. Those elements of our unwritten constitution have been forged over centuries in the fire of the Law of Moses and the Commandments as summarised by Jesus in the New Testament. ‘British Values’ is a misnomer. If we have any values, they are enshrined in the Ten Commandments and other laws contained in the Law of Moses as written mainly in Leviticus and Deuteronomy.

Even the avowed atheist Richard Dawkins has, in recent years, acknowledged the role of Scripture in shaping his moral outlook, what he considers right and wrong. Now he calls himself a ‘cultural Christian’, recognising the debt he – and all of us - owe to the Bible.

When John applied the moral standards of the Law to Herod, not the moral standards of the day, and called him to repentance, it cost him his freedom - and his life.

As we meditate on the Law, it will challenge us whenever we attempt to take the throne away from Christ. I have sometimes likened the Christian life as losing every argument with Jesus. Thank God.

In matters of money, sex, and power, our faith will be tested and we may fail. But our faith cannot be in ourselves, our ability to obey the law – that is the flesh again attempting to be in charge. No, we must walk in the Spirit.

‘But now, we have been delivered from the law, having died to what we were held by, so that we should serve in the newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter’ Romans 7v6

John the Baptist – a reset for 2026 Part 3 (i) baptism of fire (ii) judgement here and now

John the Baptist is often overlooked. The warm-up act before the entrance, stage-left, of the Messiah: Jesus of Nazareth, and eclipsed, as we all are, by the Word made flesh.

He is mentioned in all four gospels, but here’s Luke’s account, which is the fullest.

John said to the crowds coming out to be baptised by him, ‘You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. The axe is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.’

The people were waiting expectantly and were all wondering in their hearts if John might be the Messiah.

John answered them all, ‘I baptise you with water. But one who is more powerful than I will come, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptise you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.’

But when John rebuked Herod the tetrarch because of his marriage to Herodias, his brother’s wife, and all the other evil things he had done, Herod added this to them all: He locked John up in prison.

(i) Baptism of fire, and (ii) Judgement here and now

Really, these subdivisions can be run together. I’ve only separated them because the phrase ‘baptism of fire’ is so well-known.

There is, of course, some validity in co-opting this biblical phrase for impending trouble, but it is sharper than that. Far sharper. We are talking about judgement. Not a universally popular subject. Immediately, when we hear the word ‘judgement’ within the scope of religion, our minds migrate to The Day of Judgement, or eternal resurrection or damnation. I am certainly not objecting to this - except in this way: God is eternal, and therefore His judgement is eternal. From our temporal space and time perspective, that means that whatever eternal judgement is, it affects the past, the present, and the future.

John the Baptist Part 3 is a look at eternal judgement through the biblical notion of ‘today’.

John the Baptist foresaw that the ministry of the Messiah would be characterised by two baptisms – not in water like his, but in the Holy Spirit and also in fire. That in the future believers would receive the gift of the Holy Spirit and would walk through life ‘saturated’, ‘wet through’, ‘baptised’ in the Spirit. No longer would they have to make a pilgrimage to the temple; they would be temples of the Holy Spirit. Temples on the move.

But he also said they would be ‘baptised with fire’. On the Day of Pentecost, of course, there were flames of fire. Signs that each believer was alive with the judgement that is found in Christ.

We’ve already seen how Simeon prophesied the manifestation of this judgement through Jesus: ‘…this child is destined for the fall and rising of many in Israel…that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed’ Luke 2v34,35

Jesus himself spoke about the sword of judgement: ‘I came to send fire on the earth…do you suppose I came to bring peace on earth? I tell you, not at all, but division…’ Luke 12v49-53

One example of this division was at Nazareth in the synagogue that he attended from childhood. When he was handed the scroll and read from Isaiah, it says ‘the eyes of all who were in the synagogue were fixed on him’ Luke 4v20 nevertheless, when He confessed his Messiahship and when he reminded the congregation that in Elijah’s day it was the Gentile widow who had welcomed him, the congregation rose against him ‘they led him to the brow of a hill…that they might throw Him down over the cliff’.

During the Day of Pentecost, when the crowd gathered due to the sound of a rushing wind and the sight of flames of fire on the believers’ heads, despite hearing the newly baptised in the Spirit believers ‘speaking in our own languages about the wonderful works of God’ some mocked, ‘they’re full of new wine’, in other words drunk. But Peter replied, ‘These are not drunk, as you suppose, it is only 9 o’clock in the morning’ Acts 2v11-15.

Division. The account goes on to say that 3000 were baptised that day. But opposition also grew.

John prophesied about this baptism of fire as a present-day divisive fire of judgement and the consequences of accepting or welcoming Christ or rejecting Him.

‘His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.’

This agricultural picture would have been well-understood until the era of mechanisation with combine harvesters. The wheat grains are heavier than the husk around the grain, so when a winnowing fork threw them both up into the air, any wind would blow the chaff away, leaving the grain to fall to the ground, where it could be collected and stored in a barn. The chaff is also collected and burnt.

The separation is therefore a picture of judgement.

We can see this in action through the apostles, for example, with Paul and Barnabas. In Acts chapter 13, they had been preaching in Antioch on the Sabbath but ‘when the Jews saw the multitude, they were filled with envy…and opposed the things spoken by Paul (v45)

‘Then Paul and Barnabus grew bold and said, ‘It was necessary that the word of God should be spoken to you first: but since you reject it, and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life…we turn to the Gentiles’

In John chapter 5, Jesus deals with ‘judgement now’ in tension with ‘the day of judgement’.

‘Truly I say to you, he who hears my word and believes in Him who sent Me, has everlasting life, and shall not come into judgement, but has passed from death into life. Truly I say to you, the hour is coming and now is when he dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live’ v 24,25

This is both a NOW and a THEN resurrection to life or condemnation. Once we believe we experience a ‘resurrection’ from death to life. It’s not the complete work of resurrection, but it is the irreversible start.

Charles Wesley caught hold of the immensity of this transformation in And Can It Be?

Long my imprisoned spirit lay/Fast bound in sin and nature’s night/Thin eye diffused a quickening ray/I woke, the dungeon flamed with light/My chains fell off, my heart was free/I rose, went forth and followed Thee

So, it is an awesome thing to be a Christian. To carry within us the baptism in the Spirit and fire. Just as John prophesied, as we give witness and tell our story, some believe and some will not. Division. It is not that we are seeking opposition and division; we are only too aware of how receiving Christ has been an act of mercy, and receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit has nothing to do with our worthiness. But John warns us, as Jesus did later, that we are sheep sent out among wolves. The wolves howled against Jesus in Nazareth, despite their synagogue attending religiosity. But he walked free. It wasn’t his time.

As we continue in Christ, Christ living out His life in our form, we will see the chaff blown away and the grain gathered into His barn. We cannot have one without the other.

John the Baptist – a reset for 2026 Part 2 - Baptism in the Spirit

John the Baptist is often overlooked. The warm-up act before the entrance, stage-left, of the Messiah: Jesus of Nazareth, and eclipsed, as we all are, by the Word made flesh.

He is mentioned in all four gospels, but here’s Luke’s account, which is the fullest.

John said to the crowds coming out to be baptised by him, ‘You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. The axe is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.’

The people were waiting expectantly and were all wondering in their hearts if John might be the Messiah.

John answered them all, ‘I baptise you with water. But one who is more powerful than I will come, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptise you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.’

But when John rebuked Herod the tetrarch because of his marriage to Herodias, his brother’s wife, and all the other evil things he had done, Herod added this to them all: He locked John up in prison.

Baptism in the Spirit

Baptism, typically, requires three components: the person administering the baptism, the baptismal candidate and the element into which the candidate is to be baptised.

John prophesied that the Messiah would baptise not with water, but with the Holy Spirit – in other words, true Christianity has nothing to do with outward actions such as prayer, or hymn singing, church attendance, being born in a ‘Christian nation’ or being related to a Christian believer, or bible knowledge. What John foresaw was something radically new; men and women baptised in the Holy Spirit.

True Christianity, therefore, is all about being immersed, soaked in, plunged into the Holy Spirit, God Himself.

When Peter preached to Cornelius’s household, he summarised Jesus’s public ministry as:

‘God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, who went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him’ Acts 10v38

He demonstrated the life of a man baptised in the Spirit, but we don’t read of Jesus baptising the disciples and His followers in the Holy Spirit until after the resurrection.

‘And being with the disciples. Jesus commanded them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the Promise of the Father, ‘Which,’ he said, ‘you have heard from Me; for John truly baptised with water, but you shall be baptised with the Holy Spirit not many days from now’ Acts 1v5

The disciples – who numbered approximately 120 by this time – did as they were commanded; they waited, men and women.

Ten days later, Luke records, ‘When the Day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all with one accord in one place…flames of fire sat on each of them, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages as the Spirit enabled them’ Acts 2 v1-4

A large crowd gathered to hear and see what was going on, and Peter stood up to preach the first sermon of the New Testament after the resurrection and ascension of Christ. At the end of which he said: ‘Repent, and let everyone of you be baptised in the Name of Jesus for the forgiveness of sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit’ Acts 2v38

I think we all know instinctively what repentance looks like. All excuses exhausted, finally we admit what we’ve done and ask for forgiveness, so that the breach in the relationship can be mended, and the tension and strain can drain away. Here, the principal relationship is between us and God, who is holy. We know that God knows, there is no hiding place, and we admit our need for cleansing, for forgiveness, and redemption.

The baptism (in water) is a sign that Jesus has indeed forgiven us, and our sins have been washed away.

But Peter doesn’t stop there. True Christianity is not limited to the forgiveness of sins, as wonderful as that is, it involves receiving a gift - the gift of the Spirit. We come to Jesus for Him to baptise us with the Holy Spirit.

Before John the Baptist, Ezekiel had foreseen this day and prophesied:

‘I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you, I will remove the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes, Ezk 36v26,27

Paul put it like this:

‘If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His’ Romans 8v9

True Christianity, therefore, is wholly dependent on receiving the gift of the Spirit. Everything we do after receiving the Spirit of Christ (worship, prayer, church, loving our neighbour) flows from this. Later in the same chapter, Paul writes: ‘for as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God’ v14

The repentance-baptism-gift of the Spirit is ideally a fay one experience for every new believer. In practice this is not always the case.

As I write this, a remarkable example of a Southern Baptist pastor receiving the baptism of the Spirit many years after believing is described in an interview. It transformed his ministry.

The link is below.

Revival Radio TV: North Georgia Revival

John the Baptist – a reset for 2026

Part 1

(i) Brood of vipers – not just the Pharisees and Sadducees
(ii) Coming wrath – the inadequacy of Jewish lineage

John the Baptist is often overlooked. The warm-up act before the entrance, stage-left, of the Messiah: Jesus of Nazareth, and eclipsed, as we all are, by the Word made flesh..

He is mentioned in all four gospels, but here’s Luke’s account, which is the fullest.

John said to the crowds coming out to be baptised by him, ‘You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. The axe is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.’

The people were waiting expectantly and were all wondering in their hearts if John might be the Messiah.

John answered them all, ‘I baptise you with water. But one who is more powerful than I will come, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptise you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.’

But when John rebuked Herod the tetrarch because of his marriage to Herodias, his brother’s wife, and all the other evil things he had done, Herod added this to them all: He locked John up in prison.

John travelled up and down the River Jordan baptising all who came to him. The Greek word baptism means to immerse or dip. None of the baptisms recorded in the New Testament are of babies being sprinkled by a minister or priest in a font or a baptistry – far too sanitised for the mostly open-air ministries of John, then Jesus, and the apostles of the New Testament era.

Luke records the buzz, ‘Is John the promised Messiah?’, speculation was running rife.

When a whole population is stirred, the authorities send their spies, and ordinary, everyday people flock. An unease is in the air.

John addressed the spies and the genuinely curious equally:

John said to the crowds coming out to be baptised by him, ‘You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. The axe is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.’

(i) Brood of vipers - not just the Pharisees and the Sadducees

Whereas Matthew’s gospel suggests that John reserved this sharp criticism for the Pharisees and the Sadducees, Luke’s gospel makes it plain that he did not. He applied it to all who came to him.

It is the unsavoury task of the prophet, just like an honest physician, to announce to the elite and the poor alike that they are infected with a deadly disease, the cause of their present disfigurement. In the case of the prophet, the disease is sin. The effect of sin is to disfigure a person spiritually so that they rebel against their creator from the heart. They are in a state of spiritual death and estrangement from God.

And yet, within this diagnosis, there is hope. ‘Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?’ This is not a rhetorical or theoretical question. For those who came to John with no intention to repent, the answer is plain: their line managers in the evil pyramid of religio-political power that would one day arrest and call for the execution first of John, and then Jesus, had sent them as spies. Genuine seekers, however, were motivated by conviction and were responding to the loving call of God through John to baptism.

A doctor pronouncing a diagnosis and treatment is not only acting honestly but with true love of neighbour. John’s words may seem sharp, but they are with loving intent.

(ii) the coming wrath – the inadequacy of Jewish lineage

We could telescope John’s reference to the coming wrath way off to the future Day of Judgement: ‘the day when God will judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ’ (Rom 2v16), but in the context of the passage referring to the coming Messiah, the wrath that John announced had arrived.

A cursory reading of the Gospels will reveal just how divisive Jesus was. One of his pronouncements against the Pharisees was ‘Let them alone, they are blind leaders of the blind…both will fall into a ditch’ Matthew 15v14

By AD 70, the nation of Israel, under the religio-political leadership of the Herodians and the Sanhedrin, the ruling council made up from Pharisees and Sadducees, was dismantled. Jerusalem and the temple were destroyed, reduced to the Western or ‘Wailing’ Wall that we see today, the people massacred, and survivors scattered. Also, by AD70, the gospel had reached Rome, and those who believed in the resurrected Messiah had grown into a great nation without borders and continued to spread across the whole globe.

When Simeon saw the child Jesus in the temple, he prophesied that ‘this Child is destined for the fall and rising of many in Israel…that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed’ Luke 2v34,35. John had made sure his audience, genuine or not, understood that Jewish lineage, being ‘sons of Abraham’ by physical descent, does not blind God to the true condition of the human heart.

John’s baptism in the water of repentance was a prophetic sign of the true baptism to come that would be administered not by John or his disciples, but by the coming Messiah: a baptism of fire and the Holy Spirit.

________________

In Part 2 we will examine is an arithmetic equation as sure as 2+2=4.

True Christianity is the baptism of the Holy Spirit…not an optional extra for Pentecostal or Charismatic believers.

It is like turning the key in the ignition to start the spiritual life of a Christian.

Running on Empty – the new normal

On Friday afternoon, I was driving home from Hanham to Winscombe. The journey to Hanham earlier had been increasingly fraught. I thought I’d set off in good time, but was 30 minutes late arriving...another story. I hate being late.

I decided to take the country route back to avoid the traffic. At the back of my mind were the last-minute preparations needed before the neighbours were due to arrive for Christmas drinks.

On the way to Hanham, the car had already beeped at me; its petrol gauge bouncing into the red. On the way back, my mind was elsewhere, thinking about the evening, and I was enjoying the country route. At some point, somewhere deep within a small voice, not the beep, started talking. It had three things to say:

1. You’re going the wrong way
2. Look at the petrol gauge
3. Look at your phone

Stress rising, I found a small road I could pull into. Phone on 1%. Diesel had been right at the bottom for a few miles by that time. And, my 1% phone satnav map confirmed I was heading East, not West.

My mind and my spirit were not enjoying their antagonistic conversation. My mind was filing through various disaster scenarios, rescue phone calls, asking whether I had a petrol can, preparing me for the worst. My spirit, on the other hand, was calling on God. That familiar feeling of utter dependency, black humour, feeling very silly and vulnerable, and yet knowing this, occasionally, is the path we unwittingly must take…and I had.

Hooking up an older Satnav, not my 1% phone version, I headed in the right direction. Less than a quarter of a mile up the road, a petrol station, appeared. It felt like manna from heaven, as if it had just been built and downloaded to the planet for me! All that worry, self-recrimination, apologising to the Almighty, calling on Him for mercy…now joy, relief. And £30.00 never so joyfully spent!

A story to tell for the blog? Maybe.

A parable? Most certainly, yes.

We make a terrible mistake if we absorb too readily the ‘Hollywood Jesus’ whose clothes are slightly better quality than those worn by the others around him. Or he’s a tad taller. Or more handsome, his beard trimmed that bit closer than Peter’s. Hollywood Jesus has secret powers of healing, deliverance, and raising the dead, quite apart from his sheer courage, and unblinking blue eyes. The epitome of Zen-calm, He is a hero, facing down death and escaping from the tomb.

That’s a false image. The New Testament has a radically different perspective:

‘Christ Jesus…being in the form of God…emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, and coming in the likeness of men’ Philip 2 v 5-7

Jesus ran on empty.

I suspect he knew this in a deeper and fuller way than any of us can imagine. I had a taste of it in the car. A reminder that self-sufficiency is a form of delusion. And a glimpse of new light shed some on the subject.

Coming out of the Covid pandemic, there was much talk of a ‘new normal’.

Running on empty is the new normal.

It is our position in Christ if we are a Christian believer.

It is the Sermon on the Mount in real life, not an ideal that is just out of reach.

To paraphrase: ‘Blessed are the empty, they shall be filled’.

Jesus ran on empty

This is what Jesus modelled for us. Empty yet filled. The words of the parables, the power to heal, the courage to face opposition, the triumph over the grave – none of this came from His fullness, His ability. He had no secret power; it all came from the One who filled Him.

We yield any remaining thought that we are in control. We are called to faith, not self-sufficiency. We lean not on our own understanding but trust in the Lord with all our heart. We have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives within me. The life I now live, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me. We are dependent on God, who revealed ‘His Son in me’ to Paul.

God does not require us to be full. To be clever. To be successful emotionally or economically. He does not require a cv to give us a task. God knows a secret. The secret His Son Jesus demonstrated to the world: we are designed to run on empty. All day. Every day.

Jesus said, ‘Freely, freely you have received, freely give’.

This is not a self-help wisdom from a spiritual guru. He emptied Himself and was filled by God. He received freely, and He gave freely. This is our calling.

Of course, I can laugh at myself. My incompetence. My inattention. Even the word ‘My’.

That small voice is still speaking:

1. You’re going the wrong way – the opposite direction, in fact
2. Look at the petrol gauge
3. Look at your phone

In other words, He calls us back to ‘emptiness’, which is the right direction, not depending on our own abilities. Our fuel gauges are in good health if the needle is on empty. And my phone? It represents you spirit, the origin of that small inner voice, built for two-way conversations, my heavenly Father to me, His son, and from me to my Heavenly Father.

Merry Christmas

I hope you don’t run out of petrol/diesel, but then again…

Guitar String

Fingertips prise open
The waxed end of a packet
And fish out a thick E string
Golden, reflecting any light
It could find

I thread its narrow end
Through an aperture
The other bulbous end
Planted in the soil of the guitar
Out of sight

Flexed between two ends
Time wound me, tuned me
Turned metal into music
But you were with me
When time took its toll

Dulled now, flattened
Stretched, not broken
Requiring attention
Careful hands return
To cleanse and retune

The Healing of a Man with Dropsy - on the Sabbath

You may be familiar with this miracle in Luke’s Gospel, chapter 14. We…I…can easily become too familiar with recognisable bible passages that we fail to see what we need to see.

This happened to me this week. I have a fresh way of looking at this passage.

The scene. Jesus is invited to dinner on the Sabbath. It’s quiet in the streets. No shops open. No beasts of burden dragging goods up and down the road. Children are inside, getting ready for bed. A ruler of the Pharisees has invited various guests, including Jesus (and maybe his entourage), for an evening meal. It’s Friday evening, after sunset.

I prefer thinking it’s a Friday evening, not Saturday lunch, as the work that would have had to have taken place on a Saturday to prepare the meal may have broken the Sabbath, something a ruler of the Pharisees would not have permitted.

Note, the Pharisees were a hugely popular movement, calling the people back to the Law of Moses, blaming Israel’s misfortune on their disobedience to the Law. It’s a simple message.

Jesus disrupts the proceedings by asking,

‘Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?’

In the shocked silence that follows, he heals a man of dropsy, then goes on to tell the parable about seeking the best seats. It’s about humility:

‘Whoever exalts himself will be humbled and whoever humbles himself will be exalted’

Lastly, he says,

‘Invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind…and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you shall be repaid at the resurrection of the just.’

Here are my points.

1. The sons of God are led by the Spirit. On this occasion, the Spirit led Jesus not only to accept the invitation but to fall into conversation with a man suffering from dropsy. Dropsy is an affliction where its victims swell up with excess water in their bodies. There may have been many there with a variety of medical conditions, but the Spirit led Jesus to this man, or the man to Jesus. They talk. Jesus offers to pray for him. He is the centre of attention. Everyone is silent. Watching. The man would love to be healed, but he, too, is aware of the potential condemnation in the air for breaking the Sabbath, by ‘working’, ie performing a miracle. Jesus is looking around. The man is looking around, but he agrees and is healed. His excess weight drops off him, his clothes don’t fit anymore, and he takes himself off home rejoicing. It says ‘Jesus let him go’ – he wanted to remove himself from the party, perhaps with the hypocrisy of the host revealed, and the charged atmosphere, he wanted to leave early.

2. The healing is key. It illustrates all of Jesus’ teaching, which disrupts the familiar scene of popular politics. Something greater was here…the kingdom of heaven. Jesus goes on to reveal the nature of the kingdom and the nature of the King:

‘Invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind…and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you shall be repaid at the resurrection of the just.’

By all means, take this literally, if that is what God is leading you to do by His Spirit. But keep your eyes firmly fixed on Jesus in this passage, not the setting, not the Pharisees, not the Sabbath, not breaking the Sabbath. What did Jesus do? He healed a man who could not heal himself. The man with dropsy could not repay Jesus.

The real sabbath is this: God does ALL the work. The Spirit led Jesus to the house. The Spirit led him to the man with dropsy. The Spirit spoke to Him and led Jesus to stretch out His hand to heal.

We have rested from work, altogether. ‘For he who has entered His rest has himself also ceased from his works, as God did from His’ Heb 4v10.

Does this mean we laze about all day? No. Did Jesus? No! But Jesus said, ‘I only do what I see My father doing.’ Often, we break the Sabbath, we rush around doing our own thing…and that might be reaching out to the lame, the blind, the blind. Ou life can be full of good works, but if they’re not what the Spirit has led you to do, you have broken the Sabbath, however ‘Christian’ it appears to be!

3. The first shall be last. First, we must stop. In Psalm 23, the sheep are MADE to lie down. That’s the starting point. We are prone to wandering around, full of our own will. No, this is a completely new way of living in the kingdom. What God is doing today is our only concern.

4. True contentment and radical living. The fact is that much of most of our days is routine. The Christian life is not a miracle a minute. Think about Jesus in this passage. It was just a Sabbath meal. An ordinary Friday evening. He’s been to countless Sabbaths before. And then, on this particular occasion, his heart starts beating as God speaks to him whilst he’s talking to the man with dropsy, probably about his day, his vineyard, his family, the weather…small talk. At some point, the man tells Jesus he’s suffering, or Jesus points it out. And then, in an instant, everything changes. Jesus knows He has healing for the man; the power of God is present to heal, and everything else follows on. The miraculous and the mundane. Don’t mistake the mundane…it’s often where God is at work.

Alpha and Omega….and the gate-crashers called prophets

Alpha and Omega are the first and last letters in the Greek alphabet, with 22 letters in between, unlike our 24 letters in between A and Z.

In the New Testament, Jesus is described as the ‘Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end’ (Rev 1v8, 21v6, 22v13). He is, therefore, equated with God, consistent with the trinitarian description of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit throughout the NT.

In our society, we are linear in our thinking about time; we divide time into the past, present, and the future as if the universe is travelling towards an end from a beginning. Just as all living things are born and die, or a book starts with a word and ends with a full stop, so the Universe started and will end. In terms of science, the universe is bookended by the Big Bang, the beginning, and Entropy, an end state of disorder, things falling apart.

The Bible looks at this quite differently.

In the Bible Jesus IS the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end; not was the beginning, and will be the end, but IS the beginning and the end simultaneously. All of what we call time is contained in Christ.

One of the effects of this is to redefine our normal understanding of prophets and prophecy.

A purely linear approach to time views prophecy from the perspective of fulfilment, nailing it to a linear timeline; it either has been fulfilled or will be; it belongs to the past or the future, but a true biblical perspective views prophecy as a gift from an eternal heavenly realm brought into our temporal realm of space and time.

Linear thinking makes mistakes.

For example, the Immanuel prophecy in Isaiah ch7. Isaiah predicts that King Ahaz has only a few years left in his reign before ‘the Lord will bring the king of Assyria upon you’, the sign being a baby called Immanuel. This will occur, Isaiah prophesies, before he’s able to distinguish between good and bad food, the political pendulum will swing against Ahaz i.e. he only has a few years left.

A few years later, Israel was destroyed by Assyria; the prophecy fulfilled.

But the prophecy had a more profound fulfilment in the birth of Christ, so Isaiah 7 wriggles free from its timeline ("The Virgin Shall Conceive": Why Isaiah 7:14 Confuses People - Jean E. Jones for further reading).

‘The wind blows where it wills and you hear the sound of it but cannot tell where it comes from or where it goes. So is everyone born of the Spirit’

When Jesus spoke to Nicodemus at night, he said ‘The wind blows where it wills and you hear the sound of it but cannot tell where it comes from or where it goes. So is everyone born of the Spirit.’

Christian believers are those in whom the Holy Spirit lives. They are not predictable. They move in step with the leading of the Spirit, where and when the wind blows. Some are prophets, who are charged with ‘the word of the Lord’.

Imagine a party in full swing. There are drinks, music, people chatting, interacting, some dancing perhaps, somebody spills a drink, one or two have made it to the loo, most know each other, some feel comfortable, others not so…the usual mix. It’s fairly predictable. It’s begun, it will last, and it will fade to the last cheerio, and the clearing up.

And then, midway through, a man or a woman, or a child, appears. The host and a few of his/her friends don’t recognise this person – they weren’t invited. The gate-crasher. How will it go from here?

The gate-crasher and the host end up talking. The host offers the gate-crasher a drink. The gate-crasher answers by saying, ‘No, it’s you that needs a drink. You’re really thirsty. You’ve run dry. I am here to tell you…’.

The bible says the word of God is sharper than a two-edged sword; it divides.

There are two possible outcomes. The host could react, ‘You can leave now, how rude…’ or he/she is stopped in his/her tracks. Maybe there are tears, all the external pretence drops away, and the real issues of her spiritual aridity are laid bare, not before the prophet, but before the love of God, who loves the host enough to send someone…a prophet.

Play that scenario in a church setting: the church is well organised, and people have their roles. Sunday by Sunday is similar. It’s a popular destination. The preachers are engaging, the musicians motivate the people to worship, and those behind the scenes do their admin duties with joy…this is a smoothly run gathering. And in walks a prophet. The person on ‘welcoming’ duty speaks to the prophet, ‘Welcome, let me show you where you can sit’. ‘No’, comes the reply, ‘You need to know where you are sitting. You are an invited guest. Highly honoured. He’s waiting for you to take your seat’.

What will happen? The same two options. Either acceptance or rejection. Such is the experience of the prophet.

Accept or Reject?

There are plenty of secular versions. Gordon Ramsay’s ‘Secret Service’, Fiver in Watership Down, John Anderston in Minority Report, come to mind.

Any individual, family, community, or even a nation, can either accept or reject the word of the Lord, whether it comes from a gatecrashing prophet, unknown to the community (an extreme example) or from within. ‘Now in the church in Antioch there were certain prophets and teachers.’ Clearly, this church had identified some as teachers and some as prophets and knew how to distinguish between the two; the ‘gate-crashing prophets’ had been incorporated into the life of that community.

In Demos Shakarian's book The Happiest People on Earth, Efim Klubniken, an illiterate Russian who lived in the Armenian village of Kara Kala near Mount Ararat, received a vision after a seven-day fast when he was eleven years old. The prophecy warned that a period of immense tragedy and mass murder was coming to the region and that all Christians must flee to the west coast of the United States. Demos Shakarian's grandfather and other Pentecostal families heeded this warning, sold their property, and emigrated to America in the early 1900s. Those who remained behind, including the entire population of Kara Kala, were massacred in the Armenian Genocide that began in 1914.

Christ, the Alpha and Omega, loves the church. He is the bridegroom, and we are His bride. The church is His body. Prophets bring the ‘word of the Lord’ to woo the church back to its first love, to warn, to encourage – it’s the language of love, and, even if the prophetic word has a sharp edge, it finds its origin in same love that took Christ to the cross.

Remember Jesus’s tears, ‘He saw the city (Jerusalem) and wept, ‘If only you had known the things that make for peace…but they are hidden from your eyes’

Psalm 112 – Part v

He has distributed freely; he has given to the poor
His righteousness endures forever
His horn is exalted in honour
The wicked sees it and is angry
He gnashes his teeth and melts away
The desire of the wicked comes to naught

I trooped out of church, aged six or seven, to a Sunday School which resembled the exam halls I was to later endure at school and University. Desks were arranged in three long columns, and a man with a white pointy stick and some maps at the front.

This was too much. I refused to go the following Sunday. It was, of course, one of those early experiences of defiance that intrigued me. The power of No. A short word, used unwisely on many occasions – but not then!

Had I stuck at it, I may have discovered the standard Sunday School joke that has lasted for generations – the answer to every question is Jesus.

And that is where I shall start this final post on Psalm 112.

Line 1

It was Judas Iscariot that Jesus put in charge of the money bag. He was the one disciple who had a close-up view of how Jesus handled gifts and money; how, day to day, he divided up the funds to buy bread and how he decided to give to the poor. He would have fulfilled ‘distributing freely and giving to the poor’.

Lines 2 & 3

‘Authentic’ might be the word of choice today. His authority stemmed from his integrity. He was as righteous with money as the rest of life; he ‘handled his affairs with discretion’ v5. Later, his disciples and Paul the apostle would say, ‘he was tempted in every way yet without sin’

Line 4 & 5

One of the deep mysteries of life on earth is that we tend to alienate, ostracise, and exile those who lead foul lives and those who lead exemplary lives. Both drive us mad. Perhaps both hold up a mirror to our own souls, our potential for ‘sin’ and our inability to be very good.

Jesus, despite his innate goodness, miracles of healing, mercy and kindness, parables, treatment of the outcasts, and spiritual teaching, had his very vocal opponents. In the end, the politico-religious authorities nailed him to a cross. There was a lot of anger and gnashing of teeth.

Less than a generation after Jesus voiced his pronouncements e.g. ‘you are the blind leading the blind, both will fall in the ditch’ the Temple had been destroyed and the nation of Israel dismantled by the Romans whereas the church had successfully spread all the way to Rome and beyond, carrying the message that Jesus the Messiah (Christ) had been crucified under Pontios Pilate and rose again on the third day, as the Anglican liturgy states.

Line 5

I like the poetry of this line as translated in the RSV. Try reading it slowly, emphasising the final word ‘naught’ as you slam your bible on the desk. It’s unavoidably final. In the final analysis, whatever your eschatology, Jesus, the Lamb of God, is on the throne, has all authority in heaven and earth, and is Lord. His adversaries, including Satan, are no more. They have melted away and brought to…naught. (I prefer the American spelling…but replace with nought if you must!)

What is true for Jesus will also be true for us in whom Christ lives.

If you have received Christ and confessed that He is risen from the dead and is Lord, then this life, His life, has become your life. You are indissolubly joined to Him, and so His life is lived out through you, changing you en route.

He will prompt you to distribute freely and give to the poor. At His prompting. Not your good ideas or your political preferences, these are all put to one – you are now becoming attuned to the voice of His Spirit communing with your spirit. Once, I was talking to a lady whose clothes, posh accent, and whole persona exuded wealth, education, and success, but the Spirit whispered to me, ‘Money problems’. It turned out to be true.

As He lives out His life through you, you will stir up a mixed response. In some nations, persecution is rife, far worse than is usually the case in Western Europe. Confiscation of property, unemployment, violence and murder are commonplace. If a Jew or a Muslim abandons Judaism or Islam for Christ, they can expect to be shunned and exiled from their community and family and, in some cases, killed. The opposition to you may take other, more subtle forms: silence, unspoken irritation, fear, exclusion socially, or vocal derision and sarcasm.

But it will come to…naught.

Yes, of course, sometimes we, I, will fail to hear the Lord speak to us, or mistake His urging for our own, or we undermine your own integrity through foolishness or disobedience, and sometimes we will bring undue suffering upon our own heads, not because of our righteousness but by being insufferable.

But the answer to all Sunday School questions - and the answer for us in our experience - is Jesus. We are His disciples. We are learning to live as He lived, through His life, hidden in us as we are hidden in Him, oozing out into the world.

Psalm 112 – Part iv

Surely he will never be shaken
The righteous will be in everlasting remembrance
He will not be afraid of evil tidings
His heart is steadfast, trusting in the Lord
His heart is established
He will not be afraid
Until he sees his desire upon his enemies v 6-8

This is one of those biblical passages whose first impression is that it’s off-beam.

On the one hand, isn’t it a bit Hollywood hero-ish? One can imagine the long chords, building the emotion as the hero, courageous and unflinching, defeats all his foes and comes home rejoicing. And on the other hand, we dismiss it as an unattainable ideal, like heaven on earth.

The romantic and the realist slug it out.

But romantics and realists are all brought to their knees (aren’t we?) in repentance, in acknowledging our deepest spiritual needs before the love and true judgement of God.

The rich young ruler ‘went sorrowful away’ from Jesus, unwilling to relinquish his material wealth to obtain true spiritual wealth, the kingdom of heaven.

This Psalm is addressed to the righteous. And, though space forbids a long discussion, the staggering truth turns out to be that ‘righteousness’ is a gift on offer to the most unlikely recipients….us…sinners. But like all gifts, we have to let go of anything already in our hands to take hold of the gift, unwrap it, and explore all it can unleash in our lives.

The New Testament has some extraordinary statements; here’s one, speaking about Jesus on the cross, ‘He became sin that we might become the righteousness of God’.

To the extent that we believe this, we can start to enjoy Psalms 112 and others addressed to ‘the righteous’ and let the word of God reconfigure us.

The potential of evil tidings to flood us with fear is not an uncommon experience

1. Evil tidings

In some translations, it simply says ‘bad news’. Whether we are Christians or not we all face reversals, suffering, grief, loss, and pain due to bad news. The potential of evil tidings to flood us with fear is not an uncommon experience. We are shaken to the core, to the depths of our souls.

2. Unafraid

How can Ps 112 state so simply that we are not shaken and our hearts remain steadfast and unafraid? Years ago, I used to wake up at 3am, sit bolt upright in bed, my heart and mind racing out of control with fearful thoughts. I felt as if I was being unzipped. If you’ve ever suffered from panic attacks, you’ll recognise this description. All I could see was personal and financial ruin; all my molehills were mountains, and everything became grossly exaggerated. In that period of time, I found Ps112…and 1 Sam 30 v6 ‘Now David was greatly distressed…but David strengthened himself in God’ The bible doesn’t tell us how David strengthened himself in God…and I think I know why. There is no one way; it’s not a method or a technique. In my distress, I learnt to strengthen myself in God by reminding myself of the essential truths of the gospel, of what Christ achieved for us all on the cross, his resurrection, and His ascension…and therefore me. I preached some good sermons (!) - to myself! As I did so, and this happened on many occasions, I worked myself away from panic and towards God’s loving purpose to ‘establish my heart’.

3. Until

I may come back to the final sentence ‘his desire on his enemies’ in the next post, but for now, sometimes we need to realise our enemy is the fear itself…and whatever voice is feeding those fears. What I will say here is that mountains can be turned back into molehills. The true circumstances that evoked such fear have not gone on holiday but have shrunk back to their true size and now your soul, rather than being frozen in fear, is being thawed out; he warmth of faith is returning…so that you can take whatever appropriate action is needed and not remain paralysed by fear.

Final note. We are not called to be romantics or realists, but have entered a new kingdom whose resources of faith, love and courage are inexhaustible…our faith is not that we have to be unflinching heroes or confined to realism but that in us the faith of Christ is at play and at work in times of trouble, anxiety, distress and ‘evil tidings’.

Psalm 112 – Part iii

Unto the upright there arises light in the darkness
He is gracious, full of compassion, and righteous.
A good man deals graciously and lends
He will guide his affairs with discretion v4,5

First of all, I don’t want to dodge or flatten these verses: they are addressed to men. And therefore to me.

Yes, I know if you are a woman reading Ps112, the Holy Spirit who inspired the unknown author to pen these words, can use them to speak to you, personally, but it is also true to say that if the Holy Spirit inspired the author to address these thoughts to men, then we men need to sit up and take notice.

Imagine by John Lennon speaks of a longing for a kind of universal peace – a ‘brotherhood of man’, but this can’t appear except through the type of men…and I mean men…who fit the description of Psalm 112.

Line 1. These are men who maintain a moral integrity even under severe temptations and trial, or darkness of soul, or circumstance…they hang on, waiting for light to rise like the sun to rise each morning after the night. Men of radical faith, whose hope is not easily overcome by darkness.

Lines 2 & 3
There is a direct link between a life of faith, love, and hope, and how open our hearts are. Open hearts can be measured quite easily…follow the money. These men know how to be generous but with discretion. They are, by nature, men of good judgement and discern automatically how, when, and to whom to ‘disperse abroad’ and ‘give to the poor’ ie those in need v9.

Line 4 discretion
It’s quite easy to read such verses and think these are ‘good ideals to strive for’, or ‘the world would be a better place’ if everyone did this, and we end up becoming moralists in danger of self-righteous bigotry, measuring everyone by these standards, disapproving of those who fail in some way. In other words, seeking salvation individually, or for society, by ‘works’, by human effort.

Goodness! As a former teacher, how easy it would be to produce a training programme for children, teenagers, and the workplace around these verses! After reading some of the terrible, banal Vision Statements or Logos for schools and companies – verses 4 and 5, or indeed the whole of 112 would be infinitely better!

But it would be a disaster. Righteousness is not obtained by effort. It’s a gift from God. To be received.

Wrapped up in that gift is Christ Himself, and the Father, and the Holy Spirit, God, three in One. When they come and take up residence in us, change, discipleship, the transformative training really starts.

All these ‘fruits’ start to grow. If you are a believer, and have received the gift of righteousness, that work, the work of God in you, through you, in your form, as you…has begun. How’s it going? It’s a gradual rejigging of your patterns of thinking; it’s a maturing process. What is the Spirit of God turning His attention to in your life at this moment?

So, these verses are great descriptions of how men in the kingdom, indwelt by God Himself, are en route (none of us do these perfectly, as well as Christ!) to fulfilling these verses…even if they are experiencing darkness at this time. Wait and see. The sun shall rise. Light shall rise in the darkness.

In the first of these posts about Ps112, I mentioned that the Spirit highlighted Ps112 to me during a time of considerable pressure, of darkness and injected me with an extra boost to my faith, to hang in there, for the light to shine. It did. Darkness is not a strange phenomenon. We have a physical reminder every 12 or so hours.

Let the night and day cycle encourage anyone stuck in the night…morning is coming.

Been to Church and I don’t know

It’s true to the wind
I don’t know where it blows
But it’s blown us here
A reverse-play building site
Living stones assembled
Drawn by unheard words

In file the called
Drenched in sweet oils
Instruments in His hand
Servants soaked
In the fragrance of heaven
Hear them as they sing

A river tumbling and still
Full of life and lights
Fountains pouring
From a throne unseen
It’s the Bridegroom
Calling to His beloved

Eyes only for Him
He plays one, then another
A word here, miracle there
Yes, I’ve been to church
And I don’t know
Where the wind will blow

Psalm 112 – Part ii

Blessed is the man who fears the Lord
Who delights greatly in His commandments
His descendants will be mighty on the earth
The generation of the upright will be blessed
Wealth and riches will be in his house
And his righteousness endures forever v1-3

The bible asserts that the word of God is ‘living and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit’ so we need to put the brakes on if we think that the ‘prosperity gospel’ is either a pernicious distortion of the faith, or that ‘prosperity’ is a faith consequence of the gospel.

Neither does that leave us searching for some middle-ground like a hapless British diplomat succeeding only in fomenting accusations of double standards whilst trying to bridge the gap between those that preach glory and those that espouse suffering. Let us be clear, these verses do indicate financial and small ‘p’ political clout. It’s disingenuous to hit the panic button and spiritualise ‘wealth and riches’ as some form of inner wealth rather than materially in dollars, sterling, or the yen.

So, how do we handle these promises when we worship a man who ended his life virtually naked, hanging on a cross in full public gaze, and owned so very little?

A Christian is a man or a woman who has been crucified with Christ and who has entered an entirely different life, the life of the Son of God, living out His life through you, the Holy Spirit living in your new spirit and on out through your soul (thinking, feelings, will) and body to the world around you. (Galatians 2v20). The old you is gone, and a new creation stands in its place.

As a Christian, then, you hear God speak. To be a Christian is to live in a Spirit-spirit communion. This is, to borrow Watchman Nee’s book title, The Normal Christian Life.

Over 20 years ago, God ‘spoke’ this Psalm into my spirit; it seemed to jump off the page and speak to me. That seems to be how it works. So, to write these posts feels like a kind of homecoming, or a house survey, inspecting the foundations.

At the time, I was financially in a weak position, and my children had yet to enter adult life to build themselves up at work and so on, but these verses leapt from the page and have been living in me ever since, initially as seeds. Seeds are sown underground. Once the soil covers them, there is no visible evidence of their existence; the work of germination goes on unseen, away from public gaze. Twenty years on, I can report…visible growth.

I thank God for giving me a measure of faith, but ‘descendants’ is referring to generations to come. I have four grandchildren at the time of writing, so a further dimension is taking shape. We have to come to terms with the fact that we are of the Abrahamic faith and God spoke to him in terms of generations, it seems that this is God’s ‘normal’, seeing way beyond our horizons and speaking of them to us. We carry His words, believing, but scratching our heads!

We carry His words, believing, but scratching our heads!

Lastly, there is another biblical dimension to the word ‘generation’. The generation of the upright and descendants can, of course, be quite prosaic and mean ‘your kids’, our physical progeny. And we mustn’t dodge that! But it also has a spiritual dimension. The third stage of spiritual growth à la 1 John is fatherhood, in the child, young man, fatherhood progression.

Fatherhood comes in an infinite array of avenues. It is not confined to physical children or the nuclear family. It comes about when whatever wealth inside a man is passed on to whosoever. (Of course, I’m using the term ‘fatherhood’ as a non-gender specific term…though us blokes need to hear this!)

St Paul wrote ‘though you may have ten thousand instructors in Christ, you do not have many fathers…I have begotten you through the gospel, imitate me’.

That’s what father’s say: ‘Do it like this. Imitate me’.

Lastly, none of these promised riches, or descendants, come about automatically simply because we are believers, or because we have trusted in Christ and His work on the cross for us, to forgive us, to take the punishment we deserved and so on. Wonderful though that is, it won’t move us an inch into the fulfilment of these promises.

Fulfilment is dependent on fearing the Lord and delighting in His commandments. The measure to which we humble ourselves by fearing the Lord and obeying his commands is the measure to which He can fulfil these amazingly encouraging promises in our experience.

Psalm 112 – if you dare!

My bank balance forbids me from indulging various personal dreams, none more so than purchasing my ideal property portfolio.

Property number one is a ramshackle house overlooking a beach, veranda, wooden floorboards, random furniture, large fireplace. Property number two is an apartment high above the road in Chelsea with a grand piano…modelled on one of my favourite films, 101 Dalmatians. Number three….and so on. There are five in all.

In my imagination, I live in all five; they are the places I call home. I actually do live in one of these five!

If the bible can be equated to all the houses on earth, Psalm 112 would be one of my ‘homes’ I often return to, and one that I discovered at a time of particular pressure.

I don’t know how many of these posts it will take to show you around my Ps112 house, but that’s the spirit in which these posts are written. Like all properties, each room requires different types of work or decoration…we’re all in the process of dealing with timetables of neglect and action.

Verse 1.

Praise the Lord! Blessed is the man who fears the Lord, who delights greatly in His commandments

You may well be thinking ‘This is one of your favourite Psalms, John?’ even if, out of politeness, British reserve, or puzzlement, you say nowt. For one thing, it’s countercultural. We invest so much of our inner philosophical resources striving for ‘freedom’, or ‘individual autonomy’: Brontë’s Jane Eyre famously exclaims, ‘I am an independent woman!’, Martin Luther King intoned ‘Free at last, free at last! Thank God Almighty we are free at last!’ In the banishment of slavery, and with gadgetry all but replacing household servants, the concept of living within the confines of another’s command has shrunk to smaller domains such as the military. In general, we shudder at the thought of putting ourselves under the command of anyone else so schooled are we in the virtues of freedom.

So verse 1 is a stumbling block. And an issue that we have to confront.

Whilst it is true that Paul in Galatians wrote ‘It is for freedom that Christ has set you free!’ and Jesus Himself said ‘…the truth will set you free…’, the freedom that the bible speaks about is about freedom from sin and freedom from man’s traditions…not freedom from God’s commands. As many have said before, Jesus is not just my Saviour, He is my Lord.

From the outset, as believers, we wear the clothes of a servant, and we know something of the fear of the Lord and yet we also find something else which perhaps we didn’t anticipate: a strange delight in His commands.

There are clues to this unlikely pairing of fear and delight. Look at the dogs you pass in the street or on a country lane. The ones who are happiest are the ones who have learnt obedience! The tale’s wagging, the love for the owner is in their eyes, and seemingly in contradiction to ‘obedience’, they are the dogs that spend most of the time off the leash!

I fear I still struggle against the leash at times. Battles rage.

Many commandments are written, of course, that is the Old Testament way of doing things, obedience to written legislation. In the New Covenant, the Spirit writes the law on our hearts, so we obey from the heart. It can be in relation to a written command e.g. ‘love your neighbour…’, but it can also be in real time, ‘go and speak to that person now!’

The more I obey written commands in the Law of Moses from the heart and the nudges of the Spirit, the more I find that the fear of the Lord and delight go hand in hand.

The key is realising the truth that Paul wrote in Galatians: ‘I have been crucified with Christ, it is no longer I who lives but Christ lives in me. The life I now live I live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave His life for me’ Gal 2v20

As Christ lives out His life through me, in my form, my soul and body are discipled, or apprenticed, and I learn His way of living in the fear and delight of His Father’s commands.

Jesus, of course, did this perfectly: He expressed this by saying, ‘I only do what I see My Father doing’. That constriction turns out to be perfect freedom.

So, I hope you enjoyed the first room on this tour. It’s delightful…but there’s work still to be done.

I Was There

I was there
To witness the first shove
And the wild, confident
Aggression of the man, Jacob
Who crossed the Ford
At Jabbok, weighed down
With fear and promises,

And I was there each hour
Of the moon-lit night-fight
I saw the lion-man’s eyes
Flash with unearthly colours
And music leak from his lips
In the struggle
Until dawn

I was there listening
To mighty Jacob gripping
The lion-man, yet finally
Disinterested in victory
Reduced to the whisper
Of one request
Bless me

The Lion-man extended a finger
Made of light and word
And touched Jacob’s strength
His hip joint dislocated
As a new name descended
From heaven and a new man
Walked the Earth

Hostage Return: Prisoner Release

‘He who kidnaps a man, whether he sells him or he is found in his possession, shall surely be put to death’ Exodus 21v 16

Is this post written with the release of the hostages taken by Hamas on Oct 7th 2023, from the Nova Music festival and the kibbutz, in mind? Yes…in part.

The other part is to explore the question of how we should distinguish between the OT Law written on tablets of stone and papyrus, and the NT, or new covenant, where the law is written on our hearts by the Holy Spirit.

I’m writing this on Sunday, 12th October 2025, listening to news reports during the day, hoping that the hostages, alive or dead, are handed back to Israel tomorrow.

If the Old Testament Law were still in place, it would not apply to Hamas; it only applied to Jews and foreigners living within the borders of Israel.

St Paul, writing to Christians, mostly non-Jews, in Galatia, wrote, ‘the law acted as our schoolteacher to bring us to Christ.’ In other words, the Law teaches us right from wrong, but it cannot change our hearts; the bible contends that this can only happen through faith in Christ.

Reading the verse from Exodus, we can discern right from wrong in terms of the outward action of kidnapping; however, the prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel foresaw a new covenant, the New Testament, where the Law is written on our hearts. This changes our perspective on the Law.

Those who put their faith in Christ are promised a spiritual heart transplant, after which the spiritual truth underlying the above verse begins will sink in. The Holy Spirit, in writing this verse on our hearts, begins to point out the awkward truth that we are all prone to taking others hostage! If we treat others as commodities, a means to further our plans, or when we manipulate circumstances so that others become pawns on our chessboard, are we not taking others hostage?

(That could, of course, include actual hostage taking, as has been the case with Hamas, but at the heart level, it’s far more subtle, invisible, and unobservable).

Under such conviction, the believer is forced back to the love of God, knowing that Christ took the punishment that we deserved by His death on the cross, to bring us forgiveness and reconciliation with God.

And it is forgiveness that brings us to the heart of the issue with Israel and the Palestinians.

A two-state solution alone will not resolve the problem of Israel-Palestine. Only forgiveness. That’s not to say a two-state solution isn’t a laudable aim or necessary political objective, but, in itself, it could exacerbate the mutual distrust that exists between Israelis and Palestinians as easily as playing a part in solving long-held grievances.

A two-state solution alone will not resolve the problem of Israel-Palestine

In the Parable of the Prodigal Son, the older brother could not find it in his heart to rejoice at his younger brother’s return and the favour, it seemed, their father gave to the returning prodigal. Despite the father’s best efforts to lift his oldest son’s mood, he failed. If we run the parable beyond its finishing point and revisit the family home the following morning, and the day after that, and the day after that, what do we imagine happened next? Perhaps there are two possible outcomes:

A. The antipathy remains, and the two brothers occupy two different zones, unable to restore their closeness. The bitterness of the older brother prevents any reconciliation. A ceasefire, maybe, a truce, but no peace.

B. Or, mutual forgiveness and mutual respect. Brothers, yes, but not one person. Mutual zones, maybe, but very porous borders, through whose pores, forgiveness, blessing, and peace flow – in both directions. It’s still a two-state solution, but not a standoff.

Today, the ceasefire is holding.

Tomorrow, I hope, along with the world, that the hostage and prisoner exchange goes smoothly and with respect.

The Day after? Phase 2. Far harder. Our prayers ascend to Almighty God.

For Zion’s Sake I will not keep silent – Isaiah 62v1

Whilst the world holds its breath to see if the Israel-Gaza ceasefire will evolve into a lasting peace, we have some space to explore our own hearts rather than our minds. What is lurking there…the good and the not so good, the fears, and the hopes and longings?

The second anniversary of the appalling premeditated attacks carried out by Hamas against unarmed young civilians at the Nova music festival and against those living in the Kibbutz Be’eri was Tuesday of this week, October 7th.

On Tuesday, I travelled to Exeter to attend a lecture at the University, with Keir Starmer’s appeal to pro-Palestinian protestors to desist from protesting on the anniversary as a mark of respect, in the background and on my mind.

What did I find?

Two things of note.

1. No Palestinian flags or protests on campus – that I saw or heard

2. In the Forum, a large open space, containing the library, Sainsbury’s, two coffee shops, and a large atrium area in which various groups set out their stalls, sat two students manning a stall advertising the Jewish society; a young man and a young woman, sitting peacefully and quietly. On their stall, they had photos of the remaining hostages, candles to light, and small yellow ribbons to wear to indicate support.

I lit a candle and fumbled with the pin before managing to wear the yellow ribbon.

I was impressed with the calmness of the two students and the atmosphere of ‘normalness’, if that’s a word, that seemed to pervade the Forum; a remarkable Pacific oasis. I was, unconsciously perhaps, steeling myself en route to Exeter, to wade through vehement, loud, well-organised protestors, waving Palestinian flags and denouncing Israel, Netanyahu, and so on.

I find myself saying, as the years pile up, ‘nothing surprises me anymore’…but the reality was a pleasant surprise: two brave students, manning a stall, whether they would be the target of antisemitic protest, hatred, or something far worse, or support.

Isaiah, also, was brave. He spoke up. He protested. Often against his own government or rulers, the kings and priests of his day. And against Israel’s enemies. The rest of his quote is worth examining.

‘For Zion’s sake, I will not be silent
And for Jerusalem’s sake, I will not rest
Until her righteousness goes forth as a burning torch’ Is 62v1
What is Zion’s sake? What is Jerusalem’s sake?

One of the strengths that democracies espouse is upholding free speech. Whilst I have been staggered at what has been permitted to be stated on banners and in chants during the pro-Palestinian marches – well beyond the bounds of free speech – the sheer fact that such freedoms exist and society doesn’t resort to rioting and civil war is testimony to the strength of our democratic society…at least for the time being.

The final test of the righteousness of a nation embroiled in a war, however, is determined by how it acts after the war

Such freedoms exist in Israel as well. But not in Hamas-controlled Gaza. Israel is a society driven to extremes by this latest onslaught unleashed by Hamas from Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Houthis in Yemen. Many Israelis, including some of the families of hostages, are bitterly opposed to the conduct of the war in Gaza. Others support the dual aims of the war – the return of the hostages and the destruction of Hamas – and the military option taken by Netanyahu’s government.

The final test of the righteousness of a nation embroiled in a war, however, is determined by how it acts after the war.

I think it would be true to say that most British, French, Norwegian, and Polish citizens and other European and non-European allies after WW2 were able to differentiate between Nazi Germany and the general German population. The rebuilding of Germany into a free, democratic state happened remarkably quickly, with good relations restored between, say, Britain and Germany occurring in double quick time.

Much will be expected of Israel in the recovery from the shock of Hamas’s attack and promise to repeat such attacks, and the chant heard in Western countries, ‘Free Palestine from the River to the Sea’ – a chilling reminder of the combined jihadist and Marxist aim to remove Israel from the map…a publicly declared genocidal aim. And we have permitted this in the name of free speech!

Can Israel delineate between Hamas and the general population in post-war Gaza?

The world holds its breath. I hold mine. Righteousness is on the line.

Will Gazans denounce Hamas in the same way that Germany, largely, has distanced itself from Nazi ideology and created a state that opposes dictatorship and fascism, whether the fascism of the left or the right?

It’s no wonder that Jesus taught us :

‘Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, they shall be filled’

The world holds its breath. I hold mine. Righteousness is on the line.

I want to see a Gaza and West Bank that seeks to live cooperatively and at peace with Israel, to seek Israel’s security and blessing. I want to see an Israel whose righteousness shines like a burning torch and returns the blessing to Gaza and the West Bank, helping to rebuild a Gaza physically shattered after two years of war.

I worry that the deep sense of injustice that fuels Palestinian antipathy against Israel – and Israel’s largely western supporters - will again descend into the kind of inhumane action taken on October 7th 2023, and that terror attacks will continue against Israel and the West.

I worry that the far-right. ultra-orthodox, ultra-nationalist Jews in Israel will continue to push into the West Bank, claiming it is Judea and Samaria, and seek to displace their neighbours either directly or indirectly.

I worry that Netanyahu will continue along the path to place the government above the Supreme Court in Israel and undo one of the vital lynchpins of any free society to hold its government to account.

I worry that the new international administration in Gaza will prove to be as stable as a paper boat in my morning coffee, will collapse and ruin any prospects of a lasting peace, and, in the end, sow the seeds for a resumption of war.

I have my hopes and my fears, but, to conclude, I’m with Isaiah

But I also have my prayers before Almighty God.

And they are neatly summed up by Isaiah. In fact, I would recommend reading Isaiah chapters 61 and 62 in the light of the delicate political situation – this pause – that we find ourselves in.