The Kingdom of Heaven

I'm not quite sure that I believe in heaven. That is a totally ludicrous statement for a Christian to make and I know it. But it is true quite a lot of the time. The reality of heaven seems weird and detached and I find it hard for the motivation of a future reward, the future grace that Peter talks about ("Therefore, with minds that are alert and fully sober, set your hope on the grace to be brought to you when Jesus Christ is revealed at his coming." 1 Pet 1:13), to be the reason for living today. I find it difficult to explain why that is. I think because I squirm at the idea of following Jesus being about rewards. Another weird statement. I don't like to think that I am only living the way I live today for the not yet rather than for the now. I find it hard to get excited about an eternity with God. I find it hard to summon up joy at the prospect of 24/7 worship. I wonder if I am alone in that?


And yet, I know that my doubts about heaven, my nervousness (almost) about what it will be like and whether it's there at all come from my misunderstanding, and not God's bad planning. In my head - though not yet my heart - I know that heaven will be a wonderful and beautiful thing; that we will truely be able to appreciate the glory and awesomeness of God without being held back by our sin and our unbelief. That the deepest longing of the human soul is simply to hang out with God and be in his presence. I know this because I've tasted it. I know this because I hunger for a greater wanting of God. (A confusing sentence: put more simply, I want to want) I want him, but only in part. But that part is enough to know that I want him more. You cannot be hungry for something you have never tasted. I have tasted a morsel and I know the full reality would blow my mind. I just can't quite seem to translate that into my view of heaven. I can't get my head (and my heart) around the longing and aching and waiting for heaven that the bible speaks of. 


I raised this with a friend yesterday and - as well as being quite relieved that she felt similarly! - was reminded of a question I have had scribbled in my bible for the past few weeks. On a scrap of paper, in green biro, I have simply written The Kingdom of Heaven? I have been meaning to think and blog about the answer to that question for weeks. Not that it's even a question really. It's an idea. An idea that's too vast to really digest or think about. I have thought about it though and it was only yesterday that my thoughts clarified themselves. My friend suggested that - although it might be difficult to get excited about being with God because, in the brokenness of our sin, we struggle so much to really taste and see what that is like - it is easy to get excited about the coming of a kingdom. It is easy to get excited about a broken world made right again, about no more mourning or death or tears, about a place where joy and gladness will overtake us and sorrow and sighing will flee away (Isaiah 35). And a kingdom can't really be a kingdom, the kingdom cannot come, unless there is a king to rule it and people to live in it under the rule of that good and perfect king and (incredibly) we get to be those people, the people living out what it is to be in the kingdom. But (and this replaces my unease about heaven with a profound surge of joy for the present) we get to live out that reality now. And (there's more) it is our living out of that reality that brings heaven (the place where that reality is in its realest, fullest form) to earth. We are the children of glory, born into a new inheritance through the death and resurrection of Christ, who all of creation is groaning for; we get to participate in the act of making new, of redeeming. We are co-labourers in recreation. 

As Jo and I talked and prayed together, I got a picture of a little kid whose toy is snatched and broken by someone else. He takes it to his father but, rather than repair it and simply hand it back, the dad invites the son to work alongside him to put the toy back together again. I think the Kingdom of Heaven looks a little like this: we have been bashed about and bruised by our own sin, the sins of others, and the pain of living in a sinful world and God wants to come alongside us not only that we might be fixed but that we might be those who fix others. Perhaps that is what is meant when Jesus says that the Kingdom of Heaven is like a mustard seed: a tiny seed of faith is dropped into our souls that we might believe and as we grow in our maturity alongside a community of others doing the same we - together as believers, as the church, as his body - become this huge safe space, this refuge, in which all the birds can find safety.

In the bible the Kingdom of Heaven in compared to a myriad of seemingly contradictory things: It is a man sowing seed; a mustard seed; hidden treasure in a field; a pearl of great price worth selling everything else for; a king who wishes to settle account with his servants, who demonstrates supreme mercy and punishes the failure to show mercy in return; a man hiring labourers for his vineyard who flips worldy justice on its head by paying each one the same regardless of the hour they started work; a king who throws a wedding banquet for his son; ten virgins with lamps…

Scripture is at once incredibly specific and frustratingly vague about this kingdom. When Jesus first starts his ministry he announces that “the kingdom of heaven has come near” (Matthew 4:17). This same kingdom is proclaimed by the apostles in Acts time and time again as they call for people to repent and believe in the resurrection of Christ. The kingdom of heaven cannot be entered unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, and yet you must be willing to receive it as a gift, like a child. It is to be sought above all else and before all else. It is nearly impossible for the rich to enter it, and yet prostitutes, sinners and tax collectors are getting in before the religious. Some are near the kingdom; some are preventing others from entering. Some shut the door of the kingdom in the face of others whilst they themselves miss the opportunity to enter in. The kingdom is only for the totally pure and righteous; it is for the meek and the poor; it is worth losing eye and limb to get inside it. The kingdom is what Joseph of Arimathea is looking for before he asks for Jesus’ body to be taken down from the cross. The kingdom cannot be entered by flesh and blood, not by what is perishable but only by what is imperishable. To enter the kingdom you cannot look back nor can you stop to bury the dead. Your way is blocked unless you are born again of water and of spirit.  It isn’t a matter of eating and drinking; it is a matter of righteousness, peace and joy in the spirit. It isn’t about talking; it’s about power. It is entered by those who are called by God to enter in to it. It is a kingdom that endures forever. It cannot be shaken.

And yet, amongst all this, it is hard to see what the Kingdom actually is. Perhaps because it isn't a thing as of such; it is the living out of life under the King. All of the comparisons Jesus makes are a way of trying to explain what this King is like (he loves mercy and punishes the unmerciful (Matt 18:21-25); he welcomes the downcast and extends an open invitation to all who will accept it (Matt 22:1-14); he refuses to differentiate between the different subjects of his kingdom regardless of when they first met him as king and started to obey him (Matt 20:1-16)) and what it is to live underneath his Kingship. That is the very reason that Israel were chosen in the first place: not because they were greater than other nations or had anything particularly good going for them (Deut 7:7), but so that God might use them as a demonstration to the other nations of what it looked like to be his subjects:

"See, I have taught you decrees and laws as the LORD my God commanded me, so that you may follow them in the land you are entering to take possession of it. Observe them carefully, for this will show your wisdom and understanding to the nations, who will hear about all these decrees and say, “Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.” What other nation is so great as to have their gods near them the way the LORD our God is near us whenever we pray to him? And what other nation is so great as to have such righteous decrees and laws as this body of laws I am setting before you today?" Deuteronomy 4:5-8

Israel were chosen to be a blessing to the nations: 

“I will make you into a great nation,

and I will bless you.

I will make your name great,

and you will be a blessing.

I will bless those who bless you,

and whoever curses you I will curse;

And all peoples of the earth

will be blessed through you.” (Gen 12:2-4)

The first subjects of the kingdom that we gentiles have only recently been permitted entrance into were given the incredible promise that it is through them that the entire world would be blessed. I don't pretend to understand how God is working out that plan (Romans 11 boggles my mind) but He makes it pretty clear that we are only receiving a blessing because Israel failed to be obedient; we are being blessed through Israel now as the dogs snaffling the scraps under a banquet that both was and wasn't intended for us (Matt 15:17): "Rather, because of their transgression, salvation has come to the Gentiles to make Israel envious. But if their transgression means riches for the world, and their loss means riches for the Gentiles, how much greater riches will their full inclusion bring!" (Romans 11:11-12) It is not the end of the story however: greater blessing is yet to come through the restoration of Israel to the Kingdom. All Israel will be saved (!) (Rom 11:26) Like Paul I am in awe and bafflement at this statement: "Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out!" (Rom 11:33) I do not pretend to be able to understand it.

This seems to have come very far from my original train of thought. I guess I wanted to return to the notion of blessing: that God's plan was always to use his people to bless others. Through Jesus Christ that blessing potential is now infinitely greater: we have become ministers of reconciliation called to bless and transform the world around us. This feels like deja vu as I know I have written similar things before but this, for me, is the most unbelievable and beautiful and exciting thing about the kingdom: it is all about the now, the imminence of heaven breaking into earth, being dragged in by those who will dare to live in the way of the king, those who dare to live lives that beg the question: Who the heck are you worshipping and how can I meet him? What is it that you have and why do I feel like I want it to? Who dare to lives lives of such extravagant hope that people cannot help but ask them about where it comes from ("Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have" 1 Peter 3:15)

I write with conviction and yet I know that I fail to live up to my own exhortation to hope. I fail to be hopeful. And this, perhaps, is why we need to look forward to heaven. I would like to be full of such a confident hope in God's promises for my eternity that it influences every second of how I live now, that I would become a continual outpouring of "the faith and love that spring from the hope stored up for [me] in heaven" (Col 1:5) on earth. What is the Kingdom of Heaven like? The Kingdom of Heaven is like someone who knows that they will one day be absolutely and totally satisfied by being in the goodness and glory of God and so throws away everything now - themselves, their time, their status, their ambition, their pride, their desire to be perceived as worthy in the world's eyes - that they might gain everything then. And they do it that the world might see, and be amazed by the actions of this subject of the kingdom, and so, one day, long also to meet with their King.

“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.

   “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. ⁴⁶ When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it. (Matt 13:44-45)

Come on, my soul

It has been a difficult couple of weeks, and, increasingly, I am tempted to stay in bed rather than face the day. I do not mean that in a particularly melodramatic way; life just seems very hard at the moment and days are grinding on rather than being joyfilled. This is incredibly frustrating for someone who is used to having energy and passion - to feel suddenly unsure and faltering rather than bouncing through the day at such a speed that the next one seems to start without me really noticing. And yet, and yet, I am convicted of my own indulgent self-pity. A good friend of mine said that, after she moved to Zambia, this was something she struggled with a lot: the temptation to wallow because somehow, bizarrely, it is actually quite enjoyable to feel sorry for yourself. It is actually quite nice to be sad and tell God he's a meanie and that lament that everything is rubbish and hard and difficult and and and. That is not to say that things sometimes aren't rubbish and hard and difficult. They are. I realise, however, that, like my friend, more often than not, my response to adversity is self-pity. I love to wallow. And I think this love of wallowing is rather sinful. I don't like to admit that, of course, because it means that I've got to do something to sort it out instead of bemoaning that God is not doing His bit and sorting it out for me. Again, I am not saying that I can magic myself happy, or that I can suddenly decide to be joyful and voila joyful I shall be. It doesn't work like that. Humans being are pretty emotionally complex and although feelings can't always be trusted they do have an uncanny ability to completely incapacitate us - perhaps for the very reason that they can't be trusted. I am a victim of my own feelings and the way they lure me into self pity, but what is to be done about it?

Another good friend and I spend a vast amount of time discussing our own ridiculousness - namely in relation to our other halves and the quickness with which we become frustrated at them - and to what extent we are to blame, or perhaps culcable, for our thoughts and feelings. She suggested that there are three stages in the awareness of and action against sin (self-pity just being one example of the kind of sin we're talking about; others could include deliberately acting in a way that you know is going to start an argument/ cause pain to someone (again, probably someone close to you like a husband or a friend) overreacting unnecessarily, sulking etc). The first is unconscious and incompetent: you don't know that what you're doing is sinful and therefore you can't do anything about it. The second is conscious and incompetent: you have realised that deliberately getting attention by stropping isn't really the best way to deal with a situation but you still haven't learn to deal with it. This is the stage that I feel that I'm at with most things, including self pity: I realise that it is selfish and silly to wallow deeper and deeper into my own introversion and yet I can't quite stop doing it even though I know that I really should. This is particularly pertinent at that mid point in an argument where I really know that I need to stop and yet, rather than stopping, I keep going, enjoying, relishing even, the opportunity to gain something - although, in hindsight I am never entirely sure what I was trying to gain in the first place! The third stage is conscious and competent: you know when you're doing something sinful (or about to) and you stop doing it. I am definitely not at this stage yet for ninety percent of the things in my life, but I would like to be better. I would like to recognise when I am tempted to stay in bed and enjoy my own bad temper and, instead, do something different. To really want to start an argument just for the sake of being right or having something to fight about and not do it. To I feel on the cusp of shouting because I'm in a foul and irritable mood and restrain myself.But - and here's the key - I would like to do that without feeling like I'm having a constant coversation with my own thoughts and at absolute breaking point because all I want is to give in and have a self-indulgent stress.

I am not sure that I have an solution. But, perhaps, it is more about replacement rather than restraint. The pattern of the psalms is not only a plea for God to protect us from our sinful nature and subdue it (e.g. Psalm 19: "But who can discern their own errors? Forgive my hidden faults. Keep your servant also from willful sins; may they not rule over me. Then I will be blameless, innocent of great transgression" ) but also an active striving to praise and rejoice even when that seems a totally ludicrous thing to be doing. It is difficult to type this without making it seem glib - like some kind of miracle plaster cast to be smothered over our sadness and struggle and painted garish luminous colours - but I do think that we are called to strive with our own souls - as the psalmists do - and (as it were) get them out of bed: Ephesians 5:14 " “Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you." Practically, I am not totally sure what this means. It means we need to know scripture and use it as a weapon. It means we need to learn to talk to ourselves (Mike Reeves does an excellent exegesis of Psalm 42 on this theme, which can be found here. John Piper's is also helpful:) and that we need to stop reading  "Come, let us sing for joy to the LORD; let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation. Let us come before him with thanksgiving and extol him with music and song" (Psalm 95:1-2) as a joyful, happy clappy invitation to those who quite fancy hanging out in church together and singing some nice acoustic guitar songs (I mean no offence; I love nice acoustic guitar songs). It is much more than mere invitation; it is command. "Come on, soul! Get on with it. Yes, you don't feel like it; yes, you're tired and weary and you don't want to talk to God right now but get on and do it." 

Lloyd-Jones puts it much better:  

"Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself? Take those thoughts that come to you the moment you wake up in the morning. You have not originated them but they are talking to you, they bring back the problems of yesterday, etc. Somebody is talking. Who is talking to you? Your self is talking to you. Now this man’s treatment [in Psalm 42] was this: instead of allowing this self to talk to him, he starts talking to himself. “Why art thou cast down, O my soul?” he asks. His soul had been depressing him, crushing him. So he stands up and says,: “Self, listen for moment, I will speak to you.”  

I haven't mastered the art of talking to myself, but I think I am becoming better at detecting when my self, and my sinful nature, is saying things that aren't true or helpful. (Conscious but not yet competent). Prayer helps, even if, for me anyway, that prayer is simply: Come on, Soul. Praise the LORD! And when you can't pray, then being with people who can helps, even if you resent their silly, holy prayers even as they pray them. Last week I managed to use the first tactic on Tuesday: I got up, went for a run and sang this song on repeat: "Come on (my soul)" Rend Collective Experiment. I didn't manage to do that on Thursday so I went to church instead for the early morning prayer meeting and subsequently became a snivelling heap in front of the whole staff team. Nice. But helpful. I didn't want to pray and I was tired of shouting at my own soul; actually, I wasn't even whispering, let alone shouting. I couldn't be bothered to say anything to myself, so God used brothers and sisters to do it for me. 

" Is anyone among you in trouble? Let them pray. Is anyone happy? Let them sing songs of praise. Is anyone among you sick? Let them call the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise them up. If they have sinned, they will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective." (James 5:13-16)

I am not sure that self-pity technically counts as a sickness but being prayed for certainly felt like a kind of medicine. I am still low emotionally and feeling drained but (perhaps) I have (a little) new resolution: Come on, soul! Stop wallowing; start praising.

"Why, my soul, are you downcast?
   Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
   for I will yet praise him,
   my Savior and my God." (Psam 42:5)

A living hope

Last Thursday I met with a friend to talk about evangelism. Connie is a wonderful human being. She is full of life and enthusiasm and passion; she is the only person I know who is able to be excited about absolutely everything all the time in a totally genuine way. And she loves to tell people about Jesus. Hearing Connie talk about giving away the word of life is a beautiful and humbling experience. Whereas I often fear saying the wrong thing at the wrong time and messing up opportunities, Connie has no qualms about looking foolish for the gospel. The cross itself is utter foolishness and we are called to join in with it's folly. ("For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength." 1 Corinthians 1:25) For Connie, evangelism is exciting. It is sharing the single most important truth and praying that God will use our broken words and stumbling sentences to create something out of nothing. ("My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power." 1 Corinthians 2:4). As I heard her speak, I wondered about why this is not always the case for me. Why the gospel seems dry and embarrassing and unsuited to the situation when I sometimes try and figure out how to stuff it into a conversation. I think perhaps the reason is that the gospel that I know is too small. Connie asked me if I actually knew the gospel. My immediate reaction was to be offended: yes, I know the gospel. Of course I do. And yet, and yet, there is a sense in which the gospel is so much bigger and more mysterious and wonderful than what I know and the way in which I try to encapsulate it in a series of truth statements. 

At the start of 1 Peter, Peter's praise is that the Father, through the Son, has "given us new birth into a living hope." (1:3) James speaks of it in similar language when he explains the life giving effect of the word: "He chose to give us birth through the word of truth...the word planted in you, which can save you." (1:18-21) Through the word of God (both The Word (John 1:1) and God's written word in scripture) we are saved and given hope. These are both pretty massive notions: salvation and hope. And I think often, perhaps, the struggle to evangelise becomes about the former (saved from hell and God's wrath) rather than the latter: a hope that is alive and breathing and beautifully imminent. We are not saved simply for heaven later as an "end result" (1 Peter 1:9) but given a newness and a freedom in the present, which is to be lived out now. In fact, when Peter uses the term "end result" in verse 9 he is talking about the present, about pulling the future (our ultimate salvation when Christ returns) into the now that we might experience ahead of time something of salvation now. We are redeemed (the past tense achieved by Christ's saving work on the cross), we are not yet redeemed (we will not be fully perfect until he comes again), and yet we are being redeemed now. Not only that, but more than that: we are being redeemers called to be involved in God's redemptive work: "We, as the people of God, are caught up in God's redemptive purpose for creation, for society, for humanity and for individuals", Godwin, "The Grace Outpouring."


In Romans, Paul speaks of how all of creation is waiting and groaning and longing for the children of God (that's us!) to be revealed; we are to be responsible for the liberation of our broken world as it is "brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God" (8:21). This is not often (or at least not often by me) told as part of the good news: do you want to be part of a redeeming family who will release this planet from bondage and see the values and beauty of God's kingdom come now not simply in heaven? Do you want to be involved in the most wonderful and meaningful and purposeful partnership that will see the reality of heaven come close to earth and change people's lives and heal their wounds? That is good news. I would be excited about giving that away, giving away an invitation to have hope and to become it to other people.

I once heard someone preach on Isaiah 55 and expand the idea of God's invitation to humanity:

"Come, all you who are thirsty,

come to the waters;

and you who have no money,

come, buy and eat!

Come, buy wine and milk

without money and without cost.

Why spend money on what is not bread,

and your labour on what does not satisfy?

Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good,

and you will delight in the richest of fare.

Give ear and come to me;

listen that you may live." (verses 1-3)

In part, this is an invitation to be saved and to live rather than pay the wages of sin, which is death. (Roman 6:23). But, it is more. The gospel, the good news, is not simply a rescue mission, a message of God's wrath and our need to escape it, but also an invitation to become part of something entirely different from the way we live at the moment. It is an invitation to be satisfied by a fuller life (John 10:10). Again, this is good news. I can muster up - well, don't even need to muster up really - much more excitment about telling this to someone. About inviting a teenager who is failing at school, and at risk of exclusion, and hating home into an entirely different way of living. Instead of saying that he is a sinner and a mess and needs to repent to sort his life out. This is, of course, true, but is it gospel? Is it good news? It doesn't sound very much like it to someone who is used to rebuke and condemnation and rejection from school and family and society already. Godwin puts this beautifully in "The Grace Outpouring":

"How can we tell the story of salvation to those we meet? What is the good news of salvation for a single mum trying to bring up a couple of unruly kids? She can't manage them; she can barely afford to clothe them properly, let alone feed them well. he feels alone in her situation, even as her children become abusive towards her. Perhaps she turns to drink to relieve the pressure. And then the financial woes only get worse.
     To walk up to this woman and ay to her, 'I've got good news for you: you're lost in sin you're going to die and go to hell, but there's a saviour for you,' might be accurate, but in that moment these words are no gospel, good news at all.
     The good news for her, the gospel, is that the God of hope loves her. The God of hope offers to come now and he can support her, and his people can support her too. She may be facing a tunnel of darkness and hopelessness, but the God of hope can come into her life now and fill her with His hope, and can also transform her children. He's a God who gives, he's a God who longs to be her supplier. We can call on him together and he'll bring to release the resources to enable her family to have sufficient for the future. This is the gospel; this is the good news for her." 

last week, I received a beautiful opportunity to speak good news into someone's life - a young girl from one of our youth groups. She has struggled with bullying and school and friendship circles for the past few months and had broken down to tears at a Friday club I help at. I took her to one side and listened to what was going on, and then asked her if she believed in God and if she thought He was interested in her. She wasn't sure but I told her about the God I know: a God who loves her and longs to spend time with her and wants to help her sort out all the rubbish and confusion and be the person she was made to be. I didn't talk to her about sin. I wanted her to see grace and mercy first. She needs to know about it but, in a way, she already does: she knows that she has done bad things, and said horrible things and getting caught up in a tangle of gossiping and bullying is the result of that. The good news for her is that God gets it and he still loves her. He will bring his conviction of her own sin at the right time; he will provide an opportunity for someone else to help her understand it. That is my ongoing prayer for her - that she would be convicted of her sin and come to come Jesus as Saviour - but my immediate prayer for her on Friday was simply that she would know that God wanted to listen to her and show her a new way of doing things, a new way that school could be.

I don't quite know what the good news looks like for the different people in my life right now but I am struck by Jesus' encounter with the woman caught in adultery. (John 8:1-11) For the woman, the good news, the beautiful and liberating gospel, was that she was not condemned by Christ. He was not going to join in with the voices and accusation and hatred and punishment of the others; he was going to offer mercy instead. And it was the encounter with mercy that gave the opportunity for Jesus to say: leave your life of sin, stop doing what you've been doing and do something different. The woman already had a conviction that her life was broken. She didn't need more condemnation to tell her so. She needed to know that there was an alternative to her current lifestyle; she needed to be invited to join the kingdom.

Helplessness

Why are you trying to swim across when I am ready
to part the waters for you?

After three years teaching in Croydon, I thought God had finished teaching me about his strength and my weakness. I remember clearly two words that I received at the time, both questions from God directed towards his wayward and stubborn daughter. The first: Why do you keep running into a brick wall? And the second: Why are you trying to swim across when I am ready to part the waters for you? The second was accompanied by a picture of a fast flowing and dangerous river and a little girl sitting on the bank crying because she kept trying to brave the current and swim across and then had to turn back again. Time and time again working with young people in Croydon I ran head first into brick walls and flung myself into treacherous currents; I was desperate to make a difference and to love those I was trying to teach but I kept trying to do it on my own: I kept trying to live by sheer force of will rather than inviting God to teach me how to do it. Eventually, I learned to tattoo Zechariah 4:6 on my hand in biro in the morning as a poignant reminder that this was not about me; it was all about Him. "Not my might nor by power, but by my Spirit." Similarly, psalm 127 became somewhat of a mantra: " Unless the LORD builds the house, the builders labor in vain. Unless the LORD watches over the city, the guards stand watch in vain. In vain you rise early and stay up late." 


And so I thought I had learnt my lesson about my inability and God's endlessly willing capability. Apparently not. I think it is a lesson that we keep learning and that we need to teach ourselves every day because the temptation to make it about us is irresistible. The temptation to put our structure, our agenda, our motives down on top of God's is always there, always needs to be resisted. The relentless structure of teaching reinforces independence: it is easy to stop putting God first, and reminding ourselves that He is the very reason we are doing anything, when there are a myriad of other things to do and when, ultimately, your time is dictated by the remits of your job - the things you have to do each day. I always knew, in some sense, what I was supposed to be doing because there were deadlines and marking and teachery things to be done. 


It is not like that now. Now I don't have job or a structure and suddenly I have no idea what it is I'm supposed to be doing. There is the general, vague vision: I am living here to try and be Jesus and bless and serve this community. But the specifics of that vision are decidedly hazy. And the temptation to plaster over the haze with things that I think I should be doing is overwhelming. Rather than asking God what he would have me do and wait patiently for the answer.


On Saturday, I returned back to our flat after four days housesitting and broke into tears. This is not an unusual experience for me (I am somewhat emotionally inconstant for any number of reasons - some definable, some not). I had just been watching some clips about the work of Eden (http://eden-network.org/) and was feeling jealous and frustrated and useless; longing to make a difference, to look like Jesus, to connect with young people and love them and support them and reinforce their dreams and aspirations but having not the foggyist clue about how to do any of it. I always find it quite difficult not to be jealous of all the other amazing and beautiful things happening around the country (which is, I know, stupid and selfish and sinful and definitely an easy place for the devil to grab a comfortable foothold) and reading about Eden made me simultaneously want to run to Manchester, forget about Barnwell entirely, and join in, and ignore all of it and go and sit in some hole somewhere. Neither of which seemed particularly Godly options. And so, instead, begrudgingly, in the small angry voice inside my head, I prayed: Alright, God, I get it: I am helpless. Helpless. I confess it. I don't know what I am doing and I am helpless unless you do something. 


I am grateful for the honestly of Roy Godwin in his book "The Grace Outpouring" for sharing a similar prayer which he prayed and for writing down God's response: "It's because you come here in weakness and cannot minister of move out of your usual experience that I want you here. You have nothing to give, so you have to be abandoned to me. And the fact that your eyes are opened so that you're able to discern what's going on spiritually means that you can see what the evil one is doing and you can deal with it. But you don't know how to, so again, you have no experience with this particular area and you have to come back to me. It's your helplessness I want." 


There was something of an echo of that last sentence hammering in my head as I sniveled on the sofa and grumpily confessed to God that I had no clue what I was doing. Was it possible that a sniveling, desperate prayer might be just what He wanted? That a confession of weakness and inability was needed for Him to start working, lifting up my attempt at humility instead of having to batter against my pride. The answer seemed to be a yes because no sooner had I gone to the toilet, than there was a knock at the door and three of the teenagers we have been connecting with turned up on our doorstep. There aren't many places where you are as helpless as sitting on the loo and I took it as a sure sign that God had heard my prayer and this was his answer: I know you're helpless. You can't change this estate. You can't make young people come to you to hear about me. But I can. Look. 


Three days after my helplessness confession and we have been amazed by what God has done: several teenagers have come to hang out with us and drink hot chocolate, we've seen more teenagers than ever before wanting to engage with our weekly football on a Sunday and, last night, at Girls' Group, God doubled our numbers (two to four, but I'm still counting it as doubled!) and then, miraculously, provided enough food for everyone to eat even thought I knew I hadn't made enough spag bol to go around. 


I still haven't learnt my lesson. I am going to need to keep reminding myself that it is my helplessness and my utter dependance that God is after; not my scheming and determination to get things done in my own way as soon as possible. The idea of being abandoned to God is, however, becoming a lot more tempting. If being abandoned to God means that I get to be involved in what He is wanting to do instead of trying to squish Him into what I have decided to do, then that's definitely preferable. It's liberating. It's beautiful. And, looking back over the past weekend, it is infinitely more fruitful than anything that I could concoct on my own. 

Why is reading important?

If you type this question into google, this is the website that first comes up: http://www.learn-to-read-prince-george.com/why-is-reading-important.html

I'm not sure it's a very good website and most of the reasons cited are somewhat bland and predictable. It is interesting, however, that, according to someone the website quotes, the top reason given for wanting to be able to read is so that people are able to read the bible. Quite an encouraging statistic. But, do we need to be able to read to access the bible? I have been pondering this for some time. I used to help my housemate run a bible study in our house for older teenagers. It was fairly academic, exegetical stuff focused on Ephesians (if you want dense theology there's probably no better place to start and, in hindsight, if you're trying to work with teenagers there is possible no worse one - predestination does rear it's frightful head in the verse few verses after all...) but the girls responding to it really well because they were fairly academic themselves: sixth formers aiming for As and Bs who already knew lots about church and were quite good at finding the right "answers" and dutifully pointing out the verses my housemate and I hinted at. That is not to say that the study wasn't valuable; it was. I loved it and I think the others did too. The bible was exciting and fresh because it was being looked at anew and, gradually, as the weeks went by we really did get to know more about God and explore his character and his purposes for us. 

However, one week, two slightly younger, less confident girls came and I suddenly realised how hard the bible is as a book. It's massive for a start. Longer than the longest Harry Potter by a considerable stretch. Possibly longer even than Richardson's Clarissa, which only the bravest of Literature students have ever dared to take out of the English faculty let along begin to read. (All credit to my beautiful friend Jess at this point who is, I think, the only person I know to accomplish the mammoth task of finishing said book). And it's full of ridiculously difficult obscure words. I am still somewhat scarred by blurring the distinction between a paralytic and paraletic when reading out loud in church at the tender age of 15, and I dread to think of the effects that attempting the foreboding ranks of Jesus's genealogy might have on a small child.


So the bible is a difficult book. Do we need to be able to read to access it? There is part of me - the English Teacher - which cries out yes yes yes. Because reading is beautiful, and the bible is poetic and it's a story and you have to read to be immersed in a story...But do you? Hamish and I discussed this last night - the necessity of reading - and, after covering the bases of being able to read the instructions on a bottle of medicine and applying for a job, we reached an uncomfortable hiatus, which I was reluctant to fill with such an answer as reading is important because you need to get your English GCSE. (Shamefully, it is an answer that I have resorted to many times before with difficult year 11 boys sitting with their heads flopped on a desk). But do you? Do you need an English GCSE? Do you need a job? Do you need to able able to read to partake in society? These sound like utterly ludicrous questions even as I type them because I can hear myself going yes, of course you do. Idiot. But there is part of me that is uncomfortable with it. Literacy is fundamental to being able to function in modern society. (Or at least the society that we have created in 21st Century Britain) That seems to be true. I am heart broken by the comments on our 'Wall of Joy' (please come and sign it sometime; it hangs on the back of our living door and is covered in the scribbles of adults and children as well as an advertisement warning that 'Nicola stinks') which are spelt in ways that do not resemble any word in the English language, or that have backwards 'N's (it seems to be a trend on our estate) all over them. But is that simply the heartbreak of an English teacher with a penchant for grammar? (Interestingly, I just had to look up the word 'penchant' to check it was the one I wanted and was, in my utterly geeky way, overjoyed by the knowledge that it was!) Or a more meaningful kind of heartbreak that desperately believes in education and aspiration and allowing young people to have the highest chances of accessing and enjoying the world around them, knowing - or at least thinking fairly strongly - that reading is integral to that access and enjoyment?


I am so grateful to my first year of university because it was the year in which I fell in love with the bible, but it was not the year in which I fell in love with reading. That love affair was nearly two decades old already, spanning back to the age of torches hidden under duvets in the disillusioned 8 year old belief that my mother wouldn't suspect that I was still engrossed in The Babysitters Club at 2am. Part of why I fell in love with the bible was because - simply - it was a book. I like books. But what if you don't. What is the solution? How are we to wrestle with God's word and get to know him and meditate on the beauty of his law (psalm 119:15-16) if we cannot read what it says? 


The bible is story. And story is an oral tradition not, at least not originally, a written one. I have done no research whatsoever on this and am conscious of my pig ignorance of oral tradition and lack of knowledge about how we moved from speaking to writing but Jesus was a storyteller, not a writer. Yes, he was a student, a Rabbi, one who knew the Torah and understood the scriptures in a way unparalleled, but the way in which he chose to communicate with those around him was through parable. Not always. He did open up the Scriptures and explain God's word to the crowds in the synagogues but, presumably, many (most?) of those that he was speaking to were uneducated and illiterate (Acts 4:13 Peter and John, after all, are "unschooled, ordinary men.") Are we called simply to speak the stories of the bible, then, to those who struggle to understand them because of their poor literacy? Or do we have an obligation to improve literacy in order that they might access the wonder of God's word individually? In order that young people might have lives lived to the full (John 10:10) in this society of our making which assumes a high level of literacy and shoves back to the bottom those who do not have it? How do you teach someone who hates reading to love the bible?


I ask these questions because last night we held a Girls' Group in our flat. One of our regular attendees is from a traveller family and she seems almost, strangely, proud of her poor reading. It is not simply a can't read but a won't read and don't want to learn how to. I long sit down with her and show her the magic of story, to read Jesus' words together and see them come to life and bulge with meaning and significance. I have no idea how to do that. I have no idea how to conquer the barriers of family and upbringing and an attitude so heavily ingrained it seems impossible to change. 


This, however, bizarrely has made me quite excited. Excited because for the first time I start to see how my training as an English teacher might be useful on a council estate but more excited because I have no other option but to ask God for his wisdom. This is one of the central themes in an aforementioned book, "Dreaming with God." Johnson explains that, through Jesus, we have access to the wisdom of the Father: we are no longer servants but friends and everything that the Father has told the Son is available to be made known to us. "I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you." (John 15:15) This is pretty mind blowing and I am not sure how much I dare to believe it: that the whole realm of heaven's mystery is open to us because Jesus has reconciled us to the Father. Is it possible, as Johnson suggests that it is, that "God has a solution for this problem [whatever that problem is]. And [we] have legal access to His realm of ministry. Therefore [we can] seek Him for the answer!" God is able to make a way where there is no human way! God can provide a place on this estate for reading and for a love of God's word. God can teach young people to fall in love with his stories, and with Him, instead of PS3s and iphones. That is an incredible and compelling thought. 


Part of Johnson's argument in his book is that we, as Jesus' followers, are not very good at asking for his wisdom; we do not have because we have not asked yet: "Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be complete." (John 16:24) I long to be better at asking, at seeking God's kingdom shaped solution to the deeply entrenched social issues of this area trusting that those who seek will find and will be given what they need. (Matthew 6:33 "But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.")


This, in a longwinded way, has taken us far from reading but close to Colossians (which I am still plodding slowly through). On Sunday at church the sermon preached was about asking for God's spirit of wisdom and revelation in order to know Him and His purposes: "I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better." (Ephesians 1:17) I could not help but smile at the way God had so effortless drawn together my ponderings about revelation and asking and provided me with a link to what I had been reading that morning: "For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you. We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives, so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and giving joyful thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of his holy people in the kingdom of light." (Colossians 1:9-12) I love this. And I have been trying to pray like it over the past two days: praying for a new knowledge of God's will - his will for my time, my marriage, this estate - that can only come through the wisdom and understanding of the Spirit. And, this is the exciting bit, praying in order that the work that I do on a day to day, hour to hour, minute to minute level might be meaningful and significant and fruitful and pleasing to him.


I have absolutely no idea how to change the attitudes of young people here. I have absolutely no idea how to make people fall in love with the bible or how to solve problems of low literacy or how to teach parents to read to their children so that they might fall in love with story. But, gloriously, wonderfully, God has the perfect solution to all of those problems, the answers to all of those questions and longings. And we get to ask him what the solution might be. He has hidden the solutions from us that we might be hungry for them and hungry for Him in asking; it is only the hungry who will be fed with the word and those who truly want to see who will have their eyes unblinded. Jesus tells us that he deliberately hides truth within parable so that only those who want to know and are willing to seek will find it: When he said this, he called out, “Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear.” His disciples asked him what this parable meant. He said,“The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of God has been given to you, but to others I speak in parables, so that, “‘though seeing, they may not see; though hearing, they may not understand." (Luke 8:8-10) It sounds pretty harsh but perhaps it is necessary for God to put us in a place of needing and wanting and longing to ask in order that we might more desperately seek. 


Reading is important. It is beautiful and necessary. It opens up the realm of God's word and his knowledge and his character. It allows us to access society and function and progress and develop. 


But it is only God's precious revelation - a revelation that Jesus opens up to us and that the Spirit brings us -  that can show the way for that truth to be made known here. 

What is the message?

Today is a good day: early morning swim; beautiful, fragmented, challenging, thought provoking text from Phil the Pilgrim; the bite of cold air for the first time in weeks of mild weather; the secret joy of having a hot chocolate at 9:30am and refusing to feel guilty even though such behaviour would be frowned upon by parentals for whom chocolate is definitely a post 11 o' clock privilege; the sweet smell of freshly baked mince pies, sticky sugar icing and rainbow hundreds and thousands scattered across my kitchen. Today's wonderful mess of baking is not quite as dramatic as the chocolate explosion caused by my neighbour's two lovely girls on Wednesday when they came round for Baking Club (not so much of a club really as there are only 3 members - Hamish isn't allowed to join - and admittance can only be gained by one of the girl's utterly whimsical decisions about who does and who does not have the calibre required for brownie manufacturing) but still a pleasant site of disarray.

I have been frustrated this week by reading Bill Johnson's Dreaming with God. Not because the book itself is frustrating; it isn't, and I very much recommend it. But because I am frustrated with myself for my lack of passion. The way that Johnson speaks about God is of a close friend and a co-worker. I have spent much of this week feeling jealous and decidedly un-zealous about Jesus, longing for a greater sense of desiring and loving him but feeling all the worse for the failure of those feelings to be aroused. How can I not be in awe of the cross? How is it possible that it raises no wonder and thankfulness and gratefulness in my heart? What is wrong with me? Yes, I sound like a petulant teenager in that last question and I have been behaving like one for the better part of this week: moaning that I lack passion, I don't know what I'm doing, I don't have a dream to live out with God, I feel dry and dare I say it...bored. I want to say bored with God, but in a moment of greater honest, I feel bored with myself. And my moaning.

This feeling of frustration (probably tinted with a dose of self-condemnation for good measure) has made me recall two things: 1) When I first started University and encountered the Christian Union, I was told - rather too emphatically for my fragile, emotionally-undulating 19 year old self to hear - that a relationship with God is not about feelings. 2) In Eat This Book by Peterson, author of The Message, he speaks of the man-invented replacement Trinity: my holy wants, my holy needs and my holy feelings. Both recollections were unwanted. I know too well that I am self-indulgent with my feelings and that I allow my emotional grasp of the world, and my self, in any given moment to determine what is true. I do - as Peterson warns against - "install[ing] the self as the authoritative text for living" rather than allowing God's truths as revealed in his word to show me what is reality and what I have made up. This is, I now realise, although I refused to at the time, what a wiser Christian than me was trying to say when he criticized my overly emotional interpretation of God: God is not dependent on my feelings; God is God. Truth is not there to only be assented to only when it is convenient and feels warm and fuzzy (that midway point in the euphoria of worship for example) but when it doesn't feel like God is doing anything in particular, when it doesn't feel like He's close or cares or is in control.

It is true that God is close, He does care and He is in control even if I cannot admit it.

However, although I have become much more cautious of following my untrustworthy heart and head and defining God by the whims of my feelings, I remain skeptical: a relationship with God must be about feelings to a certain extent, surely? The God of the bible does not yearn for a robotic intellectual compact with mankind; he craves covenant, friends, lovers, worshippers, sheep, sons, daughters, heirs. He is wooing us back into a relationship with him, a marriage, not a platonic contractual agreement.  Don Miller writes about it far more brilliantly than I can in his book Searching for God Knows What. I would quote from it but I have lent out my copy. In it Miller wonderfully restores the sense of the Bible, at its heart, being a love story. A relationship with mystery and complications and wonder. Not 6 little boxes with pictures that you can put ticks alongside if you agree with them.

Acknowledging the love story truth that Miller speaks of has re-ignited my passion. I think this is because I find it very difficult to get excited about biblical truths taken out of the context of reality. My lack of passion has been caused by trying to force myself to get excited about the cross - never, at any point have I doubted the truth of it, only my response to it - without interacting with the world and seeing the huge, gaping cross shaped holes that lurk in the lives of people who do not know Jesus. There is not really much point in sitting in my living room getting rather annoyed because I can't summon up instantaneous joy when perhaps what is needed is to go outside of my front door and encounter God's reality somewhere else. This is not to say that I don't believe in meditation or bible reading (I can hear how my own snobbish, critical thoughts would pull this last paragraph to pieces if someone else had written). It is not to say that we should expect radiant, awe-inspiring communion with our Creator each time we open his Word and then beat ourselves up when it doesn't happen. (And yet even as I write that last sentence part of me wants to shout WHY NOT?! Why not expect it? Why not long for it?) But it is to say that in my experience of the last week sitting in a room and rebuking myself for my failure to be zealous wasn't really getting me anywhere - it certainly wasn't getting me any closer to a place where I might be zealous for God.

What did get me somewhere was spending time with a friend last night. This friend is a recovering alcoholic. She has a heart for the downtrodden like no one else I have ever met. She thanks Jesus more instantaneously, and more meaningfully, than any one else I know.  She befriends addicts and the homeless and lets them stay with her. Her flat is peaceful and welcoming and she is able to listen to my anxieties and sympathise with them even when her own life is such a mess, and I have absolutely no right to complain to her about anything. She is estranged from her daughter and grandson through drinking. She has depression. She had a difficult upbringing in a strict Catholic family, and is cut off from several members of her family. She has a somewhat confused faith but a strong one. She is quite remarkable. As we sat and talked last night for the first time this week the cross made me excited. In the broken reality of this woman's life, the cross - in its mystery and glory and beauty - made sense as it has not done whilst I sat in my living room. To be able to say again and again and again in response to shame and regret that it is finished. It is done. It is over. God has forgiven. That is a privilege and it is the truth. Truth made perfect sense within that conversation not because of my emotions but because the truth needs a context in which to be realised.

I awoke this morning with the question of what my friend needs to know. What is the truth? What is the message? What is the gospel in its barest, simpliest, purest form? I did not give my friend a list of statements to which she must agree in order to be a follower of Jesus; she did not need that because somehow she already knows everything she needs to follow Him. And what is that? I am not sure, but the three words that came to mind this morning were these: mess, love, purpose. My friend knows she is a mess and, more importantly, that she is a mess because her relationship with God has been broken for a long long time and she has ignored Him. She needs to know that God loves her. Oh, how much more sense does the return of the prodigal son make in the life of someone returning to a loving father! And, she needs to know that God has a purpose for her life. She is not simply saved from hell for heaven. She is saved right now for now, for bringing heaven to this earth before God finally completes the renewal. Johnson speaks of the need for Christians to be those who invade earth: invading earth with heaven. It is the most beautiful thing in the world that God saves us and invites us to join with him in having a deeper meaning in existing now than we ever thought possible.

I have fallen in love with the way Gungor express this in there song Beautiful Things.

In Colossians 3:16 (I love it when God plans that what you will read in the bible will somehow link up everything else that you're thinking!) it says this: "Let the message (word) of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns and songs of the spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts." What is the message?! In the Bible Speaks Today commentary of Colossians, Lucas focuses on the message being the word of God in the bible. This is obviously true. But part of me found his explanation kind of flat. I realise that in commentaries it isn't possible to pull apart every verse in the desired detail and mean no disrespect to Lucas's theology or exegesis, it's just that I can't help but think is that it? No. It can't be. The word is not just scriptural truth; the word is Christ himself. There is something deadening about thinking of the word dwelling in us as just having a few handy bible verses memorised to call to mind, but something beautiful about thinking that what we're calling to mind is Christ himself. In the community of Colossae, I like to think that the Christians are constantly reminding their friends that Jesus is amongst them; they are living life together and sharing it and allowing the story of Jesus to be part of it. Not sitting cut off in isolation reading their bibles.

This post has pretty much exceeded my thought capacity. I am not even convinced the last bit made sense. I want to say that I am excited. I am excited about the cross now because I have seen where it fits into the life of some one else. I hope the Colossians spent their time hanging out together and speaking Jesus into life as it happened, filling up hurt and holes and brokenness with glorious relational, cross centered truth, not just intellectual statements which they have decided to agree on. I wonder if we could learn to do the same.

Wooed in the wilderness

I seem to spend much of my life trying to will myself to be better: to faff less, to be more productive, to not think those things about that person, to be nicer, more joyful, more optimistic, a better wife, less selfish. The list could go on. But in reality, I nearly always fall short of my own expectations; or I feel a slightly smug satisfaction in having stuck with my will power only to fall short again before I have quite had time to enjoy being smug. In this light, Paul's command to the Colossians seems pretty unfair: "Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature." (3:5) The language is deliberately violent: we are called to wage war on everything about ourselves which doesn't fit in with us being new creations living in Christ. Again, in verse 8 we are told that "we must rid ourselves" of all our unpleasantness. Paul seems totally serious in this exhorting; deadly serious given that he has already warned us that God's wrath is coming because of our sinful state (v.6). 

And yet, my gut reaction is that I have tried and failed to do this. I long to look like Jesus and be distinct and shiny but I don't most of the time. Me trying to put to death all my sins very often looks like a list of rules just waiting to be broken: get up earlier so you can pray and read the bible; ask your husband how he is first when he comes home instead of launching into a rant; say something nice to your neighbour each time you see them; don't straighten your hair so much; don't join in with bitching even if it's about someone you really struggle to like; be bolder in talking to people about Jesus. And the problem with rules is that we break them. We break them and then we feel guilty and frustrated and annoyed at our lack of will power and resolve to do better: I shall set my alarm for 6am instead of 6:30am and then I really will get up on time. Fail. I guess we shouldn't be surprised; this is what Paul says the purpose of rules (the laws that God has given us) is: to make us aware of just how rubbish we really are and how unable we are to do the things we say we will do - "I would not have known what sin was if it wasn't for the law." (Romans 7:7)

It's all pretty depressing. And it - this rule making and breaking - does what I think most people expect Christianity to do in the first place: create a list of rules and regulations to make you feel really awful and condemned and force you to abide by what society says is right. The church exists to keep us in check and make sure we feel terrible if we do things wrong. It is a bleak picture. But it is bleak because it is only a partial view of the gospel; it is a gospel without Jesus. If I, as someone who follows Jesus, live my life as a miserable I'll never be good enough, I always get it wrong, I can't live up to God's standards, I'm not really allowed to do anything I want to do type person then no wonder by friends view the church as an institution of regulations resulting in boredom, legalism and, sadly, repressed desires breaking out into awful scandals. 

But, if I grasp what Paul grasps then I realise that I have not been given a new life in Christ in which I am to feel condemned but one in which I am free; I am liberated to be a new person freed up from the things that are breaking the world: free from greed, free from a cheap view of sex and my own value, free from love of money, from anger, from bitchiness. I am liberated because I am not called to wage war upon my old self, my sinful self, on my own but with the power of God working within me: "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling for it is God that works within you to will and to act according to his good purpose." (Philippians 2:12-13) and "To this I strenuously contend with all the energy Christ so powerfully works in me." (Colossians 1:29). I love this. The verse division in Philippians leaves us momentarily hanging with the daunting task of working out our own salvation, of putting to death, of ridding ourselves, but we are rescued by verse 13: it is God who is at work with us. Similarly, in Colossians Paul speaks of his own sheer hard work but does so in the knowledge that his energy, his resources, his strength comes from Christ living in him. Christ in us is the hope of glory. We are not called simply to put to death our old problematic selves; we are called to do so through the awesome work of the spirit: "if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live." (Romans 8:13) This is not simply forcing our own bodies and minds to follow a set of rules and stop doing things, this is knowing that we have the power to be different because God has not left us on our own: we are fully equipped for the task of being like him because he himself remains with us to see that the task is done: "I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me...the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things." (John 14:18-26).

It is easy to get excited about the prospect of God at work within me transforming and changing me - without my help he is renewing me in the image of his himself (Col 3:10) - but I am still called back to Paul's commands. This is all about God. But it is still about us. We are not called to simply sit back and watch as God does some redemptive stuff; how could Paul order the church at Colossae to physically put their sin to death themselves if this were so? Paul reminds the church that God is at work in them but he also reminds them that they too must work. There is a difference in working knowing that we are aided and equipped instead of slaving on our own. The question is what are we aided in doing? How exactly do we murder sin in our lives life? What are our weapons for putting to death the ways of the world and embracing the ways of Christ?

In his book, When I Don't Desire God, John Piper uses the writings of the puritan, John Owen, to answer these questions. Owen is too good to paraphrase so I hope I am excused from lifting the quote:

"As to the object of your affections, in a special manner, let it be the cross of Christ, which has exceeding efficacy toward the disappointment of the whole work of indwelling sin: “God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, whereby the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world” (Gal. 6:14). The cross of Christ he gloried and rejoiced in; this his heart was set upon; and these were the effects of it—it crucified the world unto him, made it a dead and undesirable thing. The baits and pleasures of sin are taken all of them out of the world...If the heart be filled with the cross of Christ, it casts death and undesirableness upon them all; it leaves no seeming beauty, no appearing pleasure or comeliness, in them. Again, says he, “It crucifies me to the world; makes my heart, my affections, my desires, dead unto any of these things.” It roots up corrupt lusts and affections, leaves no principle to go forth and make provision for the flesh, to fulfill the lusts thereof. Labor, therefore, to fill your hearts with the cross of Christ...Fill your affections with the cross of Christ, that there may be no room for sin."

(John Owen, The Mortification of Sin in Believers)

Our main aid in putting to death earthly desire is Jesus – Jesus dying for us. This is Jesus in his glory, King of heaven dying for me (See His Love, Tim Hughes). We are called to do what Paul told us to do at the start of chapter 3: don’t think about earthly stuff; think about heaven. Don’t think about your own desires; think about what Jesus gave up for you. I am not good at this. So often I get trapped and tangled up in my own thoughts and feelings (my sinful mind set and heart set) and do not even give a thought to Jesus. I once heard a preacher say that just a tiny glance at the cross, the smallest reminder of Jesus giving up everything for us is enough to pull us back from sin. I don’t know if this is always true. The sinful nature is strong; the battle rages and we are engaged in the most serious spiritual warfare. But I long to get better at it. I long to get better at looking at Jesus, at reading about what he did and said, about knowing what he has done for me so that I cannot help but be won over by his beauty.

In Hosea, God describes how he will woo Israel back to himself; in the metaphor, Israel is God’s unfaithful wife who he has rejected because of her sin but now goes to seek in the wilderness and draw her back home.  The image that comes into my head is, for some reason, of the new Jane Eyre film (see picture) where Jane runs away from Thornfield onto the moor. The scenery is desolate and vast and she is completely on her own; I imagine the Israeli wilderness is a similar experience and it is in this massive emptiness that God seeks his faithless wife:

“I am now going to allure her; I will lead her in the wilderness and speak tenderly to her.” (Hosea 2:14) God has already done this for us: while we were still sinners roaming around lost in the wilderness, he came to find us. Yet,  I wonder if God would be willing to do the same with us on a daily basis if we would only let him; if we spent time getting to know him, sitting with him, reading his word, would he not come and meet us and bring us back from our folly and unfaithfulness? Would he not teach us how to leave behind sin and the old ways (Col 3:7) and instead walk with him in new and better way? God is at work within us drawing us continually back to himself each time we walk away; we need to be better at knowing that this is what he is doing, to allow ourselves to be delighted by his superior beauty, by a love that is far greater than any earthly thing.

“Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you.” (Psalm 73:26) I cannot say that this is true; that I desire Jesus above all earthly things. I don't most of the time. But Paul says the secret to desiring Jesus more is to know him better. We are being renewed in knowledge in the image of our Creator. (Col 3:10) He prays that the Colossians will continually grow in the knowledge of God (1:10) because a greater knowledge of him means a greater likeness to him. It means more fruitfulness, a life more worthy and more pleasing. If we want to put to death our earthliness, we need to spend more time getting to know and being in awe of the one who gave up his heavenliness to come and rescue us.