Receiving well

I have been struck afresh this year by the advertisements for Christmas on the radio. Many of them promise that if you use their products or services it will be your best, greatest, most marvellous Christmas ever. Maybe you would like to visit the Ultimate Gift Ideas website.  One advert even promised that if you bought their gold goblets (four for £10) it would make your Christmas table the best ever. Excuse my cynicism.

But this is the problem with all if these advertisements. As the superlatives flourish, their promises inevitably lead to disappointment and cynicism which after all protects us from disappointment. We are all familiar I am sure with Jesus words “It is more blessed to give than to receive” which is a great antidote to both disappointment and cynicism for the focus shifts away from ourselves, our wants, our desires, our needs onto others.

As we give to others we can share in their joy. I love anonymous giving as you get to enjoy others’ pleasure secretly. God, the greatest giver, must have great pleasure in giving not just to his children but everyone.  Of course the best gift God gave us was his Son which is or should be the focus of Christmas.

However I am also struck by the importance of how we receive gifts. Recently I have witnessed gifts that were of huge significance to the giver been treated quite casually by the recipient.  This can be very hurtful.

How must God feel then when his greatest gift, his Son Jesus, is treated casually or ignored by most people?  His sorrow must be deep. God has provided all that man needs to deal with sin and to live a happy, fulfilled and deeply satisfying life. Through Jesus men and women can fulfill their God given destiny. The majority choose to reject this gift.

This Christmas as we receive gifts let’s make sure we receive them all – the big and the small with thankfulness and gratitude. However I want to make sure that this Christmas I take my eyes off the glitter and nonsense that will only disappoint and with a thankful heart place my focus firmly on the greatest gift of all.

Gerard van Honthorst Nativity

God loves the outsiders and misfits

It’s Christmas.  The time when we ponder afresh the wonderful news of God becoming a baby, Immanuel, God with us.  This year I am drawn again and again to the misfits, the outsiders that are an integral part of this incredible story.

Firstly Mary, a completely unknown young lady living in Nazareth, a despised town, called to the greatest honour for a woman – to be the mother of the Son of God.  Joseph, an ordinary carpenter, called to stand with Mary and share in the social disgrace of a child conceived outside of marriage.

The first visitors to the infant Jesus were the social outcasts, the shepherds, those lowest on the ladder. The other significant visitors were the religious outcasts, the Gentiles. The contrast between the rural, coarse, illiterate Jewish shepherds and the highly educated, foreign, exotic Gentiles could not be stronger.   Jesus came for everyone not just the rich, the famous, the respectable or religious people and not just for his people the Jews but for all people.

It is hardly surprising though for the Bible is full of stories of those chosen from the outside to become important players in God’s plan of redemption. Moses was an exiled murderer hiding out in the desert so inadequate and insecure he didn’t think he could do anything for God. He certainly didn’t want to go and talk to Pharaoh and be the instrument for the release of the Israelites from captivity.

Or David, the youngest member of a large family of sons so insignificant he was out with the sheep not even in the family home. Some have proposed his legitimacy was in doubt which was why he was looking after the animals. However this was where he learned all the skills necessary to kill Goliath, survive in the desert when a king was determined to kill him and most importantly of all, the place where he developed into a man after God’s own heart. His beautiful psalms are a lasting testimony to the years spent as an outcast but which prepared him to be the greatest king Israel ever had and the ancestor of the Messiah.

Even Jesus’ forerunner and relative John the Baptist was a social outcast and misfit growing up in the desert dressed in camel hair. Yet Jesus said of him among those born of women there has not risen anyone greater than John the Baptist (Matthew 11: 11). Surely in the desert John developed into the one called ‘to prepare the way of the Lord.’

Jesus didn’t choose his disciples from the religious elite or synagogue. He chose rough fishermen who would become great fishers of men.

All of these men had to flow against the tide of the day, to stand up for the Lord and lead their nation into righteousness.

Jesus himself was the greatest outcast. The Son of God was born in a stable in obscurity and poverty because there was no room for his parents in society. His whole ministry was lived on the edge of society, feted one minute and condemned the next.

However this is a great source of encouragement for us, the ordinary made extraordinary by God’s call. Wherever we are whether we are in the spiritual desert, running from persecution, a social misfit or down the bottom end of society or just plain obscure, God uses people just like us. He calls us from the desert, obscurity, the despised places, the mundane where he has been transforming and training his sons and daughters, his people, his chosen ones to do extraordinary things for him.

God's calling - our calling

There can be times when we may feel that past failure, sin or fear will keep us from stepping into or fulfilling the calling of God for our life.  Fear of failure, inadequacy and guilt can be huge stumbling blocks but our God is mightier than any of our sins and failings. The Bible is full of stories of people who felt inadequate or who in human eyes had disqualified themselves from ministry yet God had not finished with them despite their failings and weaknesses.

When God met Moses at the burning bush, he told him to go back to Egypt and speak to Pharaoh to set the Israelites free.  Moses argued with God five times about his inadequacy and every time God gave him the words and signs necessary. Finally God’s anger burned against Moses and as a concession he said that Aaron could go with him to speak to Pharaoh.

By the time of the tenth plague though Moses didn’t need anyone to speak on his behalf because his confidence in God meant he was more than adequate for the task. This stood him in good stead for leading the people out of Egypt, crossing the Red Sea and dealing with a difficult and rebellious group of Israelites for 40 years.  Moses had asked God at the burning bush to send someone else but God knew that Moses was the man for the job.

Moses’ brother Aaron was one who could also have been disqualified from his calling of being the first high priest of the nation.  While Moses was up the mountain for 40 days and nights Aaron led the nation into idolatry by making and worshipping the golden calf.  Not long after that debacle God appointed him as high priest.  Most of us would have thought Aaron had blown it irrevocably but not God. He had called Aaron to the priesthood.

Or what about David, the great king, the man after God’s own heart who committed adultery and murder? Surely he should have been stoned to death but when confronted with his sin, he repented before God writing surely one the most beautiful psalms, Psalm 51.

Peter let Jesus down by denying him three times on the very night when he could have used a friend. Yet Peter became one of the leading apostles in the early church. And Paul persecuted and murdered the early Christians yet when confronted by the love and grace of God he stepped into his God given destiny to be a great apostle and author of much of the New Testament.

God has a calling on each of our lives and whilst we may not be called to lead the nation or be a great apostle, we have a unique and important role to play. The devil would like to remind us frequently of our sin, failure and inadequacies but God would remind us that those he has called he will also equip. His love and grace are always more than enough to overcome our shortcomings. 

Next time you feel you have irrevocably blown it just remember these great men of God who fell or were overcome by their insecurities and recall what they achieved.  If they can do it, so can we.

Live free or die

The slogan of the state of New Hampshire in USA is Live Free or Die. It is found everywhere from car number plates, bumper stickers and signs. It is the ultimate expression of desire to live independently no matter the cost.

On our recent trip to the States, we were driving up the freeway. As we drove from Massachusetts into New Hampshire we saw a motorcyclist, driving at 70 mph take off his crash helmet and fumblingly place it in a pannier on the back of his bike because crash helmets are not required in New Hampshire.  It was an act of great folly. The law is not there to cramp one’s style but to protect motorcyclists who may have an accident and come hurtling off a bike and collide at speed with a large solid object.  But people would rather live free and die than be safe.

Sometimes Christians live like this. They see God’s ways as a restriction on their personal liberty rather than a loving God’s protection of his people. They would rather be independent of God and his ways than safe. God doesn’t give laws and ways of living to thwart people but because he wants to look after us.  Sometimes we need to change our default setting from God being angry, difficult and hard to please to God being loving and kind and wanting what is best for us. 

God’s laws help us rise to the highest calling and destiny that he has for our lives. When Jesus was asked what the greatest commandments were,  ‘(he) replied: ‘“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: “Love your neighbour as yourself.” All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.’ Matthew 22: 37– 40.

Jesus didn’t say this because God is some kind of megalomaniac that needs our love. He said it because as humans that is what we are created to do. The Westminster Catechism says ‘Man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever’. What an incredible calling.

Loving God and worshipping him is what will bring us the greatest joy, freedom and total satisfaction and fulfilment to our lives. God wants to draw us into the same, intimate, loving relationship that the Trinity enjoys. God doesn’t need our love and worship but he longs for us to know his love and we only know it by opening our hearts to him. That is the path of real freedom.

This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. I John 3: 16

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. I John 4: 7

Loving others flows out of our love for God. As we love our neighbours as ourselves it brings great freedom to everyone. If we all loved one another as we love ourselves, some of the greatest ills in the world would cease. Poverty and hunger would be a thing of the past.  No one is poor or hungry by choice. We look after ourselves and do all we can to have enough money and food.  If we loved our neighbours as ourselves, everyone would have enough. 

God gave the Israelites the Ten Commandments as the basic laws of living for a just society for everyone. Many countries have used these Ten Commandments as the basis of their own justice system and these nations are the fairest and freest societies. 

Where the laws are not kept pain, heartache, grief and societal break up follow. In other cultures where different laws are upheld, it usually means the domination of one sector of society and the oppression of another, often women and children.

Live Free or Die.  I think not.  That way your freedom always comes at the expense of someone else. God wants us to live free, after all he sent Jesus to die to free us from the slavery of sin. However God’s way is the only way to really live free.

So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. John 8: 36

Visit another church for a change

We have been privileged over the years to visit different churches in three continents from those who meet under palm branches in Uganda to slick mega churches in the States. We’ve been to seemingly insignificant, tiny churches to the big churches of the famous.

This weekend we visited another church, new to us, in a town north of Boston in USA. It was a wonderful expression of the local Body of Christ faithfully meeting and worshipping together, learning from the Word and with a great desire to see souls saved both at home and abroad.

I love the sheer diversity of the Body of Christ which should not depress or discourage us.  Rather it should be a source of encouragement. Unfortunately too often though this diversity opens up opportunities for division.  But God loves diversity. 

Every one of the 7.3 billion people on the planet is unique. There is no one like them and never has been and never will.  Creation is an endless tableau of diversity with an eye watering collection of animals, birds, insects, fish, reptiles and bugs from the massive to the tiny in every colour and shape imaginable.  From the largest elephant to the amoeba the Creator’s love for things that are different, unique and incredible is absolutely mind blowing.

I don’t believe that God is shocked or disappointed by the different churches but what he does require of his people is to love one another despite our differences.

Jesus said ‘By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.’ John 13: 35

The problem seems to be that instead of celebrating the different emphases and ways of worship, there is a tendency to criticize the differences.  No church has the monopoly on the truth and the right way to do things and no church is perfect because it is full of imperfect people. Even with those whose theology we may fundamentally disagree with and maybe with good reason they do not deserve vitriol or Crusader or Inquisition style condemnation. People will not change because the truth is screamed at them. They will change and respond to the truth shared in love. They may also have some things to teach others. 

I think one of the most encouraging things over the last 10 years has been a genuine desire by Christians to work with those from different denominations and movements to see the Kingdom advance. You see we are not called to build the church. That is Jesus’s job (Matthew 16: 18). What we should be doing is going out into all the world with the Gospel to make disciples and see the Kingdom of God grow and flourish.

History itself is a good indicator that when churches lay aside their differences and work together with this aim, the Kingdom goes forward and the world is impacted by the Gospel and the unity that the Church shows.

Visiting other churches is a wonderful way to broaden our horizons.  I am not talking about church hopping with no commitment to a local church but an occasional visit to another church whether locally or further afield. It helps us see the bigger picture. It stops any sense of isolation and especially pride that our way is the best way. It helps us value and appreciate others and forges relationships that build unity.

If you haven’t visited another church in a while, why not give it a go?