Earlier this year, I took up jogging, something I had never done before in my life. I have always been active but actual jogging – no way. I needed some inspiration to get going so I found a suitable podcast and for 8 weeks followed the programme successfully. The eighth week was particularly inspirational as it used the launch and landing of the space shuttle Discovery to start and end the run.  There was a real sense of achievement after running for 30 minutes nonstop for the first time.

We all need inspiration to help us in our lives. Over the years, many people, Christians and non, have inspired me to live better, to make the most of my life and to give to the world.

However, as Christians we need also to be inspirational. There is so much negativity about Christians and the Church that when people come across someone who has an authentic faith being lived out on a daily basis, it becomes a source of comment, question and hopefully helps someone towards salvation. I know that was very important when we got saved over 30 years ago. The friends who had been encouraging us took us to a water baptism service. It was the first time we had been to a full immersion baptism. I was struck by the fact that the people in this church were getting a lot more from life, church and their Christianity than I certainly was. It was an important step along the way.

We all impact those around us both positively and negatively with our words, actions and attitudes, often quite unrealised. We have a friend in South Africa who has an amazing testimony of God’s deliverance and salvation from drug abuse, prostitution and a lifestyle of abuse.  We were all in our home group one day when she commented that looking at the married couples had really helped her realise that marriage could work. Her experience of marriage had not been good, yet observing the marriages of various older couples – not perfect but working – helped heal her extremely negative view of matrimony.

I am always amazed at the comments people make about my life, telling me they’ve noticed I don’t swear, that I am a Christian even when I’ve said nothing. On one occasion, when I was just standing admiring the bowls green before a game I was asked if I was praying for the match. I wasn’t but I offered to do so if they would like!

We also though need to inspire one another in our Christian walk. I love being around people who have a different or deeper faith to mine but I believe we all have a role to play in inspiring one another. In 1 Thessalonians 5: 11 Paul wrote Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing. This was written in the context of Christians awaiting Jesus’ second coming but it’s appropriate in any circumstance.

Encouragement and inspiration may be overt but also unintentional by a positive lifestyle full of love for the Lord, a passion for his name and a consistency in the good and not so good times. God didn’t save us to be grumblers and complainers but to be light to the world, to see things from God’s perspective and to show this to our world.

Catch me if you can

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. Hebrews 12: 1 - 2

Every baton change was secure and it was with great cheers that the British men’s 4 x 100m relay team brought home the gold medal. It had been a rather disappointing week of athletics for Britain but on the final weekend all four relay teams won medals.

Watching relays always reminds me of the analogy of handing the spiritual baton on as an inheritance to the next generation.

An inheritance is something passed on that we get for nothing from someone else who has paid for it. It can catapult us up to the next level. For instance – getting a financial inheritance can help us buy a house we couldn’t possible afford otherwise. Spiritual inheritances work in the same way. We inherit a grace for something, for instance healing, that others have laboured for and may have paid a high price in terms of commitment and even criticism but it makes us more effective for the kingdom.

A natural inheritance gives us something we did not have before but a spiritual inheritance reveals to us something that was there all along but which we had never seen or grasped before. When we realise the inheritance we have, we receive all the knowledge and experience gained by the previous generation. We don’t have to find it, earn it, dig for it, battle for it but just receive and walk in it.

Bill Johnson says that one of the saddest things in the Church is that one generation has never been able to pass on revival to the next generation. Revival has become the boost that the Church receives every few years instead of being the norm. What should be normal is that ‘of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end’ Isaiah 9: 7.

Going back to the analogy of passing on the baton it is as if the next runner takes the baton, looks at it and decides that running the next leg is too hard, demands too much and anyway they are too busy with work and family. Worse still it when the baton is put in a place of honour and revered as ‘the baton from the GB and NI team who won the gold medal in 2017.’ This is like honouring Smith Wigglesworth or John G Lake but not trying to run past them and push into God for the next revelation or grace he wants to impart.

For me the saddest thing is when the next generation take the baton and then goes back to the starting blocks and starts the race all over again, running the same lap as the previous generation. Instead once the baton has been passed, the next generation must take their inheritance and run hard their own race into fresh new things of God.

Jesus ran the first lap and he promised we would do greater things than he did (John 14: 12). That’s the norm. Our forefathers are our example and they are cheering us on the greater deeds, to greater revelation that the Kingdom of God would advance not stagnate or repeat.

Have you ever seen how the previous runner at the hand over, shouts at the next runner exhorting them to run their fastest? May it be the same in the kingdom. As we pass on all we have laboured and fought for, may we urge the next generation to catch hold of everything and then run into a fresh season of revelation with faith and anointing to increase the Kingdom and see Jesus revealed in ever greater measure.

A life of devotion

We are all very familiar with the stories of the two sisters, Martha and Mary. Martha was almost certainly the older and she was the one who served – who got the job done. Mary just sat around at Jesus’ feet.

If asked which one you identify with, most of us would say Martha. We know Jesus said, ‘few things are needed – or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.’ (Luke 10: 42) but somehow sitting at Jesus’ feet when there’s work to be done doesn’t seem like the ‘better’ thing.

However Mary lived the life of devotion that followed the first and greatest commandment Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength (Mark 12: 30). It was given by Moses to the Israelites (Deuteronomy 6: 4- 5) and is part of the bedrock of the Jewish faith, the Shema, spoken by pious Jews morning and evening and it starts synagogue services.

Mary loved the Lord extravagantly and her greatest act of devotion is recorded in John 12: 1 – 8. A dinner was given at Lazarus’ house – Martha and Mary’s brother – in Jesus’ honour. Martha was serving as usual and Lazarus was reclining with all the guests.

Mary then did something incredibly brave. She walked into a room full of men eating their dinner and instead of quietly serving, the appropriate thing for a woman, she brought an expensive jar of pure nard and poured it on Jesus’ feet. The women would have been shocked and the men embarrassed. It was so inappropriate.

Some have surmised that this perfume may have been Mary’s inheritance. Money was hard to keep safe so inheritances came in the form of land or objects. Mary was blowing the very thing that would keep her in her old age in one extravagant act of devotion.

The apostle John noted that the fragrance filled the whole house – her act of abandoned love touched everywhere.

However even more shockingly Mary undid her hair and wiped Jesus feet with it. If people were embarrassed before, now they would not know where to look. Respectable women did not unbind their hair in public and only lowly servants dealt with dirty feet. Mary was not mindful of her reputation or her social standing, she just wanted to pour out her love to Jesus.

Some present ‘rebuked her harshly’ (Mark 14: 5) and she invoked criticism especially from Judas Iscariot who piously would have liked to give the proceeds of the sale of the nard to the poor. In reality he wanted to get his own hands on the money (John 12: 6). In this account in Mark 14, Judas was so offended by her waste that he went to the chief priests to betray Jesus. It was if it was the final straw.

Jesus however commended Mary for her beautiful act of worship. You can imagine all those reclining at the table who hadn’t known where to look before now sagely nodding their heads in agreement.  Jesus then said, ‘Truly I tell you, wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.’ How true - today we all know about Martha and Mary and her life of adoration.

Devotion though is a hard path to walk. Mary was criticised by her own family for sitting at Jesus’ feet instead of helping. The believers criticised her for extravagantly wasting an expensive jar of perfume.

Mary chose the ‘better way.’ Works for the Lord are important but they flow out of the greater thing. The priority is to Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.

People will almost certainly criticise us for extravagant acts of worship – for living a lifestyle devoted to God – but it is the ‘better way’.

Human beings or human doings?

I am sure we are all familiar with the concept that we are human beings not human doings, by which we mean that it is more important who we are and our character than what we do.

This idea came out of a desire to counterbalance the false thinking that we can earn our way into heaven or God’s favour by what we do. Salvation is by faith in Christ alone and is a gift of grace. There is nothing we can do to earn or deserve God’s love and salvation. 

There is another true but perhaps not so helpful saying that you can never do anything to increase or take away God’s love for you. This does not mean however that we do not need to do anything or that works of service are unimportant.

God’s love towards us is constant and never fails. Nothing we say or do changes this but times spent with Jesus increase our awareness of that love. This is never wasted time. It is in this place of intimacy that we both receive and give love. It is here that we can be honest with God and ourselves and let him bring healing and freedom from sin.  It is here that we hear from him, we learn and are inspired and it is from here that our works of love and service flow.

Some believers in the early Church were convinced they did not need to do anything as long as they had faith. James, the Lord’s brother, had something to say about that.

¹⁴ What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? ¹⁵ Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. ¹⁶ If one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,’ but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? ¹⁷ In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.

¹⁸ But someone will say, ‘You have faith; I have deeds.’ Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by my deeds. James 2: 14 – 18

James firmly shows that out faith needs actions.

In everything Jesus is our example  - God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power, and he went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil, because God was with him. Acts 10: 38

Jesus had the most intimate relationship with the Father but he showed his love for others by what he did and so must we. He loved them through teaching but also through signs, wonders and miracles. Jesus expressed his love to the tax collectors, prostitutes and sinners – so must we.

The amazing statement ‘For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost’ (Luke 19: 10) was spoken in the context of Jesus visiting Zacchaeus, the tax collector who was fond of stealing from people.  Jesus showed his love by coming to Zacchaeus’ home. Many criticised his actions but Jesus’ life was one long faith in action one.

We are indeed human beings and who we are is incredibly important. Character matters but so do our actions, as long as they flow out of a love relationship with Jesus and not out of some misguided desire to impress or win favour with either God or man. Doing God’s love is a powerful way of showing God’s love.