Thought

How is the Bible, written so long ago, relevant now?

Verse

Study this Book of Instruction continually. Meditate on it day and night so you will be sure to obey everything written in it. Only then will you prosper and succeed in all you do.

— Joshua 1:8 NLT

Good News

We have available to us the main source of wisdom for life and we are free to learn from it and use joy and talk about it. God speaks to us today through it, and we gain invaluable insight from what God has always said according to the Bible record.

Reflection

‘Doing it by the book’ implies that (1) we have the book, (2) know its contents, and (3) have a high regard for what it says. People who do things ‘by the book’ don’t make up their own rules or cut corners to save themselves effort.

On a number of levels, this isn’t how it is for most people today. We’re in an age that doesn’t like authority and will cut corners wherever possible. Relatively few people read the Bible. To see it as offering valuable, even essential guidance to live successfully is a highly ‘alternative’ viewpoint. It is presenting an idea quite foreign to most people today.

Churchgoing has at times of our history been compulsory. We wouldn’t want to go back to that. At other times, in revivals, it has been quite the usual thing in communities. Some of the newly-built chapels built by followers of John Wesley instituted a ticket system; you didn’t get a ticket to attend on Sunday unless you had attended your discipleship ‘class meeting’ in a home. The chapels were not to be places of passive, spectator religion, but the overflow of lives lived to know Jesus and live for Him. A century later, church building in the large cities were extending and replicating. The reason was partly social — the industrial revolution bringing people into the towns — but also the prayer-fuelled evangelical revival which started in the US and then swept across the UK.

Ordinary people were hearing the teaching of the Book and growing literacy and availability meaner that many had a family Bible; family devotions round the dining table were common.

Today. In a multi-cultural, multi-faith society we take our lead, not from family devotions or the ‘lessons’ read out and preached on a Sunday, but from the media and entertainment which ‘preach’ their own message. To study the Book and meditate on it is to be ‘set apart’ from the values which most people hold. It is to risk being misunderstood and even ridiculed. It brings the conflict of not being politically correct or ‘woke’, in tune with today’s world.

The promise of being prosperous (in a broader sense than financially) and successful comes with a challenge: to be people who have a grounding in what God has always said, and an awareness of what He is saying now, through that same word — and at the same time, relating to the wider world which holds different values. Everybody wants to be prosperous and successful, but most want to do it their way. People of Jesus who are, by definition, people of His book have the key to this — so it is entirely relevant.

To duck the challenge by becoming closed communities, somewhat withdrawn from the world, is to deny the value and relevance of what we have have discovered, as well as rejecting the Great Commandment to love God and love other, and the Great Commission to make disciples of all kinds of people.

To help us all know what the Book says and to think about it and to do it, is the call of every Christian today, and it is what we are attempting to do here through using new media creatively, for the kingdom of God.

Take away

What can you do, to make God’s word more accessible and more relevant to those around you?

Link

For a prayer based on the verse above, go over to this page on www.glowweobley.com

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Where is God when trouble turns up?

Verse

My child, don’t reject the LORD’s discipline, and don’t be upset when He corrects you. For the LORD corrects those He loves, just as a father corrects a child in whom He delights.

— Proverbs 3:11-12 NLT

Good News

If we belong to God through Jesus, that makes us God’s children and He treats us accordingly — including growing us by allowing us to trust Him in some challenges along the way.

Reflection

Ian Greig writes: I have some friends who met years ago on the national cycling team circuit and 40 years on they still enjoy getting out on two wheels. But in their language, a ride that doesn’t have a specific destination or purpose is a ‘training ride’. Cyclists learn to read the route ahead and prepare early for the hill section or sharp bends or rough surface. And some sections will not go as well as they should — hence the thought of a ride for pleasure also being a training session.

Life is a training session — training in holiness for eternal life in glory. And it can deal us some unexpected potholes and challenging inclines.

So does God deal us a difficult section from time to time, to teach us? That doesn’t sound like the heart of He who describes Himself as merciful and compassionate, who the apostle John described with the pure force of plain words: “God is love”, 1 John 4:16.

There are instances in Scripture where God is said to have sent afflictions.

There were times of rebellion in the desert, like Korah’s ‘insolent’ rebellion which costs almost 15,000 lives, Numbers 16, and later when the people derided God’s provision in a blasphemous complaint, and the the the Lord sent venomous snakes among them, Numbers 21:4-8 (but He also sent a sign to help them put their rebellion right and look to Him again). The exile was a national affliction which the prophets had long warned about. After the event, Ezekiel explained that it resulted from God’s wrath following generations of misrule and bloodshed and abandonment of the covenant for idolatry, Ezekiel 36:18-19. Paul wrote to the church in Galatia, where the new life of the Spirit was being snuffed out by legalistic, unspiritual teachers trying to turn it back into a religion, warning them of the cause and effect relationship of rejecting what God had given, Galatians 5 and 6:7-8.

Mostly, it is the devil who brings affliction and oppression wherever our sin gives him a way in — and in our fallen world opportunities abound. But God will take these events and use them for good, as a spiritual alert for us to seek Him afresh.

When things seem to be going fine, we get complacent about our relationship with God — but when things get difficult or frightening, as with the present pandemic coming, and receding, and then coming some more, it is a wake-up call for us to seek God.

That’s what Jeremiah was trying to get the people of his time to see when they were in a desperate situation — and the frustration for him was that the right response was as plain as a pikestaff:

in Jeremiah’s words:

“Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know.”

— Jeremiah 33:3

God is sovereign over all events, and where there is affliction, He always shows a way out. It’s like the serpent on the pole. What God wants is our hearts, our affection, our response to Him. And that is part of a turning to Him, calling upon Him, and listening for His further answer.

Which will surely come if we seek Him.

Take away

When the next testing circumstance presents itself, will you wobble — or will you welcome it as a test of you trusting God?

Link

For a prayer based on this verse, go over to this page on www.glowweobley.com

How can we see God, when He is unseen?

Good News

God is always about His work of salvation, and reveals His plans and purposes to those who are His and who seek Him.

Reflection

While I was writing this the news included Dame Louise Casey, the former Homelessness Commissioner warning that some families face being made destitute by the loss of income and opportunity from the pandemic. The backdrop to this was stricter ‘tier’ restrictions, mainly in the most economically vulnerable areas — and this kind of pattern being replicated across Europe with hospital admissions rising sharply.

How do we see God working?

Where is God in this? Or perhaps a better question, how do we SEE God working, as we cry out to Him with whatever grain of faith we have?

Business strategists have a phrase which describes a way to make sense of confusing detail — the ‘helicopter view’. From ground level, where we can’t see a way through the maze, imagine taking a helicopter flight to look at it from 1,000 feet above. A high-level perspective reveals the picture of the whole, integrating the confusing and competing parts, and it gives a clarity missing from the close-up view.

God has both the big picture perspective — on an eternal timescale rather than our short-term thinking — and the close-up definition to see right inside every individual part. We can’t do that, but we can seek to join Him and allow ourselves to be informed by His far superior wisdom.

What is a pure heart?

Jesus said that those whose hearts are pure can see Him. What is a pure heart? It’s having no mixed motives, being free of selfish ambition or personal agenda, willingly submitted to God and in right-standing with Him.

And what does it mean to see God, who is spirit (John 4:24, 1 John 4:12) and therefore by definition unseen? In the OT, giants of faith like Moses and Elijah were terrified at the prospect of seeing God — Elijah, when he encountered God on Mount Horeb, wrapped his face in his cloak.

“When your heart is pure… your eyes will open to see more and more of God” is how the Passion Translation renders this. More and more of God’s glory — and more and more of God’s working, much of which is mysterious and beyond human understanding.

How the Spirit expands our short-sighted view

This side of heaven, what we see of God will be limited and what we understand of Him and His working will be a restricted, myopic view. But set alongside that, here are two particular enabling Scriptures. One is the spiritual gift of wisdom, listed by Paul in 1 Corinthians 12:7-11 alongside knowledge, faith etc.

“To one is given through the Spirit a message of wisdom, to another a message of knowledge by the same Spirit, to another faith…” 1 Cor. 12:8-9

If the word, or message, of knowledge is something revealed by God’s Spirit, the message of wisdom is what to do with that revealed knowledge — in other words, how God is working in that person or situation and how we work with Him.

Then there is the important promise in James’ letter:

“When you face trials…if any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you. But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt…” James 1: 3, 5-6.

It is a straightforward condition that we need to be single-minded about listening to and following God. If we are listening to all kinds of voices, the opinions of the media and and the prejudices of others, this is not the “pure heart” that will see God. But if we get our focus on Him through worship and separation from the world’s noise, we are putting ourselves in a good position for Him to give us a spiritual ‘helicopter view’.

Take away

• How will you go about listening to God and asking Him to show you something ahbout Himself and His working in this present situation?

• Who will you share this with?

Link

For a prayer based on this verse and reflection, head over to this page on www.glowweobley.com

Verse

Do not withhold good from those who deserve it when it’s in your power to help them.

–Proverbs 3:27 NLT

And God will generously provide… everything you need… and increase your resources and then produce a great harvest of generosity in you.

—2 Corinthians 9:8-10 NLT

Good News

The context of this verse is the Lord’s provision and protection: “You need not be afraid of sudden disaster, or the destruction that comes on the wicked, for the Lord is your security,” vv.25-25. Therefore we, who rely on the Lord, are positioned to do good to others, out of the security we have.

Reflection

In the last recession a number of banks got into difficulties (some are no longer with us) and measures were introduced to ‘stress test’ financial institutions to ensure that they had enough resilience as lenders to be able to give us our money back in tough conditions.

Can we give, when all the instincts are to hoard? Can we behave unselfishly, even generously to others, when what we ourselves need is under threat?

We have seen this test worked out at supermarket checkouts — some being measured in what they load up, others perhaps influenced by poor choices in their information depriving others by bulk buying for themselves, creating the very shortage that they fear so much.

The moral question is about who we really care about, and who are we prepared to exclude. Does it matter if someone else can’t bake, or has no stock of paracetamol if symptoms arise? Does it matter if others lose their jobs and can’t make ends meet? Do we rationalise what is in our power to do for others, or find ways to stand together with those who need non-judgmental help?

This present pandemic, which seems to go on and on, is like a test of what we really believe and where our values lie — either in self-protection or, trusting God for our needs and safety, in generosity to others.

Take away

• Ask the Lord to show you this week someone whose need He is leading you to meet — and the faith to go with it.

Link

For a prayer based on these verses, go over to to this page on www.glowweobley.com.