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Five ways to spell confidence

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The last gathering of Bodenham Christian Fellowship before Lockdown 2 — November 1, 2020

Way in

  • Is the coronavirus pandemic a wake-up call for us believers? If so, how do we respond?
  • What is God saying to His Church at this time? How do I understand His purpose and mission?
  • People are asking questions and opening up to spiritual conversations. What do I say to them?

My approach

I rely on an old-fashioned quiet time each day with the Lord and His word. I BELIEVE what God has said in the Bible, I PERCEIVE how He speaks through it each day, and I RECEIVE fresh wisdom — which might take a little longer to understand. But I receive it anyway.

I take the verse of the day from my Bible app (not a verse of my choosing) and ask the Lord to speak through it. In particular, I ask Him to reveal His Good News in it. Then I write a reflection —- and some of these are published online.

  • I see a pattern emerging — like a rope of five connected strands, which is what I believe the Lord has been saying to me.
  • Of course, I can be wrong! So this is to weigh, to see what resonates with you.

“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”

Romans 8:28

So briefly here are five words — which are really one word.

1. Hold on to hope

What hope is there, when everything is getting worse?

Let’s start by asking the right question. WHO gives me hope and WHO can I go to, to find help? It’s personal.

The gospel accounts give us the story of Jesus — His coming, His life, His teaching, His death. And resurrected to life again, seen by many before ascending to heaven. He is a person. His teaching, about the kingdom of God, revolves around people and situations. The key is, it’s all about a relationship.

Hundreds of years before Christ, Jeremiah said:

“Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD, and whose HOPE IS the LORD.”

— Jeremiah 17:7

And the apostle John said:

“And everyone who has this hope in Him (who has this hope in Jesus) purifies himself, just as He is pure.”

— 1 John 3:3
  • Hope — is an abstract word. We can generally substitute the more concrete word CONFIDENCE.
  • In the Bible, it is more robust still — confidence in a Person and His character. This is God, who we know through Jesus, unchanging, constant, faithful and merciful — and loving beyond ouyr capacity to describe.

A Bible study finds hope used in three ways, which are all relational:

  • Hope in the Person of the Lord — “in the Lord, in Him”.
  • Hope in what represents the Lord: His word, His mercy
  • Hope through the Person of the Holy Spirit in us — “Christ in you, the hope of glory” and “the hope of His calling”. That’s an experience on the inside — we know because we know because we know — and it comes with the witness of joy and peace.

What’s the difference between hope and faith? When you have confidence (hope) in the PERSON, you can believe (faith) the SPECIFIC THING they tell you. The foundation is general — “what I am going to hear is true” — on which can sit a particular word which kindles faith — “what I have heard, I can trust and act on.”

Hold on to hope — our confidence in God’s goodness

2. Be people of praise

The story in Acts 16. The Greek ‘Man from Macedonia’ had appeared to Paul in a dream. They crossed from Troas to the Greek side and the Roman ‘county town’ of Philippi. Lydia the dyer becomes a Christian, along with others. A female slave with an annoying familiar spirit keeps haranguing them and after days of this, Paul commands the Spirit out of her. So she is free but her owners are furious and incite a crowd to demand that the magistrate put them in prison. They are brutally beaten and pinned in stocks.

About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them. Suddenly there was such a violent earthquake that the foundations of the prison were shaken. At once all the prison doors flew open, and everyone’s chains came loose.

Acts 16:25-26

And James in his letter makes this a teaching…

Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.

James 1:2ff
  • Praise celebrates the relationship in ALL circumstances. The relationship doesn’t change!
  • In Exodus 25:8, God tells Moses to build a sanctuary that “I may dwell among them”. Not a grand building — a tent. It’s not about structure. It is not about form. It’s all about relationship.
  • God wants to enjoy relationship and live with us — and under the New Covenant in Jesus, IN US. He inhabits the praises of His people, Psalm 22:3.
  • True praise comes, not by following a rigid religious form, but out of our relationship with Jesus.

Praise invites God’s presence, raises faith — and confuses the enemy. King Jehoshaphat (2 Chronicles 20:21),faced by a huge hoard of combined pagan armies that were about to overrun the city, had praise singers go out in front of the army.

  • Praise went into battle first. The modest army, following, found a defeated enemy
  • Praise changes us — from fear to faith. It did for Jehoshaphat and his people. It did for Paul and Silas. It. does for us.

Be people of praise, the expression of confidence in God’s goodness

3. Declare His kingdom, bless His people

Do we have power to confer God’s blessing?

The best-known prayer in the Bible includes these phrases:

“Hallowed be Thy name!

“Thy kingdom come!”

“Thy will be done!”

These are declarations which should have exclamation marks, because they are written as imperatives, not as generally understood, petitions.

  • We declare with our spiritual authority in Christ Jesus.
  • Declaring the kingdom is a way of speaking out blessing.

Part of forgiveness — commanded by Jesus

“But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. Luke 6:27-28 NIV and Romans 12:14

(Story about assisting a bishop to bless a new war memorial with holy water)

How much more we of the royal priesthood can bless with our new life in Jesus and Spirit-led words!

More general instance where Jesus says harvest is great but workers few… the mission of the 72… the very first thing is:

“When you enter a house, first say, ‘Peace to this house.’” (Luke 10:5)

  • Not words “kingdom” or “bless” but that is happening
  • Inviting God’s order and experience of His goodness.
  • People who begin to see God can believe in Him.

Everyone is anxious — what is the exit strategy? They need God’s peace and God’s assurance.

Our confidence in God speaks peace to others

4. Live in God’s love and compassion

  • God is love, God is good — but the world doesn’t know that.
  • The religious world is also unsure — it wants to appease God through a variety of actions.
  • But God simply wants to dwell with us knowing Him, and knowing His love.

We read in the prologue to John’s gospel:

“He was not born by the joining of human parents or from natural means, or by a man’s desire, but He was born of God. And so the Living Expression became a man and lived among us — became flesh and blood and moved into the neighbourhood.”

And we gazed upon the splendour of His glory, the glory of the One and Only who came from the Father, overflowing with tender mercy and truth!”

John 1:13-14 The Passion Translation and The Message

We can agree with the Scripture which says: “We gazed”— we have seen this.

We have seen Jesus, who is the complete and perfect representation of God.

“…The Son of God has come, and He has GIVEN US UNDERSTANDING so that we CAN KNOW the true God. And now we live in fellowship with the true God because we live in fellowship with His Son, Jesus Christ.”

 “… The Son of God has made our understanding come alive so that we can know by experience the One who is true.”

TPT

That’s how it works. We turn to Jesus and make a decision to receive Him into our hearts as Saviour and as Lord. And something happens… now we see what we didn’t see before — our understanding comes alive.

Formerly, God was remote, even austere. Now we know Him, and we know  His love. So we can live in this love, and therefore we can love others.

Confidence in God is confidence in His love and compassion

5. Meet God in His mission

“But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect.”

1 Peter 3:15 NIV

“If someone asks about your hope as a believer, always be ready to explain it…” NLT

As we hold on to hope, as we choose to praise God in the face of the enemy, declare “His kingdom come!” and in God-given confidence, speak His blessing over others — and as we live in the love and goodness of God: people are going to come to us with their questions.

  • We have something, they don’t have. Pandemic is like a traffic jam of bureaucracy and blame and rising anxiety — and we are the ones like police cars going up the hard shoulder, with the authority to take another route.
  • This is the route of hope in God — the confident way through. Everyone will want this route!

This is our opportunity to gently explain about God’s grace, giving us what we did not earn or deserve, and the joy of knowing Jesus and having that inner peace and confidence in God.

We know the One who has the exit strategy! We can praise His goodness, whatever it looks like where we are.

It’s not difficult to turn to God. Helps if someone who has done that, shows you which way to turn!

When people are turning to God, receiving His peace? Revival!

Out of this affliction, making churches re-think what they are about, and Christian believers stand up for who they believe in, God is bringing awakening, fuelled by our prayer and praise.

Time for us to put our confidence in Him to work and join Him in His mission. Whether physical healing, spiritual deliverance or gracious forgiveness leading to eternal life, salvation is what God is always doing.

Our confidence in God is also confidence to join Him in His mission

Message shared with Bodenham Christian Fellowship, Nov. 1, 2020

The divine imprint

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What is special about Bible verses?

Golden leaves from the lime tree are a sign of the season. Image credit: Ian Greig

Verse

All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realise what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right.

—2 Timothy 3:16 NLT

Good News

God revealed Himself in Jesus, but we are also given God’s revelation of Himself in written form — the Scriptures. These are not just written by people inspired by the Holy Spirit, but the words and phrases have their own spiritual life, such that God uses them to speak to us.

Reflection

Look on the title page of any book and you’ll find an important line in the small print. Sometimes it is just the name. Sometimes it is the imprint year and words: xxxx identifies as the author of this work copyright year.

The Bible, 66 books, has the imprint of God Almighty and there should be a copyright warning because we are told not to add to or subtract from these words in Deuteronomy 4:1-12, echoed in Revelation 22:17-19

How we read it

That doesn’t mean taking things in an over-literal or legalistic way. That was the mistake made by the Pharisees of Jesus’ time, who studied Scripture and took seriously what is said – but often missed the spirit that was behind the words. They reduced Scripture to a set of propositions to be strictly followed and added to Scripture by making those propositions complicated and lengthy. That is legalism, where supposed righteousness is measured by what you do and don’t do, overlooking the much greater (but more difficult) priority of one’s relationship with God. It is the fault common to all religions which try to construct a repeatable system to teach and to follow, rather than the discretion and responsibility of being led by the Spirit in a relationship with God.

God-breathed

These are words written by human authors but but under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. In Scripture, “breath”, “wind” and “Spirit” are interchangeable. God breathes His spiritual life into us — as in the title line of the well-known hymn “Breathe on me, breath of God”.

God’s spiritual life has been breathed into the words in the page, which us why they speak to us beyond the actual words — there is an impartation, something spiritual being created in us, as we engage with God’s truth put into words.

Our interaction

The interaction is important — it is how we grow. God intends for us to grow in Him, to build our spiritual maturity, every day of our lives. Like every kind of fitness, there are growth pains and setbacks in the progress. But if we stay with it, we grow.

That means us reading the Bible and letting God speak through it day by day. It confronts the rather unspiritual idea that we attend church or chapel once a week or once a month, and watch a spiritual person at the front doing the engagement with God on our behalf, including reading His word. When printing was ‘new technology’ and education restricted to a privileged few, not everyone could read and it made practical sense to read out words publicly. Now printed Bibles are plentiful, and we have searchable Bible texts available on the screen of a smartphone in our pocket. What our Father wants from us is developing our personal relationship with Him, and that means having plenty of our own engagement with the number one way He speaks to us.

Teach us what us true

God not only wants us, His children, to grow, but His Spirit in us gives us a hunger for more — we want to grow. Spending time with God and His word — the daily quiet time — is a habit all Christians learn and although fashions in discipleship come and go, some form of quiet time has always been one of the essentials in spiritual life. What God shows us in our quiet time is our news, our Good News for the day. We listen to broadcasts that keep us informed about the world, local and worldwide. It’s not always uplifting. As a source of encouragement it lets us down more often than not.

So we need to give some precious time and attention to what is always life-giving and a source of encouragement — God giving us His word for today, from His word that has endured, and has an eternal quality.

We don’t need to be biblical scholars or have an encyclopaedic knowledge — the Holy Spirit can show us where to go or give us a phrase to search. We just need to be alert, and willing to be led in directions that might not make sense to us at the time.

Corrects us when we are wrong

Similarly, Scripture acts as a yardstick to measure against. A proposed course of action, or a response to somebody, or just an attitude we are holding — if it doesn’t check out with Scripture, Scripture has ways of showing us.

Bible Sunday

Around this time of year, when the clocks change to winter time, many churches celebrate Bible Sunday. Gathering as church to celebrate and worship God has no meaning apart from His word. The early apostles taught disciples in the temple courts — from the Scriptures. And the believers also met from house to house, and discussed what was being learned from the Scriptures, Acts 20:20. Some traditions put more store by symbolic acts that they designate as sacraments. How many people have a life-changing conviction and find new life, born again spiritually, through this means? What we do know, is that “faith comes by hearing the message, and. the message is heard through the word about Christ,” Romans 10:17, and many, many people come under holy conviction and are born again through hearing the word proclaimed. So if we are seeking an outward sign of an inner blessing, this is the one that has the most personal testimonies of change!

Take away

• Do you have a routine for giving God space to speak to You through His word? How could you improve this?

• Start a journal, where you can write or record what you sense God saying to You through His word, reflect on it — and perhaps share it, for the encouragement of someone else.

Link

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

Doing life ‘by the book’

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Herefordshire valley landscape
View from Dinedor Camp over Holme Lacy. Image credit: Ian Greig

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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Life is a training session

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A window through trees on the top of Raven’s Causeway, reveals fields a few hundred feet below. Image credit: Ian Greig

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

A glimpse of heaven’s working raises our assurance

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Red kite soaring in blue sky
Red kite has a high-level perspective. Image credit: Ian Greig

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