Category: Theology and Reflections

Thought I’d write a little something something before the end of 2018.

This year has been, as all years tend to be, a battle. It’s been a battle of perspectives, knowledge, family, friends, enemies, spirituality, sin and self. This year, more then ever before in my Christian walk I’ve battled with the unknown and the darkness that looms in my own heart as well as the very real struggles of the world around me. More then any year previously I’ve come to understand more of how broken and sinful I really am and I’ve come to realize how much about the world I have yet to explore and how little of God I truly know. The spiritual road ahead has seemed so uncertain there are days I genuinely question if it’s even worth continuing to walk with Jesus. After all, I worship a person I cannot see, or hear, or feel. It’s very easy to lose sight of who and where Jesus is.

However, today I had a sort of an epiphany. You can be told something 100 times over and it won’t be until the 101st that the light bulb comes on. Jesus and His Kingdom is bigger than me. Theologically I’ve known that to be true for some time. It wasn’t until today though that I realised that I’ve been living like as though I’m the most important person in God’s Kingdom. I’ve been tremendously selfish, completely focused on myself believing God is for all people but acting like as though my relationship with God was all that mattered. All of a sudden, bam, the fog cleared, I felt a bit lighter in my steps and some of the things I’ve been struggling with have become less of an issue.

Let me be clear. God loves me more tremendously then I could perhaps ever understand. I know that if I were the only person who was to ever respond to His Gospel He’d still have sent His Son to atone for my sins. However, here’s the Good News. Jesus has chosen and called me to be a faithful blessing to others, not just myself. God’s mission is about redeeming the entire world through Jesus, not just me. His Kingdom is bigger, more loving, more powerful than whether or not I’ve had my coffee this morning. And so as it’s literally the last day of 2018 I wanted to leave you with this (for whoever is reading):

1. Start 2019 on the right foot. You aren’t the most important person in God’s Kingdom (Revelation 7:9).

2. But you are important. God loves you and wants to save you from your brokenness and sin (Psalm 86:5).

3. You are called to serve and bless others, not just to reap the benefits of your own redemption (Exodus 19:6, 1 Peter 2:9 and 2 Corinthians 9:8-11, Romans 12).

4. Let God work wonders within you. You don’t know what He has in store for you this 2019.

5. Pray (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18), preach (2 Timothy 4:2), love (Philippians 1:9-10) and serve (Galatians 5:13) to the glory of God and the joy of all people (1 Corinthians 10:31).

2019. It’s going to be much the same as 2018 and every year before it. The wicked will prosper and the righteous perish. The wrong people will be in power, the marginalised will continue to be marginalised, the poor, the needy, and the persecuted still oppressed. Anxiety, depression and mental opposition will remain itching at the walls of your mind while sin crouches out your heart seeking to rule over you (Genesis 4:7). Indeed, there is nothing new under the sun (Ecclesiastes 1:9). Something is not right with the world, and no amount of New Year’s resolutions or self-help plans will change that despite, perhaps, their placebic therapeutic value. 2019 is not going to be a new year, nothing special will occur that hasn’t already taken place. “A fresh year!” we might say, “a new year to start again and fix what was broken in the last.” However, no amount of glue can cover the cracks of our broken vessels. We remain weak and vulnerable, and yet somehow we are left believing that if we just have one more new year we can fix everything that’s been broken in the past ever since Adam. A human can no more fix the world around them or within them then a cracked pot can put itself together. The pot, like humanity, must have something greater than itself to bring the pieces back together. A Potter.

This new year let me urge you to, in a sense, see nothing new within the year itself, don’t look to self-help guides or resolutions rather, look to One who can make you and all things completely new (Revelation 21:5). Now all of a sudden as you trust in the Saviour, though sin may still crouch it can be easily ignored and ruled over (Romans 6). Though depression and anxiety may still scratch away, your mind can now dwell on that which is pleasing instead (Romans 12, Philippians 4:8). Though many of us have felt like death this year, Jesus wants to bring us abundant life (John 10:10). Though we have felt loveless and even unworthy of love Christ wants to pour out His endless love into our hearts (Romans 5:5) making it new along with our spirits and minds (Ezekiel 36:26).

Fear not.

There will come a day when Jesus will rule with an iron rod as king of His kingdom (Psalm 2, Revelation 2:27). Where He will bring justice and peace to all nations (Isaiah 41, Matthew 12), but like all the best things in life this will take time and because it will be the best thing of all it will take the most. In the meantime, let Jesus do a work in you now. You don’t need to lay shattered and broken if only you come to Him and drink.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again Christianity can be boring. It’s not every day you see pillars of fire and smoke, the Spirit hovering around as a dove, and people being raised from the dead. Christianity can be a grind and ritualistic. It can feel flat, very mundane. I get this. You may need to take a break from the grind and ritualism, get some perspective, take a deep breath and reset. Maybe the church your in isn’t right, maybe you’re not spending enough time with other people, maybe your not spending enough time by yourself, maybe your not resting enough or working or being creative enough (this blog, for example, is a great outlet for me). Recalibrate, get some wisdom and insight and go back refreshed.

I wonder though if the mundane is just as important.

I wonder if sometimes my perspective on what the Christian life should be is skewed a bit. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for the awe and wonder in the Christian life. However, perhaps the mundane is just as important as the big bang moments we all long to see… maybe even more important. What I mean is this. We read Acts or something and what we see from the author (Luke) is intentional highlight reels in order to report on the progression and expansion of the early Church. Of course, we’re gonna see miracles and revivals, reading about the Church braking bread just doesn’t make for a good story (Acts 2:42). There’s an intent from the author that we sometimes mistake for an exclusive prescriptive text rather than allowing the story to just unfold and live our lives informed by it.

Here’s what I mean. When we read books like Acts we should be saying “there’s the Christian life in all its glory.” But we should also consider the space in between the highlights, the years of downtime between events that God was most likely using to prepare hearts and minds for His Kingdom and mission. Take the Apostle Paul as an example. We read that he was converted in a blinding flash of light, a voice from the Heavens saying “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” and Paul being lead into Damascus where he recovers his sight and is baptised by Ananias (Acts 9:1-19). Very dramatic. I certainly didn’t hear God’s voice when I became a Christian, no dove fell on me, I wasn’t blinded by a light. However, what we don’t often realise about Paul’s experience is that he went to Arabia (Galatians 1:11-2:21) among other places and does only God knows what. What I’m saying is even Paul had to be prepared, he wasn’t converted and then immediately used by God to preach the Gospel and rapidly expand the early Church.

The mundane is important, more important than the high moments. Without them, the bang moments aren’t going to happen. It can be boring, it can be dull but change your perspective. God is sanctifying you (Acts 26:18, 2 Timothy 2:21), conforming you to the image of His Son (Romans 8:29), cultivating your spirit and heart to walk in His will (Ephesians 2:10). He wants to prune off the darkness and the sin, the brokenness and fill you with Himself. This could take time, even years (think how long it took the Israelites the get into the promised land). This all happens through the normality of life, through the daily grind, through relationships, prayer, reading, and doing the mundane Christian life. Let God do His thing because His thing is very powerful even if you don’t always notice it.

This morning I woke up just feeling empty. I felt completely disconnected from God, myself, and with the world around me. I knew something was wrong deep within myself. Deep within my soul. Every Christian wrestles with this feeling at times right? It’s not just me? You know the one… it’s that feeling where there’s a huge gaping chasm between how you’re living and your faith. It comes packaged with doubts, fears, depression. It’s a bit of a mixed bag. You can go whole seasons of your life not realising your in it or purposefully ignoring it. Some people call it a dry period, I’ve heard others call it the dark night of the soul experience. Whatever it is, it sucks! Sometimes I feel like looking in the mirror and wonder what’s going on? Do I not pray enough? Do I not read my Bible enough? Do I not have enough faith? Do I not go to church enough, or the right church? Do I not believe in the right set of doctrines? Maybe there’s sin in my life. Maybe God doesn’t love me as much as I thought. Maybe God doesn’t even exist. Doubts and darkness creep in and slip through the cracks and it’s easy to spiral into an unfruitful, loveless, lifeless Christianity. So, what do we do when it feels like we’ve come to the end of our rope?

I’ll be blunt. There’s no easy answer. You can pray, fast, read the bible in a year, go to church and listen to every sermon under the Sun and still not be able to climb out of your spiritual rut. Let me, however, ask another question, what if it’s in the rut that God intends to have you in order to conform you to the likeness of His Son (Romans 8:29)? I’m not saying God intends to keep you in your sin. God hates sin, He hates when you participate in it, He hates when you sin against others and He hates when you sin against Him. I know it’s hard, sometimes nearly impossible, but even in the dry ruts you can turn from sin and continue to trust in God and what He might be doing in you in the midst of the rut. Sin does not have dominion over you (Romans 6:12), it doesn’t have power, you can say no to sin and yes to God if the Spirit lives inside of you (Romans 8:1-11, Galatians 5:16). What I am saying is even if you are keeping your nose clean, life can still feel pretty rubbish. It is in these seasons however that perhaps God is doing His best work. What better time to trust in God than when there’s no excitement and pizzaz. What better time to trust in God then when you can’t tell He is near (though He’s probably closer than ever). What better time to love God and walk by the Spirit when you just don’t feel like it. What better time to love your neighbors when they’re always grinding your gears. What better time to go the extra mile at work when all you want to do is go home. What better time to lavish love upon your spouse when all you want to do is watch television or scroll on Facebook. What better time to worship the God of the universe when it’d be easier to shelve Him and put Him in the back burner.

The dry ruts are the best times of growth and worship. In your high times you’ll look back on them fully appreciating what God had done for you in those moments, what He had to teach you, what He had to show you. It might even take a few more ruts until you get it, but never forget that God loves you, He is with you, and He is always working things out for your good.

Angles, demons, spirits, ghosts, vampires, werewolves, witches and wizards. The supernatural pervades our western culture today more than ever. New Age mysticism is on the rise, the occult is coming out of the shadows, the “old gods” are coming back to life. There is, in a sense, a spiritual awakening happening in the Western world. We are moving into a post-secular society where the thirst for the transcendent dominates the hearts and minds of the common man. People crave the spiritual desperately trying to sate their thirst to live for something bigger than themselves, that of life, that offers satisfaction and power, and they will drink from any source that looks pleasing to the eye. Really, who can blame them? For centuries the Church has paved over the wellsprings of life and in a clinical sort of fashion dispensed grace and God out like He was some kind of pill. As N. T. Wright says in Simply Christian:

A generation passed. All seemed to be well. Then, without warning, the springs that had gone on bubbling and sparkling beneath the solid concrete could be contained no longer. In a sudden explosion, a cross between a volcano and an earthquake, they burst through the floor that people had come to take for granted. Muddy, dirty water shot into the air and rushed through the streets and into houses, shops and factories. Roads were torn up, whole cities in chaos. Some people were delighted: at last they could get water again without depending on The System. The people who ran the official water pipes were at a loss. Suddenly everyone had more than enough water, but it wasn’t pure and couldn’t be controlled …

The Church, in its endeavour to do right, has unfortunately done some wrong. Recently, I’ve written an article on how we’ve lost our temple experience when it has come to how we do church. I think this principle applies here. Sunday church, at least in my experience, has become sort of stale, bland, like dry toast. I mean it fills you but it leaves you wanting something sweeter. Why? I dunno. Maybe I’ve just lost touch with what’s important to the Christian experience. Actually, I wouldn’t doubt it. I need God to revive me a clean and fresh heart, one that’s open to His Word, to His sacraments (Baptism and the Lord’s Supper), to His people (the Church). There is a certain sense in which I’ve probably fallen out of love with it all. The romance has faded. However, when I read Acts… there just has to be more then what we’re seeing. I have to wonder if the Sunday church has lost touch with itself, with its temple vibes. Where’s the fear of God? Where’s the crashing experiences of God’s presence? Where’s the unfettered bold preaching of God’s Word? Where’s the power of the Spirit at work among His people? I’m sure it’s out there but, let’s be honest though, it’s few and far between. Is it a wonder then that people are running and drinking from the muddied explosions of water that pour through our streets? We need to break the pavements, expose the tainted wells, and prove that the waters of life that Jesus offers, last.

Pastor, let me encourage you, preach the Word in and out of season, feed your sheep (2 Timothy 4:2). Evangelise, be bold about your faith (Romans 10:4), the harvest is plentiful but the labourers are few (Luke 10:2). Lay hands and pray for healings and miracles (Acts 6:6) even if it doesn’t always happen, God is good and He is in control. Pray hard, God listens and wants to work in your church (1 Thessalonians 5:16). Love others as yourself, because God first loved you (1 John 4:19. Let the rivers of living water flow out from you as you walk in step with Christ and His Spirit (John 7:38).