And All That Jazz

Posted on by beckonstuff

So … an update.

As those of you who know me socially are aware, I’m currently worship team leader at my home church — a mid-size, vibrant fellowship on the southside of Brisbane. And … I’m in my mid-fifties.

This means two things. One, I’m aging out of my role; and two, my ministry didn’t take me to where I expected. And yet … the more I reflect on it, the luckier I feel. Let me explain.

When I was 15, I felt God call me to the music ministry. Specifically, He said (this was in the mid-80s), ‘I’m calling you to be an Amy Grant.’ I didn’t share this with many people, because it sounded so self-aggrandising and I was horribly self-conscious. I could sing just fine, but knew perfectly well at that age that my natural chances at this were pretty much zero. I knew He’d have to do the heavy lifting. So I left that part of it with Him.

My part appeared to be chasing down every opportunity to mould myself into the singer for whom such a Grand Destiny™ would be feasible. So I developed my voice, and my parents bought me as many backing tapes as they could. I had no money, so it was decades before I took singing lessons, and by the time I did, I’d done most of my dash and dosh. But I copied other singers (thank you, everyone from Jamie Owens-Collins to Leslie Phillips) until I could repeat their licks and trills at speed. It took me forever to master vibrato. I couldn’t read music, but I worked out some basic chord theory so I could write songs. Let me tell you, the songs I wrote at 15 were such dreck they even repulsed me! But I wrote them anyway. You can’t get to ‘good’ without going through the rubbish phase, I told myself, so get on with it. Yeah you’ve got no life experience. But you know how to write a poem. I invented a whole pop star persona (she looked like a backing singer from Wham!) and wrote her five or so ‘albums’. With stage outfits and cover art, naturally 😊 now rather water-damaged. I sang these songs to no one, shy even of my own judgment.

I also struggled to feel close to God. The way I relate to Him and feel about Him now has taken my whole lifetime to arrive at. I don’t know if that’s because I’m dense, or if it’s simply that the human soul has so many gateways and they’re not all open at the same time. It may simply take this long. At 15 I had a desire for God, and a trust in Him, but couldn’t feel Him on the daily. I had little idea of what He was like. (I’m now writing the DNA of God series to help others leap this gap.) There were hurdles. But Jesus and me, we worked on it. Our family was on the mission field at the time, and there was nothing else to do but work on my craft before the Lord.

The next few years brought massive change, going back to New Zealand on my own to live with the youth pastors for the final two years of high school. Then I left Ashburton for Christchurch — the Big Smoke — to work. I didn’t go to uni. Why would I? I was about to be discovered and become Charity Churchmouse, Gospel Singing Star! You don’t need a degree for that; you need exposure, experience, and a bit of cash. I joined a band. I wanted to be a Youth For Christ singer, but YFC had resident bands I wasn’t in (though they did throw it open for one night in 1990, and my band got to do a song). I applied for Y-One (a gospel arts presentation group that toured NZ year by year) and didn’t get in. I was 19. What next? How do you make such a huge, impossible dream happen?

This was the point at which I took a much-belated detour into rebellion (oh my goodness, it was so tame, but still so empty and therefore instructive). Upshot: my best friend and I moved to Brisbane ‘to make a pile of money in easy-to-get jobs and go clubbing for four months and then move back home and brag about our OE.’ Well. The jobs weren’t that easy to get, and by the time I got one, I wasn’t letting it go. Almost immediately I reconnected with a local friend I’d met on the mission field, she invited me to church, and the rest is history. She and I and my bestie all married boys from the same church thrash band, but that’s another story.

Here I was in Brisbane, still with this Big Calling hanging over me. How do you go about becoming a Christian rock star? Probably starts by serving in smaller, humbler ways and somehow, sometime, getting discovered while you were just living for the Lord and pushing your envelope as hard as you could. So I joined the church and youth music teams, and a local band as well. I wrote maybe 200 songs (some of them even had chords!). If fame was going to come knocking, it wouldn’t find me kicking my heels.

Here’s the bit where you’ll wonder if I’m being disingenuous. I’m actually being as honest as I can: it was NEVER about becoming rich & famous for the sake of it. It was NEVER about ‘make way, everyone, I have a great voice and I’m not afraid to use it.’ I knew perfectly well I wasn’t the best voice in the church (and still aren’t!). I have a great voice, but it’s not brilliant or strikingly unique. And I was surrounded by people who were brilliant and strikingly unique. Our church was an absolute magnet for them. It was about being faithful to my Jesus and His call. It was about chasing the ‘Well done, My good and faithful servant.’ I didn’t know how else to go about it.

So there I was, a middling fish with a big destiny in a big pond of really Big Fish with big destinies of their own. And it was hard. I often felt left behind, discarded and underestimated. To be just, this was never pushed at me. Our Big Fish were genuinely great people, who operated their talents with humility as well as skill. But my inferiority and impostor syndrome continually rose to the surface as I struggled to be someone who cheered on those who exceeded her. Maybe I even had an inner vow to the tune of, ‘I am always the one bringing up the rear. Always the bridesmaid, never the bride.’

What did I learn in that season? To love, support and celebrate others as I would want to be loved, supported and celebrated. To wait my turn and not give up on God or on myself. To continue to grow in my gift. To persevere in faith. There were wobbles, of course. But for all I look back and see where I failed, the Lord helped me do better than I probably thought at the time.

I think from the outside of my head, it must have looked like I was the forever Wannabe, chasing the bands around, taking their photos and buying their merch, putting my hand up for literally everything like there was some kind of demand for me. It must have looked desperate and tryhard. It increasingly was. But I had heard from God. I couldn’t throw that away. I had to persist with my middling gifts and big dreams. So I did.

The season in the church turned, and so did my life, as motherhood arrived. There were a lot of curveballs, not least of which was the prevailing advice that went, ‘Why are you still chasing ministry opportunities? You’ve got a baby now.’ As if giving birth was the exclusive pinnacle of a woman’s call. Maybe it is, but none of that negated what God had said to me. Nobody says this to new fathers. The same people who will preach ‘Never doubt in the dark what God told you in the light’ and ‘Step out of the boat’ and ‘Don’t bury your talent’ will have you bench yourself when you become inconvenient. Having a family seemed no reason to dump the call of the God on my life. A working uterus is not a disqualification! So I kept going, balancing (poorly) the needs of my family with the demands of the only path to my calling I was aware of. God was saying to my spirit, ‘Get up, get in the game!’ while others were saying, ‘Rest!’ Guess which voice my church thought I should obey?

Remember, I’m from a missionary family. We don’t sideline ourselves unless forced. The mission burns in us and the flame never goes out. Is it low-key obsessive? Yes, it is. But the Heavenly cloud of witnesses is looking on, with far harsher deterrents and far steeper costs under their belts. So we ask ourselves in each season, ‘How do I stay faithful to God and His call in this season? There are some things I can’t do right now. But what can I do? How do I “press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me”?’

There were a disturbing number of people who wanted to get in the way of what God had called me to do. That’s harsh, but that’s how it felt. I wasn’t stupid: when several people block you in your calling, the logical thought is, Maybe I’m not ready. Maybe there’s something in my life that needs repentance, correction, adjustment. Maybe this is the Lord’s discipline and training. So you go introspective. You examine minutely every aspect of your life, you bring it before the Lord in surrender, you ask for direction and the capacity to change. You ask Him to teach you quickly, so you can get on with the job He gave you. Time is marching on — you’re in your thirties now.

For me, this resulted in more obsession, not less. I did not know at the time that I suffered from capital-A Anxiety, PDD, and female ADHD, which I’ve only identified recently. And my inner life became all about self-renovation, self-effort, constant anxious polishing. If I can just polish my gift, my soul, my attitude, my presentation, my contribution enough … the Lord and the gatekeepers will smile and fling the doors wide and it will all start to happen. Subconsciously, God had stopped being seen as my Father and started being my Employer. My leaders had stopped being my Shepherds and started being a Tribunal. And the worst part was, the more excruciatingly I tried to be Shiny, the less shiny I got, because there is nothing shiny about anxiety.

I’ve written extensively, and as fairly as I can, about what I experienced in those years in Someone to Look Up To. Suffice it to say that it was a period of spiritual abuse, and it took many years to recover.

In 2006 I recorded my first album, Day in the Sun, with Aisle 6 Records. I say first, but to date it’s my only. I would quite like to record a companion CD for the DNA of God series, and times have never been better to do it at home on the cheap, but we’ll see. Day in the Sun remains a fantastic album, filled with the contributions of my star-quality friends and family.

Did fame and fortune come knocking? Did Word Inc. come beating my door down with offers of recording contracts and touring schedules? Er … no. How do you market yourself? I had no idea. The radio station wanted music they could point out in a shop. The shop wanted music that was already playing on the radio. I liked the idea of singing in local churches, but how do you get the courage to knock on those doors when your own church is reluctant to have you play? So I did a launch, and a couple of Easterfests, and whatever presented itself. And I waited for God to have me ‘discovered’.

Nobody discovered me. I want to add a wry, ‘Big surprise,’ but I still believe God called me. I still observe that time and chance happen to us all, and therefore some people DO get discovered while they are playing away in obscurity. I remain living in the tension between what God said and what actually occurred. Perhaps I am one of the sojourners who ‘saw these things afar off and welcomed them’ but didn’t get to take part in this life. I don’t know. Did I screw things up? I don’t know. Did life screw with me? Definitely. Could God have still made everything come together? Absolutely.

What I do know now is this: calling, destiny, purpose, and fate are not synonyms.

God placed several callings on my life, bolstered by several gifts. As I write this, I am conscious of my rudder beginning to slowly shift away from music and more towards writing. A calling is an invitation. You might be issued several invitations. None of those invitations guarantee you’ll be teleported to the venue.

So I never became ‘an Amy Grant’ in the sense of worldwide influence through music — at least, not yet! But let me tell you what the Lord DID do for & through me, while I was busy fixating on that. This isn’t a humble-brag; it’s a record of how good the Lord has been to me. He gave me a turn at pretty much everything:

  • I got to be part of various choirs. In one of them, we ministered in an outdoor stadium event.
  • I got to sing the gospel at high school music nights. (Once a year, to balance out the fool I’d made of myself in PE four times a week, lol.)
  • I got to front a few bands.
  • I got to busk.
  • I got to sing in the Christchurch Town Hall to a packed crowd.
  • I got to sing and play in God’s house as part of a team and as occasional soloist. I got to bless people — they were kind enough to tell me so.
  • I got to learn about praise and worship, the role of music in church, and be part of powerful moments.
  • I got to write songs, and even had some recorded by another singer.
  • I got to write worship songs and have a couple of them sung in church.
  • I got to sing at weddings. And parties. And a house church. A cafe. Bible college chapel. And outreaches. A rally.
  • I got to do backing vocals and choir on two or three of the church’s albums. One of my songs was supposed to be on another of them, but got cut.
  • I got to help direct the church kids’ choir. At least one of those kids grew up to be a phenomenal worship leader.
  • I got to conduct the adult church choir, which included managing arrangements-on-the-fly.
  • I got to be head soprano in that choir.
  • I got to record and launch an original album. Very few people have one, but those who do have one, love it and have been blessed by it.
  • I got to do studio session vocals for five other artists (and crowd vocals for a sixth).
  • I got to play festivals. I got to support and encourage friends and strangers at festivals, too.
  • I got to be part of the local Christian band movement.
  • I got to solo in Carols productions to a couple of thousand people.
  • I got to perform in a breast cancer fundraising musical, and headline the concert after.
  • I got to be Girl Friday as well as worship leader on the extension-church team, when you never knew who would fail to show up and therefore which instrument you’d be filling in on. (I only played two, so actually that was more my husband being Man Friday, since he played four.)
  • I got to work under some 14 creative directors, and they all taught me something.
  • I got to sing with some pretty incredible people … and still do!
  • I got to use my music skills within school chaplaincy to support, inspire, include and guide. Part of this was running the choir, but also helping individual kids with their performances and even giving some. The music teacher and I are lifelong friends.
  • About the only thing I haven’t gotten to do, really, is lead stadium worship … though I once had a vision I would!
  • I got to find out that I am MORE THAN A VOICE. More than a functionary. God loves ME, and losing my voice wouldn’t change that. Also, He told me, ‘You bless more people with your smile than with your voice anyway.’ Talk about perspective.
  • I get to lead worship in church, at chaplains’ PD days, at women’s events, at writers’ network weekends, at prayer meetings.
  • I get to play keys (moderately) and guitar (badly) and even be music director, the person on stage who helps the worship leader’s vision get across to the band. (I keep planning to learn bass …)
  • I get to lead a team. I get to develop training materials and teach them, with coaching and by example, everything I’ve learned over the years about serving in the worship space. They teach me a thing or two, too. I still have a long way to go. I love them.
  • I get to write a book about all this (God willing!). It’s to be called Someone to Worship Beside.

Am I going to whine now, because I never got the specific pressure of crippling contractual debt hanging over my poor neurosparkly head, living out of a suitcase and spending my days on the road, missing my family, while the world on both sides of the Cross shredded my imperfections in the media? Ha. I’d have been mincemeat. Thank God for His mercy.

From the seven-year-old kid inventing chords on a ukulele, to the newbie keyboardist whose knees literally knocked the first time she played, to the middle-aged lady welcoming the coming move of God — He’s been with me, meeting me every day in little moments, speaking verses from His Word, ministering to me through music, touching my small gifts with His presence time and again, because He is a big God. He can use and anoint whatever we surrender to Him. And … I’m not dead yet.

Taya: Walk With You

Image credit: Arto Sirvio

Flat Out

Posted on by beckonstuff

Moving into a leadership space is a lot like going flatting with your peers for the first time.

When you live with your parents, you say things to yourself like,

‘When I get my own place, I’m going to shower for as long as I like!
Play my music as loud as I like!
Decorate the way I like!
Clean up as seldom as I like!
Have friends over any time I like!‘

But the reality is that when you move in with other people – quelle horreur! you find that you still have to behave like a considerate human being.

I’ve recently accepted a creative team leadership role and I’m finding (as a newbie, despite having written a leadership book) that leadership is like flatting. To an even greater degree, it is not my personal playground. I can’t use it solely as a vehicle to try out my insane theories and experiments, because people’s lives are at stake. It’s not a piece of wish-fulfilment that God’s dropped on me, and it’s certainly not a stage for me to grandstand on. I’ve had to park some ideas because they were simply not going to work. Praise God, I have co-leaders around me who see my blind spots.

So, when it turns out that being in charge does not, in fact, fulfil all my fantasies, I have to compromise. Go with it. Bend. Allow the Lord to shape me into the best leader I can be.

Now and then, I am going to screw up and annoy people and need grace and forgiveness. I hope I don’t mess up too publicly, or cause damage to anyone, or bring the church into disrepute. I hope I am quick to see my errors and apologise. I am obviously hoping for a stellar performance, but I know my flesh is strong and always looking for ways to assert itself. I have to lean VERY hard and intentionally on the Holy Spirit to not fall into its traps. #imperfect

I am trying to learn to think like a leader – to watch for occasions to encourage and show care. I’m not always sure how much self-revelation is appropriate. You want to be transparent about your own flaws and your learning curve; but you don’t want to erode confidence. As a person who has historically had poor boundaries (‘I am an MK and therefore public property’) and worn her heart on her sleeve, this is going to be a tricky balance, even though it serves me quite well as a writer.

Sometimes, other people will behave poorly. It’s not good leadership to stand on my pedestal going, ‘It was their fault, not mine!’ even though everything fleshly in me screams to do so. It may be that getting misunderstood inevitably comes with the role. The Golden Rule is a directive, not a guarantee. If people are going to think badly of someone, in one sense it may be my job to let that someone be me, rather than someone in my care – just hang onto my integrity and let God vindicate me. I don’t mean one should be dishonest; just that one can choose to be circumspect, rather than spreading things around. A little judicious vagueness is sometimes the loving policy. And sometimes I’ll just have to let the fruit of the Spirit in you speak for itself as time goes by. This’ll be a great deal easier if I’m cooperating with it!

I am unsure yet about how much of this ‘martyr’ line of thinking is, in fact, godly. On the threshold of our calling we are often tempted to sacrifice – someone else, ourselves, or the honour of God – when the only true sacrifice is the blood of Christ. And there is also the temptation toward melodrama. It will bear watching, this thinking, and also listening to the voice of God.

I’m finding it useful, on the way to Sunday morning rehearsal, to pray through the fruit (God’s DNA) and also the Lord’s Prayer (because it’s not as if my prayers are superior to Jesus’s!).
It goes something like this.

  • Lord, please give me Your intense love for each of my teammates.
  • Let me bring Your joy to fuel our worship and foster an atmosphere of gratitude among us.
  • Help me promote Your peace in and between all of us, especially when technical things go wrong. When everything crumbles around us – electrical faults, declines, illness, missing equipment – You still want to meet with us, You never crumble, and all will be well! In fact, curveballs increase our reliance on the things You can do that we cannot. Do what only You can do!
  • Help me to have Your patience when noting any issues in my team – and they with me!
  • May we deal with each other with Your kindness and encouragement.
    Let me bring Your goodness – please, let’s pack this rehearsal full of wholesome ‘spiritual vitamins’.
    May we have faith in each other as You have faith in us, and turn up faithfully, and be faithfully prepared.
  • Help me, Lord, to be gentle like You and humble with others, understanding their circumstances, accepting better ideas, and modelling expression without arrogance or brusqueness.
  • Help us, Lord, to exercise Your self-control when things aren’t going well or we are becoming frustrated. And also when they’re going too well and we’re tempted to get carried away in mere musicality. The centre of the stage is always Yours.
    Help us at home, too, to self-control ourselves into practicing and preparing. Especially me.
  • Because, Father, I want to see Your name put on a pedestal and revered this morning.
  • I want Your kingdom to come, and Your will for this morning to be as clearly followed here as it is in Heaven.
  • Give us today our daily bread: the bread of Your presence and revelation. Our food is to do Your will – and oh, it’s so fulfilling!
  • Forgive us our missteps as we forgive the missteps of others.
  • Lead us away from the temptation to think that things go well because we’re skilled. No. Things go well because You graciously meet with us and work in our meeting and in our lives. You routinely exceed our capabilities.
  • Deliver us from evil and all its influences.
  • For this thing we do – the worship of Your holy name – it’s for YOUR kingdom. Through YOUR power. For YOUR glory. And those things are eternal.
  • Thank you for lending us tools and letting us be the child ‘helping’ our Dad do the heavy lifting. I love You, Lord. Be with me now. Amen.

Revelation, part 2: Here be Dragons

Posted on by beckonstuff

In my last post (Factory Seconds), I talked about the beasts of Revelation 12-13, brutal powers who enforce worldwide conformity through oppression and deception, war and authority. They are contrasted with the forever-King on the throne, who is depicted in this particular set of vignettes not yet as Calvary-becomes-cavalry, but as a once-slaughtered Lamb. The monsters roar and rage, while the true believers, by comparison, are singing the song of the Lamb.

On an allegorical level, there is a question here for us as believers and as the Church: do we follow the ways of a dragon, or the ways of a lamb? Are we all about power and weaponry and forcing conformation (for the good of all, naturally) or do we exercise a humility that points to the glory of the Lord rather than to our own? Are we seeking to be big and scary – a strong Christian state you don’t mess with – or a gentle and relatable groundswell of Jesusness? Are we roarers or singers?

Until the return of Jesus, I don’t know if we can ever establish a Christian state that does not make all the same mistakes as a pagan state – if that even is what He’s called us to do. Think for a second about the way ‘Christian countries’ have policed unrighteousness (and even difference) in the past. It’s not been pretty. Unless we are steeped and soaked in the presence and directing of the Holy Spirit, who loves people (a huge ask for a governing body made up of many individual believers) we are not going to rule well. And so this drops a large hint. If we ever want to ‘occupy until He returns’ and do it well, training as kings and priests the God-way, then our best course of action is not to amass power, but to daily immerse ourselves in Him.

There is a particular Western subculture which values bravado to such an extent that guns and God are inseparable. On the one hand, I understand its appeal: to be brave, to be the heroic defender of home and country and the unlawful incursions of heathen ravagers. But on the other hand, our Saviour demonstrated for us a great deal of pacifism. To say nothing of apoliticality.

I must confess that because I am not from that subculture, I am undereducated on the ethos of weaponry for worshipers. Jesus did indicate that it was okay to have a sword, and the context of the Scripture lends itself to this referencing an actual metal sword, rather than a metaphor for the Word of God. The right time to employ such a sword, however, is up for grabs. Simon Peter almost aborted the crucifixion by trying to do the ‘right thing’ with a weapon at the wrong time. He earned a rebuke for this mistake. And I can’t help but think it must have stung, perhaps whipping his mind back to the episode where he was told he was channelling the satan for earthly motives. Was he only afraid, around the bonfire, of flogging – or was he sulking as well? Torn between loyalty and confusion, brashness and incompetence? Poor Peter. How, without the indwelling Spirit, and in the absence of the arrested Son, was he supposed to know what to do and when to do it? All he knew was, he kept getting it wrong, and for all the best reasons, too.

We could posit that owning a weapon for the purpose of self-defence might be permissible, but going on the aggressive with it may not. But here we run into centuries of argument about whether we should wait for the pagans to slaughter us in our beds, or make a preemptive strike for the survival of God’s children.

Watching the rather gruesome dramatised historical show Vikings, in which a Lindisfarne monk is kidnapped as the monastery is sacked around him, and led to a life in which he almost converts to the Norse religion … I got a bit indignant. ‘Lord,’ I expostulated, ‘those holy monks were minding their business and devoted to you, and this happened. Why on earth did you allow that?’ And I received back (caution: subjective!) a sort of sense of the Lord spreading His hands and saying, ‘There was no other way to get the gospel to that Viking community.’ And while the effectiveness of this method might have been debatable in terms of changed Norse destinies, the necessity of the testimony of Jesus being extended can’t be argued.

I have never been in a position where I’ve had to defend my family. But I have serious doubts I could do it proactively. I cannot imagine picking up a gun (or even holding one) and firing it into someone’s body. I cannot imagine driving a knife into another person. Not even in a spot that won’t kill them, assuming I can guess where that might be. Not even with several decades of movies under my belt. I think (and maybe in the heat I’ll be proved wrong) I would rather die innocent, and go to be with Jesus, than live guilty and conflicted over what I’ve done. I don’t even know where on an assailant’s head I could safely hit them with a frypan to knock them out without killing them accidentally.

Could I ever be a soldier? Not against people. A soldier against the spiritual forces of darkness? Yes. Because that’s different. The weapons we use in spiritual warfare are not carnal (corporeal, worldly, cruelty-indulging). They involve speaking and standing on truths from the Word of God and the Logos Himself, coming to us through the counsel of the Holy Spirit. The opponents against whom we wield these words are not people, primarily, but the spirits behind and around them. And these ‘swords’ are for use in pulling down ‘strongholds’ – bastions of wrong thinking that lead to wrong feeling and wrongdoing. (In other words: spiritual, emotional, and mental health.) And they are powerful through the Holy Spirit* – our commanding officer, our wingman. He is the one in charge of the words we quote and the ideas we stand on. He has the timing and the precision, the right tool for each job. He is the tactician who is defeating the enemy; we are His platoon. There is even a case for such a platoon being composed of leaders rather than laity, since all of the Bible passages talking about the ‘armour of God’ are addressed to leaders.

*This is why Cognitive Behaviour Therapy has so many limitations, and why religious litanies don’t always change the heart, even when they contain verses. (1) CBT by itself does not address spiritual realities, and cannot always produce lasting change. (2) Litanies can be photocopied and handed out without even consulting the Holy Spirit on whether it’s right for the recipient – whom He knows intimately. Look at Job’s friends: saying all the right things about God, but misapplying them completely because of their ignorance of the true situation. But in Spirit-directed prayer ministry, the demolition of a spiritual stronghold can lead to such a change in outlook that CBT becomes effective.

Across history we’ve seen nations take up their swords and guns and missiles, even in wars they paint as ‘holy’, for the mere extension of territory and acquisition of resources, and even for personal aggrandisement. While territory, resources and figureheads can benefit the spread of the gospel, I take leave to doubt that these motivations even enter the heads of the back-room decision-drivers.

And so my dichotomy (much as I loathe dichotomies) still stands. Which will we choose, as people who do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God? As people characterised by the growing fruit of God’s DNA – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, gentleness and self-control – will we opt for the way of the dragon, or the way of the Lamb?

Revelation, part 1: Factory Seconds

Posted on by beckonstuff

About a million years ago I remember watching a Veggie Tales Jonah video which included the memorable song, ‘Our God is a God of second chances!’

Dancing asparagi aside, this was brought home to me this morning as I was reading in Revelation. Now, Revelation is considerably above my paygrade. I don’t know how much of it is allegorical, metaphorical, or just plain oracle! I don’t know which events have already taken place and which are yet to come, nor yet which fall into both categories. I believe John simply just wrote down what he saw, and left the interpretation to the ages. He might not have known either!

The thing is, the Bible is relevant to the bright and the not-so-bright. While the bright, and those who can study and research, are going to get a lot more out of it, that does not preclude your average schmuck reading it and drawing Holy-Spirit-influenced conclusions. Or, as the case may be, nonsense conclusions that don’t hold water.

So, since I’m some-random-place in that spectrum – and since I have a loathing for definitive interpretations, despite being keen to make them – take this post, as usual, with a big grain of salt. And please don’t email me long lists of ‘this means that and nothing else’ because, since the experts themselves can’t agree, I will feel no particular need to take sides. I’m just exploring and sharing something I think I found.

If (big giant IF!) John’s vision was given to him in such a way that ‘then’ represents a sequential event, we can string some of what he saw into a sort of dateless timeline. It might not be so, of course. The vision isn’t obligated to be linear. It could have run more like a mind map. Nevertheless, let’s try the idea out.

In addition to the ‘dragon’, there are three other monsters in Revelation: the first beast from the sea, the second beast from the ground (the one with a number and a mark), and the third beast on which Babylon sits. Only the third beast is defined for us as a confederation of kings. Experts disagree on the definition of the other two beasts. Some say they could be individual people, or power groups, or that they could represent humanity’s sin-nature. The same thing is said of the Antichrist, mentioned in other books of the Bible: is it a person, a series of people cropping up throughout history, or an attitude? They could be all of these things simultaneously. The point is, their nature is bellicose, voracious, swift, limit-defying, and brutally emphatic. Monster describes all these entities quite well.

Revelation 13: Beast 1 rises, blaspheming and commanding his own worship. He wages war on the saints on behalf of the Dragon, who gives him authority. Beast 2, the ‘good cop’ who looks harmless but sings the same tune as the Dragon, rises as Beast 1’s delegate. He performs miracles and commands the worship of Beast 1 and its animated statue. It mandates its mark (charagma: etching, brand, sculpture) on the forehead or right hand of all humanity. Beast 2’s deference to and performance for the seemingly-resurrected Beast 1 is almost an unholy mimicking of the function of the Holy Spirit as He points to the actually-resurrected Jesus. So, possibly the Dragon is attempting the role of the Father, the source of authority.

‘THEN,’ there is the Lamb with His 144,000 flawless followers, whose heads bear not the Beast’s branding, but the name-seal of the Father and Son, who do not roar, but sing. It is hard to be sure, but it could be that these are the final remnant of Christians left on the earth after the persecution of the Dragon and Beasts. That wouldn’t explain the Israelite tribal divisions mentioned in Revelation 7. The latter could be a further 144,000 – the successors of the Israelite former.

‘THEN’ an angel is flying in the sky, bearing and proclaiming the gospel to every people group.

So press pause here. If there are only two categories left – the pure 144,000 followers of the Lamb, and the masses of people bearing the Mark of the Beast – then exactly whom is the angel evangelising? And why? Because, at least on the surface, it seems to tell us two things.

  • Our own missionaries didn’t finish the task of bringing the gospel to every people group in time. Or, they were largely ignored. And the 144,000 are not in a position to evangelise.
  • Receiving the mark of the Beast is not the final straw. Because the only candidates left for salvation in this scene are people who have already received the Mark.

This angel of good news is followed by an angel of general news (announcing the fall of Babylon, most commonly associated with ‘the world system’ but sometimes with a particular nation or bastion) and an angel of warning (that those who worship the beast/image and receive his mark will be punished by God).

But then it says a curious thing.

‘“They will be tormented/tested for purity with sulphur/divine fire in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb,” warns the angel, “… [they] will have no rest day or night.” This calls for the endurance and faithfulness of the holy believers – those who follow God’s commands and cling to the faith of Jesus.’

If there are still regular believers on earth alongside the mark-bearers, why would the regular believers need to summon endurance and faithfulness? They aren’t the ones receiving wrath – except, perhaps, in an environmental sense.

But if all the believers are gone except the 144,000 pure singers in the wings, this would then apply to mark-bearers who heed the gospel and convert … and it would make sense that, having received the mark despite centuries of warning, they’d still have to ‘drink the cup of wrath’ – and that means they will need a great deal of endurance and faithfulness. The passage goes on to say, ‘Blessed are the dead – the ones dying in the Lord from now on … they will rest from their trouble, for their [good] deeds will live on!’

Now of course if I’m wrong, if I’ve merely reinvented the wheel of some great heresy-writer of days gone by, then I’m wrong.

But if I’m right, this is cause for wonder. The sin-factory is being blown up. Yet God, at the last extremity of had-enough-ness when He is ready to release His wrath after millennia of holding it in, is still leaving the door open for sinners to repent. These are sinners we were taught were ‘goners’ the minute they took the mark. These are people who – like St Paul, like John Newton, like others – have ravaged the lives of believers. God really is a God of second chances. And though He knows many will perish, He is not willing that any should perish. He continues to do all He can to prevent that. He really is an incredible God.

Part 2 can be found here.

To Commune

Posted on by beckonstuff

‘Communion’ is a beautiful word. It’s made from the word family of ‘union’, and it’s all about fellowship, sharing, and oneness. It’s a oneness with Christ, but it’s also a oneness with each other. The very word ‘partake’ means that you can’t take it without being part of it. And so ‘communion’ for me is more than shaking hands. It’s more like the Māori hongi, a sharing of breath.

Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.   (Genesis 2:7 NIV)

The Lord Jesus, on the night He was betrayed, took bread, and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, “This is My body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of Me.” In the same way, after supper He took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of Me.” For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.   (1 Cor 11:23–26 NIV)

So far, we are in familiar territory. We know that the bread represents His body, and the wine, His blood. We know that the Corinthian church wasn’t taking Communion seriously. There wasn’t any consideration happening, and they’d forgotten it was all about the Lord’s body.

Pause for a moment. In 1 Corinthians 10, Paul has opened the subject of ‘doing Communion badly’. And we get to the end of chapter 11, and we think he’s done, because in chapter 12 he launches into a discussion of gifts and body parts.

But what if chapter 12 is a continuation of the same topic? And love, chapter 13, keeps it going?

On the night Jesus was betrayed, He was celebrating Passover with His disciples. The event was filled with ceremonious remembrance: the pure lamb slain every year in every home, to commemorate the covenant protection of God over the household, and the flight out of slavery, toward the Promised Land.

A lamb is a weak animal, vulnerable: prey. The disciples didn’t know that Jesus was about to be a Slain Lamb. Their heads were in Egypt, 1400 years ago. This speech about His body and blood would have made NO sense to them, because the context was still several hours away — while we’ve had millennia to study it! But they understood blood covenants: they’re about adoption. And they understood threshold covenants: they’re about mutual defence.

In just a matter of hours, Jesus would be arrested, tried, crucified, and dead. That is, His body would be dead. Not just pretend-dead, because it wasn’t a pretend body like the Gnostics claimed. Real dead. If He wasn’t real-dead, He couldn’t represent us, in bearing the death-punishment for our sins. And so whenever we celebrate Communion, we remind all and sundry that the Lord’s death was absolutely real.

And at that point, at the moment of death, the body of Jesus Christ no longer functioned in the world.

That’s why He needed a new one.

Not just a resurrected body to wear home to His Father.

A new body of Christ, to remain and be present and functioning in this world.

And that’s us. We are the new body of Christ.

When we eat the bread and drink the cup, we participate in communion not just with Jesus and His death, but with each other and His life in us.

So when Paul talks about taking Communion in ‘an unworthy manner,’ there may be more than one thing in his mind. ‘It’s more than a potluck,’ Paul’s saying. ‘It’s as solemn as the memory of any departed loved one.’ He goes on to say,

So then, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. Everyone ought to examine themselves before they eat of the bread and drink from the cup. For those who eat and drink without discerning the body of Christ eat and drink judgment on themselves.

So, obviously, clowning around with Communion as though it’s finger food at a party is ‘unworthy.’ But look at the context. The overall theme of these chapters is remembering Jesus as our sacrifice and our head, and knitting together our diversity into oneness.

What if examining ourselves for an ‘unworthy manner’ is about checking whether we are considerate and loving of one another? If, when one has a need, we rush to meet it? If, when one is hurt, we rush to soothe it? Ever tried to ignore a paper cut? When one finger hurts, the whole body know about it!

What if ‘sinning against the body and blood of the Lord’ is not just about respecting the sacrament that reminds us of Jesus’ original body, but also about respecting the new body — this body of believers where we fellowship? What if we’re ‘eating and drinking judgment’ because we’re not valuing the very thing we’re part of?

Paul goes on to say that this can cause/allow some get weak and sick and die. I’m not sure if he’s being mystical (‘to disrespect the Body invites a curse’) or practical (‘to disrespect the Body is to fail to cultivate relationships’ that provided, in those days, medical help). And he hints (if this angle holds water) that this discipline/consequence could be avoided if, in these moments when we are most vehemently and publicly claiming to be One Body™, we looked out for one another. And then he goes on to talk about unity in diversity: how we can all use our varied gifts to build one another up. How every member of the Body of Christ is useful, valuable, directed by the Head, and connected to every other member. How talking about the mystical is just hot air unless it’s backed up by loving one another. How faith will be over when the unseen appears, and hope will be over once it’s realised, but love follows us into eternity.

Since we are the new body of Christ in the world, we want to look like Him. So we don’t just hang with the cool kids and shun others. We meet needs, we speak truth, we do what the Father shows us to do by His Spirit. And, wisely and appropriately, we take care of each other. I have to learn to do this better! It doesn’t mean we have to be ‘all up in each others’ business’, or rescuing mini-messiahs; but it does mean we care in appropriate and practical ways, as needs arise, and from the heart. Jesus said,

“Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are My disciples, if you love one another.”   (John 12:34b–35 NIV)

And,

“‘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.’   (Matthew 22:37–39 NIV)

Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one loaf, we, who are many, are one body, for we all share the one loaf.   (1 Cor 10:16–17 NIV)

Let us proclaim His death until He comes. And let us remember that we are one body, the Body of Christ. Let us recognise Him – in each other, and in our connectedness. For,

“Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of Mine, you did for Me.”   (Matthew 25:40 NIV)

Let His breath, His Spirit be in us, animating and linking us, and expressing Himself through us. For,

“The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit.   (1 Cor 15:45 NIV)

In remembrance of Christ’s sacrifice, let’s commit to looking out for ways to be there for one another every time we eat and drink together.

Do the Math

Posted on by beckonstuff

I once heard someone say, or quote someone saying, that who you are at your worst moment – that’s who you really are.

I absolutely want to refute that idea.

If I kicked you in your shins 18 times, would you for that reason define yourself as a “howler”? No? And why’s that? Because what has happened to you is not a regular occurrence. And the way you reacted to it was perfectly logical.

Sometimes, those of us who are conscientious are tempted to try to graph where we’re at. We draw a bell curve or a line graph showing a general upward trend and try to feel we’re doing more okay as time goes by. But I think if we’re going to graph ourselves at all, we need a box-and-whisker plot.

The beauty of the box-and-whisker graph is that it displays statistics in a fashion that has some use. The bulk of the data shows up in the box. Outliers show up in the whiskers. This explains that while you will have abnormally cruel days which will produce unusual results, you can see at a glance that the bulk of your personal data falls within “normal”. Whatever that may be!

A Small Lesson

Posted on by beckonstuff

‘It’s okay to be small,’ He whispered to my soul. And He wasn’t talking about my 5’1½”.

We were in ‘therapy,’ which is the completely accurate name I give to receiving trained prayer ministry as a mutual adjunct to psychology. These wonderful folk use a specific framework to isolate the origins of spiritual problems, as evidenced by the collateral damage they cause in one’s life. And there is also a specific framework for dealing with such matters and all their accretions, and finding a place in God from which to move forward differently.

I have been blessed in my life with several small talents, all of them in the arts: song, dance, writing, artwork.

At the age of 15, when my family had been forever nudging me toward ballet, and my creative writing and drawing were flourishing, I felt God calling me to the music ministry. Without any sort of incandescent brilliance or point of difference, I had a nice sweet soprano voice and could harmonise; music sang in me. That was it, but I knew I wanted to serve God, body and soul. I felt that somehow I was destined to make a dent in the world. I was called to Be Radical For Jesus and Do Big Things For God.

What was the path to becoming the next Amy Grant? I didn’t know. But the stories I heard at that age all sounded like this: the girl was singing someplace, and somebody important heard her, and offered her a recording contract – upon which she went on a world tour and blessed/helped save thousands of people, and made several albums (first, broad-spectrum; second, cool; third, experimental).

Well, I didn’t know anyone in the industry, and I could count the musicians I knew at the time on one hand. I was going to have to trust God to do the rich-and-famous part; my part was to keep singing, and develop my songwriting. My parents, God bless them, bought me as many gospel backing tracks as they could afford at the time. Now … who wants to let me sing?

And so I found myself, without even realising what I was doing until much, much later, chasing gatekeepers. I spent the next few decades in three countries singing for Jesus any chance I got. From school competitions and choir, I went to playing in bands, in church, at youth group, on outreaches, in rallies, at parties and weddings and festivals – everywhere. It was the only thing I knew: be sincere and faithful with what’s in front of you, serve the gifts of others while you’re at it, and trust God to bring along Bigger Things.

But to get to Bigger Things, it seemed you had to earn the respect of the Bigger People. How could you be discovered as a singer, if you weren’t singing someplace? And how could you sing anywhere unless people let you? But my, they were hard to impress. They wanted you to be at everything they put on, because you needed to look committed and pulse-adept, and show you had priorities and tenacity. Also innovation. And – let’s be honest – poise, maturity, a great look, a solid reputation, good doctrine, a pure heart, unstinting volunteerism, team player, a hotline to Jesus, a following, the X-factor, and cool friends. It incensed me when others would succeed with what looked like only some of this list, while I languished in obscurity shooting for the moon in all of them, the bar continually shifting. It didn’t occur to me that my own metric was out. Nor, for a long time, that I was self-righteous. I didn’t see it as self-promotion (a dirty word in Christendom) because I was only pushing so that I could do what God was asking of me. It was ambition, but it wasn’t selfish, I reasoned.

Alongside of all that desperation, distrust, confusion, and striving was the part of me that rang true. Bless the people around you. Sing nothing without meaning it. Write honestly and with hope. Crave the anointing. Be humble. Promote and encourage others. Share the fun parts and don’t be a diva. Roll cables. Appreciate and love all kinds of people. Aim for that Heavenly ‘well done.’

What actually happened was that I ran myself, and by extension my family, ragged. To this day I don’t really know how much of it was well-meaning and how much of it was misplaced. You could say there was faith: I was shooting for something that exceeded my wherewithal. But you could also say there was un-faith: I did it all in my own strength, without even understanding what that phrase meant.

I never did become the next Amy Grant, or at least, it hasn’t happened yet. I made a beautiful album at 35 that everyone loved but only a few bought. I wrote hundreds of songs, some of them good. I stayed faithfully ministering in church life, sometimes under grim circumstances. And I co-raised two wonderful people with my longsuffering husband. Now in my early 50s, there is still a part of me looking for my Big Break. Another part of me marvels that I emerged at all from the aforesaid local grimness, shuddering to think what would have happened if I had made it big and put my sensitive li’l heart in a position for the entire industry to chew me up and spit me out.

‘Did I screw up Plan A, Lord?’ I whispered. ‘When I insisted on having kids?’

‘Oh,’ He breathed, with laughter in His voice, ‘you’ve got no idea how many plans I have for you. We have a whole alphabet to work with …’

So here I am working as a graphic designer on the cusp of a writing career, with 2.5 books under my belt and twelve more planned. And the challenge is, will I again chase the gatekeepers? Or will I take care of business at my end, and leave the size of things with God?

It’s okay to be small.

I don’t know how God balances ‘dent the world’ with ‘be okay being small,’ but He would be the One in the know. As for gatekeeping – His gates don’t require me to be big, only to be faithful – and even then, where I am not, He is.

Not long after that memorable prayer session (hours, in fact) my eyes were opened. I started to see just how many attention-seeking behaviours I had developed. It was one part horrifying and one part pitiable. I genuinely cared and wanted to bless people; but I was going about it intrusively by drawing attention to myself as the Blessing Bringer. All for God’s glory, of course …

The fact is that while many things start out for, or may be aimed at, God’s glory – it is PERILOUSLY easy to get distracted into chasing them for their own sake. In the words of Iron Man 3, one day you look up, and you’re a long way from shore. That happened to me. And to bend a metaphor, I’m not sure what the price of admission is on this one, either.

So, while I understand the importance of building a platform as a means of succeeding as a writer, and I get that it’s a means to an end … I know that I am easily sucked into the means. And I tend to take my poor family down that whirlpool with me. All I wanted to do was serve God with my gifts; but I wound up serving the gifts. So, I don’t want to work hard at currying anyone’s favour any more. I don’t want to think myself benevolent if really a large chunk of my benevolence was simply me seeking the right to call myself Nice. I’m done with striving to be Impressive™. I hope. I don’t want to wear myself out to ‘get somewhere,’ even if that’s a legitimate path for some. It isn’t for me. I don’t want to keep trying on Saul’s armour, straining to grow into it.

Instead, I want to keep asking the Holy Spirit for His advice on how to proceed, and how to balance my responsibilities and health with working diligently on my craft/s. I’ll put my two cents out there and concentrate on being faithful, rather than famous. If there’s a platform to be built, sure, I’ll give it a go; but I want Him as my Foreman – and only incidentally, because He’s first and foremost my great Love. I’m ready to live a Spirit-led life. And if I never make it big … so be it. If there’s a spotlight in Heaven, only Jesus will be standing in it. I’ll have done as He directed me, to the best of my ability to hear and obey. And it’ll be okay to have been small.

The Incarnational ADVENTure

Posted on by beckonstuff

There’s something about Christmas. People from all walks of life suddenly start decorating their homes garishly, wearing garments they would otherwise never dream of endorsing, putting trees inside their houses instead of outside where they belong, singing in public, and making plans to cook a very specific set of foods. A whole host of traditions, coming down through the centuries across many different branches of thought, come into play. And to make sense of it all – how we got from a stable to a sleigh, from a carpenter to a tree – we have to indulge in a bit of cultural reverse-engineering.

Reverse-engineering is, in fact, a central theme of Advent: the God who dreamed up humanity became human. Creator became creature.

I struggled to think up something new and exciting to say in this piece, but in point of fact, I’ve got the exact same thing in my heart as many of you do: the sheer wonder that the Incarnation was ever allowed to happen in the first place.

If we think of Jesus as just a little baby, or even a Saviour on a cross, we’ve only told half the story. If we think of a man – a good, kind, love-in-action bloke, going about doing good – we’re still only part of the way there. If we look at Him as someone who struggled against the odds to live a completely perfect, Law-fulfilling life, we’ve still missed it.

It’s the Incarnation itself that fills me with wonder and awe. It’s like the CEO of the Lego corporation becoming a minifig – only a far more profound humbling. Because if we think of Jesus as God – as the Logos who sculpted the material universe, steersman of words and worlds – all of the things we are thankful for take on an additional, speechless, knee-crumbling WOW. For El to voluntarily become Emmanuel is to bridge an unfathomable gap. Have we lost the sheer scale of who God is? His otherness, His nebula-dwarfing grandeur, this Person who invented intelligence? That with no obligation, bar the demands of His own love-nature, He opted to redeem us – and from a position of vulnerability and relatability? That the tiny bub in the manger designed His own body, and every element around it?

What a fit the angels must have had when they got an inkling of this preposterous plan. ‘No,’ I see them shaking their shining heads, ‘oh, He can’t be serious. No!’

And God, whose dignity is so unassailable that no amount of squeezing Himself down into a zygote can ever lessen it, probably laughed to Himself and rubbed His hands with glee. If gentleness – properly, humility – is part of the fruit of the Spirit, then this was the ultimate ‘stooping’. And so the Incarnation itself displays to us part of God’s spirit-nature. We might be sinners, blind to the size of the One against whom we rebel, but His love cannot leave us to what we deserve. He will not remove ‘the lesson’ we’ve insisted on learning, but He will provide a way out of that danger. Personally.

If ever we needed proof that God is love, this is it. From the foundations of the cosmos, this was always in the works. God Himself would become a human … not even an adult human, a baby! And then He would do all the Things: go about doing good, as He saw what the Father wanted done. Reinterpret God’s intentions and motives as expressed in the Law and Prophets, for a generation so thirsty for word of Him that they were drowning in hopeful embellishments and anxious misconceptions. Heal the sick, reconnect the marginalised, empower the downtrodden, raise the dead. And, yes, die tortured on the Cross for our sins, as a man dies, in naked ignominy. The joy set before Him rendered that shame impotent. And for a Being whose nature is Love, there could be no greater joy than fully being Himself by fully redeeming those He loves. The very name Jesus means God saves.

Glory to God in the highest! And on earth peace, goodwill toward and between humans. May He bless you this Christmas, and may your heart sing.

This article first appeared in australasianchristianwriters.com. Images: Trevor McKinnon & Kevin Keith, Unsplash.com.

Heartcore

Posted on by beckonstuff

I once heard a profound sermon whose take-home message went something like, ‘All of Biblical history is the about the efforts of God, every time we turned away, to turn our faces back to Him.’ It was echoed in a video by Brad Jersak called The Gospel in Chairs. While there are other themes also present in the Bible narratives, this is one that deserves its moment centre-stage.

We spend a lot of time urging people to invite Jesus into their hearts. What we may be overlooking is that, for millennia, God has been inviting us into HIS heart.

What is in His heart, this Steersman of the galaxies, Sparker of electrons?

All of life, colour, creativity. All power and authority. All wisdom, rightness, wholeness. All of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. General people do not realise that the warning ‘forever separated from God’ is a catastrophic cause for alarm, because they have not thought through who and what God really is. In Him is everything, and without Him, nothing elemental was made. It is the soul behind this ‘everything’ that He offers to gradually reveal to us. People think they are already living without Him; but they are not, for they live in the material universe, which He sustains and upholds. They are merely out of partnership with Him.

In Eden, before humanity screwed up, God walked with Adam and Eve in the cool of the day. We aren’t told what form He took. What did they talk about? The humans had all day to walk silently among the flora and fauna, admiring its intricacies, if quiet awe was the goal. No, I imagine them – perennially young – excitedly grabbing His hand and holding forth at great length about the day’s discoveries. And I imagine Him questioning them, leadingly, about what that showed them regarding Himself, the Maker. I imagine Him opening His thoughts to them, or at least those thoughts they were capable of comprehending. I imagine them engrossed in loving conversation, the highlight of their day.

We don’t know how long this season lasted. The time record paused at seven days. It could have been days or centuries, in that primeval place before the second generation had even arrived. And the first thing to do would have been to put distance between themselves and the cursed tree – unless, of course, they needed regular doses from its neighbour. (I have my suspicions, though, that eternal life and temptation go side-by-side for a reason.)

Other examples of mutual openness emerge. God invited Abraham into covenant – at least three covenants. Covenants aren’t like contracts; it’s not a merely transactional arrangement, where two parties sit opposite each other in a quid pro quo scenario. No. ‘A covenant is an invitation to oneness,’ writes Anne Hamilton. It’s more like two parties glued to one another. ‘What’s mine is yours and what’s yours is mine – including your enemies, your friends, your family, even your identity.’

God opened His heart to Job, and Job found it inscrutable. God opened His heart to the prophets, and what was in there so astounded people that at times they could hardly bear it. Often, it conflicted badly with their personal and politicoreligious agendas. We often read of God fighting against the monstrous thing that ‘godliness’ had been turned into.

And, of course, we see God opening His heart to us in the Incarnation. There were some points He could make no other way. There were some things that could be achieved no other way. And so He enters our world physically, not for an afternoon at a time, but for 33 years straight. And He spends all of that time vision-casting, light-shedding, evil-undoing. He walks out His Progenitor’s plan. The activities of Jesus and His disciples are remarkable: a blend of the mundane and the sublime. We get a handful of snapshots, but John 21:25 tells us that ‘Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.’ The profundity and layers of rich meaning in the words He spoke, interposed with earthy metaphors and pop culture references, are staggering. J.B. Phillips puts it, ‘God is, so to speak, visible through a Jesus-shaped aperture.’

Finally, Jesus, on the eve of the crucifixion, made the following astounding statements in John 14.

  • If you love Me, keep my commands.
  • … the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept Him, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him. But you know Him, for he lives with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Before long, the world will not see Me anymore, but you will see Me. Because I live, you also will live. On that day you will realize that I am in My Father, and you are in Me, and I am in you.
  • … The one who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I too will love them and show Myself to them. … Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.
  • … the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you. Peace I leave with you.
  • … I love the Father and do exactly what My Father has commanded Me.

Paul backs this up by reminding us, ‘We have the mind of Christ.’ (1 Cor 2:16). (I don’t think this means that our thoughts = God’s thoughts; I think he rather means that the thoughts of Christ are accessible to us through the Holy Spirit.)

To the Colossians, he wrote, ‘Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.’ (Col 3:3) I picture this in my head as a Venn diagram: three concentric circles.

From these three texts – and there will be more, of course – we learn the following things:–

  • Christ is opening His heart up to us – and, by extension, the heart of the Father
  • He is doing this through the indwelling Holy Spirit (much as a wireless mouse communicates with the computer through its transceiver chip – but with a LOT more personality!)
  • The love of the Trinity is accessible* via obedience to Christ’s commands
  • And so the sequence is something like: love → obedience → revelation
  • Yet it doesn’t begin with us: it begins with Jesus, who leads by example, giving us His own demonstration of just how far love for God will translate into obedience.

*The text does seem to imply that God only loves the obedient; but if you read the passage in the context of covenant, it’s more like, yes, God loves everybody, but not everybody is obedient enough to get close to God. Those who are obedient can actually get God to move in.

So the obvious next question is, what were Jesus’s commands, that we are to obey so rewardedly? He gave lots of concepts, such as, ‘Seed falling on good ground produces a bumper crop,’ but stopped short of commanding us to be ‘good soil.’ He warned us that being unmerciful recipients of mercy would result in our downfall, but He didn’t explicitly command us to be merciful (unless you count Micah 6:8 as obliquely coming from Him).

The Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5–7, is the best place to start. Here He commands His Jewish audience:–

  • let your light shine before others
  • obey the Law and the Prophets (but do better, by internalising them)
  • be reconciled to your offended brother or sister
  • settle matters before they get to court
  • do not ‘swear by’ things, but just practice honesty
  • turn the other cheek, give more than is required of you
  • love your enemies, forgive others
  • be perfectly loving, as God is
  • give and fast discreetly
  • store up treasure in heaven
  • seek first the Kingdom of God and trust Him for your needs
  • do not judge
  • assess yourself and adjust as necessary, before assessing your neighbour
  • don’t entrust your valuables/wisdom to cynics and boors
  • if you want something from God, ask, seek, knock
  • treat others as you want to be treated
  • enter life through the narrow gate
  • check the fruit of ‘prophets’ for signs of a voracious life

Importantly, we come to John 13:34, ‘A new commandment I give to you: that you love one another as I have loved you.’ This was said over dinner, just minutes before He told them to obey all He had commanded them. This would have been the freshest command of Jesus at the forefront of their minds when He said it. And though it sounded new, and had the label ‘commandment’ rather than merely ‘a teaching,’ it was a reemphasis of what He’d been saying all along: treat others as you’d want to be treated. And, the most important things in the Law are to love God with all you are and to love your neighbour as well as you love yourself. If you truly love God, that love will compel you to be missional; and when you are missional, you will find yourself in urgent need of God.

Love for God must come first. God, also, is unwilling to entrust the treasures of His heart to cynics and boors. This is why the context of covenant is important, for only the obedient are showing evidence of it. There are plenty of people out there who love others but do not love God; but this, while commendable, is not enough to ‘reach’ God. He says plainly that doing the work without putting in the effort to know Him will not cut it. It has a form of godliness, but denies the true power: the Holy Spirit. Barry D. Jones says that connection with God is like breathing in, and connection to others is like breathing out: they go together, and the one begets the other.

So the upshot of the whole Last Supper conversation, taken in the context of Jesus’s ministry overall, is that when we love God with all we are and love one another unconditionally, that this bends God’s love and presence toward us. Within John 14 are dotted all the ancient Aaronic elements of blessing, come to fulfilment: ‘The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make His face shine upon you, and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up His countenance on you, and give you peace.’ (Numbers 6:24–26) In one short discourse, Jesus tied all of the past and all of the future together in a neat bundle. Love God and obey God by loving others, and He will open His heart to you, and be knowable. For the whole of history is about Him inviting us into His heart.

Snaps & shots

Posted on by beckonstuff

‘All the wickedness in the world that man might do or say,’ wrote poet William Langland, ‘was no more to the mercy of God than a live coal dropped in the sea.’

Mercy is in short supply in today’s world, where an errant phrase (even if uttered a decade ago) is enough to shoot down your proverbial balloon. Today’s world? what am I saying. My whole life long, I have observed the church being in the vanguard of cancel culture. It’s nothing new.

The resurgence of the purity movement resulted in a lot of babies being thrown out with the bathwater. The impetus for holiness is to be commended; but the lack of nuance … not so much. The lack of personal, Romans 14-style approaches to such decisions … not so much. Herd mentality was strong. And so I remember various efforts in the 70s and 80s to cancel all kinds of things: attending the movies, homosexuals, rock/secular music, swearing, drinking, smoking, medicine, sport on Sundays, makeup, slacks for women, martial arts, science fiction, dancing, miniskirts, and even minor chords!

Other cancellations have been more positive: we (some of us, that is) campaigned to cancel slavery, gender inequality, ignorance, world hunger, and persecution. So there’s that.

In the church, we can be quick to jump on negative bandwagons and slow to advocate for positive change. It could be argued that no one person can be the arbiter of what constitutes ‘negative’ and ‘positive’. And so we go to the timeless Word of God for guidance … bringing with us our culture-coloured glasses.

What does God say about cancellations?

‘I, even I, am He who blots out your transgressions, for My own sake, and remembers your sins no more.’ (Isaiah 43:25)

‘This is the covenant I will establish with the people of Israel after that time,’ declares the Lord. ‘I will put My laws in their minds and write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be My people. No longer will they teach their neighbour, or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest. For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.’ (Hebrews 8:10-12)

Ever looked through one of your old photo albums, and seen a picture of someone from your past and immediately felt repelled? Perhaps they betrayed you, or drifted away from you, or you found yourselves on opposite sides of an issue. But they have arrived in your photo album by a legitimate means: at one time, they were a positive part of your life.

What I’m about to say next won’t be for everyone. But this is the way I have personally chosen, on this side of healing, to regard such things:

  1. Everyone is entitled to a heyday.
  2. And it’s okay to remember them that way, even if they can no longer be trusted.
  3. And it’s okay to celebrate the person they were at the time when they represented a good thing in your life.

Some people’s heyday lasted no longer than their childhood, before they were twisted out of recognition or before they made terrible choices. Others were simply sunshine for a season. You can mourn the passing of the season, and you can mourn the passing of the friend they used to be. And then you lay it down, and look ahead to a better season coming, for God can bring change in an instant. But you don’t have to rip up your photos. You don’t have to be in love with who they are now, in order to fondly remember who they were in the past.

Some people had a ministry heyday, where they profoundly affected people’s lives for the better, advanced the gospel, did great works for the Kingdom, even changed your own life. The fact that they dropped the ball later in life does not negate the good that they once did. Those things stand on the strength of the moment and the faith they were done in. All of us know people we looked up to, who are no longer in the church at all. What they did for God when they were strong in the faith remains worth something. It’s okay to embrace what God did through them in that season. You are not required to dump pieces of God’s work in your life, simply because He brought them about by the hand of someone who no longer represents Him.

Some believers, no doubt, take a harder line: that everything that a ‘fallen’ person touched, is forever tainted in all directions, and to be cancelled along with them. But I don’t see God doing that in Scripture. I see a much larger – inscrutably larger and wiser – kind of divine mercy at work.

Think about Noah. He preached righteousness for 120 years and saved a remnant of humanity from the Flood. And then he got drunk, possibly even became an alcoholic. But what is he remembered and commended for? Building the ark.

Think about Gideon. He led an army of 300 against an army of 10,000 and prevailed. And then he led Israel into idolatry. But what do we remember him for? Defeating Midian.

Think about King David. He made his share of mistakes; not just with Bathsheba, but also policy decisions, parenting decisions, military decisions. He did not always act honourably, any more than you or I are capable of acting honourably 100% of the time. And yet he wrote great swathes of the largest book in the Bible! Neither we nor God have seen fit to rip the Psalms out of our Bibles because their writer performed poorly. Possibly we have not cancelled David because he showed a repentant heart. And yet … even on David’s deathbed he was holding a grudge and ordering a hit on a heckler. As far as we know, he took this unrepentant sin to the grave. But God still didn’t see fit to cancel David. God didn’t see fit to cancel the work he did on the Psalms, which were written at the height of his godliness. In fact, God has gone out of His way to ensure that the Psalms survived all these centuries.

Have nothing do to with the fruitless deeds of darkness (Ephesians 5:11), but hold space in your heart for the memory of the good that chequered people have done. A good thing done in a good spirit stands unsullied. Reject what is evil; cling to what is good (Romans 12:9). In other words, be selective in what you boycott.

We don’t know what the future holds for those who let us down. We don’t know the plans God has to help them turn things around, and we don’t know to what extent they resist or yearn for those plans. We don’t know if they will respond to God, rise up, and have a second, even better heyday! We do know that God works all things together for the God-lovers and the God-called. And we do know that even should we feel enmity towards someone, we are to pray for them. So, we mind our own business, and we cherish the things we have gained in God – whomever they came to us through. We trust Him, and we lean on Him and His expansive mercy and enabling grace to keep us from being the let-down-ers ourselves. And we move forward with joy and expectation.