Be Still And Know

Isaiah 53:12 NLT 'I will give him the honours of a victorious soldier, because he exposed himself to death. He was counted among the rebels. He bore the sins of many and interceded for rebels.' In today’s world we are fixated with celebrity culture, fascinated by the lives of regular people living irregular lives. We are in danger of concluding that the extraordinary is desirable and attainable. Yet, if Jesus offers a pattern for our lives, we gaze on one about whom “There was nothing beautiful or majestic about his appearance, nothing to attract us to him. He was despised and rejected – a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief” (Isaiah 53:2b-3a, NLT). So often we make an assumption that success and significance are joined together. Yet, Jesus reveals significance is living in humble obedience to God. My most recent challenge has been around surrender, offering my body, mind and spirit to God to do whatever he chooses. Success is the degree to which I am happily surrendered to God. It may feel like hum

Luke 21:3-4 NLT “I tell you the truth,” Jesus said, “this poor widow has given more than all the rest of them. For they have given a tiny part of their surplus, but she, poor as she is, has given everything she has.” “You can only do your best” is a popular phrase we regularly use to encourage others. It suggests that so long as we put everything we have into whatever it is that is asked of us, that is sufficient. It addresses attitude, and it is always attitude that interests God. It is not the external reality but the internal heart that God considers. This widow quietly made her way to the temple and contributed the smallest amount to the offering; yet for her it was everything she had – something God acknowledged and applauded. This gift was not given under duress nor from any sense of obligation, but from a willing heart that knew the reality of God. UK households are in debt at historic levels of an average of £15,385 owed to credit card firms, banks and other lenders, a combined total of £428bn. If we

Luke 20:1-2 NLT One day as Jesus was teaching the people and preaching the Good News in the Temple, the leading priests, the teachers of religious law, and the elders came up to him. They demanded, “By what authority are you doing all these things? Who gave you the right?” Jesus disturbed the world in which he lived. Those used to exercising power, religious and secular, were surprised by his impact and influence. They were heavily invested in the status quo and questioned Jesus’ authority to behave in the way that he did. Jesus always disturbs us because he is not bound by current social conventions. God is a God of surprises. The moment we think we have grasped hold of God with some inspired construct, theological or experiential, we discover, like the disciples, that Jesus has moved on and we must make every effort to follow him. A domesticated faith quickly loses its essence. This is the forever unfolding revelation of God, who wants to be known within the spaces where we find ourselves. True leadership r

Luke 19:45-47 NLT 'Then Jesus entered the Temple and began to drive out the people selling animals for sacrifices. He said to them, “The Scriptures declare, ‘My Temple will be a house of prayer,’ but you have turned it into a den of thieves.” After that, he taught daily in the Temple…' There is a great wave of satisfaction following a genuine clear-out. The challenge of downsizing is that many things carry meaningful memories. It is the memories associated with them that are hard to give away. In the famous story of the cleansing of the temple, Jesus drives out the moneychangers as well as the animals they were selling for sacrifice. This was a prophetic act, more than a social and political one. Jesus was headed for the cross, where a whole new relationship between God and humanity was born. As such we would no longer need to bring physical sacrifices to make peace between ourselves and God. We became the living sacrifices whose lives revealed the truth of God on earth. The problem remains, however, that it

Luke 19:36-37 NLT 'As he rode along, the crowd spread their garments on the road ahead of him. When he reached the place where the road started down the Mount of Olives, all of his followers began to shout and sing as they walked along, praising God for all the wonderful miracles they had seen.' Today we begin a short series of readings that leads us into Easter. On Palm Sunday a jubilant crowd celebrated Jesus’ arrival into Jerusalem. Only the Pharisees attempted to pour cold water on Jesus’ parade of praise. Scripture teaches that God inhabits the people’s praises (Psalm 22:3). It’s why we lift up our voices in hymns, psalms and spiritual songs (Ephesians 5:19). Christianity is a celebratory faith. Here, though the crowd may not have understood the significance, the King was making his progress towards his enthronement. This was a truly special event in the making. Over the next few days we shall see Jesus take up his position as King and Lord of all. Even as the days ahead are marked with sadness, they are

Psalm 130:5-6 NLT 'I am counting on the Lord; yes, I am counting on him. I have put my hope in his word. I long for the Lord more than sentries long for the dawn, yes, more than sentries long for the dawn.' Waiting demands trust. It is easy to place my hope in God’s word. It is clear and expresses God’s commitment to me and the basis upon which that commitment is built. Intellectually I get it. Trust, however, is more than a mental exercise. It demands that I withstand the assault of my fears and disappointments by clinging to the hope God’s promise offers me. If you are restless and impatient, as I have been for many years, then the waiting appears impossible to endure. Trust evaporates and is easily replaced by complaint and blame. On more occasions than I like to admit, my faith has shrivelled under the pressure of life’s realities. Courage has left me, to be replaced by panic. This in turn has given rise to anger with God. God confirms that waiting will always have its due reward. Like night must give way

Romans 12:12 NLT 'Rejoice in our confident hope. Be patient in trouble, and keep on praying.' Self-esteem and confidence are seen as key measures of our well-being. Our self-esteem can be dented by various mishaps; from social and economic factors through educational experiences and our relationships. Low self-esteem can reduce our ability to handle future challenges. Unexpectedly cast into the role of a primary carer in my late 30s, I suffered a collapse in my self-confidence. How was I to navigate this new, unfamiliar and unwanted path? It was clear that my hope in God was located in the immediate realities of my life, rather than any abiding reality that lay beyond my life experience now. And how might something that seemed so disconnected from my immediate experience be of any encouragement or help in the here and now? It was a season for discovering the realities of, and the benefits derived from, patience. Patience is the “quality of being willing to bear adversities, a calm endurance of misfortune”. I

Psalm 25:4-5 NLT 'Show me the right path, O Lord; point out the road for me to follow. Lead me by your truth and teach me, for you are the God who saves me.' For many years. I lived in fear of disappointing God and messing up my life by straying from God’s path onto the wrong road. Slowly I learned that God was not some cosmic police chief breathing down my neck, waiting to pounce upon the slightest misdemeanour. Rather, God invited me to live my life trusting in his goodness and promise of life in abundance. Today, travel has been simplified with SatNav. No longer do I need to pore over maps and minutely plan my journey. Meticulous planning was still no guarantee of a journey without diversions and distractions. My worst delay followed taking a wrong turn near Pendle Hill. The weather was atrocious, it was late at night and I was driving back to my home in the Midlands. I knew I was lost and every turn I took simply added to my confusion. Words can’t describe my feelings of relief when, by chance, I turned o

1 John 3:2 NLT 'Dear friends, we are already God’s children, but he has not yet shown us what we will be like when Christ appears. But we do know that we will be like him, for we will see him as he really is.' You are composed of three interlocking aspects, which affects who you are. Some factors that have affected your life you had no control over – for example, you did not select your parents. As you grew, you became increasingly complicit in the decisions that directly affected you – for example, you chose friends and took decisions on how you treated them. The third aspect, like a seed awaiting germination, is the essence of who God created you to be, which we spend a lifetime choosing how much to explore. Over time, we run into the consequences of choices made for us as well as those we make for ourselves. Some are positively detrimental to my realising the God essence within me. These choices lay the soil within which this Godseed was expected to both grow and flourish. The soil itself was not naturally

Psalm 25:4-5 NLT 'Show me the right path, O Lord; point out the road for me to follow. Lead me by your truth and teach me, for you are the God who saves me. All day long I put my hope in you.' Waiting has negative associations today. Western society expects instant results or access, whether it is medical results, superfast broadband access to the internet – even finding a suitable partner has been reduced to ‘speed dating’ so that we can budget our emotional energy effectively. It’s all too easy to offer up a morning prayer for guidance – “show me the right path” – and anticipate we will have God’s response by sunset. We soon learn that God does not subscribe to a consumer mindset. Ease of access and mass supply is not one of God’s attributes. In this way, God appears quite old-fashioned. More like the ironmongers my dad took me to as a child, where he and the shopkeeper ferreted around for ages, looking for a screw to match the one Dad was seeking to replace. This was the very antipathy of newer DIY stores,

1 Peter 1:3-4 NLT 'All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is by his great mercy that we have been born again, because God raised Jesus Christ from the dead. Now we live with great expectation, and we have a priceless inheritance – an inheritance that is kept in heaven for you, pure and undefiled, beyond the reach of change and decay.' I am greatly helped when thinking of blessing, both as an act of praise to God (and therefore to “bless God”) and as a receiving of help from God through the prayers of the Church (the act of giving and receiving blessings). It is in these ways that we “become blessings” for one another and offer blessings to God – by living true to who God has made us as his people. Learning to give thanks, to bless God and others, in seasons of plenty and seasons of want, gives a positive appreciation of God in all of life. That positive foundation becomes essential when life puts the squeeze on us. Ultimately, our destiny, as today’s scripture reminds us, is secure because

Psalm 96:1-3 NLT 'Sing a new song to the Lord! Let the whole earth sing to the Lord! Sing to the Lord; praise his name. Each day proclaim the good news that he saves. Publish his glorious deeds among the nations. Tell everyone about the amazing things he does.' One of my life’s great challenges is to avoid stagnation; the tendency to put off decisions, avoiding what must be done, to let relationships and activity drop, which in the past I compensated for by comfort eating or investing a lot of time in meaningless activities. In such a slough, I realised that a lot of my ‘purpose’ was defined by what I did and was measured against how other people navigated life. I was losing self-confidence and any reason for living. I needed to reassess who and where I was in life and rediscover my primary reason for living. What I needed was a new song, a fresh refrain for life. I returned to God and began to take God’s declarations seriously. I considered how seriously I wanted to take God at his word, and what that might

Psalm 16:7-9 NLT 'I will bless the Lord who guides me; even at night my heart instructs me. I know the Lord is always with me. I will not be shaken, for he is right beside me. No wonder my heart is glad, and I rejoice. My body rests in safety.' Unlike the psalmist, I cannot with authentically claim that “I will not be shaken”. At times, I really struggle with the challenges life brings. Clinging to God, I acknowledge God is “right beside me”, even if I cannot always sense that presence. This is the nature of faith; something unseen, yet factual and reliable. So, I place my confidence in this unseen truth ahead of my perceptions and their many attendant anxieties. For every crisis I survive, and there have been so many, while I give thanks and even formulate a testimony of gratitude, I know further tests lie around some future corner. The ultimate reality of blessing lies in the fact that I can live at rest with myself, my circumstances and my future. So, I am invited, and consistently instructed by the Holy S

Psalm 103:1-5 NLT 'Let all that I am praise the Lord; with my whole heart, I will praise his holy name. Let all that I am praise the Lord; may I never forget the good things he does for me. He forgives all my sins and heals all my diseases. He redeems me from death and crowns me with love and tender mercies. He fills my life with good things. My youth is renewed like the eagle’s!' It is very easy to bless God with only a certain percentage of my “heart”. Much of the rest of it is distracted by a series of less profound anxieties and desires. Who hasn’t realised part way through a time devoted to God, that actually their mind has strayed and in fact the past minutes have actually been occupied by their own thoughts and worries? In some ways, this can be identified as prayers, yet not prayers that are consciously being brought to God. I certainly don’t criticise myself in such circumstances, yet I have learned that to bless God “with my whole heart” is something else, and learned practice. When it comes to cons

Philippians 2:10-11 NLT '…at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue declare that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.' You may know that the word “blessing” means “happy”, as in the Sermon on the Mount. Yet, it has its roots in the idea of blood sacrifice from Proto-Germanic roots, as well as it’s Hebrew meaning of “to bow the knee”. As such, it is highly appropriate as we respond to God’s blessing with an act of humble acknowledgement of God’s authority. When entering or leaving the House of Commons, MPs face the mace, the sign of Parliament’s authority, and bow their heads. They are acknowledging the constitutional monarch’s authority under which Parliament officially meets. When the mace is removed by the sergeant-at-arms, whose role it is to maintain order in the Commons under the direction of the Speaker, then Parliament is no longer able to act as a legislative body. It is why we bless God, for we have no authority, indeed n

Psalm 63:6-8 NLT 'I lie awake thinking of you, meditating on you through the night. Because you are my helper, I sing for joy in the shadow of your wings. I cling to you; your strong right hand holds me securely.' It is easy to agree with the sentiment that God is “my helper”. However, my submission to God leads me into contexts I would never have chosen for myself. Yet, God remains my friend, and friends stick with us through thick and thin. This has taken me years to fully appreciate, and even longer to relax into. Is it a resignation of responsibility to quote Romans 8:28: “…all things work together for good, for those who are called according to [God’s] purpose” (ESV)? Or am I merely trying to put a brave face on challenging circumstances? I believe Paul wrote those words in recognition of the reality that God is always on our side. I face the challenge of first agreeing with that statement and then going in search of God to find grace, no matter my situation. So, as I have aged, and hopefully matured (fo

Psalm 63:4-5 NLT 'I will praise you for as long as I live, lifting up my hands to you in prayer. You satisfy me more than the richest feast. I will praise you with songs of joy.' Last autumn I woke one day with a sensation of being bathed in love. I felt a rich and deep inner contentment and well-being. I knew I was with God and this was God’s love. I lay in bed, a smile in my heart, which was reflected on my face. I prayed with hands uplifted. I was deeply satisfied and I took those waking minutes fully to enjoy this state of grace. I always pray, albeit briefly, as my head hits the pillow. I am fortunate in that I quickly fall asleep each night. I want to remind myself of the presence of God with me at all times. It was as though this acknowledgement of both my desire and need for God expressed in prayer even as I entered sleep continued throughout the night. As I woke the next day, not only had I found God without being conscious, but God had found me. We were united and all I could do was give thanks, pra

Psalm 63:3 NLT 'Your unfailing love is better than life itself; how I praise you!' Knowing myself has helped immensely in developing my appreciation of God. Knowing my strengths and weaknesses means I can develop skills to avoid the worst excesses of my character, which otherwise might prove self-destructive. How we approach God and the world will shape our experience of God. You and I are each created in a unique way, although we share some common characteristics with others. We can be confident that God knows us very well (Psalm 139). What we need to appreciate is that in finding ourselves and making friends with the person we are, we can then explore finding God, relaxed and confident in our own skin. When I don’t know myself, the danger is that God becomes something of a life raft I expect to carry me away from the sinking wreck of my own personhood. When that fails to happen, I will most naturally blame and reject God. We are not offered an escape from the realities of our own personality, nor from the d

Psalm 63:2 NLT 'I have seen you in your sanctuary and gazed upon your power and glory. Your unfailing love is better than life itself; how I praise you!' Declarations of love trip easily from the lips. However, they can depend on circumstances. I once relished in the beauty and power of declarations such as we have here from the psalmist. I found it much harder to feel any empathy with today’s verse when Katey, my first wife, was struck down with a neurological disease that would take her mortal life. Until then, nothing had seriously challenged my simple understanding of the Bible. Slowly I discovered that it was far more than having an understanding and appreciation of God’s love and acceptance. I required an encounter with the living God in each experience, every day. Somehow, my worship and faith, while sincere, had been a projection of my hopes rather than an experience lived regardless of circumstance. While I yearned to return to the undisturbed rhythms of the past, my new reality was here to stay. Wou

Psalm 63:1 NLT 'O God, you are my God; I earnestly search for you. My soul thirsts for you; my whole body longs for you in this parched and weary land where there is no water.' I only go in search of what I really want. Too often, more pressing needs relegate my search for God to whatever spare time I can muster. Like reaching for the small change in my pocket for the homeless individual I pass, it is a non-priority and more a spontaneous reaction, often provoked by guilt. I believe that one reason Jesus fasted in the wilderness was that he might experience the power of human appetite and then direct that towards the bread of life rather than the baker’s provision. Forty days and nights represents extreme fasting, but if this is the degree to which Jesus wanted to awaken his hunger for God, I’d best pay attention. As a new Christian convert, I loved serving God. Later I became an executive in a large mission as well as a church leader. This was long before my whole being longed for God. As this ‘God-ache’ gre