thoughts

Authority... Saturday, 05 September 2009

2009-09-08T01:36:00.000-07:00

Philemon: 8-9
8Therefore, though I have enough confidence in Christ to order you to do what is proper, 9yet for love's sake I rather appeal to you...

Thess 2:6
6...nor did we seek glory from men, either from you or from others, even though as apostles of Christ we might have asserted our authority, 7But we proved to be gentle among you...

Authority is a word I hear thrown around quite a lot at the moment - there is no denying that in Christ we have authority, but how often is it exerted hand in hand with love and gentleness or even forgone for the sake of others? I suspect our God-given authority, real and powerful though it is, is all too often rendered powerless by a lack of love or gentleness - it's time to get off our spiritual high horses and start loving one another instead!

Prudence... Thursday, 06 August 200

2009-09-08T01:35:00.002-07:00

Luke 10:21
"21 In that hour Jesus rejoiced in the Spirit and said, “I thank You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and prudent and revealed them to babes. Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in Your sight."

When Jesus sent out 70 naive, inexperienced but faithful people, they came back saying that even demons were subject to them - Jesus saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven, but he REJOICED because God revealed his power to babes in arms. Prudence can seem like such a worthy attribute, but it is your enemy in the gifts of God.
Jesus said we must become like children with good reason - a child has no developed cynicism and has no reason to expect failure. When a child is given a gift, the assumption is that it will work. We should be the same when God sends us.

Identity... Thursday, 16 July 2009

2009-09-08T01:35:00.001-07:00

I'm coming to realise something already.. Where as before, if you'd asked me to describe myself in terms of what I do, I might have said musician, jeweller or whatever. Now, I am just Barney's dad - everything else has taken a massive second place. Nothing else matters! That's got to say something about how God sees us as a father.

Good News... Tuesday, 14 July 2009

2009-09-08T01:34:00.001-07:00

Watching my wife in labour is without doubt the single most amazing and the most awful thing I have ever witnessed. It was exhilarating and terrifying, awesome and horrific, tremendous and traumatic... there aren't enough words to convey what a confusion of emotions I experienced, what a barrage of conflicting and contradictory feelings. When Barnabas was actually born, I was torn painfully between absolute joy and absolute horror at the pain Ju was suffering - the complete fulness of the utter ends of the emotional spectrum all at once. If you have ever struggled with how it can be that Jesus' death could ever be a good or wonderful thing and not just a terrible and tragic event, this is the closest I have come to understanding. In the midst of the deepest pain, God worked a remarkable miracle, for all time, for all humanity. It truly is Good News. Believe in Him today.
Rob

Emotion... Monday, 22 June 2009

2009-09-08T01:33:00.002-07:00

When Bishop Boniface was with us on Sunday evening, he kept saying 'people should be emotional about their God'. Of course in principle I totally agree, it bothers me that as a nation we British can be so staid and reserved...
Well I'm worse than most - there are times when I can be totally dispassionate about the most important things and even people, and I wonder if I'm somehow a little bit broken or something, so with the saving power of Jesus Christ being literally THE most important thing ever, it can be daunting that I might not be so moved by it or excited by it.
God in His grace has a solution though - the thief on the cross with Jesus simply believed, no time for deep emotional experiences, and Jesus said 'today you will be with me in Paradise'. He meets us exactly where we are and with exactly the measure we can deal with. I pray that one day I will be overcome with emotion for Him and all that He has done for me and until then, I know He understands :)

Aslan... Saturday, 13 June 2009

2009-09-08T01:33:00.001-07:00

I read the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe this morning - I still love the Narnia books and I still genuinely appreciate something new about them every time I read them. This time and maybe for the first time, I found Aslan such a beautiful character that his sacrifice almost moved me to tears. It also filled me with love for someone so selfless and sacrificial - the character of Christ is difficult to ignore, even in a fictional lion.

Lion of Judah

Gifts... Thursday, 11 June 2009

2009-09-08T01:32:00.000-07:00

So many people (myself included) would love to write a great book and yet so few people by comparison actually ever do. Even fewer are ever published. This is because it takes real time and dedication to write a book, not just a good idea or raw ability. I remember a prolific Christian writer once saying that so many people asked Him to pray for them to be blessed with his writing gift, conveniently ignoring the 30 years or more that he had spent developing and exercising the gift!
When Adam was given a garden to live in, he was also given a responsibility to tend it - God gives the gift, but we have a responsibility to help it grow.

Learning from Peter... Tuesday, 02 June 2009

2009-09-08T01:31:00.002-07:00

If anybody had reason to take issue with the apostle Paul, it's Peter...

Gal 2:11...
"11When Peter came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he was clearly in the wrong...."
What a young upstart this Paul was, daring to tell Peter he was a hypocrite in front of everyone, then writing to the Galatian church to tell them about it! Peter had plenty of reason to reject Paul, his apostleship and his correction..

And yet, this is how Peter regards Paul in his letter...

2Pet 3:15-16
"15Bear in mind that our Lord's patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. 16He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction."
Peter regarded Paul's letters as having the weight of inspired scripture - what humility.

If we take offence easily, we will miss correction we may need to hear as well as closing our spiritual eyes to what God has placed in others.

Choosing... Sunday, 31 May 2009

2009-09-08T01:31:00.001-07:00

Talking to someone earlier, they made the interesting statement that 'people choose to do the things they do' - what they meant was that we don't really have the excuse of being 'too busy' because ultimately we choose to fill our time the way we do for better or for worse. It's really made me think about how often I catch myself justifying not doing all I can to grow in my relationship with Jesus - every time I tell myself I 'deserve a night in' instead of meeting to pray or going to the evening service, or read a novel instead of His Word. Even when our reasons seem totally reasonable, we will miss out on the totality of God's calling on our lives.

Luke 9:59-62...
"59He said to another man, "Follow me." But the man replied, "Lord, first let me go and bury my father." 60Jesus said to him, "Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God." 61 Still another said, "I will follow you, Lord; but first let me go back and say good-by to my family." 62Jesus replied, "No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God."

No excuses - we're either for Him or we're against Him.

On notes and Bach... Friday, 22 May 2009

2009-09-08T01:29:00.000-07:00

What are notes for?! I'm going to use them to say things that I think are interesting that are slightly too long to go in my status bar...

At the moment I'm learning a piece by Bach - it's the 4th movement of his second partita for solo violin and it's very very beautiful... when Arthur Grumiaux plays it on my cd. When I played it yesterday it sounded horrible. Ok, so he has the advantage of probably playing in some amazing chapel with THE BEST natural reverb ever and I was in my scritchy scratchy living room, but I was still playing it really terribly - I just couldn't get the feel right. The problem was, I was getting so caught up in the minute detail of trying to get the notes and the bowing right, trying it slowly etc. that I had totally forgotten that's it's a 'Giga' - a type of dance. As soon as I tried to play it like a dance, it sounded much more musical.
Never lose sight of the bigger picture - God is about relationship, not just theology :)