Are you properly dressed?

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Philippians 2:3

I was chatting with someone recently after a service where I was the preacher. We hit on a topic where we didn’t see eye to eye – nothing serious, just a genuine difference of opinion. But it prompted him to suggest a reason why I thought as I did: “Oh, that’ll be because you’re a dyed-in-the-wool Baptist!”

Well, that had me nicely pigeon-holed, didn’t it?

I didn’t know whether to be amused or annoyed. I had only met this man five or six times before, and yet he had clearly got me well sussed – well sussed, that is, to his satisfaction. 

It was only later, as I thought about it, that annoyance (anger would be too strong a word) set in. How dare he pass such an ignorant and superficial judgment on me! (a) I’m not a dyed-in-the-wool Baptist (harrumph!), and (b) What’s a dyed-in -the-wool Baptist anyway? Grrr.

Well, I wasn’t going to waste more than five minutes being irritated, so I just passed it off for what I think it was: a silly remark.

But then something else this man had said earlier in the conversation came back to me: he wasn’t, it seemed, too thrilled with the state of the church he belonged to, and one of the reasons was that “the leaders aren’t Spirit-filled”.

Which struck me as a very different matter from me being a dyed-in-the-wool Baptist: not just a silly remark at all. By what right does any Christian presume to pass such a serious judgment on someone else? (And what, in his eyes, did a “Spirit-filled” person look like anyway?)

Even more serious, if you dismiss someone else as not Spirit-filled, then presumably you are making a claim that you are. And once you start making that kind of claim, even if only by implication, you really are on dodgy ground.

Paul tells us to “consider others better than ourselves.” That seems a very simple statement – a statement about humility – but the more you think about it the more thought-provoking it becomes.

For one thing, it flies right in the face of the Greek culture and society in which Paul lived. The Greeks of Paul’s day were renowned for their learning. They were one of the most intellectually gifted nations in history, and humility was something they not only didn’t value, but which they actually despised (they might well regard it as “servile weakness” and “obsequious grovelling” says one commentator).

(I have a feeling that our twenty-first century western world – so brash, so vulgar, so sure of itself, so look-at-me – isn’t a lot different, and could do with a strong dose of Paul’s quite revolutionary remark.)

Still more, Paul speaks of humility as a chief characteristic of Jesus himself: “he humbled himself and became obedient to death, even death on a cross.” Pride is, very simply, the polar opposite of all that Jesus is about (your mind probably flies to that remarkable event of the washing of the disciples’ feet).

The obvious question can’t be avoided: how do I view my fellow-Christians, my fellow-church members? From a lofty height? Or from a lowly stool?

What troubles me is the suspicion that often we are, putting it bluntly, two-faced. Oh yes, we are skilled at putting on a humble and gracious manner – but how often, at the same time, are we despising that other person in our heart? Perhaps they aren’t as clever, or as gifted, or as successful, or as popular as we are, so we tolerate or patronise them; deep down, the thought of “considering them better (!) than ourselves” just doesn’t come into it.

Lord, what hypocrites we can be!

It strikes me in fact that, just by writing about that man in the way I have, I myself have perhaps been guilty. I can’t feel it was wrong to react to his comments as I did – but how is it possible to do that and, at the same time, to consider him “better than myself”? (Help!)

Well, questions like that can only be left to the judgment of God, who knows our hearts better than we do ourselves. All I know is that the challenge of humility is the challenge of Christ-likeness – and mustn’t be shirked.

So while I go away and scratch my head, let’s leave the last word with the apostle Peter…

“All of you, clothe yourselves with humility” (1 Peter 5:5).

How well clothed are you?

Lord God, give me the grace I need to never look down on another human being, Christian or otherwise. Amen.

Jesus, children and prayer

Jesus said, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.” Matthew 7:7-8

Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me; don’t hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these...” Matthew 19:14-15

I was eighteen, and it was my last Sunday at church before heading off to university for the first time. An elderly lady came up to me to wish me well. I don’t think I had ever spoken to her before, and I didn’t know her name - when you’re a bolshie teenager the “older people” are just a grey mass really, aren’t they, not actual people? - even, I’m fraid, the butt of a few jokes.

Anyway, I thanked her a little awkwardly for her kind words; and she then said, “Ever since you were a little boy in Sunday School I have prayed for you regularly.”

I’ll leave you to imagine how I felt: embarrassed, ashamed, guilty, moved - yes, all of that, and more besides. Above all, perhaps, humbled.

That happened over half a century ago. Who could ever calculate the impact of that woman’s prayers on my life?

Our minister recently challenged us to take on a responsibility. He asked us all to pick one child from the church’s children’s work and “adopt” that child for systematic prayer. Just that; nothing more - in the privacy of our own prayer lives, to remember that particular child on a regular basis. I couldn’t help being reminded of that old lady from all those years ago.

Two strands of thought come together in my mind.

The first strand, of course, is children, and how precious they are to God. Hence that beautiful story from Matthew 19 (it’s also found In Mark and Luke) about Jesus welcoming the children and praying for them.

One of the great joys of church life is the gift of children. I remember receiving a message from the secretary of a church I was due to preach in which said, “There won’t be any need for an all-age talk as, sadly, we don’t have any children at the moment.” Sad, indeed!

A joy, yes; but children are also, of course, a great responsibility. Thank God for those who teach and lead them, who give up many hours in thought and preparation! Thank God for those who give them attention and take them seriously! Thank God for those who pray for them! (Should you be thinking about getting involved in ministry to children?)

The second strand is prayer. 

When Jesus tells us to “ask”, “seek” and “knock” it’s prayer that he’s talking about, and one type of prayer in particular: what you might call soaking prayer. The English translations don’t convey this, but you could translate his words as “ask - and go on asking; seek - and go on seeking; knock - and go on knocking.” In other words, he’s not talking about one-off prayers, though obviously there are times when that’s what’s needed. 

(He says pretty much the same thing in Luke 11:5-8, the story of the man who pesters his neighbour and gets him out of bed; and in Luke 18:1-8, the story of the needy widow who won’t let the judge rest till he does what she asks. I knew someone once who referred to Christians as “God-botherers” - it sounded a bit disrespectful, but perhaps she was onto something!)

Anyway, this is why “soaking prayers” is a good way of describing what Jesus is talking about - simply taking a person, a problem or a situation and soaking it in prayer on a regular basis. That woman who prayed for me didn’t see many “results” for her prayers (apart, of course, from my baptism when I was fifteen - I mustn’t forget that!) but she simply made it her business to “soak” me in disciplined, persevering prayer. 

This type of prayer can, of course, be difficult. It can lose any feeling of freshness, because it’s bound to involve repetition. It isn’t easy to find new words to express what’s on our hearts, so it can seem little more than a duty (though what’s wrong with duty?). It isn’t particularly emotional most of the time, so it can seem a bit flat, even rather dull.

But who cares? We all know that it’s hard to fathom how prayer “works”. But the message is simple: don’t try to understand it; just do it...

Lord God, even when I have prayed for someone or something a thousand times, please help me to keep on keeping on. Amen.

A 24-7 faith

These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up…  Deuteronomy 6:6-7

The first time I visited France, in my early twenties, I remember being amazed and impressed at the wonderful ease with which even small children spoke French. I mean, here was I, who had spent several years at school struggling to master French grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation with only limited success, and here were these children prattling away perfectly without the slightest effort.

My amazement lasted only a second, of course. Dense though I no doubt am, it didn’t take me long to figure out that this great skill came from the fact that these children hadn’t, in fact, “learned” French at all in the way I had tried to do. No: it was second nature to them. It was all they knew, because it was their native tongue, just as English was mine. They had absorbed it, as the saying goes, with their mother’s milk.

And that, says God to his people in Deuteronomy 6, is how children in Israel should learn the essentials of their faith: “Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up…”

What applies to Israel applies also to Christians. And what applies to children applies also to adults. Our faith in Jesus should not be a thing apart from ordinary life, something bolted on, so to speak, but something in the very air we breathe day by day and minute by minute.

Sadly, our Christianity can easily become something we “do” only at special times – probably on a Sunday morning – and only in special places – probably a building which we call a “church”. This is a pale reflection of true, red-blooded Christianity.

With the genuine article, even our homes can be – should be – miniature “churches”, where God is honoured and the Spirit lives. Even the most routine tasks – the washing up, changing the baby’s nappy, cooking meals and hoovering round – can be done as an act of worship to God.

The distinction between the “sacred” parts of life – worship, prayer, reading the Bible and so on – and the “secular” parts – like the things I’ve just mentioned – is dissolved. It is all one: as the Bible tells us, “Whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him” (Colossians 3:17). And “whatever” means whatever! Yes, including sitting in your favourite armchair, strolling down the road, getting up in the morning and going to bed at night.

There is, of course, a place – and it’s an important place – for special times to focus on God with our wider Christian family, and probably that will usually be on a Sunday, the day of Jesus’ resurrection. And there is also a place for buildings set aside to make such gatherings possible, and there is nothing wrong with calling them “churches”, as long as we remember that churches are in fact families of God’s people, and don’t absolutely need such buildings.

These times and places are matters of convenience and practicality: the real time and place for “practicing our faith” is – putting it simply – anywhere and everywhere. If Jesus is Lord of our lives, then every moment of every day is “sacred”.

You sometimes hear it said of, say, football fans, that they “eat, sleep and breathe football”. And it’s not far off the truth. Their team’s success is everything to them; it completely dominates their lives. This, of course, is why they’re called “fans” – fanatics. It can be unhealthy and dangerous.

Well, I’m not suggesting that Christians should be fanatical. When it comes to “religious” matters, that word conjures up all sorts of ugliness – bigotry, intolerance, even violence – as we see only too often in our troubled world.

But there is a sense in which we too “eat, sleep and breath” the grace and goodness of God, the daily, minute-by-minute presence of Jesus and the peace and love which flow from him. He is everything to us, directing our thoughts, words and decisions, motivating us at the very heart of our lives.

So… What about our faith in Jesus? Something apart? Something bolted on? Something kept in a convenient little pigeon-hole? Or something that saturates everything about us, everything we do, the very people that we are? Make no mistake, that’s the way of peace, fulfilment and happiness!

Lord God, help me to truly love you with all my heart, all my soul, all my mind and all my strength, and to love others as I love myself. Amen.

A prayer for the turning of the year

I pray that out of his glorious riches the Father may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. 

And I pray that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have power… to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge – that you may be filled to the measure of all the fulness of God. Ephesians 3:14-19

2016 is nearly over.

Time, then, for stock-taking – for reflecting on the joys and sorrows, the successes and failures, of the past year. Time too to look ahead, not asking to know what is going to happen, because that is not possible, but aiming to set our sights high so that we make 2017 as good a year as lies with us.

I suggest that we offer a very serious prayer to God: a prayer based on the rich, remarkable and tightly packed words Paul offers to his Christian brothers and sisters in Ephesus.

It’s too condensed to be opened up in full detail, but one thing that stands out is that it rests on a particular belief: what the Christian church would later come to call the “Trinity” – the persons of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit within God. Let’s skim it on that basis…

1. God the Father is “gloriously rich” (verse 16).

He is the maker of all things, and all that he makes and does is good. The whole universe is at his finger-tips – he owns everything, and nothing happens without his knowing. And he it is who one day will bring everything to a wonderful conclusion.

Our God is not some weak and feeble God. He is perfect, holy and infinite.

2. God the Holy Spirit is at work “in our inner being” (verse 16).

This can only mean that if we are Christians then God actually lives within us, for the Holy Spirit is God. Our very bodies – yes, weak flesh and blood though they are – are “temples of the Holy Spirit” (1 Corinthians 6:19). And the Spirit means, among many other things, power.

The very energy of God himself is at our disposal.

3. God the Son is infinitely loving (verses 17-19).

He too is said to “dwell in our hearts through faith”. Faith means not only a mental assent to God – “Yes, I believe in Jesus” – but a glad acceptance of Jesus, a belief that his death and rising were for us personally, and a willing submission to him.

But the emphasis falls on his love, which is mentioned three times…

First: as Christians we are to be “rooted and established” (verse 17) in that love, like a healthy plant or tree growing in fertile soil, or like a solidly built house on a strong foundation.

Second: it is so great that we can never measure it – it is “wide and long and high and deep” (verse 18) – though Paul does pray for the Ephesians to be able to “grasp” at least something of it.

And third: it is a love “that surpasses knowledge” (verse 19), unlike any love that we can ever know in our human relationships.

In short, the man Christ Jesus is God’s love bundled up in a package we can see and recognise: didn’t he himself utter the staggering words, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9)?

So… if you want to know what God is like don’t stare up at the skies – no, look at the baby in the manger, look at the Galilean workman walking the roads of Palestine, look at the man who fed the hungry and healed the sick, who calmed the storm and raised the dead, look at the servant washing the feet of the disciples, look at the agonised man sweating and praying in Gethsemane, look at the God-forsaken criminal hanging on the cross.

And look at the risen Lord standing in the garden on the first resurrection morning and saying “Peace be with you” to those who saw him.

Where else will you find such love, such power, such authority? No wonder the preaching of these things changed the world for ever – and still changes lives today.

Paul ends his prayer with an even more breath-taking hope: “that you may be filled to the measure of all the fulness of God.” I don’t know how to comment on those words – just trying somehow reduces them to the commonplace and ordinary. Each of us must close our eyes and make a real mental effort to grapple with them.

But there it is: just a skim – nothing more. But enough, I hope, to prompt us to ask a question: “How then should I pray as I look to the coming year?” Well, here’s a suggestion…

O God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, forgive me that my vision of you is so small and shrivelled, and my faith in you so weak. Enlarge my mind and heart by the Holy Spirit, and fill me to over-flowing with that divine love which cannot be measured and which never ends. Amen.

'Tis the season to be grumpy?

“Who are my mother and my brothers?” Jesus asked. Then he looked at those seated in a circle around him and said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.” Mark 3:33-35

... to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God... John 1:12

When it comes to Christmas I am not (please believe me!) the “Bah! Humbug!” type. Not at all. A spot of fun and laughter, some nice food and drink, a present or two, not to mention some crackers and silly hats - you can count me in, no problem.

But I must admit that there are one or two things that I get a bit fed up with.

One of them is an over-emphasis on family. Anyone would think that the whole point of Christmas is the big jolly get-together round a table heaving with food, with at least half-a-dozen generations represented. This image is projected on card after card, in advert after advert, and on television show after television show.

Fair enough, Christmas does have a bearing on families. The story in the Bible is precisely the story of one - the family of Jesus. And, fair enough again, there can be great joy in families coming together to share a special time.

But if it gets out of hand, this emphasis is simply wrong. And that’s exactly what often happens. Painful questions arise...

What about people who have no family? I know someone, now in old age, who has never had, so far as she is aware, a single relative. How do people like her feel?

What about families where there is a painful gap, an emptiness? - someone has gone away, or has to be in hospital, or simply has to be at work. Or, of course, someone has died...

What about the single, the divorced, the widowed? - rendered acutely aware of their solitude, their outsider status, in this merry atmosphere.

And what about families which are full of tension and even animosity? I knew a family once who had a door-mat with the message, not “Welcome to our home” or something similar, but “Oh no, not you again!” Only a joke, of course (they were lovely, welcoming people). But isn’t that exactly how many people feel as Christmas draws near and they face the prospect of having to be falsely nice to someone they really don’t like?

And, of course, reality never measures up to expectations. You eat and drink too much, so you get bloated, sluggish and tetchy, someone is felt to have taken the Scrabble game a touch too seriously, that bracing afternoon walk becomes a duty (insisted on by an infuriatingly bright uncle) rather than a pleasure - and the weather is cold and damp anyway. Oh dear...!

In the Bible, families are certainly important. But they are not all-important. Christianity is often mindlessly said to “uphold family values” (whatever they are). But is that really true? Not if we take the words of Jesus seriously - look back at the verses I have quoted from Mark 3. 

And what about the boy Jesus in the Jerusalem temple? He spoke about “my father’s house” - but it wasn’t Joseph he was referring to. Worst of all (so to speak) are his words in Luke 14:26 - I’ll leave you to look them up; but be warned, the word “hate” appears in the context of family. Family values?

Yes, families matter, marriages matter, parenting matters, the mingling of different generations - all these things matter. But the family the Bible mainly focuses on is of a different kind altogether. It is “the family of God”, to which all who love and trust in Jesus belong. “To all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God,” as John 1:12 puts it. 

Those two words - received and believed - are key. Literally, indeed, they are the key which opens the door into God’s eternal kingdom, God’s family which know no bounds.

So... if you are part of an ordinary human family, I do of course wish you great joy this Christmas. But if your family is far from the kind of ideal portrayed on the cards and in the adverts (and, in fact, even if it is that perfect), I remind you that you have a loving Father in heaven. He wants you to be part of his great family here on earth - and he has sent his own Son to make that possible.

May you and all yours - yes, including the grumpy ones - know God’s love and peace this Christmastime. Amen!

Don't be over-spiritual!

Contend, O Lord, with those who contend with me; fight against those who fight against me. Take up shield and buckler; rise and come to my aid... May those who seek my life be disgraced and put to shame... Psalm 35:1-3

Jesus cried out in a loud voice... “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Mark 15:34

I recently read an interview with a quite prominent Christian. He was asked, among other things, about his prayer life. To this he replied, “I never pray for myself; I only ever pray for other people.”

I wonder how that strikes you? My first reaction was to feel very small - I’m afraid I couldn’t make anything like the same claim! It led to a bit of soul-searching, a bit of self-questioning. Are my prayers in essence selfish? Do I need to rethink completely the way I pray?

But then I thought: hang on a minute! Is this man claiming to be better than many examples we find in both the Bible and in Christian history? Better, in fact, than Jesus? Is he right to never pray for himself?

In fact (look out! - confession coming up), I found myself starting to get a bit cross, even judgmental. Who does this sanctimonious, super-spiritual creep think he is (you can tell, just in case you don’t know me, that I’m not really a very nice person)? Isn’t saying “I never pray for myself” tantamount to claiming to be superior to us lesser mortals who do pray for ourselves?

And I thought of Psalm 35, and the words I have quoted. In the first three verses the words “me” or “my” occur five times (I’ll leave you to tot up how many more me’s and my’s there are in all twenty-eight verses). Psalm 35 is pretty much a random example - I could have gone for literally dozens of other places, not least Jesus’ prayer of agony on the cross.

The kernel of truth in what that man said is obvious enough: something is very wrong if we only, ever pray for ourselves. Of course! I hope none of us need to be told that. But let’s never be ashamed of the fact that we are in a deep, personal relationship with God, and at the heart of that relationship is conversation, dialogue, and dialogue means, among many things, talking to God about the things that excite or trouble or worry or puzzle us. How then can we not pray for ourselves? He is our father; we are his children.

I would sum it up like this: it is perfectly all right to pray for ourselves; but those prayers should not be selfish. How can that be? Here are two suggestions.

First, focus on holiness rather than happiness. 

We all want to be happy, of course: that’s natural. But none of us has a right to happiness. 

The top priority in the Christian life is to be made more like Jesus, and the fact is that in this slow, life-long, day-by-day process, one of God’s main tools is a dose, large or small, of unhappiness. The bumps, as they say, are what you grow on. If we pray only for our own happiness we are missing the point of life; and we will remain shallow (not to mention deeply unsatisfied) as people.

Second, focus on usefulness rather than personal fulfilment.

Again, there is nothing wrong with being keen, even ambitious, to make the most of the talents and gifts God has seen fit to give us (and these may be things which have nothing at all to do with “religion”). But if we are Christians our chief motive when it comes to “making something of my life” is to be of service to God. The nineteenth-century hymn puts it perfectly: “O use me, Lord, use even me,/ Just as thou wilt, and when, and where...” Amen!

One of the greatest things the New Testament says about Jesus is this: “Even though he was in the form of God, he did not consider equality with God something to be taken advantage of, but made himself nothing (literally, emptied himself)” (Philippians 2:7). If we can boil that down and apply it to ourselves: you become somebody when you are happy to be nobody.

Holiness and usefulness... Aren’t these essentially what the Christian life is about? Other things certainly have a claim upon our prayers - health, work, money, family, you name it - but they find their rightful places if we keep these key priorities uppermost in our minds.

Father in heaven, thank you that you love me so much as to be concerned with all my worries and troubles, my joys and pleasures, and that I can talk to you about the biggest and the smallest. But help me always to put first the things that matter most, the heavenly and eternal things, and the needs of others. Amen.