37. God who is Righteous (2)

Getting to Know God Meditations:  37. God who is Righteous (2)

Psa 11:7 For the Lord is righteous, he loves justice;

Job 37:23 The Almighty is beyond our reach and exalted in power; in his justice and great righteousness, he does not oppress.

Doing all things well? The complaints that come from the grumbling, critical and so often ignorant-of-the-Bible atheists, is that God is harsh and unkind and spiteful. I really don’t know what Bible they are reading – if only they would read – for the Bible I have before me shows a very different God. Perhaps it is all a matter of perspective! The God I see does all things well, not perhaps as we would do things, but He does them far better than anything we could do if we were masters of the universe. Yes, I understand that at first sight some of His actions appear ‘different’ – I am not going to use any stronger negative word because that would only show our folly in misunderstanding. In this study I want to look at a couple of incidents from the Old Testament, and then in the next study, incidents from the New Testament.

Following the Fall: I used to think that what followed the Fall was tough going for Adam and Eve, until I gave it some more thought.  First of all, let’s just recap what happened. God gave them a wonderful world in which to live, a world of enjoyment but to build character into them, He gave them one prohibition to follow.  They ignored it and did what He said not to do, so He held them to account for this and they made excuses. I wonder if the outcome would have been different, if they had responded, “We’re sorry, we’re stupid, we did wrong, please forgive us,” but they didn’t and so we find the Lord sending them out of the Garden, forbidding them to return. That seemed hard.

Whatever else it meant, it meant loss of that previous wonderful experience of peace, tranquility, security and love, but basically God was giving them exactly what they had asked for – freedom to do what they wanted without any restrictions from God – just like most people want. But left to their own devices, humanity is not nice, we exercise our free will in ways that are self-harming and certainly harming to others (as a history with only very few years free from war, tells). So Cain kills Abel (Gen 4) and within a relatively short time, “The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time.” (Gen 6:5)

But Hope: What a mess! And we sometimes refer to ‘civilization’????? How stupid sin is. If we had a complaint of God it might be, “Why ever did you give us free will?” and I think the answer would be, “Without it there would no love, no creativity, no relationships, no inspiration, and so much more missing.” So yes, God cut us free to be ourselves with all the awfulness that entails, but the alternative would be a world of zombies. Yet He doesn’t leave it there. When I first realized it, it came as a surprise but the mere fact that He gave them freedom to live outside His sphere of influence – the Garden – didn’t mean He completely cut Himself off from them. In chapter 4 we find Him talking with Cain, trying to guide him away from murder.

In chapter 5 we find Enoch ‘walking with God’, having an ongoing relationship with God. In chapter 6 we see Him talking to Noah. In chapter 12 we see the start of the long saga of Abram’s relationship with God, and all that follows on. Oh no, as we saw very early on, this is a God of involvement and eventually a God of salvation through His Son, Jesus. Free-will failure, yes. Banishment. Yes. No contact. No! The plan is that God would work within the folly of mankind, not outside it as we’ll see.

Pharaoh, a hopeless case: We’ll keep this one short: why did God engineer the whole debacle involving hard-hearted Pharaoh (Ex 1-12) because that’s what it seems like? He knew it would happen,  He knew that in a broken world a famine would mean Jacob and his family would end up in Egypt, He knew they would stay there instead of returning to Canaan, He knew they would flourish and grow and be a threat to Egypt and become their slaves, He knew that Egypt, with the folly of sinful mankind would decline into an occult-driven, superstitious mess of inhumanity (even sacrificing their own children) and He knew that hard-hearted occult-driven Pharaoh would never give way to Moses’ demands, so why…… hold on!

I used the word ‘engineer’ early on but perhaps that is not an appropriate word to use because what I have just listed in this series of events is i) a result of the Fall, a famine, and ii) then a series of misdoings by human beings whereby their messy interactions ended up with the events of the Exodus. God simply took the sinful affairs of mankind and used that as the backdrop of the stage where He would reveal His power and grace and mankind’s staggering folly. Wow!

Saul: The third instance that I have in mind, of the way God works well, is that of Saul. To try and keep it as short as possible, Israel are fed up with having judges rule over them and so ask Samuel to give them a king like other nations have. (1 Sam 8:4,5). Now God is incredibly gracious when Samuel comes to Him with this request and says, don’t worry, it’s not you they are rejecting, but me. Now make sure you tell them what happens when you have a king, the things he will demand (see 1 Sam 8:10-18) so that they will know exactly what they are getting into.

Nevertheless the people say give us a king – so God gives them exactly what they want – a big guy, head and shoulders taller than most, who looks good and looks like he can beat up the enemy. You can read it in the following chapters. God even allows the choice – Saul – to have a serious spiritual experience (see 10:9,11) Saul has everything going for him, yet he shows that being a king of a nation under God requires more than just looking big and tough and, cutting a long story short, God has to tell Samuel that it’s up with Saul and He has someone else on His heart to replace him, (1 Sam 13:14) a man after his own heart – David. But consider all this, God gave them exactly what they wanted but that wasn’t enough and the record proves that.

And So? So what have we seen?  God who holds His erring Adam and Eve accountable but allows them to live their lives exactly as they wanted – and yet He still keeps in close contact. Then there was the foolish Pharaoh, coming at the end of a series of unwise choices by Israel (not to return home and to stay in Egypt, and not flee when the pressures started to build) who simply provided a further opportunity for the folly of sin in mankind to be demonstrated for all to see, alongside the power and grace of God.

Finally, in the case of Saul, we see God giving Israel exactly what they want – despite all the warnings they rejected – and allowing that situation to be worked out in the long-term bringing maturity to the shepherd-boy-cum-king, David. For anyone with an honest and open heart, these are examples of a God who cares but that caring is in such a manner that in each case truth is revealed to the world about itself. The message we are left with? We need a Savior, someone to dig us out of the messes we keep getting ourselves into!  We’ll see some more of this in the next study.

32. God of Hope – the practice (2)

Getting to Know God Meditations:  32. God of Hope – the practice (2)

Jn 5:6,7    “Do you want to get well?”  “Sir,” the invalid replied, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.”

Taking Stock: We need, I think, to pause and take stock of where we are. We have been considering the ways that hope is conveyed as something God brings to our confused states within the human race, to help us be more reassured in today as we face tomorrow. Hope is always about tomorrow – or maybe the next hour or the next few minutes, and the question arises, will God be there for me? To conclude this little section, I want to focus us on some illustrations from the Bible that say that, not only is God there, but He is there for us.

The Hopelessness of Bethesda: Our verses above come from an incident involving Jesus who had returned to Jerusalem to celebrate one of the Jewish feasts. He goes to a pool in the city, identified as having five covered alcoves (5:2). Now something happened to this pool every now and then, it bubbled up, and seemingly when you managed to get into the water when it bubbled up, you were healed. Now whether this was a natural occurrence or something else we don’t know, but the fact was that many people who were sick or disabled came to this pool and sheltered under the alcoves (keeping out of the sun or rain, no doubt). In a day when there was no health service or health insurance, the sick and disabled were pretty much helpless and their circumstances hopeless. Those who were able, stumbled into the water when it was stirred but perhaps there were so many of them, it was often impossible to get near it. Whether anyone was healed is open to speculation. Nevertheless they came with hope that it might happen. This one man had been an invalid for thirty eight years and he was just lying there, clearly with all hope gone: “‘I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.’” (v.7)

Then Jesus: Why Jesus chose this man and not others is unclear; perhaps he wanted to make the point that no one was beyond his help. He commands the man to get up and he is instantly healed. The cynic might suggest the man was just pretending to be sick, but to what purpose? Lying around, begging, in the midst of a sick crowd. It is bad enough sitting in a doctor’s waiting room, this must have been far worse. No, he was sick and now he has been healed. When we look carefully at the Gospels, we see that Jesus healed vast numbers of the sick, disabled and demon-possessed who either came to him or were brought to him – see Mt 4:24, 8:16, 12:15, 14:14,36, 15:30, 19:2, 21:14, as well as many individual healings. Jesus generated hope and when the people heard what was happening they flocked to him.

Only New Testament? Without doubt, this was a unique time that amongst other things verified that this was the Son of God, God incarnate on the earth, so was this three years a unique time when God healed? Well, no, because in Acts it is clear that the apostles continued Jesus’ healing ministry. In the teaching within the rest of the New Testament, there is reference to the gift of healing (1 Cor 12:9,30), and James specifically says that church elders should pray over the sick and heal them (Jas 5:14-16). So is healing restricted to the New Testament period? The categorical answer is no, healing is there in abundance in the Old Testament.  I think I will do what I don’t normally do and leave it to other writers. John Wimber’s ‘Power Healing’ is possibly one of the best known and very comprehensive books on healing. Dr. Jack Deere’s ‘Surprised by the Power of the Spirit’ is also worth a read, as is ‘The Kingdom and the Power’ by a compilation of writers. The point we need to be making is that the all-powerful God sometimes (but not always – and there are reasons – read the books) heals and bring hope to those who feel hopeless in their circumstances.

Naaman: There is one healing that stands out in the Old Testament that speaks volumes about God. Naaman was commander of the army of Aram (2 Kings 5:1), a nearby nation who came and every now and then raided Israel (5:2) i.e. they were enemies of Israel. The only trouble was that Naaman contracted leprosy (5:1c). However he had taken, on one of his raids, a young Israelite girl, who he made maid to his wife. This maid suggested to his wife that he go to visit a prophet in Israel named Elisha who might heal him. To cut a long story short (read 2 Kings 5:1-15) Naaman is healed. Now just consider this: the man is an enemy of Israel and has done harm to Israel – but God still heals him! What an act of grace and mercy! It screams at us, whoever will come and surrender themselves to God (or His representatives) will find God’s help.

Wider Issues: There are times when circumstances seem so confusing they defy us and yet James writes, “If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you.” (Jas 1:5) Wisdom is the knowledge of how to act, so what is James saying? Go to God in a believing state (see v.6) and He will tell you how to deal with your problem. So, the knowledge of ‘how to’ is available to believers.

But what about other physical or relational issues. I hate moving in this area because of never wanting to bring false hope, but twice I have been privileged to have a prophetic word for barren couples that they would conceive within a year (and they did) and once to a single girl who felt she would be single for the rest of her life, that she would be married within a year (and she was). Is there anything special about this? No, the Bible is full of couples who were childless and God turned up and enabled them to have a child. God is concerned about all areas of our lives and I believe no area is ‘off limits’ as far as God is concerned. There is nothing automatic here for, as we’ve sought to show before, it is all about relationship. And, seeking to be wholly honest, it is sometimes a mystery why God heals some and not others. The book writers suggest a variety of reasons but the simple instruction has to be – know He loves you, pray and keep on praying and be at peace. Easy to say, hard to do.

But hope: But this is the message of the whole Bible, that we live in a fallen world where we get it wrong often, things go wrong often, and a mess often ensues. Left like that it would be depressing but the bigger picture is that God is there for us and as we cooperate with Him, so He works to redeem every messy situation and bring good into it, as we allow Him. Those are the only limiting criteria – ‘as we cooperate with him’ and ‘as we allow Him’. He never forces His way into our circumstances, but always comes when we call with an open heart. That is the hope we have, that tomorrow can be better than today because of God. That is what hope is all about, a God of hope.  Without God it is all wishful thinking but thankfully the Bible and the testimony of millions down through the centuries says otherwise. Hallelujah! OK, it’s time to move on.

29. God of Hope – the theory

Getting to Know God Meditations:  29. God of Hope – the theory

Rom 8:24    hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? ²⁵ But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.

Eph 1:18   I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people,

The Future?  As we concluded the previous study we mentioned the future and in a day when the future of this world seems increasingly uncertain, with ever new doomsday scenarios being presented to us, we find the future has a big place in the scriptures, not as a means of escaping the present but as a time (here) of potential blessing, and that going on into a glorious eternity with God where life continues in a dimension that, I suspect, defies our wildest dreams.  I feel sorry for atheists who seek to portray their wares, their philosophies, as something good, at times contorting their minds to overcome the picture of gloom that their ‘world by accident’ (“Well of course evolution is purposeful.”  Really???) comes up with, and the best that I have read that they can come up with when it comes to after this life, is us being turned into dust that joins the rest of the cosmos. Dust????

The ‘Recent Future’: I think many of us who are Christians tend to take this for granted but we have already considered in small measure the changes that take place when we turn to Christ. Let’s briefly recap them: we are forgiven, cleansed, justified, adopted and empowered. Be quite clear in your mind what each of these mean because they all impact tomorrow! The fact that I am forgiven (1 Jn 1:9) means I do not keep on having to go back over the past with regret. Yes, I got things wrong, yes I lived without the knowledge of God, but that is now all past history and I know differently today.  The fact that I am cleansed means the guilt and the shame and even the tainted memories have come under the cleansing hand of Christ, all dealt with on the Cross. He has done it; I am a new creation! (2 Cor 5:17) To be justified means that I have been morally put right in God’s sight; justice has been appeased because One has died for my sins and I have been released from the Court of Heaven to live a new life.  The fact that I am adopted means I have been taken into God’s family and remade (Jn 1:12,13) in the family likeness. I am family! The fact is that I am now empowered by the indwelling Holy Spirit who came to me and generated fresh life in me in an almost indescribable way when I turned to Christ. All of these truths impact the way I can face today and especially, tomorrow.

The Immediate Future: But how does a believer face tomorrow (literally tomorrow, not the distant future)? What are the things the Bible teaches me that will help tomorrow? They are things that come out of direct teaching lessons that are implied through the way God has interacted with people in the Bible.

• The first thing is that He is there. That is what is behind the whole thesis of these studies. We are not alone in this universe, I am not alone in this universe, God is there.
• Second, He is there for me. Everything about the teaching about Jesus and the salvation he brings, says God is for me. Everything that has happened to me all the years I have known Him tells me He is for me. When I pray, when I read the Bible, those experiences convey this to me – He is here for me!
• Third, He is there with a plan for my life: “The fact is that what we are we owe to the hand of God upon us. We are born afresh in Christ and born to do those good deeds which God planned for us to do.” (Eph 2:10 JBP)
• Fourth, that plan is all about redeeming my life. That simply means He is constantly working to save me from what I once was and from the messes I still manage, sometimes, to get myself into.
• Fifth, that plan means He is there guiding me and leading me into better things.
• Sixth, these things means He is in the process of changing me to be a more loving, more appreciative, more godly, more gracious, and a more Spirit-filled human being.
• Seventh, His grace is there for me every day, the resource of His own Holy Spirit who provides me with everything I need to live a godly and righteous life.
• Eighth, (and we could go on and on), finally let’s say, that grace enables me to overcome all the obstacles and temptations that the enemy would put in my way and enables me to triumph over these things.

Yes, all of these are truth that help me live out tomorrow and the next day here on this earth, and as many days as He allows me to have here. But that makes me add just one more:

• Ninth, and this is the final one, He will keep on working in and through me every single day until I go to be with Him in heaven: “he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” (Phil 1:6)

Hope of Eternity: Now we have entitled this study, the God of Hope, because all we are talking about is what I hope will happen in the time and eternity ahead of this day.  Non-Christians use the word hope casually but for Christians it means an assurance of the future. When we say we have hope in Him it means we have total assurance, total confidence in Him for our future. The apostle Paul wrote, “I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people,” (Eph 1:18) and, “faith and love that spring from the hope stored up for you in heaven,” (Col 1:5) and, “their knowledge of the truth that leads to godliness— ² in the hope of eternal life,” (Titus 1:2) and “having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life.” (Titus 3:7) There it is, the hope to which he has called you, the hope stored up in heaven, the hope of eternal life (x2). This is the future after we die and cease our time here, a future with Christ in heaven, a future with no end.

When we are young, death is something distant and almost unreal. The older we get the stronger the reality becomes that death may be just around the corner. When I consider my present age, I realize there are many people who have already died who were much younger than I am now. Death comes when, much of the time, we are not expecting it.  But for those of us who know Christ, death and what follows is not something to be feared. At the beginning I referred to the atheist who, in his novels for young people, talks about us ending up as dust in the cosmos. Meaningless! But that is not for you and me. The limited pictures that we are given of the afterlife, suggests an eternity with purpose, an eternity with joy and pleasure and meaning, an eternity with God who we enjoy and who enjoys us. THAT is our destiny. Rest in it, be at peace in it.

And So: The big picture that the Bible conveys is that our time on this earth is not a meaningless blink of time but is a preparation for something to follow that is more glorious. At the risk of making this an over-long study, may I conclude it with something I wrote in a series called ‘Reaching into Redemption’, near the end of that series:

Imagine a cold, rough, harsh street in which you have lived, and in front of you is a great building and you hear a voice calling, inviting you to come in. As you peer in through the open doors you see an interior that is so different to this street outside. You realize you have tolerated this awful street for too long and you long to experience the wonder of what you glimpse inside. Yet you feel unworthy and so simply kneel on the steps, but a voice calls again and bids you enter. In humility you timidly pass through the entrance doors. Inside it is full of light and beauty. A servant comes up and offers you new clothing and you realize all you had worn previously was threadbare, torn and dirty. In a vestibule to the side you are able to change, and you emerge in splendor.

The area inside the entrance doors is enormous and glorious and splendid and there is so much to see. There are so many things to which your attention is drawn, and time passes rapidly as you enjoy and enter in to so much of what is before you. But then the voice comes yet again and invites you to ascend the stairs that lead out of this area, but you hesitate. There is so much here in this room that has become so familiar, there is so much that is good, and you feel there is still so much yet to explore, and so you hesitate. But the voice is persistent, and you know it is a command which you cannot refuse and so you ascend the stairs and pass through the door at the top. Suddenly your breath leaves you because what is before you cannot be described as a room, it is a world, and you gasp at its beauty, and as you glance back through the door behind you, all that you had been experiencing simply looked grey by comparison to the wonder, the color, the brightness before you and, suddenly, you realize that the room below where you had spent so much time, yes, so much more wonderful than the street outside, was but the entrance foyer to this new world.

It is but an illustration, but an accurate one I believe. The street outside was our old life. Entering the doors was our conversion. The time spent in the entrance foyer was simply to start to prepare us for the reality to come. Accurate? But incomplete, for it is but a parable, and parables never tell the whole story. So back to our experience of this ‘entrance foyer’, a place of promises where some are fulfilled and experienced, and some are simply glimpsed at a distance as we gaze up the staircase and catch just a glimmer of what is beyond.

Our past, our present – and our glorious future, if we will but receive it today.

36. All about God

Expectations & Hopes Meditations: 36. All about God

1 Pet 1:20,21   He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake. Through him you believe in God, who raised him from the dead and glorified him, and so your faith and hope are in God.

Time to draw a close: Because the word hope come up so many times in the New Testament, we could keep on and on  with this subject, meditating on the individual verses, but instead we will draw this series to a close with the two verses above that really sum it all up for us We have considered this subject of expectation through individuals in the Old Testament and then as it pertains to Jesus. As we have just said, these two verses sum up or summarise the origins, at least, of our hope, and they are in Jesus.

The Gospel Encapsulated: The Gospel of Jesus Christ is not a recent fiction of the last two thousand years, but has its origins, we are told over half a dozen times in the New Testament, right back before the creation of the world. It was then that the Godhead, with the recognition that giving mankind free will would mean that we brought Sin into the world, decided that the Son of God would step into history at a given point of time to act as one who would carry our sins and thus our guilt in his death on a cross. This Peter says, “was revealed in these last times.”  Through what happened to Jesus, we are focused on God. Through Jesus’ death and resurrection our attention has been grabbed and we focus it back on God.

It’s all about God: We realise that it had to be a work of God, as Peter himself preached, “Men of Israel, listen to this: Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs, which God did among you through him, as you yourselves know. This man was handed over to you by God’s set purpose and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross. But God raised him from the dead.” (Acts 2:22-24) Four is said to be the number of divine government and four times there he spoke about God’s involvement in all that had happened. Twice it was God providing the miracles Jesus did, once it was all about God’s set plan and purpose and once, it was God who raised Jesus from the dead.

Faith & Hope: The whole of the events involving and surrounding the coming of Jesus were about God bringing about the possibility of you and me being able to have a genuine relationship with almighty God, and that immediately puts before us the thoughts about our future, our future here on the earth and our future after death. How we live out today is all about faith, because it is about how we respond to His word in the way we live now, but the fact that we are constantly looking forward to tomorrow means we are living in hope, with the expectations His word generates in our hearts and minds.

Did you see that? From our vantage point, how we respond now is about faith, but how we view tomorrow is about hope. Faith is doing now; hope is about expectations for tomorrow. When we arrive at ‘tomorrow’, whenever that is, we will be living out that day in faith, but as we continue to regard the future, we do it with hope, this confident expectation of what God will do or how He will respond in respect of us.

A Question: But, someone might ask, if hope is constantly about the future, does it really matter? If, when we get to ‘tomorrow’ we are acting in faith, isn’t that the key thing? Well, in one sense, yes, but as we’ve seen in past studies, the fact that we have this hope acts almost as a stabilizing foundation for our lives today. Without it, life and the ongoing years is really an exercise with a big question mark over it. The fact that we can say tomorrow the Lord will be with us to bless us and after death we will continue to be with Him, means that we can live today with purpose – not only to capture the blessings of today, but to ensure we keep going to capture the blessings of eternity that God has promised us.

To Summarise: In this sense, ‘hope’ is a very real factor in our lives. It encourages us in today and energizes and motivates us towards tomorrow. Remember, the origins of our hope lie in the fact that we have been, as we said in the previous meditation, justified, adopted and empowered (and all that by the work of Jesus) and the content of our hope for tomorrow is that our understanding and experience of these three things will deepen and enlarge and will continue to carry us through the years until we pass off this present existence and are carried into eternity where it will just get better and better.

I think I will draw it to a close here. We will have a final recap tomorrow, but in the meantime, I hope that these studies will have put some content to your understanding and added some strength to the foundations of your faith. Amen.

35. Confident Expectations

Expectations & Hopes Meditations: 35. Confident Expectations

1 Cor 15:14,17-19   if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith …… And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.

A People of Hope? As I have working through this series on ‘expectations’ I have come to realise (or just see more clearly) that hope, or confident expectation, is everywhere, especially in the New Testament and so, we are called to be a people of hope, a people of confident expectation. Thus, when I suspect that a large majority of Christian do not live with this expectation, I conclude that it must be because they do not read their Bible or take in what is there.

Back to Basics: Very often with such studies we start out with some complexity but then find ourselves going backwards it seems and becoming more and more simple, and so, as we must be drawing nearer to the end of this series, let’s see if we can be absolutely basic.

The Resurrection: If we have this hope, this confidence, we have emphasised again and again that it is to do with the future, but why can we have this confidence? On what is it built? Well, very obviously, it is built upon Jesus, upon what we read of him in the Gospels, but even more it is built upon his resurrection. If Jesus had just come with good teaching and did a variety of miracles and healed a lot of people, we could say he was just a good man, but he stands out in history as having died by crucifixion and then within three days as having risen from the dead. There is also the small matter of his ascension! The fact that this happened to Jesus, not only marks him out in history, but it also indicates God’s approval of him, as well as setting down a foundation of believe in a power that is there available for our lives also, a power we have already observed that will take us through death and into an eternal life with God.

Our Salvation Package: So, when the ‘salvation package’ is laid out before us, we find it includes us being justified (because Jesus has taken our guilt and shame), us being adopted (because Jesus has taken away any barrier between us and the Father) and us being receivers of his own Holy Spirit (because Jesus has redeemed our lives from the enemy and his way of living). All of these things, I have just shown, we have because of what Jesus has done. Thus, our confidence for these things is in Jesus, and our confidence in Jesus is because of what we see of him in the Gospels, and especially his death and resurrection. Because we are sure of these thing, we can be confident about tomorrow and especially the ‘tomorrow’ that includes our death and what comes after it.

The Ingredients of Tomorrow: Thus, seeking to be as simple and obvious as possible, if we can backtrack over these things, as I look into the day ahead of me and the many days, weeks, months or years I may have left to me, I can look forward to such times that will be free from guilt or shame because I have been justified. Even more, I can look forward to such times being those when I am aware of being a son of God, a child of God, part of God’s family, part of His household (Eph 2:19), and thus a receiver of all of the love and goodness that flows in that relationship with the Father. And underpinning all this, is the glorious and wonderful presence of His Holy Spirit who indwells me and equips me and empowers me to do the work of Jesus.

All of these things, I have with complete confidence and it is a confidence that they will be there, just the same, every day of my life that remains. There will not be a day when I have to feel guilt and shame, there will not be a day when I do not know the love and provision of the Father, and there will not be a day when I will be devoid of the Holy Spirit and His power and enabling. THAT is the confidence, THAT is the hope we have for this day, and tomorrow and every day after that.

Holding Firm: In case this sounds too good or too easy, let me balance it with the following that comes earlier in that same chapter as our starting verses: “By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain.” (1 Cor 15:2) Now there is a faith element to all this. Why is it that so many are not living in this threefold expectation I have just laid out? It is because of lack of faith to believe God’s word, the Gospel that Paul said he had preached.

Please, if you need to, if you recognise that you do not live with this daily threefold recognition (and we could add more things to those three), then go back and reread the paragraphs above until you take them in and absorb them and are able to say, “Yes, that is the basis upon which I live each day!”

The Unacceptable Alternative: And to go back to the beginning, we can say these things with a certainty, with this sure and confident expectation – this hope – because of Jesus and because Jesus died AND rose again. I do like the way Paul puts it, “if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith … your faith is futile …… we are to be pitied more than all men.” We either believe it and live it, or we pack our bags and go and join the miserable atheists, materialists and humanist. Trying to settle somewhere in between (“well you ask too much of me”) means we incur the strong words of Jesus: “you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! …. you are lukewarm–neither hot nor cold” (Rev 3:15,16) We don’t want to be that; we don’t need to be that. All we need do is go back over and over those three sets of truths above – justified, adopted, empowered – and get them well and truly settled in our lives, and then live them!

These things we should be able to be completely confident about, and when we are we can live every day with this confident expectation, and the wonderful thing is that when we do, it opens a door for God to move in and through us and who knows what the outcome will be? All I can say is that a) it will be change and b) it will be good! As you finish, dare to pray: “Lord, thank you in anticipation for this day and this week ahead, that I can live it in the knowledge of your love, live it as your child and live it with your power. Thank you, Lord. Amen!”

34. Growth through Hope

Expectations & Hopes Meditations: 34. Growth through Hope

Col 1: 5,6   the faith and love that spring from the hope that is stored up for you in heaven and that you have already heard about in the word of truth, the gospel that has come to you. All over the world this gospel is bearing fruit and growing, just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and understood God’s grace in all its truth.

How Hope Works: Hope is a strong and sure expectation for tomorrow and when we have hope it affects how we live today. There is nothing special about this, it is not big and clever thinking but just ordinary, ‘this is how life works’ stuff. For instance, a gardener in Spring plans how the garden will develop through the rest of the year and cleans beds, lays out new ones, sows seeds, gets new plants in – all to achieve an end result. He or she has in their mind’s eye, a picture of what the garden can look like later in the year.

Or take a businessman running his company. Yes, he looks at how the company is running now but he makes plans how to grow his business and he takes steps now to create growth tomorrow. He sees in his mind’s eye what he could be achieving in a couple of years’ time and he works for that to happen.. Or there is a couple with a growing family living in a small house. They look at their finances and agree that they can afford to move to a bigger house. They don’t just sit back and do nothing. No, they start scouring the windows of estate agents, they start assessing different areas, they check out possible schools for their children, they start actually looking at specific houses. They are active because they see in their mind’s eye living in a bigger house.

Effect of Hope: Now Paul says that the hope that we have for an eternal future with God, generates faith and love for life today. The Gospel we have heard, he says, tells us that there is a better tomorrow promised us and as we have taken hold of that hope, it helps us as we live today. That hope stirs faith in us to live out today with that end in mind. That hope of God’s goodness poured out in eternity for us, in abundance, stirs love in us. But not just us; it does it wherever the gospel is preached around the world. The truth has set us free and the fulfilment of it in eternity anchors us and stirs us in the present today as we receive God’s grace for both now and then. That is what he says in our verses above.

Today and Tomorrow: If we let that truth settle in us, it can have profound effects for both now and the future. As we have considered previously, this hope is not only for that eternal experience, it is also for the days ahead of us in this life. Again, as we saw previously, when I came to Christ, that hope may have been in a very simple form – simply that tomorrow will be different, a better different: “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” (2 Cor 5:17) My past has died and there is a new tomorrow because I AM a new person, and I DO have the Holy Spirit within me, changing me and empowering me to enjoy today and tomorrow. My eternal destiny is there ahead, something to look forward to and while it is still future (and I am still here on this earth) future and present merge as far as expectations are concerned for it is the same Holy Spirit who will carry me into eternity who is in me now. So, very subtly (and I suspect many of us don’t ever realise this) our thinking is changed – tomorrow WILL be different and so tomorrow CAN be different.

Possibilities: Think about this. The word of God, the Gospel, told us that the end fruit, if you like, of our salvation is a wonderful eternity with God. So, yes, tomorrow – our eternal tomorrow – WILL be different. Now we do have an eternal future; there is a life after this. But part of the package, again if we may put it like that, is that the time between now and then, CAN be different. Now there is a sense whereby it WILL be different because He is in us, but there is also that truth that we are partners with God and we do have a say in how our lives are worked out.

Future impacts Present: Perhaps we are unsure about this future dimension, about its reality in respect of how it affects our present because, perhaps, many of us rarely think about it? But I wonder if that is actually true? Imagine the Gospel was: “believe on Jesus and your present life will be good and when you die, that will be the end of everything. You can be assured that you will not have to face God after death, it will just be the end.” Now if that was what you were told, I’m not sure it would have the same impact. A good life now is a worthy goal but for it to come to an end when we die? What is the point of such a life?

Deep down, it is this reality that in fact there is more than this three score and twenty (as it tends to be today in the West) years, that reassures us. That IS there, whether we think about it regularly (when you get older) or not. The reassurance is actually a very real one, maybe at almost subconscious level, but it is there – I have a destiny and it is more than simply living out today. Today is important, and I can have real hopes for today – that He is there for me and providing for me etc. – but that importance is strangely anchored in that hope of eternity; this is what subtly puts meaning to everything – there is more than just this life this side of death.

Assurance: Now there may be some of us who are not so secure in that eternal hope. Well, should that be you, think of that most famous of verses: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (Jn 3:16) There it is in its simplicity. You believe in Jesus, you believe he is the Son of God who died for you? You believe that because the Bible says it is so, and you believe the Bible? Done! You have eternal life and that means a changed, empowered life now and an eternal destiny, a wonderful life with God for ever.

Transformation Possibilities: There is such an inter-connecting with all these things. What we believe about tomorrow affects our today. What we think about who we are and what God thinks about us, affects our today. If you are unsure of your future or unsure of God’s love for you, it will blight your present. I have been watching in recent months, the Lord blessing one little lady in our congregation who has been through a really tough time with an abusive, violent husband. It all ended in a bitter divorce and she was shattered. Her self-esteem was zero, and then the Lord very gently started rebuilding it. She got prayed for, she went out for prayer and every time the Lord reaffirmed her. Whereas she saw she had no future but a lonely, bitter, scarred and wounded one, that has been changing as she has started to realise afresh that she is a beautiful daughter of God – with a good new future! And she has been changing. There is still some way to go but she is changing. Now she is someone who prays for and over others; she is getting words from God for others, she is ministering to others. Amazing and beautiful!

We are what we are because of what Jesus has done for us, what he is doing for us and what he will do for us in eternity. All those thing impact on my life today. I don’t know what today will hold, but I know Jesus is there in it with me and will continue to be until that time when I move into the eternal dimension after death and, for now, that eternal reassurance encourages me in today and helps release faith and love, just as Paul said. Isn’t it great!

33. The Need for Vision

Expectations & Hopes Meditations: 33. The Need for Vision

Rom 8: 24b,25   Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently

An Expecting World: Sometimes the Bible says the very obvious but it is the very obvious things we need to take hold of, things that we may ignore just because they are so obvious. In Romans 8, the apostle Paul has been speaking about the state of the world: “We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the first-fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all.” (Rom 8:22-24a) There is a sequence of truth here that needs noting. He says we know that “the whole creation has been groaning… right up to the present time.” He portrays the world as being in a state of expectation, “as in the pains of childbirth” which suggests that the world as it was, is not the world that will be; there is something being formed that is yet to be revealed.

A Frustrated World: To make sense of that we have to go back into the prior verses: “The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed.” (v.19) That’s interesting; his starting place is the sense that the world waits for Christians to be revealed. Why is that so important?  “For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it.” (v.20) Because of the Fall, God laid certain limitations on ‘life’ – see Gen 3 – relationships would be strained, childbirth hard yet desirable (v.16), working the earth will be hard (v.17,18), man excluded from the tree of life (v.22,23) and from the presence of God.

Nevertheless Hope: And so it had existed, ever since. And yet, there was this feeling ever since, that there is something more. Relationships with the Lord did spring up – Abram, Isaac & Jacob, a people were formed to relate to God (Israel), and yet even that didn’t work well as Israel failed again and again. Nevertheless, as God spoke through His prophets there was this hope of something better, one who would come who would change things, who would bring peace and harmony with Him.

But, Paul goes on, when God ‘subjected it’ to frustration it was “in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.” (v.20,21) i.e. that there would come a time when the world could be changed by the presence of those who could be called “children of God” which brings us back to our starting place – this world was groaning in expectation of some change which, says Paul, is the revelation and bringing about of a new people, brought into relationship with God through the work of Christ.

Yet not yet: But when we come to our starting verses again (v.24b,25) Paul says we still have this ‘hope’, this expectation of a future ‘something’ and thus implies it has not yet come to full fruition, implying a future fulfillment which he speaks about in v.23: “Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the first-fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.” Note, ‘first-fruits’; we’ve already received part of the package. Back in v.11 he said, “if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you.” 

Already there has been a measure of this for we have received the Holy Spirit who now indwells us and in ways that are not always clear, His presence in us, can even affect us physically. But back in v.23 he also spoke about how we “wait eagerly for our adoption as sons.” Now we have already been adopted into God’s family the moment we were justified and saved, but the clear implication is that there is yet more to come, more behind this meaning of being ‘adopted’ and that has yet to come.

More? Right, hold on to your seat, for this where it is going to get mind-blowing and challenging. In Paul’s writing here in chapter 8 there is this clear declaration that we have a hope of something yet more to come. In our lives before us, they will be two phases: first, the rest of our life on this earth before we die, and then, second, a future dimension in eternity, certainly involving heaven, but also involving a new heaven and a new earth (see Rev 21). So, hold on to those two phases. Yes, we have that post-death phase that we are clear about because Scripture talks about it so much, but how about the pre-death phase? How do we view that?

Living Today? Do we, perhaps, live with the sense that we have ‘arrived’, that we have everything right now that Christ has for us, or is there something more? Well, I believe we do indeed have the potential for everything that Christ has for us but that we may not have entered into it all or appropriated it all yet. The New Testament hints at the idea that we are to grow up or mature, both concepts which convey the idea of change and development. If you are a Christian of say thirty years standing, hopefully you will have considerably more knowledge and understanding than you had when you first came to Christ. Hopefully you have also experienced much of him, have known the filling and gifting and leading of the Spirit and have experienced him teaching you many things.

Example: Let me give the example of the life of prayer, if we may speak about it as such. Many young Christians just pour out wishes, desires, even complaints to God, often with little understanding and certainly with little thought about whether God wants those things for them – and then they feel bad or doubt when those things don’t happen. As they mature, hopefully they learn that prayer is actually about listening to God and speaking out the things God wants for us, to bring us in harmony with His will. Instead of demanding our answers we, as we mature, ask Him what He wants for us and then as He conveys it, we may pray it with authority and see it coming about. If we have learned that, we have learned that there is more to life, more to praying, more to our relationship with the Lord, and as we enter more fully into those things we become more open and available to Him and find Him leading us into things we have perhaps never previously considered.

Hope for Today: This is the hope Paul is now speaking about in these verses, not only in receiving something wonderful AFTER we die, but having a life of openness to the Lord whereby He is able to teach us and train us and lead us into paths we perhaps had never dreamt of. Take, as another example, the apostles. When Peter first encountered Jesus (Jn 1:41,42) at the Jordon, Jesus changed his name. Later when Jesus went up to Galilee and called him (see Lk 5:1-10) he completely changed Peter’s perception of who he was, and called him to become a fisher of men (Mk 1:16-18). Until then Peter had been ‘just a fisherman’ and happy with that. Now he is changing. Watch him on the day of Pentecost and you see a leader. Traveling around the country (Acts 9:32 on) we see him ministering, just like Jesus; it is almost uncanny. When we first saw him at the Jordon he would never have guessed that’s what he would end up doing. This side of death we have a path that is rolling out before us as the Lord leads us, into ever greater things. Do you and I live with this ‘hope’, this expectation? May it be so.

32. Hope is about Believing

Expectations & Hopes Meditations: 32. Hope is about Believing

Rom 4:18   Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to him, “So shall your offspring be.”

Belief for the Future: As Paul quotes from Gen 15:5, we usually take that quote as the precursor to belief being the basis of righteousness because v.6 in Gen 15 continues, “Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness,” but Paul’s verse emphasizes to us that which we may otherwise take as obvious, that the belief that saves, is the belief in the future. For Abraham it was that his currently barren wife would yet have a son who would pave the way for a family tree that would eventually become a nation, Israel.

Belief in the Past: For us, there is both a past and present dimension to this believing and both are essential. The past dimension, if I may put it like that, is that we are required to believe that in the past Jesus has died for our sins on the Cross, but more than that, his work on the Cross has achieved everything that is necessary for us for our future lives.

Hopeless? But before we look at all that provision for our future, let’s just take on board those opening words of Paul’s verse above: “Against all hope”. That was the reality of Abraham’s situation as it had been back in Mesopotamia; his wife was barren and there was nothing he could do about that. Year followed year and hope of a child gradually diminished until the onset of the menopause when all hope of a child died. That was how it had been, and then God spoke, and God called him from that land we sometimes refer to as the ‘Cradle of Civilization’, to go to the land of Canaan where God would bless him in such a way that he would become the father of a nation.  He went and then it was in a subsequent ‘conversation’ that God said those words and Abraham believed and was declared righteous.

And Us? Isn’t that how it is with us?  We come to a point in life when we either feel utterly frustrated with our lives or we feel utter failures; we long for something better but, as with Paul in Romans 7, we can’t meet our own expectations and cry out, “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me?” (Rom 7:24) Well, it may not have been exactly in those terms but one way or another we find ourselves under the conviction of the Holy Spirit (although we didn’t realise it was Him at the time) feeling utterly helpless and hopeless and needing to be saved. We had lost all hope of me being able to save me. In desperation, “against all hope”, we cried out to Him when we heard the Gospel, “I believe. Please forgive me. Please save me.” At that point we were relying on what we had been told about the past, on what God had done, two thousand years ago, in Christ.

Again, Looking Forward: But then there is a future dimension which, I suspect we rarely think about in this context. Paul said, “Abraham in hope believed.” His belief was in something happening in the future, in God doing what He had said He would do – make him the father of many. Now for us it will be the same but different and maybe the difference is that initially for most of us (I know it was for me) it is more simple. All we know is that we are unhappy with our present and past and when we come to God through Christ we are coming with the hope that He is going to change me, change my life, change my future. Prior to coming to Him, my expectations of the future were that I would just carry on the same: unchanging, unfulfilled, frustrated, feeling bad, struggling and striving and getting nowhere. But when I turn to Him, I turn with this very basic belief that now it will be different.

Conversion: Maybe somebody quoted to me, “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” (2 Cor 5:17) I was told I was a new creation – and I felt it! Somehow, I felt different! Somehow, everything had changed. I didn’t understand it at the time, but I was now indwelt by the Spirit. Now I was justified by the work of Christ on the Cross. Now I was adopted into God’s family. Now I was a child of God. Now I had eternal life. All these things were true, even though I didn’t appreciate them at the moment of conversion; I just knew it had all changed.

My Believing: I don’t think I really thought about it – I don’t know how many of us do – but the truth was that, with Abraham, now in hope I believed. I believed that it would all be different and as the days, months and years passed I came to realise more and more the reality of that change and my beliefs became stronger and clearer. Initially I had just believed God when He said this is what I needed to do, and I trusted that whatever followed would be right and good. Like Abraham, I suspect, I didn’t have a clue how it could all happen, but if God said it, that was sufficient – I believed Him, I believed that the future would be changed. My expectations were unclear, but they would get clearer as the days passed. At that moment, they were simply, “It will be all right, because this is what God wants of me,” but in saying that I was looking forward and I had this confident assurance, this confident expectation that we call hope.

Words without Conviction: The belief we are talking about, the expectations we have, have to come with a practical commitment. Let me explain that. Once, many years ago, I had a five-hour conversation with someone about the Gospel. In that time, we covered all the bases and at the end of it they said (and I do not exaggerate), “I hear everything you have said. I understand it all, I understand all you have said about sin, all you have said about Jesus dying for me and all the rest, but the truth is that I like this life of sin and I’m going to stick with it,” and with that they got up and left.

They heard the words, but the conviction was not there, so they did not believe it applied to them and God would give them a better life, and they certainly didn’t believe they would suffer if they continued living as they were. This ‘believing’, this ‘hope for the future’ has to be something applied to me, as a reality. Why some people hear and truly believe, while other people hear and simply accept the facts but without them being able to be applied to them, so they are convicted, is a mystery. We believe against hope, but in hope we believe, and that is how we get saved. The more we understand this the more the wonder of it can fill us, and perhaps that is why we are doing this series. May our understanding grow and may the wonder of it increase to produce more and more worship. Amen.

31. Copying Jesus

Expectations & Hopes Meditations: 31. Copying Jesus

Acts 2:25-27    I will not be shaken. Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices; my body also will live in hope, because you will not abandon me to the grave, nor will you let your Holy One see decay.  

Following Jesus: Jesus is always to be the one we follow, the one we copy, and this is as much true about expectations as it is about anything else.  I have always been slightly worried about the “What would Jesus do?” campaign of a number of years ago because it has the potential for legalism and of ignoring the Holy Spirit’s inner leading, but nevertheless Jesus is indeed to be the one we follow and seek to imitate.

Resurrection Hope: It was the apostle Peter on the Day of Pentecost, under the anointing of the Spirit, who took the words of David from Psa 16:8-11 and declared them prophecy that spoke out the heart of Jesus in respect of the resurrection. Now when it comes to expectations these words are worthy of our consideration, so let’s check the quote first of all.

Verse 9 of Psa 16 says, “Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices; my body also will rest secure,” but Peter changed it to “my body also will live in hope,” Perhaps David when he first wrote it did not dare to take that final step about a resurrected body and yet he clearly hinted at something akin to that as he continued, “because you will not abandon me to the grave, nor will you let your Holy One see decay,” and if that wasn’t enough he concluded, “you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand.” (Psa 16:11) There is definitely a thought there about living in God’s eternal presence after we die. Peter, and we must remember, under the anointing of the Spirit, extends this in respect of Jesus to suggest that he knew the reality, he (Jesus) had known he would be resurrected.

Jesus Sureness: Now this, of course, is quite true because we have read, “Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.” (Mt 16:21) which was reiterated by Jesus in Mt 17:22,23 and Mt 20:17-19 as well as more oblique references in Mt 17:9 and Mt 12:39,40 and Mt 26:31,32 which also became obvious public knowledge (see Mt 27:62-64).

Two Applications: Now that was Jesus and we just said that we are to walk in his footsteps and when it comes to his resurrection there are two ways this applies to us: first in respect of the life we now live and, second, the fact of our bodily resurrection. These are both the hope (expectation) that we have today. Let’s consider them both.

First of all, our lives today. The apostle Paul taught, “just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection.” (Rom 6:4,5) Christ’s resurrection is to be symbolic of our lives today.  But this isn’t merely symbolic, it is about the power within our lives today which will take us on after physical death, which takes us on to the second application, life after death.

A little later he wrote, “You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ. But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness. And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you.” (Rom 8:9-11)

Now this take a little explaining. When he says, “your body is dead because of sin,”  he means, as the Message version puts it, “you yourself experience all the limitations of sin” and the Living Bible helpfully adds, “your body will die because of sin” i.e. the fact is that, humanly speaking, each one of us will physically die one day because of the ‘sin thing’ since the Garden of Eden, but, nevertheless, because the Holy Spirit indwells us and enlivens our spirit, there is yet a further existence for us after our physical death whereby we will receive new resurrection bodies.

Before we came to the Lord, the Bible speaks about us having been ‘dead to Christ’ or ‘dead to God’ but when we receive the Holy Spirit and are born again, our spirit is brought alive, resurrected if you like, and alive to God. As the apostle Paul said in that earlier argument, “In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.” (Rom 6:11) So it is a very real and very practical application for our lives today – Him in us, gives us a new resurrected life, and who knows where He will lead us tomorrow.

But it is also life after death: “Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.” (1 Cor 15:20-22) So there it is, but it is not simple and obvious. When, is a question asked. Paul continued, “each in his own turn: Christ, the first fruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him.” (v.23)  i.e. when Christ returns. How, is the next question. Paul replies, “So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.” (v.42-44)

What is ‘a spiritual body’?  Clearly a body that is imperishable and does not rot as a physical body does. Did Christ’s own body after he was raised from the dead give us a clue, a body that did not seem to be limited by time and space, that appeared to be able to pass through physical matter?  Again Paul wrote, “just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven.” (v.49) A ‘body’ is clearly part of the package for our eternity and perhaps we will just have to wait until after death to experience the reality of it. In the meantime, we have this expectation: there is a life beyond death, a life that involves a body. In the meantime, there is a ‘life’ that exists now which includes spirit, His Spirit linked to my spirit and that may be the clue to our eternal future as well. Amen.

1. So what is Faith?

Meditations on ‘Focusing Faith’ : 1 :  So what is faith?

Heb 11:1  Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.

I need to start this new series of meditations with a confession, well, perhaps two confessions. The first confession is that I have often sat in church services and wondered, “What about this is faith?”  Now that wasn’t always a negative denunciation of sterile ritual, but an honest desire or appraisal to know what, in what we were doing, was genuinely faith and, as we’ll see as we go on, I have been surprised that there was more of faith in our services than I had thought. The other confession is that I sometimes sit and ponder and wonder how much faith plays a part in my own life and that has had more negative overtones, and yet by the very fact that I am writing these meditations suggests an element of faith, which we’ll see in the days to come. I’m not sure where this is going but I suspect we may need to look at what is faith, why is faith important, how does faith come, is faith static or does it grow, and no doubt a few more things about ‘faith’.

The starting place has to be the so-called ‘hall of faith’ in Hebrews 11 and the writer’s opening statement, our verse above. Faith he says is being sure about something, about being assured of something. There is a confidence about faith. There is a sureness about faith. It is not wishy-washy half-hearted wondering. To reflect on that more fully we perhaps need to turn to the apostle James’ letter.

The apostle James, while not actually using the word faith in the opening part of his letter, clearly has it in mind when he speaks about our needing wisdom: “5If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. 6But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. 7That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord; 8he is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does.” (Jas 1:5-8)

Verse 5 builds faith as he says we need to ask God for wisdom  because he says God gives (a) generously, (b) to all and (c) without finding fault and (d) He will give it when we ask. Do you see that? God is a generous giver, you don’t have to earn wisdom, He’s got lots of it and is very happy to give it away. Moreover He is very happy to give it to anyone who comes to Him asking, “to all”.  Further He is not going to interrogate you to check to see if you are good enough or up to it, He isn’t looking for faults in you that will put you off getting His wisdom, He simply will give it when you ask.

Now after you have read that verse, hopefully you are feeling confident about asking God for wisdom (the knowledge of ‘how to’).  It may be that there have been other negatives in your life that quench belief  but in the absence of those things, something will have risen in you that says, “Yes, I CAN ask God for wisdom.” That is faith, a sureness about a course of action which has been brought about by the word of God (James’ writing) and no doubt prompted and confirmed by the Holy Spirit as I encouraged you. When you go away and ask the Lord for wisdom for some aspect of your life now, that is faith. It came by God’s word, it stirred the truth in you, witnessed by the Holy Spirit in you, and brought a confidence on which you act.

But James knows that not everyone is open like this, hence verse 6: “But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind.”  Doubting has no place in asking and getting, doubting has no place in faith. Remember the two key words at the beginning – ‘sure’ and ‘certain’. You cannot be sure and certain AND doubt. If you doubt, nothing is going to happen. God responds to faith – He responds to you responding positively to His word coming to you, bringing in you a sureness. You see, to take the example above, when you ask for wisdom but are uncertain about it, you spend more time thinking about your doubts than taking notice of thoughts that may be coming from God. It’s not that God doesn’t want you to have the wisdom for the situation; it is that you clutter your mind with doubts (unbelief) and so CANNOT hear God. When you are sure and certain, you ask God for it and then listen and, with an open, believing heart, suddenly ideas start flowing in your mind and you realise you have the answer to your problem that needed wisdom. You HAVE the wisdom!

You can recognize faith when you are alert to these sorts of things. You have faith when you suddenly know “It’s true!” or “He’s here!” or “Yes, I can do it because He’s said so!” You suddenly recognize a confidence that wasn’t there previously. You have a gift from God (which we’ll see some way down the line) and it is a confidence in Him; what He says IS true. That is faith Now of course there was another whole side to our starting verse – the ‘hope’ and ‘unseen’ part of it, and we’ll look at that in the next meditation.