Author: 'face2face' - Gareth Duffty

To this end…

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Donkey power

28 Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ.

29 For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me.

(Col 1:28-29)

Paul seemed to have been so radical impacted by a short fall during his life, he was so foundation-ally affected, transformed by his falling off a donkey encounter.   As he travelled about his business he lost his grip of the reigns, slipped off the back and wham hit the floor.   Hitting what ever part of his body first on a hard dusty well trodden roadway.   It was not stars he saw around his injured head  but he saw an arrival of God, that is as held within the name Yahweh the “ever arriving one”, the God who came and introduced him not to a theology or r even religion and its forms, but to his very own nature the seeing of the nature of God.   Just as God is introduced to us in Genesis his very nature rushed into Paul’s void in his life.    You might asked how do you know he had a void, let me suggest any one who required  a letter to give him the right to conduct himself indicated he had not found himself, maybe?

Light and sound, a voice God nature arrives, Paul on hearing the sounds of God just as creation heard the sounds of God “light be”, so Paul’s short fall some 1 to 1.5 meters off the shoulders of a short animal was a huge distance in his inner being.    It’s amazing to some such a small incident for some can be so huge for others.   I wonder what was your short fall into a whole new life?

Paul heard the voice of Christ asking, “Why do you persecute me” and some 20 years on, the impact was so evidently foundational to his life that it comes across in him testifying before King Agrippa, the encounter was still powerful to him, still living as the narrative shows, there was still life communicating and conviction pulsating from it to the point in “nearly persuade” the king zeal communicated raise zeal in another.

It certainly was not a take it or leave it approach, Paul said, I have based my whole life’s action, my decisions and direction were all moulded from the foundation of his encounter with Christ and not by his own life’s development, his encounter developed his life!   Now that’s a choice for us, can we bring our life, relationships, money and how we use our resources, our focus and priorities, in line with our meeting Jesus, can we choose to be transformed by our onward encounters?

The narrative of Paul’s life indicates to us that something should happen to every one of us, when we truly encounter Christ.   The narrative emphasizes that it is certainly not about the emotions or ecstasy of the moment but about what is impregnated into our lives, causing us to change.

It is not just about capturing or thoughts or intellect but impregnating deep within us, who we are, if you and I have met Jesus, that is what actually happened, a “light be” exploded in us, for some it had immediate implications, while for others it might take a period of time for the light to make its course to transform our foundation.

There is an impregnating of seed of life, in a word, in a donkey fall, or what ever is yours, the seed of the restoring of the image and likeness to bring about a burden and a breakthrough.

Each one of us have our own “burden”,  we sometimes refer to this as our “call” or “vision”.     That which radically changes everything, that which first asks of us, then demands that our every decision and direction aligns towards the vision.   In this way it will fill out your understanding and conviction as to what God has destined you to pursue in life.

What I am seeking to give to you written here as principles of life in God, are merely a packet of seed.   Seed for you to plant and nurture if they are to become fruitful in your life.  Following are simple steps to feed, take hold of the burden that has impregnated, come to reside to bring our live sot a place to make it matter to make our lives count

First Step – THE DEVELOPMENT OF FELLOWSHIP WITH GOD

My enjoyment of fellowship with God started in the initial wave of gratitude for forgiveness which resulted in great joy within me, I was full of praise and adoration for God OUR Father,

In retrospect I see that openness to God and emotional spontaneity were two of the most vital aspects of my early life that have continued to prove fruitful and cause me to progress.

By “openness to God” I mean an attitude of:

  1. Expectation – God can do anything, at any time, in any way, in any place that I am.
  2. Hunger and thirst for God, that is pulling on God, doing all I can to set my hope, my desire, my focus, my thinking on God.   Many older Christ followers would use the term your “first cause”, to hunger and thirst is to make God my first cause and shape my life according to the first cause I see
  3. A heart ready and willing to respond obediently to anything God might do or say.

I experienced enlargement of my expectation as a result of what God did in response to my openness.     It has become an endless cycle of blessing and increase.

By “emotional Spontaneity” I mean learning to laugh and cry, rejoice and repent, pray and praise, which has developed in me a responsive heart to God.      Our emotions are to be cultivated even though they are still to be controlled.      People respond to emotion more than to exploitation.      This is why, if there are two able preachers in the same vicinity, one excellent in teaching the other very caring and feeling for the people, it has been noted the one who is most likely to have the people deeply joined is the person of emotion rather than explanation.

Developing the emotions makes us sensitive to God’s workings, and leads to knowing God intuitively (in the heart). As yet the mind remains largely uninformed, and although this is not desirable as an ongoing thing, it is certainly our initial experience.

Having said this about the emotions, it is equally true that we need an informed faith.      Paul prayed that the “eyes of your understanding be opened” (Eph.l :18).      Feelings will change, whereas understanding will deepen convictions.        As understanding is built-in so we are built up, which leads us now to spiritual discipline.

It is the cultivation of a disciplined way of life that prepares us for a revelation of God.

Next time we shall visit the thoughts of Spiritual Disciplines.            In the mean time let me encourage you to find some donkeys to take a short fall to let the ever arriving God arrive and light fill you again and again.

Love of the Father – Why?

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father's loveMy reason for writing today is purely as an appeal that our world might be overwhelmed by the LOVE of God.   That our society might be transformed by the LOVE of God.   That the church might demonstrate “that all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:35 NASB)

We have all become recipients of the Love of the Father, the Love of God, the Fathers Love which ever way we say it, it really does not matter as long as we are affected and transformed by this LOVE and continue to transform our world through this love.    A Love that brings security, love that brings belonging, love that so imbibes my being that overwhelms us, accepts, propels and is making us like God.

May the love of God overwhelm us daily and enable us to be so impacted, putting us the right way up in order that we become the Love of the Father to our neighbours, friends, family, society and world, being the love of God in the streets of life.

We are introduced in Genesis 1 to “light” this light, the light of God is seven times brighter than the sun, the scriptures tell us, it is the essence of the Father God.  A light that was there days before the orbs of light, sun and moon were created, this is God.  Light breaking into formlessness and void making itself known when there was no essence, transforming all it touched.   This is a specialty of God to pour into empty, nothingness, a dark soup of lostness, God’s essence!   By Matthew 5 the people of God are to be the literal LIGHT on a hill never to be hidden, we have become the very essence of God in our world.   Light carriers, so it is to be with the essence of God in every term,  as God is LIGHT and LOVE, the LOVE that its seen in us and through us,  extending out from us.   Love is expansive and ever-increasing, perhaps we can see this in this instance, when we are told in Isaiah 9:7 “Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end,”  his government, is his love extending just like God.   This Father the God of all is the ever arriving God, Gods love is ever arriving and so we are to love with an ever arriving love.    Perhaps that is a better way of looking at Romans 5:5 “…the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit which has been given to us…”, it is ever arriving to us and through us towards our created world.

I am challenged with what is seemingly happening today the popularising of the flavour of our day in our Christ following walk in making Jesus and his Gospel of the Kingdom part of our consumer society.   It is becoming what I can get, MY feelings, MY destiny, MY wants. MY needs and MY stuff.

I think it was Eugene Peterson who once wrote in “Eat This Book: A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading” on the trinity of our modern world and saw it  as my needs, my wants and my feelings  he went on to say

“My needs are non-negotiable. My so-called rights, defined individually, are fundamental to my identity. My need for fulfilment, for expression, for affirmation, for sexual satisfaction, for respect, my need to get my own way – all these provide a foundation to the centrality of me and fortify my self against diminution.

My wants are evidence of my expanding sense of kingdom. I train myself to think big because I am big, important, significant. I am larger than life and so require more and more goods and services, more things and more power. Consumption and acquisition are the new fruits of the spirit.

My feelings are the truth of who I am. Any thing or person who can provide me with ecstasy, with excitement, with joy, with stimulus, with spiritual connection validates my sovereignty. This, of course, involves employing quite a large cast of therapists, travel agents, gadgets and machines, recreations and entertainments to cast out the devils of boredom or loss or discontent – all the feelings that undermine or challenge my self-sovereignty”.

It seems agreeable to be the consumer, being a consumer with the love of God rather than being consumed by the love of God, of the Father, the Fathers Love.      The Love of God presented in order that I have an inner feel good experience, it gets my self loved and its all about my inner feelings rather than being about the maturity of the whole body.    This Love is to come to each of us, to go through us so that is might extend out from us as the LOVE of the Father, touching life around us, loving humanity, loving creation.

What a great lesson of love, Jesus is to us, he explained love fully, what a great attitude he displayed as he was the love of the Father, Fathers love, the love of God, a lesson for us to be just like him.      I think of John 15:13, “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”     Maybe it’s not just talking about our physical life.      Perhaps it is the life we know, the friends we have and loose.      Maybe I show love when I lay down the life we have together to be the bridge for you, to be the servant that enables you, while you walk over me to reach your maturity, it is the love I have to be a friend in helping others when I see a wrong attitude or action.    May be this love shows when you bring a confrontation to me of my wrong ways, may be it is the forgiveness I freely give when you let me down or show unkindness.   Maybe we show no greater love than when we are counted with people who others consider tainted. 

Becoming friends with those who have been cut off, those who we say are judged for their life style.   Being the love of God to the down-and-out, the ones who don’t have anything, the prostitute, the destitute, the sexually different, the social law-breaker, the nobody.   To love here is a defining moment of our life, ministry, and career.       Sure, you may lose a few relationships, unfortunately, but I can’t find a better way of extending or being the love of the Father and loosing relationships for loving like God?   These friends so-called, even these we are to love, as we love all, I doubt they would have cared for me in my failures and spoken in love?    So really, I lost nothing.     If being the love of the Father, being the friend causes some to hate and reject me what can I do but continue to LOVE and extend the essence of God into the fabric of life

The love of the Father says to me and compels me to lay my life down for the fringe, for it is in the fringe God works,  often we think That god is at work in the centre, with the celebrity, those who command, but, I see the scriptures  narrative saying God is in the fringes of life, and seems to be there in greatest power – Love of the Father, the Fathers Love what ever way you say it, extend it into the fringes of people’s lives, and to people who are on  the fringe.   The Davids, the Gideon’s, the Paul’s, the disciples, Jesus himself born in a cave, laid in the feeding trough, being the bread to all.    The Love of the Father from you to others it’s not just about me being but it’s about me extending love of God through me.

Consumer of love or lover of all?   

Consumed by the Father of consumer of ???

Chose!

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images-4Chose Life is the direction of the scriptures, more than that the Spirit of life causes us to ‘chose life’, the passage in Deut.  30:19 “I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. So choose life in order that you may live, you and your descendants, 

 The desire of the Father for us all is that we “CHOSE” and that choice is “LIFE”.   “Chose Life” the shout goes across time and through creation into the hearts of mankind.   Chose, make a right choice, the grace of God enables us.

We must have all sat in examinations some time or another, I recall  schooldays with the invigilator, the one who wandered between lines of the desks  making sure you did not cheat in any way, whilst you had notes written on your arm, little slips of writing paper with answers on slipped into your pencil-case, with words so small that by the time you needed them in the exam you could no longer read them, by what ever way by whatever means people attempt to get themselves ahead.   Perhaps you are one who did not need anything but could recall all at the appropriate moment.    The invigilator strolling between the lines of order, pressuring the children.   But this Father of ours , the God of all creation does not allow any one to become pressured, for as the Father of Life passes by and sees your pressure he reaches over your shoulder and points at the correct choice.   So he sets before us choice, life or death and points, just incase the question is too difficult for us, LIFE to enable us to make the correct decision.

Life is a series of choices. Our present circumstance and status in life is the consequence of the choices we have made & have refused to make in life.

The most difficult choices are not the ones between good & evil, but choose between multiple good. Phil 1:9

 

Choices, Life is full of them they roll in every day, ever hour, they stand before us daily.     God wants us to make choices and through choices we are schooled, God will always present choices for our maturing.   Consider Adam right from the word go humanity is presented with a choice ‘this tree or that one’, a moral choice, a choice of life, a choice of obedient response.   Humanity even following being instructed not to take of one tree, humanity is even show which one was full of life and humanity should continue to taking from it, yet a choice stood in the centre of the garden two trees to begin the process of maturing.   Through the choice made immaturity along with a way of life that all humanity has struggled with, an orphan way of life overwhelmed at that time and we have being dealing with provision and protection ever since.

A choice made that brought all mankind to be defensive and protective in life along with taken up in gathering and amassing all kinds of provision, in making providing for self a central feature of life yet Choose Life the direction was to be.

In making a sound choice, freedom from 2 enemies of the present age is necessary.

  1. Possessions material goods and  the pursuit of them
  2. Positions status, what others think of us, protection.

All Ministry begins with…what?

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A Blog taken from various other sites to stimulate thought and biblical accuracy

Women Bishops: It’s about the Bible, not fake ideas of progress by Tom Wright

Exhorting CoE to ‘get with the programme’ dilutes the argument for women bishops

“But that would be putting the clock back,” gasps a feckless official in one of C. S. Lewis’s stories. “Have you no idea of progress, of development?”

“I have seen them both in an egg,” replies the young hero. “We call it Going bad in Narnia.”

Lewis nails a lie at the heart of our culture.       As long as we repeat it, we shall never understand our world, let alone the Church’s calling.      And until proponents of women bishops stop using it, the biblical arguments for women’s ordination will never appear in full strength.

“Now that we live in the 21st century,” begins the interviewer, invoking the calendar to justify a proposed innovation.        “In this day and age,” we say, assuming that we all believe the 18th-century doctrine of “progress”, which, allied to a Whig view of history, dictates that policies and practices somehow ought to become more “liberal”, whatever that means. Russia and China were on the “wrong side of history”, Hillary Clinton warned recently.      But how does she know what “history” will do? And what makes her think that “history” never makes mistakes?

We, of all people, ought to know better. “Progress” gave us modern medicine, liberal democracy, the internet.       It also gave us the guillotine, the Gulag and the gas chambers. Western intelligentsia assumed in the 1920s that “history” was moving away from the muddle and mess of democracy towards the brave new world of Russian communism.      Many in 1930s Germany regarded Dietrich Bonhoeffer and his friends as on the wrong side of history.      The strong point of postmodernity is that the big stories have let us down. And the biggest of all was the modernist myth of “progress”.

“We call it Going bad in Narnia.” Quite.

It won’t do to say, then, as David Cameron did, that the Church of England should “get with the programme” over women bishops.     And Parliament must not try to force the Church’s hand, on this or anything else.      That threat of political interference, of naked Erastianism in which the State rules supreme in Church matters, would be angrily resisted if it attempted to block reform; it is shameful for “liberals” in the Church to invite it in their own cause.     The Church that forgets to say “we must obey God rather than human authorities” has forgotten what it means to be the Church. The spirit of the age is in any case notoriously fickle.     You might as well, walking in the mist, take a compass bearing on a mountain goat.

What is more, the Church’s foundation documents (to say nothing of its Founder himself) were notoriously on the wrong side of history.       The Gospel was foolishness to the Greeks, said St Paul, and a scandal to Jews.       The early Christians got a reputation for believing in all sorts of ridiculous things such as humility, chastity and resurrection, standing up for the poor and giving slaves equal status with the free. And for valuing women more highly than anyone else had ever done.     People thought them crazy, but they stuck to their counter-cultural Gospel. If the Church had allowed prime ministers to tell them what the “programme” was it would have sunk without trace in fifty years.     If Jesus had allowed Caiaphas or Pontius Pilate to dictate their “programme” to him there wouldn’t have been a Church in the first place.

So what is the real argument?     The other lie to nail is that people who “believe in the Bible” or who “take it literally” will oppose women’s ordination. Rubbish.      Yes, I Timothy ii is usually taken as refusing to allow women to teach men.       But serious scholars disagree on the actual meaning, as the key Greek words occur nowhere else.         That, in any case, is not where to start.

All Christian ministry begins with the announcement that Jesus has been raised from the dead.       And Jesus entrusted that task, first of all, not to Peter, James, or John, but to Mary Magdalene.       Part of the point of the new creation launched at Easter was the transformation of roles and vocations: from Jews-only to worldwide, from monoglot to multilingual (think of Pentecost), and from male-only leadership to male and female together.

Within a few decades, Paul was sending greetings to friends including an “apostle” called Junia (Romans xvi, 7).      He entrusted that letter to a “deacon” called Phoebe whose work was taking her to Rome. The letter-bearer would normally be the one to read it out to the recipients and explain its contents.       The first expositor of Paul’s greatest letter was an ordained travelling businesswoman.

The resurrection of Jesus is the only Christian guide to the question of where history is going.       Unlike the ambiguous “progress” of the Enlightenment, it is full of promise — especially the promise of transformed gender roles.

The promise of new creation, symbolised by the role of Mary Magdalene in the Easter stories, is the reality. Modern ideas of “progress” are simply a parody. Next time this one comes round, it would be good to forget “progress” — and ministerial “programmes” — and stick with the promise.

Tom Wright, a former Bishop of Durham, is research professor of New Testament and early Christianity at the University of St Andrews

You are in God

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Outside of God, man is locked up, trapped, a prisoner of emptiness: in his frustrations.  Ever reaching, but finding nothing within his grasp.    Mankind lives with forever promises being made & forever failure of  deliver.   “But God” is the old turning point of all human lives, the “but” that breaks through and takes the imprisoned soul, the barren and empty life transforming them:

Noah who one day found his sweating brow cooled by a soft breeze became unwound.

Adam & Eve who left the paradise of God without holding hands.

Abraham who saw what to others was not visible. Who lived by faith in the unseen God. Who pilgrimaged in faith for an unseen city.

Sarah who trusted

Moses who brought people out, Moses who climbed where  no man had.

Joshua who rose up & moved the people of God forward.

Daniel whose covenant kept him.

Elijah whose prophetic character watched his prophetic word.

 

“But God” brings us to a realisation that:

God: spirit: word: all else has it’s Genesis here.

God: dwelling in the fullness of solitude.

God: enjoying fellowship in the fullness of fellowship with the society of the Godhead.

 

Determining the expression of Gods pleasure, the demonstration of Gods power, fulfilling Gods desires.

God Surrounding with majestic splendor befitting all creation and nature, extending God by “Let there be” and God surround with colour, form and creations.   With the turn of  fingers another galaxy spun into space.  The considered mind of the council of God in the precision of divine purpose hung every star in it’s place.      Everything is held together by the power of Gods words that now filled the space between all that had come into existence.

God poured & called into being other beings to show Father Spirit and Sons delights & continued creating as those sons of God, the moving stars leapt for joy & brought forth in praise day & night, morning & evening, day running into night as onward he went like some exuberant reveller.     Wild with delight –  your all was to plan.     Nothing too soon.      Nothing too late.      Rivers & mountains & streams & valleys, deserts & waters. Animals, fish, birds until the whole earth teamed with life.

Exuberantly called out praise to the creator by the created who in heart desire to express Gods pleasure. Then a paused and a command issued God said let us make man and to the breathless wonder of all the rest of the created order, he added ‘in our own image & likeness’

Scooping up a handful of earth, red clay a restored dignity came to the planet, by shaping the soil to express  likeness and image, with breathed is own breath of life into the crown of creation.     heaven council watched as man bearing image stood up, eyes open, ears attuned to all else around and saw that which was created with mankind in view, universe, stars, sun, moon world, water, mountains.     Yet it was good, that is it functions as it was created for, then it becomes “it’s not good”, following 5 statements of “its is good”, more accurately stated it is functional, then we have it is not good, what is not  good ?    The Image and likeness was not fulfilled.    As God is never alone, God is nerve singular so mankind had to be more than one, putting him to sleep the God of perfection completed the detail of necessary companionship, friendship, fellowship and love, making covenant seen, setting an order to destiny a corporate people is the image and likeness.    Together Adam & Eve hand in hand worked through the garden of pleasure surrounded by fullness of provision and  everything worshipped the invisible God whose image was now visible in mankind in man and women of heavens council in making.   From council “let us” rather than “let be” did Gods council create mankind to be from council and to continue in council  for this is destiny not aloneness of self-made but a corporate son and multitude of people, man and women image capturing and bearing.

Everything stood quietly, treading softy, as day after day in the cool of the evening God & mankind walked together in the sweet fellowship of oneness, & perfect compatibility.

This is the Restoration and the centre of our salvation to walk again in the garden which is God to walk in God and through God.