KINGDOM

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 ???

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

Refreshing to Restore

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The Bible speaks of ‘seasons of refreshing’ and a ‘time of restoration’ two focuses, events that our world and society will be impacted by, these times are spoken of  in Acts 3:19 – 21

“Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord,     

20 and that he may send the Messiah, who has been appointed for you—even Jesus.     

21 Heaven must receive him until the time comes for God to restore everything, as he promised long ago through his holy prophets.”     

Within a season of Restoration is everything the prophets addressed which  included the reformation of society seen in picture forms in their writing –‘ swords into plough shares ‘.    It’s the fulfilment of promise spoken and written of throughout the scriptures.   We live in a time when the “season of Restoration”  is breaking in upon us, how exciting it is to live in this challenging world that Gods finger prints are all over it, bring a season of restoration.     Be careful in order we don’t get lost in times of refreshing only by camping around them and creating monuments while God has a greater purpose for us.   Enjoy the refreshing and be enlarged, instructed and empowered but our goal is to bring around and advance the season of Restoration being a people of Restoration.

The Message translation pens it thus “Now it’s time to change your ways! Turn to face God so he can wipe away your sins, pour out showers of blessing to refresh you, and send you the Messiah he prepared for you, namely, Jesus. For the time being he must remain out of sight in heaven until everything is restored to order again just the way God, through the preaching of his holy prophets of old, said it would be”.

Until order has come to our world, this is the task for which we were brought into the Kingdom of God, to restore order, Gods order.    We are those working for the restoration of the ‘image and likeness’ of the Father, to see restored back to our created world the image of God for this is the Kingdom of God established fully.    That Christ will fill everything, inside and outside.

O God Restore come and be established, times of refreshing we recognise that these times are in your process, they are necessary, this process means times of refreshing that will come and go, they will grow to a crescendo and pass away, they are supposed to.     “Times” plural that mean one comes and one goes and there will be more than one.   Yet there is a “time” to arrive a “season” to come that is sustaining and remaining that will herald and welcome that will come and not pass away a Time of Restoration, will be that which release the culmination of Gods plan and ultimate intention.   We have been invited to partner with the Father to be fully involved to be part of this heralding work.   Let us all get on Gods time seeing transformation and order coming to pass around us, in our individual lives that will then seen in community life.

Changing Your View

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Changing your view: “We must pray the promise not the problem”.     We increase in faith as we boast in our hope, as we are a testimony of things to come. Heb 3:6

Faith must find it’s true measure; it has to be unlocked, unhitched from the wagon of healing, goodies & money and  given a wider and deeper application to our time & our lives, faith is bigger than the few issues mentioned above.   Unfortunately any one looking in on the church will think there are only a few things that are impacted by what we call faith, don’t get me wrong these issues, money, healing and provision will be reorder by our faith but there is so much more to unlock in our understanding when we consider faith.    So many themes, life factors are hijack to a narrow view of our understanding when there is much more to take hold of in Gods promises.   For example healing, when your sick it’s a blessing but when the promise of God to us is full health then healing  for the world around us let’s believe for health as a covenant people, prosperity finance only when prosperity is a fullness of life in peace, even blessing for me when we are to be blessed to be a blessing.    Rediscovering the truth of “living by faith” is a call for our hour, it is a call to live beyond the immediate, beyond my need, it is a way of life, living by faith is not when I look for income its a way of live continuity not just to get my need we are to live by faith not by events of faith only.

Faith must enrich us in every way and not simply adjust the material realm.     Indeed to be in the worst kind of poverty is to have all the material wealth you could ever wish for and yet be empty, unfulfilled, frustrated, and miserable, then, you are really poor.     Poverty is not a lack of resource but a people who are dependent on others for basic resources, our dependency should be on God not on resources.

In the same way that faith has to be unhinged so too Prophecy.   Prophecy must be seen bigger that just used in the realm of signs and authenticating a man or woman and their ministry, its time to find it’s true message to our time.    Prophecy does have a predictive aspect to it but much more we are to be a people who interoperate God to our world in our daily life, this is prophecy.     Prophecy gives the people of God a voice to interpret God’s onward creative acts in society and our world telling and interpreting.       Prophecy is to confront us with a plumb line of truth, enabling us, asking us, to build in the light of it, the prophecy that is, building according to a divine pattern and foundation, this requires our faith to be applied in our daily living.

Prophecy must be elevated in the ministry, to deliver us into our world, and the Kingdom of God into us.    Prophecy takes the taste of the age to come and increases the taste, allowing the breaking in of the Kingdom of God to enfold further in this world.

Faith and Prophecy are twinned, for many prophecy is shouting out things that come to mind, but our faith is tied to that which we utter and live.   Prophecy must be a life style as well as an utterance, the people of God, the church, will become the direct manifestation of prophecy just as the prophets of old, their lives, the way in which they lived was a gift, you could see the life’s message in their life style choice and the way they lived.

Faith and prophecy twinned, Romans 12:6 says “We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your faith” as we are told to prophecy to the measure of our faith it becomes necessary to re-asses our place, that is, what we are involved with or  what we are doing, checking that it is in line, not only with the prophecy but also with my faith, living by faith every moment of every day.

Two basic questions:

Do we feel content to continue as we are?

Do we desperately want to break through into different realms?

These twins are necessary in order that the twins of mercy and goodness can follow us all the days of our lives…There is no release from the lower sphere of this material realm, of content existence, unless we have experienced the liberating prospect of the Spirit freeing us to rise as an eagle, to climb the air to the high altitudes of living.

Faith and Prophecy unlocks us to soar free, to live out our potential in the Grace of the Father.

Kingdom, Kingdom!

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“Your responses to life’s situations, your behaviour and actions are the result of your theology not of your intellect or emotions”.   We concluded with this last time I wrote going on to say that, we have come to a world that react rather than living out convictions from the foundation of life actually from the Christ, who is our foundation….to believe is to live out our belief, this has an impact on our view and should reflect what new birth is in reality.     If this cosmos rules in our life then it is questionable, if the other place the Kingdom has been either seen or entered, it will alter our way of life.

The word may have entered the mind, even been welcomed by the emotions even germinated thought through influence but we have to see that only when we have come to live by the Spirit (Romans 8 “…led by the Spirit are we not the sons of God…”)  birthed in us is a power greater than any other.   Christ has incarnate himself in us by the Spirit, that is Christ in you the hope of glory will now rule our direction, emotions, actions and decisions.     A power works with in transforming, forming and conforming us to Christ causing us to become those who are taking on board his interests, his cause as our first cause.   The company we keep, Money decisions, Homes we build , our families  all become expressions and demonstrations of the Kingdom of God, we are disciples of the Kingdom.    The Holy Spirit is so integral to the coming, the establishing of the Kingdom, the coming of the promise of Holy Spirit was a demonstration for early Christians that surely the Messiah had come and his Kingdom is here.   We can not have the Kingdom of God with out the Holy Spirit Romans 14 says it is not external things “…eating and drinking…” but that the “…Kingdom of God is righteousness, joy and peace in the Holy Spirit…” that is the Kingdom of God  in the Holy Spirit, as a great teacher Ern Baxter always stressed.

This is the reason we should not get excited about a kind of Christianity that marginalise the Holy Spirit.  How do we marginalise? through over planning, through not giving room for the Holy Spirit in direction and influence in lives.     Do not allow life  to become a system of lists that replaces any form of listening to the Spirits voice, actually not allowing us to learn the art of listening.   To give preeminence to the Holy Spirit means letting go of control and trusting another.    If we are not Holy Spirit directed we will end up making much of minors and little on major issues in our walk and Kingdom life.     Years ago it was getting lost on such issues, minor ones, such as “they had a drink of alcohol”, compliance to dress codes, attendance at all meetings, to show commitment, whilst at the same time allowing people’s attitudes  to stink, allowing un-forgiveness in hearts to remain, divisive conversation and gossip being the major issues we should have been dealing with.   The fight of the cosmic system that continues to try to ‘run’ the agent of the Kingdom of God in this world.

There is a  challenge in getting trapped into programs to ‘attract’ rather than being centers of Holy Spirit activity  where the kingdom of God is manifest, that is what is attractive.   Imprisoned by wrong expectations we have created in people’s hearts a faith of minimum cost and involvement whilst giving maximum rewards and benefits.

There is areal sense on the one hand of God working purpose and advance in some parts of the world, of people turning to Christ, yet we still have a church that has promoted a religion rather than the advancement of the Kingdom of Heaven.   Many Christians have weekly round trip tickets from the Kingdom of God to the Kingdom of…???… Returning to spirituality on Sunday.

To advance the Kingdom of God is to serve God in our generation, it is to serve Gods purpose, God aims and objectives, taking up the Fathers interest and living according to Gods’ will rather than mine.

Actions

1        Bring our own lives in line with Divine rule (not a common term these days but how else should we say it?) letting a Godly order come in our lives

2        Determine for yourself all you have, and see it as totally available for the advance of the Kingdom of God – a son of the kingdom (see blog…???)

3         Recognise you are joined to the body of Christ, discover where you are to be planted by God with a people and function, be yourself there, not a title, but invest you into the lives around you.

4       Rule and overcome in your world (personal, circumstantial, Spirit, possessions…)

5         See your own life as extending its’ influence to the ends of the earth as Abraham’s seed

6         Deal with the enemies of progress in your life.

  1. Possessions – the materialistic chains of the Cosmos, it is not a problem having stuff,  it is a problem  when the stuff has you.
  1. Ambition – ungodly drives that conflict with the Kingdom of God
  2. Position – status,platforms of life you will seek to protect
  3. Relationships – when they bring other kingdoms to distract you
  4. Possessiveness – you are a steward and servant you don’t own any one

May you aim to see Gods order and God’s image and likeness restored to our world in fullness, the coming of the Kingdom of God.