LOVE INTERPRETED

Relentless kindness and infinite care.

The love of God for us and through us to His world.

JEWISH PROVERB

To shame a man in public is tantamount to murder.

THE WORLD AT WAR

From the day of His birth Jesus lived a life of displacement and persecution even though He had created the very world in which He chose to come and live as one of us, opening up the way of reconciliation to His Father and offering peace.

THE PATH TO HOLINESS

Meditation on God's word day and night, conforming our thinking and equipping us to serve Him acceptably in a hostile world.

TRUE CHRISTIAN

A man whose every thought is pleasing to God, conformed to His word and ways.

BORN AGAIN

A man or woman who has been given the mindset of God. One whose life is devoted to knowing and serving Him, a replica of the life of Jesus who, as the God of our salvation as His name implies, gives to us the life of the Kingdom of God, His Father, through the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit.

A true intellectual.

FEASTING AT CHRISTMAS

We need to go on a fast this Christmas and feast only on Your love for us. As the carol says: 'Love came down at Christmas, love all lovely, love divine'.

This love is rooted in earthly as well as spiritual aspects of our lives and we must sharpen our wits and perception to see it in all that comes our way, seeing You in all of life.

This will turn us into adoring children of the most high God and we, too, will sing like the angels did over the hills of Bethlehem. The wise amongst us will spot Your star rising over the earth each morning, heralding Your righteousness which will bring healing to our cruel and broken world.

TRUE MISSION

To seek out mankind, turning slaves into worshipers and nations into servants of the Most High God.

As God's children we are to seek out His love in our lives. Love begets love. This turns us into ardent suitors of God and His people. The more we see His love for us, the greater our desire to see man turn and see the God we know Him to be. The only true lover of our souls.

The burden of Paul in Ephesians which echoes the mission of Moses sent to rescue God's people from Egypt to love and serve the God of their fathers.

CO-WORKER OR CARETAKER?

We prefer God to be our heavenly caretaker, keeping things in running order while we get on with our lives.

When He reminds us we are co-workers with Him, both in remaking the image of His Son within us and in the world, bearing witness to the kingly rule of our Saviour, we pretend not to hear. It disturbs our pursuit of self-satisfaction and complacency.

We smugly say 'our lives are in His hands' but fool ourselves.

If we continually refuse to hear He will leave us to our own devices and pay the price of loosing the lives we cherish in preference to His chosen destiny for us.

'What does it profit a man........?'

'Work out your salvation in fear and trembling for it is God who is at work within you, both to will and to do His good purposes'.

COUNTERFEIT CHRISTIANITY

Some Christians cocoon themselves in the death of Christ, using the cross as some kind of talisman from all evil. This is their cop out of a life spent in rigorous service entering the brokenness of life, living in a resurrected Lord who leads the way in triumph through the gates of hell on earth, bringing captives with Him to new life.

It is we who have to die daily as we follow in His steps, but in growing confidence of His love and goodness towards us and those we seek to rescue. We know His resurrecting power at work within ourselves and have confidence to ask for yet more dangerous assignments in the battle for His Kingdom on earth.

Ephesians 3 vs 14 - 21.

EQUALITY

Equality today means equality of value for all lifestyles. There is to be no freedom to discriminate and assign disapproval or condemnation. No toleration of intolerance. No absolute truth which is the measure of all things. Each man a law unto themselves.

If this position is questioned they reckon they feel threatened and offended and the guilty party is put in chains. None must disturb their pursuit of pleasure in satisfying their own lusts.

TRUE PROPHET

Prophets are those called to reveal the heartbeat of God for His world. His yearning for reconciliation and peace, both with Himself and between His people. His yearning too for righteousness, mercy and justice to hold sway.

This will disturb the self-seeking complacency of man and stir up rebellion and anger. It is the prophet who will be considered the troublemaker and muzzled.

HAVENS FOR ALL

God is itching to get His hands dirty in rebuilding His world of man and nature. It is to rebuild a garden and a shelter, a haven where He can live amongst His people and walk with them again.

He calls man to this high purpose. The only hands He has are ours. We must give them to make havens for others who are homeless and damaged.

GOD'S RELENTLESS CARE

When the Scripture reassures us that God cares for us, it is most of all in the sense of achieving His loving purposes for us of walking without blame and in true holiness. For that we may always pray.

SELF-RETREAT

The smaller we become, the more we make room for God to will and work within us. The greater He becomes, the more He takes the brunt of attacks upon us as we hide in Him.

TRUE LIFE

Eternal life is learning the art of living and dying in the presence of God.

A WEIGHTY CALLING

At every moment of our lives we are sent to make the fullness of the Godhead touchable, knowable and visible to those in our vicinity. After all, our heavenly Father, His dearly-loved Son and the Holy Spirit, the only true God, has taken up residence in us as Jesus made clear the last evening He spent with His devoted pupils. They would desert Him but He would never desert them.

We are a travelling sanctuary maintained and preserved moment by moment by the Creator and Sustainer of the Universe, rooted in His without-beginning-and-ending, never-failing love for us.

Ephesians 3 vs 14 to 21.

THE WINDOWS OF OUR LIVES

We may be able to clean the outside, but only God can clean the inside. This He does by gently making us aware of the smudges which impede the incoming light of His truth and the reflection of His life through ours. As we recognise them we turn from those ways that grieve Him. He loves us the more for doing so, not the less. There is no place for feelings of guilt as there is no place for condemnation, when we are His children. Our open confession and expression of gratitude for His salvation is all He asks.

CHRISTIAN MINDFULNESS

True discipleship is learning to love God and His life-giving ways of salvation, and to swiftly follow in them, so basking in His delighted approval. This spurs us on to yet more loving obedience and intimacy of union with Him, recognising His everlasting loving-kindness reaching out towards us moment by moment, transforming those moments into joy unspeakable.

This, too, is the commission we have from Him, to call others to this high vocation.

Baptism is the sign of our acceptance of, and initiation into, this vocation. In it we declare allegiance to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In fellowship with other family members the breaking of bread and drinking of wine in memory of the sacrifice of Jesus, the God of our salvation, nourishes His life in us, individually and as a body of followers of like assurance, stirring up love for Him and one another as He taught.

A careful reading of the records of the good news of God's redemption in His Son will make this plain.

LIFE COURSE

In God we all live and move and have our being.

We must all come to the perception that He is not a taxi driver. He sets the satnav to our final destination and we do well to follow His directions. He is the Captain of our Salvation and will bring us to the home He has prepared for those He has called to live in peace and joy with Him. Some jump ship when disaster strikes.

The world teaches us we are due the reward and home we deserve as we steer our little barks as worthy citizens of our age, deserving only the best.

Little do we realise we are captive slaves of a cruel master who thrives on our destruction, drunk on the blood of his victims.

Only in Christ are we safe from this cruel world's certain fate.

WORDS

The world can stop us talking about Jesus, our God of salvation, but it can never stop us being Him.

SOUL REST

The healing and the restoration of the earth is mediated by the lives of many 'slain lambs' in the image of their Shepherd. Jealousy causes the blood of many of them to be spilt as was Abel's. The theme runs from Genesis to Revelation but they will all be vindicated at last and the meek will inherit the earth.

Jesus promises we will find rest for our souls when we are yoked in service with Him, the true meek and lowly Servant of His Father. Not fighting for our rights, recognition or approval is to live in true freedom from men and circumstances.

Revelation 4 vs 6.

IDENTITY

Each morning it is essential that I recognise who I am and whose I am. The special possession of the triune God.

Then it is to remember where I am and where I'm going. I am 'in Christ', God the Father's appointed Servant, Saviour and Son, and I'm on my way to become like Him.

We should be able to pray each day to be Him for others and the world. After all that's the way He lived His life on earth, in permanent communion with His Father so making Him known as eternally loving and good for the world's salvation.

'I AM' the good Shepherd who gives His life to and for the world. We are to do likewise.

GOD'S SECOND CHANCE

Man turned away from a loving God who had provided the best for him, to serve, not himself as he thought, but to serve as a slave to Satan and so to perpetual sin and everlasting death.

Our only hope of rescue is to take shelter in Jesus, the Captain of our salvation. He is God Himself, crucified in the flesh, ending the rule of evil and everlasting death, raised to give us His unending life and joy.

He is God's second chance for the world, the only One. If we neglect so great salvation there remains no life or shelter for us.

Jesus Himself will be our Crown Prosecutor. He would be our Advocate if we so choose. We are, after all, our final enemy.

Hebrews 12 vs 25.

GOD'S GATECRASHERS

When on a Divinely appointed mission, we tend to break up the party, disturbing the peace but intent on rescue.

God's people are called to invade the portals of hell which will give way before them. Those, like Peter, who have been rescued themselves make the best fighters. In spite of his Divinely given confession, he got into trouble because he sought the comfort of the fires of the enemy.

Matthew 16 vs 18

BURNING BUSHES

God's purposes with His people are to turn them into burning bushes as the Holy Spirit alights on them like tongues of fire. Always burning but never consumed. Others are to see us in this way, like the three friends in the furnace who were preserved by the figure of a Fourth, discernible to those making the fire.

The Light has come into the world and the darkness will never put it out. God would have us be set like flint towards evil. Flint is dangerous. It is a weapon and also a means to setting fire.

LOVE LETTERS IN WARTIME

What better way to write a journal of life in a war zone, than to write a love letter each day to our Royal Lover about our insights into His love for us which are new every morning. He is an absent Lover at present but soon the 'day will break and the shadows flee away' and 'our eyes will behold Him in our flesh'.

Hardly surprising we call out 'return hastily, O my Beloved'.

This is the story of every Christian mystic through the ages. 'The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him and He will reveal His covenant to them.'
Psalm 25 vs 14.

UNENDING TORMENT

Man can never obliterate his consciousness, the truth that it is he looking out from behind his eyes. In hell there is no suicide.

This is the fate of those who persist in hating God, refusing to see His goodness expressed in creation and above all, in the incarnation of His dearly-beloved Son, delighting to do His Father's will even unto death for His enemies so as to reconcile man and creation with the yearning Father of all creation.

His Father vindicated Him by raising Him from the dead so that He can give life to all who love Him. But He will condemn all who persist in turning their backs on Him. They will live in perpetual torment and darkness, but fully conscious of it.

When God wants to teach a man theology He sometimes gives Satan permission to send him to hell first. It is a desperate place to be.

THE DAWING OF ETERNITY

It is when we are weakest that God most cradles us in His compassionate love, enfolding us in His care. Encased in His armour and housed in His Fortress, with His strength pitched over us as a tent, we can go into the most dangerous situations and circumstances. It will then be radiantly obvious that it is He that is on parade.

It is our answer to the Age of Aquarius, the Age of Selfism, the world's New Age which leads only to eternal abandonment from the Source of Life.

'Those who miss the mark of their high calling, injure themselves; all who hate and shun Me, court death.' Proverbs 8 vs 36.