Sunday 11 February 2018

Confidence in Christ #3: Living under grace as if God really means it

We are loved utterly and completely by God. No strings attached. God loves us not because we are naturally adorable but because it is the nature of God to love. ‘God is love...’ (1 John 4.8)

Grace is the means by which this love is made available. Unlike human love, which so often has to be earned or deemed deserving in some way, grace means that the God of the Bible is simply and utterly besotted with you.

That’s a mind-blowing concept because it is so far removed from the way that humans relate to one another. And that is rather the point. God’s love stands for something that is in stark contrast to the way love is often transacted in human relationships.

The love of God costs nothing, doesn’t have to be earned, you don’t have to compete with anyone to receive it, you are not in a league table of people who are more or less deserving. God simply could not be any more in love with you than is already the case.

Try and sit with that for a moment and allow it to sink in.

All those ways we beat ourselves up for being inadequate in this or that regard; or the way that we can sometimes be secretly quite pleased with ourselves or think we’re better than others. God doesn’t give a hoot about any of that. That’s what grace is.

It is through Jesus that this amazing gift has been shown to us, and all we have to do is take it.

In the Vicarage kitchen is a fruit bowl which is always stocked with good things to eat; apples, bananas, oranges, grapes, all bursting with vitamins, minerals, fibre and natural sweetness. It sits there on the counter inviting me to partake of it, rather than the toaster or the biscuit tin. Whether or not I choose to reach out for an apple, the apples are always there.

Having a well stocked fruit bowl doesn’t make my diet healthy. The vitamins don’t magically find their way into my bloodstreams, simply because I’m in the same room as a tangerine. The availability of healthy nourishment that fruit contains still requires action on my part in order to enjoy the full benefits.

This is what God’s love for us is like, constantly available, inviting us not only to be present to it but to actively partake in it, through prayer, Bible study and Christian service.

St Paul wrote, ‘[The Lord] said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness’ (2 Corinthians 12.9, NIV). If we lived as if we believed God really means it - that grace really is enough - what, I wonder, might that look like?

We would, I imagine, be dipping into that bowl of grace every day, enjoying all the delights of knowing that God is alongside us and within us, drawing us closer, and enabling us to be transformed by all the goodness God has to offer.

All the ways we behave towards others to needlessly quell our fears and anxieties, to compete and prove ourselves as deserving, would simply fall away. As the old hymn puts it:

Turn your eyes upon Jesus,
Look full in his wonderful face,
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim,
In the light of his glory and grace.
— Helen Howarth Lemmel (1863-1961)


To live under God’s grace means means putting God at the heart of our consciousness each and every day. When we do this the human desire to feel we’re better than others, or the drive to be more successful than them, the hunger to manipulate and control, or acquire more possessions, and all the rest of it, simply begins to look dull. We are drawn to the light that does not fade, the grace of God that never wants to belittle or put us down but simply offers to welcome us home.

Monday 5 February 2018

Confidence in Christ #2: Living in Uncertain Times

We live in uncertain times. People mostly have. It’s not difficult to look back on history and see events of greater turbulence than in our own time. Yet even periods of relative calm and stability can contain uncertainty: economic downturns, industrial unrest, health scares, terrorism, rumblings abroad. Someone, somewhere, is always threatening a war which may have consequences for us.

In the midst of this it is natural to feel fearful and anxious.

Whatever has been going on around me in the world, my life — like yours — has had its share of challenges: bereavements, ill-health, struggles with work or challenging relationships. The person of Jesus Christ has been a constant presence throughout my life, but never more so than in difficult times. I have found in him not only a role-model and wisdom teacher, but someone who has rescued me from living down to the worst of myself.

In the film As Good As It Gets, an unlikely romance develops between a bad-tempered and anti-social Jack Nicholson and attractive single mother, Helen Hunt. He lacks the social skills to woo her effectively, and whenever he seems to be making progress he commits a terrible faux pas, and sets back their relationship. Confused by his behaviour, Helen Hunt’s character at one point demands to know why he keeps bothering her. He replies, ‘You make me want to be a better person.’

That’s how I feel about following Jesus. He makes me want to be a better person, to dispense with the patterns of behaviour that spring out of fear and anxiety, to see myself not as the centre of the world but as part of a much bigger story which rests on God.

The beginning of that story is told in the Bible, where the people of God definitely lived in fragile and uncertain times. The 66 books of the Bible cover a period of hundreds and hundreds of years, where we see folk wrestling with the eternal human struggle of whether to live life simply to please themselves, or be shaped as a community centred on God.

When they do well at living as the people of God, they discover stability and security. When they all choose to please themselves and pull in different directions, society breaks down and they become vulnerable to invasion or defeat by the threats around them.

And then Jesus arrives on the scene, showing us that security isn’t only about our outer lives and whether we feel safe, but that in even the most difficult of times, we can feel secure in God within our inner life.

In the years since the stories of Jesus were collected and shared in the gospels, they have inspired and enabled Christians living in the darkest of times to cultivate an inner life centred on God, and find in that the most amazing source of peace and love.

As St Paul wrote, ‘Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God’ (2 Corinthians 3:4, NIV).




Confidence in Christ #1: The Inner Life

There is a part of each of us that is hidden from those around us, and is made up of our thoughts, feelings, memories, hopes, values and beliefs. All these are things that help to make you, you. Let’s call it the ‘inner life.’

Much of life is spent on outward appearances, and the things that other people can easily observe about us. How we look. The way we dress. The work we do. The house we live in. The way our kids turn out. It is easy to become focussed on trying to make everything look good, so that others will think well of us and accept us.

Such outward appearances, however, are not who we are. It is our inner life that determines our real qualities and characteristics. And while it may be hidden, the inner life can make itself known to others by the way we behave and the things we say.

The inner life is complex. Sometimes there is conflict and confusion. We might have thoughts or feelings that we struggle to control. What we think about ourselves may be very different to how others see us.

Yet our inner life is also the place where God resides. Deep within us there is a core of goodness that comes from God, a divine imprint that reminds us that we are a chip off the heavenly block.

Spirituality is the word we use to describe the process of making sense of our inner life and, in particular, how we get in touch with the God who is ‘the ground of our being.’

Some religious people understand this, but others do not. Instead of helping people on their journey to the heart of God, they try to control others, or make themselves look superior, or impose lots of rules and regulations to force others to become someone other than who they truly are.

Jesus understood this problem well, and came to help us find our way back to God. He cuts through the clutter of religious life and teaches us simple truths about God, about his desire for us to enjoy God’s love, and to take delight in passing it on to others. It is a journey that takes us deeper into what it means to be human in the best possible way, discovering the core of goodness within ourselves, not through the force of others or a strict regime of rules, but in the joy of prayerful union with God.

The Christian life is not about outward appearances, nor about clever theological thinking (although I’m very glad we have theologians who help us develop our understanding of God). The Christian life is simply an invitation to follow Jesus who is longing to show us the way to a full and rich inner life, to discover that spiritual wholeness that the Bible calls ‘holy’.