HEARTS AND TEARS.1

Longing Heart (tears of passion) March 22 Lent 4

Ex 20:1-17; Ps 19; 1 Cor 1:18-25; Jn 2: 13-22 

Exodus 20:1-17: The account of the giving of the ten commandments which is in fact a display of God’s heart for  healthy relationships; between God and creature, between one person and another, between a person and the world around him.

In the first three commands God reminds them that He stands alone as the one who rescued them and cared for them, and that He has chosen them to be His unique and special people. His longing, expressed in this communication is that they would learn to trust and rely upon him and His compassion for them.

He then gives them a prescription for healthy living for the community of both people and animals. Don’t try to work every day of your existence – take time to rest and reflect on this God who has selected and surrounded you with His goodness. This ensures a godly focus as well as justice for all people in their community whether slave or free.

The final five commands are about relationships within the community of God’s people. These commands create an environment in which every person and relationship is treated with respect as one who is equally loved and treasured by their Creator. They also strengthen the need to rely on God and His provision as sufficient for each.

 

1 Corinthians 1:18-25: Paul reflects on the apparent foolishness of God’s willingness to restore us to relationship at an immeasurable cost to Himself – and that this apparent foolishness is in fact great wisdom, so great that it is beyond the wise.

What amazes me is that the One who creates and sustains the Universe by His decision alone chooses a way of bringing us into relationship that to the sophisticated makes him look ridiculous – such is the depth of His longing for us. Of course, as Paul rightly discerns, in the process being willing to look ridiculous, God has made a mockery of all that humanity offers as wisdom, subtlety, and discretion.

God here is demonstrating the lengths to which He is prepared to go in order to draw and hold us in a relationship of healing and transforming intimacy – the Creator with His creature.

 

John 2:13-22: The cleansing of the Temple reveals the radical nature of God’s loving desire for us – He is prepared to sweep away whatever stands in the way (using violence at need). The truth of the matter is that, even in the light of God’s grace revealed in Jesus, we are still trying erect our own religious superstructure on the glorious foundation offered us in Christ crucified and risen.

The Temple had been intended as a place where people, God’s people, would interact with him in prayer – in worship, in listening, in sending out aid to the poor and the weak – instead these same had come to see it as an opportunity for a significant indulgence in free enterprise reinforced by religious edicts that had come to be oppressive and discriminating. In John’s account it comes as an early dramatic statement of what Jesus is about – setting the scene for the conflict between institutional religion and the astonishing freedom of relationship with God to which Jesus had come to call us.

 

Reflect on the ten commands of God to secure great relationships. (Exodus 20:1-17)

Ask yourself what is God trying to help me embrace? What is God trying to get me to reject or even repent of? Where is God challenging me to grow and change?

 

Repent of anything that you discover, especially those things that are firmly entrenched as a way of living or being that is contrary to what God has shown you to be His purpose. Bearing in mind that repenting is turning from the wrong way to the way God points us toward, go on to…

 

Respond by talking over with God what you’re beginning to discover about the longing of His heart for relationship with you; and the longing in His heart for you to relate readily and freely with others. Further, you can answer God’s longing by seeking for ways to build deeper and stronger relationships with others; this in fact a practical way of giving expression to the movement of repentance.

 

Relate what you have been finding out and the decisions you have made as a consequence to others, either in a house group, or a group to whom you are able to make yourself accountable.

from Petes Page March 22

Choc and chicks or hearts and tears

What is the most dominating theme for you as Easter begins to loom on our emotional horizon? The commercial world continues to trot out the same tired clichés of Easter eggs (bet they start calling them “holiday eggs”) and fluffy chickens (& bunnies) – but they know nothing!

This Lent and Easter I’m thinking about hearts and tears as meaningful and evocative images for this season. Why hearts and tears?

Hearts because the heart of God is revealed to us in the achingly beautiful story of His one and only Son taking upon Himself all the nasty things that stand between Him and us, paying the cosmic price of our reconciliation with the One who made us and sustains us. It’s about hearts because it is a heart to heart work that rescues and redeems us; His heart transforming our heart, renewing our heart, rebuilding our heart in the image of His heart.

His heart was caused to cease beating, while the Cosmos held it’s breath to see if God’s incalculable risk had any effect. Would the hearts of His creatures be changed, would the world be changed, would the Cosmos be renewed?

Tears…well do I have to explain that?! See there is Jesus in the garden – confronted with the sin of the world in all its horrid variety and it’s pollutant power – hearing the unerring call to be the One who takes it ALL to Himself. Faced with the choice of disruption in the eternal bond of the Trinity, or the final damnation of the loved but foolish human creatures, He weeps in the anticipation of pain and suffering as if already suffering. This torture almost as bad as the lash of the whip and prick of the sarcastic crown, the excruciating pain of nails and spear.

Tears also as they fall from the eyes of astonished and grateful children of God throughout the intervening years, as they are gently confronted by the Spirit with the truth about the depth of God’s heart of love for them; of His willingness to embrace them heart to heart regardless of, some say because of what they have done in their rebellion.

Hearts and tears? Let it be your theme this year.

Leaving Behind a Good Taste

Imparting blessing as witness and encouragement

 

4. Where and When focus for the flavour of God

Isaiah 58:6-11; Matthew 5:1-11; 9:35-38

 

A. First a word from the Word

Isaiah 58:6-11     This, along with other passages like Isaiah 61:1-3; Micah 6:8; Matthew 25:31-46, forms a manifesto of action for those upon whom God has extended His startling and unexpected favour. While there are elements that should command our attention in this passage, I want to simply observe that addressed to us in our place and time, we hear the following: we are here in this state of being special, favoured, selected, empowered to do good for those who have little or no opportunity to do good for themselves or those for whom they care.

 

Matthew 5:1-11   This list of blessings are conferred are not so much about what the blessing is as, about those upon whom it is intended to fall. So what are we say about those qualify for blessing?

* God blesses (marks out for special attention) those who are short on resources…and know it but still want to do things God’s way.

* God blesses those who are not going to get in the way when God wants to work through them

* Those thus blessed by God are more likely to discover the riches of God’s gracious provision… thereby becoming aware of what it is they are being called to share.

* …and they’re not deflected by persecution or blunt resistance.

 

Matthew 9:35-38    In this quick summary of Jesus’ ministry we are provided with a model for our own attempts to fulfil the manifesto to which He has called in following Him.

* Jesus went wherever there was need, and reached out to whoever had need and acknowledged it

* Jesus’ ministry was fuelled and directed by His compassionate sense of the great need of those among who He ministered

* Jesus’ own words encourage us to see this as something best done as a community of fellow workers engaged in God’s good work. (Refer back to notes on the Isaiah passage.)

 

B. Going about it in your world

1. Meaningful Touch

* It communicates positively with your body – there are known health benefits in being positively, physically touched.

* It communicates and increases trust in relationship (giving and receiving.)

* Jesus constantly used touch as multi-level way of communicating the healing, accepting love and power of God. [In receiving the little children (Mk.10:13-16); in healing lepers (Mk.1:4042); in raising Jairus’ daughter (Mark 5:41).

 

2. Speaking words of blessing

* The power of words starts at Creation…the whole came from God speaking, ‘and it was so.’

* James writes of the astonishing power of speech (James 3:3-6)

* It is something which we should be very generous and gracious – not withholding affirmation when appropriate, even as an act of discipline – we shouldn’t asking whether they deserve it, but rather whether they need it. (Proverbs 3:27-28)

* The sweetness of an unexpected word of blessing stays with longer than the taste of very dark, very rich chocolate.

 

3. Attaching high value to the one being blessed

In Hebrew “to bless” is from the root “to bend the knee”, which inherently carries the meaning of placing high value upon the one being blessed; hence the word is used often in our relating to God. Look at biblical blessings; Deut 33 is Moses blessing the people of Israel as he dies; Joshua 14:13 has Joshua passing on his mantle to Caleb; 2 Samuel 6:18 shows David blessing the people as the Ark returns to the sanctuary.

Four keys to using word pictures to value another highly include:

* Use an everyday object. Something that catches something from a person’s character trait or physical attribute.

* Match the emotional meaning of the trait with the object you’ve picked. (Songs 4:4)

* Word pictures unravel our defences. How does Solomon’s bride go from ‘don’t look on me’ to ‘I am a rose of Sharon’? Via his kind words of appreciation that bless her. (1:6, 2:2)

* Points out the person’s potential. Jesus renaming Peter (Matthew 16:18) names a destiny that took a while in coming.

 

4. Picturing a special future for the one being blessed.

* They often help to bring out the best in those we bless (Jeremiah 29:11; John 14:1-6).

* They provide a guiding light for the future by which we can chart our lives.

* However it needs to be something about we’re consistent in our family and communal lives – a history by which we’re known and respected. (As one who blesses consistently.) And it needs to be something we’re committed to seeing fulfilled in the lives of those to whom we’ve reached out in such love.

 

5. An active commitment to fulfilling my part in their blessing

There is a cruel illogic in speaking words of encouragement or blessing without any commitment to the one in need of a lift, and James catches this with his words in James 2:15-16. So how do we go from empty words to active commitment?

* Be clear that is God whom you’re expecting to do the blessing. (eg. Jacob blessing his sons near the end of his life says ‘…the God who has been my shepherd…bless the boys.’ Gen 48:15-16) This way we’re keeping the Lord at the forefront of the person’s attention, secondly we’re communicating our faith in a God who involves Himself, personally, in our lives and concerns.

* Commit our selves to their best interests. This may necessitate loving intervention, persistent prayer, even stern words of encouragement at need. What blessing doesn’t imply is a few well chosen words and then we walk away and pay no further attention to that person and their needs.

from Petes Page for 14 March

Now is always the right time!

She came into the office and planted a startling passionate greeting right on my lips! In clear sight of an ogling bunch of draughting cadets. Before I could stop myself I’d said, “Not here! Not now!” And she replied as quickly, with a mischievous giggle, “Now is always the right time; here is always the right place!” In a perverse kind of way, I felt unnerved and proud at the same time.

Maybe there is a right time and place for PDAs (public displays of affection) but I’m a hopeless romantic, and tend to think that within limits there’s no such thing as the wrong place, wrong time.

And that’s how I feel about taking the opportunity to pass on a little blessing to another fellow occupier of this Planet. I would add that there’s no wrong person to whom you can offer a blessing. What seems an embarrassingly inappropriate time to you may the surprisingly perfect moment for another. Wisdom is required sometimes.

For some it may be something we daren’t delay, because the weight of grief or confusion that they carry should be alleviated immediately, and you may be the only person that will cross their path that day with the equipment to be the blessing they so desperately need.

Gets me thinking of the poor stiff who’d been mugged near the Jerusalem rubbish dump; he lay there in pain, in danger, in desperate need, while one man after another found the time not quite right for helping a victim of brutality. Hope was beginning to die in this poor, helpless, victim – when a member of a despised and mistrusted ethnic group decided there is no such thing as the right time to help another in trouble – just there is no opportune for being beaten to pulp. This despised one not only stopped to rescue but proved himself a friend beyond expectation, a blessing never to be forgotten – remembered forever by succeeding generations.

2. Sharing the Love – the flavour never runs out
Genesis 12:1-3; Luke 6:37-38; Romans 12:9-21; Numbers 6:22-27

It’s a fact! We are blessed! Not because we, or anyone else, says we are, but because that’s how God relates to us – with generosity and startling kindness. Last week we looked at the many ways in which God has already blessed us and promises to bless us in the future.

However it’s already apparent that blessing not only for us, but to be shared – which we see from the aching example of Christ’s death and rising.
- Christ’s is a love is to be shared. (You’ve heard the saying “share the love…” usually in trivial things, this is what the wonder of God’s love is about – sharing the love.)
- This is a love to be shared liberally, willingly, gladly with whatever means we have to hand [Luke 6:38].
- This is a love to be shared precisely because of what Jesus has done for us (so that means there are no real limits to its scope).

This blessing is for friends and enemies alike. [Romans 12:14-21]
- Bless is an imperative, a command that means you MUST do this. It comes from a word that means “good speech” and “celebrating with praise.” This positive, God-sourced speech is for those who oppose you, who annoy you, who demean you, who have hurt you and questioned your decency. To such unfair and abusive treatment, in Christ, there is only one response possible – blessing from your mouth as from the mouth of God
- It’s the perfect antidote to revenge because it arises out of a love-fuelled outflow of maintaining, even restoring, relationship. Revenge kills trust and hope in relating to others and eventually makes relating artificial at best.
-
In God, and because of His love we seek to care for people where they are in their lives.
- We seek to acknowledge their mood, by bringing Christ to where they are right now, rather than deflecting them to a place where we feel more comfortable. [Romans 12:15]
- You don’t have to be in the same place, or in a contrary place, but in a complementary place, a harmonious place
- Treat others as having great worth (after all God died for them too.) [Romans 12:10]

Always give better than you get (but not as your mother told you!) [Romans 12:20-21]
- Luke 6:22, 27-31 gives us direction as to how we should behave in the face of interpersonal cruelty. (These are the words of the One we so readily call Lord and Saviour.)
- Reject any kind of revenge or payback as an option in response . If we take it up we are saying that God is not acting justly and we need to do it for Him - in effect we are judging God.
- In this trust God and surprise your enemy. This is an ancient expression from Proverbs [25:21-22] that reveals that God is and always has been a God of compassion. Again these are imperatives, meaning they are not optional forms of behaviour for particularly holy or weird, they are for all people who want to be known as members of God’s household.
If you’re meant to treat your enemies this way how much more is this true of the people who are following Christ with you wherever you are– in some community formed out of the love of Christ.

Being a friendly christian from Pete's Page for 1 March 09

She stood there at the bus-stop, day after day, silent tears decorating her ashen cheeks; meanwhile he stood watching, day after day, not aware of the frown on his face, caught somewhere between concern and embarrassment. Has was concerned, but somewhere inside a voice (probably his mum’s) said, “You just don’t go up to strangers and ask what’s wrong?” And yet he was a follower of the One who was continually taking out time for strangers, especially those most people preferred to avoid. Finally he took a deep breath, crossed the yawning chasm of 2 metres, and asked if she was okay. Had to repeat himself twice – language difficulties. She was new in the country, and she’d just heard that her sister was desperately ill and her life hung in the balance. She felt alienated from home, and with her formal English had trouble understanding Kiwis and their weird pronunciations and their unique use of expressions she’d never heard before, she felt alienated in this land in which she’d come to study.
So he arranged to collect her for a meal and friendship with his family, and introduced her to a group of students at his own church she could meet up with during the week. He also arranged for her to make phone calls home from his house (at his cost.)
What provoked this outburst of empathetic caring? He’d remembered his minister talking about Jesus saying, “as much as
you did this for the least of these, you did it for me.” The minister had asserted that you don’t have to go looking for the least; in this very secular world, they were going to cross your path every day and it was up to us to recognise who those least people were. And that we might have to cross barriers of embarrassment and prejudice to be the difference in that person’s life. But when we think of what Jesus has done for us in making us into His Friends, was it really that hard? And he found that it wasn’t once he’d made the leap across the divide of diffidence.
Pete.

God flavours – we are blessed, and there is a point to it
Genesis 12:1-3; 18:18; Galatians 3:6-14; John 3:16-17

Genesis 12 To me it’s clear – our purpose in life is to bring God’s blessing into the lives of unsuspecting ordinary people going on with their everyday lives all around us. To let them know they matter and that there is a great point to their continued existence upon this planet. But first we need to be sure in our minds about a few things. God says to Abraham He will bless him and the nation that forms around him – we are supposed to be Abraham’s heirs because of our faith-filled embrace of God’s promise in Jesus, His unique Son.
So here it is; How are we blessed? Has God fulfilled His promise to Abraham? How do we experience that blessing? Is it just now and then, a flash in the pan; or is it just a matter of perception (you know, I’m blessed if I feel I’m blessed); or is it something that’s going on whether we can see and taste it or not? Do you feel blessed at all?
1. The Joy of being a part of the amazing creative work of God who continually reveals Himself as Love. The wide and stunning variety and complexity and strange interrelationship of all things created (and that is ALL things.)
2. The joy and challenges and struggles of being part of the human race, and of at least one of the many varied and fascinating communities that gather us into our ideal state. For the richness of colour, language, culture, customs and history of each people, tribe and nation.
3. In the discovery that there is a God at the source of all this astonishing beauty and variety, working out a plan that is both self-revealing, and other-preferring. For the story of God’s love affair with His creatures that involves a relentless pursuit across time and space.
4. In the astonishing and unwavering compassion of God in the death of His Son for the sake of our freedom from the curse of our sin and the death that follows. For the grand surprise of the life that follows such a death – life that can never be extinguished – life with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, in unbreakable and unshakable unity.
5. In the ever-fresh wind of the Holy Spirit waking, breathing, stirring, challenging, convicting, transforming, healing, renewing again and again, drawing together the many threads of humanity in Christ into a global, eternal community of resurrection life and power.
6. In the inspiring community of fellow-travellers with Jesus, released by His death, emboldened by His rising, filled with the life of the Spirit – as various and as intriguing as the first act of creation. For those who love us, accept us, hold us, pray for us, welcome us, forgive us, heal us, restore us, challenge us, and point us continually to Christ.
7. In the promise that this isn’t all there is to life. That life is resilient even in the face of ridicule, torture and death. That there is a destiny for us and for all of Creation that involves an ultimate renewal that both arises from and transcends all that we know and love of this world. A future in which God in Christ is both the key and the centrepiece.
Do you feel blessed yet?

I've been thinking about how we relate to people both within and beyond the normal scope of our community of faith, and remembered a Vineyard Seminar in about 1992/3 that focussed on blessing people as a way of communicating positively (even evangelistically.)
So I've embarked on a brief series of messages about "Blessing" called "Leaving a Good Taste."
My mum used to say that some people left a bad taste in your mouth, and I wanted to help our lovely people come to terms with the imperative to leave a good taste in the mouths of all manner of people; even the "moron" who cuts me off in the traffic, or threatens my kids in a park.
So the next few posts will follow the notes for those messages and the teasers that I published in our weekly bulletin. I try to keep it biblical but it also reflects a heck of a lot of where I am at the moment.
Have fun with and feel free to respond via the blog.