Cheques

"The central experience of Christian life is a gift which I cannot see, but which is certainly there, for I draw cheques to any amount on it and find them honoured by God every day." (Leslie Weatherhead)

Time

The Lilliputians in "Gulliver's Travels" (remember those little guys?) note that Gulliver's pocket watch is probably a god. This is because (they reason) he rarely did anything without consulting it. He called it his oracle and said it pointed the time for every action of his life.

"Travels" was written over 200 years ago. This was a comment about the then modern preoccupation with time. But has anything changed? Gulliver sure sounds like me.

Is "time" an idol to us? Or an almost-idol? A god that decrees the level of anxiety we feel, whether we are good or bad (did you get everything done today that you planned? You didn't? You naughty human!), what is possible and impossible.

Whatever happened to living in the moment? Or is that irresponsible? What did Jesus mean by "Don't worry about tomorrow"? Was he just talking about focussing on what you can do, not what you can't? Or was this also about time?

"Idols not only enslave their admirers ... they also transform people into replicas of themselves. So people (act) with a repetitive regularity which has no resemblence to the rhythmic life of a living being." (Robert Banks, The Tyranny of Time)

Willing

Occasionally I enjoy the Sunday fellowship of Bay Vineyard church here in Melbourne. The last time I joined them, Pastor John Wall asked the question:

How much of our view of God (or our understanding of God) is second-hand; as in
"you heard it from people like me in rooms like this?"

He followed this up with:

"How much have you discovered for yourself from Scripture and from experience?"

John then helped me to read Matthew chapter 8 with fresh eyes. The story that starts in verse 5 is partly about how this man perceived Jesus (or understood Jesus).

I invite you to skim the story again. As I read it again, I noticed the willingness of Jesus to heal, to help, to rescue from torment. There's no real hoops to jump through first, he doesn't have to wave his hands in the air ("C'mon people, lift God up!"), or pray a magic prayer and say it right, or sit in the front rows (where the good Christians sit).

Neither do we.

The man discovers for himself that when you appeal to God's compassion with a trust in his ability, He's there for ya!

John finished his chat with the point that we "believers" don't usually struggle with whether God can (help), but whether He will.

As you skim that chapter, there's a couple of questions that I find helpful, passed on to me through the writing of Jim Peterson:

• Who is Jesus? What kind of person is He?
• What is He asking me to do?

Pure

"Keep yourself pure" (1 Timothy 5:22)

What's Paul telling us? I know what the word PURE means, I looked it up the dictionary, it's easy to grasp. And the greek word for pure is ... pure. So I'm not analysing the word. I'm just wondering what I'm to aim at here.

I used to follow an arrogant belief system. I told myself that as a Christian, I was no longer a sinner. It was unscriptural to think I was. When I heard other Christians say "I'm just a sinner saved by grace", I would think/say "If that's what YOU want to be, fine. But my Bible tells me I can reach a state of sinlessness (I think I got that from the latter parts of 1 John); that I'm a New Creation (Ephesians); that I'm already made perfect because of what Christ did (Hebrews)". And there is truth in each of those things.


But facts are facts. Even at my best, on those days or in those seasons where I feel 'tuned in' to God or self-controlled or motivated - I'M STILL A WEAK SELFISH PETTY MAN WHO THINKS SAYS AND DOES WEAK SELFISH PETTY THINGS!!!!


So what kind of purity is God expecting? How pure is pure, when we've all eaten of the Knowledge of Good and Evil?

If we're talking moral and character issues here, and the best I could hope to acheive is 99.9% good and only 0.1% evil, is that enough to call myself pure? Would I drink a glass that's 99.9% rain water and 0.1% raw sewerage?


Or might pure refer to an allignment of the heart? One that 'righteous' actions grow out of? Something that starts in humility perhaps...?


Because I know that wheat AND tares are growing in my soul together, because I know that my best efforts only take me so far, the story Jesus told of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector (Lk 18:10-14) gives me hope.


I am the tax collector.

No matter how much I try to move toward the pharisee's "testimony", I often find myself hiding in the shadows, weeping over my condition. "I am so like other men...!"


All I can do is trust Jesus that at the last day, He will save me from my sin. Without that hope, I am lost...

In Whose Image?

This quote I saw today captured my attention and has made me think a lot.

"You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do." - Anne Lamott

The Opposite of Contentedness

"Should we accept only good things the hand of God and never anything bad?"

How alien (to the way we think) are these words from Job - right at the lowest point in his life!

Humans regularly experience peaks and troughs in life. My observation is that some of us even behave in the following way: chasing highs and embracing hype – then dipping or crashing into periods of emotional listlessness or complaint or lethargy or anger or anxiety.

In short, we want life and (because of the marketing we've believed) expect life to be lived on the mountaintop, expending massive emotional physical temporal financial resources in that pursuit.

In natural systems (e.g. tides, weather, the rhythm of our bodies) and human systems (e.g. economies, fashion, popularity, sporting competitions), there are always peaks and troughs, highs and lows, booms and busts. Usually the greater the high, the greater the low when the 'bubble bursts' – though this is not always true since higher rainfall is not necessarily followed by drought.

Humans are at least preoccupied with the peak and shun the trough to the point of sometimes labelling the latter unfair. So the sensations of

• winning,
• a full stomach,
• orgasm,
• chemical high,
• a huge cash payout,
• an experience of God’s glory or power,
• the first episode of a favourite TV show’s new season,
• purchasing a new item,
• receiving a gift,
• having life 'run smoothly' for a while

– these all represent the mountain top –and truthfully we want life to be comprised of nothing else but these kinds of highs.

I have to keep reminding myelf that this desire is unreasonable, since it is in denial of several facts:

1. The universe that God designed is cyclical by nature (e.g. the body cannot exercise all day but needs recuperation; it cannot rain all year nor be sunny all year without severe damage to the environment and its inhabitants)
2. The effects of sin on earth are such that they have destroyed equilibrium (e.g. our greed has adversely affected weather patterns and the quality of our food; the rich continue to get richer at the expense of the poor)
3. The Bible reveals that God is far more interested in our character than our comfort and avoids ‘spoiling’ in favor of disciplining/shaping us.

This longing for continual highs also touches on another issue: our tendency to expect more and more and more …

Give me a job at $60,000 a year and today I will rejoice in my blessing … but this time next year I will be complaining that 60K is just not enough!

Give me sex every day and I will soon be bored with what last week was like being in heaven (although I'd be happy to test that and see if it's true...)

Give me the presence of God at my beck and call, and I will soon become complacent arrogant and overindulged - I will devalue even Him…