Live by the Spirit (7) - Our Father

The final message in this series takes us back to a Jesus team basic. This prayer was taught by Jesus to the twelve but also to his disciples and believers.

Our Father, Who art in Heaven, hallowed be 
Thy Name. Thy Kingdom come. Thy Will be done, 
on earth, as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our 
daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we 
forgive those who trespass against us; and lead us 
not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen. (traditional version)

If you have been around Christians awhile you will be aware that this prayer is part of the scenery of Church life but each time we say it we should try our best and hear ourselves saying it for the first time. Why? Because if Jesus taught us to say it daily it is important. The reason is that for the serious disciple it is an aide memoir to help us consistently remember the component parts of prayer. And so! Next time you say or hear it I want the words TEAM PRAYER to flash into your mind. And savour its wisdom and meaning. It is for meditation and for saying daily. Lets's have a look why.

Our Father, Who art in Heaven - reminds us that our life comes from God. Our dad in heaven - perfect father to us. Our dad like earthly dads is greater than us his children. Perfectly loving us (unlike our fallible earthly dads). This opening phrase reminds us where we are in the relationship. That God is greater than us. That as author of our lives he is greater and more knowledgeable about us. We should enter prayer with that thought.

Hallowed be Thy Name - These days we would say "Holy is your name" - A reminder that there is power in the God's name. As it says in the Acts of the Apostles, there is no other name by which we can be saved. As followers Jesus wants us to have that thought always before us.

Thy Kingdom come - We are here to build your Kingdom here on earth. As Kingdom builders we yearn for  it's coming fully to our neighbourhood. We will do us best to enable it! Not hinder it!

Thy Will be done, on earth, as it is in Heaven - There is no point ever, and I mean ever, praying for something that is against God's will. If we desire something illicit we need to ask God to convert our heart. We align ourselves with his will.

Give us this day our daily bread - We ask God to provide for our needs, through our labour, daily. Notice it doesn't mention a Porsche! Just bread.... asking God that we always have the daily necessaries.

 Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us; and lead us not into temptation -  A reminder to live in daily repentance. Daily we have to forgive others and receive their forgiveness. Very necessary in family life. In our immediate family and beyond where would we be without this! No long held grudges are allowed in the Christian life. If you have one lurking in your life surrender it today!

....but deliver us from evil. A reminder that God is more powerful than any evil we will encounter in our daily life. Stronger than the darkness we encounter.

For meditation:

One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.”
Jesus said to them, 
“When you pray, say this:
‘Father: May your holy name be honored; may your Kingdom come.
Give us day by day the food we need.
Forgive us our sins, for we forgive everyone who does us wrong.
And do not bring us to hard testing.’”
And Jesus said to his disciples, “Suppose one of you should go to a friend's house at midnight and say, ‘Friend, let me borrow three loaves of bread.  A friend of mine who is on a trip has just come to my house, and I don't have any food for him!’  And suppose your friend should answer from inside, ‘Don't bother me! The door is already locked, and my children and I are in bed. I can't get up and give you anything.’  Well, what then? I tell you that even if he will not get up and give you the bread because you are his friend, yet he will get up and give you everything you need because you are not ashamed to keep on asking.  And so I say to you: Ask, and you will receive; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you. Luke 11:1-9 GNT

Dear Lord, open our hearts in prayer. Let your Spirit come in to teach us! Amen

Live by the Spirit (6) - Forgive

"As water reflects a face, so one's life reflects the heart" Proverbs

It is an inevitable side effect of being human that we will hurt others and they will hurt us. Sometimes it will be deliberate and at other times it will be the sad side swipe of our own or their own incapacity to deal with life.
It's what we do with that hurt that can radically influence our life by the Spirit. Do we hold onto it letting it work it's damages on our thinking and behaviour. Or are we going to allow ourselves to be different, allow ourselves to be people of the Kingdom?

Sometimes we want to hang onto our hurt because we get an almost masochistic pleasure feeling from turning it over in our mind. And it can be convenient to blame somebody else for what is going on in our life.

We can break that cycle of despair or oppression if we choose to. Some changes are always in our power to make. And in addition there is God's life changing Holy Spirit power available in forgiveness.

Believe me I know what I am talking about. I am the son of a chronic alcoholic and for a long time I held onto (in a spirit of unforgiveness) the damages he had caused to my life. But it was through listening to God's father heart and his teaching on forgiveness, that I learnt that I could surrender that hurt and let God's grace work on it and change my inner life. It was a slow process but I have received my inner healing and I want you to know that, if you dare, you can receive yours.

I think it is essential to the life of the Spirit to ask God who we should be forgiving and also to ask who we have offended.

Once we have his answer (our heart will also help us know who) there are two actions that we need to take. Pray hard for God's grace to change your heart, so that you are given by Jesus the desire to forgive.
When you have reached the moment. Find a wise person and discuss how you can take it forward. God might give you the desire to verbalise your forgiveness but for it to be sincere we have to do it with due consideration. Years or decades may have elapsed since we received the hurt or inflicted the hurt.

I urge you to let God speak to you on this whole area. Remember he is like the father in the parable of the Prodigal Son. Ready to come out on the road to welcome you back. Luke 15:11-32

I wish peace to your heart this day as God speaks to you. May you understand life can be different and that the Holy Spirit has healing powers for us. May the Spirit visit you as you think about this. Amen

Live by the Spirit

Those who live as their human nature tells them to, have their minds controlled by what human nature wants. Those who live as the Spirit tells them to, have their minds controlled by what the Spirit wants. To be controlled by human nature results in death; to be controlled by the Spirit results in life and peace.(Romans 8:5-6 GNT)

I have been giving some thought to the renovation of my personal life. Asking myself what does it mean to walk daily in the Spirit. Without being antsy fancy just thinking what could be better in my life? However remember God doesn't require us to be a stuffed shirt or without humour. If the three most important fruits of a Holy Spirit led life are Love, Peace and Joy then glumness has no place in Christianity!

What follows though is a rough guide to walking in the Spirit... when followed it will inevitably promote growth in the things of God and in our personal life. Try these components together for three months and I guarantee that your interior life will change. I said previously that I had learnt over the years that Christianity is a relationship and not a religion. Well, listed below is what will help that relationship with God grow. Furthermore your relationships with others will also change.

• Regular daily prayer time changes us. Remember "to pray is to change" 
• Time spent in the Word feeds our spirit and challenges us. Read the bible because it is the "Word of God" and contains God's message for us which is relevant for all even to this moment
• Asking the Holy Spirit what he wants you to do today, sometimes it is only one thing - the Spirit rarely overwhelms us with demands
• Give up judging other people! 
• Ask God who you should be forgiving (also think about who you have offended and go to them asking to be forgiven) 
• Live in community! This is harder if you are housebound but if possible spend time with other Christians. Find people who are trying to grow up in the Lord and be with them. (it says in Proverbs "iron sharpens iron" and this is the community effect, it sharpens us so that we are more alert to the things of the Lord) 
• Meditating on the Our Father. There is a reason why Jesus told his disciples to pray using this prayer read/say it often and you will start to get why

All components to be taken daily as the master physician Doctor Jesus has directed us. Start out with at least 10 minutes a day and then eventually build it up to thirty minutes or more each day. Components can be taken in any order but a good way to start is by reading a psalm out loud. Always talk to Jesus as you would a friend. Give time to listening too because in our pauses God can inspire us Follow this blog for the next seven weeks and I will talk in more detail about each of the steps above. But don't delay start today!

Dear Jesus, I desire my life to be different - renew in me your Holy Spirit so that I may grow in the things of God. Send your peace to my life. Give me a listening heart. Amen

God delights in showing mercy

One of my preoccupations since I moved to Ipswich is which rubbish bin I should put out on a Monday evening. I always have to look it up as I can never remember whether to put my black or blue bin out.

Do you ever wonder what it would be like if we could de-junk our personal lives from the burdens that we carry? Wouldn't it be lovely to be able to put our emotional baggage out for collection?

Some of that feeling we have of emotional baggage comes from having unresolved sin in our lives. I want you to listen to some words from the prophet Micah that reveal a wonderful image of God. Here they are:

"What god can compare with you: taking fault away, pardoning crime, not cherishing anger for ever but delighting in showing mercy? Once more have pity on us, tread down our faults, to the bottom of the sea throw all our sins. Grant Jacob your faithfulness, and Abraham your mercy, as you swore to our fathers from the days of long ago." JB

That sounds like a God that cares for us and wants us to succeed doesn't it? And what a beautiful image "tread down our faults to the bottom of the sea."

Before we go further with that thought we need to ask ourselves what is sin? In the original language of the NewTestament the Greek word 'hamartia' is used. Literally translated this means to 'miss the mark.' Sin is when we deliberately choose to miss the mark. Where we deliberately choose a bad action instead of a good or neutral action. Another way of looking at it is that sin is when we choose to be unloving in the way we act. Now there are various levels of harm caused by sin. A major,or grave, one would be to murder someone. Obviously the harm in that is collosal. A minor sin in comparison is when we tell a white lie. But even that has a knock on effect.

St Paul says that sin unchecked leads to death. I believe that he means spiritual death but he might equally be warning of physical death. We can quite see that the cumulative results of a series of negative actions could lead us into the sort of angry conflict where death ensues. Sometimes inevitably one evil thing leads to another.

Some sins break national laws as well as spiritual laws. It is worth us thinking about the following passage from St Paul "The commandments... are summed up in the one command, "Love your neighbour as you love yourself." If you love someone you will never do them wrong; to love then is to obey the whole law." Romans 13:10 - Surely this means that love should be the yardstick by which we need to measure our actions?

The thing about the Christian faith is that it is about redemption. It doesn't lead us to an awareness of sin and then leave us 'high and dry' to wallow in our misery. God through Jesus offers us a new beginning. A way out of sin, a new way of forgiveness that comes from God.

God wants us to be happy and fulfilled people who have put darkness behind us. He can bring us to a stage where we are aware of our sins. When that happens we need to then turn to him and ask what we need to do put things right. It could be, for example, that we need to forgive someone or ask them to forgive us. That forgiveness then opens us to receiving God's forgiveness. The fact that we are trying to make amends allows a spiritual dynamic to happen.

Now the great thing is that we can access this grace gift at any time. We don't have to wait until the one day in two weeks when the bin men come. God comes out to meet us on the road and is prepared at any time to "tread down our faults to the bottom of the sea."

Dear Lord, help me to identify what in my life needs changing. Show me how that change can happen. Give me courage and insight to take the steps that I need to. Help me to bless and not to curse. To build and not to destroy. May your Spirit come to strengthen me, Amen