Lego have brought out cookie cutters, one of which enables children to make cookies in the shape of a Lego person. The only problem is these all tend to look the same because there is (in our set, anyway) only one mould for a Lego person. The world too has a mould which tends to want to churn out the same people, regardless of individuality. This mould may have different ‘flavours’ (some people are materialistic atheists, who do not believe in anything other than the physical world; some are ‘secular’, not being connected to religious views, and others are ‘spiritual’, which usually means an acknowledgement of something other than the material world but which is often a mish-mash of beliefs and ideas, not all of which are religious.)

This mould is how we all once used to live (see Eph 2:2-3), but Rom 12:2 urges us not to let the world around us squeeze us into its mould. The Message version translates this as ‘Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking.’ We’re not required to be chameleons, adapting to our culture to the extent that we live our lives effectively as functioning atheists. We can become all things to all men (as Paul put it) without fitting into the world’s mould. By letting Christ be Lord in every area of our lives, we show people a different mould altogether.

In God, the ordinary can become extraordinary and the natural can become supernatural. He can take our mundane, everyday lives and accomplish more with them than we can imagine. What He longs for is for us to be naturally supernatural. This means being unafraid of the truth (since Jesus is full of truth and described Himself as the Truth) and living lives that break the mould. We can live righteous lives, showing others the right way to live; we can show compassion to others (Col 3:12). We are meant to be Christ’s ambassadors who reveal His character to the world, living out the Beatitudes (being peacemakers, being meek, mourning over sin and so on), effectively ‘being’ God among the people.

Faith and trust are key elements in a life of faith, and if we want to become mature in Christ, we can’t ever let go of these things. The key to staying connected to Christ, to remaining in Christ, is to believe the promises of God. Paul says, ‘For no matter how many promises God has made, they are “Yes” in Christ. And so through him the “Amen” is spoken by us to the glory of God.’ (2 Cor 1:20) In Christ, it’s always ‘yes’ and ‘amen’, but we have a part to play too. Our part is to speak the ‘Amen’ to the glory of God. Our part is to agree with God, no matter what the visible signs around us say.

We only grow spiritually if we remain in Christ and keep on believing what He says over and above what we can see with our natural eyes or what our feelings tell us. We need to learn to speak out what God says over and above what we feel or think. It’s so easy to talk ourselves into defeat because we only talk about the negative. Instead, we have to speak out God’s word.

The voice of pragmatism is always there, urging us to follow alternative paths. Abraham listened to it and allowed himself to sleep with Hagar. David listened to it and stayed at home instead of going to war, following the lust of selfish longing and listening to the rationale offering excuses for normal human needs until he’d not only committed adultery but committed murder as well. We all listen to it to some extent. Pragmatism sounds so utterly convincing and reasonable and so much more sensible than climbing out of a boat and walking on water or taking one child’s packed lunch and feeding thousands of people with it. Faith requires us to ignore the temptation to play it safe and stay in our comfort zones and follow Christ wherever He goes. And He tends to go to places we’d rather He didn’t!

The challenge for each one of us is to believe God’s word over and above anything or anyone else. This is a hugely important spiritual battle, one that’s largely invisible to other people but which truly determines how we grow up in Christ. As Lauren Daigle sings, it involves fighting voices in our minds that say we’re not enough, that we will never measure up and means choosing to believe what God says about us rather than anything else, choosing to find our worth and identity in God, rather than in anything else. (‘You Say’) We practise every day believing God or believing the lies more times than perhaps we realise. If we are to grow in our connection to Jesus, then we must learn to believe His promises and rely on them. Absolutely nothing else will win the victory. Only as we speak the ‘Amen’ to the glory of God can we claim every promise God has made and live in the spiritual realm Christ died for us to enter.

Knowing who we are in Christ takes a lifetime to explore. Here are just a few of the things the Bible tells us we are in Christ:

• We are complete in Christ. (Col 2:10) We don’t need anything else; all the fulness of God dwells in Christ and Christ dwells in us. When we begin to grasp this truth, it helps us to let go of the manipulation and control we feel we need to practise to get by in life. We don’t need to always be scheming, plotting and planning so that people do what we want, so that we can get our own way and everything we want. We are complete in Christ. He’s enough for us. He’s sufficient to get us through life. We don’t need ‘Christ and…’ He’s enough.

• We are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. (Eph 2:10) God has purpose for our lives, things for us to do which can please Him and glorify Him. Instead of feeling aimless and that life has no point, we can tackle everything with joy, because we know it’s God’s will to do these good works He has prepared in advance for us to do.

• We are chosen and clean people, holy and set apart for God. Eph 1:4 says, ‘For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight.’ This gives us a whole new sense of identity and hope. Life’s about more than despair and trouble. It’s about being chosen and loved! It’s about living life without guilt and shame, without fear and condemnation.

• We are more than conquerors through him who loved us. (Rom 8:37) No situation has the power to defeat us if we learn to abide in Christ. If the power of God could raise Christ from the dead, then nothing can crush us totally. We’re on the winning side! No matter how big your mountain is today, we have a God who can move mountains. No matter how tall the walls, we have a God who can tear down walls. As Rend Co. Kids sing, ‘Your mighty name will ever be the soundtrack of our victory… Our God, You will tear down the walls. Our God, You are invincible. The strongholds crumble like castles of sand, as we shout loud our Jericho song.’ (‘Jericho Song’)

• We are God’s children and He will provide for us: ‘my God will meet all your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus.’ (Phil 4:19) When we are connected to the Maker of Heaven and Earth, we don’t have to worry about provision, about where the next mouthful will come from. Jesus urged us to live lives free from worry because God knows our needs and will provide for us. We can trust God to meet all our needs. He’s rich enough!

• We can live in peace and freedom. Paul tells the Philippians that ‘the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.’ (Phil 4:19) I believe that being in Christ helps us with so many things which would seek to destroy us. There are so many mental health issues these days, but as we allow God’s peace to come into our lives, our hearts (our emotions, our feelings) and our minds (our thoughts) will be guarded in Christ Jesus. We can claim this promise, along with so many others, if we are remaining in Christ. We can live secure, guarded lives, no matter what traumas and tragedies life throws at us.

In our latest sermon from our ‘Connections‘ series, we looked at our connection to God the Son, often described by Paul as being ‘in Christ’, with Christ also living in us (see 1 Cor 1:2, Eph 1:1, Phil 1:1,1 Thess 1:1, Col 1:27). Being in Christ is Paul’s recipe for successful living. Those who are in Christ Jesus are free from condemnation. (Rom 8:1) He knows that nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Rom 8:39) Grace is given to us in Christ Jesus. (1 Cor 1:4) God has called us into fellowship with His Son, Christ Jesus (1 Cor 1:9); we are now safe and secure ‘in Christ Jesus’ (1 Cor 1:30). For Paul, it’s this connection with the living Christ that makes all the difference to us.

Our connection to Christ begins when we are born again and is maintained as we remain in the vine (see John 15:1-8). It’s a connection based on grace and faith (see Eph 2:8-9), and we have to continue in this same vein if we are to flourish spiritually (see Gal 3:1-6).

We can be reassured that the connection we have with Christ is not something flimsy or superficial. All the fulness of the Godhead bodily dwells in Christ (see Col 2:9-10) and we have been given fulness in Him. Just as Jesus was in the Father and the Father in Him, so we too can rest secure in Christ (see John 14:10-11, John 17:21). Nothing whatsoever can separate us from God’s love in Christ Jesus (Rom 8:37-39); we are safe and secure in God’s bear hug! (God’s love is stronger than any Gorilla Glue, even!)

In Christ we have redemption and forgiveness (see Eph 1:6-7). We are people who have been given a fresh start. We don’t have to live life with the baggage of yesterday, weighed down by our sins. We are people who can enjoy life, who can enjoy our connection to God because we know that Jesus has taken all our sins and our sorrows and made them His very own precisely so that we don’t have to carry them anymore. Moreover, this fresh start – we’re new creations in Christ Jesus, remember! (2 Cor 5:17) – carries on day after day.  It doesn’t just last for a short time and then fade away, like jewellery that can get tarnished if it’s not constantly polished. Instead, ‘the Lord’s compassions never fail; they are new every morning.’ (Lam 3:23)

I am reading a book about Jeremiah, and in that, the description ‘creative constancy’ is applied to the prophet. (‘Run With the Horses’, Eugene Peterson) That phrase intrigues me. It’s an oxymoron, a figure of speech in which apparently contradictory terms appear in conjunction. ‘Creative’ has the connotation of freshness, newness, difference; ‘constancy’ has the connotation of repetition, faithfulness, things being the same. How do these two things combine in one person? We are used to thinking of them as opposites: can they really be integrated?

Jeremiah proves to us that they can. Jeremiah (one of my favourite Biblical characters) spoke out the word of the Lord faithfully for years, a word that was highly unpopular as it was a word of judgment. In Jer 25:3, he says, ‘For twenty-three years—from the thirteenth year of Josiah son of Amon king of Judah until this very day—the word of the Lord has come to me and I have spoken to you again and again, but you have not listened.‘ There’s definitely an element of constancy there! It must have been hugely discouraging at times to be speaking this word, only to have people mock him, oppose him and even ultimately imprison him, but nothing deterred Jeremiah from sticking to his God-given task.

Because the word he brought was so unpopular and because he lived at the time when Israel was threatened with exile (which eventually happened towards the end of the book), Jeremiah has become associated with lament, weeping, pain and sorrow: not a very appetising mix, we may feel. But it would be wrong to categorise Jeremiah as all doom and gloom, with no creativity. Instead, Jeremiah learned to seek the Lord each day and report His word with freshness and vivid imagery (see Jer 2:20-25). He was ‘not stuck in a rut; he was committed to a purpose.’ (ibid., P 113) There is power and force in his creative words; there is nothing tepid or stale about Jeremiah’s message.

Creative constancy seems to me to be the aim of every Christian. We serve a God of creativity and are made in His image, so there is the scope for freshness, innovation, a ‘new thing’ in all we do. We also serve a God whose faithfulness endures for all generations (Ps 100:5) and therefore are called to perseverance, faithfulness, constancy. May the apparent contradictions in this phrase startle others and prove to be a conversation-opener, leading us to talk of the creativity and constancy of the God we serve.

A hole in the heart (a septal defect) is a congenital defect of the heart which results in inadequate circulation of oxygenated blood, causing breathlessness. Sometimes this hole closes naturally as a baby grows and there is no need for surgery; in other cases, surgery is required to effectively ‘close the gap’. It can be very frightening when such things are diagnosed, but most babies now born with this defect survive to live normal lives.

Because of our experience of this condition in the physical realm, we may well respond to the idea of a ‘spiritual’ hole in the heart with alarm, suspecting this implies a lack of compassion or kindness, an inability to receive or pass on God’s love. When I talk about a ‘hole in the heart’ in spiritual terms, that’s not what I mean. I am thinking more in agricultural terms, where the farmer digs holes ito plant seed. If we think of our hearts as a field of unploughed land into which God’s word is the seed that will produce fruitfulness in us, the idea becomes more understandable.

Hosea urges God’s people to ‘break up your unploughed ground, for it is time to seek the Lord.’ (Hos 10:12) Breaking up unploughed ground is hard work. It involves digging, tilling, ploughing and harrowing until hard soil is loosened, softened and ready to receive seed. In the same way, we have a responsibility to prepare our hearts to receive God’s word each day. We have, in effect, to make a hole in the heart, to dig into our hard hearts to remove the sin and unbelief that so easily lodge there so that we can, by faith, receive the seed of God’s word and give it the best possible environment in which to grow.

So before you gather to worship today, do a little heart-digging and make room for God’s word so that the seeds He wishes to plant in us are not scattered onto dry, rocky ground where they can be snatched away. Dig a hole in your heart which can receive the word of God and let that word transform you, nourish you and produce a harvest in due time.