V is for Vision – Spiritual vision is the ability to see the invisible. It involves having an eternal perspective so that we’re not seduced by what we see all around us, but learn to ask God to open our eyes, even as Elisha prayed for his servant, so that he might know the armies of God are greater than all the armies of the world. (2 Kings 6:7) Developing spiritual vision happens when we STOP, LOOK AND LISTEN: when we pause from our doing to gaze on God and listen to Him.

W is for Witness – a witness is simply called to report what they have seen, and we who have seen something of God’s goodness and grace have a responsibility to pass that message on to everyone we meet (see 2 Kings 7). So often, we hold back, feeling inadequate or unable to share our story with others, but all are called to tell others their God-stories (Ps 107:2).

X is for Xenophilia – a love for outsiders, foreigners, strangers, commonly translated as ‘hospitality’. The Bible reminds us that we are all ‘foreigners and strangers’ on earth, all pilgrims passing through (Heb 11:13, Phil 3:20), so we need to show love in practical ways, not only to those who are like us but to those with whom we may have absolutely nothing in common. This life of faith is not something to be hidden away in a box. Jesus doesn’t want us to hide the light He’s given us. (Matt 5:14-15) We show love in practical ways as we practise hospitality. (Rom 12:13)

Y is for You! – The Christian faith isn’t just for other people! God knows you by name and cares for you. The genealogies we often find boring in the Bible are actually proof that God is interested in every individual. We are made in God’s image (Gen 1:27) and we matter so much to God that He sent His only Son to die for us so that we could be reconciled to Him. (John 3:16, 2 Cor 5:21) So often, we feel insignificant and unimportant, but God wants us to know that we are precious to Him and have a new identity in Him: we are children of God.

Z is for Zeal – the fuel which keeps us going on life’s marathon journey. Paul said, ‘Never be lacking in zeal, but always keep your spiritual fervour, serving the Lord.’ (Romans 12:11) Perseverance is needed, which comes as we are continually filled with the Holy Spirit. (Eph 5:18)

Q is for Quietness – a desperately missing ingredient in today’s hectic, busy, noisy lifestyle. Ps 46:10 reminds us to ‘be still and know that I am God’ and Is 30:15 says, ‘In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength.’ (Is 30:15) We need to be determined and deliberate in setting aside time to listen to God and to seek the quietness to hear His gentle whisper.

R is for Restore – God is able to restore all that has been lost through sin and disobedience. He is able to redeem us, buying us back from the enemy’s hold (Eph 1:7, Col 1:14), so that we can reclaim all that we have lost through sin. We can be released from addictions, from the tentacles of sin, and can live in freedom and wholeness in God. God wants to rebuild our lives into something solid and lasting for His glory; He wants to renew us inwardly day by day, an ongoing transformation that allows us to reflect His nature to others. (2 Cor 4:16-18)

S is for Salvation – Jesus is our Saviour, our Rescuer – good news for all of us because as a result, we are free from sin forever more. The story of the Philippian jailer (Acts 16) shows us that salvation comes through belief in Jesus and opens the door to a life of freedom!

T is for Truth – since Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life. (John 14:6) Jesus told us that the truth has the power to set us free (John 8:31-36), but we have to be willing to give truth free rein in our lives if we are to see this happen. Jesus reminds us that truth will prevail and that there is such a thing as absolute truth.

U is for Unity – Jesus prayed for His disciples to be one (John 17:20-23). One of the reasons for this is that the Godhead is one: one God in three persons, Father, Son and Spirit. We are called to reflect God’s nature to the world and so unity is a crucial ingredient in drawing people to faith: ‘so that the world may believe that you have sent me.’ (John 17:21) Unity is not the same as uniformity; we’re not all the same! God is a God who loves diversity, but unity is a powerful witness of the transforming power of the gospel.

I is for Imagination – God is a creative God (see Genesis 1) and we are made in His image. God wants to do for us so much more than we ask or imagine (Eph 3:20), and a sanctified imagination is one of the ways that God breathes faith into us and allows us to see beyond the natural world to what He can do. We need to be unafraid to dream God’s dreams and let Him fire up our imaginations.

J is for Jesus – Jesus is at the heart of the Christian faith. He is the bridge between God and mankind. He is both fully God and fully Man and as such is the mediator: ‘there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus.’ (1 Tim 2:5) Jesus makes reconciliation with God possible.

K is for Kingdom – there are ultimately only two kingdoms, the kingdom of darkness and the kingdom of light. Life, once we become children of God, means following a new King. We become part of the kingdom of God – but it’s a kingdom unlike the world’s idea of force and power. Here, ‘whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all.’ (Mark 10:43-44) In God’s kingdom, service is the key to greatness and death precedes life.

L is for Life, Light & Love -in John 1, we see that Jesus is the source of all life (‘in Him was life and that life was the light of all mankind.’ (John 1:4)) He is the light that came into the world (Jn 1:9) and that light has the power to overcome darkness. (Jn 1:5) Light illuminates our path and gives us guidance throughout life’s journey. Love is the very essence of God (1 Jn 4:8) and needs to be the one ingredient that characterises everything we are and do. Jesus said everyone would know we were His disciples if we loved one another, and love still remains the benchmark, the hallmark, the identifying mark of every Christian.

M is for Motivation – not just doing the right things, but doing them from the right motives! God is looking for people who will serve Him with pure hearts. Instead of being motivated by fear, we have to be motivated by love. Instead of trying to live to please people, we have to live to please God. Instead of putting ourselves first, we have to put God first. Motivation means we dig beneath the surface and look at what is going on underneath, because we know that God does not simply look at the outward appearance; He looks at the heart. (1 Sam 16:7)

N is for New – God is the God of new things. (Is 43:19), the God of new birth and new life (1 Pet 1:3), the God who has made a new covenant with us (Heb 9:15) and His creativity spills over into new things – a new song (Ps 149:1), new wine in new wineskins, to use the words of Jesus. (Mark 2:22) He is a God who calls us to transformed thinking (Rom 12:1-2) and is busy preparing new heavens and a new earth (Rev 21:1-2) We must always be open to the new thing God wants to do and to be ready to hear the voice of His Spirit calling us to new things.

O is for Obedience – saying yes to God! The consequences of disobedience are dire (the book of Jonah outlines this for us!) and we need to understand that ‘to obey is better than sacrifice.’ (1 Sam 15:22) God wants us to ‘trust and obey.’

P is for Prayer – our lifeline of communication to God. There are many obstacles to prayer, including our tendency to procrastinate, the things we do wrong which make us hide away from God and distraction and doubt, but there is a need for us to shut the door and spend time with God on our own (Matt 6:6) as well as join with other Christians to pray. Prayer involves adoring God, confessing our sins, thanking God and bring our petitions and requests (supplication) to Him (ACTS).

Having reached the end of our ‘essential ingredients’ for a life of faith, we looked tonight at all 26 ingredients which help us to grow on our journey towards God.

A is for Adore – adoration of God who is the Alpha and Omega (Rev 1:8) is the start of our faith and one of the chief purposes of man.

B is for Believe – ‘Everything is possible for the one who believes’, Jesus said (Mark 9:23) and believing and trusting God are key elements not only to the start of our Christian journey but for every stage thereafter.

C is for Christ Crucified – the centrality of the cross is at the heart of our faith (see 1 Cor 1:18-25). As Simon Ponsonby reminds us, ‘if we drop the cross, we lose the plot.’ We don’t need a new message; we need to have confidence in the fact that Jesus Christ died for our sins and because of this, we can have a personal relationship with God and can have the assurance of eternal life. The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ are absolutely fundamental to growing in faith.

D is for Desire – God’s desire is for us. He loves us so much that He sent His only Son to die on the cross for us so that we can be reconciled to Him. (John 3:16) As the Song of Songs says, ‘I belong to my beloved and his desire is for me.’ (Song of Songs 7:10)

E is for Extravagance – our response to God’s passionate, raging love for us should be an equally extravagant love in return! The woman who poured out the alabaster oil of perfume was not thinking of cost but of how much she was loved. Such extravagance may well arouse disgust and disdain in others, but God loves a cheerful giver. (2 Cor 9:7)

F is for Follow me! – Jesus calls us to follow Him (Matt 4:19). Primarily, we are called to a relationship with God, and our primary allegiance has to be to Him. There are costs to following Jesus, which he spelled out to all His disciples, but there are also huge benefits.

G is for God – we are called not to religion, but to worship God as He is revealed in the Bible: one God in Three Person – Father, Son and Spirit. One God who is all-powerful and all-knowing and all-loving. One God who is far above all things, completely holy and pure and majestic, righteous and just, and yet who stoops to rescue us and acts in grace, mercy, tenderness and forgiveness. One God who is good and who works good from the tragedies of life. (Rom 8:28)

H is for Heaven & Hell – not fashionable topics these days, but Jesus taught that there are eternal consequences to the choices that we make on earth (see John 3:16-19). Heaven is the hope we all have if we believe in God’s Son; we shall be saved and shall not perish. To those who reject Jesus, however, there are eternal consequences: ‘they will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might.’ (2 Thess 1:9) 

These three psalms (Ps 123-125) take us on a journey from scorn to security, with God’s help (succour) the thing that makes all the difference. Ps 123:3-4 talks of contempt and ridicule, synonyms of which include scorn, disdain, disrespect, derision and mockery. This often leaves us feeling demoralised and discouraged, but the psalmist encourages us to live in humility before God as a servant attentive to his master (Ps 123:2). The problems we face may well be caused by people, but there is always a spiritual element to opposition (see Eph 6:12), and solutions are not to be found in our own strength or cleverness, but in the mercy and grace of God. (Ps 123:2-3)

We can be confident in all situations because of God’s help which means that the long-awaited disasters plotted against us lose their power over us. (Ps 124:2-6) God is able to thwart the most complex of plots (see Neh 4:15) (whilst no plan of His can be thwarted, as Job 42:2 reminds us) and set us free from other people’s traps and snares. (Ps 124:7) This confidence sustains us through life’s journey. Ps 125 likens God’s presence with us to the mountains surrounding Jerusalem (Ps 125:1-2) and we are reassured by the fact God does not change. (Mal 3:6) Heb 12 takes up this picture of being unshaken, reminding us that ‘we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken.’ (Heb 12:28) Our stability ultimately comes from God’s stability.

Ps 123-125 give us the second group of three psalms in the Psalms of Ascent, dealing with troubles and trials, God’s help and protection and the deliverance we ultimately will receive from Him. Psalm 123 talks of the contempt and ridicule faced by believers from those whose opposition to God is manifested in very concrete ways experienced by God’s people. The opposition Nehemiah faced when rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem is just one example of this (Neh 2:19, 4:1-9), and it can be both distressing and wearing for people to endure the drip-drip-drip effect of negativity and hostility. The opposition is so great that destruction is inevitable if God is not factored into the equation (Ps 124:3-7), but the psalms remind us that we are not without help. Ultimately, we are not destroyed because of God’s presence with us and help towards us.

The antidote to opposition is a right view of God. We are urged to lift our eyes up to the One enthroned in heaven (Ps 123:1). God is far greater than any opposition we may face and Ps 124 is exultant in tone, because God on our side makes all the difference (Ps 124:7-8) Paul’s question ‘If God is for us, who can be against us?’ (Rom 8:31) has much the same tone. Ps 125 reminds us of the security and confidence we have in God, likening our position to the solidity and security of Mount Zion (Ps 125:1-2) God surrounds us and protects us. We may well have a long time to wait before we see the rule of God firmly established, but we have assurance that this will be the final result of history. This enables us to carry on trusting in the everyday, whether that is in prosperity or trial.