Friend of God

Feb 25, 2024

This morning Dave spoke from John 15:9-17, where Jesus spoke to His disciples about being more than servants, about being friends. All of us need friends; we need to know we are important to someone else and that we are loved.
Often, we need self-acceptance first, for we can think that others would not wish to know us or be friends with us if they truly knew us. God knows everything about us; He knew us before we were even born, and He has chosen us to be His friends.
Jesus has chosen us not for what we can do or even what we might do! He has not chosen us simply to ‘make up the numbers’ or because He was forced to. He has chosen us because He loves us and wants to be friends with us.
Friends have ready access to each other: we don’t gaze from afar but are called to be close to Jesus. We are called to intimacy and to be with Jesus at all times, no matter what. In these verses He reminds us that He trusts us and works for us, forgives us and opens the gates of heaven to us.
Friendship with Jesus is not exclusive to us, however. He wants others to be His friend too and for us to be the means to them meeting Him. He is the best friend anyone could ever have. Let’s be friends with Him and introduce our friends to Him too!

Best Clothes

Feb 24, 2024

Our household object for today is our ‘best clothes’ and the Bible passage is a parable about a wedding banquet (Matthew 22:2-14).

Most people wear their best clothes to a wedding, perhaps even buying a new outfit for the occasion. Dressing up is something many people enjoy. Our toddlers at the Parent & Toddler group at church enjoy the roleplay costumes we have bought, where they can pretend to be a princess or superhero. There’s something special about looking your best! The sparkling costumes on Strictly Come Dancing or the ballet costumes we see when we go to the theatre are other examples of clothes which thrill us and impress us.

We cannot enter the kingdom of heaven, however, just because we wear nice clothes. The Bible talks about God clothing us with ‘garments of salvation… and a robe of His righteousness.’ (Isaiah 61:10) We need the righteousness of Christ in order to stand before God. Paul tells us ‘God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.’ (2 Corinthians 5:21) Easter reminds us that we must clothe ourselves in humility and gratitude and receive Christ’s righteousness instead of relying on our own.

 

Freedom

Feb 21, 2024

Our household object today is a hat, and our Bible passage is 1 Corinthians 11:14-16. Nowadays, hats are both practical (keeping us warm in winter and cool in summer) and fashionable (worn at weddings and other special occasions, especially for women), but they have frequently been seen to be a measure of respect and honour. In the past, women used to wear hats to attend church services; convention tells us that a man wears a hat outdoors only and a woman wears a hat whenever she wants!
The idea of hats being linked to freedom may seem strange to us today, but in the past, this topic has aroused much controversy. An emphasis on the outward trappings (what we wear) seems pointless to us today, but the concept of having to become a Jew before you could become a Christian is something Paul had to fight against; an outward sign of conformity (circumcision) is no longer needed because of Christ’s sacrifice for us on the cross. Standing firm for freedom without offending others is something we still wrestle with today, and will look different for different people and cultures. We have to remember that Christ died to bring us into a relationship with God; relationship and not simply rules are what matter now. (Rules can be really helpful, but relationship gets to the heart of the matter!)

Re-appraising what’s valuable

Feb 20, 2024

Today’s household object from ‘At Home In Lent’ is something not every household may have: a safe. Our Bible passage is Matthew 6:19-23.

 

A safe is used to keep valuable things safe! Money, jewellery and important documents are items we often keep in a safe, which is protected by a lock and often needs an access code to open. The idea of a safe is that even if a burglar or fire were to devastate the sanctuary of our homes, our precious belongings would be protected.

Jesus reminds us in these verses, however, that we need to travel light through life and understand the importance of eternal treasures. As Chris Tomlin reminds us in his song, ‘Father of Lights’,

‘All the best things in this world
Money just can’t buy;
They come down from the Father, down from the Father.
Down from the Father of lights.’

Lent is a time for re-appraising our values and looking afresh at what is valuable in this life and the next.

 

The Kitchen Sink

Feb 19, 2024

I’m really enjoying my Lent study book, ‘At Home In Lent’ by Gordon Giles. The book looks at 46 household objects and connects them to our journey of faith. We are studying these passages and objects at our Lent lunches at church, starting on Friday, and each day during Lent on our church Facebook page and website, I’m sharing thoughts on these.
I believe firmly that faith is rooted in the ordinary and the everyday, that God is real in both our mountain-top experiences and in the valleys low! So today I offer my own household object: the kitchen sink.
I came down this morning having clearly not tidied up properly last night to find my sink looking like the first picture. Food remnants were clogging up the plughole. It looked disgusting.
I had to clear it all out and wash it (which obviously I should have done last night) before it was restored to its usual state.
As I did this, it reminded me of how sin so easily clogs our life and blocks the flow of God’s Holy Spirit in us. The sin may not seem very big (shreds of carrot and tiny onion pieces were not huge, after all), but it can easily build up to block our lines to God.
In order to have those communication lines restored – for if sin and unforgiveness remain, we are cut off from God – we must be cleansed. We have to confess our sin and turn away from it and allow God to cleanse and restore us.
So my morning cleaning job turned into a parable of its own!

Keys

Feb 19, 2024

Today’s household object are keys and the Bible passage is Matthew 16:13-19.
Keys are essential to unlocking doors, but the concept of keys applies not only to a physical lock but to other areas (a piano or computer keyboard have keys, diagrams and maps have keys and ciphers to explain what we see and of course music is said to have a key signature to help us know what the music will sound like.) A key unlocks something, giving us access to something or to some place.
Jesus came to give us access to God. (John 14:6) He entrusted the keys of the kingdom of heaven to us. Now we can approach God with confidence and boldness, knowing we will find help and mercy from Him. (Hebrews 4:15-16)
I have a habit of losing keys. No matter how many designated safe places I have to put them or how many lanyards I buy to keep them safe around my neck, I still lose keys on a daily basis. Sometimes J feel equally lost spiritually, ‘locked out’ of God’s presence because of wrong attitudes or temper or other sin. The key back to God’s presence and peace is always repentance and reliance on God’s love, mercy, grace and forgiveness. (1 John 1:9)