According To Your Faith

Tonight we looked at the subject of living by faith since it is according to our faith that so much happens in the spiritual life (see Matthew 9:29-30). Faith is what is needed to please God (Heb 11:6); it is a core ingredient to the spiritual life which cannot ever be omitted. To do the works God requires means we have to believe in the One He has sent (John 6:29); we have to be like Abraham who is our model in terms of faith (‘he believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness.’ Gen 15:5)

Hebrews 11:1 gives us our definition of faith and the rest of the chapter lists many people as examples of how to live by faith. In the New Testament, many miracles involved people whose faith was commended by Jesus: not only the two blind men who were healed by Jesus but  also the paralysed men whose friends brought him through the roof (Luke 5:20), the centurion whose servant was ill (Luke 7:9-10), the woman who reached out to be healed (Luke 8:48) and the blind man who wanted to see (Luke 18:42). Conversely, where there was little faith, Jesus did not do many miracles (Luke 18:8), a sobering reminder of the importance of faith.

Faith is often tested by God, and there is frequently a period of waiting between God’s promises and their fulfilment, as Abraham and Sarah remind us. Joseph too had to wait to see his youthful dreams fulfilled and suffered much in the intervening years. Faith grows in the soil of desperate situations where we learn to wait and to trust in God. We need to belong to those who do not shrink back but who have faith and are saved (Heb 10:39); we need to press forward and stay with God, no matter what.

Friend of God

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

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

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

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

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!