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.

Apologies for the delay in getting the birthday pictures up this week. We had shy people on the box this week…

We often feel embarrassed or even afraid of zeal and passion, recognising them as the impetus behind action and feeling wary about the combination of emotion and action. It’s not considered British to be passionate! Zeal may make us feel uncomfortable (think about Phinehas whose zeal for God led him to kill the Israelite and the Midianite woman (Num 25:10-13) or even Jesus as He overturned the tables in the temple (John 2:14-17)). We are more comfortable with the wishy-washy, but God abhors the lukewarm attitudes so many of us bring to Him (Rev 3:15-16) and longs for us to be devoted to Him whole-heartedly (see Col 3:17).

Zeal marries patience to passion, truth to trust, fervour to faithfulness. Think of Baruch who ‘zealously repaired another section [of the wall], from the angle to the entrance of the house of Eliashib the high priest.’ (Neh 3:20) The work of repairing the ruined walls of Jerusalem may not have seemed very glamorous or spiritual, but Baruch worked steadily away with zeal. We need to understand that zeal keeps us going, even in the mundane and the boring.

Developing zeal will only happen if we are filled with the Holy Spirit, for He provides all the spiritual fuel we need to live for God. We are leaky vessels; passion and zeal may once have been ours, but it’s easy to let these things slip with time. The way to keep our spiritual fervour is to keep on being filled with the Spirit (Eph 5:18); this is necessary for we are all called to serve the Lord. God calls each one of us to is a life of service (which will look very different for there are all kinds of ways of serving Him!), and that life can only be successful if fuelled by Him. Only as God’s zeal fills us will we have the perseverance and passion to serve Him with love, gratitude and humility. He wants us to be never lacking in zeal. Do we?