Month: July 2020

A young orphan girl was raised by her cousin, her name was Esther. The King got rid of his wife and Esther was made queen of the Empire via a beauty contest, hiding the fact she was a Jewess. At the King’s banquets the Queen was meant to display herself immodestly in front of lustful men. The Queen refused to be paraded. She preserved wisdom and modesty.

But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, Ephesians 5 v3

‘Impurity’ is not an activity, this is deeper than immorality; it is an internal disposition. It is inside. The word is akatharsia.

Akatharsia means a filth of heart and mind. It is what you see and imagine.

It was used by Jesus to describe the decaying bodies in a tomb (Matthew 23:27) and then in the other 10 times it is used in the New Testament it is used for thoughts, passions, ideas or fantasies that are filth or rubbish or like pus around an open wound and it specifically refers to sexual sin.

It is difficult to spot impurity. It hides behind masks of purity, pews and pulpits. Eventually it seeps through and takes over, defiles more than ‘it is just this’ and takes over like a cancer that then breaks out into activity.

One of the saddest verses in the Old Testament is this:

From his vantage point on the roof King David saw a woman bathing (2 Samuel 11:2)

No one else saw him, but he from his vantage point, alone, was able to see what was for him beautiful.

The world’s most successful industry is the porn industry and yet it is the most destructive in a person’s life and on those involved.

When I was a teenager – only vantage point was on the highest shelf of the newsagents. You would have to stand on the Readers Digest and puzzle shelf to have any chance of reaching it and then risk causing a collapse of the whole shelving unit. It wasn’t worth it. It was left to the diagrams in the human biology books!

Today it is so different. The vantage points are all around and so easily accessible.

A recent survey published by Psychologies magazine in the UK found that a third of 14-16yr olds had first seen sexual images online when they were 10 or younger; 81% looked at porn online at home and 63% from their mobile phones. The effect of porn in our culture is that men are devoid of any knowledge and understanding of having relationships with real women. Women themselves find that this porn-obsessed culture we live in means their true identity is affected and for many they are robbed of their own sexual desire in fear of aligning themselves with those that men lust after.

The voice of the Christian should be NO to the plight of what porn is doing to our children and our families. Whatever the consequence is for the Church, no matter what people think of us as being old-fashioned etc. The truth is PORN is not innocent, it is destructive.

And if you are hooked into it then you must seek counsel, accountability and help whether you sit hiding in the pew or preaching from the pulpit. It will destroy you. There are many Christian websites that will be the first step to recovery, for example, https://www.covenanteyes.com or buy this book by one of my Pastors, https://www.amazon.co.uk/Better-Kind-Intimacy-Price-Overcome/dp/1909728810

I was going to title my blog, “I when no one sees me” but I decided on using the word Porn to shock those who think it should never be mentioned (perhaps that’s the reason why the Church has so many broken people because it is silenced) and to bring it into the light for those who have no one to talk to. But when no one is around you then that is who you are. When no one sees you that is the real you. Of course there is always one who sees you all that happens in your heart and mind and He loves you more than you could possibly know. But you should try and find out more about that!

The Apostle speaks about sex quite a lot and it has led some to believe he had some kind of phobia about it whereas others have argued over words he used and their meaning with regards certain activities and lifestyles. Here he is in prison speaking about impurity, it must be important to him and to us. It is. Put it off. Don’t let the inside of your life become filth as it will destroy you.

The vicar decided to do something a little different one Sunday morning. He said, “Today, I am going to say a single word and you are going to help me preach. Whatever single word I say, I want you to sing whatever hymn that comes to your mind.”

So he shouted out CROSS. Immediately, the congregation started singing in unison THE OLD RUGGED CROSS.

He shouted out GRACE. The congregation began to sing AMAZING GRACE.

He said POWER. The congregation sang THERE IS POWER ,POWER WONDER WORKING POWER.

The vicar finally said SEX. The congregation fell in total silence. Everyone was in shock. They all nervously began to look around at each other afraid to say anything.

Then all of a sudden, from way back in the church, a little 88 year old grandmother stood up and began to sing MEMORIES LIKE THE CORNERS OF MY MIND.

Maybe you think it is too early to think about such a topic and why is this Apostle suddenly now talking about sexual immorality when he is in prison. Is he running out of ideas?

He uses the word porneia.

The original meaning of the Greek word porneia is “to prostitute” or “to sell.” But it came to mean a whole list of sexual activity that broke social or cultural norms.

The Church throughout its history has created new lists in every generation of what this word porneia refers to. It is definitely connected to activity and not what is looked at. However if the Church just focuses on the activity it only pushes porneia further into the recesses of the heart. For porneia is definitely an issue of the heart.

But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, Ephesians 5 v 3

The Message has it like this, “Don’t allow love to turn into lust …”

Having just spoken of the love of Christ as the fragrance of God and how we should copy Him by loving each other, the Apostle clearly tells us that this love is not a love that takes for self-gratification.

Self-less, sacrificial, pure love is unconditional. “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonour others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. “Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.” If you have found such love then don’t let go of it. If you had such love then be thankful for it. If you have an opportunity to give this love then do it.

Porneia is not that. Porneia grabs and takes and goes for what it can receive from that other person not what it can give. It has an agenda which is to gain for its own pleasure. It will pay for it or manipulate or deceive the other or themselves to ultimately get what it wants. It will appear as activity but it commences in the heart and that is why the Apostle says “not even a hint”.

There is more to say and that will come in the next word Paul uses ….

“Can you smell that?”

A number of noses joined in with their sniffing powers we all agreed we could smell something horrid. This smell wasn’t meant to be in our house. It wasn’t there before and we could not carry on regardless of it. We had to locate it and deal with it. By the end of this smelly chapter of our life we had ripped partition walls down, pulled out all the loft insulation, filled in every cracked hole wherever it was, sent cameras down the drains and repaired the broken pipes that the extension of our house had been built upon. We laboured hard and it cost us a lot but we caught him and his family! Apparently we are only 10 feet away from a rat at any one time in the UK. Is it possible to get used to the smell of a rat?

Well, it is possible to get used to your own smell.

I went into a church building before lockdown and it hit me as I walked in, the smell. It was that damp, stale odour of a building that perhaps hadn’t been opened for years, except they had just met the day before. They had got used to the smell. I said to the Pastor, “What’s that smell?” he said, “What smell?”

You wouldn’t dream of leaving your home without first washing, would you? You would never go to a friend’s house stinking to high heaven because you couldn’t be bothered to have a wash that day, would you?

The problem is people who don’t wash get used to their own smell. Their stinky, pongy, stained smell becomes to them au naturel. Everyone needs someone who will say ‘My friend, I love you so much I need to tell you, you stink.’

Let’s see what the Apostle says, “Follow God’s example, therefore, as dearly loved children and walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. Ephesians 5 v1-2

Pause for a moment. Think of the fragrant offering in relation to the Old Testament system. When a sacrifice was offered on an altar, the odour of the burning meat went up to heaven and the god to whom the sacrifice was offered was supposed to feast upon that odour. In the Jewish Synagogues they too used this system and a sacrifice which had the odour of a fragrance was especially pleasing and acceptable to God.

Paul uses this of the sacrifice Jesus brought to God. It was a life of perfect obedience to the Father and perfect love to men, so perfect that he went to the cross.

The Apostle says, ‘Copy God’. And if you wish to imitate God and to imitate the sacrifice which Jesus made, you can only do it by loving people in the same way Jesus loved at the cross.

Love is fragrant.

A building may have a stale smell and that can be fixed but what of the smell of the Church’s heart? Do they love each other? Do they love their community?

There are smells in churches that should never be there.

Is there bickering? Divisions and fall-outs? I wonder how many people would say they got hurt by Church?

Everyone needs a friend to say, ‘my friend you stink, stop it, tone it down, shut your mouth.’

The Church coming out of lockdown needs to smell better than when it went into this strange season.

So climb down from the high horse.

Humble yourselves.

Lay your life down.

Pay the price.

Where is the sacrifice gone from the Church?

Let’s love and love loud.

The only God who is broken, who surrenders, who lays His life down, who dies is the only God.

Islam cannot accept a God would do such a thing. God is powerful and mighty not a Suffering Servant. He is all those things.

Follow God’s example, therefore, as dearly loved children, Ephesians 5 v 1

The Message: “Watch what God does, and then you do it, like children who learn proper behaviour from their parents.”

This is almost a breather, a break within the 50 commandments the Apostle lists for the conduct of Christians.

In a nutshell it is this: Copy God, be like Him.

As you begin a new day in whatever circumstance of your life there is an opportunity to imitate Him.

From the temptations of the desert to the teaching of disciples; to working out the will of your Father to following its cause; we have an opportunity to look like Him.

Children copy their parents.

God on earth carried nails in his hands for us and His resurrected body showed the nail prints as proof of that.

Why is God seen more in suffering than any place in the world? The nails.

Step into suffering today, surrender, let go, give your life for others, step down from lofty places no matter how justified you feel. Rather feel the pain again. Choose nails. Copy Him. There will come a day, a resurrection day when you will be able to lift up your nail printed hands and say I paid the price, I lived the life; I copied God.

The world wakes this morning to more sad stories. Every day is the same. A 17 year old boy is stabbed to death, a woman hit by a van has died was what popped up on my newsfeed.

Maybe you wake to the hurt of yesterday.

Every day there are wrongs done to people. You may be reading this carrying such a horrible weight of wrong that has been done against you.

There are unbelievable tragedies today. There are many victims. Since the beginning of time God has seen what mankind can to each other. “The LORD said, “What have you done? Listen! Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground.” (Genesis 4:10).

Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you, Ephesians 4 v 32

The Apostle, in the present tense, says keep on forgiving just as He keeps on forgiving us!

God has given mankind the freedom to choose.

We choose to love which blesses or we choose to sin which hurts.

Today you may be the victim because someone made the wrong choice.

When we are the sinner we cry for mercy. But the natural response when we are sinned against is to cry for justice.

The blood of Abel in Genesis 4 cried for justice. It was a prayer of ‘Get him God.’

The blood of Jesus is not ‘Father get these murderers’ but “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” (Luke 23:34)

What name needs to be mentioned that would cause you to react with? They may have died years ago. The event is not far from you. Is there unforgiveness still there?

Eva Mozes Kor died in June of last year as she was once again visiting Poland. She was a survivor of Auschwitz. “Forgive your worst enemies,” Kor said in a video recording of her last visit to the Auschwitz Museum posted to its official Facebook page. “The moment I forgave the Nazis, I felt free from Auschwitz and from all the tragedy that had occurred to me,” she added. Eva and her twin Miriam were cruelly experimented on by the ‘Angel of Death’ Josef Mengele but survived until the liberation of the camp in January of 1945. They lost their parents and two other sisters there. Before she died Eva was filmed at the site and she told of how she forgave Mengele:

“After we were set free I went home, closed the door and picked up a dictionary. I wrote all the nasty words I could find from the dictionary and spoke them out clear and loud. I then said “In spite of all that I forgive you.” I found that as a little victim I had power over the Angel of Death and I wasn’t hurting anybody. I had an interesting thought that he could never change my forgiving him. I am in charge of it. It was a very powerful feeling. If I can forgive him I can forgive anyone who ever hurt me.”

Who still needs your forgiveness?

Do it now as you ask the Father to forgive you your sins.

Compassion is the attitude behind the act. The word comes from the words to ‘suffer with’.

Be kind and compassionate to one another, Ephesians 4 v32

Today may God open our eyes to see.
Today may our heart be broken for the broken.
Today may we not give up until those around us and beyond us are helped.

God loves and defends those with the least economic and social power and so should we. This is compassion.

Why should we care about slavery which still exists today?

Why should we be concerned about those who are hurting?

It is because God is compassionate and we encouraged by the Apostle are called to be like Him.

Deuteronomy10:17-18 “The Lord your God …defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow and loves the immigrant giving him food and clothing.”

So often God is introduced as the defender of the vulnerable. This is so significant.

This is one of the main things he does in the world. He identifies with the powerless, he takes up their cause.

This sets our Compassionate God apart from all the other ancient gods whose power was always channelled through and identified with the elite of society. Our God was and is always on the side of the powerless and of justice for the poor, needy and vulnerable.

If we don’t respond to the cries of the hurting we dishonour God and we hide God from the world.

It’s time for me, and for us to get bothered about what really bothers God. It is time to ‘suffer with’.

Oh! to be like Thee, full of compassion,
Loving, forgiving, tender and kind,
Helping the helpless, cheering the fainting,
Seeking the wand’ring sinner to find.

I watched a Hollywood movie this week that was billed as epic. It told the true story of Noah. The film was actually based on the true story of Noah as there were lots and lots of footage and conversations that didn’t take place unless Hollywood have a direct phone line to Heavens reference room. Please don’t concern yourself with whether I enjoyed or even if I should have watched it. I mention it only because I confess I was moved by one of the closing lines that came from Ham as he begins to walk away to a life alone.

Here’s the script:

[Packed and ready to leave Ham walks over to Ila]
Ila: You don’t have to go.
Ham: I don’t belong here. For what it’s worth, I’m glad that it begins again with you.
[Ila embraces him]
Ham: Maybe we’ll learn to be kind.
[We see Ham walking away into the distance on his own]

The Apostle says, “Be kind …” Ephesians 4 v 32

It is to look outwards all the time and not inwards.

Maybe we will learn to be kind. Maybe.

In another epic movie, CINDERELLA, Prince Charming says to her, “Be kind and all will be well.”

The world longs for kindness.

The Church can demonstrate it. If we choose to do so.

Every day I have an opportunity to be like God, to put on kindness. To be kind. To think of others for no other reason than because of kindness. More of them less of me.

Love and sacrifice.

I have an opportunity for that to be my life’s testimony.

Kindness is to step aside from your life to engage in another’s.
Kindness is to come down, not in a patronising way, but in a selfless manner.
Kindness is not to hold on to what you have but to empty yourself so that others can hold what they have never held.
Kindness is to move across the room, to leave the room, to walk across the street, to journey, crossing borders and cultures very different to your own.
Kindness is humility.
Kindness attracts the dirt and the mess of life.
Kindness is good news to the poor and a release to those who are held back.
Kindness opens eyes, lifts burdens off people and helps people into the next chapter.
Kindness can often be misunderstood and even criticised.
Kindness can be killed off but kindness will still keep coming back.
Maybe we can learn to be kind again.

I’m almost relieved to get to the end of this verse. This is the 15^th ‘commandment’ out of 50!

Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Ephesians 4 v 31

Malice is important in legal cases where knowing an act is illegal before committing it becomes very much part of the judgment.

Not every killing is malicious. The suicide pact between a couple whose illicit love was so great as to make death seem preferable to living apart is not malicious.

Stories like Juliet drinking poison which knocks her out and everyone will think she’s dead but it all goes wrong and Romeo hadn’t got the message and believes she is truly dead and goes and kills himself. Juliet wakes up eventually and finds what Romeo did and so then kills herself properly. This is a disaster but there’s no malice.

Malice is the desire and the intent to harm, the unexplainable desire to see someone suffer.

It is to use the sentence, ‘he got what was coming to him’, the joy of seeing misfortune and hardship coming onto a person. The need to see someone suffer, having a desire to cause pain or distress to someone else.

This can never be in a Christian. Surely when we come to Christ then these qualities disappear?

But the Apostle doesn’t speak to those outside the Church but within.

The truth is malice lurks deep into the recesses of a heart that is deceitful beyond measure.

Paul says ‘Get rid’.

Maybe you know people are plotting your downfall. You stand on the rock of Christ and He will hold you firm. Those who plot are the ones who are on a slippery surface.

Do you remember when you wanted the person who hurt you to be hurt?

Does it lurk there in the recesses of your heart?

Get rid.

The Apostle continues and says put off noisily shouting at one another, stop insisting loudly and do not lose control with each other.

Ever been to an AGM where people have lost control?

A leader on describing his leadership meetings said to me, “At times it gets really heated and we end up shouting at one another but when we come out of the meeting we are best friends.” I thought, ‘I don’t think so!’

One of the lovely things about ‘zoom’ meetings is the mute button. It really looks like a God creative idea! After the pandemic and we try to resume normal life we must take the mute button with us. For ourselves and others!

Get rid of all brawling and slander, Ephesians 4 v 31

Here are 10 things I have been taught from when I was a child.

Our churches and communities would be better places if they were heeded. How many do you recognise and how many are part of your life?

1. Keep your voice down.
2. If you can’t say anything good about a person then don’t say anything at all.
3. Gossip is saying behind their back what you would not say to their face. Flattery is saying to their face what you would not say behind their back.
4. You can’t believe everything you hear.
5. Some people will believe anything if it is whispered to them.
6. Anyone who will gossip to you will gossip about you.
7. The battle is over except for the shouting.
8. The need to control always comes from the person who has lost it.
9. Let our words be heard as well as our voices.
10. Where there is shouting there is no true knowledge.

Following on from bitterness, there are further roots that wreck the heart. After giving some advice regarding anger, the Apostle now is even stronger and rather than ‘putting it off’ he says ‘get rid’. Easier said than done you may rightly say. This is not getting rid of the emotions when someone has jumped the queue or short-changed you. This is ‘getting rid’ when you have been badly mistreated, abused or rejected. When your heart is truly broken.

Get rid of all rage and anger, Ephesians 4 v31

Some days all you can do is pray.

Maybe today is one of those days for you.

Let me try and help with this prayer. Pray with me:

Father,

I have often been angry at the small things in life. The things that didn’t really matter have brought words of anger. As a child I remember stomping my feet, gritting my teeth and doing all manner of things because I didn’t get my own way. I’m still that child but life has got a whole lot more serious since those days.

This life has heartache, betrayals and failures, grief and loss so deep so hurtful that it feels like an illness than an emotion. All around me are deceitfulness and lies, abuse and mistrust, stories of the wounding of people and riding roughshod over the weak so that the powerful become more powerful.

In their trails lay broken hearts and a pain never known unless you experience it.

This has the potential to destroy me. To make me no more. To remove me. I feel its power. It wants to change my vocabulary. It feeds me words that I have never used. It taunts me, laughs at me, sneers and all the time tempts me to explode with new wicked words that will only backfire to cause more destruction.

How do I get rid of the raging war in my soul? How do I get rid of the anger of the injustice done to me and to others?

Do I hope it isn’t there in the morning? Do I think you will take it from me?

Why do I have to get rid when I never asked for it in the first place?

Lord, have mercy on me.

Where is your mercy found?

And so I come to the old rugged cross once again.

I take my cross and I deny myself.

I make that commitment today to choose to bless others. Even those who don’t know what they are doing to me.

I bless them. I want them to be happy. I pray for their well-being. I think of them not as my enemies but as my friends. I don’t have to hold their hands but I hold my hands up for them. Bless them my Father. As I see your goodness and grace fall on them and as I see heaven open over their lives I commit to smiling at them. I smile through the tears. Bless them Father, Bless them Jesus, Bless them Holy Spirit.

I choose to bless until peace arrives again. Quietness will come after the pain. I bless to get to the stillness of the soul. It feels I will have to stay blessing for some time but in my loneliness you are here, my life is easier when I look on you.

So hear my prayer

Amen