Missions Paul

Most days I am walking into someone’s battle. It is usually not with an enemy as such though they have made it so. It is with another Christian, maybe an authoritative figure or just a fellow member of their Church. Often they haven’t counted the cost of their argument. They haven’t considered what they would lose, the damage they would cause to themselves and to others. They neither ask for peace and they never get on to the cross. The one word I never seem to hear is the one word everyone is fighting for, ‘sorry’. I said to one person who was in a fight with their Pastor, “Do you not realise the damage this is causing you? Even before we think of the people in the Church. If you carry on like this then you will die a sad, old, bitter person with bad memories.” I met this person at the end of the service of a church I visited a year ago. I had noticed how she had come forward to serve the bread and wine during the Communion part of the service. She was one of the two members who then went row by row collecting people’s tithes and offerings. After I called people to the front for prayer after my sermon she was the first one out. She wanted more of God and was praying through tears. After the service had ended she was the first to approach me to tell me how much God had spoken to her through my message. After a couple of questions I realised this was the woman the Pastor had told me had given him so many problems because she wanted rid of him for he had made too many changes!

When was the last time someone hurt you? The list of names come easily. Here’s another question: When was the last time you hurt someone? Is that even possible?!!

Many are living with open wounds and cannot truly be the person God has called them to be. Those wounds could have been caused by you and me.

“Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to them; then come and offer your gift. (Matthew 5 v 23-24)

Maybe our church buildings need to stay empty for this reason alone?

Jesus is on the mountainside teaching his disciples with the crowd around listening. The Temple in Jerusalem is a long way away (perhaps 75 miles) but it is etched in the imagination of the people. So Jesus tells a story of travelling all that way to Jerusalem, to the altar, this is a special occasion and everyone would know how exciting this trip would be. The purpose is one of thankfulness for all that God has done, you desire to celebrate Him and you have purchased an animal, it was bought whilst there or you brought it from Galilee, either way it cost you. But then at the altar something happens, you remember, not how hurt you are, but the hurt you have caused to someone. You realise it is more important to stop worshipping and giving and going to reconcile than it is to continue knowing someone is angry or hurt with you.

Go back in the same way that you came. You came with excitement, with personal cost, with thanksgiving and Jesus tells us to approach the person we have hurt in the same way. There is no condition attached to this on whether or not the person is innocent and actually the argument is 50/50. Just go because of your part. Stop singing, leave your money or your lamb and leave the building. Then come back and start again. Reconciliation is more important than your worship.

This word ‘reconciled’ means to change thoroughly, it means to bring back together a relationship that was broken. For that to happen repentance needs to be present; the willingness is hugely important; pride needs to fall; humility needs to rise; it won’t be easy but when we hurt someone the first place to go is not the altar though that may be where the conviction comes. We must go and use a word that is more longed for than spoken, ‘sorry’.

Over the next several days we will see how Jesus challenges the Pharisaic interpretations of the Old Testament with his own. Whose would you want to follow? The Pharisees interpretation or Jesus’?

They focused on external behaviour but he focused on an inner interpretation.

 “You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘You shall not murder,and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell. (Matthew 5 v 21-22)

Let me give an interpretation of some of the words:

Murder – is the premeditated and deliberate attack.

Anger – What Jesus challenges is the hypocrisy of feeling proud that you haven’t committed physical murder but you have ruined the reputation of someone by stabbing them in their back.

Raca – meaning empty-headed. Stripping away a fellow disciple’s identity through defamation.

Fool – a word meaning contempt, viewing a fellow disciple as less than they really are.

Fire of hell – Gehenna, west and south-west of Jerusalem where the rubbish was continually burning, a place where its history was shameful (known for child sacrifice and judgment)

The children’s song isn’t true is it?

“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me.”

They do hurt. They can injure for a long time. It ruins our self-confidence. It can destroy an individual. But those who condemn will be condemned.

Here is a prayer for anyone battling with anger today. I hope it helps.

Father,

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?

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.

Amen

So in the Christian league of Christians are you nearer the top or the bottom? How tired are you at being simply the best and above all better than all the rest? Exhausted?

How many rules of life do you keep? How’s the diet? How many miles have you run today? C’mon I am typing this at 7.30am surely you have been out running, walking, keeping fit?!!

If my Christianity is about keeping to the rules then all that will lead to is finding myself in a place where I feel ultra-good about myself or in my case feel utterly worthless!

If I succeed I will not have encountered grace because I wouldn’t need it and if I fail I will have so focused on the duties I will have been blinded to the Divine.

I have never met a joyful legalist only prisoners.

I want to turn the table upside down. I used to think a spiritual mature church were members who were committed to the spiritual disciplines of prayer, bible study, witnessing etc. I don’t think that is an indicator of spiritual maturity anymore. The proof of your maturity is not in disciplines or the beatitude check-list. But it is in the awareness of your own impurity, that you cannot fulfil the laws and everybody’s personal lists of acceptability, but you need Him and you need a community that will hold you accountable and ask you the hard questions. I think this is spiritual maturity.

Here are some words from Jesus on this matter:

 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfil them. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 5 v 17-20)

Grace is hard to understand. People often say you can’t be accepted by God through grace alone, but I don’t see how else it would work.

How can only those who are good be accepted by God?  Where do we draw the line? Is it so long as you’ve not murdered someone or stolen something, or is it about never telling a lie, or so long as you’ve not sworn? Where is the cut-off point?

I can easily categorise what I regard as absolute evil, and then the other end of the spectrum say something is a sin, which is not great to do, but it’s not the worst thing ever. A sliding scale of acts. We all have them. Let me give an example by posing a question: As a man if I look at a woman lustfully is that better or worse than if I look at a man lustfully?

If I go to Africa as a Pastor and have a glass of wine it would be an abomination but in Europe it is acceptable. Which Pastor is nearer to God?

The Bible says compared to the perfection of God all our good works are like dirty rags, so we don’t really stand a chance at earning acceptance.

Unless we have to have a righteousness which is way above the Pharisees and all their law keeping.

Unless our righteousness is internal we’ve no hope.

It’s not externality, it’s not like the Pharisees: how long your beard is; how long the gown you wear is; the colour of it; what you do on the Sabbath day; whether you trail a chair across the ground and it constitutes ploughing; whether you lift wood; whether you speak; whether you do other things that were prohibited on the Sabbath day and certain parts of it.

It is nothing to do with externalities the Lord Jesus Christ is saying, but He is saying it is something deep within your soul – it is something internal.

They always accused Him of destroying the law: ‘He’s not saying what the law said’. Jesus is still not saying what the law says nor what any Key Performance Indicator says. He is still saying this:

‘I have not come to take the law away, but the law is lacking, the law is not the finish. I have come to finish it, to fill up that glass, to be the purpose of the law.

I, myself as I stand before you, Jesus Christ the Son of God, am the fulfilment of it’.

To be better than the best is to acknowledge you need a Saviour and you need friends who will walk with you. This is what the Church was always meant to be.

God and Light. It is all through the Bible. Darkness will be overcome. Light has come. Darkness is overcome. The story of the Bible. What is hidden is brought into the open. It is the Gospel.

But wait!

“You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.” (Matthew 5 v 14-16)

With similar metaphors as salt in that it is impossible for a city on a hill to be hidden or that of a lamp which is only extinguished by the small measuring bowl to snuff it out; we are the light of the world! The disciples of Jesus.

In Zundert, Holland in 1853, a Lutheran pastor became the proud father of a baby boy. At 16 the boy went to work for a firm of art dealers in The Hague. A few years later he took the opportunity to travel to England. There he fell in love with his landlady’s daughter, but she rejected him. In his grief he turned to Christ. He began helping a Methodist minister in Turnham Green and Petersham. The conviction grew that he should become a full-time evangelist, and in his mid-twenties he returned to Holland. He soon found great success in preaching to the poor, dressed like a peasant and living in their company. He washed their clothes, cared for their sick, consoled their dying and he led them to Christ. However, the Church leaders of the day rejected him and forced him to give up his ministry. For many this would have brought a crushing blow with no recovery. But God can bring light out of darkness. He went back to the world of art and tried his hand at painting. His name was Vincent van Gogh. Yes he battled throughout his whole life but he constantly looked beyond, to the starry sky, he carried continually a sense of wonder forcing itself through the dark shadows that attacked him. On one occasion he said, ‘For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream.’

 Maybe you have unanswered questions. Maybe you have pain in your life. Maybe you can make no sense of it all. Today a disciple may wake thinking their life is over. They were a city on a hill, they were a light in the house, but this morning darkness has come.

I want to get hold of that person and shake them.

There is hope. Great hope. There always is with a God who is the light of the world.

We align ourselves with what Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4:6

“For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness, ‘made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ.”

It is never over for us because of the eternal light which will always shine through our lives.

We face trouble but the light is shining through our troubles.

We approach the darkness of people’s lives and the light brightens their perspectives.

Death does its best to cast its fear but the shadows flee because of the light.

This is our peace and it is our message.

Don’t give in and don’t give up!

Go and do some good deeds.

Let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.

Turn on the light.

Usually followed by ‘that’s enough Dad”.

I like salt.

“You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.” (Matthew 5 v 13)

.Every day Jesus was influencing, winning over, gaining favour and leaving people fascinated with what he was saying. He wants us to do that.

Turning to the disciples he gives them 2 images of their life in this world. Salt and Light.

This Christian life is pretty much the same every day. Yes, there are a variety of things we do in work, rest and play. We meet lots of different people and go to different places. But when we break it down the same 3 things happen:

1. We live our life for Jesus revealing his teaching and values and we do it all to try and preserve people’s lives from the many pitfalls in our world.
2. We live our life for Jesus and reach out to those who through disappointment and discouragement need the seasoning influence of God adding to their life.
3. We live our life for Jesus recognising that God is already at work in people’s lives and so our involvement is to enhance, fertilise and help them realise His presence is near.

That’s it. It is that simple. Preserving, Seasoning and Fertilising. The impact of salt.

You may not have a huge ministry and you maybe unknown. You don’t need all that anyway. Just need to be a little bit of salt in your world and you can be a huge influence where you are.

If we are not doing that. If the Christian life is only about going to a building on a Sunday to sing some hymns and say some prayers then we have missed it completely. We might as well give up.

This final beatitude, given to the disciples on a hillside with crowds listening on shows that this is not a list of requirements to enter the Kingdom of God. If they were then this 8^th saying would be an endorsement from Jesus for some masochistic lifestyle!

“Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” (Matthew 5 v 10-12)

I’ve been in church services where the members have affluent lifestyles and whose problems are based around what they thought they should have but didn’t get. I’ve been there with them and their problems have so overwhelmed them that they have struggled to rejoice in any way.

I’ve been in church services where the members have lost what appears to be everything. The women have been brutalised, their children taken, their men have been maimed. They have lost it all. I have been there with them and I have been overwhelmed at their joy in praising Jesus.

Those who appear to have it all sometimes don’t have anything. Their kingdoms may be shinier but nothing of their life matters in the real kingdom.

Years ago, there was a master violinist in Europe. He would play in concerts, and he had a magnificent Stradivarius violin, extremely expensive. He would play the Stradivarius violin in concert and everyone would whisper in the crowd, “Listen to the beautiful sounds of the Stradivarius.” He would play in churches, and people would say, “Listen to the beautiful sounds of the Stradivarius.” He even played before kings and queens, and they, too, would turn to one another and say, “Listen to the beautiful sounds of the Stradivarius.” All the glory went to the instrument.
Then one day this master violinist was walking by a pawn shop. He noticed an old, beat-up, worn-out violin. He walked into the pawn shop and asked how much it would cost. The owner of the pawn shop told him the American equivalent of five dollars. He bought the violin, and he took it home. He polished it, and he refined it, and he tuned it, and he re-tuned it, and he built some character into that violin. Then, when he was to play the greatest performance of his life in a concert hall, he took out the little, five-dollar, worn-out, beat- up violin that he had polished and refined. He put it up to his chin, and he began to play, and everybody in the concert hall whispered, “Listen to the beautiful sounds of the Stradivarius.” (“Rejoicing in Our Suffering,” Preaching Today, Tape No. 74)

I have met and will continue to purposely meet many five-dollar, worn-out, beat-up, violin-type people around the world. At first glance there isn’t much to look at until you realise the master has got hold of their life and something beautiful emerges. I have heard the beautiful sound of the Stradivarius from the amputees of Sierra Leone; the persecuted of northern Nigeria and Burkina Faso; the raped and the child-soldiers of DRC; the prisons of Niger; the HIV stories of Eswatini; the famine of many nations; the slums of Kenya; the graves of Zimbabwe; the orphans of Malawi; the list just goes on.

And the sound coming from the pain … there is none like it in the whole world!

They are happy.

It isn’t an earthly happiness based on circumstance or feelings. But it is a happiness from heaven and found with those who are living in the Kingdom. That’s the true meaning of being Blessed.

So here are the headlines on my BBC app this morning:

Russia braces for latest Navalny protests; EU and UK ‘reset’ relations after NI vaccine row; Trump ‘parts with lawyers’ before Senate trial; Rashford racially abused on social media; I was scammed out of £17,000 on Instagram; Situation in CAR’s encircled capital ‘apocalyptic’.

Tomorrow will be similar and the day after. A world at war with itself from nations to neighbours.

Since the beginning of time the blood of Abel cries towards heaven.

Can you remember why the Flood came? It was corruption and violence (Genesis 6:11)

Violence grieves the heart of God.

If the Beatitudes were a list to try and achieve then I, even in Christ and with Him by my side have failed every one of these. The Beatitudes are teachings from Jesus that are far more about the person we are and where we find ourselves than what we do.

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.” (Matthew 5 v 9)

This may have been a shock to those waiting for a Messiah to come and overturn the Roman Empire and establish a new kingdom.

Are you a peacemaker?

If you are then you will have stories of finding yourself in an uncomfortable place. In the middle. Being in the middle sometimes causes both sides to dislike you. In fact I have known times when the opposing sides allied against me, the peacemaker.

So let’s be reminded on how God dealt with the violent world. He first sent Moses with the Law and the prophets to speak His Word and priests to bring atonement. All of it was lacking. The greatest enmity between God and the world was still there.

So He came Himself.

On the cross, arms stretched out, Jesus became the Peacemaker. He experienced the wrath of God and the slander of the world on the Cross of Peace.

Is this you in a lesser version?

Then yours is the kingdom and therefore happiness is yours for you are known as a child of God. God is seen in you, in the painful place of the middle.

If you don’t know what carbolic soap is then you must have gone to school after the 1970s in Britain. It has an unusual and unique smell and was used a lot in the hospitals because it was seen as powerfully hygienic.

In the 1970s teachers were still permitted to use corporal punishment. I was used to the cane but not the carbolic soap which was put into the mouth of any child because they had been heard to use bad language.

The reason why I think of carbolic soap this morning is because of our next beatitude:

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.” (Matthew 5 v 8)

It is so difficult reading the beatitudes without thinking I am failing in probably all of them.

Can I see them differently?

There were at the time four major groups in the Jewish religion, the Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, and the Zealots, all of whom presented a different viewpoint to the Jewish people. The Pharisees demanded strict observance of the Mosaic Law expressed in the Torah, but also accepted the oral tradition of Jewish customs and rituals. The Sadducees were mainly from the priestly families and strictly accepted the Law of Moses but rejected oral tradition. The monastic Essenes awaited a Messiah that would establish a Kingdom on earth and free the Israelites from oppression. The Zealots were a militant Jewish group who wanted freedom for their homeland, and were centred in Galilee; one of the Twelve Apostles was Simon the Zealot.
Jesus is bringing a new teaching of love. Not a teaching of force. The Pharisees were basing their approach to God, were basing their acceptance with a holy righteous God, Jehovah, upon their external righteousness. So much so, that they had 600 plus rules and regulations added to the word of God by which they could come closer to God Himself.

Describe purity and we have to get out our lists of do’s and don’ts. These lists change over time.

When we closely study the life of Jesus one fact is consistently surprising.  The group that made Jesus the angriest was the group that, externally at least, he most resembled. Scholars agree that Jesus closely matched the profile of a Pharisee. He obeyed the Torah, or Mosaic law, quoted leading Pharisees and often took their side in public arguments. Yet Jesus singled out the Pharisees for his strongest attacks. ‘Snakes!’ he called them. ‘Brood of vipers’, fools, hypocrites, blind guides, whitewashed tombs.

What provoked these outbursts from Jesus? The Pharisees had much in common with those whom the press might call Bible-belt fundamentalists today. They devoted their lives to following God, gave away an exact tithe, obeyed every minute law in the Torah and sent out missionaries to gain new converts. Against the relativists and secularists of the first century they held firm to traditional values.  Rarely involved in sexual sin or violent crime, the Pharisees made model citizens.

Jesus was fiercely against legalism.

And although legalism takes different forms now then if did years ago I don’t think it has gone away, and its dangers represent a great threat even today.

Things that have been considered sinful in the past and deemed unacceptable by the church, is common practice now, although the manifestations have changed the spirit of legalism has not. We are more likely to encounter today the legalism of thought. There are authors today who dare to question doctrine on issues of abortion for example and face the same judgement that a ‘social drinking’ Christian faced in the fundamentalist subculture. Tony Campolo has received so much abuse from Christians in his pleas to show more compassion to homosexuality. Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase of the bible ‘the message’ made him a target of a self-proclaimed cult-watcher as he was ‘tampering with the word of God’. Richard Foster dared to use words like meditation in his writings on spiritual discipline and people have put him under suspicion of a new ager. Chuck Colson received abusive emails from Christians when he accepted the Templeton Prize for Progress of Religion, which sometimes goes to people who are not Christians, and when he signed a statement of mutual cooperation with Catholics he received even more abusive. What is going on?

Legalism is a subtle danger because no one thinks of himself as a legalist. My own rules seem necessary; other people’s rules seem excessively strict.

Jesus condemns the legalists’ emphasis on externals. And in the Sermon on the Mount in this passage of the Beatitudes Jesus shows a different expression of love for God.  Not one that is just about the externals but one that is about our internal state.

Blessed are those who are pure in heart, those who are honest. Those who have pure motives and are not doing things just to be seen by others and praised by others.

In other words the proof of spiritual maturity is not how ‘pure’ you are but awareness of your impurity, which is what the Beatitudes try to demonstrate. And it is that very awareness which opens up the door to grace.

Why would Jesus tell us to do something we cannot do?

We cannot do this beatitude if it is a command. We are hypocrites. We may look good but we aren’t.

But here is the invitation to those of us who want to be good people, who want people to think we are good and who also want others to be good too. To those of us who have spent our whole life trying harder, resolutions are made every day not annually, but the more we try the more we have to try harder. Is there any hope? Yes says Jesus! The kingdom invitation is here: come on in! And we try and answer by asking what good do we have to do to accept the invitation or we puff out our chests and say God must be happy with me because of the invitation. And we fail to understand the invitation.

We fail until we see Jesus, the one who took our imperfections when he died on the cross. We fail until we see the broken and bleeding body of Christ who bore our legalistic efforts and demands and judgments on others who don’t meet our standards. We fail until we see Jesus. But when we do all our efforts fall to the ground as we rest in His purity. Our obedience is not work to prove but love and joy. We live life knowing He makes all things beautiful, even impure hearts pure. His blood washes cleaner than carbolic soap!

This is not an updated list of the 10 commandments. Moses had a list and now Jesus has his. These are not 8 badges of merit. Get these and you’re in the kingdom and you are blessed/happy.

Difficult that it is for us as we have been trained and conditioned to perform our Christianity but we must come away from a commandment relationship with Jesus and his kingdom. It’s risky and we might be afraid to do so. It may feel wrong and turning our theology upside down. But the kingdom is near, Jesus says, and we need to know who gets into it. For what we understand is it is not a course of action that brings happiness but it is the kingdom.

“Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.” (Matthew 5 v 7)

At the cross we see justice and mercy collide. Justice poured out on Jesus and mercy poured out on the world. Mercy is not giving us what we deserve, judgment. It looks like the world has taken advantage of God. God loses and the world is free. God waits and as He waits He continues to show mercy. We understand that.

A reminder of the context of that mountainside. Jesus is teaching the disciples in ear-shot of the crowds. Who were these people? “… people brought to him all who were ill with various diseases, those suffering severe pain, the demon-possessed, those having seizures, and the paralyzed …” (Matthew 4:24)

Would you have these people on your team?

Within those crowds were also the Religious leaders and the Roman sympathisers, ruling with oppression, judgment and condemnation.

Blessed are the strong, those with back-bone and those who uphold the standards of God.

Would you have these people on your team?

Who is right amongst the crowd?

Those who don’t break any rules?

Those who don’t make the standard?

Jesus says those who are right are those who look like God. They are merciful. They look like the world has taken advantage of them. It looks like they have lost and their world has won. The world has hung a sign up saying, ‘You are not welcome here’. Happy are these people in the kingdom. Happy not because they have achieved mercy but mercy in disqualifying them from their world has opened for them the door to the blessed kingdom. This is not a list it is about being last.

Have you been taken advantage of? Walked right over? Ignored by your world? Forgotten in your brokenness? It is a mirror of God at the cross. Mercy is yours. Welcome the kingdom of happiness is within you.

Planning meetings have taken on a whole new experience. When I was a Pastor and planning the Church BBQ we would have to plan a contingency for if it rained. The meetings I attend now are far removed from the simplicity of factoring in the weather. It is all about when will we be out of this pandemic? Will we be able to gather by then? What restrictions will be in place? So my diary has dates that are provisional and back-ups and events that are online or online with possibility of a few in-person and in-person gathering with online also. The diary looks crazy.

Let me just save some time and just get straight to the point:

Are we in danger of longing to be back to normal more than we are longing for Him?

I hope that when the Church comes out of the pandemic and goes back to whatever normal it is that we do so with a longing for the justice of the kingdom; a desire to walk right with one another and a craving for God to move with salvation in our cities and towns. If those were the 3 overwhelming desires of everyone within Church then that would be something worth coming back for. Anything else, programmes and plans, will come to nothing if our appetites are not for Him.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. (Matthew 5 v 6)

Jesus said this at a time when the Jews were heavily taxed and the money used for the building of the Herodian’s lavish palaces and homes for the gentry, hunger was very familiar to most.

Today there are people who stiff suffer at the hands of their governments and broken infrastructures. We are still to discover the true findings of the negative impact of this pandemic but prior to it at the commencement of 2020, a report by the Social Metrics Commission stated that 4.5 million children were living in poverty in the UK. That will have greatly increased.

Of course that doesn’t compare to the many famines that have happened and are still going on around the world. Fuelled by war, corruption, ideologies and apathy from the rest, many are hungry today.

But on that mountainside were people hungry for God to once again step in and end the suffering of His people which historically was seen to have been caused by their wandering from Him. Jesus is teaching his disciples but the crowd are listening. I wonder if Jesus had this Scripture in mind when he gave this Beatitude?

Psalm 107: 4-9 “Some wandered in desert wastelands, finding no way to a city where they could settle. They were hungry and thirsty, and their lives ebbed away. Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress. He led them by a straight way to a city where they could settle. Let them give thanks to the Lord for his unfailing love and his wonderful deeds for mankind, for he satisfies the thirsty and fills the hungry with good things.”

The Church needs to find its hunger point again.

We do not have everything. We cannot by our own efforts see Church growth and effectiveness. We boast and advertise our riches but it all comes to nothing. We need God to enter. We need to be able to say, “He has filled.” So …

Are you hungry?

Do you have an insatiable longing that can only be satisfied by God?

Is there a strong desire for more?

Are you pouring out your soul?

It is better to be hungry than not needing a thing.

So let’s hunger for Him today.