Missions Paul

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

On 13^th June 2018 the national headlines in a small Lincolnshire town, Spalding, was this:

Bomb squad called to Secondary School

Picric acid had been found in an old store cupboard of the school.

It is toxic if inhaled or swallowed. Because of its relative instability, its low temperature combustibility and toxicity, its ability to react with other materials, and its extremely explosive nature, picric acid is one of the most dangerous substances found in the laboratory.

Let us examine that list again.

Poisonous

Unstable because it reacts to other metals

It can combust at room temperature when you wouldn’t expect it to.

It has huge explosive powers

It is highly dangerous probably the most to be found in a lab.

The 19^th century French chemist, Jean Baptiste Anote Dumas named this chemical Pitric acid because of its bitter taste. The word picric comes from the Greek work pikros meaning bitter. It is of course the word the Apostle uses:

Get rid of all bitterness. Ephesians 4:31

Since 1886 to World War 1 it was the most widely used military explosive. But its corrosive action on the military shells was a disadvantage.

Paul says get rid of it.

Pikros is a long-standing resentment, a hardening of the heart which refuses to be reconciled. It is to say “I will never speak to that man again.” It is to nurse the anger and to take care of it, thinking over and over on the offending conversation and the injury that it caused you. It is to say I will never love again because of the pain they caused me.

It is easy to see how picric acid is also used as to stem bleeding as a fixative on a finished artwork preserving it from the dust, like a varnish.

It seals the work.

So let me remind us to get rid of it.

Do you want to be known as poisonous?

Do you want to be known as unstable with people tip-toeing around you forever?

Do you want to just blow-up even when there’s nothing of harm going on?

Do you want to create havoc with one your explosions?

Do you want to be known as being dangerous so that people avoid you at all costs?

Probably not. So let’s get rid of it.

All I could do was to sit there. I had no words. Even if I had the words they would not be heard above the deep guttural wail from my friend who had finally realised that their spouse was incapable of faithfulness. I waited what seemed hours until exhaustion set in and there was no more noise but fragments of a broken heart. It was now quiet enough to speak but my words seemed cheap and not comparable to the obvious chasm of destruction. So I simply put my arm around their shoulder. I will never forget it.

Why do I describe that moment?

Lupeo.

“And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.” Ephesians 4:30

The word ‘grieve’ is that word.

It is the deep emotional pain that affects you physically because someone has broken faith with you.

Sadly many know this, some stay in their marriage and some cannot stay. Hearts break because of selfishness to be attracted to another and they break because of selfishness from not being attractive to the one they married. To break a vow is to break a heart. Some wail from beds that are empty and some wail silently in beds that are occupied.

Lupeo.

Now purposely the Apostle in the context of relationships and how we treat each other reveals the possibility that we can grieve the Holy Spirit.

Though dreadful this may sound it is also incredibly comforting.

Our Changeless God! Omnipotent, Omniscient, Omnipresent, transcendent, eternal God! The ruler and creator of Heaven and Earth, the one who is above all stoops so low, comes down to the dirt of life so much so that He becomes capable of being affected by Lupeo.

Do we think of the world and its sin that does this? Those who trample all over Christ by persecuting His followers? NO.

Paul is speaking to Christians who lie, hold grudges, let the devil have a foothold, steal, speak wrong to each other, let bitterness rise, become angry and slander one another.

It is only the Christian that can make the Holy Spirit grieve.

Today before you begin to hold resentment in your heart no matter how justified you feel then ask this question: will this grieve the Holy Spirit in my life?

Ephesians 4 v29

“Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.”

The Apostle now moves us to put on. Put off unwholesome talk and put on …..

Is this helpful?

Does it build the person up?

Am I thinking of their need?

Is it beneficial?

Am I recognising that they are listening to every word?

Everyone can criticise but we are called to construct.

Building someone up isn’t to massage ego or tip-toe around issues why they may need building up.

What someone wants to hear and what they need to hear can be very different.

Sometimes what is needed is not a pat on the back, a sympathetic shoulder to cry on, we need a hard word, a revelatory word, something spoken that hasn’t been said before and we need outside of the box thinking.
We need words that will move us out of a position we may be stuck in.
We need words to think the opposite.

We need words to dare to believe in the face of opposition that something just maybe true!

Choose your words carefully today. Slow your mouth down. Don’t type so fast on your social media feeds. What will flow from you today? Building up? Strengthening?

“Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.” Ephesians 4 v 29

Tony Campolo famously is said to have begun speeches to Christian audiences with this opening: “First, while you were sleeping last night, 30,000 kids died of starvation or diseases related to malnutrition. Second, most of you don’t give a s—. What’s worse is that you’re more upset with the fact that I said s— than the fact that 30,000 kids died last night.”

The word ‘unwholesome’ is the translation of a word which means rotten, decaying and literally ‘putrid’.

The Apostle says ‘Put off your rotten talk.’

Ever since I can remember swearing was a sin. That’s all well and good if you remain in the same nation and in the same culture. But what happens if you move out of that and use the same acceptable word? A Britain going to America or vice versa will soon realise that words mean different things!

The unacceptable language when I was growing up is acceptable today.

Let’s go further back.

In 1866 a famous French poet, Charles Baudelaire was being tended by nuns after having a stroke. All he could say was the word ‘damn’. Today if someone said that word we wouldn’t do what the nuns did and after several ‘damns’ said this proved he was satanically possessed and had him kicked out!

So it cannot be just the words that are putrid. Though at any one given time in the culture we find ourselves certain words are rotten.

Paul clearly says in the whole verse which we will get to tomorrow. Put off and put on.

You may pride yourself on never swearing. That’s not good enough.

Even if you have switched the word to a more gentler word and use it to bring someone down then it is unwholesome talk.

Examine your words today. How much is criticism? How much belittles? What about the way you say things? The tone?

This week a leader recalled their deep hurt to me when they approached a National Christian leader many years ago with his friend simply to say hello. This leader was so proud of his friend and was looking forward to introduce him to this ‘man of God’. However, they were deeply hurt by the offhand and negative response from the ‘man of God’ that years later the leader was telling me how it still hurts. I was able to help him. But the ‘man of God’ hasn’t spent years carrying the disappointment of hurting someone because of foolish and unwholesome talk.

If God places you in a new position then there is a new vocabulary of heart and mouth to learn. You have to watch your mouth. You have the possibility to bring great harm. What was acceptable before may not be so now.

I wonder if we carried a voice recorder around with us for a whole day and then play it back what we would discover?!

During lockdown I have been dealing with a lot of conflict management on zoom. There is a beautiful button called ‘mute’. Maybe we should use it more often?

Anyone who has been stealing must steal no longer, but must work, doing something useful with their own hands, that they may have something to share with those in need. Ephesians 4 v 28

In the context of putting off stealing and putting on work the Apostle gives the reason.

1. It is an assumption that if you can work you must work. There isn’t an option. If you must steal you must work. The greatest entrepreneurs are those who must work to survive. They grow fruit and vegetables, they make crafts and they do all manner of things around the world in order to provide for their families.
2. Do something useful. Value your work. No matter what your hands find to do today, this is not a secular job as in the sense that it is away from God’s divine opportunity or appointment. You are working for God. It is useful.
3. Earn not only that you can survive of course that is the result but earn so that you can share with those who are in need so that they don’t resort to stealing. Earn to help. Earn to provide not for yourself but anyone in need. This is the theology of work and giving coming together in this one sentence.