Old man in a hurry

As I write this on the closing day of December, I am conscious of God having spared me to live yet another year. It is a time for remembering how swiftly life passes. This is especially so as my birthday nearly coincides with the beginning of the new year, and this time it will be a big one - I turn 60 and move from my sixth decade into (gulp) my seventh!

The daily notes this morning brought home to me some words from the 39th Psalm: "Lord, make me to know my end, and what is the measure of my days, that I may know how frail I am." That was King David's meditation. The note writer could equally have quoted the more famous Psalm 90, written by Moses. In verse 12 this says, "Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom."

Perhaps these things had added point in those far-off days. It amazes me that, though not robust, I have survived to the threshold of 60 with few significant health problems until this past year. My ancient forebears would have struggled to reach 30. Before the Great Flood, our ancestors apparently managed extremely long lifespans, but these were dramatically reduced after the Deluge, when the effects of sin and rebellion against God really took hold. Who can imagine what effect it would make on your thinking to know that by age 15 your life might well be at least half over? You would have had to cram everything you wanted to do during your life on earth into a much shorter space.

Some say that young folk are in a hurry, but that the elderly are too. There may be an increasing sense that they will not live to see a longed-for achievement. Something must be done soon. The old person exerts his or her failing powers to hasten the time, and looks with eager desire for a result. Of course, a Christian believes that most of our existence takes place in eternity after this life is over. But even so we are placed in this life in order to fill it with service.

Old Simeon in Luke chapter 2 was waiting for Jesus Christ to come. He had received a supernatural promise that he would not die without seeing Him. Naturally there was nothing he personally could do to hasten that day, but at least he turned up in the Jerusalem temple at the prompting of the Holy Spirit. It was just as well he was obedient, for that very day Mary and Joseph brought Jesus at eight days old for His dedication ceremony. Simeon burst into song: "Sovereign Lord, as you have promised, you now dismiss your servant in peace. For my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the sight of all people, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel" (Luke 2:29-32 NIV).

As one more year slips by, may God find us active and obedient, and watchful for Him to achieve things in us and through us.

Another year is dawning;
dear Master, let it be,
in working or in waiting,
another year for Thee;

Another year of service,
of witness for Thy love;
another year of training
for holier work above.

Frances Ridley Havergal, 1836-79

Belt up!

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The first ever Christmas marked the start of a very long interval between two world-shaking events. We are still living in that interval. It is the space between the first and second comings of the Lord Jesus Christ.

This gap seems overlong to those who yearn for Christ’s second coming to put an end to all the injustice in the world, which seems to go unpunished now. Yet, if we only knew it, there is no idleness or delay in heaven. We read in the Bible that Christ is praying continually for us to His heavenly Father. “Jesus ... is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them” (Hebrews 7:25).

There’s another biblical description of Jesus in this interval time which rarely gets a mention. In Revelation 1:13, John the Revelation-writer, exiled for his faith on an island, heard from behind him Jesus, commanding him to write messages. He turned to look at Him. What he saw was “someone ‘like a son of man’, dressed in a robe reaching down to His feet and with a golden sash round His chest”. This is the garb of a priest ready for action. The earthly priests in the Jerusalem Temple were busy people, always occupying their time with the ritual sacrifices and other duties they had to perform. Our great heavenly High Priest, the Lord Jesus Christ, is just as active.

Charles Haddon Spurgeon writes, “Well it is for us that [Jesus] has not ceased to fulfil his offices of love for us, since this is one of our choicest safeguards that he ever liveth to make intercession for us. Jesus is never an idler; his garments are never loose as though his offices were ended; he diligently carries on the cause of his people. A golden girdle, to manifest the superiority of his service, the royalty of his person, the dignity of his state, the glory of his reward. No longer does he cry out of the dust, but he pleads with authority, a King as well as a Priest.”

Our Lord is an example to us all. This year will present us with many opportunities but also many pitfalls. Are we dressed for service? The apostle Paul reminds us to “Stand firm, then, with the belt of truth buckled round your waist” (Ephesians 6:14). If we fail to equip ourselves in this way, we can be easily tangled up with the things of this life, and tripped up by the snares of temptation. If in heaven Jesus is always dressed for action, much more should we be on earth.

And there is timely encouragement for us. Our ever-active God is working to bring us to completion, to full fitness to be with Him for ever in His kingdom. Philippians 1:6 “... he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus”.

Never too late?

As I write this, some from our church are looking forward to a trip into Yorkshire to witness the baptism by full immersion of a lady 82 years young.

Many churches have ceremonies where infants are sprinkled with water. Parents and supporters make promises (often scarcely understanding what they are saying) to guide and instruct their children in hopes that these will one day become Christians. Other churches believe you should wait till you are old enough to think for yourself before being baptised. These usually immerse the candidate fully in water “on profession of faith”, in other words their declaration that they repent of their sin and accept Jesus Christ as Saviour. Any such baptism is a powerful and moving event, but there are some special features about the one we are going to.

As happens all too often, this lady’s progress towards faith in Jesus Christ was slowed down by the fact that her husband was emphatically not a believer. After he died, she felt more free to look for a gospel church. She found one that belonged to the Baptist tradition. In it the gospel was faithfully preached and she gradually became convinced that she needed to ask for baptism.

This was remarkable, not only because of her age, but because believer’s baptism would not have been part of her culture. She struggled with the issue. One Sunday morning she was visiting our church at Bethany. I just happened to mention baptism. It was not the main point of the sermon I was preaching and I certainly didn’t expect it to have the effect it did. To her it was like a confirmation of her growing wish to be baptised. She took the matter to the authorities of her church and they have been preparing her for that great day when she is to go through the waters.

I might almost say the moral of this story is “It’s never too late”. When things change for an elderly person, a deep impression is made. In Acts 3 we read of the healing of a lame man. There was much sensitivity around this event and a lot of controversy, but what silenced the critics was that this man was “over forty years old” – beyond the age when cures normally took place! I remember, too, the astonishment in the voice of a churchgoer in Cornwall as he told me about a local preacher in her late 80’s who, he said, was actually preaching better and better.

We praise God for the woman who is about to be baptised and exclaim, “It’s never too late”. But there is a warning in the Bible about a window of opportunity which is not to be missed. Isaiah 55:6 says, “Seek the Lord while he may be found”. That is literally, “Seek the Lord in His finding time”.

Even though I became a Christian at 18, I regret leaving it as long as I did! We rejoice in God’s mighty work in those of advanced years, but don’t put off what you need to do just so you can become a miracle of grace in your 80’s. The “finding time” is finite and you can leave it too late.

How Guernsey helped

Last week I paid a visit to the Channel Island of Guernsey, where I was born and bred. I still have a number of good friends there. A special highlight of every visit is to spend time with a group of people who helped me become a Christian by keeping religion simple. In my teenage years I was a very intellectual “Christian” – not really a Christian at all. I had all sorts of high-flown ideas which were no help to me or to anyone else where salvation was concerned.

The church I attended was made up of very kind people, but a suburban and intellectual bunch who expected the kind of preaching that would suit their tastes. Social comment was acceptable but ministers and preachers never really presented Christ and His claims on each one of us. I suspect that Church attenders could take their places in the pews for a lifetime without ever hearing of their need of a Saviour from sin, or ever recognising that we can and must get to know Him personally.

My mother, who was profoundly deaf, did me an enormous favour by joining the Deaf Christian Fellowship. This was not part of our church, but it met on Sunday evenings in the church vestry. It consisted of people, many of them deaf from birth, who communicated by sign language. To help them understand the gospel, the preachers at the Fellowship, normally Christian Brethren, put the Christian message in very simple terms. They talked much of the cleansing of sin through the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. I went along with Mum and the meetings had a great impact on me.

At first I thought the talks were way too simple and naïve for someone like myself with a top-flight education. Even so, I became aware of great gaps in my understanding which these preachers were filling for me. Eventually, at age 18, shortly before my family and I left the island to live on the mainland, I did what these simple speakers had always been urging me to do – I put my faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and gave my heart to Him.

I was a new person from then on. The change in me took a while to absorb and I behaved badly that summer. But on a number of occasions and in a number of ways I saw God at work in my life, helping me to make the right choices, paving the way for me to enter Christian ministry. That way I found my faith confirmed and strengthened.

You can appreciate, then, how much I owe to those down-to-earth, caring, hard-working champions of the deaf and how much I enjoy renewing fellowship with them every time I go back to the island. A particular joy was to visit a lady in her nineties I know as Auntie Ruth. With her common sense and kindness she was a mother in Israel to our family. When her husband died she continued to steer the Deaf Christian Fellowship, under God, with a steady hand. It still exists, though sadly she is not well enough to attend.

She and her friends illustrate a truth from the words of Jesus that often strikes me. In Matthew chapter 11 He expresses His frustration with the towns in His neighbourhood who have failed to respond to His message. He then exclaims this prayer in verse 25: “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will.”

This is certainly not a plea to His hearers to be simplistic. It is a plea to look at who Jesus is and respond as we should.

It's no yoke?

I was rather bemused, a few weeks ago, by the rumpus surrounding the decision of a priest in the UK to refuse permission for yoga classes in his church. Gospel churches have been resisting requests to host such classes for years, and mostly the reasons are well understood and not thought newsworthy.

It is no accident that the Sanskrit word “yoga” is linked to our word “yoke”. We have the right to ask of everyone who promotes yoga, “What exactly are you expecting us to yoke ourselves to?”

A lady who was brought on to the radio as a spokesperson for yoga had to admit that there was a religious dimension to the practice. While superficially yoga may simply be a set of physical exercises to bring about inner peace and calm, there are overtones of an Eastern spirituality that is foreign to what Christianity teaches. Put bluntly, the underlying philosophy goes like this: spirit - good, body - bad, and you must overcome the downward pull of the body by the exercise of mind over matter.

Now certainly, there is a place in Christianity for training the mind to stand up to the promptings of the flesh, whether those lead you to laziness or to unwholesome thoughts. “To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace” (Romans 8:6 ESV). “If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:1-3).

Yet at the same time Christianity views our bodies as important – too important to be suppressed or yoked to an oriental philosophy. Jesus Christ was raised bodily from the dead. It wasn’t simply a disembodied ghost that left Jesus’ tomb on resurrection day. And because we follow where Jesus leads, we who trust in Him can look forward to a bodily resurrection as well. Quite how this works out, I don’t know. It is beyond anything in our experience.

As dear suffering Job exclaims, “... after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God”, the God who in Christ has mercifully chosen me to be His own while still in the flesh, loved me, saved me from sin and takes me to live with Him forever. This is quite different from the way things are in many Eastern philosophies. These may talk of reincarnation, which holds that you may come back to life as someone or something completely different, depending on what you have done in this life. Or they may talk of the human spirit being so liberated from all care that it is totally unburdened and absorbed into the greater spirit, thereby arguably losing any sense of identity.

No doubt many yoga teachers present themselves as well-meaning, public-spirited people putting on a service to the community. As a leader of a gospel church, I would still wish to insist politely that their yoga with its dubious yoke belongs in buildings other than ours. “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery” (Galatians 5:1).

Aliens and Strangers

It was inspiring to listen to the FIEC national director, John Stevens, at the Leaders’ Conference recently. The theme of the conference was “Aliens and Strangers”, chosen because Christians in today’s Britain feel increasingly marginalised. We mourn the passing of a Christian society. We sometimes wonder whether God has abandoned His people, or is punishing them for their sins, or even whether He has failed.

Using the book of Daniel, Stevens assured us that this marginalisation is actually not unusual but normal, because Christians are always aliens and strangers in this world. Nostalgia is pointless. We need to learn how to serve God in exile, to know how far we should conform with the prevailing society and how far we should resist. It is thought-provoking to study where Daniel and his three friends drew the line. They didn’t resist being drafted into the Babylonian civil service. They didn’t even resist when forced to ditch their names and assume Babylonian ones. They drew the line somewhere else: eating forbidden food and praying to pagan gods. Are we equally careful to pick the right battles at the right times?

The book of Daniel affirms that nothing happens outside of God’s control. Under His direction, His faithful people in exile have a massive and unexpected impact on their oppressors.

Pagan kings seemed to have humiliated the God of Israel, totally defeating His people and destroying His temple. But in fact the proud king Nebuchadnezzar ended up being humbled by God; the defiant king Belshazzar ended up being slain at a word from God; the sympathetic Persian king Darius was used by God for His own purposes.

Our day has this difference from the time of Daniel: because we live after Jesus’ resurrection, we experience both the kingdom of the world and the kingdom of Christ. We are in exile, but we know that God has already won the definitive victory in Jesus. His kingdom has broken in to our time. This is the tension that we must live through, but we are right to feel triumphant hope.

Hope is the defining characteristic of God’s people. Energised by hope, we enter into the culture in which we find ourselves, but keep pure and speak truth to power, knowing that God will glorify Himself over the long haul.

Who might be the Daniels in your church, the ordinary men and women through whom God will get honour for Himself in the midst of an alien world?

Watch yourself

The temptations faced by high-profile Christian evangelists are enormous. Those who have not made themselves sufficiently accountable have at times brought the church into disrepute. No doubt even those who lived in the past must have gone through the mill of temptation.

I admire Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the foremost evangelistic Baptist preacher of the 19th century, for his clear and courageous stand against moral compromise. As an exercise, I have taken one of his meditations on the subject and turned it into the English of today. While his original words are easy enough to understand, people express themselves in a completely different way nowadays!

Spurgeon's text for the passage which follows is Psalm 5:8. In the King James Version with which Spurgeon would have been familiar, this goes, "Lead me, O Lord, in Thy righteousness because of mine enemies."

Here is my rendering of what he has to say about it:

The hostility of the world against the people of Christ is bitter indeed. People will forgive a thousand faults in unbelievers, but they will exaggerate the slightest moral lapse by Christians. Instead of fretting about this, let us turn it to advantage. Since so many are watching for us to slip up, let the knowledge of this spur us to behave extra carefully in the presence of God. If we live without watching our conduct, the eagle-eyed world will soon spot it. With its hundred tongues, it will spread the story in all directions, exaggerated and embellished by those who enjoy putting others down. They will shout triumphantly, "Aha! Just as we always thought! Look how these Christians behave! They are hypocrites, every last one of them." Great damage will be done to the cause of Christ in this way, and great insult heaped on His name. The cross of Christ is already offensive to the world without our help; let us not do anything to make it more so. To the Jews it is "an obstacle to trip over": let us take care not to put any more obstacles where there are enough already. "To the Greeks it is foolishness": let us not add foolery of our own. This would simply give more of an edge to the scorn which the worldly-wise heap on the gospel. How watchful we should be about ourselves! How unbendable we should make our consciences! Our enemies will misrepresent even the best of our deeds. If they cannot condemn our actions, they will question our motives instead. Faced with that, how circumspect we need to be! When pilgrims travel through Vanity Fair in John Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress", they are marked people. Not only are we under surveillance, but there are more spies than we could ever imagine. This espionage is everywhere, both at home and when we are out and about. If we fall into the hands of our enemies, we would be more likely to receive generous treatment from a wolf, or mercy from a malicious demon, than from them. The last thing they will show is patience with our weaknesses. After all, they spice their insipid unbelief in God with scandals against His people. Lord, lead us every moment, for fear our enemies will trip us up!

Man, Movement, Machine, Monument

Preacher and writer Dr Vance Havner once said that most religious movements begin with a man, then the movement becomes a machine, and finally it turns into a monument.

It’s sadly a very true statement. Thinking of my own background in the Methodist denomination, John Wesley in the 18th century was a whirlwind of a man, a great organiser who set in train the mighty movement known as Methodism. Marshalled into Conference, districts, circuits, preaching places, classes, bands, its following soared. There was even talk of the country being on the verge of going Methodist.

Then the pioneer movement somehow became solidified into one of the big denominations of the 19th century. It gave birth to a multitude of organisations and programmes. Everything meshed together and ticked over like a well-oiled mechanism. It had become a machine.

As the 20th century wore on, the sense grew that Methodism could no longer meet the needs and fire the imaginations of the people. Its movers and shakers began to hark back to the past. Places where Wesley did this or that were turned into stops on a heritage trail. A musical – “Ride! Ride!” – was written to celebrate the memory of the great man’s prodigious evangelistic travels. The machine was slowly but surely turning into a monument.

I moved into independency in 1998 and am hopeful that Evangelical independency remains a dynamic movement. Churches co-operating, but each standing free under God – that has ongoing appeal to me as a good way of doing and being church. But the same danger lurks.

It may be hard to identify the point where movement turns into machine and then monument. Yet it should be clear to those with discernment. When a church’s programme simply perpetuates itself year after year without question, or fond memories of the glorious past loom larger than hopes for the future, watch out.

A church may need to take a critical magnifying glass to much of what it has become, which is a painful process. Yet if the ideal of the movement is recovered, if Jesus Christ becomes real for people again, if people are once again helped and blessed, it is worth while.

John the Revelation-writer had to warn even the great church at Ephesus, “Yet I hold this against you: you have forsaken the love you had at first. Consider how far you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place” (Revelation 2:4-5 NIV).

Getting into the community

Oddly, despite episodes in hospital and other distractions, I have become more involved in my local community here in the Leigh area than anywhere else I have lived.

It has long been my aim to contribute to my local community. There is great value in meeting people outside of church circles and interacting with them.

This is distinct from the duty Christians feel to introduce outsiders to Christ. True, we would not wish to deny to others the great benefits the Lord Jesus Christ has given to us. If only those others knew it, it is a matter of eternal life and death for them. I frequently accuse myself of not guiding more people into conversation about their spiritual state. My excuse is that it is counter-productive to foist such discussions on people uninvited. When the Bible says, “Preach the word; be ready in season and out of season” (2 Timothy 4:2), that means be ready whether it is convenient to you or not – not the other person! We are not to harass people. But that can be an easy get-out, and there are all too many times when I could have shared the gospel without offence or inconvenience and didn’t.

But whether I get to talk to non-churchgoers about their souls or not, it seems good for a pastor to be an active citizen in his community. This was near impossible when I was minister of multiple churches scattered around different communities. I shared myself around seven churches in Cornwall, where I began my ministry, and as many as eleven in Banbury, with a hospital chaplaincy on top. But towards the end of my time in Aylesbury (only six churches there!) I became impressed with the work of the local CRUSE branch which offered counselling support to those locally who were bereaved. When I moved into independency in 1998, with only church to look after, I contacted a bereavement support organisation local to the Kidderminster area and became a volunteer worker with them. In Worcester I trained to do budget coaching for those who had financial problems.

In my current neck of the woods, things have taken a different turn again. I have joined up with my local Lowton East Neighbourhood Development Forum (www.lendf.co.uk) which meets monthly to discuss matters of concern to local residents. It has been an education and a joy. I’ve met lots more people through it, received their support in time of illness and hopefully given a little back. This must never be allowed to encroach on my duties at church, but it adds depth to my connection with the place where I live.

Some churches have little or no interaction with their local community. Others have been so bound up with it for many generations past that they have almost lost their distinctive Christian character. Our task is to be in the world, but in such a way that the world wants to ask, “What makes you so special?”

Shouting something about forgiveness

As I look back on our church's week of outreach early last month, I feel it was well worth doing. Simply viewed from our standpoint, it was a blessing to have something to aim for during those rather empty summer weeks when most of the church's regular midweek activities come to a standstill. It was also encouraging to see how many from the church got actively involved. Not everybody could come along, of course; some could do no more than support us with their prayers. But many used their gifts of hospitality as we opened the church for different events, and a surprising number even willingly engaged in the scary activity of meeting the great unchurched public in the centre of town.

Where possible, in street outreach, you get people to talk. Some might think that all the talking is meant to be done by Christians who have something to tell everybody else. We know all the answers, you might think, and nobody else can tell us anything. But in fact it is a rare privilege to stand and listen to what others outside the church are saying and thinking.

One one occasion, as we stood out on the street in Leigh trying to engage people in conversation, a lady passed by who shouted something about forgiveness. We may never know what prompted her to do that. Within a few seconds she had passed by, and the contact was gone. It led me to think about an incident that happened some years ago which showed how little people understand about forgiveness.

It was a sordid situation where a man at a church I was minister of at the time began an affair with a woman from a neighbouring church. His wife tried desperately to keep the marriage together. She found it unhelpful that some of us, however lovingly, called a spade a spade. What the man was doing was wrong - it was no good saying anything different. But the wife's constant and reproachful demand to us was, "You must forgive - you must forgive".

For many, forgiveness is cheap, a thing to be handed out like sweets from a slot machine. Regardless of the offence against God and against people, they reckon we should excuse it, shrug our shoulders and carry on.

When Jesus Christ on the cross cried "Father, forgive", God was pouring into that act of forgiveness not only His feelings, but His very flesh and blood. For Him, every human sin is not just "one of those things", but a slap in the face, a whip on the back, a nail through the wrist.

The Sunday after the outreach, I tried to show that God's forgiveness calls forth one of the great exclamation marks in the Bible. In Romans 5:7-9 the apostle Paul exclaims, "Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him!"

May there be many more times in the future when as a church we listen carefully to those outside and treasure their stories. May God then give us openings to explain to them the cost and the benefit of God's forgiving love.

One way in, one way out

It seems that nowadays they deliberately design buildings to have just one way in and out. The days when homes sported both a front and a rear entrance are passing into history. Whether it is a single property or blocks of properties, the fashion seems to be one way in, one way out. It reminds me of the Lord Jesus Christ and His description of Himself in John’s gospel chapter 10, as the genuine Shepherd who enters the sheepfold by the appropriate gate. The entrance and the exit are carefully guarded and the gatekeeper makes sure that only authorised staff have access to the sheep. The “thief and … robber” who “comes only to steal and kill and destroy” gives himself away by climbing over a barrier somewhere else and sneaking in.

The news is full of the dark and dishonest dealings of those who try to worm their way into our trust but then take advantage of us. Often this concerns money, but there are spiritual counterfeits too. They offer us ways of looking at life which seem believable but lead only to destruction. The Saviour aims to protect us from those who steal and kill and destroy. We should welcome Him and thank Him for looking after our well-being, because it will benefit us for ever.

We need to be on guard for our own safety. We need at the same time to keep others safe by showing them the one and only way to God that will work for them. As I write this, we are less than a fortnight away from a big week of outreach that our church is running in the town of Leigh. We seek to meet as many of the public as we can, by doing street work in the centre of Leigh and putting on various family events at church. It is certain that during the week we will encounter many people who simply do not know the way - do not know how to walk the world in spiritual safety. It is our privilege to show them that there is a means by which they can be kept safe: putting their trust in the Lord Jesus Christ as Saviour. We can show them the benefit: like sheep who feel secure in a sheepfold, they can safely find pasture to nourish themselves spiritually. Those who are constantly exposed and unsafe are spiritually starved. They do not have the time and the leisure to discover the proper food sources and make the best use of them. So I thank God for just one way in and one way out - one way to be safe, one way to be secure, one way to flourish. I trust and pray that many in these days will find that way, to their own joy and to God’s praise and glory.

Out walking

The day I can go out for a short walk is the day I know I am starting to recover from illness. It is a good feeling, first of all, to progress from being confined to a hospital bed to taking a few lumbering steps, perhaps attached to tubes. Of course there are those who cannot manage even that. You trust there are compensations for them in other ways: appetising food, loving care and attention, the sense that they are still valued members of the community, perhaps the comfort of Christian ministry by the bedside.

But God has blessed and provided me with healing and I have progressed from those first few steps to gradual strengthening, discharge from hospital and the point where I can take the fresh air and walk outside a bit further each day. It may not be much of a walk the way some people see it. I am not one of these fitness fanatics who routinely step out for five miles each day before breakfast. But to know I’ve walked at least some distance is the measure of whether I have been truly alive this day.

In the Bible, the life you live is your walk. In Bible translations that stick close to the original there are some 200 references to “walk”. Often our walk is described as being “before God”. He never fails to observe our daily conduct. In Genesis 17:1 God introduces Himself to Abraham and commands, “Walk before me and be blameless” (ESV). A misguided person may walk the wrong way. In 1 Kings 16 a wicked king walked in the sins of a previous ruler who set a bad example. Some strong-willed people walk in the stubbornness of their hearts. The apostle Paul tackled the problem of work-shy busybodies who walked “disorderly”, 2 Thessalonians 3:11 AV. Many walk “in darkness”.

But back to our real theme: good walking before God. Again, God sees it and notes it down. There are those precious ones of God’s people for whom what counts is faith in Jesus Christ, not ritual. Romans 4 describes them as those who “walk in the footsteps of the faith that our father Abraham had”. You can’t go wrong if you walk by faith! Whose footsteps will you tread in today?

Previous experience

As I face a second stay in hospital, at least I have previous experience to go on.  My first ever episode of hospitalisation, back in January, was both reassuring and disturbing. I had complications following a simple biopsy. Everyone loves to feel special, but to be the one person in 100 chosen to have a particular problem is a privilege I'd rather avoid!

At the same time, I know that I shall meet with kindness and courtesy and much practical love, help and support. As a resident of a friendly locality and pastor of a caring church, you may be reasonably confident of this both in hospital and in convalescence afterwards. The period of recovery will probably be rather lengthy and I may be quite dependent on others. I don't look forward to being a burden, but I know everyone will reassure me that I'm not one. There are also things which I shall handle differently because I have been through it all before. Perhaps I shall make a better fist of it this time, even though last time didn't go too badly.

Thinking about this experience question brings to mind those job adverts which flag up that previous experience of the work is "desirable" or "essential". Of course this is the bane of many a job-seeker's life. Employers don't seem to understand that you've got to start somewhere. An applicant longs for a sympathetic employer willing to look at his or her potential rather than a proven track record. Many, though, are hard-headed business people who don't see it that way and won't give a youngster a chance. It's a hard world.

The job market is all about life, however, and life can be hard. Sometimes doing things with no previous experience can bring disastrous results with lifelong bad consequences. Yet there is great comfort for the Christian. As a wise believing lady told me one day, "God never punishes anyone for making a mistake".

Old Job, in the Bible book of that name, found himself on the end of a torrent of challenging questions from God. He had experienced heavy losses for maybe the first time in his life, and had taken it all very hard. Somehow he managed to retain his integrity through it all, and did not curse God. When confronted, he was desperately sorry that he had been so bitter: "My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you. Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes" (Job 42:6). God praised Job up in the presence of Job's false comforters and blessed him more than he had been blessed before.

Thank God, coming to Him through the cross of Jesus is not a question of building up experience and getting it unfailingly right.

Turning round

It doubtless happens many times each day, though I had never remarked on it until this particular occasion. A car heading one way up our road came through the entrance into the church car park, turned round and left again, moving off in the opposite direction. The driver was, quite understandably, using our premises as a turning place.

We have no problem with that. There are no plans to put up "No Turning" notices. In fact this car turning round gave me pause for thought. Our church is a place where, we hope, lives will be turned round. This is what “repentance” means.

The word in the original Bible language means literally that – to turn your life around 180 degrees. (Not like the fashion photographer who told his model to turn round 360 degrees – which would mean she ended up facing the same way again!)

This radical turnaround implies that a person’s stubborn set of mind is broken down and they allow themselves to be guided into a different way. We all need to examine which way we are taking. Proverbs reminds us twice over, “There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death” (14:12 and 16:25). The most frequent advice the earliest Christians gave to those who wanted to join them was “Repent!”

Today that word “repent” is associated with glum Puritan preachers wagging a finger at those they reckoned to be sinners and warning them harshly to change their ways. Originally, though, it was a warm-hearted plea to men and women who were heedlessly heading fast in the opposite direction from God. Let them turn round and take the same route Jesus took, the way of life – through a cross to a crown. It was also a timely instruction to some who were already Christians. They had somehow lost their way and gone cold (Revelation 2:5; 2:16; 2:21; 2:22; 3:3 and 3:19).

Yes, long may our church serve as a place where lives are turned around. We trust that our week of outreach to Leigh in August (5-12) will be a time when people consider the claims of Jesus on their lives, perhaps for the first time. And may it be a place where even experienced Christians keep humbly realising they have some turning round left to do.