Is this the greatest Easter painting of all time?

Les Disciples

Wishing you a very happy and meaningful Easter. In step with these wishes, I came across a 2017 post by Mike Frost that’s fitting and worth a read.  (link is here)

It's a tradition in some circles to greet one another on Easter Sunday with the phrase Christ is risen! The reply: He is risen indeed! Knowing the practice spans the centuries for more than 2000 years, I actually look forward to hearing it again today and knowing the rootedness of the tradition is millennia old sets the practice in the context of history and narrative that undergirds its meaning today. 

Yet, springing from a real place, real persons, and real time in history it's a helpful reminder to remember there was a day when the words were uttered for the first time. How incredible it must have been to hear in that day "He is risen!" - and to see again the Risen One - having "put death in its grave" - this side of the his cross and tomb!

Quoting the prophet Isaiah from more than 800 years before the birth, life, crucifixion, and resurrection of Christ:

“He will swallow up death forever; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken.”

 So, to that end, may I say: Christ is Risen! He is risen indeed!

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We are seeking to accomplish what God himself wills to happen

It's been a very long while since posting here. Lot's of reasons -mostly good methinks. However, the following link merits chasing. Enjoy :-)

So all our missional efforts to make God known must be set within the prior framework of God’s own will to be known. We are seeking to accomplish what God himself wills to happen. This is both humbling and reassuring. It is humbling inasmuch as it reminds us that all our efforts would be in vain but for God’s determination to be known. We are neither the initiators of the mission of making God known to the nations nor does it lie in our power to decide how to the task will be fully accomplished or when it may be deemed to be complete. But it is also reassuring. For we know that behind all our fumbling efforts and inadequate communication the supreme will of the living God, reaching out in loving self-revelation, incredibly willing to open blind eyes and reveal his glory through the treasures of the gospel delivered in the clay pots of his witnesses.

- Christopher Wright, The Mission of God, p. 129, 130

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Holy Love :: Offensive Cross :: Needed Win

With my thoughts turning towards the Lenten and Easter seasons and the continued shaping of our community, I'm often - and may it always be so - reminded that the benefits of the Gospel and Kingdom come only on the basis of the blood, death and resurrection of our King. Whilst being boldly loving folk and doing "good" things should lead us towards the peaceful fruits of justice, mercy, humility and the "blessing" of others - especially the "least of these", I cannot step over the stumbling block and offense of the cross which remains foolishness to some and the very power of God to others.

Seeking to anticipate the "sparks in the wind" sort of varied influences - especially the markedly heretical - that may contain the embers needed to influence, confuse or harm the folks of our community, I came across the following poem. It is an excerpt from Timothy Stoner’s The God Who Smokes: Scandalous Meditation on Faith (p. 30).

Certainly worth the read methinks.

Holy Love Wins

The love that wins is a holy love.

The love that won on the cross and wins the world is a love that is driven, determined, and defined by holiness.

It is a love that flows out of the heart of a God who is transcendent, majestic, infinite in righteousness, who loves justice as much as he does mercy; who hates wickedness as much as he loves goodness; who blazes with a fiery, passionate love for himself above all things.

He is Creator, Sustainer, Beginning and End.

He is robed in a splendor and eternal purity that is blinding.

He rules, he reigns, he rages and roars, then bends down to whisper love songs to his creatures.

His love is vast and irresistible.

It is also terrifying, and it will spare no expense to give everything away in order to free us from the bondage of sin, purifying for himself a people who are devoted to his glory, a people who have “no ambition except to do good”.

So he crushes his precious Son in order to rescue and restore mankind along with his entire creation.

He unleashes perfect judgment on the perfectly obedient sacrifice and then pulls him up out of the grave in a smashing and utter victory.

He is a God who triumphs . . .

He is a burning cyclone of passionate love.

Holy love wins.

Grace & Peace,

-T

Read entire originating post: Holy Love Wins

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A Needed Glimpse @ Nehemiah

For the Love of God , a daily devotional designed to walk a person through the Bible in a year, remains a helpful compliment to the M'Cheynne Reading plan. Sunday's commentary was particularly striking. Partly because of the pastoral context and needs in our community. Partly because of the tendency to drift that remains a resident lure in my own heart.

Reflect: A Swim Upstream Awaits

ONE OF THE MOST STRIKING EVIDENCES of sinful human nature lies in the universal propensity for downward drift. In other words, it takes thought, resolve, energy, and effort to bring about reform. In the grace of God, sometimes human beings display such virtues. But where such virtues are absent, the drift is invariably toward compromise, comfort, indiscipline, sliding disobedience, and decay that advances, sometimes at a crawl and sometimes at a gallop, across generations.

People do not drift toward holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord. We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom; we drift toward superstition and call it faith. We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation; we slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism; we slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated.

Click here for the complete post. (D.A. Carson:For the Love of God: The Gospel Coalition)

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A Seamless Robe & Theology's Common Grounding

“When you encounter a present-day view of Holy Scripture, you encounter more than a view of Scripture. What you meet is a total view of God and the world, that is, a total theology, which is both an ontology, declaring what there is, and an epistemology, stating how we know what there is. This is necessarily so, for a theology is a seamless robe, a circle within which everything links up with everything else through its common grounding in God. Every view of Scripture, in particular, proves on analysis to be bound up with an overall view of God and man.”

J. I. Packer, in The Foundation of Biblical Authority (Grand Rapids, 1978), page 61.

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Blasted Gourds Towards Growth in Grace

Here's a hymn that resonates with experience. Sanctification is messy and uncomfortable. Making progress in grace towards formation increasingly into the image of Jesus involves suffering, joy, repentance and faith. Moreover, it is the gracious work of God that makes it so.

An excerpt from this John Newton hymn underscored a point in a recent message I heard on the subject of suffering and the goodness of God. Liking the excerpt, I found the whole text. It merits reading- even time to ponder and reflect.

Enjoy :)


Prayer Answered by Crosses
by John Newton

I ask'd the Lord, that I might grow
In faith, and love, and ev'ry grace,
Might more of his salvation know,
And seek more earnestly his face.

'Twas he who taught me thus to pray,
And he, I trust has answer'd pray'r;
But it has been in such a way,
As almost drove me to despair.

I hop'd that in some favour'd hour,
At once he'd answer my request:
And by his love's constraining pow'r,
Subdue my sins, and give me rest.

Instead of this. he made me feel
The hidden evils of my heart;
And let the angry pow'rs of hell
Assault my soul in ev'ry part.

Yea more, with his own hand he seem'd
Intent to aggravate my woe;
Cross'd all the fair designs I schem'd,
Blasted my gourds, and laid me low.

Lord, why is this, I trembling cry'd,
Wilt thou pursue thy worm to death?
"'Tis in this way," the Lord reply'd,
"I answer pray'r for grace and faith.

"These inward trials I employ,
"From self and pride to set thee free;
"And break thy schemes of earthly joy,
"That thou mayst seek thy all in me."

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...with Feeble Fingers Cling

The following clip is worth the look.

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O Lord, Our Lord, How Majestic is Your Name

Wrapping up a short but refreshing break in the WNC mountains I thought it good to sort out a quick post. The reading schedule I follow is returning to the Psalms again for this year. This morning's reading reminds me why I so much enjoy the Scripture's hymn book that spans from generation to generation.

This appreciation of the Psalms hasn't always been there for me. In fact, I found it difficult to sort out the deep emotions and honest - at times seemingly "ungodly"- requests and cries of the various psalmists. I knew the emotions but wondered how to transact what I was reading in light of the cross and resurrection. Yet, in time, seeing the breadth of the scriptures through the prism of the gospel leads me to read the psalms within the context of God's redemptive thread. At least for me, this transforms my approach to the Old Testament.

Anyway, enough rambling on. Here's the Psalm that evoked today's post.
Hear now the Word of the Lord

How Majestic Is Your Name

To the choirmaster: according to The Gittith. A Psalm of David.

O Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!

You have set your glory above the heavens.
Out of the mouth of babies and infants,
you have established strength because of your foes,
to still the enemy and the avenger.

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,
what is man that you are mindful of him,
and the son of man that you care for him?

Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
and crowned him with glory and honor.
You have given him dominion over the works of your hands;
you have put all things under his feet,
all sheep and oxen,
and also the beasts of the field,
the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea,
whatever passes along the paths of the seas.

O Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!

(Psalm 8; ESV)

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An Encouraging Perspective

I met Penn Jillette about two years back. A simple nice to meet you near the elevator at the Rio. Too many people and not much time to say much else as folks began to approach with paper and pen in hand to ask for his autograph.

I was struck by his willingness to stay put and meet the folks that drew near when it seemed clear he'd probably like a little space and a chance to enjoy a coffee in peace. Who knows, maybe he doesn't even drink coffee but he struck me one who requires time for contemplation.

This morning, in my own time of contemplation, I came across this video. It's a snippet from Penn Says. I'm struck by his honesty and take heart in his exhortation and what he took away from a conversation with a gracious follower of Christ. Penn was touched by the encounter. The manner and gracious heart of the one that spoke of Jesus is instructive.

Thank you Penn for sharing. I would that many who name the name of Christ would take notice. May we speak in a way "seasoned with grace". May we not acts as jerks when kindness should issue from the heart of those who know the gospel. One who has been "forgiven much" will be gracious with others for she knows what it means to be forgiven without the means to repay.

Take time to watch and listen to the link below. It's worth it.

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A Puritan Prayer

Wrapping up an evening on the road, I'm spending a bit of time reflecting backwards along the tapestry of those in Christ who, together with all the saints, comprise the continuum of God's covenant people. Pausing to look a bit further into a Puritan point in the thread, I think the following prayer merits sharing.

Giver of all, another day is ended and I take my place beneath my great redeemer's cross, where healing streams continually descend, where balm is poured into every wound, where I wash anew in the all-cleansing blood, assured that Thou seest in me no spots of sin.Yet a little while and I shall go to Thy home and be no more seen; help me to gird up the loins of my mind, to quicken my step, to speed as if each moment were my last, that my life be joy, my death glory.

I thank Thee for the temporal blessings of this world—the refreshing air, the light of the sun, the food that renews strength, the raiment that clothes, the dwelling that shelters, the sleep that gives rest, the starry canopy of night, the summer breeze, the flowers' sweetness, the music of flowing streams, the happy endearments of family, kindred, friends. Things animate, things inanimate, minister to my comfort. My cup runs over. Suffer me not to be insensible to these daily mercies. Thy hand bestows blessings: Thy power averts evil. I bring my tribute of thanks for spiritual graces, the full warmth of faith, the cheering presence of Thy Spirit, the strength of Thy restraining will, Thy spiking of hell's artillery. Blessed be my sovereign Lord!

-A Puritan Prayer

Grace and Peace- T

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An Unpopular Message : A Needed Word

The Word of the Lord.

To the twelve tribes in the Dispersion:

Greetings.

Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. (James 1:1-4; ESV)

Thanks be to God
Amen



Note: Sir Norman Anderson is mentioned by Dr Piper. Without the aid of context from the broader message, maybe the following link, offered for your information,is useful?: FYI here.

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Whilst Rivers Clap Their Hands: His Righteousness Revealed

Make a Joyful Noise to the Lord

A Psalm.

Oh sing to the Lord a new song,
for he has done marvelous things!
His right hand and his holy arm
have worked salvation for him.
The Lord has made known his salvation;
he has revealed his righteousness in the sight of the nations.
He has remembered his steadfast love and faithfulness
to the house of Israel.
All the ends of the earth have seen
the salvation of our God.

Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth;
break forth into joyous song and sing praises!
Sing praises to the Lord with the lyre,
with the lyre and the sound of melody!
With trumpets and the sound of the horn
make a joyful noise before the King, the Lord!

Let the sea roar, and all that fills it;
the world and those who dwell in it!
Let the rivers clap their hands;
let the hills sing for joy together
before the Lord, for he comes
to judge the earth.
He will judge the world with righteousness,
and the peoples with equity.

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A Sojourner's Birthday

Today is a day of contemplation. Why? A good friend is turning 50.

We've been through a lot as brothers in our common village and church community and I really can't let the event pass without speaking gratitude into his life.

We've watched our kids grow up together. He and his wife were at the birth of each of our three boys and we have taken part in the lives of their kids, too. And against the consumeristic tide of our day, we have persevered to serve in a community called the church (the same local body) for more than 22 years.

He was there when I met my wife. He was there when we married. He was there when we struggled financially and with broken health. He was there in the ongoing process of restoration in Christ. Truly, he is a friend. You know, it may not take a village but it certainly is good to be a part of one- and even better to have a friend.

So, what follows is an excerpt from birthday wishes to him.

Dearest Brother, with the Psalmist, we can say, "I am a sojourner on the earth." And, this is increasingly recognizable as we progress, live, labor, and love. In fact, we’re getting older. We know this and it is a good thing.

God has crafted us for communion with Himself and to take our place in the progression of His story-His work of redeeming, restoring, and blessing His creation. We are, in fact, partakers at his invitation and at His expense, in the eternal fellowship of the Trinity. Wow!

As a fellow laborer, partaker of life in Christ, and friend, I have to tell you that you are blessing and great encouragement to me. Please know that I genuinely delight in knowing you – my brother.

From another sojourner with a place in God’s redemptive history, we read:

So teach us to number our days
that we may get a heart of wisdom.
Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love,
that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.
Make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us,
and for as many years as we have seen evil.
Let your work be shown to your servants,
and your glorious power to their children.
Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us,
and establish the work of our hands upon us;
yes, establish the work of our hands! (Moses; Psalm 90: 12; 14-17; ESV)

Blessings and peace and ....

Happy Birthday.

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Always, Life is War

Whilst listening to a preview of “Indelible Grace IV: Beams of Heaven", I came across the following quote by John Piper and, given my present pastoral context, it is both encouraging and sobering. Why would we ever expect that the war has subsided this side of His Kingdom fully come? So it is. Thank God He, our Father, leads, reigns, and sustains.

“Life is war. That’s not all it is, but it is always that.” We are in a battle, but not against flesh and blood. Christ is our champion and we are called to follow Him as His kingdom advances upon the parasite kingdom of Satan. Our encouragement is His promise that the gates of Hell will not stand. - John Piper in “Let The Nations Be Glad”

Note: Indelible Grace IV features 15 hymns performed by Sandra McCracken, Matthew Perryman Jones, Matthew Smith, Derek Webb and a number of other folks who merit a listen. If you want, you can hear the preview the CD release here.

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The Pressures of Missional Living

Wrestling to integrate faith and praxis is a good thing. Since meeting Christ and setting off in His embrace to follow Him, I've not been - nor do I desire to be- at ease with the status quo and pre-packaged pat answers. What's more, this tension between expediency and truth seeking remains after nearly 30 years of new life. In fact, it persists across the varying roles of my life as husband, father, employee, boss, elder, co-labourer, etc.

Staunchly resistant to consumerist Christian practice, I yearn, in His grace, to run towards the unsettling tensions of the seemingly necessary internal pressure that results as the pieces of my life puzzle continue to emerge in their formation and are fitted together through the ongoing “death and resurrection” process of continuing transformation. ( Soren Kierkegaard said, "Life can only be lived forward and understood backwards". Maybe there's some truth in his observation?) Yet, one surprisingly - albeit totally to be expected based on the Scriptural narrative of creation and redemption- positive point is my work.

I enjoy my industry and delight in adding benefit to the lives and work of customers. Granted there are times I’d like absolute liberty to stop,wrestle in solitude, and more actively (full time) pastor; however, I remain confident in the value of staying in the the struggle. Tension, whilst integrating and persisting to resist compartmentalized living as a believer, bears increasing fruit- especially over time. Plus, the requirements of my work spark necessary travel and provides the basis to nurture cross cultural and global friendships.

Recently, a friend and fellow shepherd, whom I see with some frequency in my travel to work, took time to share a reply he made to his sending organization. As I (I believe) am called to remain non-vocational as a pastor, my friend – and I believe he is called to do so- is working out his "calling" in the context of pioneering a church plant in the Midlands of Britain. Reading his reluctantly shared note builds empathy in the common struggle and heartens me, his friend and Christ co-labourer, to be a bit of a Barnabas and encourage his family and him in their missional endeavour, as well as, respond in praise to Christ.

My friend reminds me that he appreciates the encouragement he receives as we keep up with one another from across "the pond" and I suspect he doesn’t recognize – even though I have said it clearly- that the encouragement flows both ways. Anyway, here’s his note. (Location and denominational specific references deleted for the sake of anonymity.) I think you'll find it quite worth the read:

"What pressures have you, as pioneer missional pastor, experienced?"

I answer this for the sake of those who are romantically attracted to this role and those with responsibility for selecting and managing us.

I have felt pressure and, over the past winter, felt extremely bleak at the sense of slow growth and my own inadequacy. I am not often operating in my ‘comfort zone’ or my perception of my strengths. It has been crucial to know that I am called to this, and to believe that existing expressions of church (and even ‘freshly-tweaked expressions’) are wholly inadequate as a response to Christ’s calling to engage with him in His Mission.

Initially the pressure comes from all the space. There are no guidelines, no set role, and no fallback function. There are only a few who have ‘gone before’ so there is little possibility of specific guidance. My own sustaining spiritual discipline is key along with intercessors and encouragers. I give thanks for those people who are these to me.

The pressure to fill the space is intense and comes from my own sinful patterns of earning acceptance by achievement (I observe similar patterns in the institution which employs me). I could fill my diary with church meetings – filling in for clergy, meetings which exhaust rather than energise, speaking to people who have little intention of either being part of the project or responding to the call to do likewise (I still can’t discern exactly what people are really asking when they ask ‘How’s it going?’).

As people have come they bring their own pressure, as anyone in leadership has experienced. The imagined enthusiastic able and uncomplicated team does not quickly appear! Instead we have gathered a community filled with pastoral issues (real people with real problems). The temptation is to revert to chaplain/pastor problem-solver and so lose the missionary focus.

Growing community and growing networking with the demands of communication and development increase the pressure of administration. As I have become known and met strategic people in networks of media, local government, education, business and in the voluntary sector as well as potential partners in Christian organisations I have become pressurised by the need for administration to help develop these links as well as ensure the accountability, equipping and releasing of our fellowship’s members and communication through website etc. Because I have no base except the family home, the family shares this pressure. My children have no space except their own bedrooms and, as they are entering teenage years this is becoming difficult. Finding time to read and write this (and other) reports is a pressure and yet I know that time for reflection is vital. I just about manage a day each month at a local retreat house.

There is a pressure in reconfiguring and reconceiving the Gospel. For many years I’ve been aware that it is too simplistic to say that we need to hold fast to the Gospel and simply to repackage it culturally. We have to go through the insecurity of asking ‘What gospel am I holding too?’ With a lack of rigorous theological reflection around this is a challenge. I find myself wanting to challenge many ‘gospel’ assumptions proclaimed in word or action by Christians around me as well as having to ask hard questions about my own inheritance. This is the challenge of transformation, which involves both death and resurrection in Christ. There is a concern about syncretism if we do not defend the uniqueness of Christ and the foundational doctrines of the faith. We will be ineffective if we can’t communicate with emerging cultures and irrelevant if we are merely assimilated into the prevailing cultures.

There are also the pressures that come from the lack of an ‘official’ building. I can’t ‘go’ somewhere to worship and I can’t refer anyone to go there either. I’m sometimes isolated in a role that feels so different to any other and among people that are culturally very different to me.

Please don’t respond by preaching to me, or telling me I’m doing well really! I know that I’m called here. And that I’m God’s person for here and now. I know that He will help me in my weakness and lead me on. His grace is so wonderful – and there are signs of it. So pray for me and praise our Lord Jesus Christ!

A Fellow Elder in Christ
Church Planter/Mission Pioneer

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Messy, Quiet, & Able to Speak

OK - time to get back at it. Not one to post too often anyway, even I can’t believe I’m cracking what is nearing the two month mark of blog- silence.

Tending to wrestle for the sake of congruence between truth and praxis (and to do so often), I could easily stay in a place of contemplation and “sorting things out" quite a while longer. Whilst, in the midst of integrated living with work, family, service, learning, worship, contemplation, and other relationships, I remain drawn to the quiet and persist in a state that is a bit unsettled.

Much of the lure to contemplation springs from pastoral challenges within the community of believers amongst whom I cooperate as family and church. I don’t know who first applied the adjective messy as a descriptor to the body of Christ; nonetheless, reading the Apostle Paul the basis for doing so is as ancient as the earliest generations of those who comprise the ongoing thread of God’s creation called the church.

Here, take a quick peek. Even limiting your glance to Paul’s letter to the Philippians, you see it.

I hope in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy to you soon, that I also may be cheered when I receive news about you. I have no one else like him, who takes a genuine interest in your welfare. For everyone looks out for his own interests, not those of Jesus Christ. But you know that Timothy has proved himself, because as a son with his father he has served with me in the work of the gospel. I hope, therefore, to send him as soon as I see how things go with me. (Phil 2:19-23, NIV)

Now I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel. As a result, it has become clear throughout the whole palace guard and to everyone else that I am in chains for Christ. Because of my chains, most of the brothers in the Lord have been encouraged to speak the word of God more courageously and fearlessly.

It is true that some preach Christ out of envy and rivalry, but others out of goodwill. The latter do so in love, knowing that I am put here for the defense of the gospel. The former preach Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely, supposing that they can stir up trouble for me while I am in chains. But what does it matter? The important thing is that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached. And because of this I rejoice. (Phil 1: 12-18, NIV)

Do everything without complaining or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe as you hold out the word of life—in order that I may boast on the day of Christ that I did not run or labor for nothing. (Phil 2: 14-16, NIV)

Maybe it’s a sad commentary on me as a servant-leader but I take comfort in knowing the challenges of an under shepherd aren’t new. Nor, are they confined to the modern or post modern era.

Anyway, that’s enough for now. Many things have happened in the past two months. All good... some difficult... but all under the sovereignty and goodness of God. I am humbled by His sustenance and thankful to the core that He is in charge. Maybe, a post or two will follow soon? Either way, it’s good to be back.

Blessings and Peace- Thom

P.S. Please note the shepherd in the watercolor inset is assailing the wolf - not the sheep :)

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