The Lasso Walk

The thought.

A couple of years ago I felt that Wirral was so heavily influenced by Liverpool that it had lost some of its connection to Wales. It was somehow being overshadowed by the city. All things seemed to tie the peninsula to the city rather than any identity of its own or connection into Wales. So whilst the prophetic words related to Wild fire coming from Wales I felt it would need an easy path across Wirral if it was to impact, something of a joining of the nations, a knitting together of North Wales to Wirral via the Dee estuary.

So Phil and I took a wander from Wirral into Wales one day. A 13 mile trek winding our way over fields and through flooded footpaths into Wales. We then organised a crisscross walk along the border, gathering a bunch of folk from different spheres and generations to amble left and right over the border between the two nations like a thread sewing the two together. It seemed significant to have a group wandering together, talking, eating and enjoying the possibility of making a difference.

Phil and I believed there was another walk due that took in more of the Wirral and in January Phil saw a fiery lasso shape and knew that was the shape of the walk. We chose a weekend that seemed the most convenient to most people and set about gathering maps, planning the route, the teams and eating times, (obviously the most important part).

A friend asked if the walk was linked to a group of people who had also chosen the same weekend to organise a more detailed border prayer walk, incorporating 24/7 prayer rooms along the whole border for two weeks starting at the top and relaying down the border, North to South. Two groups of youngsters to climb the two highest mountains in the two nations and they were kicking it off with an event on the Friday night that we were gathering the team together. It seemed God had a specific plan in mind for this particular weekend in May in 2011 to call something into being. I emailed the border prayer group just to connect with them and was encouraged by what they were doing and their enthusiasm for what we were doing as that they had not looked at the North part of the country but had covered the south with a walk across the Severn bridge, so the encouragement was mutual as they discovered that we covered the top. One of those very rare moments when you know you are in the right place doing the right thing and you haven’t just lost the plot.

The team.

It was amazing the team that gathered for the weekend. Nigel and Jean from the South of England and with Welsh blood flowing through their veins, the Luff clan from North Wales carrying the Kiss, Dyfed from Anglesey the home of royalty, Derek from London married to Joy from Wirral pulling the North and South together, Andy from Liverpool married to Sajmira from Albania pulling the nations together, Phil from Chester married to Mags the Celt, and our children one born on Wirral, one in the city, Alison from both the City and the Wirral full of promise for what can be, Jonathan from Wirral-the indigenous, Anne-Marie from the city and carrying the catholic heritage of the mystics. It was good to have the generations walking together, fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, grandparents and grandchildren. A small part of what they carried individually and tiny no doubt in comparison to what God saw when he looked at us together walking out a fiery lasso.

The journey.

We gathered on the Friday night, ate together and drove over to West Kirby to see our starting point for Saturday morning. Following a very rainy day the view was clear and whilst cold and windy the lighthouse could be seen sticking up on the other side of the estuary. We stayed for a moment to enjoy the view and the expectation of the adventure of the next two days.

Saturday morning we gathered to lush up on Jesus, to walk and wander the outline set and to release blessing, joy and togetherness onto the land. The maps had been walked on, laid on and kissed. We were on a mission from God (lol), to pull Wirral back into place, to pull off that which had covered heaven’s design. We were and are part of a chain reaction!

As we walked along the Welsh side of the estuary I felt a sense that as we walked we were releasing the land from that which had pressed it down. A picture of geysers popping with every footstep. Weni played her Celtic drum and we ambled along in the sunshine. The afternoon walk was somewhat less straightforward, a later start, a rejigging of the plans, the weather turned damp, a forgotten car and a hill to climb! It is interesting that this was the sticky point of the walk for me whilst Phil and Nigel walked the crossing of the border with no let or hindrance, noting it is an open border.

Sunday’s walk incorporated most of Wirral walking along the coastal path facing the Irish Sea, the Mersey-side Docklands where Nigel had worked in his past, Port Sunlight a village built by Lord Lever for his employees and strange in its design and feel, past the cancer hospital, into Thornton Hough, a very posh Cheshire village, and onto the end point at Parkgate, home of the ice-cream and view across the Dee estuary to Wales. We gathered in the morning at Joy and Derek’s house to focus our eyes on Jesus and I was struck by the comparison of trying to be quiet and controlled due to uncompromising neighbours and walking to pull the Wirral out from the overshadowing of a controlling city – the micro and the macro.

The walk was marked by wild wind and rain. On the coast facing the Irish Sea, Andy fully embraced the wild as he stood on the rocks and threw his arms out in abandonment to the wind and rain and Sajmira tried to fly in her waterproof poncho. We walked and talked about the shape of church, the solid and sure wild fire from the Welsh speaking community and our hopes and frustrations. We finished the walk very damp, tired and with a sense that maybe the deeper magic had been at work as we wandered.

I once was blind but now I see!

‘So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.’ 2 Cor 4:18

‘Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.’ Hebrews 12:2

‘Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy.’ 1 Peter 1:8

‘To live by faith but not by sight!’ 2 Cor 5:7

To believe what God says is true, to trust in what God has said, regardless of what our circumstances look like. I think it is during the Freedom in Christ course they make the statement that you live what you actually believe not what you say you believe. We can all say quite easily that we believe what God says, believe what it says in the bible and then spend our days living out something that says we don’t actually believe any of it. It is quite shocking to note the gap between what I say I believe and what I actually live out. Each day as we open our eyes we are met with the reality of the world around us and we respond accordingly. The verses above seem to exhort us to not open our eyes to this reality but to focus on the unseen, to focus on the face of Jesus and respond to him. Perhaps if we had some sort of filter over our natural eyes so that we could only see Jesus and beyond that into the world around us, how would we respond to the world around us? What if our focus was Jesus and everything else had to be seen through him first? The reality of our new creation existence is that Jesus is living in our bodies and we have full access into the presence of God, therefore being able to see Jesus is a reality that we can simply believe. The verse in Peter seems to indicate that at least one result of believing in Jesus is inexpressible and glorious joy.

There is an interesting story of Jesus healing the blind man outside the village – he spits in his eyes (nice) and then;

‘He looked up and said, "I see people; they look like trees walking around.” Once more Jesus put his hands on the man's eyes. Then his eyes were opened, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly.’ Mark 8:24-25

I think it is an interesting story as we have used this story when we’ve prayed for people to be healed and there hasn’t been an instant healing and said something like ‘oh well even Jesus had to pray twice for the blind guy.’ It seems right and certainly helps us to understand why some folk don’t get healed first time round but do we really believe that Jesus couldn’t heal the guy with one go? He doesn’t seem to have a problem elsewhere with any of his miracles. But how about we put the story in with these scriptures and perhaps/maybe what Jesus did was he enabled the man to see things in the unseen reality first;

‘They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the LORD for the display of his splendour.’ Isaiah 61:3

‘But blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD, whose confidence is in him. He will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.’ Jeremiah 17:7-8

‘Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers, But his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers.’ Psalm 1:1-3

I’ve been pondering a few other good verses relating to blind eyes seeing;

‘The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.’ 2 Corinthians 4:4

I wonder if we just ignore this verse on the basis that it does not apply to us, we have after all seen the light. But what if the god of this age can blind the mind of believers? What if the god of this age and certainly in the Western, very well educated world, is the dependence on the intellect, on our ability to reason, to work things out. Perhaps we insist on understanding something before we will believe it? Not knowing the answers or understand what is going on is seen as somehow unacceptable. Surely just to not know should be ok as understanding a mysterious God can be pretty tricky! Perhaps by relying on our heads rather than the Spirit to understand everything we have missed the point of the gospel? If the Spirit doesn’t reveal what is going on to you then perhaps you don’t need to know and you can just carry on trusting.

The usual rebuttal to suggesting that one may be ‘thinking too much’ is ‘God gave me a brain and I’m going to use it’, interesting in light of the scriptures regarding man’s brain power.

‘For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength.’ 1 Cor 1:25

‘So that your faith might be based not on man's wisdom but on the power of God. ... so that your trust might rest not on the wisdom of man but on the power of God’ 1 Cor 2:5

Amazing verses as to where we need to get our wisdom from!! Perhaps as we have seen the light of the gospel and are therefore new creations we need to know where our mind fits in to this mysterious transformation.

‘We have the mind of Christ’ 1 Cor 2:16

‘Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.’ Romans 12:2

‘Instead, let the Spirit renew your thoughts and attitudes.’ Eph4:23 New Living

As we have been made in the likeness of God our intellect, our brain function is amazing, absolutely incredible and absolutely to be fully utilised in all the good things the mind is capable of. I’m certainly not saying that the mind is useless; I’m just not convinced it is to be used as a replacement for simply believing and I am suggesting that part of the new creation reality is to lose our own head and have it replaced by Jesus’s head. The idolisation of our intellect can be a whopper in our churches and can leave some people in our churches feeling insecure in their faith. Some feel that because they don’t understand commentaries, don’t understand theological debates, haven’t been to bible school, can’t read, struggle with thinking altogether that they are somehow inferior to others in the church. They simply believe what it says in the bible. I ‘think’ these people are the ones who should be out front on a Sunday morning telling us their faith stories. I was in a group once where a refuse collector said he believed it because God said it – simple as. What a fantastic testimony. The wonderful gospel creates a level playing field with no favourites and no experts. The Holy Spirit is our teacher, the revealer of all truth and our dependence on him will bring us all the understanding we need. I really don’t have to understand the things of God to believe in Him, I don’t have to understand the cross, the redemption, grace, the fullness of Christ living within me, my co-crucified status; I just have to believe in their reality.

‘We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. No, we speak of God's secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began…. no mind has conceived …but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God.’ 1 Cor 2:7-10

Jesus talked of becoming like children, the foolish shaming the wise and he does seem to have an aversion to those who know the words of scripture very well and understand how to work them to their advantage without understanding God at all. Jesus was surrounded by teachers of the law and yet seems to have spent his time with fishermen, tax collectors and the sick. He refers to the teachers as blind guides and accuses them of squeezing out a gnat whilst swallowing camels. Those Jews who took great pains to avoid offence in very small matters, superstitiously observing the smallest points of the law, in this case the law against eating insects, and carefully straining out the gnat larva from drinks, whilst taking no effort to avoid great sins of hypocrisy, deceit, oppression, and lust.

Here’s my final thought

‘My companions led me by the hand into Damascus, because the brilliance of the light had blinded me.’ Acts 22:11 I wonder whether it was the religious spirit all over Paul that blinded him in the face of Jesus. He is released from it, like scales, when he is prayed for to be filled with the Spirit. I can’t find any other reference to folk going blind when faced either with the glory of God or the risen Christ other than Paul, blindness is often an analogy of spiritual blindness in the bible and spiritual sight comes with being filled with the Holy Spirit. An interesting thought.

Spiritual Hunger?

Firstly an apology – it’s another fairly long one today, please stick with it and secondly the disclaimer; what follows are just my thoughts on the subject not a statement of absolute truth.  It saves a lot of effort to say it once at the beginning rather than qualifying every statement I subsequently go on to make!

There’s a lot of talk about being hungry at the moment in blogs, on Facebook, in sermons, in ‘worship’ song lyrics, in prayers and in books and to be honest and blunt most of it really winds me up!  I have a few issues with the concept of being ‘spiritually hungry’, ‘hungry for God’, ‘hungry for more of God’, ‘hungry for His presence’ or any one of the hundreds of similar phrases bandied about.

If you personally feel spiritually hungry, or hungry for more of God I am not criticising you, nor do I want you to feel hurt, angry, naughty, wrong, invalidated or condemned.  I do, however, want to suggest that you can be satisfied, and I’d also like you to give some of the ideas here some thought.

In the NIV version of the Bible there are 102 verses using the words hunger, hungry, thirst or thirsty. The Old Testament has the most with 67 and the New Testament has just over half that with 35.  Most of the references are direct descriptions of normal physical hunger or thirst, a lot are concerning God’s promises to feed the hungry and quench the thirsty.  Very, very few are using the word hunger and thirst in relation to a spiritual condition (Amos 8:11 being a prime example and this in the midst of another prophetic rebuke to the Jews).  The Old Testament must always be read from the perspective afforded by the New Covenant of grace.  Just because someone says it in the Bible it doesn’t make it true! Now hold on, put that rock down; don’t stone me yet.  In Psalm 42:9, and elsewhere, the psalmists say “Why have you forgotten me?” to God.  Do we have a theology that believes that God forgets us from time to time?  Is he absent minded?  “He is getting on a bit – he’s older than time after all”.  Nonsense!  The psalmist may have thought God had forgotten him but we know from Deut 31:6, Josh 1:5, Heb 13:5 and many other scriptures and promises he can’t and won’t – so this statement isn’t ‘true’ in the sense that we can extrapolate a theology or concept of God around it. 

Psalm 42 is the big one in the Old Testament to justify being ‘hungry for God’.  So big in fact a very popular worship song has used it (“As the deer pants for the water”) but what we have to remember is that the psalmist, a Son Of Korah, was an Old Covenant man, he did not know Jesus, he didn’t have the indwelling Holy Spirit so his encounter with God was through animal sacrifices, visiting the tabernacle or the temple and through the Torah.  As with much of the Old Testament the longing expressed by the writer of this Psalm was fulfilled by Jesus, Jesus was the drink of water that the psalmist was looking for!  Is the rock back on the ground?  Am I safe to continue?

Of the 35 instances in the New Testament only 11 do not relate to someone simply being physically hungry or thirsty and they are Matt 5:6, Luke 1:53, Luke 6:21+25, John 4:13+14, John 6:35, John 7:37, Rev 7:16, Rev 21:6 and Rev 22:17.

In 10 of those 11 verses in the New Testament, the hunger or thirst referred to is satisfied by Jesus!  That’s it.  Simple isn’t it?  If you’re hungry or thirsty then go to Jesus and he will satisfy you.  Matt 5:6 “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled” is in the Beatitudes, a passage with many layers of meaning.  Each attitude of those blessed is matched up with specific blessing, the pure will see God, the meek inherit the earth, those hungering and thirsting for righteousness will be filled.  There’s no sense of a repetitive loop, that those seeing God may become impure and stop seeing him and need to re-purify themselves, that the earth will be taken away from the meek if they get out of line in some way and they’ll need to become meeker than ever to re-inherit or that the hungering and thirsting for righteousness will return after it has been filled!

Let’s also briefly address Luke 6:25 and get that out of the way; it says “Woe to you who are well fed now, for you will go hungry”.  The four woe’s in v24 to v26 are addressed to those who were satisfied with Israel’s state of affairs, the Pharisees, the Scribes and those adherents to a religious system that Jesus’ ministry was in direct opposition to.  This verse clearly does not apply to those following Jesus or those living in the New Covenant of grace. 

The old religious ‘do-do’ has crept into the simple understanding of Jesus satisfying all our hunger and thirst and it exhorts us to continue to be hungry for more!  What more?  There is no more.  Jesus came as the perfect sacrifice to destroy the sinful nature, make us new creations and fully inhabit our lives by the indwelling Holy Spirit.  There is no more – the cross was the finished work of God in the rescue of his creation!  Our knowledge, understanding, bliss and enjoyment of that finished work should grow, expand and deepen as we live in perfect union with Jesus but that doesn’t mean that we don’t have it all right now!  To talk about being ‘so hungry for more of God’ is as ridiculous as two fools sitting at a banquet trying to out-do each other with their bragging of how hungry they are and yet never satisfying their hunger by eating the feast!  The gospel stories of Jesus feeding the physical hunger of the multitudes expresses the lavish Father heart of God towards us, he is an abundant God.

The call to ‘get hungry’ is a return to works rather than a reliance on the grace of God.  It is in fact a heresy.  (See – I’m stating things as facts rather than my opinion, just check that first paragraph again if you’ve picked that rock back up.)  If our experience of the goodness of God is dependent upon us we are in the same boat as those who insisted on circumcision for the gentile believers back in the 1^st Century.   When preached at a meeting it is not only dead works it is also manipulation and condemnation, the implication being that the speaker has a better or bigger experience of God than you because of something they did and that you didn’t.  (They almost always promise that you can have it too, if you would only do the same thing they did.)

There is a phrase I’ve heard quite a bit in the last few years, in fact I’d written it as a note on my smartphone a few years back because I used to really like it!  The phrase is “Our portion is in proportion to our hunger”.  Scripturally I can find absolutely no evidence for the truth of this, well not in the Bible anyway.  I think this mocks the character of God, it implies God is like a mother bird, which tries to feed all her chicks but will feed more to the ones that make the most noise! Or that God withholds good things from us because we’re not hungry enough!  I’m pretty sure my Bible speaks of a God who gives the exact same amount of himself to all who believe, and that amount is: all of him.  Romans 8:32 – “He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all— how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things”? He pours his spirit out on all flesh.  I don’t get more of God because I’m hungry for more!  God doesn’t bless me more because I worked hard to make myself desire him more!  The work of God is simply this: to believe in the one he has sent.

Now I’m not saying we should be complacent and just sit about never spending time with our Father, never enjoying him, never eagerly looking forward to times when we can put aside the mundane things of normal life and focus 100% on him in prayer, worship or adoration.  Not at all!  What I’m saying is that to call this ‘hunger’ is to do a gross disservice to Jesus as it implies lack.  It implies that what God has done for you already was not enough.  So I encourage you to feast yourself on what Jesus has already done.  Don’t be a starving fool at a banquet, tuck in, read Romans 6 in particular and all the letters of Paul and then the whole Bible and feast on the New Creation reality and realize that you’re not hungry and you were never meant to be once you’d encountered the bridegroom and he’d swept you off your feet and taken you into the wedding feast.

Nor am I saying that I’m satisfied with the state of the world, the unsaved lives of those I love, the amount of miracles I see when I pray for healing.  But to call this very specific dissatisfaction ‘hunger’ seems odd to me.  It’s religious language.  The Lord’s Prayer tells us to pray “Your kingdom come on earth, as it is in heaven” and I’m fully on board with that! I want to the kingdom to come into the lives of those who don’t acknowledge Jesus, I want the works of the enemy to be undone by the power of the Gospel, I want heaven on earth.  But the word ‘hunger’ implies lack of something rather than simply a desire for something.  I am fully satisfied with my God.  I am fully satisfied with what he’s done for me, and for the world, on the cross.  I am convinced that the kingdom will be advanced better and quicker by a people who know the full satisfaction of their salvation and leak that over-abundance into a needy world than by Christians who are constantly frustrated and looking for more.

You may have a different perspective or opinion and if so, bless you.  I am not going to fall out with you over it, and I hope you won’t fall out with me!

Livin’ in a box, livin’ in a Perspex box

As you may, or may not, know I am a drummer.  It’s not my profession; it’s more like a syndrome.  I am constantly tapping anything that will make a sound, making drum noises with my mouth, playing ‘air-drums’ as I wander around the house and from time-to-time I do also sit on a drum stool and hit drums with sticks.  I’ve played with a wide variety of people in all kinds of church settings and enjoyed some of it a lot and some of it less so.  There’s a couple of worship leaders (and I’m not especially comfortable with that term but it’ll do as a readily understood short-hand for now, I may blog about that another time) who I absolutely love playing with, the first is Godfrey Birtill and the other is Rob Cresswell.  I’ve played with both of them many many times over a number of years and its comfortable and exciting and fun and challenging each and every time.  There’s an easy connection and a ‘flow’ that feels natural and makes it just work when we play.  Some might spiritualise it and call it an anointing, some might just chalk it up to lengthy experience.  I think it’s a bit of both.  However there’s one thing that’s guaranteed to ruin the experience of playing together and that’s when the drummer is put into or behind a Perspex box.

Aside from making a professional quality recording there is no technical reason whatsoever for putting the drummer behind a screen.  Churches are the only places where the drummer is boxed off like that!  Have you ever seen a live band in any secular setting put a box around the drummer?  It doesn’t matter if the band is playing the O2 Area, Madison Square Gardens, the local community centre or a tiny back room in a pub the drummer’s connection to the band, especially the bass player, is immediate and personal and vital.  It’s also not a genre thing – the music can be jazz, rock, soul, funk, reggae, country, folk or anything – the drummer is still not hidden behind a screen.

The reason, or indeed often excuse, for this strange behaviour by churches is almost always ‘The drummer is too loud’.  This could be because (a) he really is so much louder than the rest of the band that he’s drowning them out or it could be (b) some people just think he’s too loud because they can still hear him! 

If you’re in point (a) then then most churches first and only course of action is often to buy  a Perspex screen and plonk it between the drummer and the band – this is like noticing the volume on your TV set is too loud and immediately deciding the solution to this is to put the TV in a different room!  You are tackling the symptom rather than addressing the problem.  If your drummer is genuinely too loud then the leader of the band needs to work with the drummer to teach him to play more sensitively.  It is possible to play quietly when required.  I can – and I’m an extremely average drummer. Try positioning the drummer in a better place so he can see the band leader properly and ensure a good fold-back unit is used, where appropriate, so the drummer can hear properly at the right volume level so he can pitch his playing correctly.  Your drummer is NEVER EVER going to develop sensitivity in their playing if you stuff him behind a screen and rely on the PA to control the sound.  The PA is simply there to ensure everyone in the room can hear what’s going on – it should never be used to control the sound.  The band should control the sound themselves and that requires communication, honesty and humility.  If your drummer is arrogant and insists on playing too loudly despite repeated conversations about the problem then the solution is NOT a Perspex screen, the solution is that they’re not allowed to play at all until they are prepared to do it with the right attitude.  If your drummer is a beginner and struggles to play sensitively then again the Perspex box is still not the answer – he needs practice, encouragement and feedback on each song.

And if the drummer is too loud occasionally, or the singers hit the odd bum note or the guitarist plays the wrong chords from time to time and they get flak for it then frankly those who have a problem with this need to get a grip and realise musical perfection is not the point in worship!  Expressing joy and delight in our heavenly Father is the point.  As Godfrey says “We’re all in the band” – so stop slagging off your band mates and get your focus on Jesus and not the music.

If the criticism is more point (b) then you have an easier problem to deal with.  People who think the drums shouldn’t be heard at all probably don’t want anything other than a 400 year old pipe organ in church so you’re on a hiding to nothing trying to accommodate that attitude.  If we’re only going to use ‘biblical’ instruments then all we can have is crashing cymbals (would they like that?  I doubt it!), a few flutes, primitive trumpets, the odd harp maybe but certainly no organs, pipe or otherwise, guitars or pianos let alone the evil of the drum kit! Western European diatonic scale melodies would also be out so clearly we’d have to just sing using the ancient Hebrew musical tradition!  If they just want ‘traditional’ English church music then they need to be reminded that the church persecuted those that wanted to replace the plain-song sung only by Monks with the congregational singing and the religious choral style that they now consider to be correct! So what you should do with these people is this: ignore them completely because they won’t be happy whatever you do!

So set the drummer free from the evil tyranny of the Perspex box!

This one is bad...

 

This one is ghastly...

But this one is PURE evil...

All of these were seen in churches where I've played.  (Didn't use the bottom one - we asked for a second kit to be put out on the stage - this one was nicknamed 'the garden shed' and it was in America!).

Rob Bell

Rob Bell!  There I’ve said it.  It seems everyone is blogging about him, tweeting about him, being interviewed about him and  talking about him – well since his new book ‘Love Wins’ was announced anyway.  Here’s my take on the whole ‘Is Rob Bell a Universalist?’ debate. 

I don’t care.

I read a few web articles out of curiosity and some made some interesting points both pro and anti Bell’s book but I’m not going to link to them here or promote one over another because what does it matter what he believes?  Nor am I going to buy or read his book or engage in the debate any more.  As my, very wise, wife pointed out to me this morning it’s not like he’s altered the Bible!  Is God diminished because Rob Bell believes something I believe to be heretical?  No.  Is God enhanced because Rob Bell has a wonderful truth to impart to me?  No.  Am I a part of Rob Bells congregation?  No.  Are you?  Unlikely, if you’re reading this blog!  So what does it matter to you what he says, believes, writes or teaches?  If Rob Bell's ‘stuff’ brings life to you and helps you in your walk with Jesus then enjoy it, if it doesn’t float your boat then don’t engage with it. Listen to someone else’s teaching or ‘horror-of-horrors’ actually read your Bible for yourself more and ask the Holy Spirit to give you some fresh revelation!

As my friend Godfrey has noted in the past the ‘spiritual police’ are often around in our meetings – checking stuff out to see if it’s right or if it’s wrong.  Sadly those ‘spiritual police’ are sometimes not the modern day Pharisees and legalists, they’re us!  We have this crazy urge to judge everything and decide if it lines up with what we believe and then get all huffy if it doesn’t.  We get especially wound up if the person is successful, influential and, dare I say it, American!  We British often like to feel smugly superior with our, often, cynical world view and think things like ‘I would never have fallen for all that style-over-substance nonsense’ or ‘those naïve Americans will believe anything if it’s slick and flashy!’.  We justify our criticism by feeling like we’re part of some low-rent Christian team of ‘X-Men’, saving the church from the heretics and deceivers.  “I must quickly nip into this phone box and change into ‘Heresy Man’ – I fight untruth and dodgy-doctrine wherever it may be found”!  Nonsense, our responsibility is to love one another in the same way as the Father loves the Son and the Son loves the Father, not to nit-pick over the beliefs and teachings of someone 4,000 miles away leading a congregation we’re not even a member of!

Again as Godfrey has said “Let’s hand in our home-made ‘spiritual police’ badges - we made them, God didn’t give us them.”

Wouldn’t it be nice if in our attitudes to other parts of the church, part of the bride of Christ, it was actually true that ‘Love Wins’?

The guilt trip

Fear, guilt and shame, the three great manipulators. I’ve been wondering about these three in the last couple of days and especially why guilt seems to be so prevalent in the church, so here are some of my thoughts.

As a Christian we are told not to fear, to be courageous, to be very courageous. If we are to fear anything or anybody it is God and even there our understanding is limited as to what that actually means. We are very familiar with fear and can experience it in relation to the future, the past and even the present. We have endless things to fear and worry about but we also know without a shadow of a doubt that fear is something to be conquered. It is something bad and not part of God’s plan for us and so we work on trying to deal with our fears. We pray to be released from them, we look for root causes and try to dig them out with various techniques and we ask for help facing our fears. It is all part of being victorious and living in more freedom. As a manipulation tool of control it is excellent. It can keep us locked down, make wrong choices and cause us to be suspicious of others, ensuring that we huddle together for safety.

So is fear always bad? Not necessarily, I think it is an emotion given partly to protect us from harm, to heighten our awareness of a real danger not a possible danger. It certainly is not there to control our decisions and it must always be subject to the spirit of God that is within us. We have not been given a spirit of fear but of sonship. If fear is being used to manipulate us we should always deal with it by using truth. My own view is that fear can only be dealt with by truth; it is not a process or a technique or about digging out something. It is slam-dunked through belief in what God says about us. He tells us to be courageous because he is with us. Can it be as simple as that? Can we deal with all our fears through simply believing the truth that God is with us? I think so, simply believe.

Shame we also recognise as something not to be tolerated. We know it is linked to the fall, at their creation Adam and Eve do not feel shame; they eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil and become the first to feel this emotion. They don’t appear to be ashamed of their behaviour in disobeying God; they feel shame because of their nakedness. They rapidly sew fig leaves together to cover it. We know that God does not want us to feel shame in any form. He has rescued us from the fall and any experience in our life that causes us to feel shame needs to be looked at, prayed through, forgiveness needs to be forthcoming – either accepting it or working through forgiving others. If someone can make you feel shame about your actions or your person they can manipulate you. I think there is a key to overcoming shame shown to us in the garden. Shame needs to be covered but it is not by our own efforts, it needs to be covered, not with fig leaves but with the blood of Jesus. Allowing him to cover our shame with his blood is I believe, the only way for it to be gone forever, for it to be dead and buried and not to haunt us and used against us. Even from the beginning the shame needed to be covered by a sacrifice!! Again it is for us to believe the truth over and above our experiences.

We know that fear and shame can be used, to restrict our freedom and therefore we know and are taught to control these feelings/emotions and to keep them from causing us harm. My thoughts have wandered to whether the same applies to guilt. As Christians are we taught with the same gusto to deal with guilt? Could it be that guilt is such a good manipulator we want to keep it in the church or do we believe guilt comes hand in hand with being a Christian, as it helps us to identify our sin? Making congregations feel guilty, as a control tool, is not unheard of and I think is pretty rampant. It is can be used in most churches to make people turn up, tithe, follow the vision, contribute and behave as a good member of the church as long as we follow the set rules. As we are so familiar with the feeling of guilt, and possibly even believe that feeling guilty is ok, we can be manipulated really easily and therefore controlled really easily. If we can put somebody on a guilt trip they can be manipulated into believing they are doing a service even if it is detrimental to them and possibly their calling. How many Christians have been manipulated into doing things that they really don’t want to do, feel guilty for not wanting to do it and then out of a sense of duty will do what they have been asked or is expected of them?

If we believe that we have been given guilt as an emotion to help us identify sin we will not deal with it in the same way as we do fear and shame. We will not want to annihilate it from our lives and in fact will be suspicious of people who say they don’t feel guilt. Whilst Romans 8:1 tells us that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ, we still think that only applies once we have confessed our sins and only for a very short period of time until we sin again. I’m satisfied that condemnation and sin go together but I’m not convinced that we should be in a constant battle with sin and condemnation/guilt. Paul is drawing out in Romans the difference between life under the law and life in the spirit and in Romans 8 it is clearly stated that there is no condemnation for those who live in the spirit. For those believing in the gospel of grace and not under the law, that did condemn, a life without condemnation is a possibility. The gospel sets us free from the law, into a life of the new covenant where all our sins are forgiven already, where now we choose to sin rather than being controlled by a sinful nature and we can choose not to sin. We can remove guilt from our choices and whilst some of those choices may make people unhappy, we are not responsible for others reactions and this certainly cannot be considered sin and therefore warrant guilt. I don’t believe in being sin conscious which leads to guilt conscious which makes us susceptible to manipulation through guilt. I do believe in God consciousness which leads to freedom from manipulation.

From the moment that we are dead to sin we are dead to guilt. To simply believe that this is true may make us a less easy target for manipulation in any setting. I think the answer to manipulation in any form is to simply believe the truth.

What if...

Rob Bell, John Crowder and Rick Joyner walk into a pub.....definately a good joke in there somewhere......

Rob buys everyone in the bar a drink, he’s very inclusive

John asks for an empty glass, he’s already drunk.

Rick doesn’t need to order as he met the bar tender in a dream and told him what he’d want.

The Calvinist walks into the bar and thanks God he’s got that out of the way.

The Puritans walk into the bar – don’t be silly!

Brother Lawrence walks into the bar and heads for the kitchen.

The Pope walks into the bar orders a large glass of red wine, drinks the lot and wipes the glass with his hankie.

Some Sadducees walk into the bar, have a good drink and start singing Imagine.

Some Pharisees walk into the bar and check if everybody’s hands are clean before they order a drink.

St Paul walks into the bar with a friend, they check everyone has a drink and then orders a carry out.

Jesus walks into the bar, changes all the water into wine, starts a sing a long and calls for a lock in.

Rob Bell, good communicator but not sure what he is actually saying, John Crowder, preaches Christ crucified whilst 'toking the ghost', Rick Joyner the pursuit of the supernatural and a knight of Malta, Martin Luther the great reformer - unless you're a roman catholic, Paul the great evangelist but not too good with relationships - the list of ‘spiritual’ leaders who have got some things we might consider right and some things that we think we should stone them for goes on and on. We love to debate other people’s theology, prodding it here and there to see if it lines up with scripture and even there does it line up with the NIV or the KJV.

If we lived 2000 years ago would we be any different listening to Jesus? Or if Jesus lived today and we heard a few things he said via the media, maybe looked him up on YouTube or Google, see what end times prophetic were saying about him. Is he popping up on the Elijah list? Does he have a podcast we could listen to? Would we be getting on a plane to go and see him personally? Would we even know about him even if he lived today, he seemed to avoid wanting publicity. He possibly wouldn’t be a PR guy’s favourite customer.

I like some ‘teachers’, I don’t like others. The one’s I don’t like, I try and avoid. I put it down to style mostly, sometimes the content or lack of it, will make me pull a face, get a bit wound up, but hopefully not reach for my bag of pebbles. If we are going to believe that love is the centre piece of our lives then I suppose that must include those teachers that get on our spiritual nerves. I doubt those we are trying to introduce to Jesus care about our disagreements other than to note that we don’t really love each other so how can we say we love them.....