I quit!

I read an article today on the BBC website called ‘I Quit!’ It talked about the recent, numerous high-profile resignations and the different reasons and methods people use to resign. The strapline read ‘Some hang on until the bitter end and some leave under a cloud but is there a way to go with grace?’ What a fantastic question; is there a way to go with grace?

The article pointed out that resignations have sometimes been used as a kind of protest that people will resign from their position when they feel they can no longer tolerate or be associated with the policy of those employing them. Our conscience will at times, despite the consequences of our actions, inform us that resignation is the only way to do what is right, to do the right thing. Clearly one person’s definition of right and another’s can differ which leads to calls for resignation where there is the appearance of wrong doing. The article points out ‘When some resign they leave with their heads hung in shame, for others it's a moment of defiance, and there are those who acknowledge that they have done wrong and leave quietly.’

It was the phrase ‘I quit’ that sparked a few thoughts about quitting; it reminded me of the Brother Lawrence quote – ‘I have quitted all forms of devotion and set prayers but those to which my state obliges me.’ which has been a marker phrase in our house for a few months. It is the call to avoid going through the motions, going to the meetings because we should, it has been a call to resist the status quo, to stop doing things that we have just always done and taken time to think about what we actually believe. To stop doing those things that perpetuate myths and fallacies. Our intent is to focus our attention on practising the presence and believing more what Jesus has already done for us rather than inattentively meandering along a well-worn path. To consider prayer a continuation of our relationship with God, to simply turn our gaze towards his face and continue the on-going conversation rather than enacting something that suggests there is a separation between us and God or a separation between the sacred times and the secular times.

I have quitted using phrases that make no sense in the light of the finished work of the cross, such as; praying for an open heaven, when Jesus opened heaven and left it open for humanity to enter; praying for an outpouring of the Holy Spirit when he has already been poured out on all flesh; referring to the land as dry or a place as hard as we carry the springs of living water and all of the earth is the Lords. I have quitted living under the old covenant terminology when I have been rescued by the new covenant. I have quitted looking to others for impartations and anointing when God tells me I have the fullness of the deity within me and have been fully anointed. I have quitted thinking that I have to pray the right prayers in the right order at the right time in order to be heard. I have tried to quit pointless squabbles about doctrine as nobody has the whole truth and trying to change somebody else’s beliefs is not my job.

Is there a way to go with grace? Yes, Yes and Yes. To go with grace means to quit all forms of law. I can quit anything that suggests I can earn or keep my salvation or that my relationship with God is about me keeping the rules. I am blessed because he loves to bless me, it is his character not mine that leads to blessing. I am righteous and holy because he says so, I am reconciled, accepted and loved because he says so and he tells the truth. Jesus came full of grace and truth and anything more than that or mingled with that is not for me. I cannot mix in some law, just to be sure of my salvation, keep all the rules just in case it is too good to be true. Mixing law and grace is the same as saying the cross was not sufficient to fulfil the law, that sacrifice is still needed and law keeping is still necessary, something which Paul rebuked the Galatian church for believing. So I have quit law keeping and have gone the way of grace. His grace is sufficient for me.

Beauty and Hope

‘He makes all things beautiful in its time’ Ecclesiastes 3:11 NIV

‘The whole He hath made beautiful in its season’ (Youngs Literal Translation)

All things in harmony with the whole work of God. A verse bursting with hope.

I wonder if we can link this verse to Isaiah 61:3 – ‘to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair’, where perhaps the ashes are hopes that have turned to dust. People are full of hopes and dreams, some of which they see fulfilled and some they see crumble in their hands like dust. I wonder whether when we consider our purpose for today we could add the dimension of bringing hope back to people. Can we speak words of life to create hope again? To inform them that God always has good plans for them, that his word is true and everything God does is forever, nothing added, nothing taken away.

The bible is full of scriptures that encourage us to look up, to hope, to trust, to know that help is on the way, to know that all will be well. Where perhaps in the past the church has been concerned too much with judgement day and the consequences of sin we could shift our emphasis to redemption and hope for today.

I wonder if we can ask God to shift the times and seasons to bring beauty today where there are ashes, to bring hope where there is despair. Yesterday we were praying for two young women, one with breast cancer, one with cervical cancer, (the two cancers that affect woman-ness, femininity, beauty, identity). Cancer brings with it a devastation of hopes, from the very moment it is diagnosed the hope to avoid it is in ashes whilst other hopes hang in the balance; the hope to have more children, the hope to avoid medical interventions, the hope to avoid hair loss, the hope to avoid sickness, the hope to live. One of the biggest hopes we have – to be healthy and the main thought throughout pregnancy – the hope for a healthy baby. So we prayed for these two women, we prayed for beauty today instead of the ashes that came with the diagnosis and medical intervention. We prayed for today because that is what we have - we hope today for beauty today. We asked God to call the time for beauty ‘today’ not in the distant future.

This is not new information; it is just a reminder that we are the hope carriers.

Here’s a good prayer. It was delivered by Mother Theresa when she addressed the United Nations in 1985 (according to Wikipedia)

Lord, make me a channel of thy peace.

That where there is hatred I may bring love,

That where there is wrong, I may bring the spirit of forgiveness,

That where there is discord, I may bring harmony,

That where there is error I may bring truth,

That where there is doubt I may bring faith,

That where there is despair I may bring hope,

That where there are shadows I may bring light,

That where there is sadness I may bring joy.

Lord, grant that I may seek rather to comfort than to be comforted,

To understand than to be understood,

To love than to be loved.

For it is by forgetting self that one finds.

It is by forgiving that one is forgiven,

it is by dying that one awakens to eternal life.

Amen.

Harry Potter and the Deadly Paranoia

First of all a confession… I’ve read all seven Harry Potter books.  I quite liked the first two as children’s books and probably read them to/with my youngest kids.  I enjoyed the third book as a novel in its own right.  I disliked the fourth book, the first of the huge ‘bricks’ she then produced, and considered it self-indulgent, over-long, unfocused and lacking in plot, in fact I disliked it so much I didn’t read the fifth book until after the sixth one came out.  Eventually my daughter persuaded me to give it a go and I enjoyed it so I then quickly read number six and on its eventual release the seventh and, so far, last book.

I wouldn’t call myself a huge fan.  I can remember only bits of them, the films stick in my mind much more, and I can’t remember what bits happen in which book terribly well.  They’re reasonably well written, or they would never have been published in the first place, but they’re not in the same class as Terry Pratchett’s ‘Discworld’ series and they’re certainly not ‘literary’ novels.  They’re kids’ books that appeal to some adults who enjoy fantasy, adventure, escapism and taken in the broad sweep an epic struggle between good and evil.

So why do so many Christians hate them, loath Joanna Rowling and in extreme cases not just stop their kids from enjoying them but actually go so far as to preach against them and publically burn them?  There’s a one word answer: “witchcraft”.   This is just a word, a simple two syllable word – so what is it that people are really reacting against? I think it’s the kingdom of satan and the way that is most overtly expressed; that is ‘the occult’.  Now I’m no expert on the occult, I was brought up in a Christian home and never strayed down that road, but surely the key thing about it is that there is a personality at the centre of it all, the devil or satan, and the occult operates as a religion.  This religion, as all religions do, provides a system of practices, laws and rules that enable its practitioners to access knowledge and understanding which is derived from and leads to the personality at the centre plus the faithful gain some perceived benefit from that system.  Obviously a Christian believes people involved in the occult are in fact gaining merely fleeting benefits, if any, and ultimately it will enslave and destroy them, and I would heartily agree with such a statement. (This is why true Christianity isn’t a religion – there are no rules to keep that produce knowledge or understanding or access to the personality – Jesus did away with the law and gave us union with God through grace by his perfect sacrifice).

And this is why I think the Harry Potter novels do NOT deserve the hated that has been reserved for them in some quarters.  In these books, and similarly in C. S. Lewis’ ‘Narnia’ novels, J. R. R. Tolkien’s ‘Lord Of The Rings’ saga, Terry Pratchett’s ‘Discworld’ series and countless others, the ‘magic’ that is featured so prominently and practiced by witches, wizards, elfs, etc has NO such personality at the centre of it.  The ‘magic’ is a naturally occurring phenomenon within the reality described in the books in much the same way as magnetism, electricity, gravity or radio waves are in the real world.  The witches, wizards, elfs etc are simply the people who have the ability to manipulate that natural phenomenon via the tools of their trade, staff’s, wands, crystal balls and spells in much the same way that a radio engineer in our world could manipulate radio waves to send voices ‘magically’ across the world using circuits, a battery and an aerial!  There is virtually NO correlation between the real world occult practices of a modern medium, psychic or spiritualist and the magical practices of Harry Potter, Gandalf the Grey, Aslan or even The White Witch or Voldemort!

The magic in these books is NOT a religion.  It’s simply part of the physics of the world.  If the actual substance behind the ‘magic’ is nothing to do with the real occult, if there isn’t a person (satan) behind it, then what’s the problem?  It can’t be the words surely?  They’re just words!  It’s the meanings that are important. 

If our objection really is to the words ‘wizard’, ‘witch’ and ‘magic’ and we think the meaning inextricably linked to them then how come we can change the word ‘magic’ to ‘the force’ and have no problem with that?  What else is a Jedi but a space-age wizard?   Why is Luke Skywalker’s use of ‘the force’, which is surely just another way of describing magic but without the literary baggage associated with the fantasy genre, allowed by the Harry Potter haters?  There is NO substantive difference between Dumbledore in Harry Potter and Obi-Wan Kenobi!

If it’s the super-natural abilities that we object to then we have a problem not just with Harry Potter’s wizarding world, but with Aslan’s magic in Narnia, Gandalf’s in Lord Of The Rings and with Superman and his ability to ‘magically’ fly, to see though solid objects and be super-strong; we would end up comparing the man-of-steel with the demoniac from the Gospels who could tear his chains off and couldn’t be restrained even by many men!  Is Superman possessed?  I don’t think so!

I think the reason some Christians hate Harry Potter so much is they have a warped view of both satan and God.  They see them as almost equal and opposite, like the Greek gods Zeus and Hades, who were brothers, playing chess with the lives of mortal men.  When in fact satan's attempts to defeat God would be better compared to an amoeba attacking a supernova – it’s never going to go well for the amoeba.  We have no reason to fear satan – if we are in Christ nothing can separate us from him!

Saying that reading Harry Potter would interest children in magic and therefore the real occult is as sensible as saying that letting children watch Tom & Jerry cartoons would interest them in animal cruelty and cause them to grow up to abuse animals, or that reading The Beano makes them grow up to be teenage delinquents. It’s nonsense.

Finally in the Harry Potter books good always wins.  Evil is vanquished and what is it vanquished by?  Better magic?  Greater power?  Superior spells or witchcraft?  Military might? Nope.  Evil is vanquished by a combination of love and self-sacrifice…. now where have I read that before?

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!