Seekers Start With Word From The Beginning

I am back again in the land of blogging after several days away from net access. I’ve got loads more to share which will come in due time. What you’re about to read is the blog entry I had all specially prepared for Thursday. There’ll be more in catching up on what’s been going on in due time.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. (John 1:1)

Of all the gospels, John’s one often comes across often as the most intriguing, mysterious and compelling. Whereas Matthew outlines Jesus as the fulfilment of scripture and Mark’s Jesus is an action man suffering as a servant whilst ruling as Lord and Luke’s appeals to a universal audience, John’s portrait of Jesus is both intimate and familial and divine and magisterial. Nothing conjures that up more than the first chapter where you get those at 11 titles/names for Jesus all on display and we are not just introduced to the Promised Messiah or a Suffering Sovereign or a Man of All Peoples but we are met by this awesome yet very present God.

And then to kick it all of we get those amazing first words of the gospel account that mesmerise me more than virtually any other verse in scripture as it holds me to that which I love most – Jesus is the Word. And the Word was at the beginning. Light brought life indeed as a very real reading of created order, but Light was first thought expressed in Word.

For even as we recall Genesis 1’s account of how things came to be nothing happened until Light – as long as it was ‘let there be’ there was a divine intake of breath in anticipation … let there be what? There it exploded – Light. Word creates and all things thus came from Word.

Now some of us faith dudes get all hung up on it especially running away with verses like ‘life and death is in the power of the tongue’ and believing our words hold the very same creative power as God’s. If that genuinely is the case then there must be a number of disappointed speakers because for all the words spoken for financial prosperity and global harmony neither reality seems to have hit the earth in a very real way for the masses.

This is not to neglect the importance of words, but it is to set the Divine Order above our efforts. It is also to remind us, especially me, that if we are to see results for the words spoken, it is in our/my best interests to go back to aligning ourselves/myself with the original Word. Not only that but in pursuit of God we go back to the beginning and we see Him expressing Himself as, in and through Word.

Today has been a really good day. Part of it was spent walking the streets of Glasgow city centre getting a feel for the place and I must say I like the feel. It is not hectic at all, even with the amount of people that go in and out of it I never got anything near the sense of speed and hyper-activity that characterises a place like London or Birmingham.

It’s hardly a friendly town, but there are a lot more natural smiles on faces than I find in Stoke-on-Trent for example and there’s definitely no sense of depression that is also accustomed with S-o-T. That’s not to decry S-o-T, I still love living there, but some experiences have to be acknowledged and that’s one of them!

Glasgow is a rather imposing and foreboding structured city centre architecturally as the building look over you, but that adds to the feel of the city. I like it. I’d definitely like to come here again and find out a bit more about it experience one or two different things.

I am not here presently though on a sight-seeing tour. In regard to what I am here for it has been a most relaxing, engaging, refreshing and reinvigorating day in the sense of being able to attune myself and focus on who I am and what God has called me to do. The majority of the day was spent with words – words read, words thought, words written and on the rarest of occasions words spoken.

Those words have helped crystallised a lot of things in terms of reaffirming my focus and as with any team building the system around the focus. It is very much like the syndrome of having a star player and building the team to play around his strengths and that can definitely be seen in the engagement I am pursuing.

Herein lies the issue and this is why Jesus as the centre of all life is so crucial. He is the star player around which the team of life plays around. He is the creator – both in the football analogy and in real life. He starts the passes going and He sets up achieving all the main goals in life. He directs traffic and He is the first port of defence to prevent conceding any own goals. He is the one that makes everything happen for the glory of His Father by the power of the Word.

So to guarantee success, today in the cherished city of Glasgow I have been reminded, it is all down to being in the Word.

For His Name's Sake

Shalom

dmcd

Seeking Makes Sense

This blog entry has been a week in the making. Last Wednesday as I got my laptop out and set up stuff for the evening’s cell group session I reflected on the text I’d sent to Authrine. I told her that we needed to get some smelling stuff for the front room and our bedroom. The thought suddenly occurred to me that in seeking God, He expects us to use all of our senses – smell, see, taste, hear and feel. Searching for Him is not something that can be done by one sense alone, but a combination of all of them. He can be experienced through all of them.

Now I know that there is the thing about being careful not depend n our natural senses. We live in a material world where one of the great deceptions is to get people to depend only on what they can see with the natural and what they can physically attain. That’s the great deception that suckered the first couple and it’s the great deception that Jesus snookered by giving the Word’s supremacy in all things.

Acknowledging this, however, the point about seeking God with all the senses is about recognising God uses these to make Himself known. We look at some of the more immediate examples of this like being in a beautiful natural setting where the senses are bombarded with the beautiful diversity of creation in whatever aspect. The nostrils are tickled with a distinct soul-pleasing scent, the hands and feet are caressed with the soft grass, the eardrums reverberate to the noise of the animal kingdom in all its pomp and majesty, even the taste-buds take in some pleasures available. Of course the sight we behold in itself is breathtaking and led one songwriter to put it all down and say that on reflection when he considers it all he mentioned to the Almighty How Great Thou Art.

So faith-awakened physical senses are capable of receiving evidences of grace and go on to prick the conscience about the Living God. What I am contending further, however, is that for those who have come in contact with God and are privileged to be doing life in search of Him, those self-same sense can be key aids in interacting and engaging with Him. The whole concept of seeking God reminds me of a detective story especially Columbo. That brother is a pest, he is a dog that cannot be put down, he has the sniff in his nose and he pesters and digs and peeks and feels and prods knowing what we all know, that is the identity of the culprit. He knows it, we know it, but we need to seek out the clues that will bring us to the conclusion.

I confess I’m not that diligent in searching for God. As an audio and visual kinda guy unless I read it or see it then I’ll miss it. Even then to apply myself to that Columbo-like pursuit is not always the case for me. Yet in line with the Fast and the Curious series I recognise the great need for such diligence. Not only is it diligence, but it is diligence with delight. Fully engaging the senses in pursuit of God is not in search of a criminal, it is in search of the Creator, the Father, the Giver of good gifts. Using a waft from a nearby kebab house can even get you twitching to think about food that lasts forever rather than for a second. Feeling some sharp object pierce our flesh can remind us of the nails that tore into the flesh of the Saviour. This is not specious connecting for the sake of it, but it is alerting the senses and the heart to seeking God through the senses.

I write this blog on the seventh floor of a hostel in Glasgow where outside, even at this time of night, there is the noise of traffic and a near train track with the trains going from place to place. Hearing these sounds reminds me of the busyness of life and rushing to and fro for noble or ignoble purposes. It reminds me of the call of God to find His still small voice in the busyness, not to be caught up in the hustle and bustle but be driven by another sound, another rhythm, another beat. It reminds me of how easy it is to be distracted by noble or ignoble purposes, but for my heart to find peace I am to practice even in the middle of a hectic life the ability to be still and know God for who He is. I am aware He is not impressed by my busyness or my work outputs for the day. I am aware that it is not in the noise of my activity that I’ll necessarily find His blessing even if it produces the acclaim of those that look on and material benefits. I am aware that fruitfulness comes through dedicated and consistent, diligent and dogged abiding in Christ. Hearing His voice, smelling the fragrance of His presence, seeing His glory, tasting the satisfying nature of the Bread of life and feeling Him near me guiding me along paths of righteousness …

That is why this month is particularly appropriate for a time to seek God with greater fervency. There is a lot of stuff still on the plate of my life, family developments, church developments, personal developments, relational developments – some very exciting, all very challenging and in the midst of it all I know there be the presence of the risen Saviour beckoning me towards Him. Not neglecting these developments but placing them in the proper perspective of allowing them to be conduits towards Him rather than distractions from Him. Should they be the latter to have the courage to dispel them so that there is nothing that hinders me from embracing Him and seeing Him work through my family, work, church and relationships – not because I dictate His movements, but allow my life to directed by His call towards closer intimacy with Him.

I recognise now more than ever that it’s all well and good encouraging others to start or make progress in their spiritual journey to seeking the Saviour, but the best position that I can do that from is as one humble sojourner seeking Him likewise with all the internal and external senses that He places at my use for His glory.

For His Name's Sake

Shalom

dmcd