Author: Craig

Our Courageous Saviour Painted in Shades of Shame

/ Craig / Leave a comment

IMG_7289 - Version 210The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. 11I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. 12He who is a hired hand and not a shepherd, who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. 13He flees because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep. 14I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, 15just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep.

John 10:1-15

Perhaps you don’t see yourself in the centre of a conflict. Jesus does. In John 10 Jesus describes the human condition with the metaphor of sheep. The thief, the wolf, (Satan) comes to steal, kill and destroy sheep. Jesus comes to give life, abundant life to the sheep. Hired hands would run away from the cost of winning this conflict. But not Jesus, He is the good shepherd; He lays down His life for the sheep. He lays down His life for you.

Jesus is the courageous Saviour. Laying down His life required a cross. A cross was not the typical vision of courage. Such a death would have been painted in shades of sinful shame. And yet, Jesus decided the will of the Father’s love for you and me was worth it. You are immensely valuable to God. It took a courageous Saviour Shepherd, Jesus to show us.

1Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, 2looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. 3 Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted.
(Hebrews 12:1-2)

NT Wright on Prayer & Holiness

/ Craig / Leave a comment

IMG_4526

I’ve been reading N.T. Wright’s book, After you Believe: Why Christian Character Matters. I keep returning to his discussion of Romans 8:12-17. Absolutely beautiful! My systematic theology professor, use to say our generation had one of the most under-developed eschatological visions ever. N.T. Wright is out to change that.

 

After You Believe, p. 93-95. (Harper One, 2010, paperback)

So the telos, the “goal” of being “glorified” over the creation, is to be anticipated in the present by replacing the slave-habits of mind, heart and body with freedom-habits—habits that both share in God’s freedom themselves and bring that freedom to the world. That is, more or less, what Paul understands by holiness or sanctification, the learning in the present of the habits which anticipate the ultimate future. But that sovereign and redemptive rule of renewed humans over God’s world is also anticipated in the present time through prayer.

The whole creation, he says, is groaning in labor pains, longing for the birth of the new creation from the womb of the old (8.22). We ourselves, within that creation, find ourselves growing as we await our own “adoption as sons and daughters, the redemption of our bodies” (8.23) But precisely in that state, as we are longing for and anticipating the final “glorification,” the Spirit is also at work within us, “groaning without words,” and thus enabling us, even when we don’t know what to pray for as we ought, nevertheless to be interceding for the whole world (8.26-27). This essentially priestly vocation, standing before God with his whole creation on our hearts, joins up with the vision of royal sovereignty over creation, and is one of its key aspects. This passage offers one of the strangest but also most moving descriptions in the whole New Testament of what the Christian understands by prayer: the inarticulate groaning in which the pain of the world is felt most keenly at the point where it is also being brought, by the Spirit, in the very presence of God the creator. This is central, in the present time, to the entire human vocation. Learning this language is the second key habit which forms the pathway to the eventual goal, the goal of “royal priesthood.”

In other words, the present anticipation of the future glory consists not in lording it over creation, imagining ourselves already its masters, able to tyrannize it and bend it to our will. It consist, rather, in the humble, Christlike, Spirit-led activity of prayer, the prayer in which the love of God is poured into our hearts by the Spirit (5.5) so that the extraordinary and almost unbelievable hope that is set before us is nevertheless firm and secure (5.1-5; 89.28-30). Thus, at the heart of arguable the greatest chapter of certainly his greatest letter, Paul sets out the pattern of present anticipation of future hope. This is what virtue is all about. The hope is that all those who are “in Christ’ and are indwelt by the Spirit will eventually reign in glory over the whole creation, thereby taking up at long last the role commanded for humans in Genesis 1 and Psalm 8 and sharing the inheritance, and the final rescuing work, of the Messiah himself, as in Psalm 2. And if that is the telos, the goal, it is to be anticipated in the present by the settled habits of holiness and prayer.

Go with? Discover God’s answer to shame.

/ Craig / Leave a comment

IMG_8799

9For in him (Jesus) the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, 10and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority. 11In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, 12having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead.

13And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, 14by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. 15He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.  Colossians 2:9-15

I spent a summer in Iowa working with a church youth ministry. It was a challenging and rewarding experience. I learned lots, met some people who changed the trajectory of my life, and picked up some new english expressions.  The students would hear about a plan or even an errand I was running and they would ask,“Can I go with?”

“Go with?”

It felt familiar with the hopefulness of family; but always expressed a  question, an uncertainty. I have never been able to see and hear the word “with” the same way.

We need inquisitiveness and hope when we read the Scripture’s words “in” and “with.”  When the Apostle Paul uses “in” and “with” he expresses the mystery of the Gospel and the reality of our life with Jesus the Risen King. It is an answer to the question of our longing for God and the humility or shame that wonders, “Would God really want to be close to me?”

To be Christian is to be in Christ Jesus for He is in us. We are with Him now and for eternity participating in His life, death, and resurrection. To be in Christ Jesus is to be immersed into the communion of God without shame for He has fundamentally altered who we are at the heart of who we are. Once we were dead to God, but now we are alive. Once we were outsiders but now we have been included. Once we had a record of failure and sin that stood against us, but now we are pardoned and free.

Jesus wants you to be with Him. His desire for you required a cross. The cross takes the question “go with?” and makes it a reality for now there is no guilt, shame, fear or threat of accusation equal to the glory of being “in Him” by His invitation.

Jesus was not an independent operator.

/ Craig / Leave a comment

IMG_8724 - Version 2

19So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise. 20For the Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing. And greater works than these will he show him, so that you may marvel. 21For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will.   John 5:19-21

Remember the Bourne Identity? Tension grows in the series as the mystery of Jason Bourne’s identity grows. We wonder even as he wonders, is he a rouge operative? Who is he? Where did he come from? What is his purpose in life?

These are the essential questions of our humanity.
When we read the Gospels we must not read Jesus as an independent operator. He did not view himself as a self-made man. Nor was Jesus unclear as to His true identity and purpose in life. Jesus did not view Himself or His mission as something He had to create in order to feel good about life or Himself. Jesus is intent on revealing His true identity and His relationship with the Father to all who will hear so those who hear may have life.
Jesus lived loved. And He declares, “Truly, truly, I say to you, The Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise.”

I don’t have a lute but I’ve got rhythm.

/ Craig / 1 Comment

IMG_8217

1 It is good to give thanks to the Lord, to sing praises to your name, O Most High;

2to declare your steadfast love in the morning, and your faithfulness by night,

3to the music of the lute and the harp, to the melody of the lyre.

4For you, O Lord, have made me glad by your work; at the works of your hands I sing for joy.

Psalm 92:1-4

Even if you don’t have musical rhythm you can can enter into the daily rhythm of a life with Jesus.

Declare the faithfulness of the Lord in the evening.

Declare His steadfast love in the morning.

When you come in from the fullness of your day and begin your evening routines its a good time to consider how God had shown His faithfulness to you. Debrief the day with thanks.

Each morning when you prepare to go out into the fullness of your day do so in the love of our Lord Jesus. Take time to declare the Lord’s love to yourself and to those you share space with. Live loved by entering the day with praise.

Sit with Jesus long enough to be glad in His work on your behalf in the Cross and from the Throne.

He is our joy.