Be Still And Know

Mark 1:35 Before daybreak the next morning, Jesus got up and went out to an isolated place to pray. Although Jesus’ ministry had only recently begun, he was already very busy. His authoritative preaching and miraculous healings were attracting great interest and he had little time to himself, but he knew that his authority came from God his Father, so he needed to keep in close contact with him. He had to work hard to find a special time and place to pray. He knew that his ministry relied upon it. As we walk in the footsteps of Jesus, we need to work just as hard to find our special times and places to pray. One thing is certain: personal prayer won’t happen without discipline and determination. We will always be able to fill our time with other activities. The key thing is for us to become convinced that prayer is our priority and that other activities, however worthy and enjoyable, are of lesser importance. That’s often hard to accept because we tend to judge ourselves, and others tend to measure us, by

Mark 1:16-18 One day as Jesus was walking along the shore of the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew throwing a net into the water, for they fished for a living. Jesus called out to them, “Come, follow me, and I will show you how to fish for people!” And they left their nets at once and followed him. I will never forget the first time I saw the Sea of Galilee. I was with a friend and we had been travelling for a couple of hours up the Jordan valley. It was incredibly hot and our little car didn’t have the blessing of air conditioning. We greeted our first glimpse of the lake with great excitement and, as we saw it, it was so easy to imagine Jesus walking along beside it, coming to a couple of fishermen and inviting them to follow him. The truly incredible thing is that nothing has changed. Two thousand years ago, Jesus invited people to follow him, and he still does! It's the personal nature of Christianity that makes it so different from other religions and philosophies. Religions normally

Mark 1:14-15 Later on, after John was arrested, Jesus went into Galilee, where he preached God’s Good News. “The time promised by God has come at last!” he announced. “The Kingdom of God is near! Repent of your sins and believe the Good News!” We all know what we need to do when we are driving in the wrong direction: turn around. These days, I rely on satnav for most of my journeys, but every now and again, I trust my memory. Most of time that works brilliantly, but I have had a number of embarrassing experiences when I got things wrong. I remember one time when I was driving home at the end of the day. I wasn’t far from home, but I suddenly realised that I was driving north when I needed to drive south. All I could do was swallow my pride and turn around! That’s repentance – turning from the wrong direction to the right one. Just like John the Baptist, Jesus preached a message of repentance because he knew that it was the only way for people to discover the good news of God’s forgiveness. Repentance is mu

Mark 1:12-13 The Spirit then compelled Jesus to go into the wilderness, where he was tempted by Satan for forty days. He was out among the wild animals, and angels took care of him. We’d probably all like to think that if our lives were totally led by the Spirit like Jesus’ was, we would be able to avoid all challenges and difficulties. Life would be one long succession of blessings and smiling people. The experience of Jesus shows us that this isn’t how the Spirit works. Led by the Holy Spirit, Jesus faced temptations, injustice, opposition and violence, but as he did so, he was given the wisdom and strength to face every challenge. The New Testament is incredibly candid about the challenges which face those who follow Jesus, and he himself was very clear about this. He saw it as an inevitable consequence of living in a broken and sinful world. In Jesus’ teaching to his disciples before his death, he said: “I have told you all this so that you may have peace in me. Here on earth you will have many trials

Mark 1:9-11 One day Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee, and John baptised him in the Jordan River. As Jesus came up out of the water, he saw the heavens splitting apart and the Holy Spirit descending on him like a dove. And a voice from heaven said, “You are my dearly loved Son, and you bring me great joy.” Here, in a gentle yet spectacular way, we see God the Trinity at work. Having been baptised by John, Jesus saw the Holy Spirit descending upon him, and God the Father spoke from heaven confirming his identity. As Jesus stepped into his new ministry, it was essential that the whole Trinity was involved. Jesus continually sought to be close to his Father in prayer and was led by the Spirit. People often struggle to understand the Trinity but it is in Jesus’ ministry that we see most clearly how they all work together. We must be constantly aware of the presence and blessing of God the Trinity in our lives. God is our creator and we bring our worship to him through Jesus in the power of the Holy Spirit. T

Mark 1:7-8 John [the Baptist] announced: “Someone is coming soon who is greater than I am—so much greater that I’m not even worthy to stoop down like a slave and untie the straps of his sandals. I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit!” It’s always great to see people who know what their job is in life and are happy to get on and do it. I am thinking of carpenters, car mechanics, ministers, teachers and accountants that I know – all sorts of people who have discovered where their gifts are best used and who happily devote their time and energy to doing the very best they can. That well describes John the Baptist. He knew exactly what his God-given role was: to prepare the way for the Son of God. He knew that he had a vital task to perform but that all the attention should go to Jesus, not to him. Do you know what your God-given role is? People often struggle with this question. They tend to be quite dismissive of what they’re currently doing. They don’t see it as very import

Mark 1:1 This is the Good News about Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God. When Mark put together his Gospel, he had a very clear purpose. You might have expected him to take us through Jesus’ life story, but he doesn’t. He totally disregards the first 30 years of Jesus’ life. He doesn’t tell us about Jesus’ birth, education, employment or relationships. We would be so fascinated to know about all of those things, but Mark wants to get to the heart of the matter: Jesus was nothing other than the Son of God. He was the Messiah, the one that the Jews had been anticipating for centuries. It is generally agreed that Mark was the first person to write a Gospel. Matthew, Luke and John’s Gospels were written in very different circumstances over the next 30 or 40 years, but it was Mark who was breaking the new ground. He was probably relying on Peter’s eye-witness account of Jesus’ ministry, and it is believed that he wrote it in Rome. Many scholars think he was writing around the year AD 60, a full generation after

Psalm 96:1-3 Sing a new song to the LORD! Let the whole earth sing to the LORD! Sing to the LORD; praise his name. Each day proclaim the good news that he saves. Publish his glorious deeds among the nations. Tell everyone about the amazing things he does. Many people see life as divided into two categories: the sacred and the secular. The sacred is, for example, what we do when we go to church and worship God, and the secular is our normal daily routine of family life, working and relaxing. This way of looking at life is strongly Greek in origin and is very different from Hebrew thinking, which we see reflected in this psalm. The psalmist had no thought of confining his worship to his visits to the temple! He was eager to proclaim the good news of God’s salvation every day. Whatever he was doing, he wanted to declare the greatness of God and encourage other people to do the same. The idea of living in two separate compartments was completely unknown to him. When we see God at work in every aspect of our li

Psalm 95:6-7 Come, let us worship and bow down. Let us kneel before the LORD our maker, for he is our God. We are the people he watches over, the flock under his care. If only you would listen to his voice today! These words of invitation are often used at the beginning of church services to remind us of how wonderful God is, and how much he deserves our worship. However, although God is perfect and worthy of our complete devotion, he will never impose himself on us. It is up to us to respond, and listening is a crucial part of that response. The sad reality is that we often fail to listen. The psalmist reflects on a time when the people of Israel did just that. They were at the start of their wilderness wanderings and there was no water to drink. I don’t want to minimise the acute difficulty of such a dilemma, but the people’s response was to complain and not to listen to God. Although he had miraculously delivered them from slavery in Egypt, and provided regular food for them through the provision of quai

Psalm 94:18-19 I cried out, “I am slipping!” but your unfailing love, O LORD, supported me. When doubts filled my mind, your comfort gave me renewed hope and cheer. Sharing honestly and openly what God has done in our lives is incredibly powerful. The most wonderful thing about it is that nobody can deny it. Other people might choose to interpret our experiences differently from us, but the moment we declare our personal accounts of how we have seen God at work in our lives, they are bound to take note of what we have said. I draw the conclusion from this that we need to give one another generous opportunities to share what God has done. Sharing our personal testimonies is good at every level. In a large congregation, they can inspire faith and stimulate worship. When we share our experiences in small groups where we can be totally honest with one another, one person’s testimony can trigger other people to share what they have been through. Probably the best time to speak of what God has done is one-to-on

Psalm 93:4 Mightier than the violent raging of the seas, mightier than the breakers on the shore – the Lord above is mightier than these! I was brought up by the sea and have always enjoyed the sight of waves breaking on the shore. I love the rhythm and the drama as they crash onto the beach. There is a timelessness about waves, and it is easy to understand why the psalmists often refer to them. But, however powerful and violent the sea might be, the psalmists insist that God is even more powerful. He is incomparably great. Whatever threat you are facing, God is more than able to cope. I wonder what challenges you are facing at the moment. They may be connected with your family, work, church, neighbours, community or something completely different. Life in our broken world inevitably produces a stream of challenges for all of us, and when we think beyond our immediate lives, we can see incredible problems engulfing our world. There are fires, floods and famine arising from climate change; huge numbers of p

Psalm 92:1-3 It is good to give thanks to the LORD, to sing praises to the Most High. It is good to proclaim your unfailing love in the morning, your faithfulness in the evening, accompanied by a ten-stringed instrument, a harp and the melody of a lyre. Throughout the psalms, we are continually reminded how good it is to worship God. In Psalm 84:10, the psalmist says that he would rather spend a single day in the presence of God than a thousand anywhere else! Our verses today remind us of the importance of worshipping God throughout the day. Worship needs to be woven into the fabric of our lives. We can’t do it occasionally or half-heartedly. It needs to claim the best of our energy and attention. Worship is of such huge importance because it needs to affect absolutely every aspect of life. The thought of worship being confined to a couple of hours in church once a week is completely foreign to the Bible. When we worship, we declare the greatness of God and seek to bring our lives into line with his will.

Psalm 91:2 This I declare about the LORD: He alone is my refuge, my place of safety; he is my God, and I trust him. I will never forget where I was when I heard the news of the 9/11 attack on the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in 2001. I was buying carpet with my wife in a large store in Exeter, standing at the till. A woman was describing to the shop assistant the awful events in such a way that I assumed that she was talking about a film. Such things don’t happen in real life – or so I thought! As I listened to the conversation, it suddenly became clear that she was talking about a real event, and the horror of it started to sink in. Thousands of people were snatched away in an instant. All of them had gone to work that day with the not unreasonable expectation that they would return home safe and well, but they didn’t. Such events are exceptional, thank God, but we all live in a precarious world where none of us enjoys complete safety and security. In such a world, it is important that we recogni

Luke 2:37-38 [Anna] never left the Temple but stayed there day and night, worshipping God with fasting and prayer. She came along just as Simeon was talking with Mary and Joseph, and she began praising God. She talked about the child to everyone who had been waiting expectantly for God to rescue Jerusalem. In this part of Luke’s gospel, our eyes are focused on Jesus and his young parents. A new day had dawned that was full of hope for the future. It is important, however, that it was two old people, Simeon and Anna, who recognised the significance of his birth. They had lived so close to God that they were ready for this moment. Age can change people in very different ways. Anna had only been married for seven years before her husband died. She was now an old woman and had been a widow for many decades. She could have become sour and cynical with the passing of time, but her life was clearly focused upon God. She spent her days in the temple worshipping God, and this meant she was spiritually alert and qui

Luke 2:28-31 [Simeon] took the child in his arms and praised God, saying: “Sovereign Lord, now let your servant die in peace, as you have promised. I have seen your salvation, which you have prepared for all people.” Simeon was clearly an old man and had spent years waiting for this moment. When he saw baby Jesus, he recognised that this was the one who had been the focus of his prayers for all that time. The Messiah had finally come. Simeon had lived a good life. Luke described him as “righteous and devout” (v25), and that tells us that he had lived in the right way towards the people around him and had been committed to God. Now, as his life ebbed away, he found fulfilment in holding Jesus in his arms and bringing his praises to God. Simeon’s prayer is known by its Latin name as the [itals]Nunc Dimittis[end itals] and is used by many churches as part of evening worship. It is also often used in funeral services, and that’s easy to understand – here was a man who came to the end of his days at peace beca

Luke 2:21 Eight days later, when the baby was circumcised, he was named Jesus, the name given him by the angel even before he was conceived. Three ceremonies took place after the birth of Jesus, just as they did for every Jewish baby boy. Firstly, he was circumcised. This practice dates right back to the time of Abraham and was a sign of the covenant between God and his people. It was absolutely essential for every little Jewish boy to be circumcised. A failure to do so was believed to lead to the extinction of the soul and the denial of a share in the life to come. It was such an important ceremony that it could take place on any day of the week, including the Sabbath. The Jews believed that every firstborn male, whether human or cattle, was sacred to God. They belonged to him, so they needed to be bought back from God. This was done for the cost of five shekels and could not be paid sooner than 31 days after the birth of the child. The third ceremony was the purification of the mother. In Jewish law, a

Luke 2:21 Eight days later, when the baby was circumcised, he was named Jesus, the name given him by the angel even before he was conceived. My wife Sue and I have three children, and I well recall the long conversations about names which took place before they were born. We talked about names that had been important in the family, biblical names and others that we simply liked. The naming of Jesus was a very different matter. This was the name Gabriel had given to Mary when she had first been informed of her miraculous pregnancy. Jesus was actually a very popular boy’s name at the time and was a shortened form of the name Joshua, which means “the Lord saves”. Because most people at the time only had one name, they were often known by the place from which they came or the name of their father, so Jesus was variously known as Jesus of Nazareth or Jesus, the son of Joseph. There would probably have been many children around in Nazareth with the name Jesus, but only one who had come to bring salvation. In Jes

Luke 2:18-19 All who heard the shepherds’ story were astonished, but Mary kept all these things in her heart and thought about them often. People greeted the birth of Jesus in very different ways. The shepherds were thrilled that they had been given front row seats for this wonderful occasion. It was the last thing that they would ever have believed would happen to them. Having seen the baby just as the angel had promised, they rushed back to their village with the news. The people were astonished. Then there was Mary. Her reaction was very different. She’d had nine months to prepare for this remarkable moment, but even so, she had a lot of adjusting to do. Not only was her way of life completely changed, just as it is for any mother after the birth of her firstborn child, but she also needed to reflect on the awesome implications of bringing up the Saviour of the World. She had a lot to reflect upon, and it’s no wonder that, in Luke’s thoughtful words, “she kept all these things in her heart and thought ab

Luke 2:10-11 “Don’t be afraid!” [the angel] said. “I bring you good news that will bring great joy to all people. The Saviour – yes, the Messiah, the Lord – has been born today in Bethlehem, the city of David!” The news of Jesus’ birth would have been a shock to the shepherds for many reasons. We know these accounts so well that there isn’t any surprise for us, but we need to remember that although the prophet Isaiah had spoken clearly about the coming of a Messiah, that was more than 700 years ago for the shepherds. Over the past 400 years, there hadn’t been a prophet in the land. There was nothing that would have led them to believe that this would be the moment of the Messiah’s birth. Additionally, they were shepherds. They were not seen as responsible members of the community and were generally excluded from religious life. They were outsiders, and would hardly have expected to be the first people to receive news of Jesus’ birth. It was also the middle of the night, and you needn’t be surprised that the

Luke 2:6-7 And while they were there in Bethlehem, the time came for her baby to be born. She gave birth to her firstborn son. She wrapped him snugly in strips of cloth and laid him in a manger, because there was no lodging available for them. The birth of Jesus was such an incredibly important moment in the history of the world that the circumstances of it are deeply shocking. This was no way to welcome the Son of God, but all of this serves to remind us of the love of God in sending his Son to be part of our broken and disordered world. Many people have questioned why Joseph took Mary on the journey to Bethlehem. He himself was obliged to go because his family line came from that town, but it is unlikely that Mary needed to be there. So why did he take his heavily pregnant wife along with him on the arduous and dangerous 80-mile journey? It is quite likely that he did so because Joseph knew the people of Nazareth might cause problems for Mary due to the unusual circumstances of her pregnancy. Joseph did