Be Still And Know

READ: Psalm 40:1-2 NLT I waited patiently for the LORD to help me, and he turned to me and heard my cry. He lifted me out of the pit of despair, out of the mud and the mire. He set my feet on solid ground and steadied me as I walked along. I was born and brought up in Westcliff-on-Sea in Essex which is on the Thames Estuary. As a boy I loved exploring the coast which is well known for its generous expanses of mud, and at low tide it is possible to walk out more than a mile from the shore. However, you have to be careful. In places the mud is of such a fine quality that you can easily sink in it and I remember being told gory stories of people who got caught in the mud when the tide turned, with disastrous consequences. The psalmist reflects on his own life and recognises that he had once been totally stuck. It was just like being stuck in the mud. He had been in a hopeless situation but he had cried out to God who had reached out to him and lifted him to a place of solid ground. What a relief! There are some

READ: 2 Corinthians 7: 8-9 NLT I am not sorry that I sent that severe letter to you, though I was sorry at first, for I know it was painful to you for a little while. Now I am glad I sent it, not because it hurt you, but because the pain caused you to repent and change your ways. Early on in my ministry one of the most spiritual and sensitive members of the congregation said to me, “Very little truth is spoken in this church.” I was quite shocked by this statement and thought a great deal about it. As I did so I came to realise that she was absolutely right. It was a very happy church and it was growing strongly but our relationships were mainly very superficial. We were all extremely friendly with one another but to be honest we didn’t talk much about the challenges and tensions that we were facing. We carefully avoided the sharp edges of truth. However, if we are truly to grow as churches there needs to be a great deal of honesty and a willingness to speak the truth in love. Paul had shared a lot of truth w

READ: 2 Corinthians 7:5-7 NLT When we arrived in Macedonia, there was no rest for us. We faced conflict from every direction, with battles on the outside and fear on the inside. But God, who encourages those who are discouraged, encouraged us by the arrival of Titus. His presence was a joy, but so was the news he brought of the encouragement he received from you. I was once chatting to two friends of mine when the subject of encouragement came up. One of them worked in a bank and the other was an engineer. They both said that they couldn’t remember the last time their bosses had given them any word of encouragement. I was shocked by that. They were both great people and I can only imagine that they were diligent and effective workers, but they had been denied the oxygen of encouragement which we all need. Paul had clearly been going through a really tough time. He had been working in Macedonia which is what we now know as northern Greece. In Acts 17 we read about some of the opposition that Paul had encounter

READ: 2 Corinthians 6:11-13 NLT Oh, dear Corinthian friends! We have spoken honestly with you, and our hearts are open to you. There is no lack of love on our part, but you have withheld your love from us. I am asking you to respond as if you were my own children. Open your hearts to us! It’s possible for our relationship with other people to be incredibly superficial. Our words can often be a way of pushing other people away rather than revealing anything significant about ourselves. A friendly, smiling face and a warm greeting can easily be used to mask deep sadness and confusion. This can happen as easily in churches as anywhere else. We can skate over the surface without ever really getting to know one another. Paul, in typical robust style, pierces through such superficiality and says exactly what he thinks! He has opened his heart to the Corinthians and they have done exactly the opposite to him. He appeals to them to open their hearts to him as if they were his children. Paul had established the church

READ: 2 Corinthians 6:1-2 NLT As God’s partners, we beg you not to accept this marvellous gift of God’s kindness and then ignore it. For God says, “At just the right time, I heard you. On the day of salvation, I helped you.” Indeed, the “right time” is now. Today is the day of salvation. We are all tempted to take things for granted, but it’s a strange fact that we normally take for granted the most precious and amazing gifts. The love of our family and friends for example. Or the reliable supply of clean drinking water and nourishing food. Or the freedom to worship God and to declare publicly what we believe. Our lives would be very different if any of those were denied us. But, honestly, how often do we consciously give thanks to God for these amazing gifts? Now let’s step it up a gear. Let’s talk about the amazing gift of salvation and the promise of eternal life with God. It doesn’t get better than that. Any gift you have ever received must pale into insignificance alongside those amazing gifts of God to

READ: 2 Corinthians 5:19-20 NLT For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them. And he gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation. So we are Christ’s ambassadors; God is making his appeal through us. We speak for Christ when we plead, “Come back to God!” If you have ever visited an embassy you will know what a strange experience it is. Suddenly you find yourself in another country: it’s weird! In an instant everything changes and you find yourself looking at pictures of Royalty or the Head of State and listening to a different language from the street outside. That is of course the whole point of an embassy which intentionally represents a different country. Paul tells us that’s our job. We are ambassadors of a different country because we represent the Kingdom of God. And, in common with all ambassadors, we have messages to share. Ambassadors are carefully trained so that they can faithfully represent the views of their government and forge strong

READ: 2 Corinthians 5:16-17 NLT 'So we have stopped evaluating others from a human point of view. At one time we thought of Christ merely from a human point of view. How differently we know him now! This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!' I’m sure you can think of many moments in life when suddenly everything changed. Your first day at school might spring to mind, or your wedding, or the birth of your children, or when you started your first job, or when you moved into a new house. From that moment everything looked slightly different. But those moments are as nothing compared with the complete change which happens when we become Christians. No part of life is left untouched. Everything looks different. Jesus told Nicodemus, one of the Jewish leaders, that he had to be born again. I don’t think that Nicodemus was playing games with Jesus when he showed incredulity at what Jesus was saying. Jesus’ words sounded like nonsense to him. How

READ: 2 Corinthians 5:4 NLT 'While we live in these earthly bodies, we groan and sigh, but it’s not that we want to die and get rid of these bodies that clothe us. Rather, we want to put on our new bodies so that these dying bodies will be swallowed up by life.' Our society tries to avoid talking about death. Paul could not be more different! For Paul it was an incredibly exciting subject because he was convinced that his life was in God’s hands and so he could be completely confident about the future. Paul has two pictures that he uses in his teaching about death. First, he speaks of our bodies being like a tent. Tents are temporary and the day will come when the tent is taken down so that we can live in an eternal home in heaven. And he also talks about our bodies being like a set of clothes. They will do for the moment and indeed we are quite comfortable wearing them. But God has a much better set of clothes waiting for us, and we should be looking forward to the day when we will be able to wear them. Our

READ: 2 Corinthians 4:16 NLT 'That is why we never give up. Though our bodies are dying, our spirits are being renewed every day.' Have you ever been tempted to give up? Paul talks about this twice in this chapter and concludes that he would never give up. His ministry had certainly been very demanding and there must have been many occasions when it would have been extremely tempting to give up. We don’t know about every challenge that he faced but to have been, as he described it himself, hard pressed on every side, perplexed, hunted down and in constant danger of death must have been incredibly tough. But Paul was clear that he was not going to throw in the towel and here he gives a firm reason and that was that every single day he was being renewed. Our bodies can’t keep going for ever and indeed from the age of about 25 all of us are in a state of physical and mental decline. From the age of about 18 to 25 the number of newly formed cells balances the dying ones. But after 25 the number of newly formed ce

READ: 2 Corinthians 4:7-9 NLT 'We now have this light shining in our hearts, but we ourselves are like fragile clay jars containing this great treasure. This makes it clear that our great power is from God, not from ourselves. We are pressed on every side by troubles, but we are not crushed. We are perplexed, but not driven to despair. We are hunted down, but never abandoned by God. We get knocked down, but we are not destroyed.' I wonder how strong or weak you think you are. It can be hard to admit our weaknesses and vulnerabilities but here Paul does so in the most open way. He laid bare the way in which he had been knocked about in ministry. He had faced pressures from every direction and was happy to admit how weak he felt. But through it all he had not been defeated and he was clear that the reason for that was the power of God. He was just a fragile clay jar. All credit for his survival in ministry must go to God. When things go wrong it is easy to conclude that we are in the wrong place. We work with t

READ: 2 Corinthians 4:5 NLT 'You see, we don’t go around preaching about ourselves. We preach that Jesus Christ is Lord, and we ourselves are your servants for Jesus’ sake.' Whatever you are doing today it’s vital to have a clear objective. Dithering or being unclear about your objective is frustrating, confusing and exhausting. Paul clearly didn’t suffer from this problem! He was absolutely clear that his role was to preach about Jesus, pure and simple. In a church that was very interested in the different personalities of their leaders, Paul makes it plain that he doesn’t want to be the focus of attention. There’s a word that I love that sums this up very well. It’s the word Christocentric – centred on Christ. The calling of every Christian is to be Christocentric which means that in our everyday life we seek to put Jesus at the centre of our thinking, our relationships and our activities. Paul was a preacher and it is clear how this applied to him. He was determined not to impress people with beautiful pol

READ: 2 Corinthians 3:18 NLT 'And the Lord—who is the Spirit—makes us more and more like him as we are changed into his glorious image.' Nothing stands still for long. If you need proof of that, then have a look at a photo of yourself from ten years ago. We are constantly changing, whether we like it or not! Here Paul speaks about the way in which we change as Christians. If our lives as followers of Jesus look exactly the same as they did in the past then something has gone desperately wrong. Being a Christian is very different from belonging to a club, where you can normally tailor your involvement to suit yourself. Many people, we are told, belong to gyms but never attend! By way of contrast, Christianity is a relationship within which God’s desire is that we change. Time and again Paul talks about the importance of growing in faith and becoming more mature, and here in 2 Corinthians he speaks of us changing so that we look more and more like Jesus. I am sure that we would all be eager to point out that we

READ: 2 Corinthians 3:4-5 NLT 'We are confident of all this because of our great trust in God through Christ. It is not that we think we are qualified to do anything on our own. Our qualification comes from God.' Qualifications are important. You can’t deny it. If I catch the train to London I want to be sure that the driver is qualified! If a surgeon operates on me I would be very concerned to know that they knew what they were doing, and had passed all the appropriate exams. The question is, what qualifies someone to do God’s work? God’s work is of eternal importance so we need to know exactly what kind of qualifications are needed. There are any number of courses in biblical study and Christian ministry, and I am sure that they are all excellent in different ways. It is wonderful that there are so many courses, face to face and online, through which we can be trained to work for God. But don’t for a moment imagine that those paper qualifications are all that you need to do God’s work. What you need is the

READ: 2 Corinthians 2:14-15 NLT 'God uses us to spread the knowledge of Christ everywhere, like a sweet perfume. Our lives are a Christ-like fragrance rising up to God. But this fragrance is perceived differently by those who are being saved and by those who are perishing.' Smells are powerful aren’t they? I can still remember some of the smells from my childhood. Many of them are associated with summer holidays when we went to the Isle of Wight and smelt the sea, the wild flowers and the beautiful fresh bread. Most of the smells that I recall were sweet although I can’t quite get over the boyhood memory of the smell of a French fish market! I love the idea that as we speak about Jesus we are spreading around sweet perfume. When a Roman general won a military victory there would be a triumphal procession through the city. The general wore a crown of laurel and a specially embroidered purple and gold toga. He rode in a four-horse chariot through the streets in a procession with his army, prisoners and spoils o

READ: 2 Corinthians 1:21-22 NLT 'It is God who enables us, along with you, to stand firm for Christ. He has commissioned us, and he has identified us as his own by placing the Holy Spirit in our hearts as the first installment that guarantees everything he has promised us.' I wonder what you really make of your Christian brothers and sisters. Honestly. Before you tell me, let me suggest that you find them mixed. You feel incredibly close to some of them and know that you could share anything with them. And then there are others who you find hard work. You just don’t easily see eye to eye with them. Their approach to life and the Lord is so different from yours. That was certainly Paul’s experience! The Corinthian Christians were very mixed. Some were his close friends and others were doing everything they could to bring him down. What I love about these verses today is that Paul addresses the whole church and celebrates the way in which God has blessed them – all of them. He is so gracious with his accusers a

READ: 2 Corinthians 1:12 NLT 'We can say with confidence and a clear conscience that we have lived with a God-given holiness and sincerity in all our dealings. We have depended on God’s grace, not on our own human wisdom. That is how we have conducted ourselves before the world, and especially toward you.' Life isn’t always easy. It certainly wasn’t for Paul, whose ministry often came under vicious attack. I have always found his relationship with the church in Corinth particularly painful because this was a church that he had helped to establish. He loved them passionately and was desperately eager for them to grow and thrive in the Lord. However, time and again they were a great disappointment to him. But it got even worse when they started making cruel and totally unfounded accusations against him. Nothing is harder than people accusing you falsely. It can easily happen, and it is so incredibly painful. When you know in your heart of hearts that you have acted out of love and concern, it is agonizing to be

READ: Proverbs 3:1-2 NLT 'My child, never forget the things I have taught you. Store my commands in your heart. If you do this, you will live many years, and your life will be satisfying.' What’s your memory like? Time and again I trudge upstairs to get something and haven’t a clue what I’m looking for by the time I get there! Pathetically, I try to find something else useful to do whilst I’m there to justify the journey! I would love to think that you have never had such an experience, but I have reason to believe that I might not be alone. Forgetting things is part of the human condition and always has been, and the writer of Proverbs addresses the issue repeatedly. He urges us not to forget what we’ve been taught, whether it was by our parents or our spiritual teachers. This involves planning. We need to pepper our lives with reminders of the essential truths. We need to evolve a rhythm to our lives so that we are repeatedly reminded of what matters most. From earliest times Jews had a variety of articles

READ: Proverbs 1:8-9 NLT 'My child, listen when your father corrects you. Don’t neglect your mother’s instruction. What you learn from them will crown you with grace and be a chain of honour around your neck.' I would be fascinated to know what you remember your parents teaching you. Their words shape the whole of our lives. I remember my father insisting that we show “instant obedience”. I presumably remember it so clearly because we so often failed to do it! I remember my mother giving us great encouragement when we were kind to others. My parents are no longer with us but their influence lives on. I can still hear their words of guidance, encouragement and warning. Since we became foster parents five years ago we have been encouraged to spend a lot of time reflecting on parenting skills. One point that is often and helpfully made is that parents are never perfect, and that what we need to be is “good enough parents”. I like that expression. We won’t always get it right but because of our love for our chil

READ: Proverbs 1:7 NLT 'Fear of the Lord is the foundation of true knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline.' You need to be careful with the book of Proverbs. It’s very easy to read too much of it and get indigestion! It’s a book which needs lots of time for careful reflection. And this is the wisest and most crucial verse of all. True knowledge begins with knowing God personally. It’s our relationship with the Creator of the Universe that enables us to gain access to real knowledge that will help us to live our lives to the full. I wonder what you understand by the expression “fear of the Lord”. I have been brought up to think of God as my friend, my companion and the one who is always looking out for me. Fear might seem to clash with that sort of understanding of God. But it doesn’t need to. We need to remember that the God who offers us his friendship is not like other friends that we have. None of my other friends have created the Universe. None of them have all wisdom, power and authority. Ou

READ: Genesis 22:2 NLT “Take your son, your only son—yes, Isaac, whom you love so much—and go to the land of Moriah. Go and sacrifice him as a burnt offering on one of the mountains, which I will show you.” This is an incredibly tough story to cope with. My wife Sue and I have three children. The thought of offering one of them as a sacrifice is beyond my power to comprehend. I really struggle with every part of it. What is incredible to me is that Abraham agreed to do exactly what God had asked him to do, terrible as it sounded. I feel sure that if I had been Abraham I would have assumed that I had misheard God or eaten too much cheese or spent too much time in the sun. Not Abraham. God told him to offer his precious son, Isaac, as a sacrifice and off he set. This story tells me a great deal about Abraham’s faith. He was absolutely convinced that God could be trusted, and that if God called him to do this hideous thing then it must be for the best. That’s amazing faith. No wonder that Abraham was seen as t