Be Still And Know

READ: Luke 1:46-49 NLT Mary responded, “Oh, how my soul praises the Lord. How my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour! For he took notice of his lowly servant girl, and from now on all generations will call me blessed. For the Mighty One is holy, and he has done great things for me.” What an incredible moment this was for Mary! How could anyone put into words the overwhelming joy and privilege of being called to be the mother of the Saviour of the World? It is hardly surprising that she, as a young Jewish girl, turns to familiar words from the Scriptures. She would have been brought up with the wonderful story of Hannah, Samuel’s mother, and would have been familiar with her prayer when she learnt that she was going to give birth. There are many moments in our lives as Christians when we simply don’t have the words to describe how grateful we are to God. Like Mary, we often turn to other people’s words to describe how we are feeling. I thank God for many songs and hymns which have been precious to me over the ye

READ: Luke 1:38 NLT Mary responded, “I am the Lord’s servant. May everything you have said about me come true.” We know the story of Jesus’ miraculous birth so well that no part of it is a surprise to us. So we’ve really got to work hard to imagine how completely and stupefyingly incredible this moment was for Mary. She is probably a teenager and may well never have been outside the rural Galilee region where she was born. The news that she is going to have a baby was shockingly surprising at every level. She knew that she was a virgin and that having a baby was therefore a complete impossibility. But she listens attentively to the angel’s words and is assured that, crazy as this all sounded, nothing is impossible with God. Her response is extraordinarily impressive. She describes herself as the Lord’s servant and accepts the future that God had chosen for her. To be a servant would normally be seen as demeaning. We probably instinctively think of the TV series Downton Abbey: of the way in which servants, l

READ: Luke 1:13-15 NLT The angel said, “Don’t be afraid, Zechariah! God has heard your prayer. Your wife, Elizabeth, will give you a son, and you are to name him John. You will have great joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth, for he will be great in the eyes of the Lord.” This was the greatest day in Zechariah’s life. Being a male descendant of Aaron, he was a priest and that was a great privilege. However, there were a huge numbers of priests. It is suggested that there might have been up to 20,000 of them and so there were divided up into 24 groups which served in rotation. The greatest privilege of all was for a priest to be chosen to go into the temple to burn the incense at the time of the offering of the morning or evening sacrifice. Having burnt the incense, the priest would then emerge from the temple and pronounce a blessing on the people. This was such a great privilege that a priest could only do this once in his lifetime and many never had the opportunity. The priest was chosen f

READ: Psalm 40:9-10 NLT 'I have told all your people about your justice. I have not been afraid to speak out, as you, O Lord, well know. I have not kept the good news of your justice hidden in my heart; I have talked about your faithfulness and saving power. I have told everyone in the great assembly of your unfailing love and faithfulness.' We often hear people say that religion is a private matter. The view seems to be that you can believe whatever you like just so long as you keep it to yourself. In this psalm David points out that this just cannot be done. Anyone who discovers the justice, faithfulness and salvation of God needs to talk about it! I wonder what excites you? It could be your family, your cat, your home, your stamp collection or this year’s holiday. It is the most natural thing in the world to want to look for an opportunity to tell other people about whatever is most precious to you. That’s the way we’re wired. When you have experienced God’s goodness in your life it is impossible to bottl

READ: Psalm 39:4-5 NLT 'Lord, remind me how brief my time on earth will be. Remind me that my days are numbered— how fleeting my life is. You have made my life no longer than the width of my hand. My entire lifetime is just a moment to you; at best, each of us is but a breath.' I will never forget the moment. I was 17 years old and a friend of mine asked me, “Have you heard about Luke?” I hadn’t. Luke was always full of life and initiative, had very long hair (as most of us did at the time) and always had a cheeky smile. My friend said, “He died last week in a car crash together with three friends. Their Mini hit a fuel tanker and burst into flames.” I was completely and utterly devastated. It made no sense. I remember thinking, “How could Luke, someone who was particularly full of life, have died?” As I struggled to come to terms with Luke’s death I learnt many things. Most of all I learnt that life, which seemed so permanent, was anything but. Totally tragic as this moment was, I learnt to look at every si

READ: Psalm 38:4-9 NLT 'My guilt overwhelms me—it is a burden too heavy to bear. My wounds fester and stink because of my foolish sins. I am bent over and racked with pain. All day long I walk around filled with grief. A raging fever burns within me, and my health is broken. I am exhausted and completely crushed. My groans come from an anguished heart. You know what I long for, Lord; you hear my every sigh.' It’s an incredible privilege when someone is completely honest with you. David tells us exactly how things are in his life, and it’s not going well! He feels guilty, he’s in pain and he is emotionally crushed. You can hardly imagine anything worse. But the crucial fact is that, amidst it all, he knows that God hears him. I love the expression that David uses when he writes “you hear my every sigh”. God doesn’t merely know when we are going through a hard time, but he picks up every detail of our distress. He is our Creator and knows us better than we know ourselves, so when we pray he is well ahead of us

READ: 1 Corinthians 1:10-11 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.' It’s hard to be criticised. No one likes it. If there is some truth in the criticism that’s one thing, but when you are sure that the criticism is totally unfounded that’s something else. That’s Paul’s situation here. He is being ferociously attacked by people in the church in Corinth. It would be a disappointing experience in any setting, but when it comes from the people of God it is particularly discouraging. Paul’s response is to look inside and to examine his conscience. As he does so the pressure lifts because he has a clear conscience. He believes that he has lived before God with integrity and has depended on God’s grace and wisdom. That didn’t make the critics go away but it did give him streng

READ: 2 Corinthians 1:8-9 NLT 'We think you ought to know, dear brothers and sisters, about the trouble we went through in the province of Asia. We were crushed and overwhelmed beyond our ability to endure, and we thought we would never live through it. In fact, we expected to die. But as a result, we stopped relying on ourselves and learned to rely only on God, who raises the dead.' We all experience hard times. They are an unavoidable part of life. It may be a sudden illness, a road accident, a broken relationship or a hard time at work. No-one is immune. Paul certainly didn’t manage to avoid hard times and is very honest about them, as we see in this passage. The question is what do you do with hard times? We don’t know exactly what Paul is describing but he was clearly staring death in the face. He may be referring to one of the occasions when he was faced with physical violence, although some Bible scholars think that it refers to illness. Whatever it was , the result of this experience was that he lear

READ: 2 Corinthians 1:4 NLT 'He comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others. When they are troubled, we will be able to give them the same comfort God has given us.' When God blesses our lives, he doesn’t want us to hug the blessings to ourselves. In this verse Paul makes it plain that God encourages us so that we are then stronger and can go out and encourage other people. God calls us to get involved in an eternal chain reaction. It works like this – God encourages us when we go through difficult times so that we can encourage others and then they, in turn, are made stronger and can go out and encourage yet other people – and so on, and so on. Isn’t that exciting? The experiences of your life are unique. No one has experienced life in exactly the way that you have. Your life is a bundle of joys and sorrows, successes and failures and through it all God has been with you and has given you his encouragement. As a result of this you have a story to tell and you can use it to put courage and

READ: 2 Corinthians 1:3 NLT 'All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is our merciful Father and the source of all comfort.' Paul is bursting to address lots of issues in this letter. His relationship with the church in Corinth was a difficult one and he will need to defend himself very strongly in the pages that follow. But he begins by reminding the church about the nature of God their Father in Heaven. He reminds them that he is the Father of Jesus and that he is by his nature merciful. As a result of this he is the source of all comfort. The word comfort that the translators have used here is an interesting word but not what I would have chosen. Comfort comes from Latin and literally means ‘with strength’, however, the word doesn’t sound very strong to me. It makes me think of someone coming along with their head on one side and saying,” O dear, poor you. I’m so sorry you’re feeling rough.” A better translation for me would be the word en-courage. That is to say, God doesn’t merely say

READ: 2 Corinthians 1:1 NLT 'This letter is from Paul, chosen by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus.' Paul had a stormy relationship with the church in Corinth. He had had the privilege of establishing the church in that busy and famously immoral city but they gave him a consistently hard time. It is, therefore, crucial for Paul to establish the reason why he is writing this letter. He is doing so because he is sure that he has been chosen by God for this role. Humanly speaking I’m sure he would have loved to have steered well clear of them. But Paul is committed to doing whatever God called him to do, however tough it might be. It is vital for us all to know what God is calling us to do. I remember a ministers’ meeting years ago. About fifteen of us were present and we all shared how we had heard the call of God to become ministers. It was fascinating and probably very different from what you would imagine. A couple of people could point to a particular verse of Scripture which was important f

READ: Psalm 37:16-17 NLT 'It is better to be godly and have little than to be evil and rich. For the strength of the wicked will be shattered, but the LORD takes care of the godly.' The Old Testament has no problem with wealth, indeed many of its stars were incredibly rich – such as Abraham, Job, David and Solomon. Indeed, wealth is seen as a sign of God’s blessing. But if you’ve got to choose between having wealth and a life focused on God, then the best choice is God. When our relationship with God is right, every other consideration pales into insignificance. Jesus pointed out that you have to choose between gods. You cannot serve both God and money (Matthew 6:24). Only one of them can be in the driving seat. This is a vital message for our society where the desirability of money is largely unquestioned. Many of the things that money can buy are excellent in themselves and can rightly be admired, but they have a limited shelf life. How very different from living a life that is deliberately focused on God b

READ: Psalm 37:1-3 NLT 'Don’t worry about the wicked or envy those who do wrong. For like grass, they soon fade away. Like spring flowers, they soon wither. Trust in the Lord and do good. Then you will live safely in the land and prosper. Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you your heart’s desires.' I have worn glasses since I was a little boy. Without them life is just a blurry jumble of images and makes little sense. I am so grateful for the skill of opticians over the years who have ensured that I can see clearly. In this psalm David is encouraging us to see our lives from God’s clear perspective – to see life not from our blurry, short-term human point of view but with the sharp clarity of eternity. David was surrounded by people who were committed to making life difficult for him. In early years he lived with the explosive and often violent temper of King Saul. And then as king he faced the challenge of not only a constant supply of military opponents but also many of his fellow countrymen who we

READ: Psalm 36:5-7 NLT 'Your unfailing love, O Lord, is as vast as the heavens; your faithfulness reaches beyond the clouds. Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains, your justice like the ocean depths. You care for people and animals alike, O Lord. How precious is your unfailing love, O God!' Do you remember the first time you heard someone tell you that they loved you? Perhaps it was your parents or a friend or a partner. It’s an inexpressibly wonderful experience. It changes everything. You are special, and the whole world looks different. David says many wonderful things about God but most incredible of all is that God the Creator of the Universe actually loves us. It’s always precious when you see a child and their parent expressing love for one another and the expression “I love you to the moon and back” is often heard. Here, thousands of years ago, David is looking for similar language to express the unfailing love of God and concludes that his love is as vast as the heavens, and his faithfulnes

READ: Psalm 35:17,18 NLT 'How long, O Lord, will you look on and do nothing? Rescue me from their fierce attacks. Protect my life from these lions! Then I will thank you in front of the great assembly. I will praise you before all the people.' Have you ever felt that the Lord has completely forgotten about you? Perhaps you have seen God blessing all the people around you, and you are wondering when it’s going to be your turn. If you’ve ever had those thoughts then you will understand where David is coming from. He has had a succession of crushing experiences and he is desperate for God to step in and to sort things out. Waiting is never easy, but when things are going so painfully badly it is much, much worse. Time and again in this psalm, David cries out to God to fix the situation. But what impresses me is that as he waits for God he doesn’t lose confidence that God will, at some point, step in and answer his prayer. He is sure that the time will come when he will be praising God for his deliverance. Samuel

READ: Psalm 35:1,2 NLT 'O Lord, oppose those who oppose me. Fight those who fight against me. Put on your armour and take up your shield. Prepare for battle and come to my aid.' This is an agonising psalm. David is in a deep hole. He is the victim of cruel injustice and he appeals to God to come to help him. We feel his deep anguish and pain and not least because, sadly, injustice happens in every generation. Every newspaper and news report gives us evidence of the injustice that is happening in our society today. You may feel that that is not your own personal experience but you don’t need to look far to hear the stories of people which resonate with David’s experience of long ago. The significance of this psalm is that David is sure that God can help. He knows that God is a God of justice, and that he would be deeply concerned about the injustice that he is experiencing. I had two years living in India and whilst there I had the incredible privilege of living in a village with an outcaste family. There are

READ: James 5:19,20 NLT 'My dear brothers and sisters, if someone among you wanders away from the truth and is brought back, you can be sure that whoever brings the sinner back from wandering will save that person from death and bring about the forgiveness of many sins.' Churches are not made up of perfect people. Far from it! This surprises the kind of people who assume that Christians live lives of near perfection. For such people there is great consternation when the organist goes off with the youth leader, or the treasurer embezzles the church’s money. We should always be shocked and disappointed by such behaviour – but never surprised. Churches are well compared with hospitals, composed of people who are far from perfect but who, by God’s grace and in the power of his Spirit, are becoming stronger and more mature in their Christian lives. Sadly, there have always been people who wander away from the church. It is always tragic when this happens and churches need to have a clear strategy for reaching out

READ: James 5:16 NLT 'The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results.' Four years ago I contracted whooping cough. To be honest I thought that it was only for children and was amazed when my GP told me that I had caught it. From time to time over a number of weeks I struggled to breathe, something I had never experienced before. The worst episodes were in the middle of the night and I will never forget those desperate attempts to breathe which ended in the “whoop” as air finally and slowly returned to my lungs. Breathing is essential to life and I now have a new respect for the process, and a deep gratitude that I can breathe without a struggle. The Bible makes it clear that prayer is the way in which we breathe as Christians. Everything depends on prayer. It has been wisely said that we are as strong as our prayer lives and no stronger. It would be impossible to exaggerate the importance of prayer, just as it would be impossible to exaggerate the importance of breathi

READ: James 5:16 NLT 'Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.' How are you? I wonder how you normally respond to that question. Probably, like most of us, you smile sweetly and summarise your life with the one word “Fine”. It’s a good word and if it’s true that’s wonderful and one can only hope that it will continue to be the case. But, if we’re honest, it is sometimes the word we use to push people away. What we’re actually saying is, “It’s none of your business. Leave me alone. Hopefully if you think I’m fine you won’t bother me again.” The reality is that we are not always fine. Sometimes we feel awful, and there are times when we know that we have failed miserably. James is encouraging his readers to be honest and to face up to the stark realities of life. We need to be real with one another and actually confess our sins and pray for each other so that we can find God’s healing. I don’t believe that God is calling us to share absolutely every inner secret and sin

READ: James 5:14,15 NLT 'Are any of you sick? You should call for the elders of the church to come and pray over you, anointing you with oil in the name of the Lord. Such a prayer offered in faith will heal the sick, and the Lord will make you well. And if you have committed any sins, you will be forgiven.' Jesus was both a healer and a teacher. You cannot divide up his ministry. He ministered to the whole range of people’s needs – body, mind and spirit. When Jesus left this earth he commissioned the church to carry on with that ministry and here in James we see what that meant in practice. The church is called to minister to those who are sick and to pray for them knowing that God loves to make people better and also to forgive their sins. In recent years the word “holistic” has become very popular to describe the way in which God works. In the power of his Spirit he wants us to be whole people, enjoying him and his world to the full. Many parts of the church have tended to focus on words and preaching and h