A full life

Jesus had always lived in Heaven, with all the privileges of being divine. Then in order to reconcile us to God, he volunteered to become a human baby in a poor family, without much privilege at all - such a change in circumstances. He even had to learn how to live as a boy, obedient to his human parents, while redeveloping as a human his relationship with his Father God. The incarnation of Christ is all about Jesus' becoming one of us to share in human life and understand it from our perspective. Therefore, to a large extent, he started out just like us.

Then one day he turned up in front of his cousin, John the Baptist, and asked to be baptized. After a bit of a disagreement, John gave in and when Jesus came back out of the water, the Holy Spirit descended on him in the form of a dove and remained on him. Now Jesus already knew who he was - he had referred to God as his Father when he was 12 years old, so presumably he had some sort of relationship with his Father and the Holy Spirit before he was baptized. However, this was clearly a turning point for him. The upshot was that he was finally ready to minister and when he returned to Galilee he did so in the power of the Spirit in a way that he hadn't before (Luke's Gospel chapter 4, verse 14). This man who had been the village carpenter was now unrecognisable. It fact, it took a while for the people who heard him in the Synagogue at Nazareth to realize who he was.

Jesus' tools changed from hammers and chisels to parables and miracles. However, he often said that he didn't work on his own because he did only what his Father wanted - but He was also filled with the Holy Spirit. So the whole of the Trinity worked together while Jesus was on Earth. Jesus was so successful since he was himself God, but also because of his reliance on working in accord with his Father's wishes and ministering in the power of the Holy Spirit, with whom he was constantly filled.

Is it any wonder that Christian ministry can feel dry if we just get on with what we think that we should be doing, perhaps because that's what our job description says, or it's what we've been taught, or perhaps that's what the people around us expect of us? What we do for God is full of life and power if we constantly make sure that we are keeping in step with our Heavenly Father and remaining filled with the Holy Spirit - and that might mean not doing what others think we should be.

To minister powerfully, Jesus needed to be filled with the Holy Spirit; we can't expect to work effectively for God without the same source of power.

I was at an ordination service a few years ago at which the speaker turned to the congregation at one point and told us not to expect that the people being ordained were going to run around and sort out all the practical and administrative duties at their churches. They would do some of that, but they were primarily being set aside to be with God. If we didn't give them enough time to be with him, then we couldn't expect that they would be very visionary or effective at helping us spiritually. How much, though, do we load up our church leaders with expectations of their undertaking the tasks that we could take off them, not realizing that we should be paying them primarily to be still with God and then minister out of the spiritual anointing that comes from being filled with the Holy Spirit and surrendered to the will of the Father?

And the same is true for all of us. We might have busy jobs and many family commitments which prevent us from spending hours and hours with God each day, but our spiritual vision and effectiveness will still reflect the amount of time that we spend with him, how much we allow him to fill us and how far we are willing to surrender our lives to him. Striking a good balance between relating personally to God and working out that relationship practically in his Kingdom is oh so important. If you want to be dynamic for God, then make sure that you take time to be with him today, allow him to fill you, and do whatever he says - and tomorrow and the day after ...

Being baptized in the Holy Spirit, or filled with the Holy Spirit, is something promised by John the Baptist (e.g. Matthew's Gospel, chapter 3, verse 11), Jesus (e.g. Acts chapter 1, verse 5) and Peter (Acts 2:38), and seen to happen many times in Acts when the apostles were ministering or preaching (e.g. Acts 19:6). The result was that people were released to hear God better and speak his words (prophesy), speak in other languages (not all human ones but also heavenly - see Paul's first letter to the Corinthian church, chapter 13, verse 1). Other people receive gifts from the Holy Spirit of supernatural knowledge, wisdom or healing etc (e.g. 1 Corinthians 12:7-11).

If you are a Christian but haven't yet been baptized in the Holy Spirit, then you can ask someone who has been to pray for you. If you don't know anyone suitable, then you can ask him into your life now; then relax and let him do what he wants. "Holy Spirit, I want you to fill my life and I surrender to your will and your ways. Empower me to live for you and to minister to others so that your Kingdom grows and your will is done here on Earth."

Remember that if you have any questions you can leave a comment, or email us at Isaiah41v18@gmail.com.

Talking to God

Have you ever wanted to pray and not known how? Perhaps you haven't done that before and don't know where to start. Maybe you're used to 'churchy' prayer language and don't feel confident in using that. Sometimes even those of us who are very familiar with praying just get stuck as to how to approach a particular subject that's on our minds. A while ago I told someone that prayer is just talking to God and she echoed that back to me a few days ago. Yes, that's it - prayer is just talking to God, like talking to a friend, husband or wife, mother or child, father or cousin, work colleague or the person next to you in a queue. In one way it's nothing special; it's what we all do every day with other people. We don't need special words or phrases, or a particular tone of voice. Just say it as it is. You can even do it over coffee!

On the other hand, being able to talk to God, the creator of the universe, King of Heaven and Earth, living in glorious surroundings, attended by angels and other majestic heavenly creatures, is such a great privilege. Let's not miss out on it. God made us to live with him and, therefore, is so ready to hear us when we talk to him. After I had been reminded of the nature of prayer the other day, I went for a walk along the river to be alone with God and decided to talk to him: not use 'prayer' language, just talk to him and tell him how it is.

Sometimes we can hide God behind some sort of special way of speaking that we reserve for him, which takes away our sponteneity, even makes him feel a bit distant. It's almost as if we're writing a report for a boss, or a funding bid to a financial institution, and we have key buzz words that we know have to be included for us to be accepted. Then we can lose the initmacy of talking to the person who is right there beside us as a friend. I decided on that river-bank walk not to use the word 'pray'. When do you ever say to anyone these days, "I pray that you ...," or even "beseech"? It's just really old fashioned. To anyone else we would say, "Please will you do ...?" or "I'm desperate for such and such a thing to happen, so can you please sort it out?" or "Please can you help me with this?" Prayer is about more than just asking for things, so this is just one example and we shall look at other ways of praying in future posts, but it was so useful and refreshing spending time with God using just normal language and getting rid of all the special churchy words.

Prayer is talking to God, telling him how we feel, what we think of him, what we need, what we want, what we're grateful for, and anything else that comes to mind, just like talking to a friend.

After all, where, even in the Bible, do we see people saying, "I pray that you will ..."? Jesus, in the Lord's prayer taught us to pray without using that word. Instead he told us that we should say: Let your will be done, give us our daily bread, forgive us our sins, deliver us from evil etc. It's all very direct, not couched in polite language. We see the Israelites having the same approach in the Psalms. If they wanted something, they said it, and addressed God by name, Yahweh (maybe Jehovah or the Lord in the translation that you tend to use). I give here just a few examples. "Rise up, O Yahweh, save me, O my God!" (Psalm 3, verse 7) "Answer me when I call, O God." (Ps 4:1) "Open your ears to my words, O Yahweh. Consider my groans. Take notice of my cries for help, my King and my God." (Ps 5:1,2) "Let all those who hide themselves in you be glad." (Ps 5:11) "O Yahweh, don't speak to me harshly or punish me out of anger. Be gracious to me, O Yahweh, because I'm pining away. Heal me, O Yahweh." (Ps 6:1,2) "Make your ways known to me, O Yahweh, and teach me your paths." (Ps 25:4) "Vindicate me, O Yahweh." (Ps 28:1) "Repay the wicked for their works and evil deeds" (Ps 28:4) Of course, the Psalms are about more than asking God for things as well, but we can see how direct the writers were in stating their various requests to the one they knew by name.

In the New Testament the story is the same. For example, after Peter and John had been arrested and then released, having being threatened about not teaching in the name of Jesus, they went back to the other Christians who prayed together: "Now, Lord, note their threats but enable us, your servants, to carry on talking about you boldly. Stretch out your hand to heal and perform miracles in the name of your holy servant Jesus." (Acts chapter 4, verses 29 & 30). This is pretty much everyday language. You could change a lot of the words and turn it into a carefully crafted and beautiful prayer for use in church, but it's fine as it is. On the other hand, there's nothing wrong with church-style prayers; there's nothing wrong with using whatever kind of language that you feel happiest with when praying. But always remember that prayer is just talking to God, the one who is ready to hear and is right there beside you listening.

If you don't know how to pray, or don't feel that you are connecting with God as you would like, then just talk to him as you would anyone else. You could start by saying something like, "God, I want to talk to you as the real person that you are, like the friend who wants to be near me. Help me to speak my mind and my heart to you, and to listen to what you want to say back." Then tell him what you want him to hear and listen in case he would like to reply straightaway. If you don't know God personally, because you haven't yet given your life to Jesus, then you can read about how to do that here. That will dramatically change your prayer life as well. And remember to keep talking to him, whenever, about whatever.

Who do you think you are?

There's quite a lot of interest in people tracing their family trees at the moment, with various organizations willing to help us out - generally for a fee if you want to go beyond the basics. There's even a television programme with the the same title as this blog post because we're nosy about other people's ancestry as well. It seems that our heritage is important to many of us. I'm sure that some of you reading this have done much more than my rather limited efforts in that regard. One of the things that Luke does in the third chapter of his Gospel is give us a genealogy of Jesus (Luke's Gospel, chapter 3, verses 23-38). Now tracing their heritage was important to the Jews, not just because of personal interest but it could also be important legally, as we see in the book by Ezra (chapter 2, verses 59 and 60).

Luke goes to great lengths to give us a genealogical record of Jesus, although it isn't the same as Matthew's (Matthew's Gospel, chapter 1, verses 1-17). The reason for the differences is unclear and various theories have been put forward. If you know anything about tracing the royal families of England over the centuries, however, you will be aware that some of the paths confirming rights to the throne were rather tortuous, and they often met and crossed in various places. Matthew and Luke similarly trace different routes for Jesus, but they meet at important points.

Luke shows us that Jesus had a great heritage, including being born into a human race created by God. We all share much of that heritage.

What we know for certain is that Jesus was born into the line which included:

• the first man and woman, Adam and Eve, who were explicitly created by God;

• Enoch, who followed God so closely that he didn't die, but God took him straight to Heaven at a relatively young age;

• Noah, who, with his family were the only people saved from the Great Flood, because they loved God;

• Abraham, the man of faith who became the ancestor of Israel, as well as other nations;

• Isaac, the second of the great Hebrew patriarchs, whose near-sacrifice at the hand of his father was prophetic of Jesus's death and resurrection;

• Jacob, who wrestled with God and wouldn't let go until he was blessed, the father of Israel - the name given to him in later life by God;

• Judah, the founder of the tribe into which it was prophesied that the Messiah would be born;

• Ruth, the foreigner who married Boaz and they became great-grandparents of King David;

• David himself, the great King, warrior, prophet, poet and the man after God's own heart par excellence, from whom it was prophesied that the Messiah would be descended;

• Zerubbabel, who was instrumental in the rebuilding of the Temple after the Jewish exile, and likened by Haggai to a cygnet ring on God's finger - the heavenly royal seal and a symbol of huge authority.

This is the family into which Jesus was adopted humanly when Joseph married Mary, one which started with a human son and daughter of God and included men and women of great spiritual significance. Jesus was also directly the Son of God in his own right. So Luke has painted a convincing claim to Messiahship for Jesus. But what about your heritage? Whoever you are, your family started with the same son and daughter of God, not spiritual children like Jesus, but human creation by the King of Heaven. If you've given your life to Jesus, then you have also been adopted into God's spiritual family.

So, who do you think you are? You are God's creation, fearfully and wonderfully made (Psalm 139, verses 13-16) - God loves you unconditionally and died for you willingly, as Jesus on the cross. If you have accepted Jesus as your Lord and saviour then you've been set free from all the mistakes, guilt and shame of your past, and born again into a personal spiritual relationship with the creator of the universe and King of Heaven, as a child of God. That's who you are.