Be Still And Know

READ: Matthew 5.7 NLT 'God blesses those who are merciful, for they will be shown mercy.' Jesus told many stories that make us sit up. One of the most powerful was the story of the king who was owed millions of pounds by one of his servants. (Matthew 18.21-35) The man couldn’t possibly pay his debt. The servant fell on his knees and begged the king to be patient. The king took pity on him and cancelled the debt. If you have ever been deeply in debt you will know what an amazing experience that was for the servant. The relief must have been incredible. The servant then went out and met a friend who owed him a fiver. It was a trivial amount but the servant demanded that he be paid back in full, and threw him into prison until he recovered all his money. When the king heard this, he was incensed and ordered that the servant, who had been let off the most enormous debt, be thrown into prison and tortured until he paid back every last penny. Ouch. Jesus concluded by saying that that was exactly how his heavenly Fa

READ: Matthew 5.6 NLT God blesses those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they will be satisfied. I wonder when you last felt painfully hungry or thirsty. I suspect for most of us that, if it has ever happened, it is a distant memory. However, it is likely that Jesus’ hearers would have been very familiar with both. Harvests could be good or bad, and it was impossible to achieve a reliable flow of food. Additionally in a hot country people would often have felt desperately thirsty, and finding a good supply of clean water would never have been easy. Jesus wanted his followers to have just this kind of desperate longing for God’s will to be done in the world and for his justice to be established. Christianity suffers desperately from those who give it merely polite agreement. They live respectable and kindly lives and consider that Christian faith is generally a very good thing. Jesus is looking for something completely different. He wants us to have the same passion for his kingdom as a hungry and thirst

READ: Matthew 5.5 NLT God blesses those who are humble, for they will inherit the whole earth. Mother Teresa taught the world a great deal about humility. She gave us a wonderful example of what it looks like through her costly service to the most rejected and unloved members of her society. But she also offered us many wise words on the subject. She wrote,” Learn to be humble by doing all the humble work and doing it for Jesus.  You cannot learn humility from books; you learn it by accepting humiliations.  Humiliations are not meant to torture us; they are gifts from God. These little humiliations—if we accept them with joy—will help us to be holy, to have a meek and humble heart like Jesus.” Humility lies at the heart of the Kingdom of God. Jesus once told his disciples that the only way to enter the Kingdom was to become as humble as a child (Matthew 18.4). They were still looking for power and influence, but Jesus wanted to turn their thinking upside down. We only serve God effectively by giving up all th

READ: Matthew 5.4 NLT God blesses those who mourn, for they will be comforted. The word that is used for mourn here is also used in the Greek version of the Old Testament, the Septuagint, to describe Jacob’s grief when he was led to believe that Joseph, his treasured son, was dead. (Genesis 37.34) He was grief stricken. God’s promise is that those who are overwhelmed with sorrow now will find his comfort and strength. So that leaves us with the question as to who  these people are. Who are the people that are mourning so profoundly today? Jesus probably had in mind, amongst others, those who knew the agony of losing a loved one. We all know the pain of friends and family members dying, and many of us have had the awful experience of people dying suddenly or even violently. None of us would want to make light of these terrible experiences, but Jesus reminds us that death doesn’t have the last word. Even in the midst of our loss, God is there with us offering his peace, strength and love. When someone  has died

READ: Matthew 5.3 NLT “God blesses those who are poor and realize their need for him, for the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs.” Robert Powell acted the part of Jesus in Franco Zeffirelli’s film Jesus of Nazareth. He claims that his life was changed by the experience and recalls the day when he was filming the Sermon on the Mount. Powell had no time for Christianity but as he preached the sermon he said that he was so affected by its beauty that he began to cry. The tears were not in the script but Zeffirelli wisely kept them in the movie. It is easy to see why he was so affected by these words because they take us to the heart of what it means to be alive. They stand before us as a challenge and encouragement to us all as we seek to understand what it means to live the Christian life. Today’s verse is the first of the so-called Beatitudes. Before we launch into it we need to be clear what Jesus meant by the Kingdom of Heaven, an expression he often used. The Kingdom of Heaven comes where God is allowed to be in c

READ: Isaiah 59.1-2 NLT Listen! The Lord’s arm is not too weak to save you, nor is his ear too deaf to hear you call. It’s your sins that have cut you off from God. Because of your sins, he has turned away and will not listen anymore. If God feels far away, guess who moved. Isaiah makes it clear that the answer is decisively not God. Throughout the years people have lashed out at God because he seemed so distant. Have you ever had that feeling that your prayers were bouncing off the ceiling and getting nowhere? I suspect all of us have had that experience from time to time, so we all need to listen to Isaiah and learn that God is never weak or deaf. So when we feel far away from God, the problem is entirely with us. In order to keep close to God we need to keep an eagle eye on the sins which can so easily creep into our lives and push God away. The problem with sin is that it normally presents itself innocently. Perhaps you are feeling overlooked at work. You don’t feel that you have received the recognition

READ: Isaiah 58.6-7 NLT “This is the kind of fasting I want: Free those who are wrongly imprisoned; lighten the burden of those who work for you. Let the oppressed go free, and remove the chains that bind people. Share your food with the hungry, and give shelter to the homeless.” It is incredibly sad that Isaiah’s words written more than 2,500 years ago still apply today. There continue to be people who are wrongly imprisoned, hungry and homeless. God’s word to us today is, therefore, unchanged from Isaiah’s day. He  declares that the reality of our worship will be revealed by our willingness to care for those who are denied justice and as we reach out to feed the hungry and give shelter to the homeless. I am thrilled that Christians are busily engaged in fighting for justice and in providing practical relief for the hungry and homeless. The need is still enormous. There are more than 300,000 homeless people in the UK. I have often spoken  with homeless people and have been struck by the terrible ease with w

READ: Isaiah 58.4 NLT “What good is fasting when you keep on fighting and quarrelling? This kind of fasting will never get you anywhere with me.” Nothing is more unattractive than hypocrisy. When I have talked to people who don’t go to church, time and again they have pointed out the gap between churchgoers’ faith and actions. This was precisely the situation that Isaiah was  addressing. The people were regular in their attendance at the Temple and they said all the right things. They seemed to take their faith seriously but, in fact, it was all an act. Even when they fasted it was just play acting because they kept on fighting and quarrelling with one another. And the ultimate proof of their hypocrisy was that they treated their employees badly.  Jesus spent a lot of time pointing out people’s hypocrisy. In his day the most educated and committed Jews were the Pharisees. No one could doubt that they took their faith seriously. They were meticulous in the way in which they worshipped and tithed, but Jesus rep

READ: Isaiah 57.20-21 NLT “Those who still reject me are like the restless sea, which is never still but continually churns up mud and dirt. There is no peace for the wicked,” says my God. It was Augustine of Hippo (354-430) in his famous Confessions who observed,” Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee.” There is no doubt that Augustine was reflecting on his own life. He had lived a promiscuous life before he became a Christian at the age of 31 and had lurched from one philosophy to another. He knew how tempestuous and unsatisfying life was when lived in his own way and it was clearly a matter of joy and relief when, through the friendship of Bishop Ambrose, he found personal faith in Christ. A few days before writing this we were in Devon as a family watching the waves  crashing against the beach. I’ve seen this a thousand times but the enormous power of the sea struck me afresh. Everything got churned up by the angry waves. This, Isaiah declares, i

READ: Isaiah 56.9-11 NLT Come, wild animals of the field! Come, wild animals of the forest! Come and devour my people! For the leaders of my people—the Lord’s watchmen, his shepherds— are blind and ignorant. They are like silent watchdogs that give no warning when danger comes. They love to lie around, sleeping and dreaming. Like greedy dogs, they are never satisfied. As a church leader I find these words incredibly challenging and agonisingly sad. I am sure that we have all known church leaders who have worked extremely hard and they have rightfully earned people’s love and respect. But there are lazy leaders as well. Here Isaiah depicts the way in which spiritual leaders in his own day had totally missed the point. They were the opposite of shepherds. They didn’t care for the sheep at all. Their only concern was to have a good time and Isaiah goes on to describe how they loved to party and get drunk, and then to plan even bigger parties.  If you are a church leader then, like me, you will want to hear the

READ: Isaiah 56.6 NLT “I will also bless the foreigners who commit themselves to the Lord, who serve him and love his name, who worship him and do not desecrate the Sabbath day of rest, and who hold fast to my covenant.” In the Old Testament, God’s people were often told to be welcoming to foreigners. God’s love was not confined to the Jews and they were reminded that, as a nation, they used to be foreigners in Egypt so it was only right that they should be generous and loving towards foreigners. The people of Israel had spent four hundred years in Egypt so there was nothing that they didn’t know about the vulnerabilities and insecurities of being foreigners. The celebration of the Passover was a continual reminder of their roots in Egypt. We live in a wonderfully diverse country which, over the centuries, has welcomed people from many nations. This continues to be the case and every year we welcome many thousands of people. Some of them come to us as refugees and asylum seekers because of the dangers in th

READ: Isaiah 56.1-2 NLT 'Be just and fair to all. Do what is right and good, for I am coming soon to rescue you and to display my righteousness among you. Blessed are all those who are careful to do this.' Justice is a major theme throughout the book of Isaiah. From the first chapter, God declares his hatred of every form of injustice and his unwillingness to receive the worship of people who refuse to act justly. God declares that he has had more than enough of the people’s sacrifices and is burdened by their religious festivals. It’s vital that we realise that fighting for justice is not an optional extra for Christians but integral to our worship. Or to use the blunt language of Isaiah 1.15-17 if we don’t live justly then God won’t listen to our prayers. I wonder how well you know the community where you live and whether you can identify where injustice is taking place. I say that because most forms of injustice are hidden. They can happen in busy cities and quiet villages. The only way to know what is

READ: Isaiah 55.10-11 NLT 'The rain and snow come down from the heavens and stay on the ground to water the earth. They cause the grain to grow, producing seed for the farmer and bread for the hungry. It is the same with my word. I send it out, and it always produces fruit. It will accomplish all I want it to, and it will prosper everywhere I send it.' There is something about me that you need to know, and that is that I am incredibly excited writing these daily devotionals. Believe me, that’s got nothing to do with my abilities as a writer but everything to do with the fact that God’s word is powerful. So being asked to encourage people to read, enjoy and live by God’s word is as exciting as life can get. Every day, thousands of people read and listen to these words and I have very little idea of what the impact will be. However, what is certain is that God’s word is challenging, changing and encouraging people’s lives. We are completely dependent on water. There can be no life without it. Therefore, when it

READ: Isaiah 55.8-9 NLT “My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,” says the Lord. “And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine. For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.” Life is full of mysteries. Every day tragedies occur and people scream out to God that life is not fair. As we reach out to others in their times of loss we would love to be able to offer an explanation, but we cannot. The problem of suffering has challenged humankind since the dawn of time and will continue to do so. But the mysteries of life are not only at that end of the spectrum, because the wonders of life are just as mysterious. How can you explain the beauty of a flower, or the wonder of a sunset, or the majesty of the night sky? All these things are beyond our ability to understand. However, we worship a God whose understanding is infinite and whose love knows no limits. How should we respond to the knowledge that God is infinit

READ: Isaiah 55.1-2 NLT 'Is anyone thirsty? Come and drink – even if you have no money! Come, take your choice of wine or milk – it’s all free! Why spend your money on food that does not give you strength? Why pay for food that does you no good? Listen to me, and you will eat what is good. You will enjoy the finest food.' Much of Isaiah’s prophecy is dominated by the theme of judgement. The people had wandered away from God and had lived lives that were a complete disappointment to him. They had worshipped other gods and had neglected to care for the poor and needy. But, through it all, God’s deep desire was to bring the people back to himself, and so he promised to send his servant to bring them salvation. In today’s reading God’s incredible offer is spelt out. He alone was able to satisfy their deepest need and he was willing to give them everything they needed freely. The offer today is just the same. God sent his servant to us in the person of Jesus Christ and he offers his gift of forgiveness and new li

READ: Acts 7.59-60 NLT As they stoned him, Stephen prayed, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” He fell to his knees, shouting, “Lord, don’t charge them with this sin!” And with that, he died. Stephen was one of the seven people who were appointed to handle the distribution of food to the widows. Chapter 7 reveals that he was also a very fine preacher. He delivered a careful exposition of the Old Testament story which showed that God had repeatedly raised up men to act as deliverers of his people, and the Jews had systematically rejected them. And now they had murdered the Righteous one, Jesus himself. The sermon did not go down well. His Jewish audience was infuriated and shook their fists at him. They covered their ears, yelled at the top of their voices and rushed at him, dragging him out of the city where they stoned him to death. He was the first Christian martyr. As he died Stephen used words that remind us what Jesus had said as he breathed his last, but his words were interestingly different. Jesus ha

READ: Acts 6.1 NLT 'But as the believers rapidly multiplied, there were rumblings of discontent. The Greek-speaking believers complained about the Hebrew-speaking believers, saying that their widows were being discriminated against in the daily distribution of food.' If you have ever been part of a church or other human organisation you will know exactly what is meant by rumblings of discontent! They are part of life and are exhausting. It isn’t open war, but it isn’t something that can be brushed to one side either. The problem on this occasion was a practical one but it was clearly causing great unhappiness. The church in Jerusalem was composed of Jews from different backgrounds. Some of them had always lived in the Jerusalem area and spoke Hebrew or Aramaic, but there were others who had lived in neighbouring countries and largely spoke Greek. Some of the latter had come to live in Jerusalem at the end of their lives and were far from their families and so were particularly vulnerable. The response of the

READ: Acts 5.38-39 NLT Gamaliel said, “My advice is, leave these men alone. Let them go. If they are planning and doing these things merely on their own, it will soon be overthrown. But if it is from God, you will not be able to overthrow them. You may even find yourselves fighting against God!” The success of Peter and John’s healing and preaching ministry was deeply irritating to the Jewish authorities. They were anxious to silence them but nothing seemed to be working. They tried imprisoning them but even that didn’t work as the apostles miraculously managed to escape and carry on their preaching ministry in the Temple. So, once again, they were hauled before the Jewish leaders who had become so furious that many of them wanted to put Peter and John to death. Rabban Gamaliel suggested a different approach. Gamaliel was one of the most prominent rabbis of the time and was greatly respected by everyone. He was the apostle Paul’s rabbi and was so revered that he had the title rabban which literally means

READ: Acts 5.1-2 NLT 'But there was a certain man named Ananias who, with his wife, Sapphira, sold some property. He brought part of the money to the apostles, claiming it was the full amount. With his wife’s consent, he kept the rest.' This is a chilling story. Ananias and Sapphira were not obliged to give all the money from their property sale to the apostles, but they made the false claim that they had done so. They lied. There’s no getting away from it. They conspired together to trick the apostles and the result was that when confronted with their lies they both, one after the other, dropped dead. Given that everything seemed to have been going so well for the infant church this must have been a shattering moment. No wonder Dr Luke concluded the story by saying that great fear gripped the church and everyone else who heard what had happened. Lying is always serious. Facing up to what we have done may be painful but massaging the truth for our convenience is always destructive. It undermines trust and a r

READ: Acts 4.29-30 NLT “And now, O Lord, hear their threats, and give us, your servants, great boldness in preaching your word. Stretch out your hand with healing power; may miraculous signs and wonders be done through the name of your holy servant Jesus.” Having been ordered to keep quiet by the Jewish council, Peter and John returned to their Christian friends to update them. Their response was to pray, and what a beautiful prayer it is. You would have understood if they had asked God to sort out their opponents, but they didn’t. They simply asked God for more boldness so that they could continue their ministry and they prayed for yet more miraculous signs and wonders. The pressure of the authorities wasn’t going to silence them for a moment. I have had the privilege of meeting with a number of Christians who have suffered greatly for their faith. During the communist era I remember speaking with a Romanian Christian leader who had been repeatedly threatened by the secret police. We knew that we were be