Author: Tobie

The Glorious Church

Tobie9 Comments

It has been almost five years now since a group of us started meeting weekly in a house in one of the suburbs of Bloemfontein.

We have never had a name or the need for one. In fact, we have been highly suspicious of church names since the outset (See related blog posts here and here).

Recently I decided to do a blog for our fellowship, and so I was faced with the dilemma of a name. There was only one that I could truly embrace, that accurately reflected what I had come to learn and believe about the glorious church of Jesus Christ over the past 3 decades of my life: The church’s name is… The Church.

Of course I mean “Church” in the sense of the Biblical “Ekklesia”, that is, the “Assembly” or “Gathered Community”. I certainly do not mean it in any one of the other ways sources like Webster define it, such as “a building for public Christian worship”, or “a religious service in such a building”, or “a Christian denomination”.

Some of us appear to have a need to read more into this word than what the New Testament means by it. The error is quite understandable. Apart from the words that we use on this planet to speak about the Godhead, it is the single richest word in existence. Of course such a word calls for scrutiny and exploration. Of course it seeks an expression that will truly reveal its essence. Of course it calls for all kinds of synonyms.

But in doing so we need to go deeper, not wider. Such a word can never be expanded. It has to be expounded. And you are not doing so if you use adjectives like “First”, “St. John” or “Shekinah”. Even “Covenant” and “Grace” do more to detract from the glory of this word than add to it. If you choose to highlight one attribute associated with the Ekklesia you inevitably make the others fade into the background. Church names, like idols, have the habit of turning on you in the end.

There are great synonyms in Scriptures for the Ekklesia, such as “the wife of the Lamb”, “temple”, “body” and so on. These will take you deeper, not wider, and they should be reserved for that purpose. There are others, too, and even if you manage to fit all of them on the sign outside your building, they will still mean nothing to the casual observer. To truly understand something of the church’s nature requires the best part of a lifetime, which means you can save yourself the trouble of trying to provide a synopsis by cramming a selection of her attributes into a name.

There is no name more beautiful to me than my wife’s, for it represents to me all that she is. She need not be called The First Glorious Revien Beautiful Wife Mother Lover of the Cedars of Lebanon (yes, she descends from there), for I know her to be all those things. I may whisper them to her, but I have no need to see them printed in her passport. This knowledge is reserved for those who are close to her.

Less is more, we often say, and this is truer about the name of the church than most anything else. Writers know that one of the golden rules of their trade is to never overstate the obvious. In fact, you should hardly ever state anything that your readers can figure out for themselves. Don’t preempt the mystery. Don’t rob them from the exhilaration of the quest and the glow of discovery. Refrain from the temptation to mediate the revelation. Trust God’s Spirit to decode their parables.

And so we adopted the only naming convention that we can find in the Bible. We called ourselves “The Church in Bloemfontein”, followed by the street address of the house where we meet. We make it very clear on our blog that the name does not belong to us but to the body of Christ in Bloemfontein, that we are not the only church in Bloemfontein and certainly not more officially so than any other one of the local churches. The only distinction is the address, which is part of our name for the sake of maintaining the principle of locality.

We’re challenging others who meet like us to do the same, although we certainly won’t split hairs about it.

What do you think?

Struck by Insight

TobieLeave a comment

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. 2 Corinthians 1:3-4

One of the most fascinating books that has recently found its way into my library is My Stroke of Insight by Jill Bolte Taylor. Taylor tells a gripping story of how she survived, and recovered from, a massive stroke that had left her without the functions of her brain’s left hemisphere.

What makes the book unique is the fact that Taylor was an accomplished Harvard brain scientist at the time of her stroke, and that she had enough sense to conclude that the experience of losing half her mind was the research opportunity of a lifetime. And so she began taking mental notes in her dazed and confused state, ultimately leaving us with a striking memoir, through the eyes of a scientist, of what it’s like to experience the deterioration of the left brain and its functions. Also, she provides an extremely practical step-by-step account of her recovery.

Taylor’s bravery was rewarded: The book became a New York Times bestseller and gave her international renown. Recently Ron Howard has signed on to direct the film of the book.

Reading it, I could not help but think of Paul’s words above. What do we do when we experience severe affliction? Do we become bitter and despondent? Do we blame others? Do we shake our fists at God? Or do we, like Taylor, see our affliction as the research opportunity of a lifetime; as a unique lesson of God’s infinite grace in the face of human pain and suffering that no textbook or sermon can ever convey?

The Second Call

TobieLeave a comment

In his classic The Ragamuffin Gospel author Brennan Manning devotes a chapter to the “Second Call” in the Christian’s Life.

Sometimes things don’t work out according to plan, Manning says. Sometimes Christians are devastated by death, disease, divorce, debt or disaster and find that they cannot live the afternoon of their lives by the morning plan. They have to find a new plan. They have to construct new goals and start over.

There is simply no other way.

This is the time when Christians are often surprised by a second call, when God intervenes and calls them as clearly and definitively as the first time around, and sometimes even clearer.

The Bible is full of second calls: Moses at the Burning Bush, The Prodigal Son, the distraught Peter at the Sea of Tiberias, to name but a few. These were people who once had a sense of destiny but who lost it as a result of the mistakes they had made: Moses became an exile in Midian, the Prodigal ended up in a pigsty, Peter went back to his fishing boat.

Yet they were all given a second chance. In fact, it was their response to the second call that made them legends.

The saying “God forgives, people don’t” is true indeed. Like the Prodigal’s older brother, we often frown when our fallen ones want to get up. Our sense of self righteousness is threatened by the notion that God wants to restore them fully and unconditionally, and so we prefer them to remain in the pigsty from where they can make us look better than them.

C. S. Lewis once spoke of the four ages that people go through: Unenchantment, Enchantment, Disenchantment, Re-enchantment.

If you have become disenchanted in your faith, don’t give up. Allow God to re-enchant you.

Love and Fear: A Given

Tobie4 Comments

Now this is the commandment… that the LORD your God commanded me to teach you… that you may fear the LORD your God… You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. Deuteronomy 6: 1,2,5

In his 1996 book Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think cognitive linguist George Lakoff argues that the main difference between “conservatives” and “liberals” has to with their understanding of morality. According to Lakoff, conservatives hold to a “Strict Father” morality and liberals to a “Nurturing Parent” morality.

Lakoff’s views seem to confirm an age old observation, namely that all religions can basically be divided into one of two broad categories: Religions of fear and religions of love. The one depicts a stern God of justice, the other a compassionate father.

The famous passage above provides us with two clear directives: We are to love God and we are to fear God. The reader is not given any choice between the two. Clearly the God of the Bible is both a God of justice and a Father of compassion.

Love and fear are the strongest emotions known to humanity. All of us are born with them, and we can never rid ourselves of them. Our only choice in the matter is who (or what) we shall love and who (or what) we shall fear. This combination of reverential awe and loving adoration is what worship is all about. Without God this remarkable inborn drive to worship becomes corrupt and misdirected. Love then becomes sensuality or a sick dependency, and fear becomes terror or anxiety.

The great challenge for the Christian is not to try and create these two forces, but to detect them and to redirect them back to their rightful object: God.

The Faith of the Fatherless

TobieLeave a comment

A number of years ago psychology professor Paul Vitz wrote a book with the title Faith of the Fatherless. In it he pointed out that many atheists maintain that religious belief arises from psychological factors.

Sigmund Freud, for instance, saw belief as a form of wish-fulfilment, an illusion deriving from powerful wishes or unconscious infantile needs.

The irony of this “projection theory”, Vitz says, is that it actually provides us with an explanation for unbelief rather than faith. According to him, it “provides a powerful new way to understand an illusion as the psychological basis for rejecting God — that is, a projection theory of atheism.”

A case in point: The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche famously proclaimed that “God is dead”. What few people know is that his father was a Lutheran minister who passed away a few months before Nietzsche’s fifth birthday. His conclusion might very well have been a way of dealing with his childhood loss – code for “Dad is dead”.

Nietzsche’s case is by no means an exception. Jean-Paul Sartre, Bertrand Russell, David Hume, Arthur Schopenhauer and Albert Camus were all atheistic philosophers who lost their fathers at a young age. Vitz mentions that many other famous unbelievers also had troublesome relationships with their fathers. Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Freud, Voltaire, Thomas Hobbes, Samuel Butler and H.G. Wells all had abusive or weak fathers.

We can learn a number of things from Vitz’s book. More important than the insight into unbelief is the disturbing, yet glorious truth of how our children are affected by our actions. We fashion their understanding of God.

This may provide one reason why the Bible is so concerned with the plight of orphans. Where there is no parent to represent God to a little one, Christians should be ready to step in and fill the void.

From Eternity to Here

Tobie5 Comments

Every now and again a book comes along that captures the essence of Christianity in a remarkable way. These are the writings that subsequent generations refer to as “classics”, and they are usually only recognized for their profundity and timelessness once the author is no longer around. There are many examples (although not too many!): Watchman Nee’s The Normal Christian Life, Andrew Murray’s Abide in Christ, Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s The Cost of Discipleship, C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity, Chesterton’s Orthodoxy, Gene Edwards’ The Divine Romance, and so on.

The latest addition to the “Classic” bookshelf in my library (reserved for the very best of Christian literature) was published only a few years ago. Yet it is regarded by many as one of the greatest Christian books of the last few decades, and a certain future classic.

I am, of course, referring to Frank Viola’s From Eternity to Here. Although not everyone agrees with Viola’s views on the church (he co-authored the controversial Pagan Christianity in which he and fellow author George Barna takes on “institutional Churchianity”), few of his critics find fault with this book. It has been endorsed by traditionalists and radicals alike, and is revolutionalising the way multitudes of believers worldwide see the “big picture” of Christianity.

Unlike so many Christian bestsellers of late, Viola has no new revelation to offer (thank goodness). On the contrary, From Eternity to Here combines in one volume the greatest and most precious insights from the best of the “Deeper Christian Life” authors of the past few centuries. People who are unfamiliar with authors like Nee and Murray, and with Christian movements such as the Brethren, will find this book astoundingly revelational and deeply edifying.

I heartily recommend From Eternity to Here. In fact, I recommend that you buy a few extra copies and give them away.

The Secret to Humility

Tobie3 Comments

One of the best definitions of humility that I have ever heard comes from the pen of William Law. “Humility is not thinking less of yourself but thinking of yourself less”, Law said.

Along the same lines, C.S. Lewis wrote: “Do not imagine that if you meet a really humble man he will be what most people call “humble” nowadays: he will not be a sort of greasy, smarmy person, who is always telling you that, of course, he is nobody… He will not be thinking about humility: he will not be thinking about himself at all.”

Law and Lewis are spot-on. As I’ve pointed out in this column before, a regular ingredient of pride is a sense of accomplishment. And so it is in fact impossible to pursue humility and find it, for the sense of accomplishment at the end of the journey will destroy it.

To understand this, we merely need to remind ourselves of Soren Kierkegaard’s legendary words: “God always creates out of nothing, which means that before he can use something he first reduces it to nothing.”

Theologians speak much of God’s ability to create “ex nihilo” (Latin for “out of nothing”), but Kierkegaard underlines the importance of “ad nihilo” (“towards nothing”, the etymological roots of our English word “annihilate).

Herein lies the secret to Christian humility: Only God can create out of nothing, and only God can reduce to nothing. Human beings can engineer the work of the cross no more than they can fabricate the resurrection. Both the letter of the law that kills and the Spirit that gives life come from God.

And so humility is not to be found by looking for it. Rather, it is the natural outcome of looking away from ourselves and to Jesus Christ.

The Root of Desire III

Tobie3 Comments

This is the third (and most important) post dealing with the issue of “desire”. If you happen to read this and you have not read the previous two, it might be a good idea to do so first. However, what I am about to share can stand on its own. It is, I believe, such a foundational truth that it ultimately relegates everything else relating to “desire” to the status of mere commentary. And so you can continue right on if you are not in the mood to read the previous posts.

Desire: An Appetite

What is desire? Desire is a yearning towards something. It is a hunger for something, and so it can be described as an appetite. Of course human beings have many desires for many different things, but in the final analysis they are all bits of one great desire. All appetites are mere shadows of one single appetite, namely the human appetite for spirituality.

Let me explain. Just as we are born hungry, and just as we need a source through which life will be administered to us in order to replace “craving” with “satisfaction”, so we are born spiritually hungry. In other words, just as “life” exists on two planes, namely the natural and the spiritual, so our yearning for it exists on two planes. We are naturally hungry, and we are spiritually hungry. Consequently, we can experience “fullness” both in the natural and spiritual realm.

Note that “hunger” and “satisfaction” serve as the primary indicators by which humans determine whether life has been administered to them or not. Of course this does not mean that these indicators are infallible. If you have seen Super Size Me you will know what I am talking about. But mostly we get it right. Mostly the pangs on our stomach direct us in a marvelous way to some or other source of nutrition that not only provides gratification, but that also keeps us alive.

Until we are hungry again, of course. And then the process repeats itself.

The point cannot be overstated: Hunger is what we experience, but it is in fact life that we crave. My two year old seems constantly hungry, but he is oblivious of the fact that when he eats he is satisfying a much deeper need: The need to survive as a human. And so God has designed a marvelous cycle of desire and fulfillment to keep us alive.

At this point we are ready for a few conclusions:

• Human desire is always an attempt to move from death to life, although this mostly happens outside of awareness. Note that Eve’s desire for the forbidden tree neutralized the fear brought about by God’s ominous warning of certain death. We’ll see why in a moment.
• For desire to cease, it looks outside itself for an object that can administer the life necessary to provide gratification. Eve “saw” the forbidden tree and concluded that the prospect of being “like God” would administer more life than eating of the other tree. Clearly, for being like God would imply more than merely receiving life. It implied becoming a source of life.
• Desire is not a pleasant experience. As the awareness of lack, its main aim is to destroy itself. And so the exhilaration of desire does not have to do with the desire itself, but with the prospect of gratification, that is, with desire’s absence. Desire’s main aim is to stop desiring. This is why Eve’s desire led her to pick and eat the forbidden fruit.
• The aim of desire is to bind the one who desires with the object of desire in a union of life. The result of this union is contentment, satisfaction and a total immunity to all lesser objects of desire. Eve expected the tree to do more than provide a snack. She expected it to transform her identity.
• When the object of desire fails to live up to its promises, for instance by offering mere temporary gratification, desire will return and the cycle will begin again. This could lead to an effort to extract more out of the object of desire or to interact with it in a fresh way. It could also lead to a total abandonment of it in the hope of finding a more suitable object of desire (See the reference to the Samaritan woman of John 4 later on in this post).

Made by God, Made for God

With the above in mind, let us consider two quotes:

You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you. Augustine

There was once in man a true happiness of which there now remain to him only the mark and empty trace, which he in vain tries to fill from all his surroundings, seeking from things absent the help he does not obtain in things present. But these are all inadequate, because the infinite abyss can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object, that is to say, only by God Himself. Blaise Pascal

God created us with a passion in our hearts: A passion for him. The aim of this desire is to unite us to God in an eternal, loving union. Just as children crave mother’s milk for the sake of their survival, we crave spiritual satisfaction for our spiritual survival. And just as the human body will not allow itself to be fooled in regard to the demands of its appetite, God does not allow us to experience this satisfaction apart from him.

Now think about this:

WHEN GOD DISAPPEARS OUT OF OUR PICTURE, OUR DESIRE FOR HIM DOES NOT DISAPPEAR.

No. It remains. It is an eternal and indistinguishable spiritual survival instinct, and it cannot be eradicated. And so, without God, the very passion that was intended to unite us to God becomes the passion that drives us to all kinds of objects and things in which we hope to find a suitable substitute for the absence of God. The reason people ‘s desires lead them to all kinds of sins is that they are seeking spiritual fulfillment. As Chesterton once said: “Every man who knocks on the door of a brothel is looking for God.” It is because of dispossession that we seek to possess, in other words.

If you are still with me, please stay here. I am about to say something that you may never have heard, and that may very well change the way you view Christianity, the world and yourself:

DESIRE CANNOT BE RESISTED.

Let me say that again: Desire cannot be resisted. The reason for this is that it is a spiritual force, given by God to you for the purpose of enabling you to fulfill the greatest commandment: To love him with all your heart, mind, strength and soul.

This instinct is engraved on your DNA and nothing can ever change it. The great commandment has never been an option. It is part of your constitution. And you will spend your life trying to obey it, no matter how confused you may be as to how to do it. The difference between human beings is not that some are religious and others are not. No. All people are deeply religious. The difference between them has to do with the particular avenue they choose as an outlet for their religious instincts. Even a self-professed atheist is doomed to finding some sort of mission, object or person in his or her life to make it more bearable. As always, desire is the navigating tool to do so.

Now for the punch line: If desire cannot be resisted, then it is futile to try and do so, even if it is “sinful” desire. To try and conquer desire is to fight against God, for desire is given by God as the appetite of the human soul. Even a child will tell you that it is pointless to overcome hunger by trying to resist it. It simply won’t work. Hunger and thirst only disappear when there is a filling of sorts, and it has to be a filling that corresponds with the demands of the body. This is why people adrift on the ocean eventually die of thirst. Seawater does not do it for them. In fact, the more they drink, the more they thirst. And to religiously command such a person to “stop thirsting” is idiocy.

The Purpose of the Law

This, of course, is the purpose of the Mosaic Law: To illustrate the impossibility of conquering human desire. As I pointed out in The Root of Desire II (this may be a good time to read it, if you haven’t done so before), Paul’s epic battle to keep the law of God (and his ultimate failure) had absolutely nothing to do with sins like adultery, theft, lying and so on.

No, Romans 7 makes it clear that all of Paul’s failure in keeping the law sprung from one, single commandment: The tenth, that is, the prohibition against desire. The “very commandment that was intended to bring life” (Note: …to bring life) instead produced in Paul “every kind of covetous desire” (See verses 8-10). And so Paul concludes: “I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, “Do not covet.” Put differently, Paul would not have understood desire as a powerful spiritual force that cannot be overcome by willpower, even the strongest religious willpower in the world, were it not for the tenth commandment.

Desire cannot be resisted, not even by the world’s most moral man. This is why God chose Saul the Pharisee as the channel through which to reveal the benefits of the New Covenant. Through Saul’s dismal failure to keep the law that he respected so much, the real purpose of the law is revealed: To make us aware of sin. Not of sins, but of sin.

The law shows us that we are slaves of desire and that we cannot do anything about it. Yet it is not the desire itself that is sin, but the way in which we choose to satisfy it. To get this wrong is to commit idolatry, that is, to attribute God-like characteristics to lifeless things. As strange as it may sound, the principle underlying all sin is love. But it is forbidden love. As Norman Grubb pointed out, sin is an illicit love match.

For our man adrift on the ocean, neither seawater nor willpower can bring life. For the man in Romans 7, and that includes all of us, neither sin nor religion can satisfy us. We need “real food” and “real bread”, to use Jesus’ terminology. Our desires must not be annihilated. They must be redirected. That statement is so important that it bears repeating:

OUR DESIRES MUST NOT BE ANNIHILATED. THEY MUST BE REDIRECTED.

Desire is the force that is intended to drive us away from the inherent emptiness in ourselves, and the horrible experience of that emptiness, to some or other source of fulfillment. This force is even stronger than our natural survival instinct, which is why some people will commit suicide in the hope of finding more satisfaction in death than they do in life. As I pointed out in the previous posts, every action of a human being is preceded by a desire. When we act, we obey desire. Desire rules us. We do not rule desire.

The man who sold all in Matthew 13 did not do so because he found religion. He did so because he found a treasure that was worth more than everything he owned. Through it all he remained true to his desires – desires that were transformed by a discovery of great treasure.

Similarly, the mistake of the rich young ruler was not his unwillingness to let go of his possessions. It was his inability to see the supreme worth of Jesus Christ. He was blind to the pearl of great price, as all of us are, and so his desires compelled him to hold on the only collection he knew. This is why Jesus pointed out, in true Romans 7 fashion, that salvation is “impossible” for human beings. The impossibility, of course, has to do with ruling over our desires. Clearly, for “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:21).

The Solution to Romans 7

The solution to the problem of Romans 7 is found in Romans 8. Here we find the “filling” that solves the universal problem of humanity’s spiritual emptiness. Romans 8 is about the Spirit of God, and the implications of being filled by the Spirit.

In this chapter Paul says that “through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death” (verse 2). Note the movement from death to life, and then note how this actually plays out in practice: “ Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires” (verse 5). Note the references to desire. And note that human desire does not cease in this equation. Rather, it is redirected from the guidance of the sinful nature to the guidance of the Spirit. And so the man in Romans 8 finds it possible to keep the law, for his desires has been conformed to the will of God!

Paul’s effort to resist desire in Romans 7 was futile. This was no mistake, but a necessary lesson to indicate that salvation is an impossibility for humans, but a possibility with God whose Spirit of life can arrest our desires and direct them in a wholly different direction.

Christ the Bread and Water of Life

The above clearly illustrates how bankrupt religion is as a means to curb desire. Only Jesus Christ can offer the satisfaction sought by the human soul. No amount of rules, ritual, willpower or anything else in the whole, wide world can do this. Only Christ can, and this is what we mean when we say “Jesus Christ is all”. Of course, this is what the Bible means when it says that Jesus Christ has the supremacy in everything and that “God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him”.

Think about it: Jesus had at his disposal countless metaphors by which to illustrate to us who he was and what his mission involved. But he chose the image of a meal from heaven to do so. We are to eat and drink him, he instructed us, and the result will be that we will never hunger or thirst again. Every time that Christians sit down to the Lord’s Supper, this is what they confess. Christ is our life. Christ is our delight. Christ is sufficient. We desire nothing but Christ.

Loving the Father and loving the Son is not an act of the will. It is a spontaneous and irresistible compulsion following the discovery of who God really is. This treasure is locked up in Jesus Christ, as is evident from the following verses:

• It has pleased God to let his fullness dwell in Christ (Col. 1:19)
• Jesus Christ is the “image of the invisible God” (Col 1:15; 1 Cor. 4:4)
• Jesus Christ is the “exact representation” of the being of God (Heb. 1:3)
• Jesus Christ is the “Word” of God, that is, God’s primary communication to us (John 1:1, 14)
• When Philip asked Jesus to “show” the Father to the disciples, Jesus replied: “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me?”

Jesus Christ is the character and nature of God embodied in the flesh, and so the only avenue to the fullness, wholeness and contentment of God is in and through Jesus Christ. We are to take him into us as our ancestors were intended to eat of the tree of life. His life is the life of God, the only life that satisfies.

And so the great commandment, to love God with all of our faculties and with all of each faculty, and the Mosaic Law’s great prohibition against covetousness, is in reality one and the same commandment. Matthew 22:37 and Exodus 20:17 are the two sides of the same coin, the one stated positively, the other negatively. The one summarises the great “do” of the law (covering all the so-called “sins of omission”) and the other the great don’t of the law (covering the “sins of commission”). All of them are wrapped up in a single principle: The all-sufficiency of Jesus Christ. And so Jesus Christ is both the central message of the Ten Commandments as well as the New Testament.

With the above in mind, reconsider the following verses, most of which you may know:

O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you;
 my soul thirsts for you;
 my flesh faints for you,
as in a dry and weary land where there is no water … My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food,
 and my mouth will praise you with joyful lips, when I remember you upon my bed, 
and meditate on you in the watches of the night… Psalm 63

The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. 
He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul. Psalm 23:1-2

As a deer pants for flowing streams, 
so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God,
 for the living God. Psalm 42:1-2

Whom have I in heaven but you?
 And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. Psalm 73:25

I spread out my hands to you; my soul thirsts for you like a parched land. Psalm 143:6

You open your hand; you satisfy the desire of every living thing. Psalm 145:16

Your name and renown are the desire of our hearts. My soul yearns for you in the night; in the morning my spirit longs for you. Isaiah 26:8-9

Come, everyone who thirsts,
 come to the waters; 
and he who has no money, 
come, buy and eat!
 Come, buy wine and milk
 without money and without price.
 Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread,
 and your labor for that which does not satisfy?
Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good,
 and delight yourselves in rich food.
 Incline your ear, and come to me;
 hear, that your soul may live. Isaiah 55

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Matthew 5:6

Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life. John 4:13-14

Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. John 6:35

I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world. John 6:51

On the last and greatest day of the Feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. John 7:37

What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ. Philippians 3:8

He said to me: “It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To him who is thirsty I will give to drink without cost from the spring of the water of life. Revelation 21:6

The Spirit and the bride say, “Come!” And let him who hears say, “Come!” Whoever is thirsty, let him come; and whoever wishes, let him take the free gift of the water of life. Revelation 22:17

Jesus Christ is our satisfaction. We were created and designed for a relationship with him. That is why we exist. Nothing can quench this desire. We are the bride of the Groom, and our desire is for our husband.

Like the Samaritan woman at the well, we will remain thirsty throughout all our affairs with different lovers. Our problem is not our thirst. It is the wells we drink from. This is the message of John 4, and it is the central message of the Bible. As God said through the prophet Jeremiah: “My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.”

Only two sins, God says. We do not allow him to be our satisfaction, and we seek our satisfaction in that which cannot satisfy.

It was Augustine who said that the gospel is not about duty, but about delight. He was right. Our mission on planet earth is to delight ourselves in God. Nothing brings God more glory, for nothing reflects his fullness better in this age. His perfection is best expressed in our contentment. His life is best expressed in our satisfaction.

As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me. John 6:57

The Art of Reflection

TobieLeave a comment

Consider what I say, and the Lord will give you understanding in all things. 2 Timothy 2:7

According to communication theorists the process of communication consists of three elements: A Sender (encoder), a message (code) and a receiver (decoder). According to the apostle Paul, spiritual communication contains a fourth element: Understanding given by the Lord.

There is a condition, however. The hearer needs to “consider” or, as some translations put it, “think about” the message. Only then will the insight come.

The implications of this verse are quite astounding. Paul is, in fact, prescribing a profound spiritual discipline to the church of Jesus Christ. The Greek word for “consider” literally means “to exercise the mind”. Understanding the Word of God is the conclusion of a deep and serious meditative process, in other words.

The New Testament uses the metaphors of meat and milk to distinguish between the nutrition of mature and immature Christians. When we consider that one of the primary differences between drinking milk and eating meat has to do with the respective digestive processes associated with it, Paul’s advice makes a lot of sense. Milk requires no digestion as it is pre-digested. For meat to be absorbed, however, it needs to be broken down by the body, and this takes time. It is therefore not farfetched to suspect that one of the fundamental differences between the mature and the immature believer lies in their ability, or inability, to digest the meat of the word – to consider, think about and meditate on it.

We are a culture who has lost their ability to reflect, many believe. We prefer soap operas, not Shakespeare. If this is true, then Paul’s challenge is all the more relevant.