The Call to Holiness

'This is the will of God, even your sanctification' (1 Thessalonians 4:3)

In the Tait Chapel at Fulham Palace, London, is a mural by Brian Thomas that depicts the command of Jesus to His disciples:' Go into all the world, and preach the gospel.' Below is portrayed the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, by whose power the command could be fulfilled. But among the group in the Upper Room is a man in the dress of our own age.

One observer viewing the artist’s painting commented, “Is not this touch of modernity  saying that the presence of the Holy Spirit is to every generation and for all?”  

The artist seems to be saying through his depiction that such experience is not the fancy of a small group of Christian eccentrics, nor the exclusive concern of a select group of disciples. I think that he is saying that holiness should always be considered in its proper setting—as an integral part of the redemptive purpose of God for all humankind. Rightly understood it is the one serious attempt which believers may make (as God shall help them) to translate the spirit ofJesus into a recognisable pattern of Christian behaviour.

Two week known Christian’s from different traditions speak of scriptural holiness in a similar way.  Firstly, Mother Teresa “Holiness does not consist in doing extraordinary things. It consists in accepting, with a smile, what Jesus sends us. It consists in accepting and following the will of God.” And secondly A. W. Tozer “Holiness, as taught in the Scriptures, is not based upon knowledge on our part. Rather, it is based upon the resurrected Christ in-dwelling us and changing us into His likeness.” 

A 20th century hymn writer put it this way.

To be like Jesus!
This hope possesses me,
In every thought and deed,
This is my aim, my creed;
To be like Jesus!
This hope possesses me,
His Spirit helping me,
Like him I'll be.

John Gowans (1934-2012)

The Call to Holiness

We start this weeks daily devotions with an extract from the Methodist Church Website as we contemplate the Call to Holiness.

"The longing for holiness is not about wanting to be 'holier than thou'. It is about wanting the love of God to permeate all of our life, and for that love to be shown through our lives to other people.

God gives us the Holy Spirit, and when we respond, there is no limit to what the grace of God is able to do in a human life. John Wesley taught about 'Christian perfection.' He believed that a mature Christian can reach a state where the love of God reigns supreme in our heart. We can't be perfect in an absolute way, as God is. But we can be made perfect in love.

However we do not become holy all on our own. Methodists believe in what John Wesley called 'social holiness'. It is vital to meet and worship with other Christians in order to grow in the Christian life and to understand what is God's will for us and for our community.

The Methodist movement began in the eighteenth century when John and Charles Wesley got together with like-minded friends in Oxford to meet regularly for prayer, Bible study and Holy Communion, and to visit prisons and workhouses. It was called the Holy Club.

Holiness is not just about personal spirituality and prayer. It will also be expressed through a commitment to social justice and to enabling other people to become followers of Jesus."

I leave you once more with the wise words for Frederick Buechner "Only God is holy, just as only people are human. God's holiness is God's Goodness. To speak of anything else as holy is to say that it has something of God's mark upon it. Times, places, things, and people can all be holy, and when they are, they are usually not hard to recognise."

A Prayer

Lord, I come to You incapable of being able to live a holy life myself and humbly ask You Lord, that You would teach me to be holy and show me how You would have me live. Open my eyes to see what You would have to do. Unblock my ears so that I may hear Your still small voice, and give me a teachable spirit to learn all that You would teach me. I know that alone I can do nothing, but in Christ, Who is my life, I can do all things. In Jesus' name. Amen

That’s the Spirit

Come as the dove, and spread your wings,
The wings of peaceful love;
And let your Church on earth become
Blest as the Church above.

The symbol of the dove is both international and timeless and readily identified as an employ of peace. But what sort of peace does it signify.

In Christian terms there fare several biblical pointers to help us.

In John 14:7 we find Jesus saying to his disciples “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.”

In Philippians 4:7 we find Paul advocation, that “the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

However it is often our anxiety, our disturbed peace that impedes our Christian journey. We may well ask, in what way do I see myself frustrating Jesus and in what way do I console him? Would my understanding of this passage be a source of consolation or of frustration?

We need to be very humble and patient about embodying the presence of Jesus in the world as we have so much false conditioning to shed, we are in constant need of purification, we are always a work in progress. Each day we need to invite the Spirit of Jesus to take us over. We could start each day with the following morning offering and then in the evening time go back over the day to see how we have lived out our offering and how much more we need to grow into it.

We may well need to  pray the 13th century prayer, which was refreshed in the musical Godspell in 1971:‘Dear Lord, three things I pray: to see you more clearly, love you more dearly, and follow you more nearly, day by day.’ Then perhaps we shall know you in the scriptural meaning of the word peace.

A Prayer 

Lord Jesus, I give you my hands to do your work. I give you my feet to go your way. I give you my tongue to speak your words. I give you my mind that you may think in me. I give you my spirit that you may pray in me. Above all, I give you my heart that you may love in me your Father and all humankind. I give you my whole self that you may grow in me, so that it is you, Lord Jesus, who live and work and pray in me. Amen (The Grail Prayer).

That’s the Spirit

Come as the fire and purge our hearts
Like sacrificial flame;
Let our whole soul an off'ring be
To our Redeemer's name.

From yesterday’s light we move to the phrase “Come as the fire and purge our hearts”

1 John 1:7 says “if we are living in the light of God’s presence, just as Christ does, then we have wonderful fellowship and joy with each other, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from every sin.” (Living Bible)

I read a story of  a nursing home where a resident group was discussing their ailments. “My arms are so weak I can hardly lift this cup of coffee,” said one.  “Yes I know, my cataracts are so bad I can’t even see my coffee,” replied another. “I can’t turn my head because of the arthritis in my neck,” said a third. At which several others nodded weakly. “My blood pressure pills make me dizzy,” another one went on. “I guess that’s the price we pay for getting old,” winced an old man. “It sure beats the alternative.” “Well, it’s not that bad,” said one woman cheerfully. “Thank goodness we can all still drive!” Are our priorities out of place today? Are we just so thankful that we can drive that you don’t see the problems around you?”

It was Thomas Merton who said, “By reading the scriptures I am so renewed that all nature seems renewed around me and with me. The sky seems to be a pure, a cooler blue, the trees a deeper green. The whole world is charged with the glory of God and I feel fire and music under my feet.”

Where as Charles Stanley advices that, “Renewing the mind is a little like refinishing furniture. It is a two-stage process. It involves taking off the old and replacing it with the new. The old is the lies you have learned to tell or were taught by those around you; it is the attitudes and ideas that have become a part of your thinking but do not reflect reality. The new is the truth. To renew your mind is to involve yourself in the process of allowing God to bring to the surface the lies you have mistakenly accepted and replace them with truth. To the degree that you do this, your behaviour will be transformed.”

The need for spiritual purging, renewing recreating is all too apparent in our lives, that we may well earnestly pray - Come as the fire and purge our hearts.

A Prayer 

Oh Lord, create in me a clean heart, and renew a steadfast spirit within me! Hear the cries of my heart right now, for the uncleanliness that surrounds me is what the enemy has sought to use against me to kill and destroy me. I declare, that by Your sovereign power and the faith that I have in You, I will be made clean for I am Yours and You came so that I may have life in You more abundantly. Amen.
Psalm 51:10

That’s the Spirit

Come as the light; to us reveal
Our emptiness and woe,
And lead us in those paths of life
Where all the righteous go.

Today I want to concentrate on the line “Come as the light.” I love the gospel word picture of Jesus healing the blind beggar where he calls upon Jesus to make him see and the narrative goes on with Luke 18:42 Jesus replied, “Look and you will see! Your eyes are healed because of your faith.”  At once the man could see, and he went with Jesus and started thanking God. When the crowds saw what happened, they praised God.”

In the gospel incident the people tell the blind man to keep quiet. A useless beggar like him has no right disturbing the Master. But the man ignores them and keeps crying out. (In this he reminds us of the persistent widow we read about the other day.) Now Jesus stops. If the man had not kept calling out, Jesus might not have heard him and might have passed forever out of his life. How often does that happen to me? Is there something I need to call out to Jesus for today?

Michel de Verteuil says of this episode: ‘Lord, there are many people sitting at the side of the road, shouting to us to have pity on them, but they often shout in strange ways: by behaving badly ... by taking drugs and alcohol; by sulking, remaining silent or locked up in their rooms; sometimes by insisting that they are happy to be at the side of the road while others pass by. Like Jesus, we need to stop all that we are doing so that we can hear them express their deep longing to have their sight restored to them.’

‘I might also hear Jesus asking me, ‘What do you want me to do for you?’ Am I as prompt as the blind man to answer, do I know as well as he what I desire from Jesus? I too can ask to see again, to see God’s presence in my life and the life of the world, to see what the Lord wants me to do. I thank Jesus for his merciful and reassuring presence in my life.

A Prayer

Here I am Lord, coming to you to ask you to hear my prayer. Even though you know my needs Jesus, I need to tell you of them so you and I can have a conversation and my heart find it’s rest. Amen

That’s the Spirit

Today we turn to a 3rd favourite Pentecost hymn of mine written by Andrew Reed.

Spirit divine, attend our prayer,
And make this house your home;
Descend with all your gracious pow'r;
O come, great Spirit, come!

In Acts 4:21 we read, “After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly.

Sometimes, the Bible shows us people who are praying for things they already know God wants. Daniel counted the years until it was time for God to restore Jerusalem and then prayed that God would make it happen (Daniel 9:2, 16–19). In Jesus' "High Priestly Prayer," Jesus asks God to guard the testimony of His followers—which was God's plan all along (John 17:15). In the same way, the leaders of the church in Jerusalem pray for the boldness to speak God's word and the signs to validate that teaching (Acts 4:29–30). 

If they know this is God's will, why do they pray for it? Praying for God's will shows that we are ready to submit to His plan. It prepares our hearts for the changes about to happen. It is a way of stepping forward to volunteer for His work. It is good to have a demeanour that is properly submissive to God. To state that willingness in words for a specific goal at a specific time is powerful. 

The Holy Spirit honours their request by making Himself evident in their midst. They have chosen a path of hardships, persecution, and martyrdom. The Holy Spirit will never abandon them, and He will continue to strengthen them until their work is finished. Later, when faced with danger, they will be able to look back at this moment and remember both their willingness and the assurance that God approved of their prayer.

Prayer
Holy Spirit, our Comforter, and our Friend, as we stand on Your Word, we ask that You rain down on us. Let Your power fall on us and change our hearts. Open heaven wide and pour out the rain of Your Holy Spirit over our church and our lives. Change us, renew us, empower us. We need Your touch again. Precious gift from heaven, send us Your cleansing rain. Amen.

That’s the Spirit

Breathe on me, breath of God;
so shall I never die,
but live with you the perfect life
of your eternity.

How do you measure perfection.  I am sure that many of us with recall the scene in the children’s film Mary Poppins where the script show’s Mary saying…. 

“By the time the wind has blown
The weather vane around I’ll show you, 

if I can No matter what the circumstance
For one thing I’m renown
My character is spit-spot spick and span
I’m practically perfect
In every way.”

But what is Perfection in Christian terms. A summary of Wesley’s sermon on Christian Perfection shows how he described this  ‘as having "purity of intention", "dedicating all the life to God", "loving God with all our heart", and as being the "renewal of the heart in the whole image of God". A life of perfect love meant living in a way that was centred on loving God and one's neighbour.’

Our Hymn writer clearly shows that it is the breath of God within that enables the Christian to live a perfect life. And what is the essence of this perfection. 1 John 4:18 tells us, ‘There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.’

“To be a saint,” says Frederick Buechner, “is to live not with hands clenched to grasp, to strike, to hold tight to a life that is always slipping away the more tightly we hold it; but it is to live with the hands stretched out both to give and receive with gladness.” He goes on to say, “[God] wants each one of us to have a loving heart …  When all’s said and done, perhaps that’s the length and breadth of it.” 

Let’s read that verse once more,

Breathe on me, breath of God;
so shall I never die,
but live with you the perfect life
of your eternity. Amen