Aug 25, 2020 | Wens Pen
Hello Everyone
“Do you love me?” Imagine standing in the shoes of Peter when Jesus asked him, not just once, but three times “do you love me?” This is a profound story of love, forgiveness, redemption, restoration and the call to serve. This experience for Peter came off the back of his monumental denial of Jesus. Here we find this once flamboyant, extraverted personality who had shouted his extravagant, unswerving love for Jesus from the rooftops. Yet in those moments around the courtyard fire, Peter so quickly denied the one he loved so greatly. How was he to ever recover from that defining desertion of Jesus and the deep sense of brokenness after he ran aground on the jagged rocks of denial? We are told he wept bitterly as he looked inside the open wound of his shattered soul.
If we are honest, we are all quite quick to judge Peter and in doing so, miss the insight into our own defective track records. In fact, we have all been “Peter” at some point in our lives and have denied our Lord as we stand around the courtyard fires of life. I believe Peter did love Jesus, but the tentacles of fear wrapped around him with such an intense grip, he defaulted to protecting himself as he imagined his own fate by being associated with Jesus. But the real message of the story pans from a focus on Peter’s failure to a focus on the deeper message; a story of undeserved love, forgiveness, redemption, and restoration. This is not just unique to Peter but threads through every human life. We all need a gracious Saviour who extends this same gift to us and astonishingly enables us to carry out His Kingdom mission in our faltering, imperfect states.
Peter’s recovery and reinstatement was exclusively dependent on the perfect love and grace of Jesus. That day, on the shores of Galilee for Peter would be far more than just a day fishing. Peter would be a transformed man with a transformed mission. Jesus was aware of Peter’s need for forgiveness and reinstatement before he could step into his true call. Peter had gone back to fishing, but Jesus was about to call him to a life of love and service in the Kingdom. So, when Jesus asked Peter, “do you love me?” He was asking Peter, “do you love me with a love that is transcendent and of the highest, supreme nature; more than anything else [agapelove]?” Understanding the various Greek meanings of love, I imagine that Peter was aware of the lofty nature of Jesus’ question and was not so quick to declare agape love out of fear he may fail Jesus again. Sadly, Peter seemed to have locked down that effervescent, unflinching, unbounded sense of love for Jesus. So, when he answered, he expressed a love likened to a friend and brother [phileo]. Yet, Jesus pressed the point, and wanted to unlock that supreme sense of devoted love by peeling back the layers of Peter’s heart and extending His unqualified love and grace to this son who felt so unworthy and now so tentative. Jesus was calling this fractured, imperfect man into a mission of love and service that would see Peter become a key in opening the gate of the universal church where salvation was to be extended to the Gentiles. For Peter to be truly restored and reinstated, Jesus had to call forth a love that was unshakable. Yet, this love was not dependent on Peter’s ability to generate love. The call for Peter to love Jesus in a transcendent sense was underpinned by the profound exchange of forgiveness, grace and love extended by Jesus to him, along with the reminder that Jesus’ relationship with Peter was not defined by that moment of denial. Jesus then calls Peter, an imperfect candidate, into a life of service to “tend and feed His sheep” (John 21:15-17).
Each of us have imperfect records of faithful love for Jesus. Thankfully, we are not qualified on our own merit. Just like Peter, Jesus asks “do you love me; do you love me above all else?” When we understand the depths to which Jesus loves us, we say “yes” to that profound question. And Just like Peter, Jesus trusts His Kingdom work to us in our imperfect states. What a privilege to love Jesus and to serve Him knowing we are never worthy of the call, but qualified simply because He loves us perfectly.
So, friends, get your ‘agape love’ for Jesus on today.
Best days to come
Wen
Aug 25, 2020 | Care Conversations
We ended last time with Ben’s comment:
“Christ can change our hearts in an instant; changing our habits may take much longer.”
When we are drawn into a relationship with the Triune God, we are given the mind of Christ; the righteousness of Christ. Christ IN US is what transforms us and enables our continuing transformation.
The grace of God is at work in us, causing us to be formed into Christ’s image.
However, it is a mistake to think – OK, no effort required on our part, we can simply relax and wait for Jesus to perfect us… we can carry on with our selfishness, our meanness, our anger our self-centred focus . . . we’ll just wait for God to clean us up . . .
Paul points out:
“…work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.”[1]
Surrounding this statement by Paul, is a call to obedience which will result in a lack of grumbling and dispute as our attitudes and behaviours will be become noticeably different.
Again, we see that the Bible is thoroughly realistic about our human condition. Sometimes the Lord will simply remove from us the desire to express our self-centredness; sometimes we will find ourselves living in humility and be amazed that God has caused us to live in such a way. It is the grace of God changing our rebellious hearts.
In other situations, it may require
- Our willingness to struggle to overcome our sin of selfishness,
- Some conscious discipline to love others.
- Our readiness to make every effort to serve.
- Our concerted effort to place others before ourselves which will require the engagement of our mind and will.
The source of our motivation is knowing the grace of God in the humility of Christ; the source of our effort is His power and energy.
We will work. We will be willing. We will serve. We will put sin to death because of the strengthening power of the grace of God through the humility of Christ.
We, and our young people, need to know that living in Christ-like ways is enabled by the grace and power of God and His Spirit who causes us to persevere.
[1] Philippians 2:12-13
Blessings,
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Aug 18, 2020 | TEC Connects
The Pacific Group of Schools launched into 2020 with the noble theme of ‘Hope Through Perseverance’ (James 1:2-4). As we continue to persevere and navigate our way through this challenging and complex season, I have found myself asking a philosophical question that has a spiritual answer. Are we shrinking or enlarging?
At the end of 2019, there was a shared hope that 2020 could be our best year yet. We had sketched a picture, full of hope for what the year would deliver. Afterall, weren’t we perfectly positioned on the 21st century timeline, where history was about to turn the page from one decade to the next, offering us more at our fingertips than any other time? What happened to all the dreams, hopes and plans that were bundled up in the 2020 promise box prior to the pandemic hitting? It seems like we are shrinking or narrowing rather than enlarging, as the tiny particles of fatigue are settling into the crevices of broken dreams and expectations.
All the outward signs of our current, collective reality would point to a humanity that is turning inward as the borders of our lives appear to be closing and life as we know it feels like it is shrinking. But are we really shrinking? The answer to this philosophical question is found in a spiritual truth. Actually, we are not shrinking (John 15:1-8). God is faithfully holding every promise we started the year with in His very large, cosmic-sized hand. We are not shrinking, nor have we lost the promises or the dreams; they are simply obscured at this point in time by the blanket of calamity. We are not shrinking; we are waiting! Once God removes the fence line of the pandemic, He will bring us into a renewed, expanded territory that He has prepared for us to inhabit; a new season of life. God takes these times of “narrowing” and prepares us for the enlarging. He invites us to look past the declarations of doom and take hold of His hand to faithfully lead us into all He has promised, as He opens the borders for us to inhabit these expanded territories and fresh seasons. God prepares us in the narrow trenches so we can flourish in wider, expanded territories of our lives, as we partner with Him to advance His kingdom.
Take the example of David as recorded in Samuel. In 1 Samuel 16:11-12, David is anointed to be Israel’s next king. Talk about the promise of an enlarged territory. One-minute David is a shepherd boy in the hillsides of Bethlehem and next he is anointed to be King. Yet, David’s coronation did not come until 15-20 years after God’s anointing. David entered into a life of successful military warfare in Saul’s army. When Saul realised that God had accompanied David in every military strike, he feared David. Saul put a price on his head and David became a marked man. David’s hopes and dreams took a sudden turn that required him to run for his life. He appeared to be running from his appointment rather than to the new, expanded territory God had promised. His territory certainly appeared to be shrinking. Living as a fugitive looked very different to the promised life in the palace. David was relentlessly pursued. No place was safe. He was under constant threat. He must have felt unjustly persecuted, exhausted, desolate, and suffering personal agony; imagine his heart-cries to God? Yet, it was in the narrowing, the hiding in caves, and the battle grounds where God shaped David’s fierce, resilient trust in God to make him ready for the perfectly appointed moment, where his borders would enlarge and he would wear his God-given crown as God’s appointed king, to complete God’s kingdom work. The waiting and the narrowing were the gate way for the enlarging. He was never shrinking.
We return to our philosophical question . . . “are we shrinking in this difficult season?” If we answer philosophically, perhaps we could be left without hope. The answer to our question is shaped by who God is and is a resounding NO! We are not shrinking. God’s grand plan to enlarge our borders will come on the back of a season of waiting (Isaiah 40:31). It may feel like life is shrinking, but it’s a season where God is shaping us and positioning us to renew our strength, soar like the eagle and enlarge our borders in new and exciting ways. Our hardship will become the passage into new and expanded, God-shaped territories. No, it won’t be easy and we will feel the pinch of suffering, fatigue, fear and anguish. What makes the difference is the hope we have in the faithful promises of God, that when our territories do enlarge, we will be exactly where God intends us to be.
Friends, as we close out for August, 2020, our encouragement is to keep persevering. We are tired, we feel drawn and we want to see the back of our struggles. God will miraculously open our borders and we will find new and exciting terrains to inhabit and we get to tell the story of our God who faithfully led us to our fields of gold.
Aug 18, 2020 | Uncategorized
Hello Everyone
Dreams. There is a narrative in our culture that tells us we must create a dream and live it out in order to find purpose and fulfilment. In the backdrop of our minds there is a silent pressure to embrace this philosophical notion and if we don’t we are left questioning, “did I miss the dream boat that sailed off into the sunset”? There is a ringing in our ears to “live your dream” or “if you quit your dream, what’s left?” And then there is the famous quote by Henry David Thoreau “If one advances confidently in the direction of one’s dreams, and endeavours to live the life which one has imagined, one will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.” 1 Whilst some of these thoughts sound inspirational and even brave, there is a fundamental fault-line running all the way through the thinking that can be traced to a godless narcissism that assumes humans are in total control, following our dream with an insatiable appetite and unstoppable capacity. The dream philosophy propagates a self-focused, ambitious posture where the dream itself becomes self-defining as it weaves itself into the open crevices of one’s identity, consuming the dreamer. “I determine the dream, I live the dream and nothing can get in the way of the dream; my dream is who I am”.
Dreams. Of course, there is nothing wrong with having a dream. God is the master dreamer. The question about having dreams is who and what is at the centre of the dream and to what end do we pursue those dreams? The footing of the dream philosophy is to be defined and driven by the dream, whereas a God-shaped dream means we are directed by the God of the dream. God does place dreams and passions on our hearts and it is incumbent upon us to pursue God’s call. The pursuit, however, is not the dream itself, but the God of the dream. God’s dreams are about His kingdom; they are not about self-pursuit. To understand the nature of God-shaped dreams, have a read of the story of Joseph in Genesis 37-50.
Dreams are a miraculous part of the fabric of God’s creative design. The birthing of dreams and the fusion of those dreams into the realm of our humanity is the prerogative of His originality. God plants the seeds of His dreams for our lives deep within us. He works within the uniqueness of our personhood to inspire His vision, giving us the imagination to cultivate the blueprint of His dream, along with the innovation and creativity to engage what He births. That’s part of our creation mandate. We can then live with the tension of passionately pursuing our God-shaped dreams, whilst holding the dream loosely before the master dreamer, accepting the possibility that at any moment God may permit the dream to change. The critical thing about God-shaped dreams is they do not define our identity. A dream may be fulfilled or broken, and if broken, our identity is not shattered. Dreams are essentially about God’s recreative purposes and what He wants to accomplish through us when He entrusts us with dreams. The delight of God-shaped dreams is that it’s not up to us to make the dream fly. God gives us the wings for the dream and the wind of His Spirit to release the innovation, creativity, passion and resources to live out the dream. Our role is to love the God of the dream and be faithful as we co-labour with Him to see the dreams come to fruition for His glory.
So, friends, get your “God-dream” on today.
Best days to come
Wen
1 Henry David Thoreau
Aug 10, 2020 | Wens Pen
Hello Everyone,
False accusations. There is nothing worse than feeling falsely accused. In the courtrooms of our everyday lives we would never accept any accusations that falsely accused us of something we did not do. We would take up arms and defend our positions like a fearless warrior chanting victory ahead of the battle.
Yet the Bible tells us we have an enemy who hurls false accusations at us every day. These false accusations are fuelled with malicious lies and fired at us as missiles of destruction. Revelation 12:10 tells us that the enemy of our souls accuses us day and night before God. To throw us off his own stench, the accuser sugar coats these false accusations with words that appear to have a hint of truth; words that the enemy uses to hook into thoughts we have about ourselves that may have been shaped by brokenness or faulty self-beliefs that were shaped in our formative years. The enemy camps on any opportunity where we are vulnerable and becomes a persuasive orator when falsely accusing us. Some of the enemy’s false accusations include us being unworthy, inadequate, unlovable, never measuring up, being guilty, never being able to please God, being unacceptable, undesirable, deserving of the rejections we experience, that perhaps God loves others more than us; false accusations that roll on and on, creating spiritual scar tissue from all the cuts and abrasions of his vile false accusations, intended to dislocate us from the truth. Notice the pattern? Nothing that brings life; only false accusations designed for our destruction. Bit of a backdoor bandit if you ask me.
Lisa Bevere, recently shared a quote that said, “if you feel you are inadequate, worthless or not enough, you didn’t get that idea from God.”[1] As we stand in the courtroom of God, we see that these false accusations have been thrown out by the ultimate Judge. The case was settled when we entered into relationship with Jesus. God debunks the lies by setting us free as a final act in the drama of our salvation. He declares we are enough and nothing we do or don’t do can make us more or less acceptable to God. How about being described as the apple of God’s eye? Not only is there NO condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, He has discharged us from everything we were ever guilty of and every future offense as well (Romans 8:1-2). The most powerful Judge in the universe declares me worthy, acceptable, loved, forgiven, adequate, and completely stamped with His approval. On top of this God gives us weapons of the Spirit that we can fight with “against the principalities, powers, and rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” (Ephesians 6:12). God speaks truth and we must fine-tune our spiritual ears to listen to His declarations above all others. It is not God who falsely accuses us; it is God’s enemy; but his days are numbered.
So, friends, get your “truth” on today.
Best days to come
Wen
[1] Lisa Bevere
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