Windows On The Soul

Some Christian traditions have always associated the Church with a mother image. Although not an actual scriptural term, the Bible does however call her the “Bride of Christ” ( Rev.21:9 ). Without stretching the analogy, we can learn a lot about what a church should be like by considering motherhood. The first is the birth of new disciples. The Church’s Great Commission ( Mk.16:15 ) echoes the first biblical commandment to Adam and Eve, “ Be fruitful and multiply ” ( Gen.1:28 ). Evangelism will not be fruitful because of programs devised by man, but as a (super)natural outcome of the attractiveness of the deep love between the Church and her ‘bridegroom’, Jesus the Christ. And having born new disciples into her family, the Church’s other function is the love and nurture of her members, with special attention to the ‘new-born’. There are both spiritual and physical needs to be met. There is feeding and teaching and cleaning up after ‘accidents’. Nursing of injuries (both spirit...

" Friends come and friends go, but a true friend sticks by you like family " ( Pr.18:24 ) The experts tell us that in aiming for the goals we have in life, like love, friendship, success, etc. we all consciously and unconsciously have various conditions, measures or rules by which we decide whether we are moving toward or have achieved a goal. These conditions can be positive or negative, and mandatory or optional. Friendship is a goal relationship that will be very fragile when the conditions held differ widely and are poorly communicated. Some example conditions are:- frequent contact, never criticizes, shows genuine interest and concern, never breaks confidences, shares personal thoughts. A useful exercise is to divide a sheet of paper into four, and prayerfully list all the conditions you have about friendships: the ' musts ', the ' shoulds ', the ' should nots ', and the ' must nots' .  Try and be exhaustive; if you have many more positive...

The Bible uses a number of different analogies to describe The Church, such as a ‘body’ ( 1 Cor.12 ), a ‘garden’ ( Isa.61:3 , Jn.15:5 ), a ‘family’ ( Jn.3:29 , Rev.21:9 ), or a ‘building’ ( 2 Cor.5:1 , Eph.2:21 ). All of these images illustrate multi-faceted growth, extension and adaptation, and all apply equally to The Church, any individual congregation or individual Christians. I’ve always liked the slogan, “ Please be patient. God hasn’t finished with me yet ”. When a ‘lost soul’ finds Christ, there is a sense of completeness in that a void has been filled. But as we grow in Christ, there is another sort of sense of incompleteness, not like an emptiness that needs to be filled, but rather being called onward in constant improvement. As God is constantly revealing areas of our lives that are not ‘up to scratch’, we are challenged to renewal. As our lives encounter new experiences and situations, we are challenged to meet them like Christ, with love. We are called to st...

“ I ask... that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. ” ( John 17:20,21 ). The squabbles in the church must sadden our Lord who prayed that his followers may be one. If the church worldwide were united (in spirit, not necessarily in one organisation), the world would take notice. As it is, critics of the church are constantly mocking us for our sectarian divisiveness. The church is both human and divine. It comprises fallible humans, and has yet to be perfectly redeemed. It is divine - the Body of Christ. So we need to be patient with an imperfect church. Henry Scott Holland put it this way in 1914 when the Bishop of Zanzibar wrote a pamphlet asking where the church stood. Scott Holland said that it did not stand at all, but 'moves and pushes and slides and staggers and falls and gets up again, and stumbles on and presses forward and falls into the right positi...

Among the many miracles of construction of the human body, is the wonderful structure of bones, muscles, flesh and skin. Without bones, we would be mere blobs of flesh, unable to stand or move. Without flesh and muscles, the bones would collapse into a heap. Although each individual bone is rigid, the skeleton being a jointed structure, is not rigid. It relies on pairs of muscles and sinews connecting pairs of jointed bones, with opposing muscles maintaining perfectly balanced tension. Further, the flesh and skin cover the harsh, hard bones, with the soft, flexible, cuddly exterior to the world. Paul's analogy of the body to the church, in many ways also applies to our individual spiritual "bodies". We must have a skeleton of doctrine, rigid in part, but jointed and movable, kept strong and in balance by the paradoxes of Righteousness and Mercy. Then our doctrine must be clothed with the warm, soft, tender "flesh" of love as our face to the external world. --...

"In a time when blood transfusion was unknown, Jesus chose the perplexing figure of drinking His blood. Ever since, Christians have wrestled with the theology of the Eucharist. Who can describe the process by which Christ's body and blood become part of my own? We are brought near to Him; we participate in Him; He feeds us - any of these phrases only hint at the mystery. Jesus used the analogy of branches attached to a vine. The more contemporary metaphor of blood transfusion opens the way for me to grasp the intended meaning. The communion service reminds me that Christ is not dead and removed from me, but alive and present in me. Every cell in His Body (the Church) is linked, unified, and bathed by the nutrients of a common source - blood feeds life. The infusion of fresh blood also helps explain the process of cleansing. I focus on the toxins accumulating in scattered cells of my body and the happy relief that comes when blood washes away those poisons. And f...

What a paradoxical metaphor Peter uses ( 1 Ptr.2:4-5 ) - "Living Stones"! "Stones" conjures thoughts of hardness, solidness, deadness: the very antithesis of "Living". Yet in the hands of God, the master builder, the passive "stone" is chosen and fitted into the correct place in the building of His spiritual temple.  Just as Jesus " the living stone rejected by man as worthless but chosen by God as valuable " submitted to God's plan, right to the cross and the grave, so we are called to obedience. Just as no two stones are exactly the same, so we all have our own shape and niche into which we fit - to one the door-step, to another the lintel, another the underground foundation, yet another the carved capping stone.  Then in the beauty of the whole, the very stones "will proclaim the wonderful acts of God". ----xxxXxxx---- Ps.118:22 "The stone which the builders rejected as worthless turned out to be the most...

If you weren't at the evening service a couple of weeks ago to see 50 of our young people, fresh back from camp, arms linked, singing God's praise, you missed out on a great soul stirring night. Yet our children grow up so quickly. In a matter of 5 years or less, a thriving church can go into decline if there is no on-going flow through from nursery, pre-school, primary, juniors to youth groups. But even with the best Christian parenting, our children must become children of God in their own right - God has no Grandchildren . They must discover for them-selves God's salvation. So continue to pray for the youth and children’s leaders and teachers at all levels. The children of today are the church leaders of tomorrow. ----xxxXxxx---- Pr.15:20 "A wise son makes his father glad, but a foolish man despises his mother" Ecl.12:1 "Remember your creator in the days of your youth" Pr.29:5 "The rod and reproof bring wisdom. A child left...

At this time of year, a mini-building boom occurs across Israel, as Sukkot (Tabernacles) approaches (Sept.20 this year). Councils prune trees and leave piles of branches on the road side for residents to use to make their temporary shelters or sukka . Even the newspaper real-estate sections advertise apartments with "a sukka balcony", so even high-rise city dwellers can have somewhere to sleep under the stars during the feast. As we celebrate our church anniversary Temple Day, I was reminded of the Feast of Tabernacles. The children of Israel celebrate God's guidance (by the cloudy pillar of fire) and provision (with manna and water from the rock) as He brought them out of Egypt, through the Sinai desert to finally reach the promised land after 40 years. As we celebrate our anniversary, lets remember that " Where God guides, He provides ". ----xxxXxxx---- Lev.23:33-36 "The Festival of shelters lasts 7 days...come together for worship" Deu.2:...

99% of the admonitions in the New Testament are for Christians to love each other. If we can really learn to love Jesus and each other, everything else that is supposed to happen will. If we learn to do that right, the world will be knocking on our doors. The command to "love our neighbours as much as ourselves" not only applies individually but corporately. The Church does not exist for ministry, but rather to be the Body of Christ . And as the trinity loves itself, so must "the body", and that love is the measure of our love for the unsaved world. Our ministry must be an outgrowth of our being the Body of Christ. (Selections from - "Living Together in a World Falling Apart" Dave & Neta Jackson) ----xxxXxxx---- Rom.12:5 "So we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are parts one of another - mutually dependent on one another" Eph.4:12 "His intention was the perfecting and full equipment of the saints, ...

The Lord God - the pre-eminent command, demanding total love with every fibre of our being. One's Self - when natural self-love is put under submission to the Holy Spirit, healthy self-respect and self-control develops as the miracle of the Holy Spirit making our bodies His temple, dawns upon us. Neighbours - the people we encounter in our daily walk, especially anyone in need, is loved by God, equally a (potential) temple of the Holy Spirit, to whom we must show equal love as for our-selves. Each Other - familial and sibling love now extends to the whole "family" of God into which we have been reborn/adopted as sons and daughters. This is the principal sign to the world around of our membership in this family. The Stranger - even the stranger who we will never see again, who has no particular need, deserves our hospitality - no strings attached. The Lost  - these have a need far deeper than our "neighbours". This is the love of Christ on the c...