Category Archives: General Principles

Guidelines to how I view the cosmos

Family, General Principles

Jesus and His Dad

Leave a comment

Everyone has a father even if not everyone has known who that was or even if they were not always there for them.

My observation is that absent or dysfunctional fathers are the root cause of a lot of people’s issues with authority, other men and God.

For those who had a reasonably good, or at least present, father in their early years you probably remember a time when you idolised him. You would have compared him with others and boasted about his various attributes, how important his job was or how good he was at various things, like kicking a ball into the sky or jumping a gate. You might have been about 5 or 6.

There is a sense in which Jesus seems to have never lost that sense of awe about his dad. I guess, in one way, that is not surprising considering Who we are talking about:

“My father who has given them to me is greater than all and no one is able to snatch anyone out of the hand of the father. ” (John 10: 29)

The relationship between Jesus and his father was intense to say the least:

“Truly, truly I say to you that the son is able to do nothing from himself unless it is something he sees the father doing. For whatever he does the son also does in the same way.” (John 5:19)

“I am not able to do anything from myself. As I hear I judge and my judgement is righteous because I do not seek my own will but the will of the one who sent me.” (John 5:30)

“I and the father are one.” (John 10:30)

“I have come from the father and have come into the world. Now I leave the world and go to the father.” (John 16:28).

Most of the time we don’t hear the father’s side of the ongoing conversation between the father and son but there are a couple of examples which show just how much the father also loved the son:

And lo, a voice came from Heaven, saying, “This Is My Beloved Son, In Whom I Am Well Pleased.” (Matthew 3:17)

(Jesus said) Father, glorify your name. Then there came a voice from heaven saying: “I have both glorified it and will glorify it again.” (John 12:28).

From the above quotations and many others it is clear that Jesus depended heavily on the father for everything. We see this again coming up to the day of his crucifixion:

“Behold, an hour is coming and has come when each one of you will be scattered and I will be left alone. But I am not alone because the father is with me.” (John 17:32)

But then, when he needed him most, the father abandons him.

Did Jesus see this coming?

About three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” (which means “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”). (Matthew 27:46)

If your dad left your mother unexpectedly when you were young and or vulnerable it may have been the most, or one of the most, difficult days of your life.

Jesus knows what that was like. (Hebrews 4:15)

General Principles

Letter to a Prisoner

Leave a comment

Remember the prisoners…. Hebrews 13:3

He Himself has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” 6 So we may boldly say:

“The Lord is my helper;
I will not fear.
What can man do to me?”

Hebrews 13:5-6

Dear T….,

I was glad to hear that D… & E… were in such regular contact with you. I know they have been helping you in your new situation. I trust that you have also been aware of the Holy Spirit’s tangible help during the times when no one else can be there for you.

I was sorry to hear about your father’s passing also. The Bible says that God is the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles (2 Corinthians 1:3-4). I know that you know God. The Spirit of His Son dwells in you and you can cry out “Abba, Father” to Him and He will hear and answer you. In all your troubles He has and will comfort you.

In this letter I want to remind you of the things you already know so that you can remember how much Jesus has loved you and how He has shown that love towards you and will show it to you again. He has given you the Holy Spirit in your heart as a kind of down payment on the future he has planned for you with Him in heaven (Ephesians 1:14).

Jesus has gone to prepare a place for you among the many magnificent dwelling places that His Father has created for us in heaven (John 14:2-3). When you feel God’s presence with you in your prison cell that is a kind of foretaste of the future you will share with Him and the rest of us who are in His body. Feeling His presence is a great joy and privilege. However, even when we don’t feel the warmth and comfort of the Holy Spirit in us and around us, we can still remain confident that He has not left us. Once we become a son through His grace and because of Calvary, we never stop being a son. Once you were a slave to sin but then God met you and you became a son of God through the action of the Holy Spirit in your heart. A slave does not remain in a house forever but a son does (John 8:34-36).

These things that I have written to you are not my own words but those that God has inspired through the Bible. Now that you have a lot of time on your hands you should bury yourself in God’s word and meditate, think deeply, about these things (Colossians. 3:16). As you do this things will work out and you will begin to see the hand of God in all that is happening to you (Psalm 1, Joshua 1:8).

I hope to write again as God leads. D… and E… keep us up to date with your progress and news. I expect you will have heard by now about the good news concerning B…. Our God is very merciful and gracious.

May the Lord bless you and keep you and make His face to continually shine upon you.

Your brother in Christ

Brendan.

General Principles

Glorifying God

Leave a comment

30 Having received the piece of bread, he then went out immediately. And it was night.

31 So, when he had gone out, Jesus said, “Now the Son of Man is glorified, and God is glorified in Him. 32 If God is glorified in Him, God will also glorify Him in Himself, and glorify Him immediately.

John 13:30-32

When Jesus gave Judas the piece of bread he was putting in motion the events that would inevitably put Him on the cross. There was no possibility of turning events back at that point. It may have been the bravest thing He did.

Jesus was fully aware of what He had done and of the consequences of it. Now a son of Adam had been glorified in a way no man ever had before. Jesus knew that once a son of man had been glorified in this way that God was truly glorified in this man and that He was now going to be glorified by God.

8 And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. 9 Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, 10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, 11 and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Philippians 2:8-11

God glorifying Jesus in Himself explains why this particular man who grew up in an obscure part of the Roman Empire 2000 years ago, who wrote nothing that we know of and whose immediate followers were mostly persecuted and scattered is the Son of Man and Son of God adored by millions in ages past right up to the current day.

Only God could do that.

General Principles

Caterpillars & Butterflies

1 Comment

Earth and Heaven

Paul writes: For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made.

Romans 1:20.

Of all the creatures God has made surely none speak of how God can transform something earthy into something heavenly more than caterpillars being transformed into butterflies.

This caterpillar:

becomes this butterfly:

There is no obvious connection between any caterpillar and the butterfly it becomes. Unless someone told you, there is no way you would think that that caterpillar could turn into that butterfly. Apart from the obvious lack of wings and a very differently shaped body, there is not even a colour shared between the two.

John says:

Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.

1 John 3:2

Paul casts more light on the meaning of this astonishing creation:

35 But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?” 36 Fool! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. 37 And as for what you sow, you do not sow the body that is to be but a bare seed, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. 38 But God gives it a body as he has chosen and to each kind of seed its own body. 39 Not all flesh is alike, but there is one flesh for humans, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish. 40 There are both heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is one thing, and that of the earthly is another. 41 There is one glory of the sun and another glory of the moon and another glory of the stars; indeed, star differs from star in glory.

42 So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. 43 It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. 44 It is sown a physical body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body. 45 Thus it is written, “The first man, Adam, became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. 46 But it is not the spiritual that is first but the physical and then the spiritual. 47 The first man was from the earth, made of dust; the second man is from heaven. 48 As one of dust, so are those who are of the dust, and as one of heaven, so are those who are of heaven. 49 Just as we have borne the image of the one of dust, we will also bear the image of the one of heaven.

The caterpillar is a picture of our lives in the physical bodies we exist in now. The butterfly is a picture of what we will be like in heaven. There will be a body but the spirit (wings) will be the prominent thing. What is invisible now about you will be displayed in all its glory there.

When you look at these butterflies and their corresponding caterpillars notice the following:

  1. There is no way of knowing what butterfly would emerge from what caterpillar.
  2. The caterpillars crawl along the ground with their heads down eating. Some of them have false eyes looking up to ward off predators.
  3. The defense mechanisms that the caterpillars have:
    • False eyes,
    • Horns and spikes
    • Camouflages (one looks like bird poo!)
  4. The lack of defense mechanisms in the butterflies.

So it seems caterpillars do a lot to preserve their lives but butterflies do not seem to see a need to do this.

I found this clip on butterflies in Mozambique. You will need to be able to access BBC iPlayer (from a UK server and you will need to register) to get it or you can watch it on the U & Eden channel on Sky. It is taken from the David Attenborough narrated Africa series episode 4. The relevant part starts at 09:20 and ends at 13:35.

Thousands of butterflies emerge from pupae deep in the Mozambique rain forest. The jungle is not an easy place to fly or find mates so the butterflies follow rivers upstream. After hours of determined flying they all emerge to the only open space there is – the treeless peak of Mount Marbu. Up here, free from the confines of the jungle, they hold a butterfly ball. Now they have all the space they need for their aerobatic courtships.

The point is that there are levels to our relationship/intimacy with God and higher heights to press toward.

General Principles

The Aim of the Commandment

Leave a comment

5 τὸ δὲ τέλος τῆς παραγγελίας ἐστὶν ἀγάπη ἐκ καθαρᾶς καρδίας καὶ συνειδήσεως ἀγαθῆς καὶ πίστεως ἀνυποκρίτου,

For the goal of the commandment is love from a clean heart and a good conscience and an unhypocritical faith

1 Timothy 1:5

While Paul was telling Timothy to do some rebuking of false teachers in Ephesus, he felt it necessary to briefly remind him of the aim of everything he was saying. It was not to promote knowledge (controversial speculations) but to bring about agape love – the same love that drove Jesus through the cross, grave and hell to get His bride – love from a clean heart, a good conscience and a sincere faith.

General Principles

Ego Eimi

Leave a comment

He said to them: “It is I! Do not be afraid.” They were willing then to receive him into the boat and immediately the boat was at the land they were going to. John 6: 20, 21

Ego eimi is a transliteration of the Greek which is often translated in this passage by “It is I” but literally means “I am”. The fact that it is “I am” who is with us is why we don’t need to be afraid. Of anything.

If we are willing to receive him into our boat, the world of our innermost being, we will find we will be at the place we are going to. He is the place we are all seeking to be. Maybe we are just not aware of that yet.

With him, in him and through him are all things.

General Principles

Trusting Him

2 Comments

This He was saying to test him, for He Himself knew what He was intending to do. John 6:6

Questions are God’s way of bringing us closer to him. A relationship develops during the outworking – the back and forth – of unanswered questions. Once the answer comes the relationship growth brought about by that interaction changes or ends. That is why Jesus spent most of his time on earth asking questions or being asked questions rather than answering them.

Most of us have unanswered questions in our lives. They can range from the global to the deeply personal, from the simply annoying to the existential.

“What will we do when we retire and our income is cut in half?”

“Where will I get a house to live in that I can make a home?”

“Where is my life partner that I can marry and form a family with?”

Or as in John 6: “Where are we going to get enough money to pay for the food to feed all these people in our lives?”

The thing is: Jesus knows what he is intending to do.

And it will probably be something unprecedented in our experience.

Our tendency is to judge future prospects by past experiences. History does repeat itself and as Solomon said in Ecclesiastes: There is nothing new under the sun. Even the feeding of the five thousand was not unprecedented. Elijah had done something similar back in the days of the kings of Israel.

However the disciples were not expecting the answer that Jesus brought and normally we don’t either. In our anxious going over of possible scenarios and calculations we usually never correctly predict what is going to happen.

For the really serious, heartfelt issues that we face about loved ones being sick or in trouble, or difficult changes ahead, or anything else that hits our heart’s desires, the answer will always be found when we find where Jesus is at rest in the midst of the storm, the answer he has to the cry of our hearts. “Rabbi,” (which is translated “Teacher”) “where are you abiding?” John 1:38.

He knows what he intends to do.

General Principles

The Sheepfold

Leave a comment

Jesus sums up a way of looking at His arrival into this world, and, actually, at the world itself in the opening verses of John 10:

Truly, truly I say to you, he who does not enter through the door into the sheepfold but climbs up some other way, that one is a thief and a robber.

But he who enters through the door is the Shepherd of the sheep.

To Him the Doorkeeper opens and the sheep hear His voice and He calls His own sheep by name and leads them out. And when he has put them all out, He goes before them and the sheep follow Him because they know His voice. And they will never follow a stranger but will flee from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.

John 10:1-5.

The Scripture does not make it clear how Satan got into the garden of Eden. For sure though, he didn’t enter through the door but went around some other way. Everyone who subtly insinuates their way into an oversight / shepherding role among Jesus’ sheep without express permission from the Doorkeeper, without going through the Door (who is Jesus v.9) is of that same nature.

But Jesus is the Good Shepherd. When He was coming into the world to redeem it by laying down His life, he came legitimately. The Doorkeeper – the Holy Spirit – was happy to open up the sheepfold to Him. The Doorkeeper only ever wants those filled with the Spirit of Jesus to minister to God’s flock, those who have express permission to enter the Sheepfold which is where the Church, His Bride is growing and abiding.

In the Sheepfold every sheep hears Jesus’ voice. Not everyone understands all they hear. However, they all know the sound of His voice, the tones He uses, the Spirit that inhabits those words He uses.

He also calls His own by name – He knows your name! This is not necessarily just that He knows you as Mary or John or Conor but that He knows what He has called you. You can spend a lifetime learning what God means when He calls your name. It’s your eternal name that has two clear components: the name that everyone else sees (Rev. 3:12) and the name only He sees (Rev. 2:17).

If you are His sheep, called by His name, you can guarantee that He will lead you out along with every other sheep into the battlefield, out of the safe confines of the sheepfold, that we may together be part of His plan and work with Him (Eph. 2:10) to see the world saved.

If you are His sheep you know His voice. You will never follow a strange voice but will flee from it. Really, you will know.

General Principles

Desire

2 Comments

Watch over your heart with all diligence,
For from it are the springs of life.

Proverbs 4:23

It is a great secret to have the eyes of your heart opened so you know what is really going on down there. Paul prays that it might happen to us all: I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, (Ephesians 1:18).

It is so important to know what you really want in your heart. As I have written elsewhere, the first thing Jesus (the Incarnate Word) is recorded as saying in John’s gospel is “What are you seeking?” or loosely translated, what do you really want?

God has put eternity in our hearts (Eccles. 3:11) so therefore what we really want will always have an eternal component to it. Actually, the eternal reality is the basis of our earthly most heartfelt desires. We are all looking for something that will eternally satisfy.

Some people know in their hearts that renting a house is just not it, they must own it. What they are doing is agreeing with God’s desire to give them an eternal permanent place they can call their own (John 14:1-3). They are sharing in the same hope as those who were looking for an eternal city among the fathers of faith (Hebrews 11:13-16). The hope in God that He will give to each one of us this place of security and permanence is a heart’s desire that cannot be denied. For some this will be the assurance of it coming in the future. For others a lot of that satisfaction can be found in this age here on the earth. As David said: “I certainly believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.” (Psalm 27:13). It becomes a tree of life to those who find that desire satisfied (Proverbs 13:12).

The same applies to any desire of the heart. They are all rooted in eternally valid and appropriate fulfillments.

So let the Spirit search you out and let you know what it is you really want. And don’t be afraid of the answer your heart gives.

Because the heart is the seat of the emotions, intellect and will (according to the bible) there are always strong feelings, intense and oft repeated thoughts and actions that arise out of the desires of our heart.

For all of us it could not be more obvious what we spend most of our time thinking of and doing. What is your most commonly watched TV program (is it “a house in the sun” for example)? Or is it a program containing a lot of human forms and relationships (“Love Island” anyone)?

What do you do to relax? What are you thinking of in your unguarded moments?

One way of looking at the Christian walk is that of capturing all those thoughts and bringing them to the Christ dwelling with you in your heart (2 Cor. 10:5). For Christ dwells in our hearts through faith:

…you have heard Him and have been taught in Him, just as truth is in Jesus, 22 that, in reference to your former way of life, you are to rid yourselves of the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit, 23 and that you are to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, 24 and to put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth. Ephesians 4:22-24.

The process of being renewed in the spirit of our minds includes the taking of every thought of our hearts captive to Christ and asking him what he thinks about it. Sometimes you might be surprised at his answers. We are very often not like him at all in the way we think (Isaiah 55:8) but we do have the mind of Christ (1 Cor. 2:16) to call on at all times if we choose to do so. Putting on the new man is to continuously walk in submission to the thoughts of Christ over our own thoughts.

Keep a constant watch over what your heart is thinking. Let God show you how your desires correspond to his. He put those desires in the heart of every child of God. He hasn’t made a mistake when he lets you reap the consequences of that sowing.

You don’t really understand the heart of God if you think he wouldn’t want you to both eat the cake in this life and also have it in the next. However, he does also know whether having just the eternal version of those two or both the eternal and temporal would be best for you.

Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart. Psalms 37:4.

General Principles

A New Approach

Leave a comment

And as He was going through, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him: “Rabbi, who sinned? This man or his parents that he was born blind?” Jesus answered: “Neither this man sinned nor his parents. This is in order that the works of God should be manifest in him. We must work the works of him who sent us while it is still day, night is coming when no one can work. While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” When he had said this he spat on the ground and made clay out of the spittle and anointed his eyes and said to him: “Go now to the pool of Siloam” (which is translated Sent) “and wash.” The man then went away and washed and came back seeing.

John 9:1-7

Cause and effect is a usual way of thinking for us humans: Something happens and we seek a cause for it. In this case the disciples had been taught that the reason for illness is sin. The problem they had is that this man was born blind so there were only two possible explanations in their minds: either the man sinned while he was in the womb or his parents sinned and he felt the effects of that sin.

Jesus saw things differently. He knew that he was about to abolish sin on the cross (Ephesians 2:14-16, Colossians 1:13-14) and so change everything. 

Jesus didn’t come into the world to condemn the world but that the world might be saved through Him (John 3:17). Sin is dealt with, so He doesn’t concern Himself with that. Now every disease, sickness, infirmity, addiction is an opportunity for God to be glorified. In this case God is glorified by restoring the sight of the blind man.

Let’s see every weakness of the flesh as an opportunity for God to work instead of trying to work out why it has happened. People don’t need our assessments, they need our love and the power of God working through that.