Have you ever loved someone, so much you thought you’d die? Matthew 6:24

“Have you ever loved someone, so much you thought you’d die? Given so much of yourself, it seems the only way, tell me what you want and I and I will give it to you…”

I can hold solid conversation on faith, football and new jack swing, if you don’t know, well now you know (I’m finished). So I was listening to this yesterday and actually paid attention to the lyrics. The lead singer was FIFTEEN YEARS OLD at the time – dramatic much? But jokes aside he was expressing things that people genuinely think and feel. It can feel like you’re giving your entirety to someone and are just spent, doing whatever you can to please them to the extent that you’re left feeling drained. This is plain wrong because even when we’re in love and give ourselves over to the only man we should do, we experience continual joy, continual peace and continual security. But men AND women idolise their partners, family, friends, and then when it all goes awry they’re left broken, in crisis.

Often when we think of idolatry we think quite literal stuff: steer clear of other gods, polytheistic/ new wave ideas, materialism etc. But we rarely look at it beyond the skin deep. What’s the idol in your life? If your life and your thoughts and your actions and your joys don’t revolve around God what do they revolve around? What thing comes out of your mouth more than talk of your Father? What thing do you need to address?

Sometimes we need to step back from things and have a look at ourselves. Spending copious amounts of time on our presentation is idolatrous. That does not mean don’t buy new clothes, don’t wear make up or don’t get your hair done. But committing a large amount of time to perfecting yourself is vanity and self-love, let’s be honest. You’ve gone from preening yourself to narcissism and the consequences are not pretty.

God can’t come second to your girlfriend. You give your all to Him not her. Stop talking your friend’s ear off about her/him, chill with acting like they’re the only person on the planet. They’re not; yeah they’re cool but you don’t seem this excited about God and He kinda gave His Son as a perfect sacrifice for your eternal life, but whatever…

Until you know what it is to be loved by Him and trust in Him, and Him alone, chances are your relationship or the fallout from it is going to be pretty unhealthy anyway. When we know what love from God is, it also means we can have a framework for what love ought to look like. I don’t mean the perfect guy and the perfect wedding we see in chick flicks because setting yourself up for that dream is pretty idolatrous in itself, rather it gives you the opportunity to gauge things that are attractive in a christ-like, biblical light. In the way God intended us to love and be loved.

Further, loving God first and truly basking in the fact that He loves you, means that if a person lets you down your world won’t end, because He is the only being that will never hurt, never disappoint, never manipulate… at the end of the day the rest of us are fallible.

“No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.” (Matt 6:24).

We are here to serve our God and His creation, to be stewards in this world and light in a place of real darkness. That’s more than just some imagery and anything continually distracting you from this ought to be evaluated.

God bless and keep you always x

Let’s Be Honest, John 4:1-26

Yesterday, I stood alone in our bathroom, with no one in the house. Just out of the shower I was forced to acknowledge the very real possibility of being locked in the bathroom for the next few hours! 😭 As I was counselling myself, as you do, I realised I had been pushing the vertical lock further into keeping the door shut instead of pulling it out!

When pushing it, it had felt like such effort that I would surely remain locked in, through no fault of my own, obviously. Yet a quick change in direction delivered me from this ridiculous predicament.

In the western world there is a feeling of a shift towards seeking out eastern philosophies to live by. To paraphrase: meditation classes and polytheistic teaching are the new salvation, the new “living water” (4:11). But here’s the thing….they’re not.

The Samaritan woman in this story comes to draw water from a well that has been placed on land given to Jacob (4:5) her ancestor. Jesus tells her that he has water that will make her never thirst again (4:14). Imagine the effort of having to go to a deep well and draw out water on a regular basis, unsurprisingly she wants in.

Jesus compares the water from the well that makes people have to continually return to it, with the gift he has come to give the world. “But the water I give them takes away thirst altogether. It becomes a perpetual spring within them, giving them eternal life” (4:14). Jesus is talking of the Holy Spirit, this gift of continually-refreshing, thirst-quenching, void-filling water. In the Bible the Holy Spirit is often referred to as a spring that refreshes itself, that’s water is clean and sustaining unlike a stagnant lake or swamp.

The Holy Spirit is the way to fill this void that we feel when we live without God. When you do classes in meditation or read up on Kabbalah there is no same satisfaction, more often than not it just leads to further searching. For a number of people they may have to learn this the hard way. A man at our church spent thirty years traveling the world in the pursuit of the right religion and spiritual way to live! That is NOT efficient. The Living God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit that lives inside of us: this is the three pronged route to eternal satisfaction, forget the eightfold path.

Even within the church there is a move to be more accommodating of things God quite clearly presents as sin or not of Him. It is not for us to mould God to us, to choose the bits we do and don’t like, but to bend our will and behaviour to Him, which is only ever in our best interests. Obvious as it may sound, it could deal with being more explicitly demonstrated, myself included. We’re meant to be good examples guys.

There is no need to solicit deep sounding, pseudo-philosophical approaches to life. Don’t harp on about the positive vibes you’re putting out into the world, you can’t earn your way into heaven because you helped a lady cross the road. We aren’t perfect, so there is only one route to feel the satisfaction that our bodies so crave.

Like the lock on the bathroom door the more I forced it in the wrong direction, the more I was actively locking myself in. And the more it wouldn’t work the more force I had to put in, only to find the same unsatisfying result. Pulling the lock out was simplest thing to do and quite literally allowed me to go and read my Bible lol. Essentially, we don’t need to force or pursue things other than God. Journeys of self-reliance and “alternative” lifestyles still leave us with that very same void. “But the time is coming and is already here when true worshippers will worship the Father in Spirit and in truth. The Father is looking for anyone who will worship him that way” (4:22-23). Anyone. We have a gift here completely ours for the taking, not dependent on character, intellect, what we have to give – an entirely free gift that will fill that God-shaped void we all contain. Accept that gift and don’t look back !

God bless and keep you always x