Terry Virgo’s Blog

Last Saturday members of Newfrontiers churches from East Kent gathered in a field just outside Canterbury. Tom Shaw, the pastor of City Church (www.thecitychurch.org.uk) had done a brilliant job in gathering hundreds of enthusiastic people to what proved to be a magnificent camping site.

The weather was excellent and the atmosphere bright and positive.

I had been personally invited to join them in the sad absence of David Holden, who is indisposed at the moment, so I turned up, to be honest, rather distracted by my focus being on the Together on a Mission conference in Brighton, which is so imminently upon us.

Having said that, I was absolutely delighted to be there and felt that I should take my two Saturday morning sessions from my recent studies on Elijah, since these themes have been on my heart for some time now. I am persuaded that Elijah is particularly qualified to speak to our generation. He also knew the horrors of living in a ‘post-Christian era’, having watched all the former values of his nation gradually disintegrate and Israel almost entirely forgetting its raison d’être.

The nation that was supposed to be the light of the world and God’s special treasure now had a king and a very scary queen who had made the worship of Yahweh illegal! How rapidly things had changed from 58 years earlier when Solomon reigned in splendour. How horrifically seven kings replacing one another had undermined the values of the nation.

One Queen, several governments
I am personally very stirred to see how things have changed so radically in the UK in a similar period of time. Wendy and I watched a video of the Queen’s coronation a while ago. It is amazing to listen to the promises that she was invited to make (in 1953), all of which were so honouring of the Lord Jesus Christ. She made magnificent statements which sadly now seem very foreign to our culture.

Tragically in Elijah’s day, those who were meant to be living for the glory of God now found it was illegal to worship Him. How similar to some in our nation today where nurses are dismissed for offering to pray with their patients, and teachers would be in serious trouble if they spent time extolling the virtues of Jesus to their students. It’s not allowed.

How rapidly things have changed and how much we need an Elijah-like church.

I have been taking a series on Elijah now for a couple of years at Church of Christ the King in Brighton (www.cck.org.uk) – not every week you will be pleased to know! My most recent in the series was number eight, where we looked at Elijah’s prayer for rain on Mount Carmel.

It occurred to me that in going to Tom’s East Kent camp (above) I could take the verse found in James 5 concerning Elijah’s prayer – first that it would not rain and secondly that it might rain – and bring my first and then most recent sermons on Elijah.

Encouraging response
I must confess to being genuinely encouraged by the response that has come to this series and particularly to this most recent sermon. If God is raising up more praying people I am deeply grateful. I am very grateful too to Adrian Warnock, noting that he has come across the series and is giving each preach some visibility on his blog (www.adrianwarnock.com).

Perhaps you would like to listen to the most recent talk in the series. If so, please go to http://www.cck.org.uk/Groups/68819/Church_of_Christ/Media/Sunday_Preaches/Elijah/Elijah.aspx

Now I must return to my preparation for the Brighton TOAM conference where I shall be speaking about our past, our present and our future, somewhat in response to Mark Driscoll’s stirring words last year. I do believe these will be important days and I am so glad that thousands of you will be with us. If you have a free day, why don’t you join us as a day visitor?

Incidentally, books referred to in the most recent sermon are:-

DA Carson, A Call to Spiritual Reformation
DA Carson (Editor), Teach us to Pray
Andrew Murray, With Christ in the School of Prayer
Andrew Murray, The Ministry of Intercession
Yongi Cho, Prayer, the Key to Revival

Picture, for a moment, an imaginary scene that can help illustrate why God restrains us for our own benefit. Imagine a splendid carriage being pulled down the road by six fine-looking horses. The carriage stops and the coachman alights to investigate an obstruction under one of the wheels. The horses, decorated with bells and plumes, look magnificent as they wait in the sun. At any moment they could bolt, crushing the man beneath the carriage. But the coachman shows no fear of that. He works calmly under the carriage, not a plume quivering or bell tinkling. Each horse stands obediently still.

Then two young colts come galloping up over an open field. They are completely unrestrained and seem to challenge the carriage horses to join them in their liberty. But the temptation falls on deaf ears – the carriage horses show no sign of response. They just continue to stand calmly with the carriage and ignore the taunts of the colts.

Then, taking a rope in hand, the coachman catches the two colts, ties them to the carriage, and takes them to a corral where they begin to go through a period of training and discipline. Time passes and their forced confinement becomes increasingly tedious and frustrating. One colt, longing for the days when he roamed freely, feels that he can’t take another day. He leaps the fence and gallops away to enjoy the grassy hills.

The other colt stays behind. Gradually he learns to yield and to respond to the whip and bridle. The training is tough, but he begins to understand why it’s necessary. Finally, it ends. Is he then rewarded by being released to run free again? No. A harness is dropped around his shoulders and he is more confined than ever! Now he can’t even run around the corral; he can only move when his master speaks.

Sometime later, the first colt is nibbling grass on a hillside when down the road comes the king’s carriage drawn by six horses. The colt looks up, amazed to see in the lead on the right his former stablemate, now grown strong and mature.

While the two colts were able to roam free they didn’t have the choice to rebel or submit. They were their own masters. But, when they were tested and trained, it became clear which one was willing to submit and which was rebellious. It may seem safer to avoid discipline because of the risk of being found rebellious but without discipline we cannot share in the glory of sonship.

Rebellion or submission
When you’re first saved, you usually experience a period of extraordinary freedom and seem to be able to get away with almost anything. You experience amazing answers to prayer, and even when you’ve done some questionable things, somehow God lets you off the hook. Then God says, ‘All right, time for the next phase.’ At this point you demonstrate by your reaction whether you’ve really learned to submit to him. Will you resist God-ordained restrictions or will you patiently submit and trust Him.

We can picture that colt on the hillside running in circles and calling to his friend, ‘Come and join me! Come and enjoy the freedom!’ Yes, this colt is free, but he’s getting nowhere. The carriage horse is conscious of a deep sense of fulfilment and purpose. The one colt is weak, immature and foolish compared with his strong, well-trained colleague.

Christians will go through times of testing in which they feel like they’ve been restrained in a corral. God will use those who are willing to undergo discipline, those who don’t rebel when God says, ‘I’m shutting you in. There’s a purpose in it. Move when I tell you to move.’

Christians aren’t free. We’re slaves of the Lord Jesus Christ and he wants us to respond positively to his training programme. Do you receive the discipline of God? Are you willing to be shut in or must you always be ‘free’? Do you make all your own decisions and do whatever you like, or have you found purpose in pruning, in being cut back? When God begins to bless you with fruit, don’t be surprised when you suddenly feel his pruning knife. You’re being cut back not because he no longer loves you, but because he wants you to bear even more fruit for Him.

[This is an extract from Bible Insight Study 85. For the full study visit my website http://www.terryvirgo.org/bible-insight/]

What’s in your heart?
It seems strange to record that God tests us to see what is in our hearts, as though He didn’t already know. We read a similar thing in Abraham’s life where God called him to his greatest ever exploit of faith, namely to offer up his promises son as a sacrifice on the altar. Amazingly, Abraham does not argue or prevaricate but immediately obeys, climbing the mountain with his son.

As the boy is bound to the altar and the knife in Abraham’s hand is raised to strike him, God’s command pierces the silence. Abraham needs to go no further. His son’s life is spared. ‘Now,’ God says, ‘I know that you fear God since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me’ (Gen. 22:12). But God knows all things, we might argue. Surely He knew what was in Abraham’s heart? Why all these tests? Inevitably there are mysteries too great for us to understand, but we must never drift into a theological stance which regards everything as so buttoned-up that the whole world and your personal history are merely on autopilot, that everything is inevitable and a locked-up system.

Obviously we will never fully understand all of God’s ways. We are mere creatures with very limited understanding, clouded vision, uncomprehending minds. Many of God’s mysteries are beyond us. Our demand for everything to submit to human logic is misplaced when we approach these themes requiring neat answers. There are secret things which are beyond us. ‘The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our sons forever, that we may observe all the words of this law’ (Deut. 29.29).

Reverent fear and holy joy
It’s not for me to know why God tests you when He already knows you through and through. Your responsibility is to live this life in reverent fear and holy joy, trusting Him with every unexpected turn in the road and believing that the One who did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for us all is not careless or capricious. He is not heartless or indifferent, putting us through pains that we don’t need to bear and delays that we don’t have to endure.

In our fallen world there are many setbacks and mysteries. The perfect has not yet come. One day every tear will be wiped away, the whole universe, the new heavens and the new earth will be transformed into God’s temple and nothing unclean will enter in. Paradise will be regained.

Endurance through pain and delay will no longer be called for. Only in this passing age are we called upon to endure pain, setbacks and incomprehensible departures from or anticipated journey. When the Lord comes, faith will be swallowed up by sight, mysteries will vanish and we shall know as we are known. Meanwhile, we are called upon to run this race looking to Jesus who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame. He is our ultimate model of endurance. With no sense of his Father’s nearness and the horrors of death waiting to envelop him, Jesus stepped into our place enduring in his own self the fury of a holy God, His just and righteous wrath against sin.

In faith and patience Jesus walked towards the cross, climbing Golgotha in full faith and certainty that his Father would not abandon his soul to Hades nor allow him to undergo decay (Acts 2:27) but would raise him up and give him glory. ‘Consider him who has endured such hostility by sinners against himself so that you may not grow weary and lose heart’ (Heb. 12:3). No one else has known comparable suffering. So let’s run the race looking to Him full of faith and confidence, believing that ultimate, indescribable joy awaits us and that after we have done the will of God we will receive what is promised.

Don’t get sluggish. Make sure you inherit the promises!

[End]

Eugene Peterson, in his famous translation of the Bible, says, ‘Consider it a sheer gift, friends, when tests and challenges come to you from all sides. You know that under pressure, your faith-life is forced into the open and shows its true colours. So don’t try and get out of anything prematurely. Let it do its work so you become mature and well-developed, not deficient in any way’ (James 1).

Again in the Message he tells us further, ‘We continue to shout our praise even when we are hemmed in with troubles, because we know how troubles can develop passionate patience in us, and how that patience in turn forges the tempered steel of virtue, keeping us alert for whatever God will do next’ (Rom. 5).

Joseph had every human reason to feel that life had been cruel to him and that God had forgotten him, but we are told that even in prison he was a successful man. How do you remain successful when everything looks so dismal, when events and people treat you so harshly?

Surely one of Joseph’s secrets was to forgive his brothers completely and not to accuse God. He refused to be trapped in his immediate circumstances and to allow bitterness and unforgiveness to wreck his life. You cannot be successful if you are always living in the past, full of regret and recrimination. You cannot enjoy God’s keeping grace if, in your heart, you are accusing Him of failing you and thereby trap yourself in some earlier painful experience.

Joseph kept believing God. He knew his brothers meant to do evil to him but he kept believing in God’s total providence and reckoned that although they meant it for evil, God meant it for good.

God was at work painting a bigger picture and unfolding a greater design. Joseph’s freedom from the past gave him liberty to enjoy God’s provision of peace in the present.

Some day my prince will come
Joseph also overcame the temptation only to live day dreaming about the future and putting everything on hold until things worked out. He did not press the pause button and just wait for a better day. Endurance is not about day dreaming that ‘when I’ve finished school’, ‘when I get married’, ‘when I’m full-time’, ‘when the kids grow up’, ‘when circumstances are more convenient’ – ‘I’ll be fulfilled.’ Meanwhile I am marking time.

Some people seem to think ‘there’s a bright tomorrow and I’ll wait for that to come along.’ Some think ‘until they make me an elder how can I really serve?’ or ‘if I’m not full-time there is nothing I can do.’ Delay then brings frustration not maturity.

Jesus tells us first to be faithful in the small before we are given the large, to be faithful with other people’s things then we will be given our own, and even to be faithful with financial matters before we are given the responsibility of true riches (see Luke 16:10-12).

Delay is not like the commercial time on TV – time to flick through the channels; time for short-term distractions until returning to the plot. Delay is part of the plot! Delay is God’s way of proving you, testing you to see what’s in your heart. God told the Israelites that He had led them through the wilderness for this very reason, ‘that He might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not’ (Deut. 8:2).

Soon, like Joseph, they were to be in a good land of overflowing blessing. How would they manage the desert first? Joseph was soon to see the total fulfilment of God’s promises. He managed the delay with flying colours. He endured by continuing to believe and by keeping his eyes on God.

[To be concluded]

Don’t be sluggish
The writer to the Hebrews warns us of a great danger in the Christian life, namely that if we don’t enjoy immediate results, we tend to throw in the towel. Or, if we don’t completely abandon the cause, we at least begin to drag our feet, lose our joy and simply go through the motions with no genuine expectation. Our Christianity becomes routine, dull and fruitless. To use his phrase, we get ‘sluggish’ (Heb. 6:12 NASB). Not an attractive alternative to the dynamic and enduring faith of our Bible heroes.

The challenge is to make sure that faith remains faith even when we experience delay. We must not slip the car into neutral and begin to coast. We must keep the gear of faith fully engaged, especially when we encounter unexpected curves in the road.

When we first received the promise we expected that the road would be straight, the way would be direct. Joseph was promised that his brothers and even his parents would bow down to him. He was already his father’s favourite. His special coat already distinguished him from the others, so he guessed the bowing down part would soon follow.

No! There was a long, winding road before the promise was fulfilled. He encountered not only delay but what looked like setbacks of devastating proportions.

Rather than bow down to him, his brothers sold him as a slave to some foreign nomads. Cruel lies and false accusations resulted in his imprisonment far from home. Surely time to ditch the dream. What makes Joseph such an exemplary character is that he kept believing God. His dream did not fade. His vision remained sharp. He never abandoned his confidence in what God had told him.

Tell me your dream!
I can imagine how I would have reacted if a fellow prisoner had told me that now he had had a dream. If I was Joseph, I would have said, ‘Forget it! I also had a dream. Look where it got me!’ Instead of cynicism, Joseph displayed excitement and eager anticipation. ‘Tell me your dream,’ he urged his incarcerated companion. A dream was still to be believed. A promise could still be trusted, even when circumstances could not look worse.

‘do not throw away your confidence,’ the Bible tells us. ‘You have need of patience so that after you have done the will of God you might receive the promise’ (Heb. 9:36). There it is again. Faith and patience!

[To be continued]

Recently it was a very great joy to be present at the opening of the Huddersfield Christian Fellowship’s new ‘Cathedral House’, a massive and splendid building with a seating capacity of 2,100 costing millions to build. http://www.huddersfieldchristianfellowship.com/GrandOpeningPhotoGallery/indexCR.html

It was special to be present at the same time as Dick Iverson from Portland, Oregon, USA, who heads up an international movement known as Ministers Fraternal International. I had been invited by Colin Cooper, the local pastor who oversees the European section of MFI, to speak at that church opening weekend and also to the gathered European pastors which actually also included some from India, Africa and the USA. It was a memorable time.

I was particularly thrilled to sit at the feet of Dick Iverson, a very impressive servant of God. It was very moving to hear him speak of the recent death of his wife after 58 years of marriage! He and his four daughters were present around the bedside when she slipped away into the presence of God. Many tears were being shed in the room as he told his magnificent and moving story, which brought great honour to Jesus who has conquered death.

I very much enjoyed speaking to the assembled pastors. I took four sessions, each one on the grace of God, which resulted in some very enthusiastic comeback. Some confessed to having realised that they had been legalists without realising it and felt that they had been powerfully set free by the word. I really enjoyed fellowship with guys from Helsinki (Finland), Thessalonica (Greece), from the USA, Africa, India, Holland and elsewhere.

Celebration Mid-West, USA
Immediately following that time Wendy and I had the joy of going to speak at our Mid-West Celebration in Missouri, USA, which gathered from many churches across the Mid-West.

My visit provided opportunity for renewed fellowship with friends of some years now. It was great to hear news of the fresh churches being planted in Chicago and Charlotte, and I was especially blessed to meet Rob Wilkerson, whose testimony of having received the Holy Spirit after hearing my recorded talk that recently appeared on Adrian Warnock’s blog (11th May 2009). I loved his expression, ‘Wow! Holy cow! I am speaking in tongues for the first time ever!’ We enjoyed some great fellowship together.

I was especially thrilled to see so many people healed following my second session at the Celebration. The presence of God was truly wonderful and several were healed as I laid hands on them and simply said, ‘Thank you, Lord.’ The session went on for a long time since many were waiting to be prayed for and I guess one could have said we will carry on later but I was very reluctant to stop because God’s presence was so wonderfully real and I am still trying to learn how to sense and honour the Lord’s presence when praying for the sick. I love American enthusiasm. Many Brits, having been healed, say their quiet ‘Thank you, I feel better now,’ whereas my American friends express themselves with a great deal more enthusiasm when the pain goes! Praise the Lord!

It was good to preach on Elijah and I felt especially helped in doing my second session, which can be picked up on http://www.newfrontiersusa.org/cms/

Probably next year will be my last visit to Celebration Mid-West but I look forward to it enormously. It was also great to know that our American Newfrontiers friends gave just under $120,000 towards our £500,000 contribution to the Zimbabwe Appeal. It’s so wonderful being part of an international family who express their love in such practical terms for the needs of brothers in other countries.

Recently when I prayed for a lady in Scotland, she told me that she had endured shoulder and neck pain for 40 years since she was a small child. Through tears and laughter she told me, ‘The pain has completely gone!’ Wonderful!

‘Your faith has made you whole’ is an amazing statement. One minute suffering pain, the next minute completely free. Faith to receive now is exciting and impressive stuff.

Faith and patience
Here’s a strange combination; ‘faith and patience’. Two words we don’t necessarily expect to find together. Maybe we think that when faith arrives, patience is no longer required. We have to have patience to put up with something unwanted. When faith comes, surely that’s the cue for patience to leave. It’s no longer needed. Faith has solved the problem.

A lady in Oregon, with a similar mixture of tears and laughter, told me that, having been prayed for the previous evening, she was able to put her own socks on that morning for the first time for 23 years. Intense spinal pain had prevented her from touching her toes for nearly a quarter of a century. Now the pain had gone. She was completely free. Surely this is the kind of faith we are interested in – faith that gets the problem solved now, immediately.

To our surprise, the book of Hebrews tells us to imitate those who through faith and patience inherit the promises (Heb. 6:12). Faith, it seems, does not operate only in the realm of the immediate, the here and now. In fact the faith that the Bible often highlights and celebrates is the faith that has to wait, yet keep believing.

Hebrews 11 tells us that by faith the walls of Jericho fell down! Amen! Bring it on! That’s the faith I am looking for! Let’s have some shouting followed by immediate wall demolition.

The fact is that the Israelites first had to patiently encircle the city for seven days in silence, and Caleb was one of the marching army. He and Joshua had waited 40 years for the fulfilment of the promises that God made them about inheriting the land. Still want to join the ‘Joshua generation?’

Faith and patience are not enemies; they are good companions. Often they are called upon to keep one another company.

Abraham, arguably the greatest Biblical hero of faith, demonstrated amazing patience, waiting many years for his promised son. Our problem so often is that if we don’t see immediate results we give up. We tend not so much to resemble the ‘Joshua generation’ as the ‘give up’ generation. We, particularly in the West, have been trained to expect the immediate. Press button! Turn switch! Add water! Door opens automatically! We hate waiting. We will swap queues at the supermarket checkout or airport passport control. ‘What’s wrong with this computer? It’s so slow.’ What we mean is that it took a few seconds longer than we expected. ‘Faith and patience?’ Forget it!

A man just like us
Elijah, we are told, was a man just like us (James 5:17) and he prayed. In all honesty he doesn’t exactly look like a man ‘just like us’. He prayed for rain and the sky stayed blue. So he prayed again. Not a cloud to be seen. So he prayed again. Sunglasses still required. More prayer. ‘Have another look.’ Come on Elijah. Forget it. You’ve tried. Time to call it a day. Pack it up.

[To be continued]

God, the great gardener, knows how to cut back his plants in order to protect and guard them. David was never out of his sight. God was watching over his servant and stayed actively at work in his life. He knew that David was still a young man. If he continued to receive fame and adulation, would he be able to cope with it? Would he be able to withstand the many temptations and dangers that would come his way?

From prominence to obscurity
David went from national celebrity to living as a fugitive, holed up in a cave. In that setting he learned a great deal and ultimately emerged with a committed and disciplined army. God used the pruning to protect him from the spotlight.

A while ago, I saw on television an interview with a member of a famous rock group. He was over forty years old but he was still trying to work out what life was all about. At the time he was battling alcohol addiction. The problem began because he couldn’t cope with the unexpected effects of international fame. He admitted, ‘I’m still living like a teenager.’

Church history shows that apart from notable exceptions such as Whitefield, Spurgeon and McCheyne, God has allowed few young people to be very prominent in his church. He loves his servants too much to give them that sort of responsibility too soon, so he protects them from it.

Pruning is painful
Pruning is inevitable. We‘re told in John 15 that God cuts the branch that bears fruit as well as the one that doesn’t. All branches encounter the Lord and his knife. None of us can escape it: the fruitless he removes; the fruitful he prunes. Sometimes God seems to strip away some very precious things: people you love or a job that was important. Sometimes he almost breaks your heart when he prunes you.

I remember a time in my own life when I felt shut in, lonely and sore because of God’s pruning. I was in London, walking with a friend in Regent’s Park. The rose bushes were all very short, mere stubs in the ground. I remarked to my friend, ‘Look how they’ve ruined those rose bushes.’ He dispelled my ignorance. ‘To have good roses you must prune them right down,’ he said. I can still remember the strange sense of pain mixed with comprehension as he explained the process to me.

One minute David was riding into battle with brave, trained soldiers on the right and left. The next minute he was in a little cave with the three ‘D’s’ – the Distressed, the in-Debt and the Discontented – a motley crew, shut in, cut off.

You can be pruned in all sorts of ways. Perhaps you’ve moved to a new town. In your previous church you used to be an elder or a leader, but in this new church you have no such position of responsibility. Perhaps, as a single person, you were very independent, but now that you’re married you’re no longer so free to do what you want. You have to learn to build a relationship, and that means thinking about the other person’s needs as well as your own. Perhaps you and your spouse once enjoyed a great deal of freedom, but now you have children and all the time-consuming responsibilities they bring. Or, perhaps you or a member of your family were once healthy and active, but now illness has come and you’re shut in.

David was shut in. Do you feel like that? Do you say, ‘O God, I envy the freedom and progress others have. Some of them are only young, but they’re receiving such blessing from you. Why not me? Why am I so cut back – a dry leafless stub?’ It’s painful, isn’t it? But God knows what he’s doing with your life. It’s time to trust him, so be patient and say with confidence, ‘Father, I receive it from your hands.’

[This is an extract from Bible Insight Study 84. For the full study visit my website http://www.terryvirgo.org/bible-insight/]

Absalom is the ghastly example of a son who completely failed his father. With his rebellion came multiplied pain and chaos.

Of course, Paul did communicate through epistles full of objective truth, set out in clearly stated propositions, but he wanted to send a living letter. He wanted to sustain the incarnational aspect of the glorious gospel with its emphasis on personal relationship and example.

Exemplifying the life of a son
John says of Jesus, ‘The Word became flesh and dwelt amongst us’ (John 1:14). A beautifully attractive life was on display and this life embodied a revelation of God. The family likeness could not be hidden. ‘He that has seen me has seen the Father’ (John 14:9). As John later stated, ‘… the life was manifested … what we beheld and our hands handled concerning the word of life …’ (1 John 1:1-2).

In writing to the Thessalonians, Paul claims that his gospel came to them not in word only but also in power and the Holy Spirit, but then he goes on to add, ‘You know what manner of men we prove to be among you’ (1 Thess. 1:5). He is unashamed to call their attention to his lifestyle. Living the life is a huge message and Paul was unashamed to say, ‘the things you have … seen in me, practice these things; and the God of peace will be with you’ (Phil. 4:9).

Sadly, modern evangelicals know little about such relationships, aiming to develop their father/son relationship exclusively with God Himself by studying the Scriptures alone. Happy to aim to live as sons of God, they are not looking for the personal and intimate relationship so evident in New Testament times. Nor is this often being provided. Surely this represents loss and the atmosphere of the church reflects it.

Independent individuals retain their personal devotions, do their personal evangelism and sustain their personal walk with God, but where is the family? Where is the intimacy? How can we see the kind of development that John refers to when he writes to the fathers, young men and children (1 John 2:12-13). Surely this is not simply a reference to how old a guy is. We know that maturity doesn’t come simply with age; growing old comes with age. Maturity comes with taking responsibility, and we need fathers in the church who will help to raise up the kind of young men that John describes, namely ‘who have overcome the evil one’ (1 John 2:13-14).

Fathers don’t have to be very old
I thank God for a guy who took me under his wing when I was about 20 and he was about 26. I was a new believer but he had walked with God for years and he ‘fathered’ me, cared for me, admonished me, modelled a walk of faith and brought me into some maturity.

Had I only sat in church, listening to the preaching and attending the meetings, I would never have grown like I did under his significant influence.

This is true for women also, many of whom become wives and mothers but, in our modern world, often live far from their natural parents. Young wives and mothers desperately need the older women referred to in Titus 2:3-5 who will teach the younger women how to love their husbands and raise their children with real ‘hands-on’ insight and tenderness. Family integration and the interweaving of lives that draw strength from one another and impart life and help to one another should characterise the local church.

New converts need to encounter not simply a series of meetings and events but a family dwelling together in love and light where grace is not simply ‘in the air’, but in personal relationships which communicate life, support and strength.

End.

Paul was in a dilemma. How could he further communicate with the recalcitrant Corinthians? His powerful visit to the town, following the personal encouragement of the Lord Jesus, had resulted in the birth of the church. Jesus had stirred Paul to action with the promise that he had many people in that city (Acts 18:10). Now, however, Paul was getting to know these awkward people.

Though they were proof of his apostolic ministry they were proving arrogant, divisive, opinionated, critical and carnal in every way. Yet he still addressed them as ‘My beloved children’ (1 Cor. 4:14). Through the gospel he became their father, not simply their leader or minister but their ‘father’ (1 Cor. 4:15).

Family atmosphere
The New Testament is full of family references. Timothy, who is addressed tenderly as ‘my son’, is told to treat the younger women as ‘sisters’, the older women as ‘mothers’, younger men as ‘brothers’ and older men are not to be sharply rebuked but appealed to as ‘fathers’ (1 Tim. 5:1-2).

Intimacy characterised the church. The language of family relationships pervaded the whole. Paul’s great epistle to the Romans, full of enough theology to line book shelves with the multiplied commentaries and theological tomes that explain it, concludes with a chapter of heartfelt greetings to individuals with personal touches such as ‘Greet Rufus, a choice man in the Lord, also his mother and mine’ (Rom. 16:14).

Paul wrote to the Philippians, ‘My brothers, my beloved, my longed-for, my joy, my crown’ (Phil. 4:1). Will he ever stop? How many more words will tumble out to express his love and delight in the church that he has helped to bring to birth? How he expresses something of Christ’s heart to his beloved church.

How far removed from the ‘hire ‘em’ and ‘fire ‘em’ atmosphere which sometimes prevails in the modern church. How much business talk and technique has invaded the glorious household of God where brothers and sisters come to be called ‘staff’.

Thank God for John Piper’s magnificent book Brothers, We Are Not Professionals with its frank wake-up call to pastors and his red light alarm warning us against the frightening drift.

Paul does face a painful dilemma. His beloved children, to whom he has become a father through the gospel, need some admonition. So how is he to proceed?

I’ll send my son
Very interestingly, he chooses to send them an exemplary son, ‘I have sent you Timothy, my beloved and faithful child in the Lord’ (1 Cor. 4:17). In so doing, he follows the magnificent example set by God himself who sent His unique and wondrous Son to model sonship for us.

Because Jesus perfectly represented the Father, lived in full obedience to His command, and accomplished the work he was given to do, we are saved; God’s purpose is being fulfilled; the world is on its way to new creation and God’s glory has been and will be revealed. If the Son hadn’t perfectly obeyed; if he had chosen an alternative route, and acted independently and argued, ‘I also am God, I’ll choose my own path,’ all would have been lost.

Praise God, an obedient Father-besotted Son who delighted in doing his Father’s will showed a rebel planet how to live as a true son. He exceeded all the great advice handed out in the book of Proverbs about good sons and radiated the Father’s glory in the midst of a dark world. Refusing independence, He only spoke what the Father told him and only did what the Father showed him. Doing the Father’s will was meat and drink to him (John 4:34). He found his nourishment there.

Now it’s Timothy’s turn. Paul is not coming so he is sending a faithful and beloved son. How will Timothy handle his responsibility? ‘Paul’s not coming. Not sure why. I guess he’s busy. I am not sure he could really handle this anyway. It needs a fresh approach.’ Such a style would have spelt disaster.

[To be concluded]