Every Day with Jesus

God can seem like a great idea, but an unrealisable aspiration. A sense that we are loved by the creator of our world touches our emotions, yet our minds tell us this is only an idle dream.

We seek to live lives of generosity. All too often, our best of intentions is hijacked by a distant, painful memory, or an unfair, instant judgment. I am bemused with both the enthusiasm I have for God’s way, and my often complete ignorance in walking in Jesus’ footsteps.

As we learn to walk God’s way, the Holy Spirit acts as our compass to ensure we learn to live our mortal life well. Christianity is both belief and behaviour. We discover that God empowers us to manage our daily life experience. This involves our inner world influenced by perception and emotion, as well as the way we interact through participation in the physicality of life.

Everyone experiences both triumph and tragedy in their life. Circumstances invade uninvited, and often unwelcome. At Waverley Abbey we are contacted by many people looking for encouragement through difficult experiences that test faith. They can fuel spiritual growth; they also provide the rocks on which our faith may become shipwrecked for a season.

Yesterday was Remembrance Day in the UK. My only childhood experience of church was attending Remembrance Sunday with my dad as he recalled fallen comrades Jesus is clear; failure to love neighbours is to fail to love God. We can present a host of reasons why this is impossible, but Jesus tells us we must love even our enemies (Matt. 5:44).

Finding ‘inner peace’ is the express longing of many people. Life not only makes physical demands, but also emotional and psychological.

Scripture is clear; we choose to live by the flesh or by the Spirit. The flesh, in essence, is to live from a worldly point of view. It excludes God, or at least reduces God to a pattern of belief to which we only pay lip service. Our mortal lives consist of an ongoing battle between flesh and the Spirit.

God’s promise and purpose as we respond to His invitation is to meet us in our pursuit of inner peace; rest for our soul. The Centre for Mental Health, following a spending review, reported the cost of mental health difficulties at a record level of £119 billion in 2019– 2020.

Words that sound so comforting were spoken at a time of Judah’s greatest pain and confusion. Exiled to Babylon, defeated, humbled and apparently abandoned by God. Prosperity, hope and a future seemed far from assured. Yet, God promised this was simply a staging post on the essential course of their God experience.

God can make me feel quite uncomfortable. I am very aware of the many fractures in my life. Scripture speaks of the power of the gospel to transform our lives (Rom. 12:2; 2 Cor. 5:17). Transformation means to change from one thing to something completely different, something better.

The close of our day is an excellent time to pause and reflect on where we’ve travelled in the past 24 hours. So much can happen in a day; so many encounters and experiences to review.

For most of us, good intentions are less the problem than the distractions of life’s realities that hijack the best of them! The wisdom of God’s Word makes sense, yet is too often lost in the many demands of our day.

For most journeys we know our destination from the outset. We make many journeys daily. We visit a neighbour, drive to the shops or take the dog round the block. Most of the time, our mind is anywhere but present with us on our travels but captured by our next task or filled with unresolved issues we know we must settle.

Journeys introduce us to people we haven’t met before. On pilgrimage, we encounter and engage with a group and experience things together. Travelling alone, we still interact with people along the way.

We all prepare for a journey in different ways. On pilgrimage, where we daily have to carry all our own luggage, it’s best to travel light. In some ways, what we insist on including in our luggage will reveal a lot about where our security lies.

We begin a fresh journey today. It’s one that will lead us to Christmas. It is a journey framed by the timeless Christmas message – journeying with others in search of God.

Learning to be satisfied with what one has is something Scripture encourages. It literally means to accept that what we have is enough. In a world where accumulation is the norm, it can prove difficult learning to be satisfied.

Our beliefs are what we hold to be true. As Christians, we choose to accept the saving grace of Jesus and the inspiration of Scripture. Whilst belief is easy to express in words, the test of our beliefs lies in the degree to which we express them through our life choices.

Many of our emotions are accompanied by a physical experience. Grief grips the heart and constricts our breath. Often we act out the physical feeling we experience. We tense up with anger and give it physical or verbal expression.

To step is to take an action that leads to a result. God is interested in securing our safe encounter with Him. As we consider the many opportunities before us and the decisions we might take, we can never know what the results might be. We marry full of hope and anticipation, only to lose our partner suddenly to an unexpected illness.

The consistent promise in the Bible is that fullness of life comes from God alone (Col. 2.9). This challenges human wisdom, and indeed Scripture tells the story of humanity’s natural inconsistency, vacillating between following God and natural instinct.

No one can have God as Father who does not have the church as Mother’. So said St Cyprian, whose quote is referred to by John Calvin throughout his Institutes . This may sound a strange description, yet it is the Church that must submit to Christ in all things (Eph. 5:21–28). Indeed, the Church is the bride of Christ awaiting the glorious day when she will be united with Christ (Rev. 19:6–9).

Look around any church and you will observe great diversity. Whilst everyone seeks God, the range of experience is varied. From the financial wealth of individuals to their encounter with illness, from grief to joy, church offers a snapshot of individual life experience everywhere. One reason Paul reminds the church to rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep (Rom. 12:15).

The reason for Every Day with Jesus is to unlock the Bible and open God’s treasury of blessing contained within all of Scripture. It’s taking the time to approach and settle down in front of Jesus, much as this crowd did on the mountainside. Then inviting Jesus to bless His Word and nourish us with fresh hope and new life.

Solomon thanks God for three key foundations that sustain Christian witness. First, he thanks God for his heritage. Next, for his own calling and purpose and, finally, he declares God is trustworthy.