Every Day with Jesus

Freedom is very much a positive word for many. A child looks forward to the holidays because they will be free from school. A teenager may look forward to university days because they will be free from home. Those in challenging relationships may look forward to when those relationships come to an end and they can be free at last! 

The story of the two sons is such a powerful one. Many begin to see that the ‘DIY Christianity’ they follow is so distant from what Jesus teaches.  It is possible for us to put together a faith that is high on rules and regulations but fails to grasp the wonder of the welcome the Father gives us into His family as adopted children. 

The understanding that Proverbs is a collection of wise sayings and not a series of laws is especially important when we come to interpreting today’s verse. This verse has sadly been a source of great dismay for many Christians who assume that if their child strays away from God, especially later in life, then it must be due to the start they gave them. 

This is one of the best-known parables but is typically given an inaccurate name! It is true that ‘The Prodigal Son’ title does cover some elements of the story. The son calls for his inheritance to be given to him by his father, wastes it and returns home keen to make amends, only to be wonderfully restored to his position as son. 

There are some people who think that there are contradictions in the Bible. There do appear to be some, but often one or both passages that seem to contradict are being interpreted wrongly. One of the most obvious apparent contradictions is verses 4 and 5 of Proverbs 26. 

The apostle Paul had many who worked with him, but it wasn’t always smooth, and Luke records how Paul was convinced that John Mark was a liability because he hadn’t stayed with them on a previous trip. The text talks of a ‘sharp disagreement’ which caused them to part company. The word used implies ‘a provocation which literally jabs (cuts) someone so they must respond’! 

The second letter to the Corinthians is one of Paul’s most personal letters. He will later outline why the church could trust him as an apostle. But at the very start he shares how tough he has found Christian ministry and says that he and his companions were overwhelmed and despaired of life itself. 

The words in verse 16 of our passage for today are some of the most extraordinary words in the whole of the New Testament! They are abused by many who think they offer carte blanche to claim whatever we like. The key phrase to note is ‘in my name’. 

You may have heard the idea of ‘marginal gains’, often used when it comes to sporting endeavour, where a 1% improvement over a competitor can bring success. Christians too are looking for the ‘secret’ that will help them stay on track. 

Vines were, of course, very common within Israel, and it is possible that Jesus chose this metaphor because the disciples were passing by a vine as they were leaving the upper room (see 14:31). Jesus calls Himself ‘the true vine’, contrasted with the people of God in the Old Testament who were seen as ‘a vine’ (see Isa. 5:1–7). 

Verse 16 of John chapter 3 is so famous that we can easily forget the verse which follows. But verse 17 underlines for many sceptical about the Christian faith what God is really like. 

The best-known verse in the Bible includes, of course, a word that is much contested and which many do not wish to consider. The flipside to eternal life is of course to perish. 

When it comes to this famous verse, perhaps the major misunderstanding comes with those two words ‘eternal life’. These have typically been understood to be life after death, but in the Gospel of John it refers to the life of God experienced in the here and now which we enter into through faith in Jesus, and this is a life that will go beyond the grave .

Throughout the 1980s, Rollen Stewart travelled 60,000 miles a year as a full-time spectator, living out of his car, and using TV’s obsession with sport to promote his faith. In doing so, he made John 3:16 a fixture of professional sporting events. 

What is the very first spiritual gift mentioned in the Bible? We might think prophecy or teaching or maybe performing miracles? You may not think of Bezalel, who is given the gift of craftsmanship to build the tabernacle! 

There is a church in Newport, Isle of Wight which was built by the direction of a man who read these verses and took them to heart. He had just finished work on his own home and came across these verses in Haggai and realised his church needed updating. 

Devotion is an action. It requires movement towards its object. Where once the Temple stood in Jerusalem and housed the presence of God, today we are ourselves each a temple of God’s presence (1 Cor. 6:19–20). The temple now moves with us for we are God’s tabernacle. 

Oscar Wilde wrote, ‘Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.’ People are too materialistic to recognise something’s true value.* Writing at the height of ‘The Age of Materialism’, Wilde challenged the belief that nothing can exist beyond matter, something tangible rather than spiritual. 

Devotion means both to worship and to serve. Moses presents God’s demand to Pharoah that the Israelites be permitted to go to worship God. Pharoah refuses but neither he nor Moses and the Israelites are aware of the consequences. 

What is God’s will? A question that can easily be misunderstood. For example, ‘Deus vult’ (‘God wills it’) was first chanted during the First Crusade in 1096 as a rallying cry, but on reflection the Crusades do not present a positive expression of God’s will.* Clearly the entire Bible sets out what pleases God, addressing both unseen attitudes and visible actions. 

There are seasons when we experience one setback after another. Our patience is tested and our trust in God challenged. Trust can either wither and fail when put to the test, or we can choose to keep faith until there is some undeniable evidence that trust has been broken. 

God invites us to get to know Him as our friend. Many of us live with constant anxiety that the choices we make may not please God. We live with an uncertainty about the nature of our friendship with Him. All friendships develop over time. We discover through experience – getting things right and wrong – how friendships grow and fail. Too often the narrative of what went wrong in a relationship ha...

Freedoms are frequently demanded throughout society, but what is freedom? Most understand it as the opportunity to exercise our will. The question arises, can one person’s will be pursued at the expense of another’s? 

All of us long for friendship. We long to be loved, cared for, and helped to realise that we matter. It must have been amazing for the disciples to hear Jesus’ words: ‘I no longer call you servants, now I call you friends.’ When these words were spoken, something profound happened in their lives. 

We live in anxious times. Perhaps it began with the 2007 financial crash when we suddenly realised that it is possible to lose everything we have in an instant. Or perhaps our anxiety began to rise due to COVID-19 and the growing realisation that we are not as strong, independent, and in control as we thought we were.