Tom Wright on the Kingdom

When I was a student in music, going through A-levels and then my undergraduate degree, there was a phase that just about every student went through, when we loved the music of Benjamin Britten. Somehow each of us in turn ‘discovered’ this man’s music and fell in love with it. We appreciated it because it was our access to ‘modern’, aka 20th-century music, but carried enough undertones of romanticism and beauty not to alienate us unlike Schönberg or Stockhausen. Enamoured students would present seminars on the Four Sea Interludes or (in my case) The Turn of the Screw. We had to tell our professors how great this man’s music was – who were probably secretly bored stiff with hearing about Britten but wore a smile as we got through our phase.

Well, maybe I’m having a bit of a Tom Wright phase – I think many students of theology experience this – but the man really does know how to communicate. And what he has to communicate isn’t tosh. It’s some of the best New Testament scholarship in this or the last century.

Wright’s latest book is called “How God Became King” and I stumbled across a video linked from the N.T Wright page. The link to the video is: http://www.calvin.edu/january/2012/NTWright.htm – and it’s seriously worth a watch.

The Bible and the Question of the Afterlife

I love it when you find that the Bible constantly addresses long-held suppositions you’ve had even when it comes to the Christian faith. For me, something has been crystalising over the years with regard to this question of the ‘afterlife’, or more appropriately, what-happens-when-you-die.

There is a basic supposition which I feel is incorrect, which lies behind the questions asked by many both within the faith and outside it, and in the answers given by those from within the faith. The questions run something like this: “What do Christians believe about the afterlife?” “Where do you go when you die?” “What will heaven be like?” The answer in its basic form can sound something like this: “Put your faith in Jesus and when you die you’ll go to heaven.” With no more needing to be said after that.

Lying especially behind the last question but often behind all those statements is the following supposition: the ultimate destination of Christians is a disembodied existence in heaven which will be eternal because it will be enjoyed by our immortal soul/spirit. Maybe that’s not what you’ve grown up to believe; perhaps it was only me. Or perhaps it was only me and all the people I’ve ever had the conversation with: “what do you think heaven is going to be like?” We have that conversation because we want to know what it’s going to be like in the place we’re going to spend the rest of eternity, after-we-die.

As you might imagine, I now think there is far more to it than that, and indeed some aspects of that picture I now consider plain wrong.

For a start, it would be wrong for us to defer to the Platonist’s problem of an immortal soul needing to be liberated from the prison of a human body. First of all no verse in the Bible suggests that our soul is innately immortal. On the contrary, “God alone possesses immortality,” (1 Tim 6:16) so any immortality that comes into our possession must have been given by God – everlasting life is His alone to give and without it we are mortal creatures in every respect – spirit, soul and body. I mention this Platonic idea because it has often crept into Christian doctrine and influenced us to think that because we have this immortal bodiless part of us, that will be the part that endures through eternity with Him in heaven. I do not think this is the case.

So if we don’t want to defer to Plato’s problem but rather take the Bible at its word, I rather think our answer to the questions “What do Christians believe about the afterlife?” and “Where do you go when you die?” would look rather different. For a start there is no Biblical word for ‘afterlife’ – it’s not something it brings into question. The fact of the matter is that because of sin, ‘after life’ there is death! But of course what people mean is ‘after death’ – what is there? If we answer the question with believers in view for now, then the answer I think from the Bible’s standpoint could look something like this: the soul is carried away to ‘paradise’ (Luke 16:22; 23:42-43) for a period of waiting which in some ways can be likened to sleep (1 Thess 4:13-18) until the time of the resurrection. This takes place in two phases (which we won’t worry about for the moment) after the return of Jesus to the earth (Rev 20). Our existence then is in a newly-embodied state, in brand new ‘resurrection bodies’, an existence which will be eternal and which won’t just be ‘in heaven’ but will rather be in BOTH the ‘new heavens and the new earth’.

I realise all this needs rather more exposition than the one paragraph I have just given it, and more than the few Scriptures I have poked at to back up what I’m saying. There is a time and place for that and hopefully it will be on this blog (though I realise how often I say that without making it good…yeah sorry about that). For now I just wanted to lay out briefly how I see my theology reshaping to conform to the pattern I see in Scripture; from the classic statement of the Gospel to the true New Testament statement of what happens to us when we die…and then rise again. The resurrection is immensely important, and not just that of Jesus, but of everyone else as well, in helping us understand the plan of God, the justice of God, the creation of God, and all sorts of other things. I expect when I eventually get to the end of NT Wright’s The Resurrection of the Son of God I’ll be in a better position to explain some of those things. It’s taken me a year and a half so far. I’m a slow reader and read about a zillion books at a time.

To come back to the questions that I presented at the opening, I addressed the first two above. The third one, “what do you think heaven will be like?” requires yet more answering. On the one hand if we want to fit it into the scheme above we should really have to ask “what will paradise be like while we wait there; and what will the new heavens and the new earth be like?” though in part I believe we are responsible for the answer to the second half of that as we rule and reign with Christ. But taking the question another way, we already ought to know what heaven is like, because we are citizens and creatures thereof! (Phil 3:20) It is His will being done (Matt 6:10). We are actually seated there now with Christ! (Eph 2:10) I personally believe we have more responsibility than we presently know to be able to state what heaven is like and then to be praying it comes to earth! That is God’s whole plan in a nutshell: heaven on earth. We shouldn’t be asking “what will heaven be like?” as if we can’t wait to escape there but “what should earth be like?” with the answer that it should be like the heavenly places that we are seated in and citizens of now!

Hopefully, there will be more to come on this. According to Hebrews 6 the resurrection of the dead and eternal judgment (judgment here I think best understood as ‘verdict’) are foundational doctrines, yet I think they are often neglected these days. We need much more to understand that our final destination is not a disembodied state in heaven but in the new heavens and the new earth, with brand new resurrection bodies, ruling and reigning with Christ!

I’ve encountered the Original Greek, but he just helped me continue the journey

First of all, welcome to the new look site. Of course, it’s just another theme from WordPress. I like ‘em.

Secondly, I have a final exam tomorrow for New Testament Greek, which I have been learning for a year. It is incredible, fascinating, illuminating, to even discover some of the basics of the language and understand what they spoke. For me I get a lot from discovering the links between language then and now, knowing that our vernacular today has roots way back into ancient history. So ‘ballo’ means ‘I throw’ – because you would throw a ball! And about a trillion other examples (many of them much more meaningful, too).

I have learnt about the behaviour of language in general as well as New Testament Greek in particular. Our class has been shown a great many ‘gems’ that are uncovered in the New Testament when the original language is investigated. (Conversely we have learned how some of them are covered in most modern translations!)

But the thing that has most struck me is that my journey of discovery isn’t over yet.

I mean, in several senses, of course it isn’t, it would be arrogant for me to suggest that it is over already. As a believer in such a magnificent, awesome, holy God, I should expect that only eternity presents sufficient bounds for understanding and knowing Him. Secondly, I’ve only been studying Greek since September – I’m not an expert yet (much as I might like to pretend that I am!).

But that intriguing and wise character that is the ‘Original Greek’, it turns out, doesn’t stand at the end of the road in terms of discovering God and His nature through the New Testament (nevermind his distinctly older and more shadowy companion, Ancient Hebrew). If you thought that once you could argue from the New Testament using perfect koine Greek, you’d be the best theologian in the world, you’d have another think coming. No amount of scholarship can save us, can it? It’s the message behind the words that we’re after, not the words themselves, however helpful they may sometimes be. Mr Greek is a thoroughly useful guide on the journey, but if we really use our understanding correctly, we will continue to seek Jesus, and our understanding of God through Him. That is the believer’s journey. I suppose the journey of many scholars ends with Mr Greek, but for those knowing God and trusting Him, this is just a tool, albeit a useful one, for continuing our pursuit of Him.

Our journey is relational, not formulaic, and it’s important we remember to keep it that way. I’m going to continue to use what I’ve learnt this year (and hopefully continue to learn over the coming months and years) to pursue the One who captured my heart long before I even knew so many words in English. If you too are entertaining the idea of engaging this language, I would encourage you to do so! It’s just worth bearing in mind that you can be a Greek scholar and still be biased in one theological direction or another. Our anchor, Jesus, will help us to keep the right focus as we journey through life.

Trigg over and out.

Relational versus Functional approaches to the Bible, Theology, and God

I often feel that these thoughts I have ought to be properly expanded in a much more formal way but this is going to have to remain a ‘thought’ for now, and we could even throw it open for feedback.

Reflecting as I have been on the various arguments that often run to and fro between theological camps, particularly between Calvinisticly-Reformed believers and Arminians/open theists, as well as other polar tribes, I feel that perhaps what lies behind the two approaches and which often create the immovable loggerheads are two different starting points, two different convictions on which to base one’s arguments.

On the one hand (eg. Calvinistic/Reformed) I perceive to take a very functional, orderly approach to Scripture, where everything is seen to be neatly tied-up theologically in the Bible, and it is by reading literally from there that we can apply whatever we read systematically, with little need for nuance, variation, or otherwise. This is well and good, however I would suggest that it is only a post-Enlightenment Western society that would condition the presupposition that this is of course the way that we are meant to approach Scripture.

On the other side then where I sit, the approach is not first to find the functionally sound answer to my problem from a text of Scripture (though without question the God-breathed Scriptures are helpful for us when we’re in trouble!). I mean to distinguish this because a functionally tied-up answer with a verse of Scripture to quote may not deal with the whole situation; my approach then I humbly suggest fits with 1) a generally earlier, more Jewish approach which is relationally centred and doesn’t depend on the rationalistic processes of the Enlightenment and 2) the passion and heart of God as revealed through Jesus for relationship, with God and with one another. In other words, Scriptures are best understood through relationship with God, communing with Him and discovering in that context what He has said and how He wants to say it now.

Hence why you will find differences cropping up. The first approach sounds very ‘correct’ and certainly it shouldn’t be debunked – finding out what Scripture says about something is a valuable part of the journey. But I would suggest that with God the full journey is about relationship, and figuring out what God’s character is like should be one of our highest aims and ideals. So where on one side there is no problem with saying that God predestines some people to salvation (and therefore leaves some out of it) because this is what Scripture is perceived to say about what God DOES (His actions – ie. a functional approach), I have a problem with this because my highest value is knowing His character, and what He is like, and believing in a God who is love and in love bestows free will and wants everyone to be saved really doesn’t fit with the picture that was discovered by functionally approaching Scripture and trying to take it literally (which can often lead to grave misunderstanding when the context is not taken into account etc. etc.)

So, there’s my first problem of many with the (I would say unfortunately) all-too-pervasive and widely-accepted theological presuppositions that are preached every Sunday which I feel stem from too much emphasis on the Reformation principles and from a post-Enlightenment system of logic, and not enough from the Biblical context of relationship and indeed the Jesus-centric interpretation of Scripture. But I’m sure I’ve got a lot to work out on this yet, and that others will have helpful feedback and discussion points to raise which I hadn’t thought of

“All things under His feet” – what does this look like?

In Ephesians 1 (well and 2 & 3…and in fact the whole letter) Paul presents a stunning picture of the cosmic reign of Christ and how it plays out into history now. We find in this letter some of the most amazing statements of His rule and authority, stemming from what He has done for us.

But it can be tempting to read into some of these passages some of the many ideas that have risen up since they were penned, from Greece and Greek thought, from Augustine, from Calvin. As far as Greek thought goes, another read of the passage would simply reveal how what we treat as very ‘Greek’ thoughts (eg. ‘chosen’, ‘predestined’ vv. 4-5) are couched in deeply-rooted Jewish terms and ideas (eg. ‘adpotion’, ‘Beloved’, ‘redemption’ vv.5-6), and therefore can be looked at in that context, as we remember that Paul was always of the Jewish school of thought, not Plato’s (unlike many of his sincere devoted commentators today in the Reformed camp…just saying!).

I could take time to go into all the wonderful ideas in this passage, and their misconstruals, but to begin with one particular idea which has been on my mind for a while, what does it mean when it says that ‘He [God, the Father of glory] put all things in subjection under His [Jesus’] feet’ (v.22)?

I heard this question asked once, and it was framed in the description of our present experience, where it doesn’t look like everything is under Jesus’ feet – if it were, we wouldn’t have wars, famine, strife, suffering… etc. etc. Unfortunately I felt that the answer given at the time was less than satisfactory, or a bit fuzzy at best, seeming to say that, yes, everything really is under His feet, and we don’t necessarily understand that, but it’s what the Bible says.

It’s much simpler than that, actually. God has revealed Himself in Scripture and gives us the Holy Spirit to help us interpret. So we might just have a better chance than saying, “we might not understand it, but that’s it.”

The verses in question hearken back to two main Old Testament quotes. The first is Psalm 8:6 which says of the ‘son of man’, ‘You make him to rule over the words of Your hands; You have put all things under his feet.’ This is referred to in a number of places, including Hebrews 2 which, speaking of mankind says that ‘now we do not yet see all things subjected to him. But we do see…Jesus…’ (Heb 2:8-9) ie. there is going to be a process involved in seeing this prophetic envisioning of all things being under man’s feet, and it’s not complete yet. But we can fix our eyes on Jesus as we go our way seeking it to be fulfilled.

Because so far this has talked about man, not Jesus. Our question is about things being under Jesus’ feet; and indeed the ‘son of man’ in Psalm 8 COULD perhaps be seen as the Son of Man – Jesus.

In which case I should first make the point that in Ephesians and especially in these verses we see redeemed humanity in Christ, the head, ‘filling up’ His body, being the fullness of Him (Eph 1:23). So in a sense as much as it applies to all things being under Jesus’ feet, they’re going to be under the church’s feet.

The second thing then is to mention the second Old Testament reference quoted here: Psalm 110. In that case it is much more clearly Messianic, and all over the New Testament is immediately applied to Jesus: ‘The LORD says to my Lord: “Sit at My right hand until I make Your enemies a footstool for Your feet.”’ Ah, now we have it: all things under Jesus’ feet. But that doesn’t necessarily answer our question.

Psalm 110 appears to be straightforward, as does Ephesians 1:22 – all things are under Jesus’ feet. But we’ve already seen that the Psalm 8:2 reference involves humanity, and according to Hebrews isn’t necessarily fully inaugurated yet. We also notice the language of the Psalm ‘until…’ – there is process involved here too. And in the context of Psalm 110, when you read on through it, you find that Jesus’ enemies under His feet looks like an army being sent out to battle, ruling in the midst of God’s enemies, their enemies (Psalm 110:2-3).

Sound familiar? Because this is how also Ephesians itself ends: ‘Finally, be strong in the Lord…put on the full armour of God…’ Ephesians itself instructs us to think, act like soldiers against ‘spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places’ (Ephesians 6:10-12).

So really, arguably, Paul’s argument isn’t primarily that all things are under Jesus’ feet, end of discussion. He ends the discussion in chapter 6 with a call to arms! He has the same view that Psalm 8, the writer to the Hebrews, and Psalm 110 have: Things are BEING put under Jesus’ feet, His authority is being extended, as His army is sent out to rule in the midst of His enemies!

Be blessed.

The rapture, eschatology, and why we don’t talk about it so much

The world ended, recently.

Well, it was supposed to, anyway. In fact if you hadn’t heard, you must have had your head buried in the sand a couple of weeks ago, when secular and religious media agencies splashed the news around that 89-year-old Harold Camping in the States had proclaimed that May 21st 2011 was going to begin the end of the world. A rapture was supposed to happen, along with an earthquake, and various other apocalyptic things were to ensue.

Except that they didn’t. Causing a rather crestfallen Camping to emerge a couple of days later and announce that he got it slightly wrong. Unfortunately he didn’t leave it at that – apparently, we should trust him that actually things are being played out ‘spiritually’ and that the date in October which he had also included in his previous predictions as being the final end, remains. Hmm. We’ll see about that.

I don’t wish to pour out any more words which might be critical of this man or his predictions; it is obviously terrible to most people how some people in their trusting him lost huge sums of money. Stuff like that shouldn’t be excused. But neither do I want to stand with those who only feed themselves on the dead meat thrown to them by the media, talking endlessly about deceivers and the deceived. It’s a personal exercise of heart; criticism isn’t what we are to be known for, and it won’t do me any good. I’m gonna eat from the tree of life.

But that’s not even the point of this blog; it merely provides a helpful introduction, as indeed all this talk of rapture perhaps gave occasion for some people to think genuinely about matters of the ‘end times’, often (not much more helpfully) called ‘eschatology’.

I don’t think this is a bad thing at all; when we see error we should respond (not react) to it rightly by asking ourselves what the Bible actually says, and therefore what Christians should actually believe. The temptation naturally is to steer away altogether from talk of ‘end times’ and so on, but this kind of reaction to error usually produces error. We see it in other things too: reaction to abuse in ‘miracle ministries’ and charismatic movements in general has caused some to resort to such doctrines as cessationism, which says that the spiritual gifts outlined in 1 Corinthians 12 and other New Testament passages died out with the last of the apostles. Giving God’s timeless book a singularly useless chapter (or several, really) in the middle of some of its most important statements. Well, I wasn’t going to go into that here, either.

So we need to correct error with truth, and by really embracing and confronting the truth.

…you thought I’d have the final word on eschatology, though? Goodness me, no! I’ve lived a quarter of a century and many older than me don’t feel that they’ve figured it out yet! So I’m afraid I can’t provide a blow-by-blow account of what actually takes place in the Last Days. Sorry to those of you who thought I might.

What I’m here to say then is, isn’t the Bible fascinating! If I want to say anything in these blogs, it’s that. My line is of course to go to the Bible and ask the Holy Spirit to help us understand truth. It’s an invitation to have a conversation with God and delve into some mystery.  I said something in a blog recently, and would like to emphasise it now in a slightly different way: When you’re in relationship with God, and you find a difficult passage of Scripture, it shouldn’t necessarily be the answer that

a) we run to the nearest theologian we can find to give us the answer or
b) we try to shove it into the shape of some doctrine or theological argument we do know to make it fit. I guarantee you, it won’t fit perfectly, and you will have missed an opportunity to encounter God.

What do I mean by that? I mean that the most exciting option before us at that point is to open up a dialogue with God and talk to Him about it. Ask the Holy Spirit for revelation, for interpretation of what is before you. That way, when truth is revealed, it will mean so much more to you than if you’d taken option a) and simply asked your pastor; it has been personally sought after, and will be something now rooted into your personal history with God. And with what you know of possible theological answers in option b) could have just been expanded a bit more by some new understanding shed from your encounter with God.

I hadn’t really intended to say that, either, but I felt it was important; it has been on my heart, and having been given a couple of prophetic words to this effect recently, I know it’s important for me to share the meditations of my heart at the moment.

But I’d better cut to the chase quick, otherwise this will exceed 1,000 words and I’ll be accused of too much academia. (Probably already guilty as charged.)

I was talking about this with my wife-to-be last night. Sometimes when you’re talking, thoughts process faster than if you’re just on your own. I found myself saying something I’d not really thought of before, but it struck me as somewhat significant. (You’re hoping so, if you’ve got this far!)

It’s not a complete thought, merely a contribution to the discussion on eschatology. It strikes me that in our attempts to understand (especially) passages like Revelation 19-22 (asking how much is metaphorical, how much literal, is any of it both or in between?), we really have no other passages of the Bible or testaments from history to match up to what we read about. Never before have we seen all of humanity before a great white throne, where every eye can see God. God has never before been visible to every single eye at once, we have no historical pattern to establish what on earth that could look like or how it could happen. I think the closest is where the glory of God was visible to the sons of Israel on the mountain top; even then it is entirely within practical planes. That’s not to say at all that it won’t happen the way it says in the end-time passages; our great conviction (‘our’ being my main circles of charismatic evangelicals) is that it will happen pretty much in that way; but the picture is still so huge and cosmic that I wonder if we really have any practical way of envisioning what it could possibly be like? Not that we need to arrange it or anything – I doubt He’ll be sending messages to certain churches asking them to set out chairs.

It’s just fascinating to think about. Because as much as the Bible is unprecedented in supplying any other picture quite like that in Rev 19-22 for us to compare it with, it is also unequivocal on its assertion that there will be a great DAY of reckoning, of judgment, where God wraps things up.

So ultimately I think with the great realm of mystery that is often made to surround this area of thought, many are turned off and therefore have difficulty whenever they come across these passages. I think in this time when people are making false predictions about the rapture and so on, it would be just like God to stand right next to them and ask, “so what DO you think about the rapture and end-times and so on?” Trouble is, if at that point we’re simply running from this area in reaction to error, we might not notice that He’s asking that.

I personally don’t believe in a rapture, by the way, not like one that these people talk about, floating off into space. Just in case you wanted me to nail to SOME colours. Because I know some people just can’t be satisfied without some concrete statements I’ll endeavour to provide some more as I continue on this journey of understanding with God.

One more concrete statement. I do believe in the return of Jesus Christ, and that He won’t return without the church’s active participation in the gospel. It’s not going to come by us predicting dates and times, but by us preaching the gospel of the kingdom in the whole world as a testimony to all nations (Matthew 24:14); in this way we will actually HASTEN (or even CAUSE – from the Greek) the day of the Lord (2 Peter 3:12).

Did the Father turn His face away?

Stuart Townend has written a number of great hymns which have gained widespread usage across the church in the last few years. One of them is called “How deep the Father’s love for us” which speaks of the cross and the power of it for us. It’s a good song, but one that a number of us in Ichthus (and I know a few others too) take issue with because of one line built on a famous bit of classic evangelical theology.

How deep the pain of searing loss
The Father turns His face away

The line describes the pain of the cross, and then goes on to state that the Father turned His face away from His Son, something that many in evangelicalism believe. I had a friend just the other day talk about it as though it’s completely central and Biblical, and crucial to the idea of atonement. But is it? I’m not so sure. This will sound blasphemous to some. But with a brief run down of some of my reasons I hope people will hear what I mean (even if they still do not agree).

On the cross, Jesus cried out, “My God, my God, why have You forsaken Me?” This famous line quotes Psalm 22:1, a prophetic psalm which proceeds to envisage the sufferings of the cross with amazing clarity. This line has led to theologies being created around the idea of ‘Penal Substitution’ (which I’m not going to go into specifically, for the sake of space) that the Father and Son were somehow ‘separated’, torn apart, removed from one another, at the cross. The Father turned His face away…and so on.

On the face of it it seems right to talk in that way, using Jesus’ cry as a starting point. And as I said it has become quite a central idea to the whole doctrine of atonement in many peoples’ minds. There are issues to be addressed, like how God reacts to bearing the sin of the world, and what that looks like in the Godhead. Some would on this issue suggest that the presence of sin on Jesus implicitly necessitated God’s face being turned away (though we remind ourselves that Jesus is God, therefore correct it to the Father turning His face away) – but even then on occasion in the Old Testament God didn’t turn His face away, and stared right at the sin, seeing how detestable it was, and ready to judge it (eg. Jeremiah 16:17).

And so as I have indicated, I question the specific idea of whether the Father really turned His face away, for various reasons:

1. Jesus never addressed His Father as ‘God’ in all His years of ministry – or even before that (Luke 2:49). It was always “My Father, my Father, Father this, Father that.” He did speak of “God” when speaking to others, teaching them how to serve Him and love Him, but even that was rarer than speaking about the Father. So in this crucial moment, if I were to believe that the Father had forsaken the Son in the way that is taught, I would have thought He would cry, “My Father, my Father…” With its echo to Psalm 22 this would have had all the more poignancy, but He doesn’t. He simply cries what was already there in Psalm 22. A direct quote. Meant to hearken the minds of any hearers back to Psalm 22. To this psalm we will return in a moment. Also, each of the accounts (Matthew and Mark) record the words in a Greek transliteration of the Aramaic. Jesus wanted it to be heard specifically differently from the way He usually spoke about Father – therefore (I think) withdrawing from the notion that it would be possible to entertain the idea of Father turning His face away.

2. Having said this on the cross, there are two other occasions on the cross when He addresses Father – highlighting still further the distinction from His quote of Psalm 22. One is “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.” (Luke 23:34) According to the Old Testament, God would not hear the one He has hidden His face from (eg. Isaiah 59:2). How could He then forgive? Or had He not turned away at this point? When did He turn away? The other is Jesus’ final words – so if the Father had turned away, He would have had to have turned back for these words in order to heed them (and I don’t think anyone has ever doubted that He heard this final cry) – “Father, into Your hands I commit my spirit” (Luke 23:46) – which interestingly, quotes another psalm (31:5).

3. Various other New Testament Scriptures make it look like Father went with Jesus all the way to and through the cross. We might come to the point of Jesus making His way to the cross and say, “right, He’s having all the sin of the world put on Him, so surely the Father is going to look away now.” But to His disciples, He said in so many words, “When you all run away from me and leave me alone, I won’t be alone, because My Father is with me.” (John 16:32).

4. 2 Corinthians 5:19 tells us that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself. It was a wholesale involvement with Christ in the middle. Perhaps putting this statement together with Psalm 22:1 we could suggest that “God was in Christ experiencing God-forsakenness.” An incredible mystery, but one that I think is much more Biblically grounded than the idea of the Father turning His face away from the Son (equally a mystery but also more philosophically problematic what with less Biblical grounding – can God even be separated or would that not cause everything to fall apart??).

5. Isaiah 50:4-9 is part of one of the so-called ‘servant songs’ of Isaiah and speaks (in verse 6) in terms very much prophetic of the cross (prior to the even more prophetic song in 52:13-53:12). Yet all through it is the constant refrain that “The Lord God helps me…” eg. in verse 7!

6. But in case you thought that all of the above did not quite solidify the case enough for you, and you still felt that interpreting Jesus’ one cry on the cross “My God, my God, why have You forsaken Me?” to mean that the Father and Son were separated at the cross and that the Father did indeed turn His face away (both of which would be interpretation, not directly drawn from the text), take a look again at that Psalm to which Jesus wanted to draw the attention of His hearers, and verse 24: “He has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; nor has He hidden His face from him; but when he cried to Him for help, He heard.” David might have felt forsaken, but he ultimately knew that God’s face was not really hidden from him. How could our construal be any different in applying it to Jesus?? The weight of sin caused Him to experience God-forsakenness, yet ultimately that psalm reminded Him and His hearers that the Fathers’ face wasn’t turned away, and thus He could pray, “Father forgive…Father, into Your hands…” Because when He cried to Him for help, He heard…

Now, maybe I’m being a nit-picker, but I believe in the ‘jot-and-tittle’ of the Scriptures – getting the nuances right, not rushing to conclusions, making sure we’re Biblically based and Biblically balanced. If we’re going to teach the cross, it’s fundamental that we get it right, and I would ask that we consider this case a little more carefully, for as much as we might like to sing that song and hear that line, I argue that there is nowhere in the Bible that says that the Father’s face was turned from the Son, nor are any of the attendant ‘separation’ ideas necessarily involved. Of course, God wants us to take sin and its effects seriously, and I don’t think the case for doing so is one bit maligned by questioning this particular aspect. No doubt the wrath of God is visible at the cross; it’s the fact that God-become-man is right in the middle of it that is so startling.

To me, Jesus’ highly-stylised (if we can use that word) quotation of Psalm 22:1 forces us to think of His quote in a certain light, and is especially meant to draw our attention to what is going on, NOT in that the Father’s face had at that point turned away (for presumably, Jesus WOULD have known WHY that would be, whether He liked it or not), but to draw attention to the events as described in the Psalm, and to encourage Himself and His hearers that ultimately, He has “not hidden His face from Him,” and even more beautifully, that the declaration can confidently be made, that “it is finished,” that “He has done it.” (Psalm 22:31)

Communion – wafers and wine, or cakes and coffee?

I had an experience once, a few years ago, and since then I’ve not been able to shake this thought I have about communion.

The experience was that I was at a conference with a bunch of other fired-up young people/young adults. I actually only knew one of them but when you’re with a load of other like-minded people it’s not difficult to fit in, especially when you’re all crazy for Jesus! Anyway, we were staying at a facility owned by the host church, with a few others on the conference. We quickly got to know one guy in particular. As we sat down to eat a thrown-together meal one afternoon – I believe it was beans on toast, and some kinda juice or water – the guy we were getting to know offered to give thanks. He then went ahead and said, “Lord, You said to do this whenever we ate it, so I want to thank You for Your body and Your blood which You gave for us” – and what was in question was obviously this student-style meal before us.

I really was tremendously grateful and said a hearty “Amen” – but not just for the food, but because he had set a germinating thought in my head.

My only experience of talking about the ‘body and blood’ of the Lord until then had really been in church services where a loaf of bread was torn up as it was passed along the rows, followed by a cup of red grape juice. You got a smidgen of a bit each. It wasn’t bad; it still isn’t, as a church we’ve done it plenty of times since. There’s often a really good thought shared with it, something to reflect on, issues of the heart brought up to deal with. It’s often a holy moment. But I still can’t help keep on wondering.

On the occasion I related, it was just a meal. Quite a cheap one. But it was wonderful. We had real communion – fellowship – hanging out together – good times – over that meal. And so more and more lately, I’ve come to ask myself, why has it become this sacred thing with wafers and wine? Okay Jesus had the wine, but He didn’t have wafers. Are we trying to emulate Him or not? More provocatively, does communion look like it does nowadays because the religious folk among us WANT Jesus – this anti-establishment, anti-Pharisaical, upside-down Rabbi who did everything that Rabbis didn’t – they WANT Jesus to have established ONE official establishment-friendly ritual, practice. In fact, there’s usually two counted: communion, and baptism.

Communion has acquired a religious name too, for the uninitiated among readers – the ‘eucharist’. This is a Greek word for ‘giving thanks’ and derives from Jesus’ giving thanks at the last supper as He broke the bread and so on. But instead of being translated, it is left in an unrecognisable form to the common Englishman, and that’s where I’d take issue with the common use of the word. At least the word ‘communion’ comes from the translation, and we don’t refer to the ‘koinonia’, hence I have no problem with using the word. (Incidentally we call it communion because of 1 Corinthians 10:16 which talks about the cup of blessing being the ‘communion’ of the blood of Christ. I also think it has useful other usages and therefore is a good word.)

I wonder if people have ever asked themselves what Jesus thought of when He spoke of His church. I find it a struggle to conceive that He thought of – well, first of all buildings; the word for ‘church’ comes from a word meaning ‘gathering’; the church should always have been and always is in God’s mind, people, not buildings – but mainly I find it difficult to conceive that He thought of dressed-up priests and great cavernous cathedrals with lots of implements and trinkets after what seems to be a largely Old Testament model. No more so than with communion. When He ate a meal with His disciples, tearing up a loaf of bread and passing His cup of wine around for them all to sip out of, did He picture wafers and wine administered by an over-dressed man to lowly laymen and women as they knelt before him at an altar modeled on something from an inferior covenant? Or did He picture exactly what He saw before Him? His friends, the scraps of a meal on the table… He was actually dressed down, or had been – He had washed their feet with a towel around His waist as part of the same meal! I’d like to see the priests do that!

I know I’m being provocative; so was the one I follow. It’s not wrong to throw up questions. Jesus was all the time coming against apparently harmless traditions that actually invalidated the word of God.

At this point some might worry that I’m advocating abstinence from taking communion at all in church, however it is shared. I’m not at all. That’s not the way to see change. It has happened in history – the Salvation Army today still do not take communion or baptise, because in the days of their founder William Booth, these were seen as religious undertakings only with no power at all, so Booth eschewed them entirely, and so it has remained to this day. This may be too far. I would argue there’s power in both, if we don’t make them rituals of religion where they lose their power. It has been witnessed in church history profoundly with baptism, where the matter was seen to determine whether you were in the church or not. The established church for a long time believed that it was right to baptise babies, and they were automatically ‘Christians’ – in what sense of the word I don’t know. The generally non-established church would challenge this, emphasising believer’s baptism, and thus I believe took a right approach to the imbalance of doctrine – seeking the radical middle ground, rather than going to the other extreme (as Booth did).

So I would argue with communion: it is something wonderful that the Lord gave to the church. It IS in a sense a tradition in the sense that it was handed down, passed on. Jesus said “do this until I come”. But in order to be a tradition, does it need all the pomp and circumstance that we see attends it?

I’m just excited by the idea that Christians can sit down at a meal and find they have the opportunity to remember the Lord over that completely normal context. And generally speaking, we’re definitely always going to be eating “until He comes”! It’s the perfect place. It was the context of a meal, for Jesus. In giving it, I imagine that’s what He imagined would continue. Because if so, it makes almost any time – or certainly up to 3 times a day – an opportunity to remember Him and what He has done. It ties in with a theme that’s all over the Psalms – remembering and teaching to others what God has done!

Making it into a Sunday ceremony actually removes this possibility. Oh, sure, we might remember and have occasion to talk about Him if we think of it, and hopefully we do. But a meal helpfully PROVIDES the occasion! A ritual at church can become just another misunderstood Sunday activity, and no one would dare approach an ordinary meal with other Christians, thanking God for the ‘body and blood’ of the Lord, as that would be something you’re supposed to do with wafers and wine before going back to your pew.

I’m not saying there’s no help in current models. Of course there is. But I just keep wondering how Jesus pictured it. “Do this as often as you drink it” – as often as you drink what? wine? “in remembrance of Me…” Well, wine was common in those days. It may not have been quite what we understand wine to be nowadays. But given the widespread use of grape juice, squash, non-alcoholic wine and other interesting variants I have come across in the church, I don’t think we’re too hung up about it being actual wine. It was, after all, all symbolic.

And that’s the point. Jesus wanted to provide a context through symbols where all His followers would be able to quickly and easily remember what He had done for them, NOT establish a religious institution with a name in an extinct language reserved to be ministered only by priests and only for Sundays where the full meaning can be lost in the religious dress-up. It was meant to be something shared over mealtimes between brothers and sisters, where a normal moment could suddenly become a holy moment through a few simple words, and those who a moment before might have forgotten again remember that they are citizens of heaven and are bought with a price, the blood of Jesus, and that they are all together part of the one body of Christ, sharing in that one body.

I know there’s more to look into with 1 Corinthians in particular. Paul spoke of coming together as a church to share the Lord’s Supper. I think I might address it in a follow-up post!

I’m just looking for the time I’m asked to give thanks for a meal among Christians and I have the boldness to be different and use what I have in front of me as symbols for what Jesus did. And watch their reaction!

Love is…

At the outset of many of my blog posts, I often have to find new language to excuse myself for what might seem like the obvious points made in the ensuing diatribe/exposition/rant/study/musing/etc. I’m afraid this one’s no exception. Revelation, I find, does not always involve the unveiling of brand-new information – in fact in my experience, this is very rare. Instead of unveiling, it usually involves the shedding of light on something. An area you knew existed but had only thought about to an extent, is suddenly opened up to you with a whole new realm of possibilities. This is revelation. As I see it, anyway.

It’s no mystery that Christians might have a thing or two to say about love. 1 Corinthians 13 is probably the most-read chapter at weddings. Some might hear the undertones of 60s hippie mantras about ‘peace and love, man’, but the kind of drug-enduced emotional surges such people might have called love is not what I refer to. Others might think of what else Hollywood has had to say on the subject, and with the hundreds of thousands of movies out there, most have had very little to say other than that it can be soppy, has to involve sex, and is fairly free and easy. I know they don’t all say all of these things; but most do say some of them.

Not talking about that kind of love either. To turn to a strange and surprising guru for this one (Christians don’t worry, Bible coming in a minute), in a live recorded concert, John Mayer got talking about wanting to live more for love. Now I don’t know what he had in his head, but he too did say “I don’t mean like a Roman candle firework Hollywood hot-pink love, I mean like ‘I got your BACK’ love!” Eliciting a huge scream from the crowd of course.

But the dude has a point, whatever he ultimately meant by it, or whether he was just saying it for the cheer. Love isn’t just there for making someone feel good once in a while, and in our self-driven culture, often making yourself feel good too, but it’s there to have someone’s back; to go the extra mile; to actually do a ‘greater good’ once in a while. That’s something like the kind of love I have in my head as I write this.

There’s precious little of it around these days. For all the great many words poured forth in poetry, song, prose and script concerning love, I find this in a sense surprising, but I can see what’s happened. Love has in many cases been cheapened. Furthermore I believe that other values have been brought to fundamentally override love. In our society especially, we have seen the exaltation of rights and choice for the individual to an extremely high status. These two factors I would say have been the greatest enemies to the operation of true love in our society and have led to a lot of brokenness and upset at all levels.

I know that is a large blanket statement. I’m not always a fan of such things. But sometimes you have to be bold with what you believe otherwise you never make an impact, and you need to have somewhere to start even if you need to refine what you say.

Of course choice in and of itself is not wrong – part of my core belief system as a Christian is in the fact that we were created free beings with real choice. Neither are ‘rights’ wrong (if you get my meaning) necessarily, but I believe they have to be framed correctly. So we see in history that the emancipation of, for example, the blacks of America from prejudice and racial hatred, was finally won through a great ‘civil rights movement’.

But I say that an argument for rights has to be framed rightly, and by this I mean that such rights as we saw the likes of Martin Luther King fight for were framed in a fundamental understanding of the love of God and of the created order, where all of humanity really was created equal. We could spend time extracting this from the language of Genesis 1 and 2 but that would take more space than most sane people want to see in a blog. It’s there. I can go into it if people want.

Not all rights arguments have been framed like this. Many more have been argued along with the cry for ‘choice’ to be maintained for individuals, and this is where I believe we get into untenable territory. Maybe someone can explain to me, but when one person’s desire to choose one thing directly conflicts with my desire to choose another thing, in what way is choice a stable basis for rights arguments? On the surface of it many of the more controversial rights bills of late might have seemed to have displayed choice as something entirely affecting the right only of the individual able to choose and affecting no other individuals’ choices around them, but even then the surface is pretty thin. Where abortionist protagonists argue the right of the mother to choose, one may riposte that the baby’s right to life trumps the mother’s right to choose whether the baby should live. Choice in the baby’s case is most unfairly squashed, in the mother’s case highly exalted. There’s no logic to it. (Suggest choice happens at a good time around when conception might or might not take place.) People are now able to freely shirk responsibility, because they have the right through choice. And, my main point here: love no longer has the upper hand. Choice and rights do.

I wonder if the sense that the individual has this sacred right to choose lies at the heart of some of the many divorces that we see so pervading society. I don’t know. I know these things can be complicated and sometimes irreversible because of a great many hurts; but equally I don’t wonder that self is exalted over others when freedom of choice and rights are exalted over love. And so we can decide that an affair is okay, or divorce is alright. It’s at least possible.

I wonder too if we could say that the ‘freedom’ and ‘right’ to choose could be expressed rather as the freedom to make the wrong choice and not feel or be made to feel guilty about it. No one should be calling my moral shots; no one should be holding me accountable; I’m an individual, I can do what I like.

So let’s boil it down some more: It’s self-interests versus the interests of others. It sounds like what might come out at the weekly readings at your local parish from a dry wheezy voice – “we should look out not just for our own needs but the needs of others”. But this concept, birthed as strongly as it is in the Bible, in particular the New Testament, is as radical an idea today as it was then, perhaps more so with the way our culture has gone, and when really lived out, has the power to transform society from the bottom up. Mother Teresa didn’t do what she did because she chose to and had the right to. She did what she did because she loved. When asked what would achieve world peace she said, “Go home and love your family.” What a great starting place! No one can deny the tremendous difference that a life like hers made to countless thousands.

So in order to love we sometimes have to be prepared to forsake our choices and even our rights. Love isn’t always a mushy feeling. Sometimes it too is a choice – and I would say, is the right choice! (See what I did there? Right…rights…choice…choice… anyway…) If I want a night in but my other half has been itching to get out all week, what do I do? I give her what she wants. Because I love her, and want to show her that. If I were to use my ‘right’ to ‘choose’ that I should stay in, it would break down the relationship.

I think we all know this on some level, but it is worth thinking how far it can apply, and how much it could change about society if we lived it out. I want to start applying it merely to the way I drive and treat other road users! I can’t always be the nicest driver, but nothing is helped by moody driving. Giving way to someone in front might make the person behind a bit grumpy, but they can’t exactly say I did the wrong thing. They’d probably only be getting grumpy because they would feel they had a right to be somewhere as quickly as possible. If they lived by love too, wouldn’t the world be a happier place!

Well, we’ve got a long way to go. Once again I feel that I’ve said everything every which way I can, except what I really had on my heart, which remains that much more elusive and somehow inexpressible. I only hope the reader can glean that bit more by thinking further about this. It burns on my heart as something real and profound, and I know it’s how God wants me to live and I want to make it my mission to live like it til my dying day; somehow I don’t think it’s going to happen overnight. But He made this place and knows the power of that which will make it the way He wants it to be again – love.

I promised some Bible. It’s all over the New Testament. There’s 1 Corinthians 13 where it is expressly shown what love is. It doesn’t seek its own (it’s like Paul saw into our own day); doesn’t keep a record of wrongs (ditto); and so on. Readers can check it out. But back in 1 Corinthians 8 you can see how the principle of love also works more subtly over rights in making decisions in the church.

Paul and Jesus both in their own ways said that the commands to love at the center of the Law. Jesus picked out two and put them in this order: Love the Lord your God is the most important; love your neighbour as yourself is the next most important!

John’s letters are full of it, so much so that he says, you know what, “God IS love”. It’s His whole being! And it was to frame the whole church attitude of individuals toward one another. Apparently as he aged they used to wheel him around and he would simply preach “my little children, love one another!” Far from being the words of a doddery old man who has forgotten how to say anything else, he was laying down a message so fundamental that it could be all he preached on and that wouldn’t matter. It was the basis for stable society: love.

Jesus said that we would be known as His disciples because we love one another. You know what, if we Christians are the only ones who can really get this concept of living by love, let’s do it! The world is trying everything else, and then trying everything again, to achieve peace and order, and I don’t believe they will ever achieve it. They will continue in circles until they stop and see a bunch of people who have made love the highest mandate, living harmoniously and transforming society around them through their love lifestyle; then, maybe, they’ll want to come under the shadow of that lifestyle. I hope so.

God’s mouth and His hand

We have a good God. It is my firm belief that the understanding and belief that ‘God is good’ is the cornerstone to good theology. Living with an awareness of this, I have found more and more that Scripture confirms and underlines this! And here is just one more example that has been feeding my soul for a few days.

I blogged recently about ‘Solomon’s kingdom’. So it should be no surprise that I’m following it up with something else from 1 Kings – that’s right, I’m battling through the histories of the Old Testament at the moment. Actually, the histories are always packed with amazing stuff, but you always forget, until you get around to reading them again! Or is it just me who finds this?

Anyway, in 1 Kings 8 we have Solomon talking to the multitude that have gathered for the ‘grand opening’ of the temple, and praying to the Lord. (I hope you appreciate that due to the nature of the blog I only have space to give the briefest of contexts. I have on many occasions been accused of verbosity!)

There are a number of beautiful things to be found in this chapter alone (the glory of the Lord filling the house in verse 11; God going ahead with a desire that was in the heart of David verses 16-17) which I would love to spend time on, but I can’t, so go and look at those verses yourself.

What jumped at me this time, which I have not so much noticed before, is a phrase that is actually repeated, occurring first in verse 15, where Solomon begins to praise the Lord while explaining to the people what led to this day: “Blessed be the LORD, the God of Israel, who spoke with His mouth to my father David and has fulfilled it with His hand…” I’d not spotted the distinction before, but now it occurred to me: God spoke with His mouth, and fulfilled it with His hand. Nice.

I said it was repeated. Solomon came back to this phrase again, even more succinctly, in verse 24, when he’s praying: “indeed, You have spoken with Your mouth and have fulfilled it with Your hand as it is this day.” I think he was preaching his way into revelation! What I mean by that is, perhaps when he first spoke it in verse 15, the two things occurred to him to say, and as he went on, he realised the depth and significance of the idea, refined it, and it came out again in prayer in verse 24 in the neat way that we see. Sometimes you might find this happens, when you are living in prayerful revelation. An idea occurs which begins to clarify as you meditate on it and begin to use it in prayer and proclamation!

Anyway, I found this phrase beautiful, and as I said, had a depth to it. It constituted something I already knew, but sometimes the Lord brings things back up again for us to freshly think about.

When God speaks (with His mouth), He also stretches forth His hand to empower the word and the hearers and bearers (announcers) of the word. Like I said, He is a good God. He doesn’t say something and then expect those who hear to get on an fulfill it in their own strength. Ten out of ten times, this is impossible! That’s the mistake that was so frequently made about the Law. It was as though it were for us merely to perform duties as ordained by the mouth of God. No, says Paul, it was meant to be a tutor to lead us to Christ, who is the power of God (1 Cor 1:24). It shows us our deficiency in not being able to perform what God has spoken out of our own strength, and our need for Christ and the empowerment of the anointing of the Holy Spirit (which is what ‘Christ’ or ‘Messiah’ means: ‘anointed one’).

I repeat: God never speaks a word without also making power available to accomplish it. In the New Testament this is summed up beautifully in Luke 1:37. If you were to turn there in your Bible, it is likely it might say something like “For nothing will be impossible with God.” How, you might ask, does this sound like what I have just described? It might vaguely, but not exactly.

Well, translators of even the most ‘literal’ translations (like mine) still take liberties sometimes to make something slightly more readable, and what is actually contained in the Greek of this verse is that “no word from God will be without power.”

Hopefully you see a little more now how this reflects what I have been saying! No word from God is without power! Furthermore the word ‘word’ is ‘rhema’ which is often used to describe, in Strong’s definition, “that which is or has been uttered by the living voice…” Some would say it is used to describe words that have come immediately, ‘in the moment’, including such words from God, as opposed to the established, written word (generally meaning Scriptures), for which the Greek word ‘logos’ is often used.

In the context of Luke 1 it helps us to see how it applies: Gabriel has just delivered a word to Mary that she is to bear the Messiah, and that the means are not to be natural but supernatural, it will be a ‘virgin birth’. How will it be achieved? Not, of course, by any human strength, but “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will  overshadow you…” (verse 35).

The word ‘overshadow’ there leads us to another verse, to be found back in Isaiah 51:16. It has been a favourite of mine for a number of years. In it the Lord states: “I have put My words in your mouth and have covered you with the shadow of My hand, to established the heavens, to found the earth, and to say to Zion, ‘You are My people.’” Here we see that the activity of the word of the Lord and the hand of the Lord are more intimately interwoven. God has a word which He has placed into the mouth of the prophet so that he (the prophet) can be the one who speaks it out. God’s hand then overshadows the prophet (hence the link to Luke 1) to create the ‘atmosphere of anointing’ appropriate for the prophet to release that word. As they release it, it is empowered by the Lord’s hand to do what it was sent to accomplish. It establishes something in the heavens, which also affects the earth (‘founding’ it – laying a foundation) and furthermore speaks empowerment to the people of God (“You are My people”).

Did you know that plenty of atheists and antagonists read the Bible to tear it apart, viciously seeking to undermine its authority and condemn things that it has to say. Others all over the world (a great many more I dare say) – many millions – take massive encouragement from it and find God speaks to them through it. What is the difference? The anointing, the power of God. Without it, the Bible can be a dry book! No wonder Jesus said, “You are mistaken, not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God” (Mark 12:24). In order to have understanding, He is saying, you must not only know what the Scriptures say, but you must know and have experience of the power of God!

Perhaps you know this. One day you read it and nothing seems to go in. You go away and don’t remember a thing you just read! But on another day, perhaps you’re in a prayer meeting, or have just been in a time of worship, or have been praying yourself, and suddenly something in Scripture opens up like you’ve never seen it before. It has a ‘power’ which it didn’t have the day before – because the atmosphere is of prayer, the Spirit is there, and now God is speaking! I hope you’ve had the pleasure of this experience – it’s always tremendously exciting and something that we should seek to make a daily experience.

To press on: Zechariah 4:6 is a well-known verse which I think speaks again directly into this subject. The Lord has been speaking some incredible words to Zerubbabel, and then He caps it off with this: “‘Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit,’ says the LORD of hosts.” In case you were thinking you were going to achieve all these things in your own strength, Zerubbabel, you got another think coming! It was the Lord’s reminder that he would need the anointing (pictured by the oil that flows right throughout this chapter) to accomplish all that was spoken of (including laying the foundations of the new temple they were rebuilding, right up to completing it by placing the final ‘capstone’ as the building work was completed!).

Ecclesiastes 8:4 in the New King James Version reads “Where the word of a king is, there is power.”

And lastly (for now), we see how this idea operated in the vibrant life of the early church in Acts chapter 4. Having been persecuted for preaching the word and seeing a lame man miraculously healed, the church gathers and prays a powerful prayer, saying: “And now, Lord, take note of their threats, and grant that Your bondservants may speak Your word with all boldness, while You extend Your hand to heal, and signs and wonders take place through the name of Your holy servant Jesus.” Having prayed this, the whole house where they were gathered was shaken – a powerful confirmation from the Lord, I would say, that He heard and liked their prayer!

They asked that as they proclaimed His WORD, that He would confirm and accompany it with POWER. They believed the two things to be inextricably linked. You cannot have the word of God without power. Without power, the good news is not good news. Jesus went about preaching the kingdom, and healing all who were sick (Matthew 4:23; 9:35; Mark 1:21-28). Signs accompanying the proclamation of the gospel were a given in the days of the early church (Mark 16:15-20).

Be encouraged! If God has spoken a word (be it a fresh revelation from Scripture, or an impression in your heart, or the audible voice of the Lord, or in any way), He also provides the power to accomplish it. And He is a God who finishes, who completes the work He began! (Philippians 1:6)