Why it's good not to be settled

Since coming back to the UK we've been asked many times 'how we're settling' and 'whether we're settled yet.' And this has all been the warm concern of friends for which we're very grateful. It's good to be be rooted back into a good local church. It's good to rebuild a network of relationships. It's good to find some measure of stability. But more and more recently I've been seeing references to stability in the Bible that are sharply negative.

“Moab has been at rest from youth,

like wine left on its dregs,

not poured from one jar to another—

she has not gone into exile.

So she tastes as she did,

and her aroma is unchanged."

It is the complacent, those without Christ, who are settled like the sediment at the bottom of a forgotten wine bottle. God's people have a deep rest and joy in Christ but in this world they have trouble and turmoil and frequent change.

Because change is good for us.

"The Scripture says, "They have no changes, therefore they do not fear God" (Psalm 55:19); and so they go down to hell quietly and securely. Oh, but it is otherwise with God's children! They are tossed up and down. God will not suffer them to prosper or live long in a secure, drowsy, sinful state, the continuance wherein is a fearful evidence that such an one as yet has no saving grace, nor yet belongs to God, seeing as Christ hates such an estate and will not suffer his own to be long therein, but will shift and remove them from vessel to vessel, from condition to condition, till he has wrought in them that disposition of soul that regards and loves him more and more and has nearer and nearer communion with him." (Richard Sibbes, The Love of Chirst, end of Ninth Sermon)

Comments

Christmas is for weeping people

Who is Christmas for? Happy families? Children? Is Christmas for those who have just lost loved ones in a bus crash? Or for those who lost parents or children in the horror of the Westgate massacre. Does Christmas mean anything to South Sudan as the bullets fly and chaos and fear escalates daily? How can we talk about Christmas when we’re surrounded by that sort of pain and sadness and mayhem? How can Christmas and death fit together? Well if Christmas is all about fun and family and eating and drinking and cute nativity plays then it obviously doesn’t fit with massacres and funerals and pain and suffering. But that’s not the real Christmas. There is NOTHING sweet about the real Christmas. There is NOTHING sentimental or cute about the real Christmas story. Pick up a Bible and read Matthew 2:1-18. That is a dark story isn’t it? There’s the nice bit about the star and the gold, frankincense and myrrh but basically it’s about a mad king hunting down...

Holding together restlessness and optimism

Piper has a great section in his Marks of a Spiritual Leader where he holds together two vital biblical leadership virtues: 1. RESTLESS Spiritual leaders have a holy discontentment with the status quo. Non-leaders have inertia that causes them to settle in and makes them very hard to move off of dead center. Leaders have a hankering to change, to move, to reach out, to grow, and to take a group or an institution to new dimensions of ministry. They have the spirit of Paul, who said in Philippians 3:13, “Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead. I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” Leaders are always very goal-oriented people. God’s history of redemption is not finished. The church is shot through with imperfections, lost sheep are still not in the fold, needs of every sort in the world are unmet, sin infects the saints. It is un...

Utumishi wa Neno taster

It's finally starting! We had our first taster day for the church-based Utumishi wa Neno preaching course on Saturday. It was great to spend a few hours with 14 or so brothers and sisters and just spend soak in the Word. One of the crazy things we did was to read through the whole of Philippians out loud. How long did it take us? 15 minutes. And all of us enjoyed the experience and heard things we'd never noticed before. More thoughts on the day here . And for those who asked for the notes, they're available to download here . If you're in Kenya and want to get involved in the on-going Utumishi training see more info on the iServe Africa website .

Looking at Christ

Search This Blog