“So the last will be first, and the first will be last.” Matthew 20:16

I wonder if you feel less than, do you feel like there’s a party somewhere and you’re not invited? 

This is how our world works, it puts us all into categories of acceptance, power and success.  Depending on where we are on the world scale, being the right person in the right place doing the right thing will depend on who the world defines us to be.

If this is you, if you are feeling less than, you are the very person Jesus is inviting into his Kingdom.  In Jesus Kingdom, you will be considered first, you will be embraced as God’s lost child, the one who went looking elsewhere but realised you are made for something greater than yourself or for more than the world has to offer.

When we feel less than, we can fall into the trap of thinking that we have nothing to offer this complex, fickle world.  For some of us, we may be brave enough to think bigger, to have the ambition to take us beyond the world’s definition.

However, when we get there; the place we consider is the end goal; the place of success; those of us who have eyes to see soon realise there is still something missing, there’s still a place we were made for but we can’t quite put our finger on it, it seems like we are grasping air but we somehow know there’s something and somewhere we belong.

Jim Carey, the American actor, once said: “I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it’s not the answer”.

In the book of Matthew Chapter 20 Jesus teaches his disciples how his kingdom differs from any other ideas the world has dreamed up.  Jesus tells us the last will be first and the first will be last.  Jesus turns upside down how we think things should work or how we’ve made sense of the world so far.  You may be less than in this world, but through Jesus eyes, you are more precious than life itself.

Matthew 20:17-19 ‘Now Jesus was going up to Jerusalem. On the way, he took the Twelve aside and said to them, “We are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the teachers of the law. They will condemn him to death and will hand him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified. On the third day he will be raised to life!”  This is the new life that Jesus is offering to you today.

Jesus goes on to demonstrate how power works in his kingdom, verses 26-28 ^‘Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave— just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many”.

We are not to use our power to lord it over others to get what we want, but to use it to serve others.  If we feel less than, there will be someone in your world who feels ‘less than’ than you.  How do you respond to them, with compassion or are you tempted to think they deserve to be less than?  Maybe we consider them less than because they don’t try hard enough. Our Lord and Saviour who is ‘more than’ as the King of Kings and Lord of Lords gave his life for our benefit so that we are no longer defined by self, the world or the devil.

And finally, the chapter closes as we are told in verse 30 about two blind men crying out for rescue, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on us”.

These two men may have been physically blind but they were spiritually insightful; they could see and accept who Jesus is – the long-promised Son of God who came to rescue us from ourselves and bring us into his kingdom that God originally provided at the beginning of time.  Throughout the Old Testament, we are told of the promised one who would come to rescue humanity from itself, the world and the devil.

This is what success looks like in God’s kingdom, that as we see who Jesus is, as we realise our need of him, regardless of whether we think we are less than or whether we attempt to use our power for our own gain, Jesus cries out on the cross, ‘Father forgive them, for they know not what they do’.  This is Jesus’ invitation to every single person God created.

Jesus is the only one who is the right person, in the right place, doing the right thing – are you ready to come into his kingdom?

What do you need to bring?   Everything you have.  All your doubts, all your fears, all your anxiety, all your failures, all your successes, all your wealth, all your nothingness, all that you are.

And in this moment, you will discover the greatest joy ever, the place that you were always made for…… 

Jesus himself.  He is the one who makes sense of who we are and why we are here.  Jesus is the one who defines us, this is what true freedom looks like……

Come and see for yourself.

I have always loved living in the UK.  And one of my favourite things about living here is the contrast between the seasons.  I love observing the world and how it changes through the seasons.

When I was younger I was a huge David Bellamy fan, imagine David Attenborough for kids! I would spend hours observing nature and recreating it into drawings for family and friends.  I once did a whole project on leaves, trees and the dependency of birds on the fruit of the land and sent it to the BBC c/o David Bellamy.  Looking back I had a fascination with winter, the stark contrast between the white snowy backdrop and the red berries offered to the birds every winter.

As I got older and became responsible for a family I would always look forward to the retrieving into the home during the winter months.  I loved shutting out the demands of the world as I closed the curtains earlier and earlier in the day. 

I also loved that there is less housework to do in the Winter, once the garden is bedded for the winter there is much less to do in presenting your home to a watching world.  The dust in the house seems less obvious and you can get away with a quick hoover now and again.

This year I was reflecting on my winter memories of the past and considered how these attitudes had subtly changed over the years, and as always I was doing this while singing the carol ‘In the bleak midwinter’.

My husband doesn’t understand how you can think of multiple things all at the same time which somehow relate to one another at the end.  I often ask him what he is thinking about as he sits in quiet contemplation and it is hard for me to consider the reality of ‘nothing just resting my brain’.

But in the complexity of my brain I get to consider big life things from the mundane every day tasks of life.

It was in the everyday task of singing this carol that I was given the opportunity to reflect on the juxtaposition of the words that seem to reflect two different worlds that don’t seem they should ever meet.  But in reality it is the world that Jesus chose to be born into.

Christina Rossetti wrote this as a poem for a local paper and called it ‘A Christmas Carol’ it wasn’t until after her death that it was set to music and became the carol that has been sung across the world since.

What Christina has wonderfully imaginatively done is brought Jesus into the reality of the London life she sees around her.  It is obvious to us that Jesus wasn’t born on a wintery snowy day but it is the London that Christina sees before her.  But at her heart I am convinced that Christina wasn’t joining together the quintessential wintery Christmas card scene with the wonder of childbirth but the bleakness of the human condition that was so evident around her in the darkness of the London smog and the gloom of the everyday Victorian people trying to make ends meet.

I am convinced it is in this bleakness of the wintery scene that she brings the promise of the Lord Jesus, the hope seen through the eyes of all who met him on the day of his birth, the miracle where heaven and earth meet.

This eternal light that shines into the bleakness of life, the light that brings life where there was death.  It is a carol that understands the promise of the Saviour, that understands humanity’s need of the only hope that will sustain us through the darkness of this broken world, a carol that dares to look up out of the gloom and trust in the promises only God can fulfil.

And as I reflected on all these things since, I came to realise that the lack of housework wasn’t the gift but the gift of winter was a time of rest in Him, a time to reflect on why he came, a time to draw others in rather than shut them out, a time to bring those out of the cold and into the warmth given by Christ himself.

You see the reality of the dark is that it may hide the grime but it is still there and needs dealing with in the Spring.

Jesus birth always points us to the hope of Spring, the reality that Jesus’ death at Easter is the fulfilment of the promise of Christmas. 

And maybe at the beginning, I wanted to hide in the darkness because this was the place where I felt safest, unseen, wallowing in the despair of sin, afraid of the light that would expose the sin within.

But the glorious truth is we no longer need to live with the burden of the grime our sin creates, for Jesus doesn’t just rescue us from sin he also washes us clean.

So whether this Christmas time you are overwhelmed by the bleakness of the world or your own sin. Whether you just want to shut the world out or you want time to reflect take a leaf out of Christina’s book and let us come together to respond in the only way that brings true hope…..

‘What can I give Him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;
If I were a wise man, I would do my part,
Yet what I can I give him, give Him my heart.’ Amen.

Father why did you create me,

Only to suffer at the hands of those you put over me

Why can’t they care what happens to me,

Why must I journey this life alone.

Father, please hear my cry,

To know I am loved beyond measure.

Remind my soul to forever trust,

In your unfailing love.

Without you I would be but a speck of dust,

Unseen and unheard.      Anon

How many of us have felt like his?  How many of us wish our lives were better?  How many of us resent the way we are or have been treated?

Whatever the circumstances of the life of this author there seems to be a common voice for the people in the world we come across today, especially those who feel life shouldn’t have been as hard as it is.   Many of these people demonstrate this through anger, bitterness, rage; for others they manipulate to get what they want, they quietly work out in their minds how to get what they think they deserve.

As a Christian I have often thought that lamenting was a form of self-pity, a moping about, hey look at me, my life is worse than yours.  A dear Christian friend once challenged this thinking and suggested I took time to lament because the idea of lamenting comes from the word of God.  As a stubborn learner it was many years later before I began to understand and see what a gift of God lamenting is.

The two great biblical Lamenters that come to mind are Jeremiah and King David.

Jeremiah always lamented not for the things that happened to him but for the ways in which Israel continually rejected God.  Jeremiah’s heart for Israel was that they would come to understand that God was for them not against them.  That Israel would come to love God as he loved them and had always provided for them.

This should be the heart of every Christian towards the people trapped in the brokenness of this world. That, it is their blindness to God’s love and provision for them that results in the choices they make.  Just like Jeremiah who continually cried out to God on behalf of Israel may we pray like Jeremiah for and on behalf of the world we live in.

On the other hand, David’s lamentations were often for his personal journey, crying out to God in the face of great tribulation and rejection. There were often enemies at David’s door, ready to kill him, from King Saul through to his own Son.  King David even lamented the death of this very same Son.

Psalm 139 is filled with the wonder of being created in God’s image, to the crying out for justice to those who do evil, to the defeat of the enemies bent on his destruction but at the end of the Psalm, David’s cry is for God to change his own heart, to check to see if there is anything offensive within himself.

This is the journey of the Christian, of the one who has been transported out of darkness into the marvellous light of Jesus Christ. Whose hearts are transformed from hearts of pointing fingers at their enemies to their hearts depending on their Saviour. Who then in turn recognise that it is through Christ alone who takes us on the journey from Sinner to Saint, not because we earned it, but because he has mercy on us.

This gift of lamenting relines our hearts, having confidence the Father sees all things and judges all things justly.  That he hears and responds to our cries out of love for us. And through Jesus promises not to leave us where he found us.

The author of today’s lament had that realisation that it wasn’t the wrongs that had been done against ‘Anon’ that define us, but the Salvation of the one who loves and provides for us.  It is in the hope of God’s salvation plan that transforms us from being but a speck of dust to being seen and heard.

For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. 2 Corinthians 10:3-5 niv

I don’t know about you but the word obedience always fills me with dread.  It always reminders me how I can never measure up no matter how hard I try. As a Christian it is a word that has plagued me more than I was willing to face up to.

As I child I found it impossible to be obedient, even though I was often too scared to be disobedient because I didn’t like the consequences of being in trouble with my parents, inside I wasn’t a willing participant in being obedient.  I often resented my parents for making me do what I should want to do.

I hate sin, I hate what it does to me and to the people around me, to those I love, to those I call friends, to my neighbours, to the world at war against each other.

So if we hate sin why is it so hard to be obedient to Jesus’ call to follow him, he who is the only one without sin.

I have had many ‘addictions’ that the Lord Jesus has undone in me, much of which he has shown were strongholds because they were based on my own thinking/belief system rather than on the truth of who Jesus is and his way of thinking.  I need to bring all my thoughts captive to Christ rather than allowing them to take me captive to sin.

However, the conflict between the love of food and the desire to lose weight has been the ultimate challenge for me to overcome….or not.

Over the 40 years of this battle, I have moments of physical transformation where I could do enough exercise to counteract the food intake and many a time exercise has encouraged me to make better food choices.

However, the love of food always seemed to win out, especially after a freak gym accident that stopped me from doing the amount of exercise I needed to counteract my appetite; my most favourite being ‘spin class’ (indoor cycling) such fun.

Recently the Holy Spirit has challenged this reluctance towards obedience and is helping me reframe my understanding of obedience.

I have been learning that Jesus’ call to obedience isn’t meant to be something out of duty, it isn’t meant to be something to prove we belong to him it is about who we are following and where we are following him to.

This takes us back to the time of the Israelites out in the wilderness wandering for 40 years. Why? Because of their disobedience. But what enabled them to keep going why didn’t they just give up and go back to Egypt?  2 things: they were following their Saviour and they were headed to the promised land.

Know the one who you are following and where he is taking you

Whatever we say about Israel, no matter how far they pushed God’s boundaries they never went back to Egypt during those wilderness years.  It was God’s continuous mercy that enabled Israel to keep repenting, keep turning back towards God, the one who rescued them from their slavery in Egypt. 

Just like little children we need to keep learning how to trust Jesus our Saviour. As we keep getting it wrong and wandering off in the opposite direction we learn from life’s consequences that there is only one we can trust, only one we can depend on and that one is Jesus himself.  He alone who is without sin.

Obedience isn’t a list of rules and regulations but is a call to follow Him no matter what.  And Jesus’ promise to us?…….’Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the Lord your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you.’ Deut 31:6. God declared this to Joshua just before the Israelites were to arrive in the promised land.

Our greatest enemy is the devil who wants to stop us in our relationship with Jesus, who wants to stop us getting to the promised land and do anything to cause us to turn away from Jesus.  One of his weapons against us is temptation.  All temptation is to stop us from following Jesus and turn back to living life anyway we want to.  What would it take for you to reject Jesus? 

We do not need to be phased or terrified of sin because Jesus is the one who overcame it. He is the weapon, he is the glory that destroys the darkness. Our focus in regard to obedience isn’t really about what we do but why we do it.  Jesus wants us to follow him and learn how to live a life that enables us and others to flourish and grow; the devil, even though his temptations appear attractive, they all lead to darkness and ultimately are for our harm and the harm of others.

All that Jesus does is always for our good and his glory.

To be obedient is to agree with Jesus that He alone knows what is for our good and reject the temptation to go the opposite way.

How do we demolish the strongholds in our lives, those places where we think we have no choice but to do the wrong thing?  Be obedient to Jesus.  Follow his lead and leave the results to him. 

I am learning to stop focusing on overcoming my sin because as I do I end up trying to deal with it on my own, so I am learning instead to turn to Jesus for his help. That every time I sin I repent rather than pretending I haven’t done anything wrong, every time I want to sin I want to choose to turn to Jesus for help. rather than give into sin. I want to spend more time with Jesus, talking to him, reading about him, learning who he is in the bible, celebrating all he is and all he has done and is doing. 

The apostle Paul in Romans reminds us that we are more than conquerors. This is a real battle and we shouldn’t do this alone.  I have a trusted friend who shares the reality that this battle for our souls is real and will pray against the devil’s schemes on my behalf. 

Let us join in prayer for fellow brothers and sisters in Christ remembering that the battle belongs to the Lord, he is the one who has overcome death, has destroyed sin and the devil, he alone brings us out of darkness and into his marvellous light. He alone was the one who was obedient to his Father so that no one would perish but have everlasting life.  Let us bask in his glory and his provision.

When we put our faith and trust in Jesus we become children of God, we become family, God is our Father who only wants good for us.

However, all of this is only possible if we repent and believe Jesus died on the cross for our sins so that we can have everlasting life.  If this is your place of confusion or temptation to reject Jesus, please keep asking questions, please keep being curious and interested in understanding why Jesus did what he did.  Seek out churches who can answer your questions. Never give up until you see his glory.

Lord Jesus teach us how to follow you well, show us the ways in which we think we know best, change our thinking to line up with yours and help us to reject all things that will harm us no matter how attractive they look.  Amen

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain. Psalm 139:6 niv

Knowledge is a wonderful thing isn’t it.  Knowledge is something we seem to be willing to sacrifice much to gain the fountain of all wisdom, including our time, money and relationships.

In the minds of many there seems to be an underlying belief within ‘the pursuit of knowledge leads to great power’.  It is certainly part of the dog-eat-dog worldview of many companies instead of Spiderman’s famous quote ‘with great power comes great responsibility’ much of our worldview seems to live out ‘with great knowledge comes great power’ which we use against each other.

We can have many ideas of what we believe or what we think however it is in how we live life that speaks volumes of what our true heart’s desires are and who we aim to benefit.

You may be surprised that we, as humanity, have limits to our knowledge; we only know because we learn.

Our education system seems to be driven by the ethic/belief that all people can have the same success in life, the deciding factor being the quality of our education. In practice, from what I have observed, we are all different in our ability to access learning and for many of us there are many other obstacles to our ability to live what we learn.

Education isn’t the complete answer to a child’s ability to progress in life I truly believe it’s more about our response to what we see around us; our pursuit of learning should stem from curiosity, as it is the satisfaction of this curiosity that allows a person, no matter who they are, to thrive.   When we become convinced that there is a greater purpose in our learning, then we become excited about the world around us and become curious to learn.

If we want our children to thrive at school, we need to focus on the wonder of discovering something we don’t know.  This isn’t the pursuit of knowledge but the curiosity of learning.

I remember as a child we would learn how to identify trees by their leaves, which left me amazed by the world around me, and I grew up with a desire to know more.  However, the pursuit of knowledge, of passing exams, usurps this desire and, in many cases, it can destroy it.

Tragically, many of our schools are producing children who can’t wait to stop learning

I wonder how many future explorers we have put off by killing their sense of curiosity, by creating an education system of performance rather than include the experience of the joy of learning.

I love learning and I love teaching children the joy of learning.  Because we were created to learn, we were created to be curious so that we can discover the unknown, but more than that so we can be led to the Creator of all.

Wonderfully the Creator of all is all knowing and in his Omniscience he makes it possible for us to known him.

How amazing is that? I wonder if you had the power of all knowledge what would you use it for?  God uses it to make himself known to us.

God is all knowing because he is knowledge, he is the source of all knowledge, he never learns only teaches. We on the other hand can only teach once we have learned.

The beautiful Psalm of King David ‘such knowledge (God’s knowledge of his creation) is too wonderful for me’ expresses the awe and wonder we should have when considering God and his omniscience.  God teaches us that this pursuit of knowledge is too lofty for us to attain – the introduction of sin into the world was the moment humanity thought they could out know God, that by knowing everything then we can live independently of God.  This is what led to the destruction of humanity.

There are limits to our knowledge because we are sinful at heart, we want what we want when we want it – it is this pursuit of the heart that makes a world at war leading only to destruction instead of a world of growth and human flourishing.

It took me to the age of about 45 to realise that I was never meant to focus on knowing stuff but growing up is about learning and learning and learning.  As we learn from our Creator our pursuit of him becomes our priority.  As we pursue knowing God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit then we discover who we are, why we are here, and how to live the life he has gifted to us.  God our Father knows us better than we know ourselves.

Instead of our pursuit of knowledge, our souls are crying out to be satisfied by knowing the one who created us, the one who has a plan to rescue every human being from their interpretation of self and destroy the evil in the world, so that our future with him is one of eternal safety filled with joy and praise.

Let us all have hearts that desire to learn from the Master, the one who created us, to be in relationship with Him and grow in our desire to spend eternity with Him.

Not sure where to start…..begin with the Speak Life 3,2,1 course it opens your imagination into what you have been missing and sets your path towards the one who created you.

For those of us already in the church family let us pray that we focus more on our pursuit of knowing Christ rather than the pursuit of academia or bettering ourselves, as it is the Lord Jesus who transforms us to be like him as he is all knowing. Just like King David let us be in awe of who Jesus is and what he has done for us, not because we deserved it but because he uses his all knowing power to make himself known to us.

“he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.” Genesis 3:15b niv

Here we are at the end of the Lord’s prayer just as we reach the final week before Christmas.  It feels quite fitting that the end of the prayer leads us to Jesus himself.

Temptation feels quite a modern topic we are surrounded by things to entice us away from God’s good purposes.  For someone who has been plagued throughout my life by addictions and seeking ways of feeling better about who I am, what I have done or even what has been done to me the Lord’s prayer brings clarity and comfort.

Temptation isn’t a sin, the act is something that is done against us by the evil one. Here we are in good company after all Jesus himself was tempted as soon as his ministry was declared by God, Jesus was taken by the Holy Spirit into the desert. It is the accepting of the temptation to trust in anything other than God’s good purposes that is the sin.

It is not God who is doing the tempting but God is using the temptation to highlight the hidden sin within so it can be brought out into the light to be destroyed. With God sin is ultimately destroyed without God sin ultimately destroys us.

The reason Jesus wants us to pray this is to challenge us to question do we want to be tempted or do we want Jesus to rescue us. Sometimes the enticement of sin is attractive and exciting…..just like Edmund and his turkish delight!

Why would God send Jesus to be tested, why would God allow Jesus his own son to face the temptation of the evil one?

Believe it or not for our good!

We needed to know he was the chosen one, we needed to know that he was the promised one, we needed to know that through his testing he was perfect, without sin, without rejection of God’s goodness, willing to do God’s will.

It was declared in Genesis 3 that an offspring/child would come to crush the head of Satan, the one who came to destroy God’s relationship with his created people.  Here in Genesis 3 verse 15 is hope for every human being, that God would send one who would put enmity between Satan and humanity and crush Satan’s head.

This is the reverse of the curse instead of humanity being separated from God, Jesus would come from heaven to earth. From glory into the pit of sin to provide the means to pull us out of the pit eternally separating Satan and humanity bringing us back into relationship with Father God. In God’s goodness he made this promise at the moment humanity rejected Him.

Only Satan is destined to stay in the pit, there is no rescue plan for him. Jesus not only came to rescue us but to destroy the devil.  The devil and sin would be eternally destroyed.

Believe it or not this is for our good!

The moment Jesus was tempted in the desert we see the demise of Satan, we see the lack of power he actually has.  Jesus faced the real excruciating hunger from no food or drink for 40 days and nights which made him vulnerable to the temptation to seek the quick way out of his suffering.

If any of you have faced suffering of any kind whether circumstantial, self-inflicted or emotional we seem to be motivated to do anything we can to protect ourselves from the pain.  We want the quick way out, it seems our drive is to be at the end of the suffering and we can’t see any good that would ever come out of it.  Sometimes we can reflect looking back and see some perspective but, in the moment, we just want it to stop.

At the moment of Jesus temptation we see that his heart is for the Father’s will, it is the words of God that has the power to stop temptation in its track.  ‘It is written’ these powerful words from Jesus were the fire filled darts aimed at the devil’s evil plans.

Believe it or not this is for our good!

Trusting in the promises of God is the place of our victory because of what Jesus accomplished at the cross.

At the cross Jesus demonstrated his humanity in asking God to remove the cup of suffering if it is his will.  This excruciating suffering moment of Christ is the place of sacrifice that he came for on that first Christmas morn.  Would he choose to stop the pain, or would he choose to do whatever it takes to fulfil God’s will?

Often, we think about this moment as Good verse Evil.  However, this gives a sense of equality, that goodness wins out over evil because goodness pays off, goodness is what we all hope for.  However the truth is that God’s goodness is the only power at play, it is his goodness that created all we see, it is his goodness that demonstrates his grace to move towards us despite our sin, it is God’s goodness that sent his Son to die on the cross so that we wouldn’t have to, it is God’s goodness that would use the weakness of humanity to destroy the power of the devil, it is God’s goodness that destroys sin.

The only power the devil has is the power to tempt humanity and we have a choice either to believe the lies of the devil against God, or to recognise the goodness of God who sent Jesus to rescue us for our good.

This Christmas time as we celebrate the arrival of the child who came to die for our sins let us remember all that we have been given, all we are is because God is good and wants good for us.

The temptation of Christ demonstrates to us the pure heart of Christ that in his humanity he was perfect, not being in this for himself but to stand in our place, a sacrificial love for the Father’s will and for the good of God’s people.

And as we face temptation let us ask the Holy Spirit to give us the strength of Christ to reject the temptation to turn away from God and instead willingly live lives with a thankful heart even in the face of suffering, or loss, or rejection knowing with confidence that Jesus will accomplish all that the Father has promised for his glory and our good.

1 Peter 5:10 says, “And after you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore you, secure you, strengthen you, and establish you”. 

Dear Father lead us not unto temptation but deliver us from evil for yours is the kingdom, the power and glory for ever and ever Amen.