^‘Again, Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness but will have the light of life.’ John 8:12

As promised, we are turning back to the Lord ‘s Prayer however I need to revisit ‘Hallowed be thy name’.

While I was organising a Halloween outreach event in my garden I thought about the link between Hallowed be thy name and the event of Halloween.  Why is the same ‘holy’ name mentioned in both.  These seem like polar opposites that should never meet particularly on the 31^st October so is there a link?

Is Halloween in opposition of God as a rejection of his holiness and an embracing of all that is evil?  I’m sure many of us believe this to be true. I certainly though this for many years.

Last time we considered how God is to be hallowed, to be worshipped as Creator God.  However, we need to consider how this truth of God shines into the truth of who we are particularly as our role as worshipper.  Worshippers of our Creator God.  For some of us to be regarded as a worshipper feels offensive.  However whether we agree to worship God what we need to understand is we are naturally a worshipper whether we like it or not.  The bible tells us we either worship God or his creation.

The truth is as created beings we must be less than the one who created us, this must at the very least be what we understand by ‘Hallowed be thy name’.

Strangely this isn’t really how we naturally think, how often have you caught yourself thinking ‘when I get to heaven, I’ll tell God what I really think’ or ‘I’ll put God straight one of these days.’

For many of us created things have so much more clarity, they are not only more visible, but they take much less effort to understand.  That’s because we are created too.  What is visible makes so much more sense and is much more available particularly if you have a disposable income to spend on whatever you want.

This is one of the many differences to living for the kingdom of self or living within the kingdom of God.

God is invisible to the naked eye, so we often readily ignore his presence or worse still try a disprove his existence, which enables us to make the assumption that all our wealth and treasures are earned by our own hard work rather than gifted to us from God himself.

If visibility is evidence of all that we are we have to admit that there are many things essential to life that are invisible to us these include air, wind, breath, laws of science and maths to name a few.  As with all things invisible there is physical evidence to prove its existence.  So just because we can’t see something doesn’t mean it is less important, or we are unable to be aware of it.

The apostle John tells us in chapter 20 s 28 and 29 ‘Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!”Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

This is the difference between spiritual blindness and spiritual sight, the place of a faith that gives us hope for a certain future. It is this lens of Christ that we all need to see life through to make sense of who God the Father is.  That to Hallow the name of God is not only about respect and honour but recognise he is Holy, and we are not.

We are a different not just because we are created but because we are unholy, we are incapable of being in the presence of God without our sinfulness being destroyed by God’s pure holiness.

It is Christ himself that provides the bridge from unholiness (darkness) to holiness (light).

The meaning of hallow is ‘greatly revered and honoured’ or ‘one who is holy’.  Hallowed means bring honour and respect to the one who is to be greatly revered and honoured because of his holiness.  

In Jesus we receive His holiness not so that we are worshipped but so we as worshippers are able to fully worship our Creator, our Father in heaven without the restriction and terror that the sin within has signed our death warrant.

And this is where we see the link with Halloween, it was never meant to be a celebration of all things evil. The meaning of ween is ‘to hold the opinion’ of hallow ‘holiness’ in other words to be holy minded.

Halloween was originally a Christian event the eve before All Hallows Day the day to celebrate holiness.  On Halloween the Christian children would dress up in ghoul outfits to show how they weren’t scared of evil because they knew Jesus had overcome it and destroyed even death itself.  As Christians they (and we) have nothing to fear from evil as it is destined to destruction.

Maybe next Halloween if you are a Christian pray about how to meet your neighbours with the great news of Jesus or if you’re not a Christian you could consider understanding who Jesus is and why he died on the cross to bring you from darkness into His marvellous light.

This is what I did this Halloween

Just a little detour from working our way through the Lord’s prayer.  I wanted to share a passion of mine about how obstacles to learning, as followers or enquirers of Jesus, impacts on our lives both practically and spiritually.

When I worked in a school one of my roles was to identify obstacles to the students learning.  It was a joy to help students to not only identify their stumbling blocks but also to give them ideas of how to either use the stumbling block as a means to learning differently or how to overcome those blocks, so their learning became more accessible.

What I learned was by both identifying and equipping students to deal with specific obstacles it resulted in the students enjoying their learning across their subjects.

I think the same is true for us as we try and grapple with God’s word.  There are many obstacles to our learning, some we may not be aware of, which not only limits our understanding of scripture but can have an impact on our ability to read it in the first place.

The greatest obstacle for us all is understanding that every time we consider reading the bible we’re entering a spiritual war.  How many times have you noticed, when you want to read scripture something else gets in the way?  It is so much easier to pick up your phone or a magazine rather than spend even 10 minutes quietly in God’s word. 

For some of us reading fills us with dread, this may be due to bad school experiences, or we just don’t like reading, or it just feels like hard work and if we’re honest most of us avoid hard work or avoid additional hard work outside of our paid employment.

For others we think we know enough to be able to live out our faith and what we are taught on a ‘Sunday is enough for me’!

These are all relatively easier obstacles to identify and put things in place to see beyond them however the obstacles harder to identify are the ways in which we’re already living out our faith.

For some there will be areas of unbelief where God’s word pushes against some unknown, but heart committed belief that makes God’s word grate, so we’re tempted to reject His word rather than reject our gut feeling.

For others we believe that being in a relationship with Jesus is more important than reading God’s word.  Or reading God’s word on my own is more important than the risk of being vulnerable in church.  I used to think it was me and Jesus against the world!!

For some of us the hardest and most impossible thing we face is that the world is a scary place, and ‘I need to avoid it at all costs’, this obstacle not only limits our own lives but Jesus’ commissioning of us to seek the lost and broken with the transforming power of his word.

These types of faith journeys are harder to identify because we either believe we are right, or we believe we could never change. Both of these belief systems reinforce the sin within rather than place Christ in his rightful place on the throne of our lives.

From my experience the hardest obstacle to learning that seems to be inherent in all of us at one level or another, regardless of educational experiences, is the belief that ‘I should know this’ or ‘I already know this’. 

95% of students with access to learning issues, I worked with, thought their role in school was to give the teacher the right answer.  However, as learners our job is to ask the right questions it’s the only way the teacher can know what we need to learn.  And 95% of those I worked with who had no obvious access to learning issues thought at the age of 11 they had learned all they needed to learn to read well.

The key to learning well is to discover the joy of learning by asking the right questions.  Bringing good questions, questions we actually want the answers to, shows an openness to wanting to learn and when those questions are answered somewhere deep within us, we are satisfied.

Let’s take a step back into childhood and think about the questions little people keep asking.  Many of us parents have many a time become exasperated at the endless ‘what and why’ questions however it seems this is the beginning of the joy of learning that God has ordained so that in time we will not only ask but then seek and knock at his door.

I always thought that by the time I was 40, life would make more sense, and I would feel more in control of the world around me.  It was this moment that the Lord Jesus opened my eyes with the truth of who He is rather than who I thought he was.  Isaiah 9:6b ‘……And he will be called Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace’.

This was the moment I realised that my life was never about knowing stuff about Jesus but coming to know Him and the only way I could do that isn’t to gather as much information as I could but to embrace the joy of learning from Him.

Whatever our obstacles to learning ‘the joy of learning from Christ Jesus’ is available to us all.

And the key to learning from Jesus is to come to His word with good questions, questions we genuinely want answers to.  If you would like more help with identifying your obstacles to ‘knowing Jesus and making Jesus known’ email me on angela@livinghisword.life.

Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come……Revelation 1:5 esv

Last week we were considering how we can relate to God as Father and how The Lord’s prayer reflects our relationship with God through accepting Jesus as our Lord and Saviour.

Today we ‘re considering the next step; it is a prayer for those who are adopted into God’s family, but they are also living somewhere else.  In other words, it’s a prayer for those in God’s family but who haven’t arrived home yet.

In Genesis 2 we see a glimpse of heaven on earth through the lens of the Garden of Eden.  God’s desire is to spend eternity in communion with his creation.  However, sin on earth has brought darkness into God’s creation. God gave mankind the role and responsibility of subduing animals and to multiply God’s kingdom.  When they not only allowed the serpent into the holy garden but listened to it’s lies about God and his character, they could no longer fulfil the promise of multiplying God’s kingdom.

Heaven is so different to this place called earth. Heaven is where the holiness of God is fully expressed, it is the place where mortals cannot tread but it is also the place that all humanity were created to live.

This seems contradictory to us usually because the sin in us demands it knows better than the God who created us. Why would God create this impossible scenario?  Why promise a home that doesn’t welcome the brokenness of humanity?

What appears to be a contradiction is the very place that the supernatural power of God meets with the sinful weakness of mankind.

The time where heaven and earth came to meet when the Son of man came as a baby.

We cannot and were never meant to be able to walk this life without God’s intervention, without God’s provision, without God’s sustaining power.

The walk towards heaven is the place where we are made ready for heaven, it is the journey that tests our hearts to respond to the provision of a loving Father or demand the right to do what pleases me.

The promise of heaven, through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit, is littered throughout the bible however it is in Revelation that we see in poetic language a glimpse of the reality of heaven.  It is beyond our understanding to grasp something so alien to the place we live that Jesus reveals his glory through the love language of poetry.

Read Revelation 21 and 22 and think about how God uses the things we know to describe the things we could never imagine.

For me it is the jewels.  I can imagine the wealth and the purity that they represent, grander than any human palace every built.  Then compare this to Revelation chapter 1 and the glory of the one who came to save us, to transform us from the darkness of our sin into the light of his glory.

Then you will begin to understand that we are not only pointed to a place to live but more importantly the person we are promised to……the bridegroom.

Most weddings we go to everyone wants to see the bride but the bridegroom as he catches a glimpse of the one he is waiting for can not focus on anything other than his bride. For us as we look forward to heaven it is the bridegroom that will fill our vision, it is the bridegroom that will put everything into perspective, it is the glory of the bridegroom that will satisfy the longing of our hearts.

And how can we live with him forever the most holy of holy places……because he not only saves us from our sins but transforms us into his likeness, into his glory.

So next time we pray Our Father who art in heaven let us be thankful for the incredible work our Triune God is preparing us for……a glorious life with him forever.

And how can we trust this…..because he is sharing the beauty of his love with us now, in the midst of the darkness of this world we are surrounded day by day by his glorious intervention, his glorious provision and his glorious sustaining power……and his glorious call to come follow me!

This, then, is how you should pray; ‘Our Father in heaven’ Matthew 6:9 niv

I love language, I particularly love the written word.   I wish I was better at understanding other languages, but I love the creativity of language.  There is a beauty to it.

English often gets a bad wrap because it doesn’t have the same nuances that other languages have, English interpretation seems to be quite matter of fact and misses out the depths of the meaning certain words have in other languages.

An example of this is the word God in Genesis 1 verse 1 in the original Hebrew is Elohim, which is a plural word, so the English translation for God technically should read’ In the beginning Invisible God, Son of God and the Holy Spirit created the heavens and the earth’.  I’m not saying the biblical scholars did anything wrong they’re much more educated than I will ever be. It is more likely that at the time of the Old English translations that everyone accepted the Triune personhood of God.

The positive aspect of our English language in respect of biblical understanding is that we need to work at it.  No matter what language we use, when it comes to biblical understanding, we need to be willing to engage our brains and not expect to know but be willing to learn.

Whatever language the bible is translated into God’s word is still his word, it is still the only word we need to know to come to Jesus as our Lord and Saviour.

I think the English language reflects the matter of fact outlook our English society conducts itself; we can be quite black and white in our thinking; we seem to demand a ‘our way is the right way’ mentality and I think that’s why we love a queue.  Just go to Disneyland Paris and notice how your English expectation overcomes you to shout at everyone to get in the queue.  I often find myself having a hot flash of anger as I fume inside that the queue is no longer a single line!

So, as we consider the Lord’s prayer, I thought I would use the old English wording, as there seems to be a beauty in how it flows, there seems to be an ‘art’ to it (excuse the pun), it seems to stir up our imagination to dare hope to dare dream that this is true.

So why did Jesus tell his disciples when they pray, they should start with this opening line?

I would ask you to consider that Jesus wasn’t modelling the perfect wording of how every prayer they pray must include these words.  I would like to suggest to you that Jesus was using the words of the Lord’s prayer to teach them about their attitude as they pray, to teach them about the truths that were to be the foundation of their faith.

Our Father, who art in heaven translated Our Father, in heaven. Pater noster, qui es in caelis (Latin), Notre Père, qui es aux cieux (French), Πάτερ ἡμῶν (Greek).  Praise God for the translators.

What can we learn from this opening line?  That this prayer as I said last week is the prayer of a believer, a prayer someone who knows God as Father.  Can anyone really know God as Father, the Creator, the one above, the one away from us, the one in a different place than us, the one who is totally different to us. Can we have any means to personally and relationally know him as Father?

I don’t know what your view of God is.  Maybe he feels like some Santa Claus figure in the sky who keeps checking if you’re naughty or nice and once a year grants your wishes.  Or maybe he feels like a monster in the sky who likes to play games with your life just like the Romans and Greeks believed in their myths and legends.

Well, the bible tells us that, the God of all creation, the eternal God, the God with no beginning and no end, the invisible God, the Greeks called him the ‘unknown’ God, has revealed himself to us so that we can know him and call him Father.  How?

In the book of John chapter 14 verse 6 Jesus tells us that ‘I am the way, the truth and the life.  No-one comes to the Father except through me’.  In today’s society we have decided there is no absolute truth!

Jesus says there is, and that absolute truth is Him.  As society makes its own way in the world and rejects Jesus by demanding their right to be right, they’re missing out on the most amazing, life giving, transforming relationship we could ever wish to have……..

To know God as Father, Jesus as the Son (Saviour of the Word) and receive the Holy Spirit, as our helper, as our teacher.  What more could anyone want?

‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth’ Genesis 1:1 niv

On reflection of last weeks blog I was thinking about stories and how from a young age we love a good story.  I remember as a child I would love to read to my younger sisters and the book I used to choose to read was Billy Goats Gruff.  As with most fairy stories these are pretty weird for kids to read especially at bedtime.

I think initially I liked it because my Dad was called Billy but I also loved how the goats would attempt to get across the bridge to the other side to eat the nice green grass not knowing if they would be caught by the Troll.

On reflection I wonder whether the goats were really interested in getting to the other side or they just wanted to taunt the Troll.

It’s a bit like us on this journey of life we can think of God as someone who just wants to catch us out and tell us off for doing something wrong; or stop us from doing something we love doing or deny us from enjoying the good things in life.  Sometimes we can try and taunt God into action by questioning his goodness or doubting his existence.

Well as with all good stories there is a beginning and without understanding the beginning, the middle and the end don’t make sense.  In fact, the beginning of God’s own true story begins with the most contested and criticised statement he could ever make.

In the beginning God…..Who is this God we ask, what gives anyone the right to make such an absolute statement, how can we believe this when science proves we are our own destiny.

I think many of these questions/statements are a means to avoid the truth that we as humanity are not only answerable to but also dependant on God.  The God who ‘created the heavens and earth’.

How many people since the time of the enlightenment have tried to disarm or destroy the foundation of Christianity.  How many people who feel let down by the church then spend a lifetime trying to undermine God’s kingdom and demand that we reign on our own thrones.

This isn’t new, this isn’t because of woke culture, it isn’t because humanity is more intelligent than they were before, it isn’t because we have figured everything out.  This determination to demand our own right to make our own way in life happened right at the beginning of mankind and continues throughout each generation.  Sin follows humanity from generation to generation because it is at the heart of who we are without God’s intervention.

What humanity really needs is to understand not everything revolves around us, we are not the beginning of the beginning, and we are not the sustainers of everything.

I love how God begins the bible because it shows us that he knows us better than we could ever know ourselves.  God knew this controversial statement will get to the heart of humanity and expose the sin within whether we are willing to admit it to ourselves or not.

God created his kingdom for our benefit, and we just threw it back in his face. But that’s not the end of the story because God loves his created beings so much that he was willing to do what it takes to rescue us from ourselves.

To send his Son to be our Saviour.

But to understand the Saviour we need to understand and accept the beginning of the story……

‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God’ John 1:1 niv

‘let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it’ Matthew 16:24-25

Writing is the place where I work things through in my mind where I grapple with life, attempt to understand the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ and try and understand this corrupt heart of mine.

It’s approaching a year since I last wrote anything for this blog for a variety of reasons; over commitments in other areas and for the last 7 months recovering from some weird moments of clumsiness.

These moments of clumsiness resulted in much physical pain and heart pain of trying to understand who I am in light of where I lay.  It’s not until these moments of brokenness break into our everyday that we realise how much we’ve actually been living in light of our own achievements or pursuits rather than living in light of Jesus’ purposes.

We can be fooled into thinking that our life in the here and now is all about making everything around us comfortable.  To earn enough money to live well, to live in a home that functions well, to have children who behave well, to have a body that works well; we feel like our world is falling apart when we can’t achieve these expectations, worse still we (I include myself here) judge others badly when their lives reflect the brokenness of the world we live in.

Our hearts desire the life of completeness however according to Jesus the reality we live in is the brokenness of sin. Jesus tells his disciples that the cost of following Him is to take up their cross.  In our everyday moments this might mean wearing a cross at work as a means to witness to others or being bold enough to talk to our work mates or family members about the Lord Jesus dying on the cross for them.

However, as we continue to read Jesus is talking about being willing to lose our life.  For us in the comfort of the Western World this seems really harsh, our hearts that hunger for comfort is shocked by the reality of Jesus’ words.

Jesus is talking about the battle for our eternal lives, the willingness to follow Jesus as he leads us to the promised land, the completeness we are really craving for.

You see if we are following Jesus we are actually on the road in the wilderness, the place of heat, of thirst, of dust, of danger, of obstacles, of stumbles and falls.  Not very attractive but it certainly explains the difficulties of the life we often face. The yellow brick road of the world might look bright a breezy and exciting to accumulate all things wonderful however it leads into an eternal pit of darkness.  Whereas the walk in the wilderness that Jesus is taking us through leads to the promised land filled with milk and honey (not literally but the glorious riches of God’s glory and righteousness).

These two roads face in opposite directions with opposing results. We see this theme of choice throughout the bible either to follow Christ or to serve self.  That’s why Jesus says we have to take up our cross to deny what comes naturally; selfishness, accumulation, abuse of power, judgementalism, materialism, self-righteousness.  Read Galatians 5 for a more sobering list.

As we recognise our need of Christ as we realise the journey of sin leads only to death and destruction, we turn around to trust Jesus, this is the moment of repentance as we pick up our cross and agree with Jesus that we are willing to do what it takes to die to self (in bible speak this is called sanctification and we will think this through in another blog).  The miracle of what happens in this moment is Jesus places the gift of the Holy Spirit within us.

We may be on the dusty road of the wilderness, but we are not alone, we have the Spirit of God exposing the sin within to the light of Christ so that we know which areas of our heart need transforming from darkness into light.  

The call of the wilderness will be hard, it will be the difficult road to choose but the miracle of Jesus’ grace towards us is that he will personally pick us up when we fall, he will bring people along the way to teach us His truths, he will give us water to drink, he will give us our daily bread, he will help us with the heat of the sin of others, he will equip us to fight the daily battle for our hearts to die to self, he will remind us of the wonders that are to come as well as the wonders of having our hearts transformed from selfishness into His righteousness and so much more than I can mention here.

The amazing thing is deep down Dorothy knew all along that the yellow brick road never led home.

‘I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day – and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing’ 2 Tim 4:6-8 (niv)

Last week I mapped out the plan for this week’s blog and how we associate these words of RIP with death and how, through the Lord Jesus being the Prince of Peace, we can rest in peace in the here and now.

However, as I write these words my Mum-In-Law passed from death into eternal life and is now face to face with Our Lord and Saviour.

I am humbled as I reflect on her battle with cancer over the last three years and how together as a family we have walked this walk towards death.

Throughout this terrible journey my Mum-in-law has been stoic throughout, often bearing pain with such elegance and grace. From photos of her younger days, we can see that she has always had an angelic quality, with beautifully defined features which is reflected in the elegance in which she moves and does everyday tasks.  This elegance was part of her character which she never lost right up to the end. 

However, what motivated all she did, her hearts deepest desire was for her family to know the Lord Jesus for themselves. The thought of never seeing her family in glory caused her much distress and fear.  It was the worst possible outcome she could ever contemplate, even the news that she had terminal cancer wasn’t greater than the fear that her family would never know the glory that only comes from eternal life through Jesus Christ.

At times this fear came out in frustration and demand. At times this fear dominated her thoughts so much that she couldn’t see the joy of the future because the darkness of her family being lost forever often overwhelmed her. 

But this is the burden of an evangelist.  The God given ability to speak truth into the hearts of others but her own family always seemingly far off.  We have heard many testimonies from people who have come to faith in the Lord Jesus because of my Mum-in-law, those who will be eternally grateful to call her their Sister in Christ.  I am sure in the coming weeks we will hear of so many more.

In the last three months as the cancer has progressed and her physical weakness had begun to overtake her physical form, her faith has become less complex, her trust in the Lord Jesus for her salvation has spoken volumes to the family and anyone else who has come in contact with her including all the staff at the hospice.

As we mourn our loss, we are warmed by the opportunities the Lord has given our family to forgive well, love well and witness how God gives us the opportunity to die well.

Over the last three weeks of her life, living in the hospice, it gave her the opportunity to, as she put it ‘get her house in order’. She never meant her physical house; she meant her relationships.  She knew she would never return to her address because she knew that she was now destined for her eternal home. 

And now as she not only Rest’s in Peace but lives in complete peace, with no more tears, sin or death we too can;

Rest in Peace as we give thanks to God for her love for us

Rest in Peace as we continue her legacy to love family and friends well through the gospel message of the Lord Jesus

Rest in Peace in the knowledge that the Lord Jesus has provided a way for us too to know the hope that death doesn’t have to be the end if we put out faith and trust in His compassion to die on the cross for us and His power to rise again to demonstrate how he has now defeated not only sin but death itself.

May you know the joy of the Lord Jesus in your hearts and the compassion of the Lord Jesus for the lost.

Dear Mum-In-Law Rest in Peace, you have fought the good fight…..we now pick up your mantle and carry on.  Love and miss you.