You Must Testify

Posted on by korgrocker

“But I will send you the Advocate —the Spirit of truth. He will come to you from the Father and will testify all about me. And you must also testify about me because you have been with me from the beginning of my ministry.”
John 15:26-27 NLT

The word “testify” appears twice in these verses, once associated with the Holy Spirit and the other time with Jesus and His disciples. Everything they needed to know about Jesus after He had gone would be revealed to them by the Holy Spirit, who would “come” to them “from the Father”. But just a few short years before, something happened on the shores of the Galilean Sea that would have far reaching consequences, not just for those concerned, but for the world ever since. Those early disciples are long dead but their legacy lives on in successive generations of believers. Mark 1:16-17, “One day as Jesus was walking along the shore of the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew throwing a net into the water, for they fished for a living. Jesus called out to them, “Come, follow me, and I will show you how to fish for people!””. Just a little further along the shore Jesus found James and John and we read, “He called them at once, and they also followed him, leaving their father, Zebedee, in the boat with the hired men” (Mark 1:20). Did those four men have any clue about would happen over the next three years or so‭‭? Their world was turned upside down but they never turned away from Jesus. But here was their Master saying to them and the others, “you must also testify about me because you have been with me from the beginning of my ministry.” 

And testify about Jesus they did. On the same day that the Spirit fell on those gathered in that Upper Room, on the first Day of Pentecost, Peter testified about Jesus, “People of Israel, listen! God publicly endorsed Jesus the Nazarene by doing powerful miracles, wonders, and signs through him, as you well know” (Acts 2:22). And Peter’s last recorded words were, “Rather, you must grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. All glory to him, both now and forever! Amen” (2 Peter 3:18). The last verse in the Bible was spoken by the Apostle John, “May the grace of the Lord Jesus be with God’s holy people” (Revelation 22:21). Those early disciples, who had “been with [Jesus] from the beginning of [His] ministry” never stopped testifying about Jesus, fulfilling Jesus’ wishes in these last hours of His life.

We pilgrims, by extension, must also testify about Jesus. The Holy Spirit dwells within all truly born again believers and they too benefit from His testimony about Jesus. At every opportunity we must share how Jesus gave His life to save everyone, and in the process we testify how that made a difference to us. In John 1:4-7, we read, “The Word gave life to everything that was created, and his life brought light to everyone. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it. God sent a man, John the Baptist, to tell about the light so that everyone might believe because of his testimony”. John the Baptist was the first testifier about Jesus. He realised who the Light was and he testified about Jesus “so that everyone might believe”. 

Paul wrote, “We now have this light shining in our hearts, but we ourselves are like fragile clay jars containing this great treasure. This makes it clear that our great power is from God, not from ourselves. … But we continue to preach because we have the same kind of faith the psalmist had when he said, “I believed in God, so I spoke”” (2 Corinthians 4:7, 13). We faith-filled pilgrims may feel totally inadequate for the task of testifying but regardless we must speak the words of Jesus at every opportunity. Why? Because Jesus asked us to.

Lord Jesus. Because of Your grace and love what else can we do other than speak out our testimony of faith. Please lead us to the people You want to hear it. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Persecuted for Jesus

Posted on by korgrocker

“Do you remember what I told you? ‘A slave is not greater than the master.’ Since they persecuted me, naturally they will persecute you. And if they had listened to me, they would listen to you. They will do all this to you because of me, for they have rejected the one who sent me.”
John 15:20-21 NLT

How was it that when God sent His Son, Jesus, to His own people, the Jews, that they refused to recognise Him? They had all the Old Testament prophecies. They had the expectation that the arrival of their Messiah was imminent. And yet they rejected Him, and, worse, they persecuted Him. Everywhere Jesus went, there seemed to be a group of Pharisees and religious lawyers and leaders hanging onto His every word, looking for opportunities to kill Him. In John 10:31-32, we read, “Once again the people picked up stones to kill him. Jesus said, “At my Father’s direction I have done many good works. For which one are you going to stone me?””. Jesus’ claim “… Then you will know and understand that the Father is in me, and I am in the Father”” (John 10:38b) was a stumbling block for the Jews. In that culture, anyone who blasphemed God had to be stoned to death, as the Jews knew from Leviticus 10:16, “Anyone who blasphemes the Name of the Lord must be stoned to death by the whole community of Israel. Any native-born Israelite or foreigner among you who blasphemes the Name of the Lord must be put to death“. When Jesus claimed to be God, people started to pick up stones, because He didn’t fit the stereotype of what they thought their Messiah would be like, and therefore this “Man” was blaspheming.

Jesus’ message to His people was so counter to their culture that they couldn’t accept it, especially as they didn’t recognise the Man who was delivering it as being God’s Son. But then they had the problem of all the miracles that Jesus performed. The introduction from Nicodemus, when he came to see Jesus late one evening, was recorded in John 3:2, “Rabbi,” he said, “we all know that God has sent you to teach us. Your miraculous signs are evidence that God is with you”“. Here was a Jewish leader who knew Jesus had something special, but he was trying to reconcile in his mind his expectations from a culture steeped in the Jewish Law against what was unfolding day by day before his eyes. We’re grateful for Nicodemus, because in response to his seeking after the truth, we received Jesus’ mission-defining verse, John 3:16.

So, Jesus was persecuted by His own people. But He carried on with His mission, preaching to crowds of people as the arrival of the Cross got ever closer. But Jesus warned His disciples that they too would be persecuted, and it would be a natural thing for unbelieving people to do. Sin and wickedness is deeply rooted within human beings and was then as well. Any message that confronted man’s natural state would end up with a push back, so violent that it would sometimes lead to death. In the early days of the church it wasn’t long before the persecution of the disciples, now Apostles, started. Acts 4:3, “They arrested [Peter and John]and, since it was already evening, put them in jail until morning.” And then in Acts 5:26a, 40b, we read, “The captain went with his Temple guards and arrested the apostles, … They called in the apostles and had them flogged. Then they ordered them never again to speak in the name of Jesus, and they let them go”. The disciples were indeed persecuted, as Jesus had warned them. And in these early days of the church, this was just a start.

Fast forward to today, and we can see what is happening in the world. Persecuted Christians abound. They have committed no crime other than to believe in the Lord Jesus for their future. A visit to the website “Open Doors” will introduce the scale of the problem. But, we pilgrims have to accept that persecution is part of our mission as we share our faith with others. We must expect people to ridicule us, to ostracise us and even attack us as we go about our business of being salt and light in our communities. But we remember that there is a great reward awaiting us one day. We are in the process of storing up treasure in Heaven, and all those who attack us will one day be held to account. The scales of justice will one day have to be balanced. 

After being flogged we read, “The apostles left the high council rejoicing that God had counted them worthy to suffer disgrace for the name of Jesus” (Acts 5:41). We do not expect physical “floggings” but many in the secular societies in which we live will look for opportunities to harass us, pushing back as we share God’s words of love and grace. Some have questioned our effectiveness and missional believers if we don’t suffer any persecution, no matter how little it is. In fact, would the world around us recognise us as men and women who have been with Jesus? Hmmm…..

Father God. We have treasure inside of us that we must expose for the benefit of those round us. The Gospel is indeed Good News, as is the message about Your Son Jesus. Amen.

Greater Works

Posted on by korgrocker

“I tell you the truth, anyone who believes in me will do the same works I have done, and even greater works, because I am going to be with the Father. You can ask for anything in my name, and I will do it, so that the Son can bring glory to the Father. Yes, ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it!”
John 14:12-14 NLT

On the face of it, Jesus made a remarkable statement. Could we, as His believers, really do greater things than the Son of God? After all, look at the miraculous healings and signs that Jesus performed. He raised men from the dead, He healed all those who came to Him, He walked on the Sea of Galilee. How can there be anything greater that these?

The crime novels major on a combination of three factors needed to solve a crime – means, motive, and opportunity. And in some ways we can apply these three factors to doing the same works as Jesus. But before we do so, what are the “works” that Jesus was referring to? Our human, materialistic minds immediately jump to something that applies to our natural lives. Jesus said, “You can ask for anything in my name, and I will do it, so that the Son can bring glory to the Father”. But would that new car, or new anything, come to that, bring glory to God? So did Jesus just mean works for God’s Kingdom? Perhaps only spiritual works? 

To look at a New Testament example of a “great work“, we join Peter and John as they enter the Temple for the afternoon prayer meeting. At the gate was a beggar who was unable to walk and he asked them for some money. In Acts 3:6 we read, “But Peter said, “I don’t have any silver or gold for you. But I’ll give you what I have. In the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene, get up and walk!”” Peter had the means – the name of Jesus Christ, and the power of the Holy Spirit. He had the opportunity – an encounter at the Temple gate. He had the motive – to bring glory to God – Acts 3:13, “For it is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—the God of all our ancestors—who has brought glory to his servant Jesus by doing this. This is the same Jesus whom you handed over and rejected before Pilate, despite Pilate’s decision to release him”. 

But as far as we know, the miraculous signs that Jesus performed while He was here with us have never been exceeded. Even His Spirit-filled disciples never fed thousands of people from a packed lunch, or walked across any seas.  One example of “greater works” is possibly how the Apostles and others reached large numbers of people with the Good News of salvation. By the end of the book of Acts, the Gospel had reached most of the Middle East. Jesus only reached the people of Israel, and mainly Jews at that. Perhaps too the answers to prayer falls into the “greater works” category. With the coming of the Holy Spirit, amazing answers to prayers have been realised, as He lives and works through the lives of believers. But the key to performing “greater works” lies with Jesus’ simple requirement – “in my name”. Is what we do or pray for something that aligns with the name of Jesus? And we also must ask the question – does this “great work” bring glory to God?  It isn’t possible to sit down and make a list of “greater works” because it is only through the Holy Spirit’s leading that a “great work” will arise. Sadly, there are many today who believe that the gifts of the Holy Spirit died out with the Apostles. But Jesus didn’t say that that was going to happen, and we pilgrims must always be on the look out for a Holy Spirit inspired opportunity to do a “great work” for God.

Mark’s closing verses in his Gospel read like this. “And then he told them, “Go into all the world and preach the Good News to everyone. Anyone who believes and is baptized will be saved. But anyone who refuses to believe will be condemned. These miraculous signs will accompany those who believe: They will cast out demons in my name, and they will speak in new languages. They will be able to handle snakes with safety, and if they drink anything poisonous, it won’t hurt them. They will be able to place their hands on the sick, and they will be healed”” (Mark 16:15-18). Can there be a “greater work” than this?

Dear Father God. We pray for opportunities to reach the lost around us. And we pray for the courage to reach out in faith by using the gifts You have given us. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

The Kernel of Wheat

Posted on by korgrocker

“I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat is planted in the soil and dies, it remains alone. But its death will produce many new kernels—a plentiful harvest of new lives. Those who love their life in this world will lose it. Those who care nothing for their life in this world will keep it for eternity. Anyone who wants to serve me must follow me, because my servants must be where I am. And the Father will honour anyone who serves me.”
John 12:24-26 NLT

‭John recorded a pivotal moment in Jesus’ ministry, where He publicly declared the true purpose of His mission, though in terms that would have puzzled the disciples. They knew, of course, of the principles of arable farming where a farmer would sow seeds to produce a crop. But what was that to do with Jesus? And how would that enable Him to enter into His glory? 

Jesus said that His life would have to be sacrificed so that there would be “a plentiful harvest of new lives”. He knew that there was coming a time quite soon when He would be executed on a Roman cross, but, equally, He knew that unless He made the ultimate human sacrifice, there would be no fruit, no church, no remedy to mitigate man’s sin. With the benefit on hindsight through the Biblical accounts, we knew what happened, and the fruit in terms of souls saved has been enormous. Numbers impossible to count. But through His sacrifice at Calvary, Jesus fulfilled God’s will. Hebrews 10:10, “For God’s will was for us to be made holy by the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ, once for all time”. Romans 3:23-25a, “For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard. Yet God, in his grace, freely makes us right in his sight. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins. For God presented Jesus as the sacrifice for sin. People are made right with God when they believe that Jesus sacrificed his life, shedding his blood. …”

But Jesus went on to say something that cuts across the sin-filled culture in which we live. He said that by if we love our lives in our natural lifetimes we will find that we will lose our lives for eternity. Conversely those who care nothing for their natural lives, who instead devote their time to others and their good, will enjoy eternal life with God. Jesus emphasised this principle by saying that His followers must honour God by serving Him. A counter-cultural way of life that does not sit easily in our grasping and selfish society. A society that asks “what’s in it for me”. A society that pursues personal gain to the detriment of others. A society that honours those who have fought their way to the top of their businesses by trampling and abusing those around them in the process. There is surely nothing new under the sun – Solomon penned this verse many years ago, “But as I looked at everything I had worked so hard to accomplish, it was all so meaningless—like chasing the wind. There was nothing really worthwhile anywhere” (Ecclesiastes 2:11). 

We pilgrims are followers of Christ and on another occasion He clearly spelled out what this means. Matthew 16:24-26, “Then Jesus said to his disciples, “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must give up your own way, take up your cross, and follow me. If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake, you will save it. And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul? Is anything worth more than your soul?” So everything we do in our pilgrimage must be in accordance with the long view of the destination of our souls. 

We pilgrims have the opportunity to lay down our lives for others, and by doing so, the process will follow closely the arable process of seed planting. Everywhere we go we broadcast Gospel “seeds” that will produce fruit for the Kingdom of God. Jesus paid the ultimate sacrifice on a hill called Calvary, and we pilgrims are the fruit of that sacrifice, among many brothers and sisters throughout the world.

Dear Lord Jesus. We are really grateful for what You did for us at Calvary. Please lead us to the right places, where there is receptive soil waiting for seeds to be planted. In Your precious name. Amen.

Ignorant of the Law

Posted on by korgrocker

“When the Temple guards returned without having arrested Jesus, the leading priests and Pharisees demanded, “Why didn’t you bring him in?” “We have never heard anyone speak like this!” the guards responded. “Have you been led astray, too?” the Pharisees mocked. “Is there a single one of us rulers or Pharisees who believes in him? This foolish crowd follows him, but they are ignorant of the law. God’s curse is on them!””
John 7:45-49 NLT

The arrogance of the Pharisees, and the others who made up the religious leadership, is breath-taking. With their words they sealed their own fate and accused those in the “foolish crowd” of being ignorant of the Law even when it pointed, through prophecies, to the coming Messiah. Worse, they then cursed the people in the name of God. A very sad situation that ultimately led to Jesus’ execution at Calvary.

There are men and women today, in positions of church leadership, who claim to know better than ordinary “foolish” people. In fact, every generation since Jesus walked on this planet has had more than its fair share of people who preach a message based on their own construction rather than God’s intent. They may even use Scriptures, like the Pharisees, to justify their position. But in 1 Corinthians 1, Paul contrasted the “wise” of this world with the “foolishness” of the message of the cross and the people who are being saved by it. He wrote, “The message of the cross is foolish to those who are headed for destruction! But we who are being saved know it is the very power of God” (1 Corinthians 1:18). Paul went on to quote a verse from Isaiah 29, “As the Scriptures say, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and discard the intelligence of the intelligent””. And Paul, a lapsed and repentant Pharisee, then wrote, “This foolish plan of God is wiser than the wisest of human plans, and God’s weakness is stronger than the greatest of human strength. Remember, dear brothers and sisters, that few of you were wise in the world’s eyes or powerful or wealthy when God called you. Instead, God chose things the world considers foolish in order to shame those who think they are wise. And he chose things that are powerless to shame those who are powerful” (1 Corinthians 1:25-27). 

The wisdom and knowledge of the Pharisees and the other religious leaders was ultimately exposed for what it was by the ordinary people in the crowd who came to believe in Jesus. The “wise” religious leaders journeyed on to their ultimate fate. I can just imagine one of these arrogant leaders standing before God trying to explain why they refused to believe in His Son, Jesus. Perhaps they even angrily shook their fists in God’s face, accusing Him of letting them down. A quote from C S Lewis (the Great Divorce), “But, beyond all these, I saw other grotesque phantoms in which hardly a trace of the human form remained; monsters who had faced the journey to the bus stop—perhaps for them it was thousands of miles—and come up to the country of the Shadow of Life and limped far into it over the torturing grass, only to spit and gibber out in one ecstasy of hatred their envy and (what is harder to understand) their contempt, of joy”. But perhaps God will lovingly say to them that by sending His Son He was fulfilling the intention of the Law. Jesus said in Matthew 5:17, “Don’t misunderstand why I have come. I did not come to abolish the law of Moses or the writings of the prophets. No, I came to accomplish their purpose”. And then, before God, the light suddenly dawned on those arrogant men as they, too late of course, realised their error. 

Paul was a very learned man, and considered a Pharisee above all others, but he wrote in Philippians 3:7-9, “I once thought these things were valuable, but now I consider them worthless because of what Christ has done. Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I could gain Christ and become one with him. I no longer count on my own righteousness through obeying the law; rather, I become righteous through faith in Christ. For God’s way of making us right with himself depends on faith”. 

We pilgrims believe in Jesus. We have faith in Him and His words of eternal life. The message of the cross has led us astray, away from the “wisdom” of the world into the Kingdom of God. There is no better place to be.

Dear Father God. The message of the Cross is fundamental to our faith in Jesus, and we are eternally grateful for Your plan for the salvation of mankind. Amen.

Jesus, the Sent One

Posted on by korgrocker

“While Jesus was teaching in the Temple, he called out, “Yes, you know me, and you know where I come from. But I’m not here on my own. The one who sent me is true, and you don’t know him. But I know him because I come from him, and he sent me to you.” Then the leaders tried to arrest him; but no one laid a hand on him, because his time had not yet come.”
John 7:28-30 NLT

Jesus didn’t just appear in this world as part of the normal reproduction of human beings. He was born in humble circumstances as a male baby, the first-born of a Jewish peasant girl. He went through all the stages of growing up as a boy did in those days. However, when He reached the age of twelve, He knew His mission in life. He stayed behind in the Temple one Passover and His parents found Him there. We read in Luke 2:49, ““But why did you need to search?” he asked. “Didn’t you know that I must be in my Father’s house?”” A reminder perhaps to His parents of that fateful day when Mary had a visit from an angel. We read in Luke 1:35, “The angel replied, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the baby to be born will be holy, and he will be called the Son of God”. Jesus was born as a baby with Mary’s and God’s DNA. He was both human and divine. 

So, Jesus informed the crowd around Him at the Temple that, although they knew most of His humble origins, He had in fact been sent by His Father in Heaven. This statement of truth, however, was lost on the religious leaders who instead wanted to eliminate Him. After all, they couldn’t have someone claiming to be God’s Son around them, because if they believed Him, the consequence would be that there would be a tremendous upheaval to the political and religious life in Israel. We then have the intriguing statement that the leaders “tried to arrest Him”, but failed. The problem to them was that they were afraid of the crowd around Jesus – any attempt to arrest Him might cause unrest and threaten their authority. They needed to get Him on His own somewhere so that they could carry out their dark deeds. But there is perhaps a hint that Jesus’ Father in Heaven might have sent a few angels to protect Him, because John wrote, “His time had not yet come”. There would come a day when Jesus would be arrested but this wasn’t that time.

Jesus had been sent from God. It wasn’t a sudden appearance – that would happen at His Second Coming – but the first time round, Jesus had to come as a human being because in that way He would act as the bridge between God and mankind. We have a sinless, human and divine Saviour, who in spite of all the opposition, left us with a timeless message of love and hope, a message finally coming to fruition on a cross at Calvary. 

Dear Lord Jesus. Thank You for coming to this world in the way You did. Through Your sacrifice at Calvary we now have a way back to God, forgiven of our sins. Amen.

Sowing and Reaping

Posted on by korgrocker

“You know the saying, ‘Four months between planting and harvest.’ But I say, wake up and look around. The fields are already ripe for harvest. The harvesters are paid good wages, and the fruit they harvest is people brought to eternal life. What joy awaits both the planter and the harvester alike! You know the saying, ‘One plants and another harvests.’ And it’s true. I sent you to harvest where you didn’t plant; others had already done the work, and now you will get to gather the harvest.”
John 4:35-38 NLT

Jesus once again used an analogy that would be well understand in that culture – the process involved in the growing of crops. But Jesus was using a natural analogy to represent the spiritual world, a world where the harvest is not grain but souls.

As Jesus pointed out, there was a delay of four months between sowing seed, and harvesting the resulting crops, and this was a time of anxiety for the farmer, because any adverse weather events could ruin the crops and destroy his livelihood. In extreme times, even famine could result. The farmer also had to withhold some of the seed so that he had something to sow in the ground the following year. In my early years, “Harvest Festivals” were held both in my school and in the local churches. These were times when we brought food items to school or church and sung hymns such as “We plough the fields and scatter, the good seed on the ground”. And all in celebration of the importance of the natural sowing and harvesting process. In those services we thanked God for His blessings, for providing us with the food we required for our very existence. 

Jesus told us the parable of the soils, which we can read in Matthew 13. But the fruit of the process, when good soil was found, was a multiplication of the seed originally planted. In Matthew 13:8 we read, “Still other seeds fell on fertile soil, and they produced a crop that was thirty, sixty, and even a hundred times as much as had been planted!” Near where I live, the farmer often plants a field of barley, and sometimes I select an ear of grain and estimate the crop yield. God’s blessings are there for all to see, though we take His multiplying provision for granted most of the time. But Jesus was using the analogy of sowing and reaping to illustrate a spiritual principle to His disciples. He equated the variety of soil conditions with people’s hearts.

Jesus said to His disciples, “wake up and look around. The fields are already ripe for harvest“. The “seed” had already been planted in the hearts of the people by others, the prophets and the religious leaders, and Jesus said that the people were ready to hear the message that would produce in them a spiritual harvest. And in the following years, the disciples saw the establishment of the first century church. Peter’s sermon in Acts 2 resulted in 3000 people being added to the church. That is harvesting!

So today, we pilgrims have an opportunity. There is still a spiritual harvest waiting for the reaping. I meet people who know about God, who even recognise and believe in His existence, and who are just waiting for someone to help them bring to life that knowledge and introduce them, perhaps once again, to the Saviour Jesus Christ. But I meet others who have no ideas about God at all. Their spiritual knowledge seems to come from social media and occasional encounters with news reports about other religions. They perhaps wonder about the churches dotted around our country, perhaps seeing more and more of them closing, perhaps having a perception that they are only relevant to elderly people. These are the people who may be good soil, just waiting for a seed to be planted, a seed coming straight out of God’s unlimited storehouses. Once planted, we can see the outcome as the Holy Spirit encourages the growth. Sometimes we may have the opportunity to be harvesters. Sometimes others will have that privilege.

The church I attend meets every Sunday morning in a leisure centre, and often people passing by in the corridor outside will look in, in apparent wonder and puzzlement. They sometimes stop for a few moments, perhaps receiving a seed that will start within them the process of germination. God is always at work.

We pilgrims are engaged in the farming business. Spiritual agriculture is our calling. The church goes through seasons of growth and decline as the years go by. But we are in the thick of it, sowing and reaping whenever we have the opportunity. There are never a lack of opportunities. We just need to pray for boldness and have our messages of hope ready and waiting.

Dear Father God. We pray today for divine encounters, enabling us to plant seeds whenever we have the opportunity. And lead us, we pray, to those who are just waiting for someone to introduce them to You. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Ancestors

Posted on by korgrocker

“Jesus replied, “If you only knew the gift God has for you and who you are speaking to, you would ask me, and I would give you living water.” “But sir, you don’t have a rope or a bucket,” she said, “and this well is very deep. Where would you get this living water? And besides, do you think you’re greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us this well? How can you offer better water than he and his sons and his animals enjoyed?””
John 4:10-12 NLT

The dialogue between the woman and Jesus continued, with the woman bringing in the importance of ancestry. But the content of the exchange is interesting – Jesus is talking about the “living water”, the Holy Spirit, and the woman still has the pool of water at the bottom of a well in her head. So superficially they might have been talking about water, but the two scenarios were totally different. The woman’s sceptical thoughts burst out into the accusation that because Jesus didn’t have the necessary accoutrements to bring the water to the surface, he therefore couldn’t access it. And anyway, she accused Him of making a claim to be greater than the man, Jacob, who found the well in the first place, many years before. 

Such misunderstandings in a conversation are common. The act of being able to articulate our thoughts to another person is a skill we acquire from childhood, but knowing the other person is an important factor in a conversation, because over time both people get to know what the other person thinks about, particularly when they talk about subjects that are familiar to them. This can be observed between a married couple who have been together for many years, for example. Amusingly to an observer, they will even finish each other’s sentences. Up to this point in the conversation between Jesus and the Samaritan woman the connection between physical water and spiritual water had not been made.

How do we pilgrims communicate the Good News about Jesus, and all that He did for mankind? At Jacob’s well, Jesus used a common commodity important to the people in that culture to start a conversation. He could have sat by the well ignoring the woman, which would have been her expectation because of the hostile relationship between Jews and Samaritans. But the poor woman had to carry water in a heavy pot daily some distance back to the village of Sychar. If there was anything that would have grabbed her attention it was the possibility that she could be relieved of that burden. 

So we pilgrims pray that God will reveal something about who we are speaking with to form a relational bridge over which the Gospel can be delivered. Something to grab their attention and open up the conversation. I find that dog walkers are always ready to talk about their pets. Someone tending a planter outside our community centre will often respond to a question or comment about the plants or shrubs. But sometimes God will reveal something supernaturally about the person – but more of that in a future blog.

Paul wrote in Colossians 4:3, “Pray for us, too, that God will give us many opportunities to speak about his mysterious plan concerning Christ. That is why I am here in chains”. Paul didn’t hold back at all, and ended up in all sorts of trouble because of his zeal to share the Gospel with whoever he met. In the UK at the moment, street preachers are being arrested for sharing the Word of God on our streets, wrongly as it turns out but there is increasing hostility to the Gospel in our secular society. It won’t be long until this becomes a crime, along with other demonstrations about the Kingdom of God. We have a window of opportunity to start a conversation with a stranger at a modern equivalent of Jacob’s well. In a coffee bar or restaurant. In a supermarket. At the petrol station. In the office or classroom. And we pray for the communication skills that will transform the ordinary into the supernatural.

Father God. We pray that through Your Spirit we will have the words we need to say at just the right time. and we pray for the people we meet, that Your Spirit will go before us, opening hearts and minds. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

A Miraculous Sign

Posted on by korgrocker

“But the Jewish leaders demanded, “What are you doing? If God gave you authority to do this, show us a miraculous sign to prove it.” “All right,” Jesus replied. “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” “What!” they exclaimed. “It has taken forty-six years to build this Temple, and you can rebuild it in three days?” But when Jesus said “this temple,” he meant his own body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered he had said this, and they believed both the Scriptures and what Jesus had said.”
John 2:18-22 NLT

Of course, the Jewish leaders, the Temple mafia, weren’t too happy about Jesus clearing out the merchants from the Temple courts. After all, He was removing a lucrative source of income from them, because as the ordinary people were overcharged for the sacrificial animals and money changing, the profits made their way into the leaders’ pockets. The leaders were facing into a conflict of interest in a way. They knew that the Temple’s integrity was being compromised, contradicting God’s requirements, but they also enjoyed the profits from the market place. Perhaps they tried to rationalise their actions by claiming that they were providing a service to those who had travelled to Jerusalem to offer up their sacrifices. But in the end they decided to ask Jesus from where He had received the authority to do what He had done. A miraculous sign from God was their requirement. The miracles of healing the sick weren’t enough. Neither was the teaching Jesus performed in the Temple. Perhaps they were looking for a written message, much like the writing on the wall that we read about in Daniel 5:5, “Suddenly, they saw the fingers of a human hand writing on the plaster wall of the king’s palace, near the lampstand. The king himself saw the hand as it wrote.” But Jesus provided a cryptic answer, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” Of course, the Jews took Him literally, without realising that Jesus was referring to His own “temple”, His body. 

We pilgrims have the authority to do God’s work. In Matthew 28:18-19, we read, “Jesus came and told his disciples, “I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth. Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit”. Jesus has delegated to us, His followers, His authority to preach the Gospel, making disciples (of God) and seeing miraculous signs confirming the message of Good News (Mark 16:20). We don’t have to do this in the churches that are dotted around our country. There are no sacred buildings around as copies of the Jewish Temple. We exercise the authority given to us in the workplaces, the schools, cafes and supermarkets. In fact anywhere, where there is an opportunity. And we don’t need a sign from Heaven to confirm the authority we have. That sign happened on a Cross at a place called Calvary.

Dear Father God. Who will we pilgrims meet today, who will need to hear the message of Good News? Please lead us to the place where You want us to be. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

The Very Person

Posted on by korgrocker

“Philip went to look for Nathanael and told him, “We have found the very person Moses and the prophets wrote about! His name is Jesus, the son of Joseph from Nazareth.” “Nazareth!” exclaimed Nathanael. “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” “Come and see for yourself,” Philip replied.”
John 1:45-46 NLT

Apparently in Galilean circles, Nazareth wasn’t the best place to live. It obviously had a dubious reputation, according to Nathanael’s reaction. I suppose we can all look around our localities and think of places where a few people had in the past tarnished their reputations. And in some places local authorities engage in practices where they house problem tenants all together in a particular area, generating unfortunate outcomes. But perhaps Nazareth was just a poor village or town lacking the benefits of living in more affluent areas in Israel. We read in Luke 4 the account of where Jesus  ” … went as usual to the synagogue on the Sabbath and stood up to read the Scriptures” (Luke 4:16b). Initially his fellow villagers were impressed by what He said. “Everyone spoke well of him and was amazed by the gracious words that came from his lips. “How can this be?” they asked. “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?”” (Luke 4:22). But in Jesus’ subsequent words He obviously struck an area of sensitivity, from their reaction to His challenge. And those in the synagogue were intent on doing Him harm as we read in Luke 4:28-30, “When they heard this, the people in the synagogue were furious. Jumping up, they mobbed him and forced him to the edge of the hill on which the town was built. They intended to push him over the cliff, but he passed right through the crowd and went on his way”. So perhaps Nathanael’s words, “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” had some validity. 

Nathanael was one of Jesus’ twelve disciples, and he had another name, Bartholomew. But apart from this introduction and one or two other verses we know very little about Nathanael. He seemed to have a friendship with Philip, or perhaps the two of them were related, but tradition has it that Nathanael preached the Gospel in Persia and India and died a martyr’s death. But in this early account in John, we know that Philip introduced Nathanael to Jesus as the “very person Moses and the prophets wrote about” or, in other words, the Messiah. 

Again, we pilgrims have the privilege of being able to introduce others to this “very Person”. It was Saint Francis of Assisi who was credited with the saying, “Preach the Gospel and if necessary use words”. We reach others by the way we live as well as by the words we say. Any disconnect between the two will put people off from meeting the “very Person”, Jesus Himself. 

Father God. Our life reflects our relationship with You. We pray for the resources we need to be Your messengers in our communities. In Jesus’ name. Amen.