There are moments when one has a profound sense of the Lord’s leading and the impulse to help initiate a Proclamation! event has been one of those experiences. From the first time I heard of the event, I felt a stirring in my heart – a longing to celebrate and speak out the loveliness of God’s Word in scripture.

Proclamation! is a project of reading the whole of the Bible out loud over a period of roughly ten days, from 7 am in the morning to 9 pm in the evening. Each day is broken into 14 hour long segments. Each segment allows approximately 45 minutes for the readings, (offered by anywhere from three to ten readers, using their preferred translation of scripture, including languages other than English) followed by a short interval for refreshments, fellowship and prayer. (As a note, the reading is not sequential, i.e., from Genesis straight through to Revelation; rather the Bible Society has arranged the scripture readings in such a way that there is a continuous mix of Old Testament and New Testament readings each hour). At the end of the ten days, a service of Praise would be held.

If every volunteer reader read only one section of scripture (a section might be anywhere from five to fifteen verses), we would need more than 1,300 volunteers for the project. I am excited to see the response of believers across the Valley to join in the reading, and more importantly, in the listening to God’s Word in scripture.

We have scheduled Proclamation! to take place here in the Cowichan Valley beginning on Wednesday, March 21 and culminating with our annual interchurch service on Palm Sunday. Our hope is to have the event be hosted in St. Andrew’s Presbyterian from Wednesday to Friday; in St. John’s Anglican on Saturday, Monday and Tuesday (Sunday being left free for regular services) and in Duncan Pentecostal on Wednesday through Friday plus Saturday afternoon. Then the final service of praise would be our Palm Sunday service that we traditionally have held in Duncan Christian Reformed Church.

Psalm 19 celebrates the majesty of God’s Word as being perfect, trustworthy, right, radiant, pure, sure and altogether righteous. The Psalmist affirmed God’s Word as being able to revive the soul and make wise the simple. The Word, the Psalmist said, could bring joy to the heart and light to the eyes and would endure forever. Above all, the writer declared that this holy Word from God was more precious than gold and sweeter than honey.

It is that precious Word, that Bread of Life, that manna from heaven and holy gift of wisdom, truth and promise that we long to have proclaimed with thankfulness and power and joy. God promises that his Word goes forth and will not come back empty. What a harvest of blessing to anticipate as the Church proclaims that wondrous Word!

The Canadian Bible Society has a great video outlining the Proclamation! event. The link is http://www.biblesociety.ca/node/1625 .

]]> http://standrewsduncan.org/2012/01/25/proclamation/feed/ 0 The Staff Holy Bible http://standrewsduncan.org/2012/01/24/days-of-hope-and-peace/ http://standrewsduncan.org/2012/01/24/days-of-hope-and-peace/#comments Wed, 25 Jan 2012 06:28:44 +0000 standrewsduncan http://standrewsduncan.org/?p=1445 Continue reading →]]> There is no way of saying it kindly. Church splits are the pits! That is, when a church family faces times of dissension and division, the overwhelming result is rarely anything other than pain, sorrow and frustration. It is a sad reality but seldom can one find a fight that is more low-down and nasty than a family fight and when the family happens to be a congregational family, the only “winner” is the Enemy of all that is good and all that is of God.

It is a tragedy when we who are called by the great Lover of our souls to reflect our love for Him by the quality of our love, care, respect and mercy towards one another, manage instead to exhibit the ugliest extremes of malicious gossip, merciless judgment fear-mongering and blatant character-assassination. In a church fight, the first act of forgetfulness seems to be that today’s so-called enemies were those who yesterday we called sisters and brothers in Christ. The second act of forgetfulness is that in our desperate, no-holds-barred effort to push our holy agenda and out-yell our opponents, we are likely to end up committing more damage to the Kingdom of God by our anger and self-righteousness, by our uncivil speaking, callous behaviors and arrogant, hate-filled attitudes. When, for instance, I see parades of Christians with their angry placards declaring that “God hates fags!” I cannot help but wonder how such behavior brings glory to Jesus who not only kept company with sinners, but suffered and died for them as much as for me.

No, church splits are the pits, and yet, it is amazing to me that despite our human capacity to pure orneriness and stupid divisiveness, the Lord’s kindness and healing ends up being poured out in such unexpected and lavish ways when we so do not deserve it and yet so desperately need that goodness. Perhaps that is a testimony once again of how gracious our God is.

At our presbytery meeting today (the presbytery is the higher “court” to which Presbyterian ministers and congregations are accountable – it is a bishop in the form of a committee), I was struck by the fact that other congregations here on Vancouver Island have recently gone through times of conflict and division. Despite the conflict, hurt and loss, however, God’s faithfulness to his people remained steadfast, and a deeper mercy flowed with redeeming power into the experience of the people and leadership of those churches. While the story of conflict in each church was unique, there were some commonalities in terms of how the Holy Spirit ministered in the midst of brokenness.

While some people left either in anger or because they simply did not want to hang around in the midst of an unhappy fellowship, those who stayed found themselves drawing closer to one another and closer to Christ. In the storm of conflict, people found themselves increasingly on their knees, not only praying for discernment for God’s truth or for calming of tensions, but above all, just for the Lord himself to draw near with help and healing. In the aftermath of division and brokenness, folks were drawn deep into the scriptures for guidance and encouragement, for forgiveness and renewal. Especially, they thirsted for the grace to become forgiving rather merely bitter. They prayed to be filled with a readiness to reconcile rather than to become indifferent and cold. In the season of grieving and recovery that inevitably follows the season of turmoil and pain, the story was of God’s people finding themselves more and more desiring that their church would be marked by a more profound humility, a generous kindness and the transforming loveliness of Jesus.

Whether as churches or individuals, we only begin to know once again days of hope and peace when we let God take care of the question of who was right and who was wrong (for the truth is that we will have all sinned and fallen short of his glory); when we stop asking God to “fix them” and start asking Him to fix us; when we find ourselves  praying less that God would justify us in our positions and praying more that He would correct, forgive us and teach us; when we shift our attention from rehearsing the painful experience of the past and start praying for strength and wisdom to grasp the opportunities for kingdom ministry that still stand right in front of us. Days of hope and peace arrive when we simply choose to get on once again with our call to love and serve Jesus as best we know how.

]]> http://standrewsduncan.org/2012/01/24/days-of-hope-and-peace/feed/ 0 The Staff 25 http://standrewsduncan.org/2012/01/23/do-you-love-me/ http://standrewsduncan.org/2012/01/23/do-you-love-me/#comments Tue, 24 Jan 2012 00:28:42 +0000 standrewsduncan http://standrewsduncan.org/?p=1439 Continue reading →]]> We were blessed this past Sunday by having as our guest speaker Amie Wiebe, district secretary for the Canadian Bible society, southern B.C. region. Amie’s personal testimony of the power of the scriptures in her coming to faith in Christ Jesus is powerful and moving. You can hear her testimony if you check out the Sermons page on our website (if it is not posted yet, the audio version should be up later this week).

Her presentation also included one of the most challenging videos I have ever watched. It was a mini-documentary of the Kimyal People of Papua, Indonesia, celebrating the arrival of the first shipment of the New Testament newly translated and published in their own language ( http://vimeo.com/17025038 ). The joy of the people was matched only by their humble gratitude for the precious gift of the scriptures in their own heart language. They sang. They danced. They wept. They prayed. They praised God. In a holy echo of Psalm 78, they celebrated that now the scriptures, the Word of God would be a gift that would be handed down from parents to children to generations yet to be born. One could sense that for these people, the day that the scriptures were theirs to read in their own tongue, would be a day that the community would simply never forget.

The video was not simply inspiring but challenging. I could not help but wonder when last did you and I tremble with awe and sing with thanksgiving because of this honour and privilege of being able to read the Word of God in our own language. This past year was the 400^th anniversary of the King James version of the Bible, and while not the first English translation, it certainly has been the most famous and influential in the western world. Yet we often forget that just three years prior to King Henry VIII commissioning a translation of the scriptures into English (a version that would become known as the Great Bible), William Tyndale was executed and burned at the stake for daring to make just such a translation. With dozens of English language translations available to us, we have become so accustomed to the freedom and advantage of reading God’s Word, that most of us can hardly imagine what it would be to have to depend on foreign language translations upon which to nourish our faith and seek to share it. May we refresh our appreciation of the gift of the scriptures, and show forth the depth of our gratitude, as the old prayer asks, by “reading, learning, marking and inwardly digesting Thy holy Word of life.”

The video challenged not only with the question of whether we adequately and consistently remember to treasure God’s Word in the Bible. I was challenged simply to consider whether we adequately and consistently remember to treasure the gift of faith, the gift of Christ Jesus and the gift of his grace to us. In the 21^st chapter of John’s gospel, we find the intriguing story of Jesus’ three-fold interrogation of Peter as to whether the disciple loved him. After each assurance of his devotion, the Lord responded to Peter with the command to feed his sheep.

Most often, we understand this passage as speaking to the Lord’s restoration of Peter after his three-fold denial of Jesus on the night of his arrest. We also commonly interpret the passage as a commissioning of Peter for the work of ministry and evangelism. Yet as I pondered the explosion of thankfulness and praise from the Kimyal people in receiving the New Testament in their own language, I realized that far above their excitement over a book was a simple and pure outpouring of love for God. Perhaps that question, “Do you love me?” which Jesus posed to Peter and which is asked of every follower, is as much heaven’s longing for nothing  more complicated than our answering love to God’s outrageous and extravagant grace to us in Jesus. An ancient prayer of the church voices it this way:

Lord, who am I,  that Thou shouldst desire so much to be loved by me? And whom shall I love, if I love not Thee, my Jesus? Here I am, Lord; dispose of me as Thou pleasest. Give me Thy love; I ask nothing more. Make me all Thine before I die.

As I watched the video of a people in Indonesia “rejoicing with great joy,” I found myself voicing another classic prayer of the Church which simply pleads: “O my faithful saviour, Jesus Christ, I love Thee. May I learn to love Thee more.”

]]> http://standrewsduncan.org/2012/01/23/do-you-love-me/feed/ 0 The Staff jesus-3 http://standrewsduncan.org/2012/01/20/hating-what-god-hates/ http://standrewsduncan.org/2012/01/20/hating-what-god-hates/#comments Sat, 21 Jan 2012 01:24:23 +0000 standrewsduncan http://standrewsduncan.org/?p=1435 Continue reading →]]> In his excellent little book, 9 Things a Leader MUST DO, author Henry Cloud (perhaps best known for co-authoring the book Boundaries with John Townsend) identifies suggests, as the title says, nine key commitments which great leaders seem naturally to undertake and which, when learned, can move any leader in the direction of personal growth and greater influence in their area of endeavor.

One of the nine “musts” which Cloud identifies is the suggestion that great leaders “earn a black belt in hate.” That is, he says, they develop the ability to hate the right things well. He goes on to ask what we might think about people who hate: arrogance, lying, innocent people being hurt, harmful schemes, evil practices, telling lies about others, and things that stir up dissension among people? If a person’s life demonstrated the truth of those claims, wouldn’t you welcome that person as a coworker or business partner? Would it be easy to trust and depend on such a person?

Cloud effectively lays out the rightful place of hate in working against those things that are destructive while seeking to enhance and protect relationships. And he does an admirable job of clarifying the difference between hating the wrong behavior or cause of a problem yet still showing appropriate love, respect and care for the person.

 In our Christian talk, we often stress the importance of “hating the sin yet loving the sinner” yet in practice, I suspect most of us aren’t very precise in differentiating between the two. When affronted and offended, we can be so quick to lump the sinner in with his or her sin.  We specialize, most of us, in shoveling loads of shame, along with our outrage, towards to the person, not just to the offense.

Human beings have an inordinate capacity and inclination to label and judge one another and to presume that someone’s mistakes or wrong behavior is a direct manifestation of their character. As an example, if at some event, I feel that someone is ignoring and snubbing me (regardless of whether they in fact even are aware of my presence) my wounded ego immediately declares them arrogant, snobbish and rude. I have immediately leapt from my perception of their behavior in a particular moment of time to a critical judgment against their very character, and then dismiss them as unworthy of our regard or kindness. Worse, we are also prone to letting the anger, opinion and judgments of one person unduly sway us not only in our estimation of another but in our talk about them. Bill tells me how bad a person Henry is, and without checking whether Bill is accurate in his estimation or giving Henry any benefit of the doubt, I repeat the judgment to Martha who echoes it to Wilda and so on and so on.

Scripture warns us pretty sternly about our presumption when it comes to judging others (Matthew 7:1-5) and stresses instead that our calling is to exercise graciousness and humility and leave the work of judgment to God (Romans 12: 14-21). I’ve been told that we ought to hate what God hates, but in my experience, what that all too often means is that we want to believe that God hates what and who we do, thus justifying ourselves, our attitudes and responses. One writer said that chances are, if we believe God coincidentally hates all the things we hate and despises all the people we despise, we just might have a made an idol out of our own self-righteousness.

There are many injustices and wrongs in this world that I believe are worth hating, and which I believe God passionately hates. Yet I know that there are also no end of evil impulses, impure attitudes and tragic flaws of judgment and behavior in my own life that are not only worthy of hate – both mine and that of the Lord – but which, I pray, represent my desperate need for a mercy and grace which I cannot earn and which comes only through the compassion and provision of God. In fact, my only prayer and hope is that while my sins are worthy of God’s hate, in his kindness, God has chosen to love this poor sinner and to forgive me.

I want to hate the things God hates, and wherever possible so to live that God’s truth, healing and grace may work through me with redeeming power. It’s too easy just to hate as an end in itself. Perhaps that is why, with his dying breathe, our Saviour did not curse his butchers but prayed forgiveness upon them. And us.

The fact that a video may go viral is no indication of either artistic merit or intellectual insight. Just search out on Google the list of the “top ten viral videos” of the past year if you have any doubt of the eclectic or odd mix of U-tube videos that caught our collective fancy. Still, most videos that become wildly circulated via Facebook, Twitter and other social media, have obviously made connection with people’s angst or funny-bone, social conscience or deep longing. Whatever one may think about Bethke’s video, the simple fact it obviously resonated deeply with many for whom the institutionalized church has failed to live out the contagious loveliness, openness and world-changing vibrancy of the church found in the Book of Acts. While some of the rebuttal videos and negative editorials offer valid critique of his theology, many others just come across as cranky, self-serving and missing the point that Christ’s people all too often have failed to exemplify Christ’s radical compassion and joy that seemed to draw the watching world, rather than repel it. What is so sad is that it is so easy for society to bash the church today, because the church does too fine a job of making itself look narrow, mean-minded and unloving, especially in the ability of its saints to display such hostility, intolerance and judgment against one another.

Yet here’s the challenging truth. The church is God’s idea, not ours. The church, with all its human frailties and sins, remains Jesus’ chosen instrument through which he desires the fullness of his gospel and the beauty of his life be revealed. The church, with all its “warts and wrinkles” is still the chosen, holy bride of Christ, and no matter how much Mr. Bethke or myself or anyone else may be offended by or critical of the worst failures of the church in any of its local, denominational or historical manifestations, to love Jesus means we are part of that same messed-up, still incomplete yet thoroughly beloved new creation.

Which suggests to me that rather than bashing the institutional church in any of its forms (conservative or liberal, traditional or contemporary, third-world or first-world, evangelical or social-action oriented, mega-church or house church) or condemning each other, we would bring far greater praise to the Lord by putting more effort into forgiving, respecting and loving each other who call ourselves Christians as in bringing mercy, grace and kindness to the world for which Jesus died. In the first century of its existence, though misunderstood and persecuted, the church commonly brought forth the expression from the pagan world around it: “behold these Christians, how the love one another!”

Which leads to one other thought: perhaps the reason a video about loving Jesus but hating religion goes viral is that there is such a deep hunger in the heart of our society, not only for Jesus, but ironically, for the church to be the kind of place where Jesus can be found and met and his radical, transforming grace be encountered. If the church seems to find itself increasingly marginalized in society, it is not because society does not have a desperate yearning for grace, for the holy, for a transcendent hope or for authentic community – all the gifts that uniquely belong to the church and can only be found in Jesus. The good news of the gospel is still good news, and the church has a waiting audience that is as broad, needy and ready to receive that good news as it had in the first century Mediterranean world. Because in the end, the good news is not about what brand or version of Christianity is most liturgically pure or theologically correct. The good news has nothing to do with methodologies or technologies of our evangelism or worship or anything else. The world remains simply hungry for Jesus and it is the church, you and I, who are called to make the introduction and let the world see the Lord in us. That’s what loving Jesus is. And that is what being the church is.

I suspect that the advice may not have been welcomed by Walpole’s friend. Or, to put it more personally, had that advice been given to me, I expect I would not have welcomed it happily. It’s like Jesus’ hard words with which the Beatitudes end: “Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” (Matthew 5:10-12) It is akin to the adage that the Lord gets his best soldiers out of adversity. The trouble is, not many of us readily sign up for adversity.

I expect that few of us would rank ourselves in the realm of those saints who have endured great hardships for Christ. While I have faced some hurtful things in ministry, they really are mosquito bites in comparison to the struggles, labours and sacrifices that many have poured out for the sake of Jesus. No, I relate far more to the story of another bishop who lamented that wherever Jesus went, riots seemed to break out; but wherever he went, they served tea!

Most of us probably prefer tea to riots and our creature comforts to any real sacrifice or suffering for Christ. Given the choice, our most natural response would not likely take any road over which the shadow of the Cross loomed, since that would seem to promise to demand of us such loyalties, convictions and readiness to know “the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings” (Philippians 3:10) and we might despair of having such qualities in our soul. Yet, it is so very true that when we dare to obey Christ’s summons despite the danger or challenge or hardship, we find his presence to be so strong, dear and good. Indeed, it is precisely in those situations when we have no power of our own upon which to rely, no wisdom of our own to bring to the challenge and come to the very end of our personal resources, that we find the grace of Christ to be sufficient for us and the power of Christ to be most at work. It is not unlike that great promise in Isaiah 43, that it will be as we are passing through the waters and walking through the fire that the protection, comfort and presence of our God will be most fully known.

Over what road ahead looms the shadow of the Cross for you this day? It may also be, surprisingly, the road whereon you will discover the greatest joy of meeting Jesus.

I was encouraged to read that at least one of the participants in that disgraceful follow-up to the Canucks losing the Stanley Cup had the moral fortitude to acknowledge and take responsibility for his behaviour. However, he was not the first to do so. In fact, the day after the riot, one Emmanuel Alviar went to Vancouver’s police station and confessed what he had done. The report from Postmedia described Alviar’s decision this way:

 With the strong support of his family and friends, Alviar told police he made some very bad decisions as the riot began to unfold and he wanted to own up for his “stupid” behaviour that infamous night the Canucks lost the final game. “I felt horrible about myself,” Alviar, 20, said Saturday of the feeling he had knowing he lost complete control and behaved like a criminal. He said the mob had lost any sense of sanity and the chaos was overwhelming as loyal Canucks fans turned on each other and smashed anything in the way. “There were so many people beating the crap out of each other — it felt like the end of the world. I could feel the selfishness of people damaging and looting. I was being dumb obviously being caught up in the moment — but it was thrilling.”

 The story about Emmanuel Alviar reminded me first of all of the power of what is called “mob mentality.” Otherwise sane, thoughtful folk can be stampeded by the influence and passions of the crowd into behaviours that they normally find reprehensible. But such a suspension of critical thinking, moral sensitivities and plain common sense does not always need a mob. Paul rightly affirmed that our most significant struggles in life are rarely with people, per se, but more often than not, we are dealing with the dynamics of evil at work in our world, and our own susceptibilities to fear, anger, and sin. These are the principalities and powers that often pit people against one another, against all that is good and true, against their own best selves, and ultimately against God (even if they fervently believe they are acting righteously in defence of God – which is usually a sign that they may not have listened as keenly to the Lord as to their own anxieties and angers!)

 Perhaps no where do we see the handiwork of the devil more tragically manifest when Christians begin to fight with other Christians. Jesus declared that the greatest command he gave was to love one another as he had loved us, yet in the midst of church squabbles, it seems that love is the first thing to go out the window. It matters not what the issue might be. Whether over styles of worship or over approaches to scripture, whether over what is appropriate dress and attire for church or whether the kids are allowed to be too rowdy, I’ve watched congregations get all wound up and folks become divided, ornery and utterly insensitive and disrespectful. As Emmanuel Alviar put it, we end up beating the crap out of each other…, [revealing the ] selfishness of people…, [and] being dumb.

 I have to commend Mr. Alviar for his courage and honesty in turning himself into police, confessing his stupidity and criminal behaviour, and taking responsibility for his actions. Too often, our biggest problem is not just the mistakes we make. Rather it is that we compound the problem by being too stubborn, proud or afraid to ‘fess up, humble ourselves, and repent. Instead we re-double our efforts to blame or slander others, buttress our self-justifying arguments, or otherwise keep up the pretence of innocence.

 Someone once said that our sins are the abyss between ourselves and God. When we confess our sinfulness and our sins, they become the bridge. The Book of Proverbs suggests that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. I think that the readiness, like that of the prodigal and at least one Stanley Cup rioter, to own up and repent one’s mistakes, must surely be one more of those decisions that moves us miles on the journey to wisdom.

I have enjoyed the ministerial over my years in Duncan, but over the past few months, a special sense of blessing flowed into my life from these fellow labourers for Christ. I shared the challenge and sorrow of our church struggles and division with these colleagues, and their support, prayer, and ongoing words of encouragement and grace proved to be such an incredible strength for me. (Their rich good humour was no less a blessing. After I had spoken of our difficulties in St. Andrew’s, one of them quipped, “well, there is one good thing – if the devil is busy at your church, maybe he’ll leave ours alone!) During the past months, so many of them have called simply to ask how I was faring and to offer to extend to me whatever time, prayer or help I might need. More than anything, their strong affirmation of my ministry and integrity as a disciple of Jesus buoyed me up through the toughest moments of slander and attack.

In the weeks in between ministerial gatherings, I have the privilege of gathering each Wednesday for lunch, theology and prayer with two special brothers, Walt Vanderwerf of Duncan Christian Reformed Church and Joey Cho of the Cowichan Grace Native Fellowship. We continue to build a bond of mutual trust, respect and care as we seek to share our delight and discoveries from God’s Word, hold each other up in prayer, and simply bless one another in whatever way we can.

The psalmist declared “how good and pleasant it is when brothers (and sisters) dwell in unity (Psalm 133:1). How blessed we are when we allow the Spirit to nourish and challenge and empower us through the gift of fellow sojourners in faith. As important as it is to cherish, protect and grow our faith relationship with Christ through our private times of reading and meditating upon scripture and opening our hearts in prayer, equally we need to invest ourselves in trusting, vulnerable relationships with others. Too many Christians, too many men, and too many pastors try to do life and faith on their own, and simply find themselves overwhelmed. The Christian walk was never meant to be a solo enterprise. We need others to walk alongside us and we alongside them, and be one another’s encouragers, rebukers, listeners, helpers, counsellors and supporters. Above all, we need to place ourselves in those shared relationships through which the companionship and compassion and strength of Christ may flow.

For all those who have been such precious brothers and sisters in Christ, thanks be to God!

The one meditation focused on Acts 16, and the Spirit of Jesus preventing Paul from entering into the province of Asia, for the time had not yet come in which the gospel would penetrate that region. Rather, a vision of a man from Macedonia calling for Paul would lead that disciple into the area of both geography and ministry which the Lord had appointed for his apostle.

The other writing was a reflection on the story of Peter walking on the water at Jesus’ command, a feat quite possible for any of us if truly the Master bade us to “come to him.” Going on, the writer suggested that we must, like Peter, call out to the Lord very clearly, and then wait and listen for his beckoning and commanding word. For without that word of summons, to throw ourselves out upon the water would only be presumptuous, rash and impudent. No, till we are unmistakably called to dare the impossible, our duty is simply to pray and wait.

The two readings sparked a number of thoughts. First, how often we allow our impatience to direct our actions and decisions, rather than waiting for the Holy Spirit to guide our every step and plan. How easily we become anxious because life is not working out according to our hurried time schedule, instead of trusting that God’s timing is not only true but perfect. Our preoccupation with both technology and today’s fads has shaped us to presume God is present only to help us achieve or attain “the next best thing.” Or again, how prone we are to run ahead of God with our visions and campaigns and agendas, and then in afterthought, ask for blessing upon what we have purposed to undertake. After all, our goal is to bring glory to God – why would the Lord not want to cause our plans to flourish. Except that just as God’s thoughts are not our thoughts, nor his ways, our ways, it just may be that our great tactics and projects may not fall whatsoever within God’s kingdom plan. How often we fail completely in first of all waiting for God to enable us to discern his vision for our church or call upon our hearts.

Scripture often directs us to trust in the Lord, look to the Lord, hope in the Lord and give praise to the Lord. But God’s Word also commands us again and again simply to wait upon the Lord. God invites us and challenges us to that active, waiting, patient and prayerful work of attending, listening and discerning what the Spirit of the Lord is telling us to do for right now, and for tomorrow. True discipleship means the exercise of that holy virtue of patience and wait diligently and expectantly for his word, not our wishful thinking or arrogant will. Only as we do so will we find ourselves alert and empowered for either the Macedonian call or a meander over the waves or simply to be the sign of holy grace where God wants us to be.

It took me a only couple of seconds to ponder my response before I said, Philippians 4:4 – Rejoice in the Lord; again I will say it: rejoice! While there are literally thousands of scripture verses that speak to my soul, and dozens that would vie for top spot, I think this encouragement from Paul really does resound loudest in my heart.

But the question did get me thinking about what those key verses which we would hold dear in our life say about us. Does our favourite verse call us to fear the Lord or rejoice in the Lord? Does it summon us to a life of earnest endeavour towards spiritual holiness before God or to a spirit of uncontainable praise unto God? Does our favourite verse invite us to be embraced by Christ’s freedom or be made new by his mercy? Does that line scripture which has deepest influence on our lives entreat us to service of to sacrifice  or to surrender or to celebration?

There is, of course, no “right” answer.  All of scripture, we must remember, ”is God-breathed, and useful for teaching, correction and rebuke.”  Moreover, it is the fullness of scripture, not any single verse, which is required to direct and guide us in the fullness of Christian life, joy and faithfulness.

And yet, when we reflect on those scriptures that sound loudest in our hearts, and ponder why they have such meaning or how they particularly shape our sense of God and of our how we understand the Christian life, we may find ourselves recognizing that we need to do some expanding of our repertoire of beloved verses, in order to bring greater balance, challenge or comfort to our souls.

 As an experiment, start writing down a list of those passages of scripture that have most shaped your understanding of God, of grace, of the meaning of the cross or of your sense of duty before the Lord. What’s the emphasis? What’s the challenge? Is there sufficient reminder of the Good News of the gospel? Is there more weight of expectation and demand of works than there is a burden of gladness and promise of hope? Is there too much emphasis on future glory and not enough in be a living reminder of God’s compassion? Is there too overbearing a sense of our unworthiness and not sufficient reflection upon God’s loving kindness, or too much emphasis on our having been chosen and called and too little upon the need for repentance and transformation?

Then, keep adding and memorizing more and more verses that shape out the fullness of our gospel hope and our call to living as disciples of the King. May you begin to discover you have dozens and hundreds of favourite scriptures that together shape your faith, your witness and your life.