Phelim DohertyLeave a comment

The Gospel is not ‘Behave’, it is ‘Behold!’.

When men want to know about your life, there are certain questions they will always want to ask. These are the sorts of questions you will find on an application for a mortgage, or at a job interview: What age are you? Have you a criminal record? Have you attained a qualification? But God’s Word tells us that to truly understand someone’s life, we need only look to the root of that life; what they are believing about life itself? “for it is out of the heart spring the issues of life” (Proverbs 4:23). It seems we were created to believe, for as G K Chesterton famously observed: “When men stop believing in God, they don’t start believing in nothing. They start believing in anything.”

Because we were created to believe, our lives can ultimately only reveal who we believe God to be, what we think He is really like. Let me say that a different way. Our lives reveal what we believe God believes. This is the question that sits at the root of our lives; What does God believe? Ephesians 4:5 affirms that there is only one faith and so for God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven, there needs to be the same faith on earth as there is in heaven; His faith.

This is the reason we proclaim the Gospel, that men and women would behold in Jesus Christ the heart of God; what God believes! For what we see in Christ and Him crucified, is the way God loves the world. He so loves us in this way, as to not withhold His own life from us (John 3:16). To behold Christ, is to behold what God believes; that we have a Father who never left us to save ourselves! 

To behold Him giving Himself to us, causes in us what the New Testament calls a ‘metanoia’. We find ourselves empowered to rest in Him, to be saved, for we find our hearts persuaded that we are indeed the children of God, and He is a saving God! This is not a work of our intellect, but of His Spirit (Romans 8:16). To behold Him in spirit and in truth, is to find ourselves delivered from the Kingdom of darkness into the Kingdom of His Son and all we can say to the glory of God is “I was blind, but now I see.”

This is why the Gospel message is not ‘Behave!’, it is ‘Behold!’ Behold Christ. Behold what God believes about you and in that beholding receive His faith, that your life would be rooted in His and bear the fruit of His, a life in communion with the Father. To behold Christ in spirit and in truth, is to behold God with us, standing in our midst. (John 14:8 & 9). To behold Him is to see that He has not come to us because of our love, but His (1 John 4:10). To behold Him, is to see that He Has not come in response to our efforts, but because He is love and love must come in person (John 3:16). To behold Him, is to see that He comes to us not on our best day, but on our worst (Luke 15:20 & 28). To behold Him, is to see that the gospel has never been about what might be, if I, but always the declaration of what is, because He! 

We have got so used to preaching an earthly gospel (if you will give to God, then He will give to you) that we have settled for an earthly power; the power to motivate. Just because we place a beautiful worship session before a motivational talk, does not mean that the gospel has been preached! The power of the gospel is not the eloquence of the speaker, but the revelation of the presence of God through the speaker; their words carrying His authority and unction to open eyes and hearts to the reality of the presence of the Kingdom and the King (Mark 1:15). 

Any earthly orator can preach up a storm that stirs the flesh to action, but only the gospel of heaven still causes men to wonder, that even the wind and waves in their own heart obey and are still. All of creation must bow before the God who stands in the midst of our storms, for it is not the promise of the dawn that dispels the darkness, but the presence of the dawn. So let our gospel be more than ‘Behave!’ Let it be, Behold! Behold Christ and find God in your midst, His Spirit sent as the dawn into your heart, that you may cry “Abba Father”. 

Phelim Doherty1 Comment

An Earth Crammed with Heaven.

Extravagant: “exceeding the limits of reason or necessity, lacking in moderation, balance, and restraint.” (Merriam-Webster).

It was C S Lewis who famously said; “If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.”

Sooner or later we each discover that we have within us an extravagant thirst, a thirst for life that nothing in this world can satisfy, a thirst ‘exceeding the limits of reason or necessity, lacking in moderation, balance, and restraint’, for we were created for the most extravagant life; Christ.

Where should I go in scripture to begin to point to the extravagance of God, for when words are inadequate, pointing will have to suffice! One common place to begin is in the garden of Eden, with God giving man the whole world to be his domain. But to glimpse the extravagance of God’s generosity, we can do better that beginning with God giving man the earth, for as the first Adam showed us, indeed a man can gain the whole world and still lose his true life.

Let me point you to another garden, the garden of Gethsemane, where we see God not just giving us His world but giving us His life. Look at our God kneeling to submit to the darkness of our death encroaching on Him, like a black sun rising whose chilling shadow draws a sweat of blood. Look at love entering into our despair, exceeding the limits of reason or necessity, lacking in moderation, balance, and restraint. Look on the extravagance of such love and let compassion rise for a world that can only come up with gods who remain in their heaven, waiting to see who can work their way there by the sweat of their religious brows.

Beware reducing our God to one that men can manage, lest they set up their counting tables and call it His temple. It is not our repentance that makes God’s generosity extravagant. It is the revelation of His extravagant generosity that causes us to repent, to find our beliefs utterly changed and the extravagant thirst of our hearts quenched. Only a love that is greater than my death can undo my death. Only a love that is not measured to me on the basis of my behaviour, is powerful enough to change my behaviour.  A god who only gives according to what I first give Him, is too much like me to save me. Don’t give me a god who is just another counter of my sins against me. Let me have the one who turned over the tables of the counters.

You see apart from God’s extravagant Spirit, our earthly minds are too frugal and miserly to think or imagine a God so loving, that His way of loving us is not to stand back from us, but to fall on our dirty lives and embrace us into Himself, embrace our lonely life and our lonely death, who will go down with our ship, so that the way could be made for us to rise up in His; the fellow-ship of the Father and the Son, in the Spirit.

Lately when I have thought of that garden and God there entering into the loneliness of our condition, I see Jesus rebuking Peter, James and John for falling asleep. When those same disciples had previously felt overwhelmed in their souls with the thought of death approaching, He had chided them on their lack of faith. In the boat during the storm, it was He who slept while his disciples stood over Him crying, “How can you sleep, don’t you care?” Now in the garden of Gethsemane, we have in Jesus a God extravagant enough in His love to enter into the darkness of our living death, our perishing condition, our storm of death, our sinking ship. Now it is Jesus who finds Himself saying to the disciples in effect; “Why do you sleep? Don’t you care?” In those words, I hear God’s extravagance towards mankind; for they are the words of one fully entering into our darkness, willing to give Himself to us even unto death, that He may rescue us from the pit we have fallen into. 

This world is full of gods who offer us the world, even offer us heaven. But where in this world can we find a god extravagant enough to offer us Himself? Only in Christ do we see a god of such extravagance; exceeding the limits of reason or necessity, lacking in moderation, balance, and restraint, for to lay down your life for the ones you love, is not an act of moderation, balance or restraint.

The earth is covered with the glory of God’s extravagance, but not yet the knowledge of that glory. In the words of 19th century poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning; “Earth’s crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God, but only he who sees takes off his shoes; the rest sit round and pluck blackberries.”

Can you hear in those verses the great contrast, between a life lived in awe of the extravagance of God and a life lived focused on grasping for the next trinket. The truth of His extravagance is all around us, from the stars in the sky to the sands on the shore. The whole earth is full of the glory of God, but men have been blinded by the god of this age, the spirit of the world, whose gospel is “Here is what you need to do to save yourself.” It sounds like great advice, but the effect of believing that I am the author of my salvation, is to fall. We fall from living in the wide-open spaces of God’s extravagance, to the small prison cell that is a life consumed with saving itself. But as Paul and Silas discovered, even prison cells can be crammed with heaven by an extravagant God!

Believer, whatever the dark situation of your life right now, that appears to have you imprisoned in a confined place, look up, all of heaven is crammed into your cell! In that cell with you is a god so extravagant, so exceeding the limits of reason or necessity, so lacking in moderation, balance, and restraint, that He has made His home in your pit of darkness. Listen again to the sound of His extravagance, the gospel of His grace, the news that there is a God who entered our darkness so that the sun of His righteousness would rise in our hearts. Listen again and let the sound of such extravagance, the sound of music and dancing in the Father’s house, rise up from His spirit into your soul. Let that sound lead you out into the full light of day; the life of the Son of the extravagant Father, a life that cannot be restrained, even by the storm of death.

Phelim Doherty1 Comment

An Earth crammed with Heaven.

Extravagant: “exceeding the limits of reason or necessity, lacking in moderation, balance, and restraint.” (Merriam-Webster).

It was C S Lewis who famously said; “If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.”

Sooner or later we each discover that we have within us an extravagant thirst, a thirst for life that nothing in this world can satisfy, a thirst ‘exceeding the limits of reason or necessity, lacking in moderation, balance, and restraint’, for we were created for the most extravagant life; Christ.

Where should I go in scripture to begin to point to the extravagance of God, for when words are inadequate, pointing will have to suffice! One common place to begin is in the garden of Eden, with God giving man the whole world to be his domain. But to glimpse the extravagance of God’s generosity, we can do better that beginning with God giving man the earth, for as the first Adam showed us, indeed a man can gain the whole world and still lose his true life.

Let me point you to another garden, the garden of Gethsemane, where we see God not just giving us His world but giving us His life. Look at our God kneeling to submit to the darkness of our death encroaching on Him, like a black sun rising whose chilling shadow draws a sweat of blood. Look at love entering into our despair, exceeding the limits of reason or necessity, lacking in moderation, balance, and restraint. Look on the extravagance of such love and let compassion rise for a world that can only come up with gods who remain in their heaven, waiting to see who can work their way there by the sweat of their religious brows.

Beware reducing our God to one that men can manage, lest they set up their counting tables and call it His temple. It is not our repentance that makes God’s generosity extravagant. It is the revelation of His extravagant generosity that causes us to repent, to find our beliefs utterly changed and the extravagant thirst of our hearts quenched. Only a love that is greater than my death can undo my death. Only a love that is not measured to me on the basis of my behaviour, is powerful enough to change my behaviour.  A god who only gives according to what I first give Him, is too much like me to save me. Don’t give me a god who is just another counter of my sins against me. Let me have the one who turned over the tables of the counters.

You see apart from God’s extravagant Spirit, our earthly minds are too frugal and miserly to think or imagine a God so loving, that His way of loving us is not to stand back from us, but to fall on our dirty lives and embrace us into Himself, embrace our lonely life and our lonely death, who will go down with our ship, so that the way could be made for us to rise up in His; the fellow-ship of the Father and the Son, in the Spirit.

Lately when I have thought of that garden and God there entering into the loneliness of our condition, I see Jesus rebuking Peter, James and John for falling asleep. When those same disciples had previously felt overwhelmed in their souls with the thought of death approaching, He had chided them on their lack of faith. In the boat during the storm, it was He who slept while his disciples stood over Him crying, “How can you sleep, don’t you care?” Now in the garden of Gethsemane, we have in Jesus a God extravagant enough in His love to enter into the darkness of our living death, our perishing condition, our storm of death, our sinking ship. Now it is Jesus who finds Himself saying to the disciples in effect; “Why do you sleep? Don’t you care?” In those words, I hear God’s extravagance towards mankind; for they are the words of one fully entering into our darkness, willing to give Himself to us even unto death, that He may rescue us from the pit we have fallen into. 

This world is full of gods who offer us the world, even offer us heaven. But where in this world can we find a god extravagant enough to offer us Himself? Only in Christ do we see a god of such extravagance; exceeding the limits of reason or necessity, lacking in moderation, balance, and restraint, for to lay down your life for the ones you love, is not an act of moderation, balance or restraint.

The earth is covered with the glory of God’s extravagance, but not yet the knowledge of that glory. In the words of 19th century poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning; “Earth’s crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God, but only he who sees takes off his shoes; the rest sit round and pluck blackberries.”

Can you hear in those verses the great contrast, between a life lived in awe of the extravagance of God and a life lived focused on grasping for the next trinket. The truth of His extravagance is all around us, from the stars in the sky to the sands on the shore. The whole earth is full of the glory of God, but men have been blinded by the god of this age, the spirit of the world, whose gospel is “Here is what you need to do to save yourself.” It sounds like great advice, but the effect of believing that I am the author of my salvation, is to fall. We fall from living in the wide-open spaces of God’s extravagance, to the small prison cell that is a life consumed with saving itself. But as Paul and Silas discovered, even prison cells can be crammed with heaven by an extravagant God!

Believer, whatever the dark situation of your life right now, that appears to have you imprisoned in a confined place, look up, all of heaven is crammed into your cell! In that cell with you is a god so extravagant, so exceeding the limits of reason or necessity, so lacking in moderation, balance, and restraint, that He has made His home in your pit of darkness. Listen again to the sound of His extravagance, the gospel of His grace, the news that there is a God who entered our darkness so that the sun of His righteousness would rise in our hearts. Listen again and let the sound of such extravagance, the sound of music and dancing in the Father’s house, rise up from His spirit into your soul. Let that sound lead you out into the full light of day; the life of the Son of the extravagant Father, a life that cannot be restrained, even by the storm of death.

Phelim Doherty3 Comments

Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again.

“Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again,but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”  John 4:13,14.

Notice Jesus’ words: “the water I give them”. He never expected us to be producers of life, but partakers. Christ is the life-giver, not the life-demander! There is an eternity of difference between producing and partaking. You or I were never called to produce the life of Christ, but to partake of His life, His Spirit, and so bear His life (Gal.5:22,23). Mary was never told by the angel Gabriel to produce Christ, but a great and precious promise was given to her; “When the Spirit comes you will bear Christ”. What does partaking look like? Listen to Mary’s response, for this is how we partake of the life of God. By the power of His Spirit, we find our souls responding, “Let it be done unto me, according to your Word.” In Christ we have been given a great Saviour, a great life. Let it be. This is the good news of the Gospel; if you want a Saviour, you have one. If you want to be your own, there is religion or atheism, but be warned, it is the most miserable life in the world, being your own Saviour!

I have come to see that one of the main reasons I have found myself partaking of what the world has to offer, is that I get so worn out trying to carry a weight that Christ never laid on me but His Church so often does; the weight of trying to produce a good life. (Matthew 11:28-30). Although it appears obvious to us as believers, that alcohol cannot satisfy a thirst for life, what is less obvious to us is that earthly religioncannot satisfy this thirst either and the evidence of that is the sheer number of discontented, dissatisfied people not just found in the bars of our nations, but in the churches. Our churches are full of such thirsty people.

We were created for nothing less that communion with our creator, and nothing less will satisfy us. We were created to be what the apostle Peter described as, ‘partakers of the divine nature’ (2Peter 1:4). Notice Peter too never described us as producersof the divine nature. We weren’t created to be employees, but sons. God is not asking you to produce a Christian life, but rather calls and empowers you, through the proclamation of the Gospel (Rom.10:17), to partake of the life offered to you; Christ.

You may ask, “How do I know how far I have fallen, from partaking to producing?” I can only speak for myself. I have found that it is the thirst I carry for the things of this world, that each day is the measure of how far my life has slipped, from partaking of His life, to trying to produce His life. To earthly eyes, such a fall looks obvious in the life of any poor individual who has perhaps drank or gambled their way into poverty. Church folk would often describe such a life as ‘worldly’ and say, “we don’t want such worldly behaviour in the church.” But to heavens eyes, there is nothing more worldly than religion because there is nothing more fallen than the belief that I can establish my own righteousness, I can produce the life of God by the works of my flesh (Gen.3:5, Matt.23:27). It is ironic, that many of us in the church are so quick to label people who have left our churches as back-sliders, when from heaven’s perspective, the greatest backslide has always been from partaking to producing and right from the earliest days of the church, you never had to leave the church to become that sort of backslider, just ask the Galatians! (Gal.3:3, 5:4). Think on Paul’s gentle tone with the Corinthians, as he admonished them for their drinking and cavorting. Now compare that with the tone he took with the Galatians, for their endeavours to become righteous by the work of their hands (Gal.1:6-9). Why was he so upset? Let me use a modern analogy. It’s one thing for people to choose what they are drinking, but it’s quite another to have your drink spiked! Paul’s accusation to the Galatians, was that they had added to the gospel. They had added producing to partaking and that little leaven had dropped their gaze from Christ, onto themselves.

That little leaven changed the nature of the gospel, from a supernatural message to a mere natural one because there is no power in any message that points you to you. But what alarmed Paul so much, was that he saw the deceptive nature of it, for a zeal for righteousness always looks so good (Rom.10:1-3). The most deceptive immaturity in the body of Christ remains a zeal for righteousness, but without enough knowledge of God to know that He is not asking you to produce your own, but to partake of His. (Hebrews 5:11-14). The writer to the Hebrews called any believer who hasn’t yet grasped that God isn’t asking you to produce righteousness, but to partake of His, a ‘babe’ and that wasn’t a compliment!

Actually, to call someone exhorting believers today to establish (produce) their own righteousness a ‘babe’ may be quite apt, as a modern understanding of that word refers to someone who looks really attractive. Some of the most attractive ministries in the body of Christ to the carnal man, are those who elevate the role of the flesh, for it always seems reasonable to the earthly minded man that he would play some starring role in his own salvation (Luke 18:11). But if you watch such ministries for long enough you will notice something; the same people keep having to go back again and again for ministry. Why? Because “everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again.”

There is no power in any message that points you to you. “Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.” (Rom.10:4) Christ is the end of producing and the beginning of partaking. Don’t let anyone spike your gospel. You cannot produce better water, a better life, than Christ offers. Ministry that continually exhorts believers to produce rather than partake, will inevitably leave them thirsty enough to go back into the world looking for life, for everyone who drinks this water, will be thirsty again.