Be Still And Know

2 Corinthians 4:16 Have you ever been tempted to give up? Paul talks about this twice in this chapter and concludes that he will never give up, despite having a very demanding ministry. There must have been many occasions when quitting seemed extremely tempting! We don’t know about every challenge he faced but we do know that he was (in his own words!) hard pressed on every side, perplexed, hunted down and in constant danger of death. It must have been incredibly tough. But Paul was clear: he would not throw in the towel! And here, he gives a firm reason why. Every single day he was being renewed. Our bodies can’t keep going for ever. From about 25 years old, all of us are in a state of physical and mental decline. From about 18 to 25 years, the number of newly formed cells in our bodies balance the dying ones. However, after 25, the number that are dying are greater than the number of new ones being made. That’s the ageing process. There’s no way of avoiding it. I’m sorry if that isn’t the word o

2 Corinthians 4:7-9 I wonder how strong or weak you think you are. It can be hard to admit our vulnerabilities but here Paul does so in the most open way. He lays bare the way in which he has been knocked about in ministry. He faced pressures from every direction and was happy to admit how weak he felt. But, through it all, he had not been defeated and was clear that the reason for this was the power of God. He was just a fragile clay jar. All credit for his survival in ministry must go to God. When things are difficult, it is easy to conclude that we are in the wrong place. We make the assumption that, if we
are in the place God wants us to be, everything will go smoothly. However, God has lots of tough work to be done. As Paul discovered, when we are obedient to God, we may be pushed to our absolute limits. It is important in all of this to know ourselves and God. We must recognise that we are all fragile, and that God
is able to strengthen us whatever the circumstances. Paul’s candid testimony

2 Corinthians 4:5 Whatever you are doing today, it’s vital to have a clear objective. Being unclear about what you are trying to achieve is frustrating, confusing and exhausting. Paul did not suffer from this problem! He was absolutely certain that his role was to preach about Jesus, pure and simple. In a church that was very interested in the different personalities of their leaders, Paul made it plain that he didn’t want to be the focus of their attention. The word ‘Christocentric’ – or centred on Christ – sums this up well. This is the calling of every Christian. In our everyday life, we seek to put Jesus at the centre of our thinking, our relationships and our activities. Paul, as a preacher, was determined not to impress people with beautifully polished sermons but to ensure that they met with Jesus and understood that he died on the cross for them. But whatever your calling, you can live a Christocentric life. If you are a shopworker, you can ensure your care for customers and staff radi

2 Corinthians 3:18 Nothing stands still for long. If you need proof of that, take a look at a photo of yourself from ten years ago. We are constantly changing, whether we like it or not! Here, Paul speaks about the way in which we change as Christians. As followers of Jesus, if our lives look exactly the same as they did in the past, something has gone desperately wrong. Being a Christian is very different from belonging to a club, where you can normally tailor your involvement
to suit yourself. Many people belong to gyms but never attend. By way of contrast, Christianity is a relationship within which God’s desire is that we change. Paul talks about the importance of growing in faith and becoming more mature many time. Here, in 2 Corinthians, he speaks of us changing so that we look more and more
like Jesus. We may have a long way to go, but the Holy Spirit, day by day, is working the miracle of changing us into Christ’s likeness. Often, the best way of seeing this process at work is by looking

2 Corinthians 3:4-5 Qualifications are important. You can’t deny it. If I catch a train, I want to know the driver is qualified! When a surgeon operates on me, I want to know that they have passed all the appropriate exams. Paul addresses the crucial question of what qualifies someone to work for God. His work is of eternal importance, so we need to know exactly what kind of qualifications are needed. There are any number of excellent courses in biblical study, theology and Christian ministry available to us today, whether online or in person. It is wonderful that there are so many ways we can train to work for God. But don’t for a moment imagine that those paper qualifications are all you need. Ultimately, you need to know that God’s hand is upon your life and that he is directing, inspiring and enabling the work you are doing. Paul sums it up neatly: “Our qualification comes from God.” I thank God for the privilege of studying at Bible college and for able scholars who helped me to understand

2 Corinthians 2:14-15 Smells are powerful. I can still remember some of the smells from my childhood. Many of them are associated with summer holidays, when we would visit the Isle of Wight and smell the sea, the wildflowers and the beautiful fresh bread. Most of the smells I recall are sweet, although I can’t quite get over the boyhood memory of the smell of a French fish market! I love the idea that, as we speak about Jesus, we are spreading around sweet perfume. When a Roman general won a military victory, there would be a triumphal procession through the city. The general wore a crown of laurel and a specially- embroidered purple and gold toga. He rode a four-horse chariot through the streets with his army, prisoners and spoils of war. Along the route, perfumes were sprinkled – a sweet smell of victory for those on the general’s side and the smell of death and defeat for those he had beaten. Paul uses this powerful picture to remind his readers that, as Jesus leads us in triumph, his fragr

2 Corinthians 1:21-22 I wonder what you really make of your Christian brothers and sisters. Honestly. Let me suggest that you find them mixed. You feel incredibly close to some of them and know that you could share anything with them. And then there are others who you find hard work. You just don’t easily see eye to eye with them. Their approach to life and the Lord is so different from yours. That was certainly Paul’s experience! The Corinthian Christians were very mixed. Some were his close friends and others were doing everything they could to destroy his ministry. What I love about these verses is that Paul addresses the whole Church and celebrates the way in which God has blessed them – all of them. He is so gracious with his accusers and those who are trying to obstruct his ministry. He reminds them all that they are standing firm in Christ and can all be sure of God’s blessings in the future. Paul speaks of the blessing of the Holy Spirit at work in every single believer. He says the Holy S

2 Corinthians 1:12 Life isn’t always easy. It certainly wasn’t for Paul, whose ministry often came under vicious attack. His relationship with the church in Corinth was, at times, particularly painful, especially as he had helped to establish it. He loved the Corinthians passionately and was desperate for them to grow and thrive in the Lord. However, time and again, they were a great disappointment to him. It got even worse when they started making cruel and unfounded accusations against him. Nothing is harder than people falsely accusing you. It is so incredibly painful. When you know that you have acted out of love and concern, it is agonising to be accused of acting out of self-interest. Paul’s response is that he is absolutely convinced he has acted in the right way towards God. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what other people make of our ministry. What matters is what God makes of it, and Paul is utterly convinced that he has ministered in the right way. I have had the privilege

Proverbs 11:11 Following God is an intensely personal matter. But it mustn’t stop there. Living God’s way affects every part of our life. It needs to flow out from our personal walk with God to the community in which we live. The writer of Proverbs was eager that his readers should understand that they had vital responsibilities towards their society. He knew that the cohesion of their community depended on their personal contribution as upright citizens. Nothing has changed. Our society also depends on the contribution that we make, so let’s explore for a moment what it means for us to be upright citizens. This has to begin with our willingness to submit to the civic authorities, and do what they tell us to do. Paul told the Christians in Rome that they should submit to the governing authorities because their authority came from God. He warned his readers that if they rebelled against the civic leaders they were actually rebelling against God and would be punished for it (Romans 13:3). We also ha

Proverbs 11:1 Dodgy dealers are nothing new. Since the dawn of time, humankind has been involved in trading and there have always been people who have acted dishonestly. For thousands of years, weighing scales have been used – and it is easy to see how traders could adjust them to their advantage. The prophet Amos was well aware of this practice. He wrote: “You measure out grain with dishonest measures, and cheat the buyer with dishonest scales. And you mix the grain you sell with chaff swept from the floor” (Amos 8:5-6). What troubled Amos the most was that the people who cheated their customers were also very religious. However, Amos observed, these religious people couldn’t wait for the Sabbath to be over so that they could get back to the business of cheating people. Amos declared that God hated this and would judge the people who were responsible for it. Indeed, God detested the fact that these people worshipped him. He said that he was not willing to accept the burnt offerings and grain offering

Proverbs 10:25 We used to live very close the Met Office in Exeter. One day I was taken to see the vast computers that work night and day to forecast our weather. The present system was installed in December 2016 and is capable of making over 14,000 trillion arithmetic operations per second. That’s more than 2 million calculations per second for every man, woman and child on the planet. The Met Office is able to take in 215 billion weather observations from all over the world every day. Their ability to predict the weather is all very impressive, but the storms of life are different. They often come without any warning at all. It might be a road accident, an illness or a death, but suddenly everything is different. Our world has been turned on its head. Jesus specifically addressed this issue when he told his readers the parable of the wise and foolish builders (Matthew 7:24-27). One of them constructed his house on rock and the other on sand. When the sun was shining, the houses probably looked i

Proverbs 10:20-21 Francis de Sales, a much-loved Bishop of Geneva in the 17th century said: “Our words are a faithful index of the state of our souls.” Whether we like it or not, our words give us away. They reveal for all to see what is going on in the core of our being. That surely means we should focus our attention on ensuring that we speak well. How wonderful to think that well- chosen words could be like the purest silver and bring encouragement to many. Our verses today also say that “the words of the godly encourage many”. Other translations refer to our words as “nourishing” or “feeding many”. I have to conclude from this that it is important we reflect on the way in which we speak. We shouldn’t open our mouths and simply hope that we get it right. May I suggest two positive things that we could all do to help us to speak in a more encouraging and helpful way? Firstly, we need to pray before we speak. When we know that we are meeting up with someone, let’s pray that God will give us t

Genesis 22:2 This is an incredibly tough passage to cope with. My wife and I have three children. The thought of offering one of them as a sacrifice is well beyond my power to comprehend. I really struggle with every part of it. But Abraham agreed to do exactly what God had asked him to do, as terrible as it sounded. I feel sure that, if I had been Abraham, I would have assumed I had misheard God, eaten too much cheese or spent too much time in the sun. Not Abraham. God told him to offer his precious son, Isaac, as a sacrifice, and off he set. This account tells me a great deal about Abraham’s faith. He was absolutely convinced that God could be trusted and that, if God called him to do this hideous thing, it must be for the best. No wonder Abraham was seen as the father of faith! He set the benchmark. To everyone’s relief, God didn’t actually ask Abraham to kill Isaac. But he took him right up the point where Abraham had the knife in his hand and was about to do the dreadful deed. Abraham had no

Genesis 18:13-14 I love laughter and I am sure you do too. It’s a pleasure to see people really letting rip and having a good laugh. Laughter can be sparked off by any number of things, but it is often sparked by absurdity. We laugh at clowns because everything they do is ridiculous and turns our normal expectations of life upside down. Sarah’s laughter was for precisely this reason. She was about 100 years old, decades beyond child-bearing age. Although she had wanted to have children, she had long since got used to the idea that it wasn’t going to happen. Then three mysterious visitors arrived at Abraham and Sarah’s tent in the desert and informed them that she would give birth. The very thought was hilarious because it was so completely absurd. But Sarah was going to have a baby. And the explanation takes us to the heart of the nature of God. Nothing is too hard for him. For us, such a thing would stay on the list of impossibilities, but God is the creator of heaven and earth. For him, such thi

Genesis 17:5-8 It’s a big moment when you enter into a binding agreement with someone. Whether you are thinking of marriage, buying a house or starting a new job, it is a time to stand back from life and take a deep breath. This was just such a moment for Abram as he entered into a covenant with God that was going to change everything – including his name! The word “covenant” is important throughout the whole of the Bible. It’s an amazing word. The idea that the God of Creation wants to enter into a relationship with human beings is enough to blow your mind. The first covenant that God made was with Noah, and he set a rainbow in the sky as an eternal reminder of it. Then, in the New Testament, we see the way in which Jesus’ death on the cross ushers in a new covenant, as he throws the door open to the world. A covenant has two sides to it. On one side, there is God, who has freely chosen to enter into a relationship with us. The only explanation for this is love. He doesn’t have to form a relation

Genesis 12:2-3 Never forget that God is in the business of blessing people! That’s what he loves to do and that’s what Abram was just about to discover. At a time of life when most people would be seeking to take things more slowly, God calls him to be the father of a nation. Nothing suggests that this is remotely likely. One practical problem was that Abram and his wife Sarai had no children and were well past childbearing age. But with God around that wasn’t going to be a problem! In life, we face many challenges but God doesn’t want them to have the last word. Amid the bumps and difficulties, God’s desire is to bless us so that, in turn, we can bless other people. I love seeing that in action. I can think of many friends over the years who have had to face significant problems in life, including severe, life-limiting disabilities. They could have spent their lives moaning about the challenges they had to face every day. But, instead, they chose to thank God for his blessings and then generously to

Genesis 12:1 I wonder what your life looks like at the moment. I would guess that, for many of us, there are plenty of aspects that suit us really well. Life isn’t perfect, and we can easily come up with some suggested improvements, but the thought of it all changing completely would come as quite a shock. Well, if that’s true for us, imagine how much greater the challenge would have been for Abram. God was taking him away from the security of his wealthy and his comfortable home and leading him on the most incredible adventure, into a land of which he knew nothing. We would be able to reach for our computers and find out information about where we were going, but not Abram! Added to that, Abram was 75 when this happens. Most people would hardly consider that the time of life to embark on a daring adventure! But that’s not how God works. Living the life of faith is one long adventure and, whatever our age, we need to be ready for change, because that’s how God works. The writer to the Hebrews us

Genesis 11:4-8 God hates arrogance because it is a complete rejection of him. Here, the story of the tower of Babel could be described as an ultimate example of arrogance. The people decided to build a tower that would reach to the heavens. This would be the final proof that humankind was in control. In response, God acted decisively. He scattered everyone and, as a result, people no longer spoke one language but many. Division was the inevitable result of men and women putting themselves in the place that is rightfully God’s. Although these early chapters of Genesis describe an ancient world, they offer a powerful commentary on life today. As humankind grows in self-confidence and believes that it is in total control, division is the inevitable result. Having largely forced God out of the equation, the world is in a state of constant brokenness and despair. It is only when we acknowledge God as Lord of all that we see ourselves – and our world – with the right perspective. The constant challenge

Genesis 6:22-7:1 I am sure most of us have heard about Noah from our earliest days. Genesis gives us an amazing account of this heroic man. In short, Noah is asked by God to produce an enormous boat and fill it with his family and a wonderful collection of animals and birds. We don’t know where he lived, but it may well have been in the desert, where the whole idea of building a boat would have seemed laughably absurd. But Noah trusted God and was happy to do exactly what God told him to do. He is described as being ‘righteous’, which literally means he loved doing the right things. I thank God for the people I’ve known who, just like Noah, have been happy to do apparently crazy things because they believed that God had called them. I think of the many doctors and nurses I’ve known who have headed out to poor parts of the world where their skills were desperately needed. The income they received was a tiny fraction of what they would have earnt in this country. But, like Noah, they were happy to be ob

Genesis 4:8-9 This is the world’s first murder. Isn’t it terrible that, so early in the Bible, we have to confront such an appalling evil? If you have ever known a family that has experienced a murder, you will know the awful impact that it has – for years to come – on everyone concerned. It isn’t clear why Cain’s offering to the Lord was unacceptable, but he is furious about it and determined to do away with his brother. After the murder, God caught up with Cain and his response to God was a bizarre one: “Am I my brother’s guardian?” he asks. The translation that you may be more familiar with is: “Am I my brother’s keeper?”, although I quite like the Living Bible paraphrase of: “How should I know? Am I supposed to keep track of him wherever he goes?” Whichever version you choose, it is a crazy response. God’s reply might well have been: “No, Cain, you don’t need to know everything about your brother and everywhere he goes, but that doesn’t mean you can kill him.” God tells Cain that Abel’s bl