For the second time this autumn, I'm in Barcelona. This time the city is the venue for our all-Europe King's Kids gathering, attended by KKI leaders, staff, friends and families from West, East, North and Central Europe. Around 200 people have been arriving today from places as diverse as Azerbaijan and Armenia, Belgium and Belarus, Ireland and Italy, Poland and Portugal….. In fact they're coming from more than twenty countries, and we'll be running the conference with translation into multiple languages. Over the past three days, we've had leadership meetings with the national coordinators of KKI youth and family ministries in those nations, and today the larger group arrives for the start of our regional conference. We're holding it in a big conference centre near the airport (yes, those pictures on the left are two sides of the same building) and we're trusting for a special sense of God's presence over these next days of worship, prayer and strategising, teaching, workshops, etc. Thanks for your prayers over these next four days.
This weekend, in my daily Bible reading, I was struck by Jeremiah chapter 31, verse 4. It says, “I will build you up again.... and you will be rebuilt.” In its context, God is promising to rebuild the nation of Israel after a time of exile.... but the verse stood out to me this weekend because it brought back such a vivid memory of a day three years ago when my Dad was dying in the intensive care unit of the hospital. Although doctors said there was no hope he would ever come out of hospital alive, I felt that God was speaking through this verse in Jeremiah, promising that my Dad would not die, but would be built up again.
I looked out my old journal and read what I’d written on 4th November 2011. From verse 13 in that same chapter of Jeremiah, I felt that God was saying our mourning and sadness would be turned into joy. I felt a sense of God’s assurance that we weren’t going to lose my Dad to death, but that He would still be alive fifteen months later to celebrate his 60th wedding anniversary. I guess Father God knew how important that assurance would be... because the very next day the doctors called us into a little room and broke the news that my Dad was fading and there seemed to be very little chance that he would survive much longer.
But he did survive... and fifteen months later he was alive to celebrate his Diamond Wedding. You can read the whole story here, in a blog post that I wrote in March 2013. Not only was Dad alive and well for that special anniversary, He even got up and danced an anniversary waltz with my Mum. See the video by clicking here.
And so that’s why Jeremiah 31:4 stood out to me in a new light this weekend. I read the second half of the verse too, and it says this, “I will build you up again, and you will be rebuilt... and you will go out to dance with the joyful.”
I turned the page to verse 13 and found the same thing there: “Then maidens will dance and be glad; young men and the old as well. I will turn their mourning into rejoicing.”
How weird! It sounded like a description of my parents’ sixtieth wedding celebration: young people and old people rejoicing together... and even the old man himself getting up to dance. How could I possibly have missed, back in 2011, that these two verses not only promised life and healing; they also promised a dance?
Of course, at the time, we’d been told that Dad would never walk again; perhaps would never even breathe again on his own. We weren’t particularly thinking about whether or not he would dance. But I saw God’s faithfulness, and His sense of humour, this weekend, on re-reading those “promise verses” and realising that they spoke about a time of dancing to come.
My Dad doesn’t do much dancing nowadays... but three years after his near-death experience, I’m pleased to report that He’s doing amazingly well and enjoys working in the garden. He’s going to celebrate his 86th birthday on the first of December.
The variety and intricacy of creation testify to us that we serve a God of amazing creativity and intellectual capacity. Not only did He “invent” so many millions of different birds, plants and animals, He also thought up an amazing plan of salvation that allows us to know Him as a Father and understand Him as a Friend.
God tells us in Isaiah 55: 9 that His intelligence and understanding are unlimited; they are far superior to our human intellect and understanding. This means that He is the best placed to make wise decisions about how we should live our lives... and yet, amazingly, He invites us to be involved in that process.
When God says, in Isaiah 1: 18, “Come, let us reason together,” that speaks to me that He wants to give us understanding of His ways. He is not asking for “blind obedience,” but says in verse 19, “If you are willing.” Although there’s no doubt at all that He knows best, He is willing to dialogue and help us understand the things He is asking of us.
Yes, there will be times when He asks us to take a simple step of trust and obedience without understanding what is going on. But for most of life’s big decisions, He wants us to be willing partners who cooperate from a place of understanding and embracing the plans and purposes that He has for us.
If I were to give you a pencil and paper, and ask you to write down everything that you know about the Zadokites, what would come to your mind?
Perhaps you would remember a few times that they were mentioned in the Old Testament, but quite possibly you wouldn’t be able to come up with anything at all. The Zadokites are not exactly the most famous people we read about in the Bible. They were not well known, at least in the world’s eyes, but two short sentences buried in the prophecies of Ezekiel tell us that they were very well known in heaven.
In Ezekiel 48 vs 11 - 12, we read that the Zadokites received a special inheritance because they had remained faithful to God, even when others were turning away and being unfaithful. The message here is clear and simple: God sees and honours faithfulness.
God saw and He remembers the times that you were loyal to Him, even amidst great challenges and difficulties. He is touched by the times that you’ve continued to trust and believe Him, even when others were giving up and turning away.
Perhaps you and I will never be well known here on earth. But heaven is watching our lives, and those who are faithful to God are well known in heaven.
Today, as I reached the end of several weeks reading the book of Ezekiel, I came to the well known part in chapter 47 that speaks of the prophet’s vision of a river flowing from the Temple. As Ezekiel wades deeper - from ankle to knee depth, and from waist level to the point of being completely out of his depth, it’s a graphic illustration and invitation for us to enter deeper into the flow of the Holy Spirit.
I couldn’t help noticing, though, that the water got deeper and deeper, the further away it flowed from the sanctuary. Perhaps it is only when we step out of our comfort zone, when we are willing to reach out in evangelism and ministry to others, that we will experience the greatest flow of the Spirit’s sustaining power in our lives.
The passing of time makes us all aware of growing older… and the time is shorter and seems to go faster for our non-human friends. This weekend I got news that my border collie back in Cape Town had died at the ripe old age of thirteen. Of course, I haven't seen her for seven years (except for over the internet) and so I already said my goodbyes a long time ago. But hearing of her death reminded me of what a great dog she was - funny, clever, energetic - and what a joy it was to have her for those seven years in Cape Town. I hope that one day I can have the blessing of owning a border collie again.
If you’re one of the people who receive my monthly newsletter, you’ll have read the thoughts I shared earlier this week from a few verses in Ezekiel chapter 36. (If you haven’t read it yet, you can click on the picture here on the right to enlarge it, or click here to download it in PDF format.)
This morning I was reading further in Ezekiel chapter 37 - quite possibly one of the best known chapters in that Old Testament book. It’s the part where the prophet has a vision of a valley of dry bones, and I was struck today by the similarity of its message of hope.
In my letter, I’d alluded to the fact that there are some believers who feel that they’ve become cold of heart and numb of spirit, and who doubt that things can ever really change again. In chapter 37 verse 3, God asks Ezekiel, “Can these bones live again?” And because the prophet has noticed them to be “very dry,” he answers, “God, only you know if that is possible.”
In the next few verses, the words breath or spirit are repeated nine times. I can’t help wondering how the Bible translators decided when to translate it as “breath” and when to translate it as “spirit”, because it is the same Hebrew word, ru’ach, that is used for both. In fact, the same word is used a tenth time in those verses and translated as wind. In other parts of the Old Testament, the same Hebrew word is translated as life.
What’s clear from this short passage is that it is the Word of God (vs 4) and the Spirit of God (vs 5ff) that bring new life, even to people who feel that they have been spiritually dead or dry for a long time. If we spend time reading the Bible, the Word of God, and we allow the Holy Spirit to bring that Word alive to us, new spiritual life will soon begin to flow again. No one is too dry, too cold or too dead from God’s perspective; no one is beyond the reach of the Spirit’s life-giving power. And if whole groups or congregations of people allow God to breathe on them, they too can rise up like the “vast army” of verse 10.
I couldn’t help noticing that the dead bones are described in verse 9 as the slain (from the Hebrew word hǎrêgáh - to be murdered or destroyed with deadly intent.) They hadn’t simply dried up by their own doing or neglect (although that was probably the largest reason for it) but had also suffered violence. Often what begins a person’s slide away from spiritual life and closeness to God is a violent enemy attack in the form of difficult or tragic circumstances. These people in the vision actually say in vs 11, “Our hope is gone; we are cut off.”
But God’s restoring, renewing and reviving are so dramatic that He actually compares it (vs 12 - 13) to opening up graves and bringing the dead back to life again. What an amazing picture of hope. No matter how dead or dry someone feels spiritually, they can still come back to God and have new life breathed into them. What a God of grace!
