Jesus Course

Here is a response from Billy Graham to someone who has recently lost her husband to cancer. It’s good advice and from someone who still feels the loss of his own wife.

http://www.kansascity.com/2010/03/08/1798495/billy-graham-grief-is-very-real.html

All religions say something about death and its consequences but Jesus is unique in that he has experienced the pain of loss for himself. One of the most moving moments of the Bible is to read the words “Jesus wept” when he hears that his friend Lazarus has died.

That is not the end, though, because Jesus then raises his friend from the dead, a reminder to us that God has control over life and death and that Jesus is going to do something amazing that will release us from the power of death. We still have to face the moment when our body dies but this is not the end of life.

Christian living cancer, death, life, loss, pain, resurrection

In this day and age of high blood pressure and stress the medical advice is for us all to eat less salt. This is good advice although sometimes I miss my food being as tasty as it once was – I’ve almost given up on crisps these days  – probably a good thing for my health anyway.

So when Jesus talks about how we are to be the salt of the earth has he gone mad? Does Jesus mean that we should be putting the pressure on so everyone dies of a heart attack? Does Jesus mean that we should make sure we are doing our bit to make everyone in the world as unhealthy as we can? Of course not.

We need first of all to understand what salt meant back when Jesus said we should be like salt.

Salt in the ancient world was most certainly considered to be a very good thing. It was used for all kinds of things – not least as a flavouring for food. It was also used to preserve meat, for money, to aid healing, as an offering to God, and in customs performed for newborn babies (Ezekiel tells us that newborn babies were rubbed in salt – Ezek. 16:4). Sounds a little crazy to me but I guess it was probably something to do with it’s antiseptic qualities. Salt was a pretty important commodity. In fact in a society where food was not always plentiful and labour tended to be hot and hard salt was an essential of every day life.

Let me just make a small point here about how we use the bible. It seems to me that it is pretty obvious that when Jesus says we should be like salt he wasn’t saying we should turn ourselves into little heaps of white powder. It hardly needs saying that Jesus is using a metaphor here and he didn’t intend us to believe that we are quite literally salt and should pop ourselves into the cooking pot. This may seem obvious but it is an important point to remember. Christians sometimes gets confused by biblical metaphors and those antagonistic to Christians will sometimes quote things from the bible that are obviously metaphors but they try to make us sound weird for having such metaphors in the bible.

Anyway back to my point.

Salt is important because it improves things. This is pretty much what Jesus was saying. Christians should improve things, make the world seem a better place. Sadly this isn’t always true of Christians but it should be. So we Christians need to be asking ourselves: are we making the world a better place or a worse place.

Jesus had an answer for those who made the world a worse place – he described them as those who have lost their taste. They are no use and will be thrown out and trampled on. Again this is a metaphor.  He doesn’t mean that anyone who loses their saltiness should be thrown out in the street and used as a pavement (side walk, etc). He simply means that if we lose our saltiness we will find ourselves outside of God’s kingdom.

So are you going to be someone who makes the world a better place, or someone who makes it worse?

Christian living salt of the earth

Have you ever wondered what life would be like if people really lived liked Jesus said we should live? We see some of the effects when Christians live as they should – sadly this doesn’t always happen – we might know some of the names of well known Christians who we can admire, names like Mother Theresa and Desmond Tutu come to mind. If everyone followed the teachings of Jesus then people like these people would be common place. You may be surprised to hear that I have met many such people in churches I have been to but they don’t get noticed by the public as they live out their Christian lives.

Today we are going to think a little about the beatitudes.  The beatitudes come at the beginning of the sermon on the mount in Matthew’s gospel (Matthew chapter 5).

The beatitudes tell us about some things that will happen in God’s kingdom. These statements tell us nothing about the kind of people that Christian’s should be – save that the qualities listed have a place in God’s kingdom. Sadly some Christians have mistaken the beatitudes for a list of Christian attitudes and have tried to copy the attitudes that the beatitudes talk about.

Of course qualities like meekness and desiring righteousness are good qualities for some but God did not intend us to try and live up to the beatitudes.

What Jesus is saying is that in God’s kingdom:

• the poor in spirit will find job in the kingdom of heaven – and not when they die but now!
• those who mourn will be comforted
• the meek will inherit the earth.
• those who hunger and thirst for righteousness will be satisfied
• etc

Jesus is telling us what the kingdom of God will be like. This is reassurance that although you might feel that being merciful doesn’t count for anything – God notices and is happy that people are following him. It is comfort to know that people who mourn will be comforted by God in his kingdom. I could go on.

The beatitudes then are not rules for us to try and follow but statements about how wonderful God’s kingdom is.  I’m sure Jesus could have gone on for a very long time explaining other injustices that will be put right in God’s kingdom. And whilst God’s kingdom might need some time before it is complete we can get some of this reward in the hear and now.

Christian living beatitudes, Jesus

The sermon on the mount is a set of teachings from Jesus that have been grouped together in a section of Matthews gospel (chapters 5-7). The teachings are also in the other gospels (in various forms). Scholars like to get all hot under to collar debating whether Jesus sat down or stood up to preach and how many actually listened. The gospel writers all arrange their material to make points so it becomes impossible to say whether this sermon was written down as presented or whether Matthew gathered together several sermons into one place.

There is historical interest to finding answers to these questions but realistically we aren’t going to answer them in a way that makes everyone happy unless someone invents a time machine to go back and find out.

Sadly too many Christians gets caught up in this kind of detail and then fail to get the point of what Jesus was trying to teach us anyway. What methods Jesus used for preaching are not the point of the sermon.

The sermon offers guidance for the follower of Jesus to understand what life in the kingdom of God is supposed to be like.

Jesus makes it very clear that he is not intending to offer a new set of rules that simply replace the ones found in the ten commandments but that through the following of his guidance we can learn to love, forgive and enjoy life.

One of the complications with Christianity is that we believe that the way to get a good relationship with God is to rely on the loving and forgiving nature of God and not worry about trying to prove ourselves through the following of certain rules (what we might call being saved by grace).

However once we have gained that good relationship with God through our faith in God we then need to commit ourselves to living life with God in charge. We commit ourselves to letting God be our monarch and living a life in God’s kingdom.

We could take the line of saying that all we have to do is to love God and forget about the rest (as St. Augustine once did) but this doesn’t answer all of our questions. We are people who have to live in a practical world and so we need some practical guidance.

Because Jesus understood this he gave us guidance about what kingdom living is all about – guidance which we find in the sermon on the mount.

So if you ever wonder what a Christian should live like then you should turn to the sermon on the mount. Like all things you read in the bible you should also understand it bearing everything else you have read in the bible in mind but it does give a pretty full account of how we are supposed to live.

Does this teaching apply to people who are not Christians? The easy answer is yes because this is how God intends us all to live but the less easy answer is that each person must choose whether to live like a member of God’s kingdom or not. Christians cannot force people to live this way they can only hope that others will want to live this way when they see the difference it can make in the Christians life.

Christian living christian teaching, sermon on the mount

Most people seem to believe that there must be something very difficult about praying. A belief, perhaps, that God will only answer a prayer if it is said in a particular way or using a particular formula.

Many churches have traditions that they follow when it comes to prayer but, as far as I am aware, there is no Christian church anywhere that will claim that these are the only way you can pray.

The disciples of Jesus asked Jesus himself for some help with this difficult question and Jesus gave them the Lord’s prayer to use. It’s debatable whether Jesus meant this as a prayer to say or a formula to follow. Personally I think it’s both.

There are countless books written about prayer and various ways of thinking about the various kinds of prayers that we can use and at what times we should use them.

Then people get pretty obsessive about what ending you put on a prayer to make it work, or whether you should ever say a prayer more than once.

For my part I think an awful lot of nonsense is spoken about prayer and most of it creates so much confusion that people start to think its like writing a PHD thesis every time you start to pray.

Perhaps the biggest load of nonsense I hear – and I’ve heard this one a lot – is that some people say they are just not the praying kind.

“I’m more of a practical person so I leave the praying up to the more spiritual types”.

Rubbish, my friend.

This is like saying you are not the kind of person who eats – I leave that up to the hungry people – or breathes – I leave that up to the breathing people.

The problem isn’t that you can’t pray it’s that you have become so confused by the whole subject that you think it’s best left up to the experts.

Prayer is simply conversation with God. At times you might want to tell God about something that is worrying you or that you want. Other times you might want to tell God how fantastic he is.

Like any relationship things get pretty dull if you only ever talk about the same thing, so make sure there is variety in your conversation.

There are no right or wrong words to use. There is no set formula for how to do it or what ending you must use. There is not even a rule about how many times you should say something. Jesus sometimes makes the point that God doesn’t answer just because we repeat our prayer over and over (like you might on a prayer wheel) but at other times he makes the point that we should keep asking.

So just express what is on your heart and God will listen. The more you pray the easier it feels.

Don’t hold back – pray to Jesus.

Christian living pray, prayer

Jesus was really into praying, he just couldn’t get enough of it. The gospels are full of comments about how Jesus was going somewhere to pray or trying to get some quiet time for prayer, etc.

It surprises me, then, to learn that some Christians don’t pray other than when they are in church. Here is some research on prayer (a few years old now though). It doesn’t include the U.S.A. but here is one just for them. Even if we take a good view of the results (and we must always be wary of surveys) at least 20% of Christians don’t pray. What I found even more interesting is that in the first survey mentioned 86% said they had received an answer to prayer but only 64% pray every day. Even worse only 48% saw prayer as vital to faith.

Surely with Jesus being so hot on the subject we Christians should be doing it more. I also think we should be paying more attention to our use of time because some Christians complain that there just isn’t enough time to pray. I often wonder how many of these watch a soap on the T.V. or read a newspaper, or twitter, or facebook, etc. Anyway it’s not about the time you spend it’s about the quality of the time you spend.

Now I’m really not trying to make anyone feel guilty because what I want is to see more people praying.

So how do you pray? Well that’s one of the easiest things in the world to do. You open a conversation with God. It means having to open yourself up to God and I can’t give you a formula for that but if you have ever had a relationship with another person you will know what this means.

A lot of people get stuck on what to say. Not a problem – the disciples had a similar issue and so Jesus gave them a prayer to say. There are bookshelves collapsing in Christian book shops with prayers that you can use and before you get all uppity about not praying using someone else’s words Jesus never told us not to (in fact the Lord’s prayer and the psalms and nearly every hymn and worship song ever written is a prayer written by someone else).

Like all this stuff though I’m sure Jesus would want to point out that it isn’t about the words or about how many times you say them it’s about what is inside that counts. Whatever words you use make them real and meaningful to you and pour out your heart to God.

Sometimes people think prayer is going to be boring – in fact this is a lie the devil has been pushing on me ever since I became a Christian. Every time I’m going to do some praying a little voice in my head says “this is going to be boring you know”. Experience however tells me different. Not every day is wonderful but some days you just won’t want to stop.

A very important thing I learned about prayer is that the more you do it the better it gets. If you struggle with boring prayer times then you need to persevere and if you do it will improve.

Anyway – let’s pray.

Christian living Jesus, pray, prayer

Fasting has always been a controversial subject for Christians – ever since Jesus defended his disciples who didn’t fast (Matthew 9:14ff). It’s a mistake, however, to think that Jesus had anything against fasting – he did it himself after all.

Fasting in the bible

Fasting pops up many times in the bible and tends to be associated with a need to pray about something. It could be that people wanted to express how sorry they were or that they were asking God for something very important to them.

Jesus was keen on the idea that when people fast they shouldn’t tell others about it. Fasting is something that is done for God and not for others to observe and conclude how spiritual you are. I know that danger myself because I’ve fasted on several occasions and if people find out they are often very impressed (and sometimes confused) – this leaves me wondering if perhaps I shouldn’t have bothered now everyone knows about it.

Is fasting just giving something up?

I think it’s important to not get fasting confused with giving something up for your own benefit. It’s not unusual for people to give something up for a while to try and improve their life (e.g. T.V., alcohol, chocolate, etc) but this is about self and not about God. This is commendable but has little to do with fasting for the spiritual life.

Fasting does involve giving something up – mainly food. This can be a difficult experience and it does have the benefit of helping break dependence on the thing you fast from (e.g. food). However fasting really is about your relationship with God and not the thing you are giving up.

Feeling hunger is a good way of learning to hunger for God

Going without food, for instance, is a good way of learning to depend on God more. The hunger acts as a reminder to think about God and after a while without food you start to feel it constantly. You have to turn that longing for food into a longing for God (it’s easier than it sounds).

Give it a try

So I encourage all Christians to try some fasting, but make sure you do it all for the right reasons.

Christian living christian, devotions, fasting, jesus christ, religion

Don’t you think that following God should make a difference to a persons life? When it comes to God it’s easy to think only in terms of the afterlife, perhaps even of doing everything to avoid going to the hot place. But Jesus was pretty insistent that becoming a follower of his should change life here and now for the better. If you listen to some Christians – you may have met a few – it feels like following Jesus is actually a bit of a chore.

Now I’m the first to admit that some church services I’ve had to sit through have make it feel like a chore but that is not always true and it isn’t the way Jesus talked about things.

Jesus was pretty hot on talking about God’s kingdom. In essence this was the beginning of heaven now. The point being that we can live in heaven right now without having to wait until we die. Of course there are limitations to this because of the way the world has been dented and twisted by so much that is wrong but within the limitations we can start to experience heaven right now.

It might sound crazy but I’ve been in places (some of them church services) where it felt like being in heaven.

The life of the Christian should reflect a bit of heaven on earth. I’m just sorry that so often I’ve made a mess of things and have not been the beacon to God’s wonderful life that I should have been. People make too many mistakes.

So if you want to know where heaven is and what it’s like it’s the place where God is listened to and where his people follow. Jesus reckoned this was available to everyone and all we have to do is follow him.

Christian living discipleship, heaven

Sadly too many times Christians have mistaken discipleship with legalism. We trawl the bible looking for rules to obey and then get upset when we can’t obey them. But I’m not convinced that this was what Jesus had in mind in the first place.

Jesus does say that he has not come to abolish any laws but he also wants to go to great lengths to explain that following Jesus is about learning to think like Jesus thinks and not following rules and regulations.

This is always difficult for Christians because we don’t want to sound like wishy washy people who say it doesn’t matter what you do as long as it feels good but this is kind of what Jesus taught. But the feeling good bit is about making God feel good and not ourselves (although we feel good when we do what pleases God). God has given us a description of himself and what it is like in his kingdom but instead of saying, just do all these things and everything will be fine he says follow me and you will start to live like I’ve described.

Being a Christian is not about following rules its about developing a mindset and a way of feeling that pleases God. The benefit of this approach is that we then get to live the kind of life that God intended for us and this means we live life as it was designed to be lived (this is the best way by the way).

This all may sound confusing but simply put we don’t follow rules and regulations we follow a person – Jesus. To live properly we simply ask: “what would my life be like if Jesus were living it?”  This doesn’t mean trying to live like Jesus did (e.g. carpenter, beard, dusty roads, sleeping under the stars, riding donkeys, etc) but trying to work out what Jesus would do given your life.

So next time you are tempted to think in terms of law remember that this was never Jesus’ intention for you.

Christian living jesus christ, law