The Concerns of God

Good things ... God things.

Just one character, one byte of data, perhaps even an easily made typo ... but the difference between what can lead us away from Christ and His purposes and what can lead us with Christ and His purposes.

In Mark chapter 8 Jesus starts spelling out the plan A, which is the suffering and dying version. Peter thinks he knows better, he wants Jesus to surge forward as the successful hero-leader, and so tries to correct Jesus.

The response is stark, and perhaps one we need to be hit with ourselves from time to time: 'You do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns'.

So many things may seem right, may have logic, legitimacy, and would most other times almost certainly be correct. Yet they reflect human concerns rather than God's own heart.

Can we tell the difference? That needs an ongoing closeness to Jesus, a desire to have our minds continually re-orientated to His concerns, to His plans, balck to plan A.

Love by seeing Christ

Peter echoes the other New Testament letter-writers in suggesting a progression in qualities of character that stem from faith. In 2 Peter 1:5 onwards he traverses all the way from faith to love. While Paul stops at hope in Romans 5:4, he puts love at the very top in the well known 1 Cor 13 passage. It is no surprise that love forms the pinnacle, because God is Love as per John's letters.

The emergence of these qualities correlates to our effectiveness, according to Peter (v8). Our knowledge of Jesus is not simply academic, to be privately kept in a box marked 'faith' in our minds, but has a purpose that will produce things.

Yet what is Peter's diagnosis for those lacking these qualities? It is not 'try harder', or 'get your religious or spiritual act together'. No - it is blindness, not being able to see Christ. Not seeing Christ straight-forwardly means that we no longer appreciate what he has done for us, the rescuing, the cleansing from our wrong.

Remember Jesus at the end of Luke 7 chides the Pharisee who could not appreciate the extravagant out-working of being forgiven with the phrase 'whoever has been forgiven little loves little'. Maybe with Peter he means 'whoever appreciates little (of Christ and his work achieved) loves little'.

We love not by trying harder ... but by seeing Christ, and realising to ever greater magnitude just how much he has already done for us. That adds to our faith, resulting in a greater quality of love in our lives.

Ten Percent Success Rate

Its easy for us to get to discouraged by low numbers. Whilst it is good to think through how many people have engaged (and get a handle on where where they have come from), we need to be wary of being obsessed with percentages fuelled by our target-driven culture.

I wonder what Jesus' target was when he was confronted by the ten men with skin diseases in Luke 17. They called on his mercy, and Jesus instructed them to check in with the priest (who would pronounce on their condition, if it had improved). They seem to go in faith ... with their healing coming through their action of going. So far so good!

Yet only one returns to give thanks and praise to God. So only one has connected the action of being sent to the priest with faith that then needs to respond appropriately to God and to Jesus through whom that faith came.

Its a 10% success rate - not very high! Quite discouraging in fact.

We don't have enough data to gauge Jesus' mood, but he does question the outcome. Yet nonetheless the one is sent on his way with blessing and commendation. Perhaps just that one is encouragement enough?

Too Comfortable Not To Pray

My previous post made a play on the book title 'Too Busy Not to Pray', suggesting that here in the West our problem is as much 'Too Comfortable to Pray'.

I think we can play on the words even further. Just as the original book points out that we cannot afford to not pray - using our busyness as the lead thought, I wonder if we should consider the same with our comfort too. It seems to me that Paul never expected to be comfortable, and saw oppression and direct persecution as the norm for us Christ-followers. In 2 Timothy, chapter 2 verse 3 and chapter 3 verses 10 to 12 are just two of many examples of this thinking.

So if we are 'comfortable' (so for example we don't feel a pressing need to pray for our own survival) then perhaps we should wonder if we are actually on the right track? A wonder that itself might spur us to pray! In other words, perhaps the phrase we need to grasp is 'Too Comfortable Not to Pray', just like the original book.

I'm not saying that we should wish on ourselves trouble, nor that we should go looking for it. But if we can bounce along comfortably, perhaps we are in a state where we simply cannot afford to not pray, lest we simply end up too complacent.