The Pendulum of Christian Liberty

Is there a right way to 'do' church? One of the most interesting, and at times, frustrating elements of the New Testament is that Paul nowhere outlines what Sunday mornings looked like in his churches. Is this because his people already knew? Or simply because it wasn't important?

I think Acts 21:17-26 is really helpful in thinking through this question. Paul had been among the Gentile churches for a few years now, and he returns to Jerusalem. James hears about God's work among the Gentiles and rejoices, Paul hears about God's work among the Jews in Jerusalem and rejoices. As an aside, 'many thousands' in Jerusalem at that time must have been a significant minority, if not a majority.

Then, at the end of verse 20 and into 21 comes the showdown. James tells Paul, 'listen, in Jerusalem our Christians are zealous for the law, and they've got a bad idea about your approach to the law. What are we going to do?' Basically James is telling Paul that nothing has changed since Acts 15. What would you expect Luke to tell us next? That Paul opposed James to his face, like Peter in Galatia. But instead, he takes a vow, purifies himself, and goes to the temple. What ever is going on here? Surely Paul is not selling out?

First of all, we have to see that as long as the Gospel was believed, observance of the Old Testament law was not an issue. This wasn't akin either to idol worship, or the ice cold legalism in Galatia. It didn't swing either into licence or legalism. The culture of law keeping had submitted to the Gospel. James rejoiced that Gentiles were being saved, he knew they weren't keeping the law which shows us that these Christians did not believe that their law keeping saved them.

Secondly, and what struck me the most, was the example that Paul gives us about Christians and culture. We can keep any part, of any culture, as long as it doesn't counter the letter to the Gentiles in Acts 15. That is, any part, of any culture that isn't idolatrous, immoral or inhuman. Any loveless part of culture, or any part that might cause us to stumble is out. The problem in Galatia was that the law had become and idol, the problem in Corinth was that the cults had prostitutes. Neither of these things are an issue in Acts 21.

This is why i should, shouldn't and do, wear a coat and tie to church. There is no one culture that Jesus would show up in tomorrow and say 'yeh, this is it,' not even here in the Bible belt. God is no respecter of persons. At the loving, warm, mission minded, conservative Baptist church that i serve at at the moment, it's broadly expected that the men, particularly the leaders, wear a coat and tie on Sunday morning. Not everyone does, not everyone has to, but because of Acts 21, i do. I used to go to church in shorts and flip flops. was that wrong? A thousand times no. Does Jesus love me more now i dress like a lawyer on a Sunday morning? A million times no.

What we see in Acts 21 is the pendulum of Christian liberty swinging both ways. Christian liberty means, as long as you have Gospel central, and right, everything else is negotiable. Turn the lights down and the amps up if you want, or put on a tie and open up your hymnal. As long as the Gospel is central and preached, love Jesus and do what you want.

The centrality of the Gospel is important above all things. James rejoices of the salvation of law breaking Gentiles. Paul observes the law in Jerusalem. In all things they are bound only by the Gospel. In all things we must, must, be bound, only by the Gospel...

Pass The Baton

The Gospel, and thus the local church, is only ever one generation away from disappearing from the face of the Earth. If no Christian alive today taught his children, or reached his friends with the Gospel, then there would be no church for our grandchildren to attend. It is one of the most remarkable, and overlooked, miracles that the church today still possesses and proclaims the apostolic Gospel.

How does that happen? We pass it on, we tell people about Jesus. We reach out to those who don't know Him, and we reach over, to help those who do know Him to know Him better. Paul shared this concern with Timothy in his final letter to him. If 2 Timothy 1 is about the protection of the Gospel, then 2 Timothy is about the propagation of the Gospel.  Paul tells Timothy to remember the Gospel he preached. Paul's not talking about a private conversation here, a ministry insight he shared with Timothy over coffee one day, but something that happened 'in the presence of many witnesses,' maybe at Timothy's ordination, or maybe just on a normal Sunday. Timothy's apostolic authority remained as long as he was faithful to the apostolic message. Paul didn't tell Timothy to reinvent the wheel. He didn't tell him to remember what the people in Ephesus liked, he simply told Timothy to remember the Gospel he had heard.

Then Timothy was the 'entrust' that message to others. He was to pass it on to 'faithful men.' This could've happened then and can happen now in a variety of ways. Firstly, it had to happen from the pulpit. As Timothy looked out on a Sunday morning at his people, he knew part of his job was to preach the Gospel to them, to help them remember what they had heard from Paul. But it had to happen elsewhere as well. When Timothy met with a troubled family, he had to remember the Gospel, when he married people, he had to remember the Gospel, when he went to buy bread, he had to remember the Gospel. And he had to pass the Gospel on. He had to find the faithful men in his church who he could train and disciple, the men to whom he could entrust the message. He had to meet with them, spend time with them, and love them, just as Paul had with him.

One thing i love about being a Youth Pastor is when i see someone's eyes opening to the joys of the Bible for the first time. The Bible stops being something their parents read, and becomes their's. It stops being something for Sundays and starts being food for the day. It stops being a chore and becomes a delight. I love seeing that and hearing that. I love passing it on.

At the moment, it's my responsibility to pass on what has been given to me. And soon it will be theirs. What a responsibility all of us, whether in paid ministry or not, have to find faithful men and women and teach them, the Gospel, so that they can pass it on in years to come.

A Father. A Son. A Football Club.

I have too many favourite memories supporting Wycombe Wanderers to mention. Wycombe Wanderers is the habit I neither can, not want to, kick.

Wembley in 93 and 94, Moss Rose, Maine Road, Sincil Bank in 99, Selhurst Park and Filbert Street in 01. All these are among the memories that will be with me forever. But they’re not my favourite memories. My favourite memories of Wycombe Wanderers don’t often come from the games themselves. My favourite memories involve being on M6 in the back of a coach with close friends, testing each other on where Matlock Town play (Causeway Lane) or who the first team to do the double over us in the league was (Bury). My favourite memories involve reserve team away games with my dad, or FA Trophy quarter final replays at Windsor with my friends.

Friends and family; isn’t that what makes football, what makes life, special? Most of my time going regularly to games, before I moved abroad, was between 99 and 2008. Cup runs excepted, not much happened in that time. We played the same teams, stayed in the same league and in about the same place.  But during those years, I got to spend nearly every Saturday with my dad. I work with kids and teenagers, so I know how precious, and how rare, good father son relationships are. Wycombe Wanderers gave ours time and space to grow. On the motorway he’d tell me stories of Maskell, Birdseye and Horseman, just like I’ll tell my kids about Taylor, Brown and Devine. He told me that he thought Steven Taylor was ‘nearly as good as Keith Mead’ and when we lost to Liverpool, he consoled me with the thought that it took him a week to get over losing to Blyth Spartans in the last FA Amateur Cup.

But my dad was never lost in the past. We’d both gasp when Dave Carroll did something with a ball that mere mortals could only dream of, both celebrate the victories and mourn the defeats just as hard. When we talk now, we talk about Wycombe Wanderers like another member of the family, which I suppose they are.
I love my football club. With all the frustrations and quirks that come from supporting Wycombe Wanderers, I wouldn’t swap light and dark blue quarters for anything. I love our history, I love our former players, it upsets me I’ll never see Jason Cousins play for us again, and whenever I meet someone called ‘Keith’, in my head I immediately hear ‘Ryan.’

My dad gave me that. He reminded me that just as football didn’t start with the Premier League, neither did Wycombe Wanderers in 1993. He gave me a link with our past, our heritage. The Isthmian League, Brian Lee and playing on the side of a hill. My dad gave me Wycombe Wanderers.

And, I suppose, in a small but significant way, Wycombe Wanderers gave me my dad.

Holiness is a Group Effort

What do we think when we think of holiness? I guess depending on how deep or shallow our relationship with God feels at the moment we're asked, our answer will fall somewhere on a line between boring and beautiful. If we're drinking from the cracked cistern of sin, we'll see holiness as dull, as something that ruins our fun, if we're bathing in the living water that comes from Christ you'll see holiness as life itself.

But how often, when we're asked about holiness, do we think about the local church? The local church is holy in itself in two ways. First, that it is set apart from the world, as the visible body of Christ in it's town or city. It is holy in that it is different. Second, it is holy in that the men and women who make up the church are, or should be anyway, men and women who love Jesus and who see Him as their first priority, who love Him and seek to honour Him.

But the church should make us think of holiness in this way too. We need the local church, the gathering of Christians in a certain place, at a certain time, to be holy. I'd even go so far as to say that you're love for Jesus, and therefore your commitment to holiness is directly reflected by your commitment to the local church.

Paul is saying his goodbyes to Timothy in 2 Timothy. He knows the end is near, and he'll probably never see his son in the faith again. In chapter 2:22 he exhorts his young protege to holiness. He calls on him to 'flee youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace. along with those who call on the Lord with a pure heart.' Sometimes we overlook the small but important parts of the Bible. Timothy's holiness was a group project. He wasn't called to do it by himself, but to do it 'along with those,' who were also running after righteousness, faith, love and peace. There is no way Paul expected him to do that in any arena other than the local church. You could argue that Paul just described the local church!

We need to be along with those. We need to be along with those, as in people who are like-minded and like hearted, people who will do us good. And we need to be along with those. We need to be together with these people. Sharing our lives, our time and our homes with them. Sharing our Sunday mornings with them. This is where you might think, 'well i'm ok with just Jesus and me, i don't need the church.' Well, yes you do, for at least three reasons.

• Jesus will return for a bride, not a harem. 
• You're not ok. Your mind is an idol factory, and apart from good teaching and correction in the local church your mind will happily call any feel good idol 'Jesus.'
• The local church needs you, your gifts, your abilities. And you need the gifts and abilities of the local church. This was Jesus' plan from the beginning. He instituted the church and  organised a religion. So stop going out into the woods with your candles!

Your commitment to the local church shows your commitment to Jesus. Your commitment to the local church shows your commitment to holiness. Holiness is a group project...get involved!

The Healer and The Preacher

The following is an excerpt from tonight's message at Teen Church on Mark 1:16-39. We're looking at Jesus authority to call, heal and preach, and what these things mean in light of 'the kingdom of God is at hand.'


Next we see in verses 23-34, Jesus authority to heal. There are two healings here, or more accurately, one healing and an exorcism. See Mark keeps using the word immediately. Why? He’s making us think of what he’s just written in 1:10, that when Jesus came up out of the water, immediately He heard a voice from Heaven. He’s reminding us of the source of Jesus’ power and authority is God. Jesus goes to the synagogue one Sabbath when He’s back in his home area. There was a man there with an unclean spirit, who started to yell at Jesus. He wanted everyone to know who Jesus was, that He was the Holy One of God. But if wasn’t Jesus time yet, His mission wasn’t complete, He wasn’t ready to reveal His full identity, so He silences the demon, and calls him out of the man! That’s amazing isn’t it? No wrestling, no incantations, to magic, just a word from Jesus, and the demon leaves the man alone.  The people who see this are amazed at Jesus authority. Mark says it twice to make sure we don’t miss the point, verse 22 and verse 27.

Jesus isn’t finished yet. After synagogue He goes to Simon and Andrew’s house to eat lunch with them and James and John. I love the simplicity of that statement. What did Jesus do after church? He went to eat lunch with His friends! Just like you and me! But all is not well at Simon’s house, his mother-in-law is sick. So ‘immediately,’ they tell Jesus about her. Jesus comes and takes her by the hand…and the fever’s gone. Now, not only has the fever gone, but there’s no recovery time. You know when you’re getting over being sick you still don’t feel great for a couple of days. Not sick, but not well. That doesn’t happen here. She is so well that she can get up and start making lunch for the five men who have just arrived, plus whoever else might be ready to eat! She’s totally better already! What authority!

Suddenly Jesus ministry has a cosmic element to it. Suddenly instead of just being a preacher, He’s demonstrating His power of demons and over sickness. No one had ever seen anything like this before, no one could quite believe what was happening before their eyes. That’s why mark says that they are ‘amazed,’ in verse 27. See how the exorcisms and the healings prove Jesus authority, see how the Kingdom is at hand here, as demonic forcers and sickness are pushed back and people are freed from their power. No wonder when the Sabbath was over everyone came to see Him, imagine what a sight that must’ve been. Jesus has authority to heal.

In verses 21-23 and 34-39 we see Jesus authority to preach. Jesus tells Simon that preaching is the reason He ‘came out.’ This is how the Kingdom will come, through Jesus preaching. This is why He heals the sick and expels demons, to validate His preaching. But it is His preaching that is the important thing. Which makes it interesting that Mark waits until chapter 4 to actually tell us some of the things He said. Why is that? Because Mark wants us to see what happens when this Kingdom preaching is unleashed on the world. What happens when Jesus preaches? People get healed, the demons are chased away, people are astonished and scared, people follow Him, and people are amazed at His authority. When Jesus preached people got saved, or people got mad. That’s how we react to authority isn’t it? We either obey it or we rage against it. This is what was happening at the synagogue before the confrontation with the demon. Jesus was preaching.

Imagine that, He comes to synagogue, where maybe some people know who He is, and just starts preaching to them. I love verse 27, ‘what is this? A new teaching and with authority.’ It’s like, ‘yeh Ed’s ok, but this guy has authority!’ He was so different to every other teacher around Him, so different to anything that people had heard before. And then in verse 38 he tells the people looking for Him, ‘I’ve done my job here, there’s lots of other towns in Galilee, let’s keep moving.’ And He goes on preaching in all those other towns.
And look at what Jesus is doing when they find Him…praying! Jesus got up early in the morning to be alone and pray! That’s amazing when you think about it.

So how does Heaven break lose? When the Gospel is preached. The Kingdom advances as the Gospel is preached, the demons are defeated and the sick are healed. Don’t ever separate what Jesus did from what Jesus said. We need the message and the miracles, we need to see and hear what Mark wants us to. I’m going to state the obvious here. You and I can’t heal, but we can preach. You can I can’t preach with the authority of Jesus, but we can share the same truth in the same way. People may not be astonished at our teaching, but they can be astonished at who we’re preaching about. That should be our aim.

So this is the Kingdom of God advancing. Mark wants to know, are you in? Are you part of what’s going on? Or are you wasting your life on the sideline? Mark wants to know, what can you do to be part of the Kingdom of God advancing? Who can you tell?

Things are Better and Worse Than They Seem

It's easy to feel like the seven letters in Revelation have too much to say to us, or too little to say to us. We can be guilty in this book, as with any other, of reading things that aren't there, and missing the things that are. So what is missing in the letter to Smyrna? A rebuke. One of only two letters where Jesus has nothing to say against the church. These were a committed bunch of believers, and we can learn from them.

Imagine being a Christian in Smyrna towards the end of the first century. You have a small but vibrant church, people are getting saved and baptised, people are sharing their faith and working out how to live faithfully in their pagan culture. Things are great. But then...people start losing their jobs, someone's property is vadalised, when you go the market you hear all sorts of accusations made against you and your family, people in your church are disappearing. Things are not so great.

And then, a letter arrives from John. And as you read this letter, your hands shaking, your breathe quickening, it becomes clear that this is no ordinary letter, but it comes from Jesus Himself. What a joy! What does the Lord have to say to us in our persecution? Well, He's with us. He's lived and died and lived again! He stands by the church in tribulation, He knows. Tribulation doesn't equal abandonment, it just equals tribulation.

But then... 'some of you will be thrown into jail for ten days...' What? I thought this was supposed to be encouraging? Things are going to get worse? It seems that this letter is telling us that there will be a dedicated time of persecution against this church. It will be short, but long enough. Some of these Christians will have to be faithful in the face of death. I wonder how that was received. When this letter was read on the Lord's Day, i wonder what the reaction was. Maybe there wasn't one, maybe they knew that this was coming, maybe the reaction came from the end of the letter.

'...I will give you the crown of life...you will not be hurt by the second death...' Whoah! Things are better than they seem. Life might be 70 years years of sin, sickness and suffering, but then...the crown! Then, immunity to the second death. Then? Life, with Jesus forever. So the synagogue of satan can do what they want, i'm sticking with Jesus, life can get worse than I dread, i'm sticking with Jesus, and waiting for the crown.

This isn't 'pie in the sky when you die,' this is real, concrete, solid ground hope. This is knowing what the future holds and holding onto it. This is what kept the church in Smyrna growing.

And this is what has to keep you and me going. This week, things might be worse than they seem. Bad news, bad accidents, bad diagnoses might crush us. But things are better than they seem. Much better. For those who overcome, the crown of life awaits, for those who are faithful till death, there is a joyful eternity with Jesus waiting.

How Can We Know God?

Can we really know God? How much of God can we really know? If God is so far above us, and He is, and so unlike us, as He is, how can we hope to know and understand Him?

First of all, we have to realize that for us to know God, it is necessary for God to reveal Himself to us.
Even when talking about revelation through nature, Paul says in Romans 1:19, we only know God that way because He shows Himself to us like that.

This idea is even more explicit when talking about salvation. In Matt 11:27 Jesus says that no one knows the Father except the Son, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him. 1 Cor 1:21 reminds us that ‘in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom.’

The necessity of God revealing Himself to us is also found in the fact that man in their sinfulness distort the truth about God. We need scripture, therefore, if we’re going to interpret God’s natural revelation correctly. And scripture comes from God!

And so because of our sinful blindness to the truth, and the fact that we can not ‘work out’ God by ourselves, we rely on God to make Himself known to us.

We can never fully understand God.

Because God is infinite and we are finite, because He is perfect and we are not, we can never fully understand Him. In that sense the answer to our question has to be no, we can’t fully know God. It’s not the case, however, that God is unable to be understood rightly, but we can never know Him fully.
Psalm 145:3 tells us that God’s greatness is unsearchable. Psalm 147:5 tells us that his understanding is beyond measure.

1 Cor 2:10-12 says no one comprehends the things of God except the Spirit of God.
These verses help us realize that not only can we not know God fully, but we can’t know even one thing fully about God, not even one part of His attributes can we fully understand. We can know that God is love, but we can never fully understand His love. We can know about God’s wisdom, but we can never fully understand God’s wisdom, we can know about God’s power, but we can never fully understand God’s power. We can only say with David in Ps 139:6 such knowledge is too wonderful for me, it is high, I can not attain it.’

This should make us humble. We can never say that we have arrived in the knowledge of God, like we might with math or science. We will always have something new about God to discover. This is true even in Heaven, even when we are freed from the blinding presence of sin we will still have plenty to discover about who God is.

If this is true in eternity, it must still be true in this life. Col 1:10 tells us that we should be continually increasing in the knowledge of God. Because we can never know God fully we can be growing in our knowledge of Him throughout our lives.

If we want to make knowledge of God a matter of pride, if we want to impress people with how much we know, we might be frustrated by the idea that we can never know God fully. But the truth is that it’s a wonderful thing to always be able to grow in the knowledge of God. God is a subject that we will never master, and that we can never hope to master. This should mean that our study of Him is never broing, for it will never reach an end.

We can know God truly

Even though we can not know God fully, we can know true things about Him.
All that scripture tells us about God is true. God is love, as 1 John 4:8 tells us, God is Spirit, as John 4:24 tells us, and God is righteous as Romans 3:26 tells us. Even though we can not know God’s love or righteousness fully, we can know that those things are really true.

Even more importantly, we know God Himself, through the Bible, not just facts about Him. This is an important distinction. I can tell you things about Rachel, and you would know about her, or I can introduce you to her, and you would truly know her. The Bible tells us true things about God so that we would know God, not so that we would know about Him.

Just because we can not know God fully doesn’t mean that we can not know Him.  Jeremiah 9:23-24 says: ‘thus saith the Lord, let not a wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let a rich man glory in his riches, nor a mighty man glory in his might, but let him that glorieth, glory in this, that he understand and knoweth me, that I am the Lord, which exercise lovingkindness, judgement and righteousness in the earth, for in these things I delight, saith the Lord.’

The Lord says that our sense of importance and joy should not come from what we can achieve, but from the fact that we know the Lord. John 17:3 says the know eternal life is to know Jesus. The promise of the New Covenant in Hebrews 8:11 is that ‘all shall know Him, from the greatest to the least.’

The fact that we do know God Himself is further demonstrated by the fact that the Christian life is about having a personal relationship with Jesus. This is far greater and more meaningful than simply possessing facts about Him. This relationship is the greatest blessing of the Christian life.

Jesus is King

Mark wants us to know who Jesus is, but he really wants us to know who Jesus is. He wants us to work it out for ourselves, he gives us the evidence and then asks us what we think.

Chapter 1:12-15 is a good example of this, and i was chewing on it today in prep for Teen Church this Wednesday. The message from these verses seems to be 'Jesus is King, are you in His Kingdom?' Why do i think that?

First of all because verse 12 comes right after verse 11. In Mark Jesus' baptism and temptation are the same event, there shouldn't be a paragraph in between them. Jesus is crowed, or maybe better, commissioned at His baptism, and what's the first thing He has to do as the crowed King? He's off to fight the Devil. Off to do a better job of resisting temptation than either Adam or Israel, off to show that He is the true King.

Mark doesn't give us details like Matthew or Luke do, that's not really his style. He just tells us that Jesus fought the Devil in the wilderness, and He won. He contrasts Jesus to John. John went into the wilderness to challenge the corrupt world system, Jesus went into the wilderness to break the power of the Devil. To prove Himself as King. And that's what He did. Jesus proved Himself as God's King.

Then what happens? Well if you're in John, Jesus heads south, cleanses the Temple, and meets Nicodemus and the woman at the well. But if you're Mark, you dip your quill in some ink and jump forward six months to the arrest of John the baptist. Well, hang on. If Jesus is here, and He's God's King, why are men like John still being beheaded on the whim of a lustful king and his wife?

Because Jesus has defeated the Devil, and Jesus will defeat the Devil.

The Kingdom is here because the King, anointed by God and fresh from a victory over temptation in the wilderness is here. He brings the Kingdom, and He is the good news of the Kingdom. But, even though the Kingdom is here, even though the Devil is defeated, the Kingdom is still coming, and the Devil still needs the final sword through the heart.

Mark is a great author, and wants us to keep reading. He wants us to ask 'why?' and 'what?' But He wants us to know that Jesus is King, and He has the authority to call us to His Kingdom. Mark has Jesus calling us to leave the defeated Kingdom of death, and come into the spreading Kingdom of light and life and love. The Kingdom of God. It is here, because Jesus is here, but it's not all here, because John is in prison.

Mark shows us that Jesus is King, then he looks at us and asks, 'is He your King?

The Church at Ephesus

The church at Ephesus was a good looking church. Living in the midst of an evil and depraved city, they were working hard and persevering amidst persecution. They had been written to by Paul, and led by Timothy. This looked like a thriving church, a great example to those around them in Asia minor.

Except, Jesus knew different. In his letter to this church, found in Revelation 2, he tells them that they have lost their first love...Him. Ouch! They were working, serving and persevering...but not loving. That should be a great warning to us. We can look good on the outside, but be dead on the inside. We can work and work and work, but fail to love. Everything we do ends up being 'because we have to,' rather than the overflow of our love for Christ. It's not even clear that this church knew they had lost their love, perhaps not since Jesus used John to bring it to their attention in such a direct way.

What do we need to do when we feel our love growing cold? This is a problem for Christians everywhere in every century. Even Paul had to remind Timothy to 'fan into flame the gift of God,' in 2 Timothy 1:6. So what do we do when we feel the flames dying? Jesus tells this church to remember, and repent.

We need to repent. Maybe some world loving sin is clouding our love for Jesus and dampening the flames. Maybe our love is growing cold because we've bought into the lies of sin. A deliberate, faith filled turning from sin is what is prescribed here. This is what our spiritual health needs, to stop believing that sin satisfies, and remember that Jesus satisfies.

Remember, that's the next thing we need to do. Remember the works you did at first. Remember that first rush of faith, that first excitement when you met Jesus, the first buzz when you said no to sin and yes to Him. Remember what that felt like and do it again. Struggling Christian, stay in church, stay in close fellowship with other Christians. Keep reading your Bible, even if it starts out of a sense of obligation rather than faith. The Holy Spirit will breathe on your heart and set it aflame. Remember the astonishing promises that God will love you freely (Hos 14:4). Remember that there is more grace in Christ than sin in us, and that He is glorified not by performance, but dependence.

And what rewards we're promised. Eternal life, eating of the tree of life in paradise. Jesus shows us a reward that makes fighting dead works with love worth every bit of effort. Repent, remember and return, because amazing rewards await you when you do.

The Vertical View

In Teen Sunday School this weekend we looked at Revelation 1:9-20. I guess this is the proper introduction to the revelation he has received. He talks about who he's writing to, where he is and who he sees. He talks about his point of view, about why he's in exile.

Why is he there? Because of the testimony of Christ and the Word of God. Why is he stuck on Patmos? Because he has a vertical view of the world, not a horizontal one. It was his vertical view of life that got him into trouble, his view of Jesus, and His Word and His church, his refusal to say that Caesar is Lord, because of his view of Jesus. Jesus is Lord.

We need a vertical view of the world, if we are to thrive and grow as Christians. We are constantly surrounded by temptation to forget about the word of God and about His glorious Christ and give up a vertical view for a horizontal one. But what does a vertical viewpoint look like?

A vertical view sees the church as an unquestionable priority. We find, join, serve and give to a church that preaches the Gospel. We see the church as beyond the wisdom of the world, as more than a gathering of people with shared morals. We see the church as the most precious thing on earth, the bride of Christ bought with His blood.

A vertical view sees reading the Bible as an unutterable privilege. That God has spoken, not in a special language or code, but in a way we can understand should astonish us. A vertical view of the Bible will do that. This view sees the Bible not as a collection of ideas written by men, but as the Word of God spoken to us, as that which is necessary for instruction and growth.

A vertical view sees Jesus as the glorious blazing centre of the universe. The Reality upon and around which all reality exists. A vertical view sees Jesus as the Son of God, not as a philosopher or a good guy. A vertical view means that Jesus Words have a weight that others' don't, that we obey Him without question and follow Him closely. A vertical view is the view that will lead us to sing with the multitude in Revelation 'holy, holy, holy.'

So, simply, what is a vertical view. A real view, a view that sees the world as it really is, with priorities in their place. In the world of temptation, where the horizontal cries out for attention we must give ourselves to the vertical view, because, in reality, it is the only view there is.