Day 9 – Issue 11

Be Still Know

Ephesians 3:10 NLT

“God’s purpose in all this was to use the church to display his wisdom in its rich variety to all the unseen rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.”

One of the challenges faced by increasing numbers of people in Britain today is loneliness. It is a consequence of any number of factors, such as living longer and the failure of so many marriages. Yet, it’s also a reflection of the trend towards self-actualisation; ensuring that my world is designed around me, my aspirations and always meeting my needs. Any form of community will immediately challenge any such fragile boundaries.

My heart breaks as I listen to many couples describe the dynamic of their marriage as a series of well-constructed negotiations so that each individual partner might secure their own individual preferences, at the cost of yielding something in return. Relationship becomes reduced to yet another transactional arrangement in a society whose dominant worldview is the market and consumerism. We appear to have lost the sense of selfless giving.

In sending out the 12, Jesus commanded them to heal and serve on the basis that they had freely received and so were expected to freely give away. Paul describes Jesus as one who generously gave himself, and this was evidence that we were to put other people ahead of ourselves.

I was chatting with a friend about attending the Sunday church meeting a while back, and he said he got nothing from it so couldn’t be bothered to attend. I was taken aback and said I was surprised to hear this, since surely attending a community gathering to worship God was principally about God and not any one individual congregant. It was his turn to be taken aback. After a few days’ consideration, he returned the following week and on his own admission had an entirely different experience. He came to give himself freely to God, and God surprised him by meeting him in a style of service with which he was unfamiliar and was not his acknowledged preference.

QUESTION: What is your attitude to church attendance? Are you bored because you get nothing from it?

PRAYER: Lord, you have adopted me into a family and made me a part of a people. Help me see that this is a blessing to me and to the world, and live it out. 

Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright C 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc, Wheaton, Illinois 60189 USA. All rights reserved.