Thursday 25 August 2016

Loving God’s people – Part II

In our current series of blogs, we will look together at John 13.1-30 and see what a church that loves God’s people looks like.

As we read John 13 we will meet our God…see his heart…see the difference that makes…so let’s begin…John 13…and as we do…let me ask you a question…

What do you live for?

It is a question that would be met with many answers out on the street, but what of us, as Christians, what do you live for?

We want to say, like the disciples, ‘I live for Jesus…he’s what life is all about for me…’.  And yet as Luke’s gospel tells us, as this meal was being prepared, the disciples have broken into a fight about who is the most important in God’s crew – of course it’s Jesus…but then it’s me…yeah?

And I suspect if we were to take a genuine look at our heart, the same poisonous self-promotion is in us.  We’re more subtle than the disciples, but it is deep in us… Forever standing on our rights…our thoughts so often centring on how to arrange life best for own benefit…a competitive spirit that invades so much of our lives…or our need for approval…applause…acknowledgement.

Beneath it all is a poisoned heart that keeps asking the same question like some broken record…what about me?  We ask it, like some sort of security blanket that we cling to.  We can’t imagine living without self-interest as a defence.


But in the end, it is a self-interest based on a faulty view of reality and that’s what makes this chapter so unmissable.  Here in this little room, in the moments before his death, Jesus will fix our faulty vision by showing us what our God is actually like, which changes forever our view of ourselves as creatures made in his image.  So over the next few blogs…behold your God’s heart…

No comments:

Post a Comment