We have been adopted as the children of a king who does not withhold his love until we comply, who does not ask us to sing for our supper, who does not use us or abuse us, but longs to bind up our wounds.
God is most likely and able to work through those who accept their own weakness and don’t try to forcefully assert their own power and influence.
Despite our often minimal vision for ourselves, and our feeling of not being important to God, Jesus Christ is committed to bringing us to the fullness of life and wholeness.
God calls us to faithful expressions of the Culture of God which usually look unimpressive and unruly when judged by the world’s usual standards of success.
Satan casts out satan all the time in our divisive attempts to protect ourselves by demonising and expelling others.
A sermon in response to a broken relationship in the church
We all have different roles within the ongoing ministry of Christ, but that ministry is ultimately not dependent on the success of individual leaders.
Love is our purpose; we are not abandoned, not fearful, judgemental or self-righteous, for we are made in the image of God, who is gentle and wise, witty and loving, generous, forgiving, compassionate and kind.
Because we really don’t have the whole truth, the Spirit will be heard only when we are together, listening to one another in love.
We are not added to a particular church flock in order to be in the “right” group, but in order to learn, with Christ, to love others and lay down our lives for the world.
We shall be ourselves when we are able to surrender ourselves to Christ and say ‘not my will, but yours’.
With every step we take towards God’s economy, we will become more powerful in our witness to God’s saving action and love for the world, and be filled ever more deeply with God’s good grace.
The glory of God is most fully revealed in Jesus’s willingness to suffer death at the hands of the law.
We are prepared to sacrifice and kill in the name of our God, but God is willing to be sacrificed and be killed to save us, even when we were enemies.
When we approach God’s way of life and the Sabbath not as punishment, but as gift, the experience becomes a chance to rest from work and from striving; and to allow space for God through contemplation and re-creation and play.
Jesus calls us to turn away from pathways of judgement and condemnation and to follow him on the harder path of love and new life.
Lent is a time to walk knowingly into the wilderness, to face the Accuser and the wild beasts that emerge when we live out our identity as God’s children.
Expecting God to always appear as an exalted triumphant victor blinds us to the reality of God’s glory which is made known in suffering, self-sacrificial love.
Jesus urges us to take stock, to recognise the sicknesses which warp us and the demons which colonise our hearts and our minds, to renounce them so that we become free to minister to one another, and to proclaim the good news in our words and our lives.
Jesus calls us to model a pattern of love and generous inclusion, and to avoid the demonic temptations of exclusion and pride.