After God’s Own Heart

“When it came to presenting the Message to the people who had no background in God’s way, I was the least qualified of any of the available Christians. God saw to it that I was equipped, but you can be sure that it had nothing to do with my natural abilities.”

—Ephesians 3:8 (Msg)

How often does God use people who seem to be ill-positioned for the tasks ahead, yet, because they have made themselves wholly available, they are given licence to move?

God not only loves using ordinary people to do extraordinary things, he insists upon it—to shame the proud. And the difference is love. The desire to make ourselves available in the realm of serving others comes from love; not from ambitious gain.

The characteristics of the available—those that have the ability to avail themselves for service in God’s Kingdom—are faithfulness, openness, a teachable nature, and a servant heart.

Those after God’s Heart

Those who are available willingly seek God’s heart. They discern God’s will and do what they need to do to obey the Spirit’s leading.

They have a faithfulness about them that sets them apart to God. They are able to disappoint others if need be in order to satisfy God. This requires a high degree of differentiating discernment. But the faithful ensure they are open enough to be available.

The available have a teachable nature. They understand they have a mortgage on much knowledge, but, as everyone knows, mortgages must be paid off—they work hard to secure their knowledge. And such knowledge can only be secured through the prevailing revelation of God. Those after God’s heart are able to discern and are thirsty to learn.

To the ends of faithfulness, openness, and a teachable nature there is the servant heart which throbs beneath this Christian’s service. They serve because they love to serve; they are passionately available to serve.

God Equips the Available

As the apostle Paul has indicated in his letter to the Ephesians, there were other people who could have been more obvious choices to evangelise to the Gentiles.

But God called him, Paul. And God equipped him, because he was available, having been blinded on Damascus Road. Yes, God does tend to convince people to be available.

But once someone proves their ability to avail themselves for God’s service our Lord equips them. Added to their passion, their spiritual gifting, and whatever natural ability they have, is God’s anointing to do what God decrees must be done.

***

God blesses people in proportion with their ability to avail themselves to serve in his Kingdom. A willing heart is a heart after God’s heart.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.

Taking the Step to the Cross

How does a person know they are saved?

Millions, having ‘been saved’, have not known. There was no discernible change from within them; whether they pretended there was or not. How can they be saved if they don’t feel saved? Well, it’s a very good question. Jesus Christ, having invaded that person’s life, has deposited the Spirit from the Father. The saved person is a new creation. If they are not compelled to live as a new creation, to want more of God, have they been saved?

If they understand their salvation comes at the recognition of their sin and in their need of a Saviour they will understand their need of discipleship—to grow in God.

The person that is truly saved has learned to take their steps to the cross.

As important as the resurrection is in the salvation story, the cross points to the conciliation of our heart’s transformation. God has impacted us with truth: we are sinners with need of saving. And when we live saved, cognisant of our need of God, we live with bright effect, predisposed for life through the resurrection power of the Lord.

***

“Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.”

—Acts 16:31 (NRSV)

***

Believing on the Lord Jesus is our hope; our only hope of salvation. Though this is a one-off event, assuming the Holy Spirit has taken up residence, convicting us to live as new creations, our habit must be to continue to believe on the Lord Jesus. That requires us to commit to the process of our discipleship—to come under the headship of Christ in actively learning, each day, the will of God, and carrying it out to the best of our ability.

***

The final frontier in Christian faith is not theology, nor works, nor knowledge. It is salvation. To be saved is a heart transformation, which transforms our thinking. We know we are saved by the Holy Spirit’s conviction to get us to repent—to take the step, every day, to the cross; to where we surrender our sin and receive fresh portions of God’s redeeming grace.

It doesn’t matter what we say, it’s how we live our faith that counts. How big a role does repentance play in our lives? This is a key question in understanding the real role of grace. It is also a key question in the effectiveness of our discipleship.

If we cannot take repetitive steps to the cross we cannot receive the resurrection power God wishes us to have.

***

When we approach the cross,

Leaving there our dross,

We receive power for hope,

As well as power to cope.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.

Love – The Hub of Life

What is love?

Such a question has absorbed, bamboozled, and even frenzied people. It is a loaded question, of course. Entire libraries could be filled with relevant and incisive answers to such enquiries of curiosity, without fully explaining it.

But love is the hub of life, for God is love (1 John 4:16). As all things revolve around God, all things have their meaning in love. Even evil exists because of love—in such a case, evil is reviled by love and has vowed to fight against it to destroy it. But love can never be destroyed. The fight of evil versus good is because of love—the very presence of God that infuriates evil. The fight of good versus evil, similarly, is because of love. Love compels action because of justice, righteousness and fairness (see early Proverbs [1:3; 2:9]).

Love is behind creation; the Creative act. God ‘created’ because of love...

But this conversation is perhaps already too esoteric. Already we have travelled into the theological nebulae. This cannot be the intention: to annoy the reader.

***

Love is broader than romance; than being nice to one another; than meaning well. Love is a very practical thing based on truth:

“My dear children, let’s not just talk about love; let’s practice real love.”

—1 John 3:18 (Msg)

Practicing real love is about relating with people, and our world, in truth.

When we love in real ways, by practicing truth, we love as God loves, and we exemplify the Spirit who lives within us. To practice real love is to aspire, every breathing moment, to live for truth.

Real Love Merges with Truth

If love is the hub of life, and that is our premise, it exists eternally by prevailing against any challenge to it. Such a thing can only occur if it is identified in truth.

God is innately relational and the Lord of Truth—God is truth. Love is formed in a complex mix within, and superintending over, these concepts—love subsists by truth, relationally. It is difficult to talk in these matters because they are impossible to pin down in concrete ways.

All we can do, if we wish to keep it simple, is note that love is relational and it is identified by truth. Love is not a lie. Love has no falsity about it. Love cannot be ‘lovely’ if it cannot be tough as well. Love must encompass all that is truth.

These are challenging ideas.

But if we organise love into the realm of truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, we understand it as a concept that holds up under any enormity of pressure. If we organise love as a thing to be relied upon, we understand it well. If we organise love as that which is holy, righteous, just, and fair, we see it spread its empowering wings. We note the width and breadth of its wingspan. We can admire the wonder of it.

***

Love is a much broader concept than any of us can fully understand. But as we attempt to understand it our worldview expands and our understanding blossoms.

Love’s core is truth. Love is not a lie. Love has no falsity about it. Love cannot be ‘lovely’ if it cannot be tough as well. Love must encompass all that is truth if it is to be real. And there is nothing more real than love, for God is love.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.

Let Love Be Sincere

“Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good...”

~Romans 12:9 (NRSV)

The sub-heading of Romans 12:9 and following introduces us to love that is based unabashedly in truth.  It is not, and cannot be, hypocritical.

Love is hence the driving premise of life — a thing surrendering all ego for a God-pleasing result.  Love and truth are at once entwined — but truth against the self if necessary, so love can be victor for the other.  For the other, this power of God is pleasantly compelling. It is, after all, all for the glory of God!

When love is sincere it’s aligned in the holy triad of equity, justice and fairness (see early Proverbs [1:3; 2:9]). It doesn’t see existence as a thing to be grasped.  It’s eternally safe, coercing nothing.

Love is sincere; it is worthy of trust and respect. It’s patently inspiring.

As far as we’re personally concerned, we ought to hate what is evil within ourselves, but never to the point of self-condemnation — we instead flush it out, virulently, in resilience, with “what is good.”

Let Love — Big and Tall — Be Love

Let only the good — love that is sincere — co-exist within, so love’s beauty is the thing that all people see from without us.

Let every breath we have exert the force of love — but we will get it wrong from time to time. When we are insincere let love restore us in truth at accord with our repentance.

Let every call of wisdom exist before us as God calls it into existence. Let it exist in the sincerity of love. Let it be welcomed and not shunned, like the tall poppy is shunned. For wisdom is truth.

Bigger and broader and bolder than anything we have ever accepted is the concept of love. When we say, “Let love the sincere,” we are saying, “Let it exist in truth.” But we cannot always handle the truth. Many times we shrink. Many times the truth in love offends us, and conspires with our inherently unkempt anxieties. When truth is told, we are scared of the entirety of love. We’re quickly overwhelmed.

Love is bigger than we can grasp, but that is no excuse to not practice it.

Moreover, we have copious scope to flourish is this spacious thing. We open our understanding at the audacious rejection of fear. But we must challenge it in courage, and courage is a risk, redeeming momentary discomfort. But we can overcome discomfort — again, by love.

If we can remain open, we can conceive more of love. Let love be sincere.

***

When love is our vocation,

Love is our life,

When love’s our preoccupation,

We’re kept out of strife.

When love consumes us,

And sincerity’s our way,

All that is not love,

Cannot therefore stay.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.

Why We Pray

The wise pray. We can say this if we believe that wisdom begins with the fear of the Lord enough to not be so bold to assume we know everything; that we do need guidance.

What I’m suggesting is that the wise are characterised by their desire to seek God first (Matthew 6:33); a bit like how this instruction works:

“Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.”

—Step 11, 12-Step Recovery Program

So why we pray seems to be a no-brainer; we cannot possibly know how our moments will turn out or always how to handle them unless we continually refer back, in seeking wisdom, to God.

Linking Wisdom with Humility

We pray—to seek God—when/because we are humble enough to admit we do not know:

þ     What the next step of action/life is;

þ     How to take that next step;

þ     How to handle a particular situation or relationship;

þ     When to actually put into place an action we’ve previously decided.

The list goes on.

The reality is that life is so uncertain and so unpredictable, but we have the agency for wisdom through prayer. So not only do we express wisdom by waiting on God in prayer, we also receive wisdom from God by being open in response.

The difference between the godly and those who are blissfully (intentionally) ignorant is the obedient willingness to submit our plans, hopes, uncertainties, and even our doubts to God in prayer. This process of the conscious submission of our desires and compulsions is shrouded in the wisdom of humility. We are conscious of delaying just enough to check with God—to be open to what the Spirit might say through our spirits—and then to obey.

Praying for the Right Path

We pray for the precise reason that we wish to get more of our lives right. We pray for success—not simply ours, but for all our ventures, because inevitably other people are involved. The more our lives work out, the better the ripples into other lives are.

Why we pray is about the right path—discerning it and remaining on it.

This is both our test and our task; staying on the right path is the challenge achieved through continuous prayer, and it’s also prayer that restores us to the right path when we have gone astray.

***

We pray because we don’t know how to best handle many of life’s uncertainties. Prayer helps us stop long enough to consider the consequences of our actions. With prayer we get more of our lives right.

Prayer helps us express humility and grow in wisdom.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.

A Liberating Truth About Fear

“Fear has very few gradations and it has a ceiling... This is why we’re able to teach ourselves to confidently give a speech to 10,000 or make life or death decisions in the battlefield. Fear is fear, and once we learn to work with it, we can scale the stakes.”

—Seth Godin

Fear can literally be smashed by a persistent, never say die, attitude. When we refuse fear the power it insistently foists over us, we learn we can overcome it.

And all of the above is proven by the fact that we experience fear without scale. Fear is fear and it matters little the actual fright before us. We experience fear to a similar level despite the scariness of our situation. There are relatively few exceptions to this.

We can teach ourselves to endure the fear, and therefore overcome it.

When Fear Cannot Overcome Us

This is the realisation of the Gospel way. When we understand what Jesus is saying, that he has already overcome the world—i.e. all stimuli for fear—in John 16:33, we comprehend that, with fear, we have both the reason and need to overcome.

If there was no presence of fear there would be no need of courage to combat the fear.

So the presence of fear means that God gives us overcoming power. And when we test this power, finding it true, we find that fear cannot overcome us, unless we let it.

But overcoming fear is not attacking it, but subsuming it by working with it; we accept it, don’t judge it, but work with it.

Even when there is evidence that fear is affecting us it cannot overcome us unless we give into it. We already have the victory by virtue of the fact we are there battling through the fear. When we feel such fear, yet we go on stoically and undeterred, not cowered down, demoralised, nor denying the reality, we refuse to be overcome or intimidated by this evil present before us.

When we can conceive of the fact that fear cannot overcome us we understand the basis of victory.

Wherever we have experienced fear and have not been overcome God has affirmed us as capable of resisting all the evil that Satan, through our limited flesh, might throw at us.

Just about every reason for feeling hopeless in life is challenged when we understand this truth: fear cannot overcome us beyond our minds. The battleground for courage begins in the mind and is steadied by the heart.

***

Fear is overcome by this simple truth: where we go on past the fear, working with it in our persistence, we learn we can do anything life throws at us.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.

The Courage to Change What We Can

“God, give me the patience to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change those things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference—AMEN.”

—Serenity Prayer

Having accepted what we cannot change, we have, for some, an even more difficult task—to change or impact those things we can influence. Yet for others, acceptance is more difficult than courage. True wisdom is known to the situational application of both acceptance and change, at accord with the situation’s discreet need.

The courage to change what we can is about both discernment and decisiveness; awareness and action.

Sitting Comfortably on a Knife’s Edge

The exercise of discernment is the wisdom of understanding, and, in this context, it cannot shirk the need to be prepared to act.

We can think of wisdom as sitting comfortably on a knife’s edge—to know when to accept and when to challenge. But discernment is also about such balance. There is no advantage to us, or anyone else, if we wish to promote love, when we act without discernment; when we act from an imbalanced psychological platform.

Discernment is about awareness. Awareness, likewise, relies upon discernment if it is to call us properly to act. Such discernment may actually pre-empt courage, but it takes just as much courage to not deny what becomes patently clear. For some, the mere thought of needing to act is enough to repress the awareness, for there is a lack of courage.

Action Complements Awareness

Action is where courage really finds its feet. When we resolve to act in a certain way it takes courage to implement, to follow through, to trudge on, especially when resistance mounts. And as we act in courage we can expect resistance. Not all resistance is morally motivated, however.

Awareness of the need to act without the courage to carry through just promotes anxiety. Action complements awareness. Awareness, when there is a need to act, is impotent without the resolve to act.

As a package, these two—awareness and action—remit the wisdom of effectual courage.

As a package, these two are partners in the decisive truth for change. They are brothers in arms back-to-back in wartime. They are a romantic couple huddled warmly together on a dark and stormy night.

As a package, these two present together are inseparable and perfect for effect.

***

Awareness and action go together, in discretion and courage, when change is required. They empower us to do what is necessary. They make us people worthy of emulation, because, of all virtues, a wise courage is generally what we lack most.

***

Courage is a risk, but one worthy of the truth.

Courage is a risk lessened by understanding.

Courage is a risk, all because we love.

Courage is a risk, but one altogether commanding.

***

There is more to courage than aggression; infinitely more. Real courage requires honesty, humility, poise.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.

Accepting the Feelings of the Heart

“The heart of the discerning acquires knowledge,

for the ears of the wise seek it out.”

—Proverbs 18:15 (NIV)

For the many sensual desires, those that tempt and trap, there is one desire that unlocks the door to blessed sanctification—growth in the things of the heart, and understanding in the things of the heart.

What we seek to grow is the capacity to reach into the heart; into our hearts initially, and then into others’ hearts.

The heart, we learn from Proverbs 4:23, is the wellspring of life—from where all our life force comes from. We may be able to change what we think about, and how we think, but we cannot help how we feel about things. Feelings are much more organic than thoughts are. And our feelings influence our thoughts so very much. So we are wise to work in the heart-space; to attempt to understand it.

Getting acquainted with the heart, then, is a great advantage in life. It is a licence to discernment, and the key to wisdom. To know and understand what people feel, empathically, and even why they feel what they feel, stands us in good stead to love like God.

Falling in Love with the Heart

It isn’t a hard thing to fall in love with the heart, even though it may be more of a challenge for the thinker than the feeler. The truth is hearts are true, unlike minds. Minds are often twisted by unknown and unkempt motives of the heart, but the deeper heart, the vestiges we hardly access, is true to the core of us.

Deep inside every individual lays an essence that only God knows.

This essence is true to the person; true to their experience, psychology and biology.

In this way the heart reflects absolutely who this person is, from where they have come from. Within this essence is God’s vision of purity, and it’s only interrupted by the brokenness of sin.

So the heart is split—the person’s essence is interrupted, diluted, and muddied by two facts: there is brokenness in their DNA, and there is brokenness that has brought them through the passage of life, damaging their heart.

How each person feels is as a result of who they have become. Again, the process of feeling is tremendously organic; we feel what we feel and struggle not to. And when we don’t give credence to what we feel, we betray ourselves. If we cannot give credence to what we feel we cannot give credence to what others feel. The trouble is we betray our feelings, and therefore our hearts, with monotonous regularity. This is a learned trait from our brokenness.

It is time to begin the process of undoing the guilt and shame implicit in our disconnectedness with our feelings.

Our challenge is to reconnect with our feelings; with our heart; to be a friend accepting our feelings, and not a judge disparaging ourselves for what we feel. God is with us in this; we are free of condemnation.

Learning to fall in love with our hearts is accepting our feelings and not judging them. This gives us more peace regarding what we feel and why we feel the way we do; we are less fearful and much more capable as a result. Then freedom approaches.

When we are home within our own hearts we are more home within others’ hearts too.

***

Accepting our feelings without judging them is peace. When we have such peace, because we have reached into our hearts, we are able to reach into others’ hearts. Our keenness for judgment dissipates when we reach into the heart. Love becomes us.

To truly understand we must reach the heart.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.

Accessing the Spiritual Gift of Faith

When God decrees something the planets align, so to speak.

It is very difficult to achieve anything worthwhile in this life without faith. And faith requires the truth and a vision—the discernment of the present state and the desire for a future state:

“There shall be no interpreter to a sinful nation: but he that observes the law is blessed.”

—Proverbs 29:18 (Septuagint)

What this proverb, above, tells us is, without a vision of truth the people perish; without hope of a new land there is no need of faith to get there. Without vision we stagnate, nationally and personally.

Faith and vision, therefore, are interdependent concepts. A vision cannot be achieved without faith to get there. Likewise, without faith we cannot discern a vision and we struggle for hope.

If we have no hope, we, from the spiritual perspective, perish.

We can do a quick self-audit on whether we are living hopefully or not by asking ourselves: do we have a vision?

In other words, has our vehicle of faith got wheels beneath it? Has the vehicle the ability to roll? Does it have an engine, and, as importantly, will the engine and drive-train propel the vehicle—our faith—onward toward our vision?

A Most Important Prayer – for [a] Vision

Whether we desire a vision, or simply vision, is only personally relevant. We decide having first sought God’s input on the subject.

But it is a most important prayer—an ongoing type of prayer as we journey with God. If we have no vision we perhaps have no hope, and our faith freewheels in neutral.

The spiritual gift of faith, then, is quite contingent on having vision, or a vision, for what is essentially our call from God: the direction, purpose, and meaning of our lives.

If we ask God in our prayer time to give us a vision for what he wants us to do, he will most certainly give us the faith to realise our vision.

The Inertia of Faith

For faith to be faith it needs inertia; momentum is what defines the true basis of faith.

Faith, therefore, is inextricably linked to works—per James 2:14-26. When the vision inspires our faith it literally pushes us into action. We cannot stop it. And we wouldn’t want to stop it, for this is the purpose of our very lives.

When faith has inertia it has become faith. Before faith has inertia it is simply a vision; the projection of our potential for helping others against the theatre screen of life. So when we get moving on our vision we are expressing faith; and, as the Scripture says, we are pleasing God (Hebrews 11:6).

***

Faith requires us to act. But we cannot act unless we have a vision for what God wants us to do. Vision is hope which propels faith. When we have a vision, we have hope, and our faith becomes action. Then God is pleased. God wants us to have a vision of how we will help others.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.

Confession’s Cleansing Power

In Australia, ‘real men’ (in their churches) meet to reinvent ‘the shed’ or have a ‘pie night’. This is an important part of male culture. It’s a time when men can be together and discuss their weaknesses, and their addictive or sinful natures; in relative safe privacy of their fellow kind. There is sure to be a similar process in other countries/cultures.

It is important for men, as well as women, to congregate together to hear testimonies of confession.

The power in confession is the vanquishment of the enemy. Satan hates it when we divulge our awful secrets, because, ironically, we become tremendously empowered, as we are not rejected. Indeed, we are ever more respected for having the intestinal fortitude—in plain language, guts—to ‘fess up’ in the presence of our fellow kind.

But one step better than accountability before a group is accountability before one individual. One individual has more power to affirm us, and to gently hold us to account, than a whole group.

Choosing a Mentor To Work on Our Problems

Mentors are crucial in discipleship. They play a critical role in leveraging our growth. And central to our growth is honesty about our weaknesses—our struggles at a sin level—for we all have them.

Think about this: if we have a person who is perhaps 10 years older than us, who is someone we look up to, preferably of the same gender, and we can trust them to hold our darkest secrets, to the point where they won’t reject us, but are prepared to push us to improve—we have our spiritual mentor. We can learn a thing or three from a person like this. Indeed, they, by their wisdom, will facilitate our growth out of these problem areas.

Where we have a will to improve, they, through their sponsorship, will be passionate to help.

And the body of work we collectively work on are the very things we will be confessing—our sins against the Lord.

Trust will work both ways and the power in confession will be realised by mutual courage and transparency within the relationship.

Mentors are wise in this: they know they will learn just as much as we will learn in being mentored. Not only that, but they will be blessed to be a blessing to us.

***

Confession has the power to crush the enemy’s wicked design to ruin our lives in shaming secrecy. When we confess our sins God, who is faithful, will forgive us our sins and make us clean.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.