Let the Father’s Love Nourish our Hearts

Today is the commencement of a four part devotional series, which coincides with the Central Division’s Officer’s Fellowship. Annette has written some devotions around the theme of nourishment, which are based on John 15:1-17 from The Passion Translation, specifically verse 9 where it speaks of us needing to let the Father’s love nourish our hearts.

Over this past weekend Perry and I spent a couple of hours puddling around in our small garden. We planted some vegetables, mowed the small amount of lawn, and cut back a few things. As we finished up and went inside to recover, I noticed a couple of things.

First, I was really thirsty because, yes, we had spent this time outside in the relative warm of early spring without water bottles and I was parched.

Second, that my hands – once cleaned up – were quite dry and crusty from the work that I had done, and I needed some hand cream to nourish the skin.

It can be the same for each of us.

We are out there in the world getting on with what needs to be done, doing the hard work of planting seeds of faith into people, stepping into lives to assist and all things that come with our being ministers of the gospel.

Sometimes it is not until we stop and go “inside” that we realise the impact that the work has had on us and in particular on our souls. We can discover that we are thirsty for an infilling of what we have given out and we can feel parched and dry on the inside.

There are so many demands on each of us that at the end of any given day, week, month we can be left feeling like we have been completely drained of the good, nourishing stuff that should fill us. So, we start looking for some form of nourishment to replenish what the world has taken from us.

Our theme this fellowship comes from the Scripture John 15:1-17 and specifically verse 9 in The Passion Translation where it speaks of us needing to let the Father’s love nourish our hearts.

“I love each of you with the same love that the Father loves me.
You must continually let my love nourish your hearts.“

In preparation for this week’s fellowship the team at Divisional Headquarters have strongly felt the need to nourish ourselves in some way, even more so over the past few weeks, and we are believing that this is a need for other officers in the Division at this time.

So, this week as we step “inside” I encourage you to consider the scripture in verse 9 and start looking for those dry and parched places in your life that need to be ‘Nourished’. Use these few days to Nourish your soul, to Nourish your relationship with God and Nourish your friendships with others.

For those that are not at fellowship I hope and pray that you too will find the opportunity to nourish yourself and soak in the Father’s love for you.

Blessings ’til next time 🙂

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The Way, the Truth and the Life

Today’s word of encouragement comes from Joy Cowley’s book Psalms Down-Under.

A collection of contemporary ‘metaphysical’ prayer-poems that go straight to the heart and quicken the soul.

It draws its inspiration from the familiar verse found in John 14 where we see Jesus comforting His disciples and encouraging them for the journey that lies ahead. And I’m sure that many of us can relate to the question that the disciples Thomas asks; “Master, we have no idea where you’re going. How do you expect us to know the road?” John 14:5 (The Message)

To which Jesus responds; “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” John 14:6 (New Living Translation)

Jesus said: I am the Way, the Truth and the Life

You are the Way.
You are the bridge between earth and heaven,
between the smallness of self
and the greatness of God.
You are the path we follow
and can never lose
because it lies in our hearts.
You are the mountain, the valley,
the rough and the smooth.
You are all points of the compass.
Whoever or wherever we are,
you hold our journey in yours.

You are the Truth.
You have planted your truth within us,
the same truth for all people.
Each of us is a different container
and we wrap you in different ways
according to our culture
and our customs of worship,
but in our diversity
you are our common language
and when we meet you in each other
there is recognition and rejoicing,
for truth always knows truth.

You are the life
and there is no life without you
for you are the substance
and breath of all things.
Your life grows within and around us,
the movement of sap in our seasons,
the ebb and flow of our tides.
You are the living
and the knowing of living
which we carry with us
through the doorway of death.

You who are the way,
the Truth and the Life,
gift us with the vision
to always see you in all things.

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I Had Already Died

About the same time that I was sharing the latest update on my health condition last week, I came across the following post entitled “I Had Already Died” on the ‘Join Us Down The Illness Rabbit Hole‘ site.

It resonated with me on so many levels as I found it not only personally relevant to life dealing with an incurable disease and pertinent to my faith.

But I could also identify with the author, especially when it comes to having to explain to others what my condition is and how potentially serious it is.

Even more so in the Covid environment in which we live in today!

The thing is outward appearances can be deceiving. Often people can look at me and comment that I’m looking good, there doesn’t look like there is anything wrong with me.

A bit like the image of an apple that appears juicy and perfect to eat, yet when you slice it open you find that somehow the insides are damaged.

Believe me there have been times when I do wonder if it is all in my head, as one day I can be right as rain, accomplishing a whole heap of tasks and feeling good, pushing myself just a little bit to do more and more. The next day I’ll be struggling to get the motivation needed to start the day due to slightly over doing it the day or two before.

You see, there is an ongoing internal battle happening inside my body that is demanding more and more of my energy reserves just to keep me going, and sometimes when the energy reserves are depleted – their just aint nothing left to recoup without prolonged periods of rest and recuperation.

A woman from Maine called Em who is a wife, mother of 2, and grandmother of 3 writes:

We are all dying. People who are battling health issues, are just more aware of this

I get asked all the time, how do I deal with knowing I have an incurable illness & I could die. This always perplexes me. No one knows when they’ll die. We do know that we will all die.

I actually find myself focusing more on living right now, in this moment, than I do on dying. A lot of healthy people seem to waste a lot of time, having a lack of appreciation for every minute. Whereas people with an illness, treasure every second and they are keenly aware that death comes for us all.

I’m a firm believer in the idea that we are only given so many minutes to live. How many minutes we will get is on God. But how we spend those minutes is on us. I have always told my kids, “Don’t waste your minutes”. I pretty much say it to everyone now.

I have no idea if I’ll live an average lifespan or if my life will be cut short due to my illness. None of us know these things. Since I got sick, I’ve been trying to live in the present, to count my blessings, to notice things more & to never take my minutes for granted.

A couple years after my diagnosis, I thought to myself, my grandchildren will never know me healthy. That new people I meet, are meeting a completely different “me”, from the one I used to be. It was in that moment that I realized I had already died. The old me was gone. This is the me I’m stuck with, the me born out of illness. It was up to me to shape who I was to become.

I’ve had to accept many things. Death being one of them. I will fight to get as much enjoyment & meaning out of my life as I can.

I will live, love, learn & laugh fiercely. I will do my best to NOT waste one minute.

Imagine a world where we all realize we are dying. Where we choose life & never waste our minutes.

You can read more of Em’s posts here.

As a Christian after reading this I was left with some thoughts and feelings to ponder – Firstly that I can relate to the idea of leaving the former things behind, the old life has gone and a new one is dawning.

I’ve had to do this numerous times in my life, moving from one side of the world to the other as a young fella and then shifting houses and appointments often leaving people that I’ve grown to love and appreciate behind as we develop new friends and establish ourselves in new communities.

New people that I meet do not know the kind of person I used to be – My life has been indelibly changed on so many levels through these experiences and sometimes I wonder what life would have been like if I’d been able to settle down in one location.

Even now with my illness there are some things that I thoroughly enjoy that I’ve had to stop doing, which could get depressing if one was to dwell on it for too long.

But we gotta keep on moving on in life and living for the moment, because we don’t know if it will be our last. And I don’t want to sound flippant here but too many people get hung up on stuff that they don’t need to worry about.

Secondly, I have died to self and I try to live my life in such a way that I challenge, encourage and build up others as best as I can and when given permission to do so – Hopefully providing much needed inspiration to others as they face challenges in their own lives.

God doesn’t say anywhere in the Bible that we are going to have a cruisy life, in fact quite the opposite, but He does say that He will go with us. And He invites us each into an awesome adventure that is to involve others.

And I’d like to think that when people look at my life they will look back at it and say that I was able to inspire others to better deal with whatever they were going through and that my example invoked something within them to aspire for something more.

You see, thirdly I try to look to the positives, I’ve always been a bit of an optimist. I try to look and find a way forward to a brighter and better future regardless of what we are facing in the moment – and I’m also prepared to give anything a go.

Even more so now, especially when it comes to options around medications and the like – After all the medications that we could try may just work.

And we have gotta believe that with the advancements being made with medicine all around the world as the countries around the globe grapple with how to respond to the Covid pandemic and treat respiratory diseases, that a cure may be found – or at least new medications will be developed that will assist those affected like me with Scleroderma and Interstitial Lung Disease, or other Autoimmune Diseases and Disorders feel better and lead a healthier lives.

Bing Crosby sang about accentuating the positives, I may be showing my age just a tad here, although in many regards the song was released way before my time 😊However, when we do focus on the positives we may start realising that we can get through whatever we are facing without getting too bogged down in the negatives.

We only have this one life to live, so we may as well live it to the full and enjoy it to the max for Jesus came to give us life so that we can have joy and live it abundantly, according to John 10:10 (The Voice).

I choose life and don’t want to waste another moment – How about you?

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1:1 Discipleship

If you’ve been following my blog over the past month or so you will have noticed that each week I’ve envisaged to raise the awareness (up the ante) on the critical area of discipleship, and the importance that discipleship has on many other areas of church ministry and service.

This is in part due to that fact that many Officers, pastors, church teachers and leaders around the world have become increasingly aware that Discipleship is one of the key aspects of the church that has sadly fallen by the wayside over the past few decades or so – even though there’s a plethora of material out there both online and in good Christian bookstores.

And it could be argued that this is something that has been identified as a key issue as we have had to adapt, morph, pivot and change aspects of our methodology due to the pandemic that has affected much of our world, especially worship ministry and service due to restrictions placed upon us as faith communities.  

But as I’ve noted this is not necessarily the case, as quite a number of Christian authors prior to Covid have raised concerns over the past decade or so and if we look at the history of our faith there are numerous instances from heroes of the faith over the past couple of centuries that have also pointed out the importance of discipleship.

In 2016 Matt Rogers wrote on the Gospel-Centered Discipleship site an article (9 Reasons to Prioritise One-on-One Discipleship) in which he outlines the importance and rationale why he believes that a return to the practice of one-on-one, life-on-life discipleship is one of the most critical needs for the church today.

He identified back then that the gap between the mission of disciple-making and the actual practice of most Christians had grown wider and wider – and that many Christians knew that they should be making disciples and wanted to do so, but they simply didn’t know how. 

Quite possibly this is a sad indictment of the health of many of our churches and Christianity at large, in that we have drifted quite some distance from the Great Commission (which can be found in Matthew 28:16-20, Mark 16:14-18, Luke 24:44-49, John 20:19-23, and again referred to in Acts 1:8) and compromised on one of the key aspects of our faith (teaching, journeying and discipling others) and our willingness to share our faith with others.                   

In the story of the two followers who were walking to the village of Emmaus (Luke 24:13-53) we see that not only did Jesus provide a way to broach the subject of who Jesus was and what He did with and for others, but also encourages us each to be witnesses of what God has done in our lives.

For many churches around the world the most effective and proven way to build healthy Christians is through one-on-one discipleship. And Matt Rogers in his article provides nine reasons why we need to prioritize 1:1 Discipleship.

One-on-One Discipleship allows for every member of the church to carry the weight of expectations around sharing the Good News of Jesus Christ. 

One-on-One Discipleship allows for honest conversations.

One-on-One Discipleship allows for personalised application.

One-on-One Discipleship allows for evangelism and discipleship to unite.

One-on-One Discipleship allows for ongoing accountability.

One-on-One Discipleship allows for burden bearing relationships.

One-on-One Discipleship allows other ministries to thrive.

One-on-One Discipleship allows for mutual growth.

One-on-One Discipleship allows for healthy relationships.

The thing is, “One-on-One Discipleship relationships are not one of a host of options on the buffet line of spiritual formation alongside Sunday sermons, small groups, Sunday School, men’s or women’s ministry or a host of other good activities of the church.“

It is absolutely essential for each and every one of us that claims to believe in Christ to partake in. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer is quoted as saying; “Christianity without discipleship is always Christianity without Christ”.

So who is your one? Who are you discipling and doing life with? Who are you journeying this thing called life with? Imagine the impact if every Christian had one person that they not only prayed for, but also shared the gospel with! The challenge of the Great Commission is yours to pick up and run with – are you up for the challenge?

Why not check out this resource which is available through The Salvation Army about 1:1 Discipleship.

I hope and pray that you have found these reminders on the Importance of Discipleship beneficial, that you will be enthused and inspired to step out in faith, and start developing discipleship relationships with those that will only know of Christ through your interactions with them.   

If you’d like to check out the other posts that I have written about the Importance of Discipleship check out the following links:

Discipleship: Multiply

Discipleship = Relationship

Effective Discipleship

The Importance of Discipleship

Next week we will start looking at the importance of Small Groups.

Blessings ’til next time 🙂

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Discipleship: Multiply

About the same time that Andy Stanley released his book Deep & Wide, which I touched upon last week, Francis Chan also released a book entitled Multiply: Disciples Making Disciples.

Within it he shares the importance of discipleship in light of the Great Commission, found in Matthew 28:19-20 and that we have all been invited to take part in the awesome privilege of inviting others into God’s story of redemption, and journeying with them on the pathway of life and faith.

David Platt in the foreword shares that; “From the start, God’s design has been for every single disciple of Jesus to make disciples who make disciples who make disciples until the gospel spreads to all peoples.” 

Throughout the book Francis goes on to explain what a disciple is, how to become one, what it means to be part of the church, before expanding on the importance of studying the Bible and understanding the Old and New Testaments.

He explains early on how the church has unfortunately moved so far away from Jesus’s command that “many Christians don’t have a frame of reference for what disciple making looks like.”

I would even go so far as to say that within many churches, and Christian organizations people don’t necessarily see and understand who we are, as Christians, Believers, Soldiers, Salvationists etc. let alone who God is; as they don’t necessarily see and hear how God is at work anymore in our lives, let alone the world. Unfortunately all too often we are merely providing a service, event, activity or programme and don’t acknowledge God’s part.  

Romans 10:14-17 (The Message) says; “But how can people call for help if they don’t know who to trust? And how can they know who to trust if they haven’t heard of the One who can be trusted? And how can they hear if nobody tells them? And how is anyone going to tell them, unless someone is sent to do it? That’s why Scripture exclaims,

A sight to take your breath away!

Grand processions of people
    telling all the good things of God!

But not everybody is ready for this, ready to see and hear and act. Isaiah asked what we all ask at one time or another: “Does anyone care, God? Is anyone listening and believing a word of it?” The point is: Before you trust, you have to listen. But unless Christ’s Word is preached, there’s nothing to listen to.”

The thing is, discipleship is far more than a programme or ministry. It should be the driving mission of our lives. It should define us! Both as individuals and as faith communities.

We are all tasked with sharing the Good News of what God is doing in our lives and the lives of others – yet how often do we share it? Have we become ashamed of the Gospel? Is it what people see in us, or our churches, Corps, and mission stations?

Andy Stanley emphasises the need to create irresistible environments in his book Deep & Wide and says that “every ministry environment communicates something. There are no neutral environments. Environments are the messages before the message. The messages your environments communicate have the potential to trump your primary message.”

What do the people in our communities see? Do they see our primary message or something else entirely? Are we comfortable with what they see? 

We are according to Scripture the light of the world and are here to illuminate the God-colors in the world.

Matthew 5:16 (The Voice) emphasises the fact that we are to “Let our light shine everywhere we go, that we may illumine creation, so men and women everywhere may see our good actions, may see creation at its fullest, may see our devotion to Christ, and may turn and praise our Father in heaven because of it.“

In the foreword to Servants Together: Salvationist Perspectives on Ministry, General John Gowans opens with this “Salvationists pride themselves on being ‘doers of the word and not hearers only’, and the emphasis we place on rolling up our sleeves and getting on with it is one with which I heartily agree. But action without reflection soon becomes mindless routine; we must continually review what we are doing and why we do it.” 

The writers go on to share that; “William Booth clearly stated in 1879: ‘We are a salvation people – this is our speciality – getting saved and keeping saved, and then getting somebody else saved, and then getting saved ourselves more and more’ (William Booth, The Salvationist, January 1879).”

They go on to write; “We are called to mission. It is foundational to Christian discipleship to be in mission wherever we are. This is reflected very clearly in our task as Salvationists: we are ‘saved to save’.”

Have we watered this down when we proclaim that we as Salvationists are ‘saved to serve‘?

Afterall there are many service organisations in today’s word and it would appear that anyone can serve – people are employed to serve just about anything that we want, community food-banks popup all over the place serving the needs of their communities.

Now this theme of being ‘saved to save‘ is something that Lieut-Colonel Alan Burns picks up in his book Founding Vision for a Future Army – Spiritual Renewal and Mission in The Salvation Army, when he writes: “There should be nothing that matters more to Salvationists than to see God’s lost children found, reconciled to him and discipled for Christ. We need to be constantly focussed on this Kingdom priority. Any progress The Salvation Army makes that does not have soul-saving at the centre of it will not be progress at all. William Booth said he would prefer The Salvation Army to cease to exist if it lost its soul-saving passion. Unless we, as disciples, make disciples, who in turn make disciples, we will not fulfill our divine mandate.“

Are people in the community aware that we (as Christians, Believers, Soldiers, Salvationists) are in effect God’s people? Or do they look at us and recognise too much of the world? Has the Great Commission truly become the Great Omission?

The Gospel message is not something that we should be hiding from the world, often behind our service and actions – it should be front and centre on our lips and shown through our actions, every moment of every day.

In John 15:8 Jesus says that His “Father is glorified, that [we] bear much fruit and so prove to be [His] disciples.” (English Standard Version) 

You see, God wants the seed of faith that has been birthed within us to grow and develop, for it to mature into fruit that then replants and multiplies itself into the lives of others.

Our faith needs to multiply and grow – The evidence of our own discipleship journey should be that others are attracted to what we carry.    

Our service should be birthed out of a desire to serve God first and foremost and draw others to Him.

As we saw in the Discipleship = Relationships post, ‘God wants you and I to view the other Christians in our lives as partners in this important ministry. God has not called us to not remain in isolation – He has placed us in the context of a church community so that we can be encouraged and challenged by the people around us. And we are called to encourage and challenge them in return.’ (Adapted from Francis’ Book)

And he has also called us out – saved us to go and make fishers of men. To multiply our faith!

So, are you up for the challenge of a lifetime?

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Multiply is a 24-session discipleship experience designed for one-on-one and group settings. It is a simple resource that has been made widely available to view, read or listen to each of the sessions. You can even download the book.

Blessings ’til next time 🙂

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Discipleship = Relationship

Ten years ago (2012) Andy Stanley in his book Deep & Wide shared some key questions that he and the original staff at North Point Community Church in Atlanta began wrestling with as they were exploring the mission and strategy statement of their newly formed church back in 1995.

They were: “What should our discipleship model look like? What is our goal for the people who choose to partner with us in ministry? What does a mature believer look like? What role does the church have in developing Christ followers?“

“More than anything,” He goes on to write they “wanted to create a model that would actually facilitate spiritual maturity.”

They as a team had come to the realisation that the driving force behind most churches was not ‘spiritual formation’ (discipleship). They knew “that if they were not intentional, spiritual formation would get lost in the plethora of activities that tend to gobble up valuable time and resources.“

They had also come to understand that a growing relationship with Jesus, and with others focussed on true discipleship, was essential and that that was intrinsically linked with a person’s ‘level’ of faith and the development of such faith. Thus concluding “that the best discipleship or spiritual formation model would be one designed around growing people’s faith – true discipleship.

This was counter to what most of the group and those that they knew within the church had experienced growing up which was predominantly focussed on increasing people’s knowledge.

Therefore, Discipleship = Relationship Especially within the confines of a true Christian and faithful relationship. 

Over the past week or so I have touched on The Importance of Discipleship and Effective Discipleship and today I want to draw our attention to this essential ingredient – Relationships. 

You see, as we continue to assimilate societal and business approaches within the church we have again further compartmentalised aspects of discipleship and the myriad of relationships – especially mentoring, coaching, spiritual directors, counsellors and guides, Christian leaders, elders, pastors, ministers, officers, peer supports etc. etc. 

“What makes Christianity unique among all other religions” according to Joey Bonifacio in his book The Lego Principle, is that “it teaches people how to grow in their relationship with God and with others.“

He goes on to write that “the goal of teaching is not merely to increase our knowledge of divine principles, rules, laws, and things to do but to grow in our relationship with God and one another.“

In referencing John 5:39-40 he continues “In today’s language it might have sounded like this, ‘You keep going to your Bible studies and meetings, thinking that by doing so you’re getting closer to Me. Yet you resist living a life in relationship with Me.‘ 

The idea behind all the teaching and learning is that the deepening of our understanding of God will result in a stronger and deeper relationship with Him and subsequently with others.

John Wesley warned about learning and not growing in relationship: “Beware you be not swallowed up in books! An ounce of love is worth a pound of knowledge.” (The Letters of John Wesley: Letter to Joseph Benson November 7, 1768 – John Telford) 

Brandon Cox, a former pastor @ Saddleback and founding pastor of Grace Hills Church in northwest Arkansas, and author of Rewired: Sharing the life-changing story of God’s love through social media says that; “Discipleship happens as God’s people show love, share truth and live life with one another, making new disciples along the way“.

Mark Hall, pastor and lead singer of Casting Crowns in his book Thrive: Digging Deep, Reaching Out explains that there are four essential disciplines in the area of growing as a believer – the first three essentials; worship, prayer and the study of Scripture the Bible stress. They need to be embedded into our spiritual DNA.

The fourth discipline which is often overlooked, he goes on to explain is something that Jesus elevated to be among His top priorities. Sharing life with others! Doing life together in community.

Therefore the building of relationships, with both those within the church and those outside the church are absolutely essential for each and every one of us.

So how are you doing at doing life together with others?      

Within the context of the Salvation Army, Major Ivan Bezzant in his Leadership Jesus Way resource explores how to train and lead disciples, and challenges us that we need to take on a kingdom mentality instead of the prevailing club mentality which unfortunately persists in many churches.

This involves us as leaders within the church measuring discipleship by two things, determining how we are becoming more like Jesus, and doing life with the people we choose to associate with.

The above resource can be made available – if you’d like a copy email me @ perry.bray@salvationarmy.org.nz

You see, “Our relationship with Jesus Christ, should be grounded in prayer, Scripture, community and service, and this is central to everything else in our life. But our relationships with others are also important for our ongoing growth. Healthy, intentional relationships with other people can help you (and I) follow God”. (Purposeful Living)

As I’ve referenced previously there needs to be a reawakening for the need for effective discipleship ministries going forward and Alan & Debra Hirsch write that “to fail in discipleship and disciple making is therefore to fail in the primary mission (or ‘sent-ness’) of the church.“

As we have seen we also need to focus on our relationships and how we are going to build community with others, so that we can grow in our faith and speak into the lives of others. For discipleship = relationships.

So, as we return to a level of normality with restrictions being eased may we focus on one of the areas that needs a fair bit of work to establish effective discipleship for our people and build into the lives of others through our relationships.

Blessings ’til next time 🙂

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