Be Still And Know

Proverbs 27:25-27 After the hay is harvested and the new crop appears and the mountain grasses are gathered in, your sheep will provide wool for clothing, and your goats will provide the price of a field. And you will have enough goats’ milk for yourself, your family and your servant girls. These verses give us a delightful insight into a rural way of life which has a rhythm that those of us who live in towns and cities can totally miss. The life of a farmer is an interesting interplay between God’s provision and sheer hard work. God graciously causes the grass to grow, but there is then a huge amount of work involved in drying it out and making the hay. The grass and hay sustain the sheep and goats who will provide wool and milk to clothe and nourish the family. It’s a wonderful cycle of life, but nobody should have any illusions that it’s a quiet life. Farm work is massively demanding. However far away we may live from a rural life, we all depend upon that relationship between God’s provision and human e

Proverbs 27:21 Fire tests the purity of silver and gold, but a person is tested by being praised. I wonder how you respond when someone praises you. Perhaps you are praised for your excellent work, your sporting skills, your kindness or your reliability. The writer of Proverbs makes the interesting observation that such praise is as critical a test of a person as fire testing precious metals. Praise will expose the kind of person that you really are. There are three things you can do with praise. The first option is to open wide and drink it all in. This is a dangerous path because it is likely to go to your head. It could inflate your opinion of yourself to the point that you become arrogant and unbearable to live with. The second option is to do everything you can to deny the plaudits and suggest that they have got it all wrong. This might sound like a humble approach, but it could easily come across as rude. The best way to handle praise is to acknowledge it gratefully and to use it as an opportunit

Proverbs 27:15-16 A quarrelsome wife is as annoying as constant dripping on a rainy day. Stopping her complaints is like trying to stop the wind or trying to hold something with greased hands. I’m not going to defend the pure sexism of this proverb. There’s absolutely no need for it. Anyone can be quarrelsome, whatever their gender! The writer is convinced that the quarrelsome person is very hard to stop. He makes it sound as if quarrelling has become their way of life. No amount of challenging will change them. Clearly, quarrelling is something that has happened since the dawn of time, and it’s not surprising that the apostle Paul was fully aware of the problem. He instructed Timothy that “a servant of the Lord must not quarrel but must be kind to everyone, be able to teach and be patient with difficult people” (2 Timothy 2:24). The sad truth, of course, is that any of us can be quarrelsome. It may be that we’re not feeling well, or we are generally unhappy with the state of things or we are feeling threa

Proverbs 27:14 A loud and cheerful greeting early in the morning will be taken as a curse! This might sound a bit harsh, but if you’ve ever lived with someone who is irrepressibly loud and cheerful, you probably know what the writer of this proverb is getting at! In life, it’s not so much what you say as how, when, where and why you say it. The writer is talking about people who are insensitive, and, let’s be honest, we all know people like that, and we’ve all done it ourselves. In the previous chapter, the writer referred to someone who was completely insensitive and totally misread the situation. He saw them as a serious liability. He wrote: “Just as damaging as a madman shooting a deadly weapon is someone who lies to a friend and then says: ‘I was only joking’” (Proverbs 26:18-19). Everything was wrong about this. He shouldn’t have been lying in the first place, and to try to pass it off as a joke was just pouring fuel on the fire. We all have something to learn from this. We need to learn to use our w

Proverbs 27:12 A prudent person foresees danger and takes precautions. The simpleton goes blindly on and suffers the consequences. Prudence isn’t a word that we hear much these days, but it’s a wonderful word. The prudent person not only discerns the right thing to do, but does it. They make good plans and anticipate the problems that might occur. Our society is very safety-conscious, and that is obviously a good thing, although it can easily be taken to extremes. There was a well-publicised story of a headteacher who insisted that children playing conkers should wear goggles, and suggested that candy floss on sticks should be banned for fear of people tripping up and impaling themselves! Happily, the health and safety executive disagreed with both approaches. What we need is to live and make our plans carefully and sensibly. Jesus addressed the importance of planning when he talked about the person who proposed to build a tower. He pointed out that it was important to estimate the cost of completing the j

Proverbs 27:9-10 The heartfelt counsel of a friend is as sweet as perfume and incense. Never abandon a friend—either yours or your father’s. The writer Samuel Johnson once wrote: “Life has no pleasure higher or nobler than that of friendship.” I am sure we could all speak movingly of our friends. They are the people with whom we can laugh and cry, and be completely ourselves. It isn’t surprising that the writer of Proverbs had much to say about friendships. He recognised how important they were in a happy and fulfilling life. We see many friendships in the Bible, such as the friendship between David and Jonathan. There was an immediate bond between them when they first met, and the friendship sustained them through desperately difficult times. Words are a crucial part of friendship, and the writer of Proverbs observed how precious the counsel of a friend is. This doesn’t mean that a friend’s words are necessarily easy to hear. They may be deeply painful, but because they are motivated by love and care, the

1 John 5:21 Dear children, keep away from anything that might take God’s place in your hearts. Every day, we are all bombarded with influences. Family, friends, television, internet, advertising, books, social media and radio are all trying to claim our attention and suggest different ways in which we should be thinking. Much of the time, we don’t even notice it’s happening, but we cannot stop the process. Most of those influences are not inherently bad, but they all have the potential for distracting us from serving God. Idols come in many shapes and sizes. They will never announce themselves as idols, but they are, as this verse so clearly states, anything that takes God’s place in our hearts. It could be your family, your hobby, your football team, your garden or your job. Anything which takes first place in our lives pushes God into second place at best. Our families, our hobbies, our sporting interests, our gardens and our work are all wonderful gifts of God and they can bring enormous enjoyment an

1 John 5:14-15 We are confident that God hears us whenever we ask for anything that pleases him. And since we know he hears us when we make our requests, we also know that he will give us what we ask for. Prayer is of absolutely crucial importance to our lives. It has been wisely said that you and I are as strong as our prayer lives and no stronger. Every part of our lives depends upon prayer, so it is really important that we are clear about the Bible’s teaching on this subject. One of the most important things to recognise is that prayer is never a matter of simply saying certain words to God. Bishop Ryle said: “We have learned a great lesson when we have learned that ‘saying prayers’ is not praying.” Prayer is all about a relationship with God in which we talk to him and open our hearts so that he can work in our lives. The Old Testament prophets often observed that people said prayers that were completely unacceptable to God because their lives showed that they had no interest in serving him. God sp

1 John 5:11-12 This is what God has testified: He has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have God’s Son does not have life. Sooner or later, everyone is bound to ask what life is all about. Freddie Mercury, the lead singer of Queen, one of the most successful rock groups of all time, asked the question in one of his last songs: “Does anyone know what we are living for?” It was a genuine cry from the heart. In human terms, he had everything. He had money and fame on a colossal scale, but, shortly before his death in 1991, he admitted that he was desperately lonely. He said: “You can have everything in the world and still be the loneliest man, and that is the most bitter type of loneliness. Success has brought me world idolisation and millions of pounds, but it’s prevented me from having the one thing we all need – a loving, ongoing relationship.” John would have totally agreed with Mercury. A “loving, ongoing relationship” is what we all need,

1 John 5:4-5 For every child of God defeats this evil world, and we achieve this victory through our faith. And who can win this battle against the world? Only those who believe that Jesus is the Son of God. We need to be clear that whenever John talks about the world in this passage, he is talking about the world without God. When humankind rejects God, the world is a terrible place full of sin, death and destruction. We are all called to live in such a world, but John wanted to make it clear that we don’t need to be scared of it because in Christ, we have the victory. On Good Friday, Jesus died as the evil world unleashed its worst on him, but that wasn’t the end. On the Sunday morning, Jesus rose from death and proved that he had the victory. This has very practical implications for us. It affects our daily lives in a very profound way. Day by day, we head into a world where God is not respected by most people. The news is full of accounts of abuse, violence, brokenness and disorder. On the face of it,

1 John 4:11-12 Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other. No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and his love is brought to full expression in us. You cannot see the wind, but you can easily see the effects that it has. Equally, you cannot see electricity, but we have no doubt that it exists because of all that it does. No one has ever seen God, but we know that he exists because we see his love reflected in the people around us. The more we love people, the more they will have the opportunity to see the living God. Tertullian, one of the early Church Fathers, wrote of how the pagan Romans were struck by the Christians’ way of life. “See how they love one another,” was their response. I would love to think this would be the response to each of our churches, and I believe it often is. People see churches setting up food banks, debt advice services, parent and toddler groups, listening services and many other activities. They are wonderful e

1 John 4:10 This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins. Most of the love that we experience in our lives is reciprocal. We love other people, and they love us. Sometimes we have taken the initiative and, on other occasions, they have done so. It is very different with God. There is nothing that we could ever do to win his love. However hard we might try, we could never get to a point where God was forced to love us. The fact that he has chosen to love us is entirely down to his own initiative. This is an incredibly important truth because the whole of our Christian life needs to flow from it. In his letters, Paul often used the word grace to describe God’s relationship with us. Forgiveness and salvation are a matter of sheer gift. There is nothing we could ever do to contribute towards them. When we take the step of faith and accept Jesus into our lives, we are simply responding to his incredible generosity to us. Paul wrote to the

1 John 4:1 Dear friends, do not believe everyone who claims to speak by the Spirit. You must test them to see if the spirit they have comes from God. For there are many false prophets in the world. There have always been false teachers, but they must have been particularly difficult to face in the early Church. Many Christians would have come from completely different religious and philosophical backgrounds, and few of the church leaders would have had much education. It would have been extremely easy for articulate people to creep into the Church and lead people astray. Anyone can claim to speak by the Spirit, and it is not surprising that many young impressionable Christians simply accepted what they were saying. What John wanted to do was to encourage every Christian to test what they heard. Jesus himself was well aware of the challenge from false teachers. In the Sermon on the Mount, he said: “Beware of false prophets who come disguised as harmless sheep but are really vicious wolves. You can identify

1 John 3:16 We know what real love is because Jesus gave up his life for us. So we also ought to give up our lives for our brothers and sisters. The most famous verse in the whole Bible is John 3:16: “For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.” It’s a wonderful verse, and it takes us to heart of the good news. We need to read it alongside today’s verse, 1 John 3:16, its natural twin, which reminds us that it is not only a case of God loving us and sending Jesus for our salvation, but about us in turn offering up our lives for our Christian brothers and sisters. I thank God for the amazing Christians that I have known over the years who have poured out their lives for others. I think of children’s and youth workers, deacons and elders, ministers and carers who, because of their love for God, have gladly given everything to support other people. They have thought little of their personal safety or health

1 John 3:1 See how very much our Father loves us, for he calls us his children, and that is what we are! My wife and I had the privilege of being foster parents for a number of years. Those years gave me a new understanding of how important our relationship with our parents is. To be honest, I took for granted the love, security, affirmation and warmth of my own parents, but I now treasure those amazing gifts in a new way. Here, John reflected on the even more important relationship that we can have with our Father God. He burst out in wonder as he reflected on the fact that God loves us so much that he chose to call us his children. He did so not as a mere formality, but because we really are his children. Just as the relationship between children and their parents will have life-long implications, so too will our relationship with God our Father colour and shape our lives. We have the privilege of being able to walk into every new day with the certain knowledge that we are loved. We are secure for time

1 John 2:26-27 I am writing these things to warn you about those who want to lead you astray. But you have received the Holy Spirit, and he lives within you, so you don’t need anyone to teach you what is true. For the Spirit teaches you everything you need to know, and what he teaches is true—it is not a lie. Our world today is very different from the one that John knew, but I suspect that if he were addressing us, he wouldn’t have changed his message at all. The Christians he was speaking to were under constant attack from false teachers, and he was eager that they should be strong in their faith and able to stand up to every challenge. These days, anyone with access to the internet can have instant connection to an unlimited number of religions and philosophies. It can all be very bewildering and confusing. John would want to offer us the same encouragement that he brought 1,900 years ago. The Holy Spirit is still our completely reliable teacher. He teaches us everything that we need to know. Towards

1 John 2:15 Do not love this world nor the things it offers you, for when you love the world, you do not have the love of the Father in you. John’s concern here was very similar to that of Jesus when, in the Sermon on the Mount, he said that it was impossible to serve both God and money (Matthew 6:24). We have a choice to make as to whether we will allow all our energy to be expended on worldly interests or on God’s kingdom. We cannot possibly do both. John encouraged his readers to focus their attention on loving God and not the temporary pleasures of the world. Does that mean we should all leave our jobs and homes and sit on a park bench reading the Bible? No, far from it! We are called to enjoy God’s world, to serve him in our jobs and homes and to live alongside those who know nothing of him, but, as we do so, we need to keep our focus on the things that last and not on those pleasures, possessions and achievements which have a very short shelf life. John writes in very sharp language to encourage

1 John 2:9-10 If anyone claims, “I am living in the light,” but hates a fellow believer, that person is still living in darkness. Anyone who loves a fellow believer is living in the light and does not cause others to stumble. The letters in the New Testament give us a great insight into the life of the early Church. These were exciting years for the Church, but enormous struggles were going on. There were people teaching heresy and others making great claims about themselves whose lives showed that they were a sham. There were the Gnostics, who claimed to have discovered deep mysteries and to have encountered the light, but their lives told a completely different story. So John set out some very clear guidelines to help the believers understand who was truly living for God and who wasn’t. The key test was love. If someone showed true love for their fellow believers, you could be sure that they were living in the light, but those who were showing hatred towards others were walking in the darkness. Even in

1 John 1:8-9 If we claim we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and not living in the truth. But if we confess our sins to God, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness. John couldn’t have been more blunt. If we claim to be sinless, we’re lying. Presumably, there were people in John’s day who were saying precisely that. He knew it was such a dangerous point of view that he had to be decisive in his language. We can’t be exactly sure who these people were, but in every age there have been people who have claimed to be perfect. We certainly know that there were gnostic groups around in John’s time who believed that they had special knowledge and were not touched by sin. We are all sinners and need to own up to the fact. We might like to blame our parents, our upbringing, our education, the government or the weather, but, at the end of the day, we must take responsibility and acknowledge that we have sinned. We have deliberately gone our own way and done th

1 John 1:3-4 We proclaim to you what we ourselves have actually seen and heard so that you may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. We are writing these things so that you may fully share our joy. As a teenager, I developed a great interest in the law, and often visited the local Magistrates’ and Crown Courts. To describe these as eye-opening experiences would be a considerable understatement. Having been brought up in a very loving and protected Christian home, I was learning about a world of which I knew nothing at all. I soon learned how the courts worked, and I recall the way in which the magistrates or judges would insist that witnesses stuck to their own personal memory. The moment witnesses strayed into talking about what they had heard from other people, they were quickly told to get back to their own personal experiences. John knew the importance of sticking to his own personal witness. He’d had the immense privilege of listening to Je