KNOW You Are (1 John 2:7-14)

Do you remember the Matrix films where Morpheus is training Neo (in the first film) to fight? All the time he's training Neo to 'free his mind' and use the bendy rules of the matrix to his advantage, rather than being bound by them. He says things like 'Stop trying to hit me and HIT ME!' and is generally rather annoying and smug as he beats him up with ridiculous anti-gravity karate. Morpheus' point is that Neo needs to stop trying so hard and remember the truth. 

Something similar is going on when Christians try in their own strength to follow Jesus rather than letting Jesus live in and through them.  John writes to remind Christians of who they really are so their identity can shape their activity...

1 John 2:7-14

John says that what he's writing is not some new fad or trend but it's the same old God who has been around since forever.  Jesus is this God.  So he's not new, even though John's readers were new to Jesus.  John wants his Jewish readers to know that trusting and following Jesus is exactly the way they can obey the commands of God they've grown up with.  Their scriptures point to Jesus because Jesus is the same God who wrote them.  So he's not new.

On the other hand, John says, perhaps it IS new in a way because for his first readers, the fresh expression of God's light and love in the person of Jesus Christ was a brand new experience altogether. And the idea that God's Spirit is living in all Christians was a brand new concept too! He says this truth is seen 'in him but also in you'!  It's the same God that they had known all along but now a new depth of personal intimacy with that God was available and this would have blown them away.  This was the new bit for John's readers.  Trusting and following Jesus means that he lives in us!

John then talks about what it means to be walking in the light in terms of loving others, especially other believers and he says anyone who hates their brother or sister is still stumbling about in the dark.  Isn't it sad that Christians so often squabble and fall out or judge each other and stay away from each other?  Aren't we family because of Jesus?  We should ask ourselves who it is that we will enjoy eternity with and then start practicing now!  Why should we exclude those whom God has included?  Why should we draw lines where God hasn't?  Family isn't always easy, but if we're Christians, we ARE family and we should be learning to live like it more and more, refusing to give up on one another.  This is part of what it means to be in the light, John says.

John reminds his readers (who are Christians) who they are in Christ so they can live from this knowledge as people of the light.  He says Christians are a bit like children, a bit like fathers and a bit like young men:
  • We're loved like children because we're forgiven by God
  • We're wise like fathers because we know God who knows everything
  • We're strong like young men because Jesus lives in us
So thankfully, it's not quite like the Matrix but this is the stuff Christians need to remember if they are to free their minds and live well.  Who we are determines what we do.  Identity before activity.

Living in the Light (1 John 2:1-6)

Nearly six years ago I got married to Chrissi and we're very happy together and we have lots of fun! It probably wouldn't surprise you to know that I'm far from a perfect husband! I do plenty (and forget to do plenty) that makes Chrissi upset or cross or whatever. In short, I'm trying to be the best husband I can be, but I frequently need Chrissi's patience, forgiveness and help. Of course, it works both ways and as we work things out, we realise this is what the adventure of marriage is all about. Loving each other in relationship through all sorts of situations life brings - and bringing God glory in the process.

Today's passage speaks of the relationship we have with God if we're Christians, how our mistakes affect that relationship and how our lives are increasingly affected by that relationship...


If Chrissi wanted to divorce me every time I made a mistake, our marriage wouldn't last five minutes! It would be ridiculous if we had to be perfect in order to continue loving each other. It's a bit like this with our relationship with God, except that God is perfect and we're the ones who aren't.

When we make mistakes, the relationship isn't over and God doesn't disown us. This is because the basis of a relationship with God is forgiveness, not performance. This is something that many people don't realise and many Christians are tempted to forget! John reminds us that Jesus has paid the sacrifice that has set us free to be in relationship with God. He has paid the price for our forgiveness and this means we can love God and be loved by him without our mistakes getting in the way.

The thing is, we're still changing. We're still not perfect and we're learning, bit-by-bit to become more like Jesus. We don't have to be like Jesus in order to be friends of God, we just have to ask for forgiveness. After this, we're FREE to learn to grow to become more like the God who has forgiven us. We can make mistakes (forgiven mistakes) and we can grow without any pressure.

John speaks clearly about living as Jesus did and this should be the intention of every believer. The problem is that some people haven't joined up their faith and relationship in God to certain parts of their life. They have areas that are off-limits to God. John challenges this way of living. It's not a real relationship with God unless we have willingly surrendered our whole life to him. Sure, we're not going to become perfect overnight but we ought to be naturally heading in the right direction by opening our lives up to his grace more and more. Remember the 'light' thing from yesterday? It's like that. We may not be as light as Jesus but we should be getting brighter by spending more time with him shining on and in and through us!

Ask God to help you to accept his offer of forgiveness and then enjoy living for him in freedom!

Come into the Light! (1 John 1:5-10)

It's really quite sad when someone is lying to themselves. I remember being very little at school and my class were all making Easter cards. I saw some of my friends' cards and they looked amazing to me and I wished I could draw as good as them but I wasn't patient enough and I didn't think mine was that good. Later on, the teacher was holding them up, one-by-one and asking who's they were. I was so embarrassed by mine that I didn't want to put my hand up. I wanted mine to be one of the nice ones that looked really cool but the reality was that mine was the one with thick black scrawl all over it and it looked pretty ugly. I think I must have gotten into a right strop about it too, because I'd convinced myself it wasn't mine. I was lying to myself. What a sad day!


I love the logic of what John says about the light and darkness, truth and lies. It's not difficult to see the sense in what he's saying if we take a minute to work it through...

John's met with Jesus and he's talking about him. He's seen, heard and touched eternity and he's passing on the message that Jesus is the light. Let's think through what John says about this. Light dispels darkness. Switch on a light in a dark room and all the darkness goes instantly. You can't have both at the same time. It's the same with Jesus. He is the perfect bright light (perfect/righteous/pure) and there can be no darkness (wrongness/sin) in him.
Then John talks about people. If we claim that we're friends of Jesus or Christians or whatever you want to call it, then it follows that our lives should be fairly well 'lit up'. If we're still fumbling around in darkness, making the same old dim mistakes, how can we say we're friends of Jesus? Our habits should be changing because if we've switched the light on, how can our lives still be dark? It's about having a REAL relationship with Jesus, the light of the world, rather than just pretending that we're anything to do with him. It's impossible to encounter Jesus at all and not change! If we say we're Christians and our lives don't look different, John's basically saying that we're liars!

Conversely, if we ARE walking in the light and we DO have a real relationship with Jesus, then not only will our lives be increasingly well lit up but we will be able to see each other more clearly too and our relationships with others will be lighter and better because all the secrets are gone!

John says we should fess up and be honest about our sin, our mistakes, our darkness. And if we do this there's an AMAZING promise from God (and he never breaks them!). If we own up to our sin (mistakes, darkness, badly drawn Easter cards, etc!) then God absolutely promises to forgive us AND more than this, he promises to purify us. That means he'll give our conscience a good scrubbing too so we don't need to feel guilty any more! Absolutely not! This means we can be full of light (full of Jesus!) once more and be walking in light continually, even though we will make mistakes again and again. We don't need to be stumbling around lost in the dark. It's about confession and getting real with God. It RULES! He offers a completely fresh start and the light to walk on into. Let's make sure we do it and not lie to ourselves any more!

Is Seeing Believing? (1 John 1:1-4)

Most people today won't believe anything without clear evidence to support it. They want to see truth, touch it, taste it before they make a decision, especially if it's a decision about their own life. They would agree that seeing is believing. And all this sounds quite reasonable to me.


John seems to think he has overwhelmingly strong tangible evidence and experience of something. He's talking about something that he says he's seen with his own eyes, heard with his own ears and that he's touched with his own hands. This sounds like some solid evidence. The amazing and incredible bit though, is that this thing he's talking about is something eternal! It's not something we would normally expect to be able to see, hear and touch physically. It's not just something godly - John is talking about God himself! John is saying something amazing - that he has seen, heard and touched God himself! He's saying he's had a real encounter with the Creator of the universe - the one who was there in the beginning of time - the one who appeared in the flesh in the person of Jesus Christ - the one who gives life to all, the one who offers us eternal life - the one who wants to have a friendship with us all. Blimey!

How can John be so sure? I think it's about two main things:
  1. Reasonable and logical evidence. Most historians agree that the gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) were all written within living memory of Jesus. If you read the start of Luke's gospel, you can see the care they took over getting their sources right. Saying something false and wildly wrong about Jesus in the gospels would have been discredited very quickly. It would be the same as writing a biography about John Lennon and claiming that he could fly like a bird and grow a pink beard! People would laugh at it because they knew him personally or knew people who knew him personally and they would know that it was a load of made up rubbish. The gospels were written this quickly after the life of Jesus and so any ridiculous statements about him would never have lasted for 2000 years!
  2. Personal experience. John's writing on a personal level. He's not just got his sources right but he's had a personal encounter with Jesus himself. In John's day, this could have meant that he actually and physically met Jesus Christ in the flesh while he was living on earth 2000 years ago. In our day, people have a similar kind of encounter on a spiritual level and they would say that this is just as real and vivid as meeting him physically.
What evidence do you have for God? Have you got your sources right? Have you carefully examined the story? What are you convinced about? What are you not convinced about?

Have you met God? What experiences have you ever had of him? What conclusions have you come to?

John's point is not to cause arguments or intellectual debates but to bring his readers joy and to 'complete' their joy! What joy do you have from understanding and encountering the living God? Think and pray on this!

More blogs and that

Ecclesiastes 12

At work I'm very careful about my time. I want to make sure that I make the most of every hour I spend working and I want to demonstrate to my line manager and others I work with that I am being effective and not wasting time on unimportant things. I want to see results from what I do and I know that the best way to make sure my work bears fruit is to make sure I'm working on the right things.

Solomon concludes his book by telling us how we can make the most of our lives and not waste any of the time we have...


Have you ever heard someone say anything like this: 'Well I suppose I might think about God one day but I'm going to have some fun first.'?

A story is told of a circus bear who lived in a cage ten feet by ten feet square. Every day the bear would pace back and forth, ten feet one way and ten feet back. This was its life. Then one day it was time for the bear to retire and they gave him a massive enclosure with trees and landscape in which he could enjoy living out the rest of his life. As they observed the bear however, the saw that all he did was to pace back and forth, ten feet one way and ten feet back, as if he were still in the cage. He had all this new freedom and yet didn't make the most of it because all he wanted to do was to keep living his own small little life.

The best time to know God is now! People think that becoming a Christian is like getting into a cage and that somehow they will have less freedom to enjoy life but the truth of the matter is quite the opposite. Becoming a Christian is about discovering true freedom, forgiveness, life and hope.

Solomon knows that when it comes to thinking about when to know God, we should say 'the sooner, the better'. Why miss out on all God has for us, thinking all the time that our idea of fun is bigger and better than his? This is why Solomon says we should get to know God when we're young if we can. Why waste our life waiting to know God later?

And this is Solomon's conclusion on the matter. We should know and fear and love and obey God, rather than ignore him and think that we know best. His love, his life, his hope, his fun are all way, way bigger than ours and we ignore him at our peril! Living with and for God is right where we should be. We're more free, more ourselves and more alive when we're in God!

A prayer...
Thank you God that you're real and alive and fun and exciting and relevant to me. Forgive me for the times I've tried to live my life without you and help me to give you my everything because you are Lord of all. Please give me a bigger and better perspective on my life so that I can glimpse something of the way you see me. And thank you that because of your forgiveness I can be free to live life to the full and life forever with you. Amen!

Ecclesiastes 11:7-10

Now that I've turned 30, everyone wants to let me know that I'm no longer considered young. I'm an 'old man' apparently. In some ways I feel the same as I did ten years ago and in other ways I feel ten years older than I actually am! Solomon again speaks of perspective, this time for those who consider themselves young. I'll leave you to decide how much that applies to you!


I love young people. Working with adults drains me whereas working with young people energises me. I know for many people it would be the other way around but for me hanging out with a bunch of teenagers for a couple of hours sounds like fun!

Solomon speaks to those who are young but there's a clear message for everyone in what he says. He sees that young people are generally more able to enjoy things than older people. They have a clearer sense of fun and they're exploring and discovering things that older adults are accustomed to or even bored of. Solomon tells young people to go ahead and enjoy their life and have their fun and make the most of it. And to everyone (not just young people) he says we should try and enjoy all the days of our lives (v8). Older adults all too easily lose their sense of fun, exploration and playfulness and I personally think it's a real shame. I think a lot of adults could benefit a lot from learning how to play!

Anyway, there's a balance to be seen here in what Solomon says. Two dangerous extremes to avoid. The first danger is that we only focus on today and this life. We hear Solomon's advice to enjoy every day and that's where we leave it. We think that's what life's all about and we miss the point of the bigger picture. It's shallow and short-sighted. However, the other danger is that we focus so much on the bigger picture of judgement and eternity that it sucks all the fun out of living today. This is equally bad. Solomon says we should hold both in our hearts and minds - The 'now' and the 'not yet'. We should be able to enjoy all the grace to have fun in this life now without forgetting that we will be held to account and there will be an eternity where we will either be punished or forgiven for our wrong actions.

Ask yourself:
- How can I make the most of opportunities to have fun in this life?
- How can I make sure I remember the bigger eternal perspective in my life?

A prayer...
Lord, Thank you that there's more to life than what we experience now. Help me to trust you for forgiveness and remember that there will be an eternity with you in a new and perfect place. Lord, help me not to be anxious but to enjoy living in this certain hope by having all the fun to be had in this life you have given me now and in this way to share the story of the good news with others.
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