Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Anita Mathias's Blog on Faith and Art

My Son, in Whom I am Well-Pleased, Matthew 3, 4, Day 6. Jan 6.

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Matthew 3

 7 But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to where he was baptizing, he said to them: “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? 


LOL! Now, I am not sure if that is an appropriate Biblical comment, but really LOL! Would you want to be the one to so address the religious establishment of your day, “You brood of vipers.” A hissing nest of people, whose very nature is to sting.


One of the first imperatives of every institution is to guarantee its preservation and continuance. One of the urgent imperatives of those with an unconverted or partially-converted heart who have power, civil or religious, is to hold on to that power. Preserve the status quo.


So, do we address them as a “brood of vipers,” and have our heads presented to Salome on a platter?


The prophetic calling—truth-telling– is both a gift and a burden. Truth-telling needs to be tempered by hearing God’s directive to tell the truth. Because not every truth needs to be told.


Telling truth is a double-edged sword. The Pharisees would gladly have had his head on a platter. But the people loved him.


8 Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. 


Repentance is the key to entering the Kingdom. Not just when we are first converted, but it is indeed the key to keep stepping into the Kingdom of God—the Kingdom of peace and joy–on a daily basis.

Daily repentance whether dramatic 180 shifts in direction, or tiny tweaks of mind and heart.  


9 And do not think you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. 


And he does. All those who have entered God’s kingdom by faith are children of Abraham who entered that Kingdom by faith, as Paul explains.


10 The axe is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.

 11 “I baptize you withwater for repentance. But after me comes one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.


The continuing Baptism in the Holy Spirit is the greatest transformer of personality that I know.


If you have not known it, or known it in its fullness, seek it, and keep seeking it.


I have had an early experience of the Baptism of the Spirit, accompanied by the gift of tongues in my teens. But there is so, so much more I long to know and discover of the fullness of the Spirit.
To have more of God’s spirit fill me is, in fact, my most urgent felt need.


According to the ESV Study Bible, the Baptism of Fire is the experience of purifying fire all Christians have to go through. No kidding!


 12 His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”


 13 Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to be baptized by John. 


This is what I so, so love about Jesus—his total freedom from concern about status, position, and importance. He is “tomorrow’s man” in R.T. Kendall’s phrase; his ministry is going to exponentially surpass John’s and everyone else’s.  And he knows it!


 Why does he ask John to baptize him? Among other things, he is endorsing John’s ministry, message and mission.


And what about highlighting the importance of your own precious, beautiful ministry, Jesus? 

He leaves that to his Heavenly Father. 


14 But John tried to deter him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?”


 15 Jesus replied, “Let it be so now; it is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness.” Then John consented.


 16 As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. 17 And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”


And here is a beautiful mountain-top experience. Heaven opens. The spirit of God descends.


And God says, I love you. I am well pleased with you.


As believers in Jesus, this is our reality. We are God’s children. He loves us. He is well pleased with us, as we are in our infants and toddlers, no matter the mess, and tears and sleepless nights and wrecked interiors.


Enter this reality in your times with God.


Heaven opens over you.


The Spirit of God descends and alights on you.


And a voice from heaven says, This is my child, whom I love.

I am well pleased with her.


It takes a while for our hearts to really get it, doesn’t it? For it to become our reality!



Matthew 4

  1 Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be temptedby the devil. 

And that is exactly how the Spirit deals with us today. 

Moments of exaltation, of high spiritual experience and excitation are followed, almost predictably, by the wilderness, by temptation.

So it is wise to be prepared for temptation after sweet and intense experiences with and of God.


On a psychological level, it could be seen as a natural reaction of over-excited, over-stretched nerves.


However, this is a continual pattern in Scripture. The strengthening and insight and joy of mountain-top experiences are followed by tough wilderness experiences, when temptation comes straight at us, leaping at our throats.


2 After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. 

Forty days, the Biblical period of spiritual transformation.


3 The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.”

Use your spiritual power to meet your own needs exclusively, without reference to your heavenly Father.


 4 Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.”


Jesus fights temptation with quoting Scripture (Deuteronomy each time). How intimately he knew it.


And it is true, of course. Bread, physical nourishment, the things of this earth, simply do not keep us alive and happy. And perhaps it takes having everything you need and want to know this is absolutely true.


So what is food for our hungry, thirsty, restless spirits?


The word of God.


I am going to feast on it over the next few years, because I have a hungry, thirsty, restless spirit, which can no longer live on just bread, or the good things of this earth.


 5 Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. 6 “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written:

   “‘He will command his angels concerning you,
   and they will lift you up in their hands,
   so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’”


Another temptation. To show off.  


Show off your spiritual powers, abilities and specialness.


If Satan judged this to be a strong enough temptation to entice the Son of God, how much more will he tempt us to show off and posturize.


How will this temptation strike us? It will probably be in line with our own spiritual gifts. Prophets will show off their ability to hear the word of God; teachers will be tempted to teach more to show off their cleverness than for any good it might do; leaders will be tempted to created big flashy programs to make people admire and envy them rather than to serve people. And writers and bloggers??


 7 Jesus answered him, “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”


Do not deliberately do foolish things, relying on God’s protection.


 8 Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendour. 


Wow, who could resist this one? The Son of God could!


9 “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.”


Satan speaks to us and tempts us through our own minds. He is described as a liar, and the father of lies (John 8:44).  As the ESV Study Bible notes, Satan did not, in fact, have the power to give Jesus all the kingdoms of the world, and their splendour.


The persuasive logic with which our temptations comes us, with their false promises of happiness are almost always false. False—and illusions from a liar, and the Father of lies.


10 Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’”


And this is indeed the great battle for a Christian.


To love God, and serve him with our whole hearts.


Our idolatrous hearts, which can be described as idol-factories, rapidly making idols of money, success, sex, pleasure, travel, praise, social position, reputation, our houses, our appearance, you name it….


 11 Then the devil left him, and angels came and attended him.


There is an end, there is an end to periods of temptation, the divided mind, the struggling vacillating soul. And when we come through on the other side, bruised but triumphant, God frequently sends angels to comfort us.


As they comforted the sweet triumphant son of God.

Proverbs 1 7-9 The Fear of the Lord is the beginning of Knowledge. Day 4. Jan 4th.

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Proverbs 1 7-9
7 The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline.


The fear of the Lord is indeed the beginning of wisdom. It puts natural boundaries around us, and safeguards us from much that is destructive–and from its consequences.  The fear of the Lord preserves us from learning about the foolishness and the acrid fruits of sin in the bitter school of trial and error. 


Discipline. Something I have both craved and struggled with all my life. Interestingly, psychotherapist Scott Peck in his perennial best-seller, The Road Less Travelled, talks about discipline–deferring gratification–as the foundation of a decent human life. As parents, we have a dual burden: to discipline ourselves, and to teach self-discipline to our children so that they realize the value of their lives, their time and themselves, and later instinctively practice it. 

8 Listen, my son, to your father’s instruction and do not forsake your mother’s teaching. 9 They will be a garland to grace your head and a chain to adorn your neck.

Reunion with Lost Pets

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My pet rabbits Empress and Bandit

‘And I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, saying, “To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honour and glory and might forever and ever!”’ (Rev 5:13).

Every creature! Wow! Not only will we ourselves be healed, restored, and lost in the ecstasy of contemplating God and the Lamb, but every creature in heaven and on earth, and under the earth, and in the sea will join us.

We shall be healed, and all the sad, abused, dumbly suffering animals of all history will be healed with us. We shall ask their forgiveness. And since they are more generous than we are, we shall receive it.

We will stand together, and sing together.

I have loved animals all my life, and always has as many of them as my family would permit. A couple of years ago we had 9 pets (I live on an acre and a half in deep country, in Garsington, Oxfordshire)–rabbits, ducks, chickens, and a dog.

But decades of pet ownership do not leave one guilt free. There is always the dog we could have walked more; the loving dog we had to give away when we left America; the rabbit who died of myxomatosis; the duck mauled by the fox on the one night we forget to put her in her shed; the hen eaten by the fox on the one night we forgot to lock the coop.

From my dogs in particular, I have repeatedly sought forgiveness, because they return to me in dreams. My heaven will not be quite complete without dogs, so I was relieved to come across this passage via Charlie, Vicar of Kea Church in Cornwall (what a wonderful name for a church!) on whether there will be animals in heaven.

http://charliepeer.blogspot.com/2010/08/not-such-daft-question.html

 

 

 

Aspects of the Blessings of Failure

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A ruined church — from New Zealand’s war archive, 1918.

Here are three posts from other bloggers on a subject no one wants to consider so soon in a New Year.  And may this year be a year of blessing for all of us.

Failure is an option
Jessica talks about the pain of a church mess and failure
http://jezamama.blogspot.com/2010/11/failure-is-option.html

Can Failure in Ministry ever be part of His plan

Mary de Muth on a failure in ministry.
http://www.wrecked.org/church/god-success-and-failed-french-church-plants/

And, very sweet one this, John Piper on how he put soul, body and marriage together after a season of intense ministry (and perhaps ego-driven ?) work took its toll on each.
http://www.desiringgod.org/blog/posts/john-pipers-report-on-his-leave-of-absence

Failure, and the precious jewels it offers is something I have meditated on for a long time, and am intimately acquainted with. No doubt, once my thoughts are better crystallized, I will share them here– though I am now in a season of blessing–which follows the brokenness, repentance, humbling and acknowledgement of weakness which a season of failure brings.

In which I pursue happiness and the bluebird of joy,

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We all stayed up to see in the New Year with marzipan fruit cake, and Bailey’s Irish Cream, even Zoe and Irene.

Then today, since all of us are somewhat more introverted than extroverted, we decided everyone could be happy in their own way.

I read, prayed, blogged, wrote, and went for a solitary walk.

Roy who is now a dyed-in-the wool house-husband, finished seeing one of our books for our publishing company through press, and then tidied up the house, and assembled IKEA bookshelves for our ever-expanding library. I saw him whistling bustling around, keeping loads of laundry on the go, keeping the dishwasher running and the cabinets stacked (with Irene’s help) and generally restoring to the house to its pre-Christmas season order, and thought, “If that man isn’t happy, then what is he?” I checked, he confirmed my suspicion.

Christmas, luckily this year, hasn’t involved things. Roy and I specifically asked for no Christmas presents, as we have everything material thing we want, and so the girls made us huge lovely cards. We didn’t give any presents, except to the girls, and so Christmas was so simplified. We plan to repeat this every year. No, neither the Grinch nor Scrooge, just–at this stage of our lives– more interested in living well and in experience rather than in accumulation of stuff.

Zoe, 16, curled up with Classical Greek and Latin. I get pure happiness from learning a new language and getting good at it, and I guess she’s got that gene.

Irene, 11, who has waist length hair, spent the day with the new blow-drying and hair-style gadget Roy got her putting her long curly hair into extravagant styles, and admiring them. She wrote to her cousins and penfriends, and read some.

In the evening, Roy and I are going to a New Year’s day party with friends from St. Aldate’s. Ah, a New Year’s Day party, so much more sensible than a New Year’s eve party. At least, one can get to bed at a godly hour without the sense that you might be disrupting someone else’s party!

Leisure, free time. That’s been the most coveted commodity in our married life, and at last we have it.

Last Christmas Day, in New Zealand, I spent some time praying while the Christmas dinner was in the oven. (I have nothing to do with Christmas dinners, since Zoe and Roy love cooking). I saw a vision, maybe I should say a mental image, of our life. The direction it was flowing in which  absorbed a lot of our enthusiasm, creativity, and energy and interest was our family’s publishing company (in which a bunch of our friends also work part-time).

Roy then had a Chair as Professor of Mathematics, and though he was well-paid, it put time at a premium, and increased our stress with the additional demands on him.

I saw concentrating on Math would almost be rowing against the stream, that God’s provision and blessing was flowing on the publishing, and that we should row with the stream, go in the direction in which God’s blessing was flowing.

4 months later, Roy’s University had an early retirement offer–three times the usual settlement but we had to decide by Sept 2010. He left the decision to me. I decided on early retirement–at 47!!

It was a risk, of course, but we have so enjoyed peace, leisure, time, just living, being, that we would hate to trade it for a real job. And though, of course, we were prepared for downward mobility, that has not been the case at all, thank you, God.

What will this year bring? It’s in God’s hands, and God is good!

"Can a homosexual be a Christian?" theological musings by William Stringfellow

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The Good Shepherd





Can a Homosexual be a Christian. One might as well ask, can an insurance man be a Christian? Can a lawyer be a Christian? Can an ecclesiastical bureaucrat be a Christian? Can a rich man be a Christian? Can an infant be a Christian? Or one who is sick, or insane, or indolent or one possessed of power or status or respectability? Can anybody be a Christian? Can a human being be a Christian? All such questions are theologically absurd. To be a Christian does not have anything essentially to do with conduct or station or repute. To be a Christian does not have anything to do with the common pietisms of ritual, dogma or morals in and of themselves. To be a Christian has, rather, to do with that peculiar state of being bestowed upon men by God….

Can a homosexual be a Christian? Yes: if his sexuality is not an idol.
William Stringfellow, cited in Anthony Dancer, An Alien in a Strange Land: Theology in the Life of William Stringfellow (Eugene, Oregon: Cascade Books, 2011), pp. 198-99.

I like this because, as a newer Christian, I naively assumed that a practising gay person could not be a Christian. On the other hand, I did not doubt that, despite the occasional schadenfreude, malice, gossip, and sheer untruthfulness I encountered in my church, those who said they were Christians were Christians. 


Perhaps that is the safest assumption: to assume that those who say they are Christians are Christians, and to leave the sorting out of sheep and goats to Him.  

Proverbs 1, 1-6, Day 2. Jan 2nd

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 1 The Proverbs of Solomon son of David, king of Israel:

 2 for gaining wisdom and instruction;
   for understanding words of insight;
3 for receiving instruction in prudent behavior,
   doing what is right and just and fair;
4 for giving prudence to those who are simple,[a]
   knowledge and discretion to the young—
5 let the wise listen and add to their learning,
   and let the discerning get guidance—
6 for understanding proverbs and parables,
   the sayings and riddles of the wise.

And this is what the Proverbs are for:

For gaining wisdom and insight

And prudence for the simple-hearted

Learning what is right and just and fair

Giving knowledge and discretion to the young

Helping the wise become wiser

And the discerning receive guidance

I.e. They are for everyone, the simple, the wise, the young, the learned.

Lord, bless my reading of them.

The Christian's First Duty: Being Happy in Christ—George Mueller

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George Mueller



Hmm. I find this passage really interesting. I encountered it probably a few years ago, and legalistically followed it. 


Then, I thought it was a man-made rule not God’s, and went back to prayer before Scripture. But as Mueller observes, prayer can take up one’s entire allotted quiet time, and also, as Mueller says, it can take 10, 15, even 30 minutes before the mind stops wandering and begins to pray.

So, though my spirit often longs to pray and hear God’s voice “as the deer thirsts for living waters,” I think I am going to reverse the order, and begin with meditation on God’s word.

And next year, God willing, is going to be the year of God’s word for me, since I am starting a new big project–blogging through the entire Bible in a year. I start on Jan 1st. So help me, God!!

Food For the Inner Man – George Mueller

by George Mueller (1805-1898)

While I was staying at Nailsworth, it pleased the Lord to teach me a truth, irrespective of human instrumentality, as far as I know, the benefit of which I have not lost, though now…more than forty years have since passed away.
The point is this: I saw more clearly than ever, that the first great and primary business to which I ought to attend every day, to have MY SOUL HAPPY IN THE LORD. The first thing to be concerned about was not, how much I might serve the Lord, how I might glorify the Lord; but how I might get my soul into a happy state, and how my inner man might be nourished. For I might seek to set the truth before the unconverted, I might seek to benefit believers, I might seek to behave myself as it becomes a child of God in this world; and yet, not being happy in the Lord, and not being nourished and strengthened in my inner man day by day, all this might not be attended to in a right spirit.
Before this time my practice had been, at least for ten years previously, as a habitual thing, to give myself to prayer, after having dressed in the morning. Now I saw, that the most important thing I had to do was to give myself to the reading of the Word of God and to meditation on it, that thus my heart may be comforted, encouraged, warned, reproved, instructed; and that thus, whilst meditating, my heart might be brought into experimental communion with the Lord. I began therefore, to meditate on the New Testament, from the beginning, early in the morning.
The first thing I did, after having asked in a few words the Lord’s blessing upon His precious Word, was to begin to meditate on the Word of God; searching, as it were, into every verse, to get blessings out of it; not for the sake of the public ministry of the Word; not for the sake of preaching on what I had meditated upon; but for the sake of obtaining food for my own soul. The result I have found to be almost invariably this, that after a very few minutes my soul has been led to confession, or to thanksgiving, or to intercession, or to supplication; so that though I did not, as it were, give myself to prayer, but to meditation, yet it turned almost immediately more or less into prayer.
When thus I have been for awhile making confession, or intercession, or supplication, or have given thanks, I go on to the next words or verse, turning all, as I go on, into prayer for myself or others, as the Word may lead to it; but still continually keeping before me, that food for my own soul is the object of my meditation. The result of this is, that there is always a good deal of confession, my soul invariably is even sensibly nourished and strengthened and that by breakfast time, with rare exceptions, I am in a peaceful if not happy state of heart. Thus also the Lord is pleased to communicate unto me that which, very soon after, I have found to become food for other believers, though it was not for the sake of the public ministry of the Word that I gave myself to meditation, but for the profit of my own inner man.
The difference between my former practice and my present one is this. Formerly, when I rose, I began to pray as soon as possible, and generally spent all my time till breakfast in prayer, or almost all the time. At all events I almost invariably began with prayer. But what was the result? I often spent a quarter of an hour, or even an hour on my knees, before being conscious to myself of having derived comfort, encouragement, humbling of soul, etc.; and often after having suffered much from wandering of mind of the first ten minutes, or a quarter of an hour, or even half an hour, I only then began really to pray.
I scarcely ever suffer now in this way. For my heart being nourished by the truth, being brought into experimental fellowship with God, I speak to my Father, and to my Friend (vile though I am, and unworthy of it!) about the things that He has brought before me in His precious Word.
It often now astonishes me that I did not sooner see this. In no book did I ever read about it. No public ministry ever brought the matter before me. No private intercourse with a brother stirred me up to this matter. And yet now, since God has taught me this point, it is a plain to me as anything that the first thing the child of God has to do morning by morning is to obtain food for his inner man.
As the outward man is not fit for work for any length of time, except we take food, and as this is one of the first things we do in the morning, so it should be with the inner man. We should take food for that, as every one must allow. Now what is the food for the inner man: not prayer, but the Word of God: and here again not the simple reading of the Word of God, so that it only passes through our minds, just as water runs through a pipe, but considering what we read, pondering over it, and applying it to our hearts.
I dwell so particularly on this point because of the immense spiritual profit and refreshment I am conscious of having derived from it myself, and I affectionately and solemnly beseech all my fellow-believers to ponder this matter. By the blessing of God I ascribe to this mode the help and strength which I have had from God to pass in peace through deeper trials in various ways than I had ever had before; and after having now above forty years tried this way, I can most fully, in the fear of God, commend it. How different when the soul is refreshed and made happy early in the morning, from what it is when, without spiritual preparation, the service, the trials and the temptations of the day come upon one!
-George Mueller