By Pastor Jon
I awoke today after a rather vividly weird dream, doing my best to cast-off the lingering effects.
It was like I was still inside the ideas that had been pumping and reverberating inside my rapid eye movement, even as my pupils were very much standing to their own attention. I am not sure if you have been there. I would think you have. Rather like a disruptive vibe of an impending sense of the day-before, on the day-after. Simple really.
And as we calendar in the West, today, January 31st is the final day of a singular year, right before another begins afresh like it has never been before.
I have previously recorded these words online from John Piper, which highlight the significance of the ordering of our days, and not only in how we should approach each new year, but every new day:
“For me, the end of a year is like the end of my life. And 11:59 p.m. Wednesday night will be like the moment of my death. The 365 days of 1980 are like a miniature lifetime.”
To be sure, to be sure (Insert: spoken with a very poor Irish accent), 2019 promises to be a year unlike any other.
And that is not even a stretch of a statement. After all, you and I have yet to live anything like it. It’s twenty-nineteen. New horizon. It is fast approaching. With all manner of manic, no doubt, but I really should only speak of my children. And I don’t mean this with any faux sentiment.
Yet, if we get seriously intentional about the moments we live, the shape will be outstanding.
Here is the small print.
The life… the-Jesus-following-life you want to positively happen, does not just happen. Boom. Said it before. Will say it again. This lyric works because it is the truth. We too easily go through the motions, not realising the stealing of time this type of disposition freely gives by taking away.
Why? Because life can not follow-through without the right type of grace-based grit.
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In the past week or so, as we have celebrated the birth of the Saviour of the world in a John 3:16 sense, our family has been reminded again of the reality of death.
The most recent was a man of 54 in our street, literally preparing for an early retirement. That is no line. We do our best to encourage community, so this was pretty shocking. The second passing on Christmas Day, and the third, if you count this piece.
Today, on the last day of 2018, two people in our larger orbit will have their life remembered and celebrated, but with what we believe will be contrasting destinations, if you take the words of Scripture seriously, which we do.
We live in a broken world that sobers you quickly to the fundamental need of humanity, and that is the reconciling wholeness of finding home, because our record has become His. How we practically long for this in our present disturbance. In this unfolding pursuit, we are too often only those doing our best to madly locate life in what amounts to an overcrowded and well-stuffed existential attic of unsuccessful ways of finding meaning and flourishing, which we finally just can’t let go-of, until these are ripped from our grasp. Brutal.
This reminder of death should help to sweep away any pretension about our own garbage time, to use a basketballing metaphor. It really is the second-best option. The trash-heap has spoken, to channel the Fraggle Rock puppetry animation of one’s youth.
You can not hoard life for a rainy day. Today is the day of salvation.
Tomorrow could be glorification
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As you likely know by now, this day marks the final precipice before the year of RELOVUTIONARY.
The calendar does not lie. It is a New Year full of much change and challenge. The “apart-from-me-you-can-not-do-anything” only grows louder when all normative ways and means have been reduced to rubble.
“God, this is yours!” becomes much more than our spiritual sloganeering with friends.
Age should already inform that any sense this would be easy is a fool’s piece of gold-painted bedrock. Put yourself to sleep on that pillow. Knock-out. This present life; with the world, the flesh, and the devil mean growth and journey never amount to a rest-home existence. More like resistance.
Therefore, we each stand before our Everest, knowing there is only one way we will survive this looming year; this impending catastrophe. The Saviour made me do it. And He graciously will, to His good end.
Yet, maybe paradoxically with these recent lines, we can be excitedly animated about the precipice. And we should be! We should be humbly curious about how the Creator will art His clay between our mortal frame.
We know His talent is never lacking for options, even if there is some of that resistance from our own stupidity. I speak very much for myself!
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Each day of our lives has helped to prepare us for this.
What has God identified as your this, which was simply then, but should increasingly become now? You know, in 2019? Tomorrow. One-day-at-a-time works until that priority leads to a maturation minority. I know; that creativity will only work for some, so let me affirm that a bad habit is pressing repeat.
Cultural Value: “Life as Process Means Small Steps in the Same Direction over an Increasing Period of Time.”
No offense, but life happens, which means we can be entirely passive, and each is a 3D extravaganza of activity, so we rarely get to rest and rinse like we have servants. To flip this script, we easily become passive as a hostile takeover of other priorities leaves us breathless. There is no condemnation, only consideration. For your good. His glory. Such as in these words:
“O LORD, make me know my end and what is the measure of my days; let me know how fleeting I am!” (Psalm 39:4. Also, Philippians 1:21; James 4:13-15)
RELOVUTIONARY is really an intentional undertaking that the rebellion against the rebellion must start afresh. Doing nothing is doing something that has not been anywhere enough; conceptual confusion, withstanding. It will not suffice. You may not share our conceptual pretension, even if you do the general conviction.
Tomorrow we begin the process with an increasing detail helping to discipline positive intentionality, reflective of our values, and God’s priority. This is for your benefit, so we invite you to make this part of your process. We invite; that word again; invite you to join a daily Bible Reading program that the Lead Pastor has road-tested through every day of 2018, and which we will be daily posting online, so you just have to stay-close to keep-up-with-this-play.
On that note, HAPPY NEW 2019!
This is the Year of RELOVUTIONARY!
God willing, how this will actually translate will demand a much larger piece in about 12 months time. Today, we can only project. Whatever, it will be by grace, through faith, in the power of the Holy Spirit, each and every day.
Be resolved in the process, as Jesus was in His!
We will soon download.
Like less than 24. Think hours and not a TV serial.
For the Fame of His Name