DEEPER SPIRITUALITY

I don’t normally share like this so please excuse me for being a bit more personal than I am normally in these Pastor’s Desks. Last Sunday morning I awoke with a strong sense that I needed to incorporate the vision of Ezekiel’s Temple as a framework for us to think about our year ahead in my sermon for that day. I had to re-jig my presentation (which as you might be aware involves a bit more work than they way most other preachers do their slides). This is why I arrived at church a little later than I normally comfortable in doing. I was particularly gripped by this divine vision given to Ezekiel of the Holy Spirit’s outpouring in the New Covenant with Christ Himself being the Temple-Source (John 2:19-21). While I was preaching to our church community (in-person and online) I was also preaching to myself. As a result, Kim and I continued  in prayer and fasting for the rest of our Sunday. I now want to invite you to consider again Ezekiel’s picture of the Spirit-filled Christian life as the map for going deeper with God.

“FORMAL” CHRISTIANITY IS LIFELESS, POWERLESS, AND BORING

It’s my guess that most people regard Christianity as an outdated institution that is largely irrelevant. Sadly, I suspect that too many people who would consider themselves Christians regard Christianity as merely about them and their particular religious observances such as: attending church services, participating in the Eucharist (also referred to as Holy Communion, the Lord’s Supper), and performing other religious observances such as lighting prayer candles or contributing to the church’s weekly collection. In the words of the apostle Paul, these people might have a “form” of Christianity but they do not know God or His power in their lives (2Tim. 3:5). Having a form of Christianity like this, but never having experienced the power of the Holy Spirit in transforming your soul into the image and likeness of Christ is a rather lifeless form of Christianity. If that’s where you’re at, I invite you to go deeper into the water of God and seek to experience more of the power of the Holy Spirit (Eph. 3:19). 

And do not get drunk with wine,
for that is debauchery,
but be filled with the Spirit
Ephesians 5:18

In Ezekiel’s vision of the New Covenant which Yahweh revealed to him, he saw it as a ‘Temple’ twice the size of Solomon’s Temple with a headwater of the Holy Spirit’s life-giving, soul-transforming, miracle-working ‘water’ flowing out from under the Temple’s east door’s threshold Ezek. 47:1). The further that water traveled east, the deeper it got, and in the vision, Ezekiel was invited to walk further and deeper into it. This was a picture of what it’s like to walk with Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit (Rom. 15:13, 19; 1Cor. 2:4; Eph. 3:16). Coincidentally, the eastward direction from the Jerusalem Temple is largely dry wilderness, then desert. But Ezekiel is shown that wherever the water of the Holy Spirit goes, what was once barren becomes lush and fertile (Ezek. 47-8-9). This is a challenging picture that reveals that the purpose of the Spirit-filled life is not for the believer’s amusement, but for the empowering of the believer’s response to Christ’s summons to take the hope of rescue and soul-healing to a people lost a harsh world of barren spiritual darkness (Acts 26:18).

GO DEEPER IN YOUR CHRISTIANITY

How does Ezekiel’s vision of the New Covenant (Christianity) expect the faithful to go deeper? It begins with surrender and living to make God, His Word, and His will our highest priority (Matt. 6:33; Rom. 12:1-3). While formal Christianity is all about external appearance, real Christianity is a matter of the inner-life of the believer. The true believer is being transformed by the Holy Spirit who abides in them (Jn. 14:17). The Holy Spirit takes us deeper by transforming our priorities, our passions, our past-times, our praying, and especially our concern for people. The Spirit-filled life is a life walking daily with Christ with our spiritual ears attentive to His voice and leading.

It is no mere coincidence that both the Holy Spirit (Jn. 7:38-39) and the Word of God (Eph. 5:26) are depicted as water. Both are indispensable for going deeper with God (Jn. 3:5). Both relate to how we pray. The Spirit leads the faithful to pray (Eph. 6:18). When a new believer starts out in their new life with Christ they learn that they can talk with God (Gal. 4:6). The Spirit invites the child of God into the Father’s presence to talk freely with Him (Heb. 4:16). As this new believer becomes a seasoned believer they discover while we continue to talk freely with our heavenly Father, we must also appreciate that our Father is the King, the King of the Universe, the All-Mighty King and Judge (Mat. 25:31-46; Rev. 20:12). The Spirit opens our eyes to this awareness of the magnitude of God. The growing awareness of the Father’s greatness increasingly transforms our prayers into petitions for the eternal destiny of people (Rom. 8:26; Col. 1:29) because we walk deeper into the eastward flowing water of the Holy Spirit. 

Don’t wait for a prayer meeting to begin praying. Don’t wait for your next Bible Study to take up God’s Word and feed your soul. The deeper life begins now. Pray now. Take up God’s Word now. Be a witness now. May God the Father grant us a greater revelation of God the Son by the power of God the Holy Spirit.

¶ The Spirit and the Bride say,“Come.”
And let the one who hears say, “Come.”
And let the one who is thirsty come;
let the one who desires take the water of life without price.
Revelation 22:17

Amen.

Your pastor,

Andrew

Let me know what you think below in the comment section and feel free to share this someone who might benefit from this Pastor’s Desk.

WATER!

I’m busy. But despite my busyness there some things I just have to make time for. Watering is one of them. Even before I managed a plant nursery for a few years I had developed a love for a nicely landscaped garden. If you’ve been one of the many visitors to our home you will have noticed that in the eight years we have lived there we have transformed our barren patch of dirt to a nicely landscaped feature native garden with an ornamental feature weeping Silver Birch tree in the middle of a winding pathway which leads to our front door. On the other side of this pathway is my lawn. It is lush green with a minimal number of weeds. But recently I realised that I’d made a big mistake which has a powerful spiritual application.

¶ He is like a tree
planted by streams of water
that yields its fruit in its season,
and its leaf does not wither.
In all that he does, he prospers.

Psalm 1:3

During what has been one of the hottest Summer’s that we’ve ever had, I have consistently watered this garden and lawn with a sprinkler on a timer system. But this is not our only garden feature. Just off my driveway we have a pond surrounded by my beloved man-ferns. Nearby our pond we have two plantings of Kim’s favourite tree, Japanese Maples (perhaps due to her time as an exchange student in Japan), and a large Rhododendron. This area hasn’t received the attention that my front lawn area has because Tasmania’s world-famous normal rainfall levels have been more than adequate for keeping these plants well watered. But last week I noticed that the grass around my pond area wasn’t very green – in fact, it wasn’t anything, except dead!  I then took a closer look at our prized miniature Japanese Maples and I noticed that they had dropped a lot of leaves and some of their small branches had now become dead-wood.

¶ O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you;
my soul thirsts for you;
my flesh faints for you,
as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.

Psalm 63:1

Even before today’s water restrictions were enacted, I decided to begin hand-watering this parched area of my garden. But I noticed that the water wasn’t penetrating the ground. Because I had not kept up a consistent daily watering of this area two things happened: (i) plants and grass began to die of thirst, and (ii) the ground supporting these plants and grass had become resistant to the very thing it needed!

Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

John 4:13-14

THE VALUE AND COST OF CONSISTENT WATERING

Quite a few years ago we experienced the financial cost of not watering the grass and plants around our house. We had recently moved to Tasmania from Melbourne and had rented out our house there. We had entrusted our house to the management of a local real estate agent. Unfortunately for us, neither the real estate agent or the tenants gave any attention or care to watering the grass and plants around the house. The cost of this only became apparent to us the day the real estate agent rang us to say that one of our external walls had a major crack in it. The lack of watering had caused the ground to become unstable and undermined the foundations of the house. The cost of neglecting to water regularly was many many thousands of dollars!

that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the Word

Ephesians 5:26

SPIRITUAL WATERING

A close-up of my parched ground around my pond. From a distance it looks like it has a tinge of green – but distant looks can be misleading.

Considering my side-garden in its present state and its now reluctance to absorb the water it so desperately needs, I considered the spiritual parallels. Perhaps some of us too have neglected to regularly water our souls with the water of God’s Word.

“For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their Shepherd,
and He will guide them to springs of living water,
and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

Revelation 7:17

Our souls need watering. We are created to drink in the Living Water that God alone is able to give. Each day our soul craves the gentle showering of God’s refreshing living water.  Just like the soil around my small pond, even though we are close to water it does not mean that we are actually being watered. Without regular spiritual watering of our souls the surface of our souls becomes hardened and ironically resistant to living water! It is possible to be a follower of Christ who has become spiritually parched due to a lack of regular watering from God’s Word. The spiritually parched follower of Christ may appear to still have a green tinge, but upon closer examination, they are parched, dried out, and hardened. They have lost their thirst for God and His Living Water, which inevitably leads to a lack of desire to come to the Well (the assembling of their local church). Even when such a parched believer attempt to open their Word and find water for their soul, they are so parched and hardened by the distractions of life that Christ described in Matthew 13 (the cares and pleasures of life, the lusts of the flesh, the distractions of the world) that even this life-giving water which their soul craves cannot initially be absorbed in until they have done what every gardener knows needs doing.

Sow for yourselves righteousness;
reap steadfast love;
break up your fallow ground,
for it is the time to seek the LORD,
that He may come and rain righteousness upon you.

Hosea 10:12

 Despite my parched ground’s resistance to my watering with my trigger-nozzled hose, each night after dinner when I had returned from nightly walk with Poppy, I would shower my plants and ground. Night after night I persisted. Even after a week there was still not much to show for my efforts, but I knew that something was happening where it mattered most – beneath the surface. Sometimes when we are spiritually parched and dried-out we have to persist with our watering and keep doing what our soul needs even though it looks like the surface of our souls is showing very little benefit. Just like persistent watering of a parched lawn, the most important transformation and healing is taking place beneath the surface. In this case, the believer who has neglected the Word of God’s Living Water may read a chapter of Scripture and then intellectually wonder what benefit it was while all along their soul is beginning to reawaken.

And He said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment.”

Revelation 21:6

Tasmania is currently in the grip of a dangerous drought. I suspect that this is a portend of where many who name the Name as their Saviour are at spiritually. Compromise, neglect, distraction, all lead to a spiritual drought. And as we are seeing now, when such conditions prevail the risk of destruction greatly increases. May we at this dangerous time take care to water our souls with the Living Water of God’s Word and soften the grounds of our hearts so that we bear fruit for our Betrothed. No matter how busy we are, let’s water our souls. See you at the Well this Sunday.

Ps. Andrew Corbett

The Cost of Clean Water

World leaders are using interesting language to stress how important and urgent they feel human-induced climate change is. Words such as "morality" are being used now in the climate-change vocabulary. Interestingly, some Christian thinkers, such Jay Wesley Richards, are raising some reasonable questions about this language and alleged importance. He questions the priorities of world leaders who ignore very resolvable issues such as making drinkable water available to those who currently have undrinkable water supplies. He says that at an estimated cost to the global economy of $T700 to implement the Kyoto Protocols, the other costs (economic, social) would be enormous while the benefits would only be around a fraction of a degree in cooling global temperatures.
For less than 1% of the cost of implementing Kyoto the entire world could have clean drinking water.