Perspectives with Rev. James Tripp

 

"Have Faith in God"Jesus the Christ

In the gospel of Mark (11:22) Jesus commands His disciples to “Have faith in God.” The God Jesus is referring to is the God who reveals Himself in nature (Romans 1:20) and the Bible, and was with them in Christ.

To have faith in God as Jesus is commanding, is to have a certain kind of relationship with God that determines your lifestyle. (2 Corinthians 5:9; Hebrews 10:38) It is this relational lifestyle that makes all the difference between the way the those who have faith in God live, and the way those who do not have faith in God live. 

The way we live is always influenced and defined by the relationships we have (or do not have), because the human creature is created to live in community. Before sin God was an appreciated and loved participant in the human community. 

The gospel calls us back to the love and appreciation of the God who is, and His defining presence in our lives; it calls us back to the joy of being in community with God.

The difference between the life of a believer and the life of an unbeliever, is determined by the actuality of having faith in God, or not. 

As such, when faith in God is possessed it affects every aspect of the life of the possessor, beginning with ones primary, or governing, reason for living; i.e. that reason for living to which all other reasons within one’s life must be subordinate. (as a meditation, read Ecclesiastes 12:13, then read the whole short book of Ecclesiastes)

We are not here only addressing God’s reason for your life, but also that reason for living that you assign to your life as a free moral agent. 

The primary reason for living that attends the actuality of having faith in God may be comprehended in the confession of 2 Corinthians 5:l4-15. Consider this text in confessional form: “For the love of Christ compels me, because I judge thus: that if One died for me, then I died; and He died for me, that I who live should live no longer for myself, but for Him who died for me and rose again.

This scripture is teaching the believer how to think about the meaning and course of his own life; and it is the reciprocated love of Christ (1 John 4:19), not human logic, that leads the rationality of this thinking. 

In response to the love Jesus has demonstrated toward us, our love for Jesus should result in the reasoning and conclusion presented in this bible verse; if we actually love Jesus this will make sense to us. 

As Christians Divinely endowed with the God kind of love (Romans 5:5), we reason from our love, not to it; as concerns both God and man. This is contained in Jesus’ two Great Commandments. (Matt 22:37-40)  

In the greatest commandment we are told to love God with the totality of our “heart,” “soul” and “mind.” (notice that the word “all” is applied severally to each faculty of loving) 

The question we are challenged with is “do I express my love for God in all my affections, all my choices, my way of thinking about things, how I feel about things, and all that I enjoy in living?”

Again, the love that we are to reason from is the God kind of love as revealed and defined in scripture. The God kind of love is communicated to the Christian by the Holy Spirit (Rom 5:5); it is not natural human love that disrespects holiness and justice, and is selfish and self serving. 

The kind of thinking, and lifestyle, compelled by the God kind of love, is a purpose of Christ’s vicarious death. May this purpose be fulfilled in each one of us and the Christian community as a whole, and may it be the testimony to the world that our Lord desires. (John 13:35)

Rev. George T. Frey, 

Faith Christian Center 

Morrisburg

 

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This N' that

As I sit here at my desk in the bay window, my mind is on so many things that I can’t seem to move forward. The way I see it, that’s not a good way to start holiday time. But then perhaps that’s precisely the time to begin holidays.

When you read this Dave and I will be on holidays. We will have a chance to visit our son and his family in southwestern Ontario. We will be taking some time to get together with friends we haven’t seen for some time. 

And of course, the highlight of this time of rest and relaxation will be the annual cleaning of the chimney!

My husband, like so many others I know, has an extreme dislike of heights. He gets uncomfortable on the first step of a two-step step stool. So needless to say, I get to climb onto the roof of our house, chimney cleaning brushes in hand, and I clean the chimney.

There have been many people who look at me and shake their heads wondering why on earth I would do that. 

Well, truth be known, I love climbing onto the roof of the house. There is a sense of freedom that I get when I am high above the ground – although on the roof of the house I’m not that high above the ground since it’s a bungalow. 

I love the feeling that I get when I can stand up and look at the surrounding countryside. I see so many things that I can’t see when my feet are planted on the ground.

As a kid I loved to climb trees – the higher the better. The feeling that I got was probably not unlike the feeling the builders of the Tower of Babel got when they felt that they were approaching God. The excitement, the peace in my heart and the freedom are some of the feelings I would experience. 

In my mind being that close to God, having one of those “thin” times was always part of the climbing experience. 

Coming down to earth was not always easy – sometimes it was painful. Regardless of how painful the return was, I never lost my desire to climb, to go to places higher. 

I guess that’s why doing the outside part of the chimney cleaning is not a chore for me. Besides, it’s the easy part. Dave gets the mess and challenge of the inside part with all the soot!

Cheers, Sue+

 

Rev. Sue McCullough

Anglican Parish of Morrisburg, Iroquois & Riverside Heights

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