Peace

Peace can be something as simple as "no conflict," which is definitely something that is worth working towards in many parts of our world today. Having the privilege of meeting many refugees while a pastor in the Montreal area, something as simple as having no conflict is a blessings many of us simply take for granted. Even if there is still hatred and anger, if there is a strong enough presence to make sure that violence is contained and the average person is safe, this peace would be a huge improvement over what exists in so many places this very day.

But the peace that Paul is  talking about as part of the Fruit of the Spirit is more of an inner peace, a way of being in a stress-filled, easily offended, and rights oriented culture or society. We live in a wonderful society where we are normally free to live out our faith and values and the government normally protects us in doing so, but there are elements of our society that make it difficult for many people to have an inner peace within themselves.

Jesus said, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.” The peace Jesus gives is the Jewish concept of peace or shalom. Shalom is about health and wholeness in relationships with God and others, it's about a sense of prosperity (not necessarily financial) and contentment, it's about integrity where what you believe, say and do all fit together in harmony, it's about well-being emotionally, mentally, spiritually and physically. It's about being able to be calm even when the world around you is going nuts. This peace comes from trust and faith in knowing that God is with you, that Jesus is in control and you can rely on the knowledge that his plans for you will help you be the person you've been created to be.

Peace does not mean that life will always go easy or well for you, peace is about how you handle and approach life during those times with a sense of inner peace, calmness and trust in God. Peace chases away fear and that sinking feeling in your stomach that comes from the knots of stress and anxiety. You can easily recognize those who have this kind of peace because they bring calmness and sureness into chaotic and stress filled situations. 

It does not come naturally for most people, but it is something that can grown, after all it is part of the Fruit of the Spirit and a fruit's characteristic is that it begins from a seed or bud and with the right environment and nutrients, it can, and will grow and ripen. What are you feeding your soul and spirit on to grow peace within? What environment are you living in or creating around you? Is it one that helps you cultivate peace? Who do you trust in, who do you place your faith in? How you answer these questions will lead you to a place where you too can find and have peace. Hint: look to Jesus.

Being a disciple of Jesus and joy

I wish I had a loonie (Canadian dollar) for every time someone asked my "Why do Christians always look so sober and grumpy?" Usually this question comes up after coming to church and seeing everyone sitting properly in rows, looking ahead, quiet and afraid to create any noise. Should a child make noise, all the person visiting sees is the child getting an elbow in the ribs to hush, or if the child is lucky a peppermint to keep them quiet, or really if they're really unlucky and mom or dad is grumpy that morning, they get marched out the back and downstairs where the child often becomes even louder. As one young man I was discipling told me, "Why would I ever want to become like them?" To be honest, I've sometimes thought the same thing after witnessing well meaning followers of Jesus who are passionate about God but so sober about life and seemingly scared of fun. Faith often seems to be all about seriousness and little about joy.

So then comes along Paul, a rather serious guy himself by all accounts, and he tells us that the second part of growing the fruit of the Spirit in us is growing joy! The website Theopedia describes joy this way, "Joy is a state of mind and an orientation of the heart. It is a settled state of contentment, confidence and hope. It is something or someone that provides a source of happiness. It appears 88 times in the Old Testament in 22 books; 57 times in the New Testament in 18 books.... Greek dictionary definition: chara, khar-ah'; cheerfulness, i.e., calm delight:--gladness" When you define joy this way, it makes sense considering who Jesus is and that he took our sin to the cross on our behalf so that our relationship with God the Father is made right again. We should be the most joyful people on earth and this should come out in how we approach life and the people in our life. 

Joy comes from knowing that God is in charge and we are not. It comes from knowing that Jesus loves us more than we can ever know. It comes from knowing that no matter what happens, the Holy Spirit is with us, understands what is going on and will never abandon us. It doesn't mean that God is going to make everything work out all the time the way we think things should work out, or that we won't experience suffering or pain; these things come with life, but we know that we don't face these things alone. Joy comes from having a faith community of people committed to following Jesus who have also committed to journeying through life together, looking out for each other, picking each other up when we fall, challenging us when we need to be challenged and encouraged when we need words of hope and grace. Joy comes from cultivating a spirit of contentment, seeing that everything we have has been given to us by God instead of concentrating on what we don't have. It's about learning to be grateful for all that we have and have been given. This is all about learning to see life through the eyes of God and in relationship with Jesus, meaning joy is something you can grow inside yourself; so grow it. 

Being a disciple and love

The first part of the Spirit's fruit in a follower of Jesus is the growth of love in their life. Now this is not Hollywood emotional love; this is the kind of love that the Apostle Paul talks about in his first letter to the Corinthians, "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects. always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails." This is the kind of love that God shows to us. He is patient with us, especially when we keep doing our thing instead of his. God is kind: he blesses us, he provides for us, he gives us his Spirit so we know we are never alone no matter what is happening in our lives. This is a special kind of kindness. God doesn't envy, he doesn't boast: God tells us who he is straight out and has no need to envy or boast because he is the creator of everything and everything belongs to him. God is not rude: go back to his kindness. God is not self seeking, he sent us his beloved Son for our sake, not his own, he sacrifices his most precious Son to pay the price of our sin. This ties into God protecting us from ourselves and from Satan. This is accomplished through giving us his Spirit to guide us and keep us pointed towards Jesus. God's love means he is not easily angered. It doesn't mean he doesn't get angry, he does: at sin and at death as we see in Jesus' tears at the grave of Lazarus, but he keeps his patience for us and controls his anger and so keeps no record of all the wrongs and sin we do because of Jesus' sacrifice on the cross. God definitely does not delight in evil, God definitely rejoices with the truth, he rejoices in his Son Jesus who is the truth. I love that love is about trusting and hoping and persevering because it shows that God desires an active living relationship with us. Jesus has trusted us with his mission of making disciples and growing his church. Jesus places the hope of the world in us as the church and he never gives up on us. God's love never fails as we see in the cross.
So what does this mean for us then? How do we love like this? It sounds impossible. I love my wife and family and dear friends, but I never even come close to loving like this. But this is why the image of fruit is so important. I may not love like this, but I have a goal now for what my love should look like. This is about giving my life to Jesus and allowing his Spirit to shape me, transform me more and more into the image of Jesus. I know I'm not always patient, just ask my wife and kids, but when I look at God's love, it makes me work on becoming more patient, and more kind and less self-centered, etc. By doing so, it will strengthen my relationships with my wife and kids and others, just as it strengthens my relationship with Jesus.
The hardest part is that Jesus not only calls us to love God with everything we are and have, but he also calls us to love each other, our neighbours and even our enemies in this very same way. So before you think you have loving down, stop and take a look at all your relationships. The painful part is that we also show how deep our love for God is through how we love each other and those we don't really like. So take a look at your love level and see where it's at. Don't let the level discourage you, but like it be the starting point of growing your level of love as you seek to grow the Fruit of the Spirit in your heart, soul and life and then watch God change you in wonderful ways.

The Work of the Holy Spirit in us

About a year and a half ago I began to think about how following Jesus is more than just reading about him, trying to be nice and believe all the right things, but that a big part of following Jesus is allowing the Holy Spirit to change us. I decided to use a passage in a letter that the Apostle Paul wrote to the churches in an area called Galatia as a guide to think about what it looks like to be changed by the Holy Spirit. The passage goes like this, "the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control." At that time I wrote about a number of these, but then I accepted a call to another church and this blog was kind of put to the side while my family and I moved and adjusted to a new church and community.
It was brought to my attention that I had this blog and I was encouraged by a number of people to pick this up again, so I have decided to once again try my hand at blogging. But there is another reason I've decided to begin again, and that is because as a church we have decided to start on a journey of church renewal, using a process and structure developed by the seminary of our church. As we've entered this journey, the thing that has struck me the most about church renewal is that it is about getting back to the basics: gospel telling and discipleship. The goal of gospel telling and discipleship is to make the Bible and our relationship with Jesus the center of everything we do as individuals and as a church, and to have a focused path of helping those in our church to grow into deeper and stronger disciples of Jesus. The Fruit of the Spirit that the Apostle Paul talks about here is one way we can tell that we are growing as followers of Jesus.
Faith is about what we believe, but it's also about who we believe in and how we allow that person to shape us and our lives. Since the one we have faith in is Jesus, I want to explore through the Fruit of the Spirit what it might look like when we allow Jesus through the Holy Spirit to shape our day to day lives. It's important to understand that we are not allowed to pick and choose which of these parts of the Fruit of the Spirit we will change in, it's all one fruit, not fruits, so it is expected that in each of these areas we are going to allow the Spirit to change us. One last thought for today, it is not a passive thing we are engaging in as we allow the Holy Spirit to change us, we are called to throw all our energy into partnering with the Holy Spirit in the changes he is working in us.
Next time I will do some thinking about love as a part of the Fruit of the Spirit and over the weeks and months ahead, I'll tackle each one of the others as well. There are some I am really looking forward to reflecting on, but I will be honest and admit that there are some that the Holy Spirit and I have a lot to work on yet and these I'm not as eager to explore, but that is all part of continuing to grow as a follower of Jesus.

Change, a part of life

Wow! It's been a long time since I've written something here. I took a break because of a huge change my family and I have made. In November of last year some of my family and I left a beloved church family in Montreal to begin a new journey with a new church family in Stony Plain, Alberta. As one experienced pastor advised, "Be careful about blogging because your heart will come out and you do not want to hurt those you've left and those you are joining by allowing your conflicted heart to come out, and it will." He was so right, it has been a conflicted time, greatly missing old friends, but at the same time excited about the challenges in a new church family.
This past weekend I had an opportunity to revisit and worship in Montreal and it was a wonderful time. It was great to see old friends and participate in worship with them, and it was so good to see how the ministry is carrying on and the Lord is blessing them. It made leaving them to return to Stony Plain much easier. The hard part of leaving Montreal now is leaving our children behind, an occupational hazard for pastors! Yet a corner has been turned inside me, it was an opportunity to finally let go of the old and fully embrace the new with the blessings of the old making me appreciative of both.
As I walk forward with this beautiful new church family called Hope, it makes me aware of both the difficulty and blessing of change. Change has already come to Hope because I've come, but my own heart wrestling has made me sensitive to how many may also be experiencing conflicted hearts through the changes that have come and are coming. But I have also learnt that through it all God is with us, reassuring us that through it all we are not alone and he is working the change for our good and to help us better be his presence here. I am excited about what lies ahead as we walk together, exploring who God is calling us to be and to become.
Next week I will return to reflecting on the rest of what it is to grow the fruit of the Spirit in our lives, this week I simply wanted to give you a glimpse of the journey God has placed my family and I on.

Fruit of the Spirit: Peace

Peace, something so much of our world isn't experiencing right now. Peace is so much more than just the absence of conflict, though for many in places like Syria, that would be a wonderful beginning, peace is often about what's going on, or not going on inside us. I believe that much of the violence and war in our world is due to a lack of peace within those who embrace or engage in violence in order to gain what they hope will bring them peace inside.
I am often surprised at how many followers of Jesus lack inner peace and struggle with so many things inside and the ways it comes out in addictions, bitterness, anger, despair and lack of self love. I have found that many of those who cannot find peace find it difficult to trust God completely, find it hard to forgive others or themselves because they feel God is not fair and hasn't punished those who've hurt them sufficiently. Many struggle with worry about what lies ahead, others with selfishness because they want life to go their way instead of trusting in God when things don't turn out the way they want. I will confess that many of my times of inner struggle and unrest come when my trust in God's wisdom and work in my life becomes weak because they're not going the way I've wanted and planned for.
Some allow anger at others or at life in general to simmer inside because it gives them a feeling of righteousness, while others nurture bitterness as a way of affirming the injustice in life and are unable to forgive because they find it hard to confess their own sin and experience God's forgiveness. When stuff like this sits inside your heart, it poisons your spirit and soul, making it hard to seek peace or pursue because ultimately you've decided that God and Jesus is not enough for you and so you cannot find peace.
In Isaiah, there's a reference to a coming Prince of Peace whom we believe is Jesus Christ. I read a quote that says, "Peace does not come without sacrifice" and it struck me how true that is. Much of our lack of peace comes from our dysfunctional relationship with God that comes out in our lack of trust and refusal to allow Jesus to really shape our lives through his teaching, life and his sacrifice so that we might have peace with God. It took Jesus' sacrifice on the cross for our sin to bring that peace with God and bring about the events that culminated with the gift of the Holy Spirit.
I've come to realize that at some point you need to choose to trust God, to trust that the Prince of Peace can and will give you his peace. You have to become so tired of your own stuff and come to a realization that by not submitting yourself completely to God you have only hurt yourself, prevented yourself from experiencing God's peace and have likely negatively impacted the peace of others too. The reality is that you live in community with others and who you are impacts others. Yet Jesus continues to offer you his peace; peace with God, peace within your own soul, peace with others as Jesus' peace soaks deep into your heart, soul and mind. God is faithful and wants nothing more than to have you experience his love, joy and peace. 

Fruit of the Spirit: Joy

Joy, you would figure that anyone who calls their message the "Gospel" which means "Good News"would be the most joy-filled people around and yet this so often isn't the case. Go figure. Yet the most mature followers of Jesus I know all seem to have this sense of contentment and joy in life, which makes sense since joy is one part of the Fruit of the Spirit, a sign of maturity in life and in faith.
Joy is something wonderful but not always easy to experience or even to cultivate when life hasn't gone the way you have wanted or worked for. During times of deep sadness and distress, during times of loss or hurt or abuse, the idea of experiencing joy may even seem obscene. Yet joy is important and that it's important to know that it needs to be rooted in God, not your circumstances in life. Joy comes from knowing that God has saved you from a meaningless life that leads to nothingness, that he provides for you, protects you, chooses you as his child, and even loves you. This is the heart of the Gospel, this is the heart of Jesus' message and why he came. Joy is not so much a feeling as it is a confidence in life that no matter what is happening, you are not alone and it is not meaningless or pointless because it's shaping who you are as a person. Joy comes from knowing knowing God is with you no matter what is going on in your life, which allows even the most unhappy and even unjust circumstances to shape you into a more compassionate, and strong person more ready to reach out to others walking in their own hurts and time of injustice with understanding, support and grace. 
Hard times come and it's during those times that you discover how real your faith is and how much strength you receive from your faith because God is walking with you, reminding you through the Holy Spirit that you are not alone. When my sister died at 18, I was surprised that at her funeral that I could laugh at some of the memories that were shared. Yet it doesn't surprise me any longer because it happened with family and friends around in community, it happened with the words of Scripture reminding us that Toni is with the Lord, and it happened because I knew God was there and the sorrow would soften, never go away completely, but soften and God would not abandon us. I can say, looking back, that even at that terrible time, there was joy, not happy, but joy that showed up as a reassurance of God's love and compassion expressed through his people.
I'm reminded that joy comes from knowing and believing in Jesus as the Son of God, as our Redeemer and as our friend, and this leads to being filled with joy as Peter says in his first letter, "you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls."  Joy is closely tied to faith and hope because of our relationship with God, a way of approaching life and the world with a focus on Jesus Christ and our relationship with him. My joy is based on what Jesus has done for his people and his commitment to us, giving me the strength I need to live life well as a follower of Jesus no matter what my circumstances may be. May you live a joy-filled life.