“Do
not harden your hearts……”
It has arrived at last!
The centenary of the 1904 Revival.
There will be much celebration, much prayer and much hope that Revival
will happen again. But what is God going to do, in response to our
activities?
However I really want to ask a
different question, “What
are we going to do in response to God and His love?”
It all depends on the state of our hearts, so now is the time to examine
them. The matter of hard
hearts occurs several times in the scriptures. In
the Old Testament, the children of Israel were forced to spend forty years
wandering in the wilderness because they didn’t trust God to lead them into
the promised land. Psalm 95
gives a summary of the situation and says that the result will be, “They
shall not enter into My rest”. We
are in danger of the same outcome because we cannot receive what we don’t
believe in.
So let us today “Listen to His
voice” and consider what it means to “Harden our hearts”.
During the last few months these expressions have come frequently to mind
and I believe that God is saying that the Church today does not really believe
what the Bible tells us! It
believes in a way based on our academic understanding, else we could not call
ourselves Christians, but it does not believe that the Holy Spirit can act in
power, in us or through us. The
Church knows plenty about the Holy Spirit but it does not know Him, or the
freedom that could come if He had His way in our hearts.
It
was in reading about the incident of Jesus walking on the water in Mark’s
gospel, that I realised that when Jesus got into the boat and the wind dropped
the disciples were amazed, “for
they had not
understood about the loaves; their hearts were hardened.”(Mark 6:52)
This event happened just after the feeding of the five thousand.
Now we can understand the amazement in terms of walking on the water
(Peter also walked on the water in Matthew’s version) but the lack of
understanding was about the way the five loaves were sufficient for five thousand, plus women and
children. The disciples
had distributed this food, they had collected up the left-overs and yet they had
not absorbed the implications of God’s power manifested in Jesus.
The question of hardened hearts comes up again in Mark 8:14ff when
the subject of bread is raised again, and Jesus said, “Do you still not
perceive or understand? Are
your hearts hardened? Do
you have eyes, and fail to see?
Do you have ears, and fail to hear?”
(NRSV)
It is interesting that Mark next records
the healing of a blind man and then soon afterwards Jesus asks the disciples who
they think he is. Peter has a
flash revelation of the
truth, “You are the
Christ”. Clearly
he does not yet understand, else he would not need the further rebuke,
“Get behind me, Satan! You
do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men.” (Mark 8:33
NIV)
If we dare to compare our understanding
we too will fall short, as did those first disciples. Jesus spent three years living with, and teaching those
disciples, and although he promised to build the Church on Peter, the rock, they
were not ready. HoweverJesus
did entrust them with the task because he promised them help “…But the
Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you
everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you……….” (John
14:26 NRSV) If the
early Church needed the Holy Spirit then we most certainly do.
Understanding can indeed come as we study
the Bible, but we must make sure that we read it with the guidance of the Holy
Spirit and with complete trust in Him.
We will then be welcomed into God’s rest as we allow Him to change our
hearts, they must not remain hard. Let
us start on the scriptures that refer to the Holy Spirit so that we might truly
believe all the Bible teaches about Him, and come to know Him.
For He is the real Gift to us bringing with Him the power that we
so much want to see at work in the world.
But understanding the teaching is not necessarily believing.
We have to meditate on the passages, pray into them
“hear, read, mark, learn and inwardly digest them” as
our Prayer Book would say. (collect for Advent 2)
This issue seems to be all about the Power
of God. As I’ve said
before I do not plan the magazine it just happens that a theme evolves.
I trust however that we shall all gain some clearer picture of the Renewal
that Jesus wants in His Church. Renewal
is understood differently by various Christians and attempts to explain it seem
to lead to more confusion rather than less.
For me it means a “Normal Christian Life” * with the
Holy Spirit being a major part of the scene.
Jesus made it very clear that we needed Him, not just His help in running
the Church. We need the
power that Jesus manifested in the feeding of the five thousand and which Peter
was offered as he was called to walk on the water.
So I am pleased that Paul Thompson has
responded to Chris Webb’s article “Renewing Renewal” (issue
33), and I welcome the contribution by Lawrence Hoyle, the man behind the
formation of ARM. Clearly
God thought it necessary to give him a vision for the Anglican Church in
Renewal. We in ARM(Wales) are
still seeking to clarify our vision for the future but I believe God is speaking
and our hearts must not be hardened.
We also have excellent contributions from our vice-chairman Peter Bement
and from Bob Pitcher and Roy Godwin, so may we hear God speak as we read on.
*
“A Normal Christian Life” by Watchman Nee, is a study based on Paul’s
letter to the Romans
Mary Newsom