Tyndale Chapel Podcast

Welcome everybody. Welcome to Abide on this cold, crisp day in my world, January day. I'm reminded of a conversation I had earlier this week with a friend, Matthew Shaw, a student here at Tyndale, shout out to Matthew. As we were speaking, we were, he brought up this beautiful hymn. Maybe some of you know it. “What a friend we have in Jesus.” And we were just talking about what a privilege it is that we can come to Jesus and he can carry our burdens and we can give it all to him, like what a gift. And that is what this time in Abide is about, is setting aside a space, setting aside a time where we can connect with this friend where we get to give all of our burdens and cares. And so I'm just going to read you this old hymn and let you enjoy it with me today. There's three verses and it goes like this:

What a friend we have in Jesus,
all our sins and griefs to bear!
What a privilege to carry
everything to God in prayer!
O what peace we often forfeit,
O what needless pain we bear,
all because we do not carry
everything to God in prayer.
Have we trials and temptations?
Is there trouble anywhere?
We should never be discouraged;
take it to the Lord in prayer!
Can we find a friend so faithful
who will all our sorrows share?
Jesus knows our every weakness;
take it to the Lord in prayer!
Are we weak and heavy laden,
cumbered by a load of care?
Precious Saviour, still our refuge--
take it to the Lord in prayer!
Do thy friends despise, forsake thee?
Take it to the Lord in prayer!
In his arms he'll take and shield thee;
thou wilt find solace there.

And so let's begin to settle into our spaces of quiet. Whether that's a walk for you or seated in a room with the door closed. Whether you have a cup of tea or a candle lit, or you're gazing out the window. Let's get settled into this time that we’re setting aside to be with our friend. So let's just take a gentle inhale through the nose, just settling the body down into this present space, and exhaling out.

And let's just begin this time of prayer, knowing first and foremost that we belong to God. We are His beloved. So, we're going to breathe in, “I belong to God.” And breathe out, “I am God's beloved.” And again, breathe in, “I belong to God. And I am God's beloved.”

Today, we're going to begin with reading the Scriptures, and then we'll close our time in prayer with our gratitude practice. So, if you're here with me often, it might feel a little different. But we are in the book of Ephesians. And once again, it's a letter. It's a letter that was written by Paul while he was in prison, and he sent it. And this letter is for us. And so, you know, as you're settled into your space, you get given this letter and we get to open it up. And this is God's word for us. He is going to speak to us now, our friend, our beloved. And so, as we read these words and ponder them, let's receive them as personal words to us from God. And so, I'm going to read from Ephesians 2:1-10.

As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and he seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages we might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by work, so that no one can boast. For we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

Just allow yourself to receive this word, to hold this letter in your hand. To be reminded that Jesus Christ is sitting with you now, is sitting with me now, and is giving us this word today.

I'm going to read through the passage again. But I'm going to read it in the Message version written by Eugene Peterson. But before we read this letter once again, we're going to breathe in that prayer again, because maybe we got distracted and we, we forgot who we are and why we're here. I easily get distracted so we're going to breathe in, “We belong to God and we are his beloved.” “We belong to God.” Breathe it in. “And we are God’s beloved.”

Here's this letter once again:

It wasn't so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin. You let the world, which doesn't know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience. We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, and when we felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat. It's a wonder God didn't lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us. Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, he embraced us. He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ. He did all this on his own, with no help from us! Then he picked us up and he set us down in highest heaven in company with Jesus, our Messiah.

Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower, grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him, trust him enough to let him do it. It's God's gift from start to finish! We don't play the major role. If we did, we'd probably go around bragging that we'd done the whole thing! No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and the saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.

Let's focus our wandering thoughts and minds again in this breath. Breathing in, “I belong to God.” Exhaling out, “I am God's beloved.”

In this time of prayer, in this Abide podcast time, we're, we're learning how to pray. We're learning how to cultivate space for God and allowing it to change us, mold us, shape us. And ultimately fall deeper into this love that God keeps reminding us about. And I'm thinking about the stages that prayer has, and you know, just now we, we read the Scriptures, sort of stage 1. He begins talking to us with these words and the scriptures, so we listen. And then it's almost as if Jesus says, “What do you think? Here's my message to you. What do you think about it?” And this is where, you know, meditation comes in, where we start allowing these words that Jesus speaks to mingle in and around our being, our lives, our souls.
And so we're going to spend some time, you know, responding to these words that God gives us. Allowing it to mingle in with our lives, personally. And so, my first thought, I'd like to speak from the Message, where God says to us, “Instead immense in mercy. And with an incredible love, he embraced us. He took our sin-dead and made us alive in Christ.”

So, I want us all to picture this. Here we are dead in our sin, crippled in our weakness. And what does that look like for you personally? I know for me this week this looks like envy and jealousy and comparison with my peers and family members. A lot of overthinking and self-absorption and wanting to do my best and not feeling good enough, you know, here I am helpless and weak in all of these sins, and you know, dead thoughts. And this is where God, in his immense love, picks me up and embraces me with his love and makes me alive in him. I almost think about, you know, about being out in the cold, you know, say it's a bird that that lost its mother or a young squirrel that can't find its way home, and the mother comes, picks them up and brings them back into the nest, and that warmth gets their blood pumping again. And they're held in this love, and in this home, and in this mother, father, family space once again.

And so, I'm wondering if we could respond to Jesus in these words. And think about where is our, has our weakness shown up in the last few days and weeks? These weaknesses and sins and you know, these thoughts that come in to pollute us. What do those sound like in your, in your brain? And call to mind those spaces, and times in the day and situations. Call those to mind.

And as we begin to call these to mind, it looks sad for us. We're so lost. And then I just want you to imagine God coming to you in the midst of this darkness, in the midst of this sin, in the midst of this weakness. And imagine him embracing you and picking you up and enfolding you in his lavish, immense love. Picture that.
This is what Paul is wanting to communicate to us in this letter. This is the gift that God offers and gives and provides day after day, moment into the next moment, in our weakness, in our fumblings. There is an embrace. And are we able to perceive it? Are we able to receive it? Allow it to warm us, to heal us, to get us back on our feet once again.

I'd like us to think upon these words later, in the verses here that Eugene Peterson translates: “Saving is all his idea and all his work. All we do is trust him. Trust him enough to let him do it. It's God's gift from start to finish. We don't play the major role. If we did, we'd probably go around bragging that we've done the whole thing. No. We neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and the saving, and he creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him. In the work he does the good work he has gotten ready for us to do work. We had better be doing.

And so let us respond to this word, and that after we are embraced and held, and back on our feet. God has good work for us to join him in that he set apart for us. This is what he wants us to be doing.
And what does he do? He loves. He forgives. He helps. He gives compassion. He embraces. And so I'm wondering as we receive this lavish, immense love in this embrace in our weakness. We are now called to be in the midst of our lives, and to do these good works that he set out for us to do, to extend this love. And so, let's let this intermingle into our relationships, in our situations in the day ahead.

And I love how Eugene Peterson writes that all we do is trust him. Trust him enough to do it in and through us. Can we trust God with our weaknesses and our shortcomings and our sin? Can we trust him in the embrace? Can we trust him in how he wants to do a good work through us? And it will be personal, and it will be unique, and it will not look like our neighbor, our friend, our peer, our sibling. Can we trust and rest in this truth?

And so, in these stages of prayer that I was speaking about that when we read the Scriptures, we hear God's word. And then he says, what do you think? And so here we've had a chance to meditate on the word and share with God what we think about how these words might mingle in and through our personal situations and lives. And then we can move even deeper into a prayer. An asking with this God of ours. And so I'm going to give you this space, this moment, to ask God for help in any way that you need. What are the burdens that you need him to bear? What are the trials and tribulations that you need him to walk with you in as that hymn we read together? So beautifully spoke about. This is a time for you just to ask and inquire and seek.

And then as we grow more comfortable in deepening in these stages of prayer, then we move into contemplation. This is when we take this time with God, these words and these exchanges, and we move them in and through our day. And we call upon them and we contemplate them. So it's not just for right now in this moment, but it's for the rest of the day and into the day. And we pray that God wouldn't break the thread or allow the thread to be broken of this intimacy and of this connection and of this truth that we are embraced and held by God, that he has good work for us to do in his strength.

We're going to close our time of prayer with our gratitude practice, and often the gratitude practice is pondering things that have happened and where we can see God and be a little more attentive to what he's doing, what he has done. But you know today we're going to practice just being in our present moment, in our bodies. I realize my body is always in the present moment. It can't be in the past, and it certainly isn't in the future. It's always right here, right now. So, you can really learn a thing or two from your body. Our heart and mind tend to be all over the map.

And so, we're going to use our senses and notice what is happening right here, right now where you are. Maybe you're sitting in a chair, and just notice that chair and the support on your body and receive that as an expression of God's love. Just sitting in a chair. Maybe you're gazing out the window and you can see what specifically the sky looks like today? Maybe you're holding a cup of tea and you can feel the warmth right now. This is God in folding his love and his embrace right now, not tomorrow, not later in the year, right now. What about the sounds you hear? The beautiful sounds that are gracing your ears. Just take a moment and look around at your environment. Look at how God is showing himself all around you.
You might be looking at a stack of dirty dishes and think “Wow, I'm glad I got to eat this morning.” You might be looking at a stack of papers, a lot of things to do, “Wow, what a good work you have for me right now today Lord.” All of this is gift. All of this environment and life is meant as gift, God's expression of holding your life and embracing you.

May we all be able to be present in our physical surroundings and in our bodies, and to notice the right here, the right now. And so, as we close this time of prayer. I'd like to read you the first verse of this beautiful hymn once again.

What a friend we have in Jesus,
all our sins and griefs to bear!
What a privilege to carry
everything to God in prayer!
O what peace we often forfeit,
O what needless pain we bear,
all because we do not carry
everything to God in prayer!

Brothers and sisters. Walk with God today. Allow him to carry you, to love you and embrace you. Go in peace.