Life in Christ

Readings for Advent 3 Isaiah 61:1-11; Psalm 126, I Thess 5:12-28; John 1:6-28


What is your lifestyle choice? This is something of a modern question.
Today's readings invite us to identify our lifestyle
as Christian

How do you live faithfully as a modern Christian day to day?
Once again we have a pattern for faithful living
in each of the three readings.
What is striking
is that "faithful living"
is not lived out in a vacuum,
but rather is the act of living vigorously and actively
in this world in which we find ourselves.
Though many religious words are used,
the emphasis of the passages
is not on the narrowly pietistic
it is on the dynamically active
a life lived
in full communion with God
and totally engaged with human life.
Fully in communion with God,
totally engaged with human life.
These themes flow through all the readings
but in this reflection I will focus on the reading from 1Thessalonians

6Rejoice always, ¹⁷pray without ceasing, ¹⁸give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. ¹⁹Do not quench the Spirit. ²⁰Do not despise the words of prophets,but test everything; hold fast to what is good; ²²abstain from every form of evil.

23 May the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. ²⁴

The call to worship
I am struck always when I read this passage of its absolute nature..."always" & "in all circumstances" & "without ceasing"
Paul anticipates here that worship will not be an occasional, Sunday-only, type of activity
It will be all of life.
Two points can be made about this.
One, we need to get down and do it!!!
Developing discipline, and life-patterns means that we need to commit ourselves
to action.
We need to do it.
So find the place and start.
Pray daily, for your family, for yourself
for your concerns.
Decide that this is a life-habit
that you are going to commit to and do it.
Try, too, to seize the opportunity to turn your day to day activities
into deliberate, unobtrusive prayer.
Some years ago I was asked by a woman
who was very upset about blasphemy
"What do you do you when people punctuate there speechg with "Jesus!", this and "Jesus" that!"
My response was that I try and use this as an opportunity to pray.
It's not always easy.
We can find our own little ways to be more attentive to the need to pray constantly.
One of the great benefits of afternoon and evening walks is that we can use the opportunity
to give thanks to God for our local environment
and to pray for our neighbours.
This may not work for you....but find something that turns your heart to God
is a GOOD thing
and we will reap benefits.
The great traditions of meditation call us to "mindfulness"
not just allowing our day to day experiences
to go to waste
While we might take this to mean that we "should take time to smell the flowers"
and we should
it also means that we should treasure our daily emotional and spiritual experiences.
How often do we have ups and downs...and simply not do anything about them
other than fret!!!
Take time to debrief yourself
and commit to God

The call to discernment
Life is hard work!
And Christians are called to live with a sense of what is true
rather than what is wishful.
Our life is about faith and not fairy story.
We are called to live as God wants
not as we often vainly wish we would liem God to operate.
If I can give you an example.
Problems are very much part of what people pray for,
I, and no doubt you, are constantly asked to pray that God
might act in certain ways....
whether it may be to heal, or to address a debt crisis,
...I sometimes get emails with things like ..."Pray that God might make my husband come back to me"
These worry me a little.
One thing I do know, both from the scriptures
and from my life as a Christian
is that God deals with problems!
But it doesn't seem to me that God makes problems vanish,
most often we are invited to have faith in God's grace,
to trust that God will be faityhful.
God most often shows us the way through issues,
and says....work with me.
He enables us to work through the awful stuff
He does not simply make it vanish.
One of the problems with this
is that we so often want God to be the Good Fairy
rather than the Almighty God.
The true prophets will call us to life of vigour and discipline
the true gospel will call us to service and sacrifice.
Paul reminds us that we should test the gospel
and live faithful to the Spirit of God

The call to holiness

Life is a call to holiness
--a much maligned word--
Paul understands it to mean
this active life of prayer and worship
which is engaged with the world,
not some 'pie in the sky' unreality.
It is not a series of "do's and don'ts"
but rather a lifestyle
characterised by this dynamic attitude
of orientation to the worship and praise of God
in which we seek to be 100%
focussed on God
and committed to the realisation
of God's destiny in our lives.
A destiny which far from being focussed on narrow religious goals
will be sharply honed in responding to the needs of the sad, the demoralised,
the outcast

to bind up the broken-hearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
and release to the prisoners;
²to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favour,
and the day of vengeance of our God;
to comfort all who mourn;
Isaiah 61:1-2

...This is our eternal destiny
our Christian lifestyle