Listen here to the talk Robert gave on this theme on the last Sunday of 2024.

In a children’s infant school nativity play, one of the young people was playing the part of a king looked into the crib at the baby Jesus – and promptly forgot his lines. In a flash of inspiration he burst out, ‘Doesn’t he look like his father!’ Well, looking to our heavenly Father is the theme of this post, and if we were looking for just one there is one verse to sum up the heart and essence of Jesus’s ministry then I would suggest John 5:19:

“Truly, truly, I tell you, the Son can do nothing by Himself, unless He sees the Father doing it. For whatever the Father does, the Son also does.”

What a treat we are in for as we unpack this verse! We could summarise it thus, “I only do what I see My Father doing.’ There are many gems to unearth here that will help us to be more closely aligned and entwined with Jesus and our Heavenly Father; to grasp something of the principles by which He works, and to encourage us to love the things He loves (as well as to steer clear of the things He hates) and to be able to discern His leading, in whatever form He chooses to reveal it to us. It is a partnership and an adventure. As we shall be seeing, it is also a romance, for the union between the Father and the Son is so complete and so perfect that it carries all the poetry of romance.

The Song of Songs and the book of Ruth may be the only ‘romances’ that have found their way into the Scriptures, but in another sense the whole of the Bible describes the romance between God and His people, or in New Testament terms between Jesus and His bride. You see, we are, as Paul puts it in Ephesians 2:10, His ‘workmanship’, or ‘handiwork’ – His poiēma in Greek , from which we derive the word poetry. God has created us in Christ Jesus to do good works, which He has purposefully prepared in advance for us to do.

Good poems don’t just come fully formed; much thought and effort goes into them. It is no coincidence that such large portions of the great Hebrew prophets are in verse. People brought up on the older versions of the Bible might not realise because they aren’t displayed as poetry in the way that most modern versions are, but they are, and it not only makes them so memorable but helps us to get onto God’s wavelength.

Look deeper and we see that God Himself is a poet, who hymned creation itself into being and who sustains all things by His powerful word.’ (Heb. 1:3) Just as Jesus, like his earthly father Joseph was a ‘tektōn’, (pronounced tektone) a craftsman-artisan, I love the thought that God Himself is the Poiētḗs: the ‘Doer,’ the ‘Maker,’ the ‘Poet,’ the ‘One who performs and sustains everything. And we who are in Christ are, as Paul puts it, His poema. (Eph. 2:10) No wonder the enemy of our soul wants to sour and spoil God’s workmanship, and to keep us from entering fully into our spiritual inheritance!

Jesus has invested so much effort in crafting us, knowing that each one of us has their own unique contribution to bring. And the more we trust the power of the Holy Spirit in us to lead and energise us, and look to sense, see and hear what the Father would have us do, even on a moment-by-moment basis, the more readily and the more fully will His purposes come about.

LISTEN HERE to a talk Robert gave on this theme on December 29th 2024

The episode that ‘launches’ this article concerns Jesus’ encounter with the invalid by the pool of Bethesda in John 5. It is John’s gospel above all which moves much of the action on beyond the Galilean phase to show us glimpses of the various occasions when Jesus visited Jerusalem, which, then as now, was the centre of the Jewish faith.

Whereas the synoptic gospels recount many of His miraculous deeds and dealings with people very briefly and succinctly, and record His words very pithily, it is John above all who documents the much more detailed reflections that Jesus shares about Himself, as well as presenting us with the details of some of the miracles that He performed there, and which were causing the city to be in an uproar.

We can so easily picture the scene by the poolside at Bethesda. There were many invalids gathered there, hoping against hope that an angel would stir the waters so that the first one into the pool would be healed. Jesus’ attention was drawn to one man in particular, and He knew that the Father was directing Him to minister to him. He went across to him and began by asking what must have seemed a rather strange question, “Do you want to get well?”

It sounds like a no-brainer, but here was a man who had been there for 38 long years, and who didn’t have anyone to help get into the pool, as he was keen to point out. But Jesus hadn’t asked him for the details of his story, He homes in on what He recognises to be the real issue here, and that is whether the man really wants to be well.

When a person’s hopes have been sufficiently crushed, and a sense of deep hopelessness has set in, it is easy to fall into a victim mindset. As the proverb puts it, “Hope deferred makes the heart sick.”

We don’t know this man’s name, and he didn’t answer Jesus’ question directly, but Jesus, who is always concerned with the least, the last and the lost, came to his aid because, if someone is prepared to take one step towards seeking Him, then He so often takes two towards them. Jesus must have seen some sufficient spark of faith and longing in the man to cause Him to say, “Get up, pick up your mat, and walk.” (Jn. 5:7-8)

If the man had been a cynical Cockney he might have replied something like, ‘Garn get you! I’ve heard that one before.’ But this man sensed the authenticity that was in Jesus and did exactly what he had been told to do; he took up his bed, and walked.’ (Jn. 5:9 KJV)

With a single authority-filled command Jesus had made a long-term invalid sound and well in an instant! Praise God!(1) What an incredible thing to happen! What a miracle and a joy! Not so wonderful though so far as the deeply perturbed Jewish leaders were concerned!

The charge of blasphemy that provoked profound revelations concerning Jesus’ real identity

It is a refreshing thought that we have the wary and hostile religious leaders to thank for prompting Jesus by the questions that they fired at Him to provide us with many of the deepest self-disclosures about who He really was and is. These scribes and Pharisees who had already been watching His every move for a long time were objecting not so much to the fact that He had just healed a long-term invalid – that sort of thing seemed to come with the territory when Jesus was around – but that He had had the temerity to do it on a sabbath day. What was wrong with the other days of the week?

That alone was enough to cause them to rise up on their high hobby horses and to protest that the holy day should be kept according to the pattern established by God Himself – quite forgetting, as Jesus reminded them, that they wouldn’t think twice about rescuing a donkey or an ox that had fallen into a pit. How could He be of God and yet break His own command?(2)

Still more disturbing was the fact that He appeared to be claiming that He and His Father were one. Now that really was outrageous – for a visiting rabbi to claim to be on the same level as God Himself was every bit as much of an anathema to the Jewish way of thinking as it is to a Muslim to think that God can have a son who is coequal with Himself.

This is where tut and frown annoyance turned to full alarm. ‘This is heresy! We’ve got to put a stop to this!’ Even as early as in the fifth chapter of John’s gospel, therefore, the stage was being set for a showdown that continues to this day concerning who Jesus really is, and the fact that He represents God’s way for people to receive the free gift of eternal life.

Not for the last time the dread cry ‘Blasphemy!’ went up – which was as frightening an accusation then as it remains in countries today that are dominated by sharia law. For the Law prescribed only one penalty for blasphemy – death by stoning. (Lev. 24:14,16) Because the occupying Roman authorities didn’t permit anyone except themselves to put people to death, the religious leaders knew that they would have to pass on that for the time being, and look to come up with a different route to bring this to pass.

The real nature of the Sabbath

Jesus later followed up this man who he had made well, and met him in the Temple. After that, the man made his way to the religious leaders and told them what Jesus had done for him. It is an account somewhat reminiscent of what happened four chapters further on in John, after Jesus healed a man who had been born blind, and who ended up being kicked out by the leaders. We should never underestimate what a terrible thing that must have been to have been cut off from his community – but we can be sure that the Lord would have found ways to look after and provide for him.

Already, therefore, the battle was centring around two things: the real nature of the sabbath, and the question of whether Jesus was right in saying that He and His Father were one.

A few years ago, I had the privilege of visiting Israel during the Feast of Booths – or Tabernacles – as well as being present at the celebration of a typical Sabbath. Coming from a secular society, it was precious to observe what a special day it is for orthodox Jews. After all the busyness of the week (and a good deal of food preparation!) it is an opportunity to cease from work, gather together as family, and sit down to a time-honoured meal. A bit like 52 Christmas dinners a year! They would assemble with other worshippers of Yahweh, hear His word read aloud and join together in the synagogue service. There is a rhythm and pattern to these set-aside hours and, in theory at least, everyone from the smallest child to the most revered patriarch knows where they belong and how they fit in to this structure.

The problem comes when you turn a blessing into something so hard and fast that it becomes as it were encased in concrete, to the point where you are no longer flexible or alert to be led the Lord. Instead of recognising the miracle as a foretaste of the wholeness of the coming kingdom of God, these leaders couldn’t get their heads around that at all – never realising that they what they were doing was effectively were putting the cart before the horse. Can you imagine anything more daft than expecting a horse to push a cart when it could be pulling it?

Jesus was challenging people to grasp that God made the Sabbath for people, not people for the Sabbath. But which is easier? To revise your whole way of thinking and to go to all the fuss of manoeuvring the horse back in front of the cart, or to pick up some large stones from beside the road and hurl them at the person who was upsetting the whole order of things?

It is so easy to do what the Lord tells us to be careful not to do, which is to judge by appearances in the light of our fixed ideas. The more we do that, the more certain it is that we will become over fixated on certain details, and risk missing what the Lord is actually doing, and wanting to show us. I’m sure that most of us will have been guilty of that in one way or another, and ended up insisting on things that are either wrong, or which really don’t matter that much. Pause, pray and repent!

As Jesus forcefully reminded them, Jewish leaders in the past had tragically ‘stoned’ pretty well every prophet God ever sent them throughout the ages, at least verbally if not physically – and many of them in Jerusalem. (Luke 13:33-35)

It is in Matthew 21:14 that we see something very powerful and beautiful. After forcefully turning over the tables of the merchants and money-lenders, who had been turning what should have been a house of prayer into a ‘den of robbers,’ Jesus healed the blind and the lame there. For a brief moment in time we see the temple fulfilling its highest God-given calling, to be a place where the powers of Heaven break through on earth, not just in formal rituals but in powerful encounters that totally changed people’s lives. May that be true of our meetings together too!

We are the real temple of the living God

It was in the capital that we see the Jews most vigorously questioning Him, and Jesus being most explicit in His answers when pressed to tell people who He actually was. When He told the Jews who were in the temple courts in Solomon’s Colonnade, ‘My sheep listen to My voice; I know them, and they follow Me,’ (John 10:27) Jesus was encouraging every one of us to be confident to pick out the voice of our Shepherd from all the other ‘voices’ that bombard us from every direction. Jesus wants us to always be looking to the Father for everything – but I wonder what the voices are that are playing your heart and mind, and which make it difficult to do so.

I find it significant that what Jesus was really saying was not so much that people need to go to that imposing temple with its mighty structures but rather to be temples of the Holy Spirit themselves. Paul reminds us later on that we have been bought at a price and therefore we give ourselves completely to Him because we have the immense privilege of being temples of the living God.(3)

When Jesus was only 12 years old, you will remember how He spent three days meeting with religious leaders in Jerusalem, telling His bewildered parents that He must be about His Father’s business. Already He was describing the pattern for His life. I wonder if any of the Jews who had been so impressed twenty years earlier by His wisdom and command of the Scriptures were among the ranks of those now questioning His authority and authenticity!

Putting the Lord First: The Cost of Discipleship

Again and again Jesus replied that He was doing nothing by His own initiative, but only what He saw His Father doing, as well as speaking only the words that the Father had taught Him. (John 5:19; 7:16; 8:28, 12:49-50, 14:10) If even Jesus had to learn to look to the Father to do anything of eternal value, the implications for the rest of us are just huge.

It is in the last phase of Jesus’ ministry that  we see Him no longer teaching by parable, allegory or allusion, but spelling out eternal realities as they really are. ‘I am telling you what I have seen in the Father’s presence, but you are doing what you have heard from your father, the one who has nothing to do with the truth, but who is a liar and the father of lies.’ (John 8:38,44).

Jesus knew exactly what He was talking about, because He had always been with His Father in Heaven before He came to Earth; and the words He speaks, like the works He does, come straight from the Father. In complete contrast stand the words and works of the counterfeiter, who Jesus describes elsewhere as the prince of this world, who is always doing his utmost to bend people’s hearts and minds to follow one lie or another – any line or lie will serve his purposes just so long as it keeps people away from committing themselves wholeheartedly to the Lord Jesus.

Jesus promises great rewards for those who follow him faithfully, but He gives no guarantees that we would sail effortlessly through life. Quite apart from pressures that may come from the state or religious leaders, He knew full well that family ties, which are of themselves so important and so God-given, may yet have a way of cramping and constraining us to the point that it risks cancelling out our active following of the Lord. Unless you love Me more than these Jesus warns . . .

In not a few cases this would involve people having to leave their homes and family circles for His sake, either because He was leading them farther afield to be witnesses for Him, or because they had been chased out, as countless believers have been through the ages, and continue to this day to be in all too many Muslim and Hindu cultures.

Discerning His voice

No wonder we need to do our best to distinguish between the impulses that come our way, and to be willing to step out as He leads. Praise God for the great multitude of people who have had the courage to do so. May we not let the threats and fears that the father of lies sends our way hold us back – or the rejection that we will inevitably face from those who do not want to bow the knee and make Jesus their exclusive Lord.

No, He never said it would be easy. Jesus was quite specific that the gate that leads to life is not only a narrow one but also a hard one, (Matt. 7:13-14) and that many would turn back when the going got tough, and opposition came their way. (Matt. 8:18-22) We can’t afford to say  that we will serve the Lord just as long as it is not too inconvenient to do so. There will certainly be times when he asks us to step outside our comfort zone.

For some reason I found myself remembering an episode from years ago, when a couple came strongly to mind that I felt I ought to ring them. But it was 11 o’clock at night, and you don’t bring people of that time! I did however – and discovered that the couple were sitting up in bed having an argument. Moreover, their beside light had been flickering on and off for several minutes before I rang, and the wife had sensed that the Lord was tipping them off that He wanted to say something to them. Praise God, it worked and their marriage was saved.

The Lord takes all our strengths and weaknesses and circumstances into account, but at the end of the day if He summons us to do something, then may we have the courage to step out. He greatly honours our willingness to listen, and our efforts and attempts to obey Him and to reach out, holding on to the thought that one plus God is still a majority. We are His workmanship and Jesus is the craftsman. Praise God for what He is crafting in and outworking through each one of us.

Of such, Jesus insisted, would be the company who will be present at the marriage feast of the Lamb – quite irrespective of whether they are Jews or Gentiles, just as He surprised and annoyed His hearers by spelling out in Matthew 8.11-12 that many who were smugly confident that they were in good standing with God would not be present at that feast.

Jesus, who had no place to lay His head on the Earth knows what He is talking about. He knew that He had come from His Father’s presence, and that His real home is not to be found on Earth – yet – but it will be when He comes again to rule and reign.

It is easy to crowd Him out of our busy lives, but Paul pleaded with the Corinthians, ‘make room for me in your hearts.’ (2 Cor. 7:2) Jesus does the same. He says, ‘Make room in your hearts for Me.’ And now He is calling us, not necessarily to do great things but to have the heart of a child, and of a servant, and to be willing to go wherever He leads us.

We want to make room for the three to become four,’ just as Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego cried out within the fiery furnace, ‘Look! There are four men here in the fire – and the fourth looks like a god. (Dan. 3:25) I am thinking that this may have been something even greater than an angelic visitation I think it may have been a theophany. May He appear this year to many who are under extreme pressure and break through for them and for us.

The Question-and-Answer approach

There are few things more welcome than hearing the Lord giving us explanations and answers to issues we have been puzzling over. But like many great teachers from Socrates onwards, Jesus frequently answered questions with another question – sometimes to confound His questioners, but really to draw out their understanding, and to point them to something that He knew is what they really needed to be focusing on.

In practice what we often find is the Lord giving us partial answers, things that make us ponder, and reflect, like episodes in a dream that show us sone we need to get in touch with, or something that is out of balance in our hearts and that needs attending to. At other times, though, Jesus made very direct statements, and then, on no fewer than 25 occasions, He introduces these with the emphatic words, ‘Amen, amen . . .’ ‘Verily, verily . . .’ ‘Truly, truly.’(4)

When we say ‘amen,’ we do so when someone has finished speaking in order to express our agreement with what they have said or prayed for. But when Jesus uses a double amen at the beginning of a speech, He is emphasising His authority to make the statement that follows. He is not sharing human opinion; He is bringing divine revelation. All the more important therefore to sit up and pay attention to what He is saying!

Further Gems in John 5:19

“Truly, truly, I tell you, the Son can do nothing by Himself, unless He sees the Father doing it. For whatever the Father does, the Son also does.” Let’s take a closer look at this verse and think through some of their implications.

Five short words stand out to me in this verse: ‘can’, ‘nothing’, ‘unless’ ‘sees’ and ‘whatever.’

The Greek word for ‘can’ means ‘to have the power to do’. We know what Jesus can and did do in terms of healing ailments that no other man has ever healed: everything from leprosy to blindness and deafness, saying with the divine authority of that double amen, that ‘the Son can do nothing by Himself.’ He says the same thing again in John 8:28.

What an astonishing statement that is! Jesus is ‘the amen and yes of God,’ the one who fulfils all the promises that God has ever given, (2 Cor. 1:20 The Voice) but He is telling it straight that even He can do nothing of Himself. Nichts, niente, nada, Nowt. Zero. Zilch. Absolutely nothing. It is a word that our self-reliant generation badly needs to hear and not be afraid of.

A baby is fully dependent on others to do almost anything, but here was Jesus in the full flower of His manly anointing making this statement to spell out not only how His Father was leading Him, but how He intends things to be for all of us. Our starting and finishing point is that apart from Christ we can do nothing of eternal value. (John 15:5)

This is the glorious truth – but it takes a simple trusting heart to welcome it, and to recognise that we need Christ as much as someone who is bedridden needs help to get out of bed, or even just to turn over. As I say, this is an extremely humbling and indeed unwelcome proposition for the self-reliant to contemplate.

The Greek word for ‘nothing,’ ouden, is another of those short but all-important words that are worth looking up in the Scriptures. We are so blessed to have great bible resources available on line to look up the meaning of Greek and Hebrews, with all their many nuances.(5)

May the Lord help us instinctively to learn to look to Him concerning both what we do, how we are to do it and when.

This is the outworking of Hebrews 5.14, where we are reminded that it is ‘by constant use and practice that we train our senses to distinguish not only good from evil, but also do our best to discern God’s best, above and beyond that which might be merely ‘acceptable’.

So when Jesus says in John 5:19 “Truly, truly, I tell you, the Son can do nothing by Himself, unless He sees the Father doing it.” Praise God for that little word unless. Unless He intervenes again and again we would be left high and dry.

The verb that John uses for ‘sees,’ blepei, carries the suggestion of a continuous, intimate observation, which enables us to perceive to the heart of a matter. Just as we are called to take heed to what we hear, so we must be careful what we feed our eyes with, both outwardly and inwardly in our imagination too.

I wonder what form His seeing and His knowing took when He saw the man lying by the pool at Bethesda? How does it work for you? How do you know that you know that you know when you should or should not do certain things? What do you see?

I love the way Aslan showed himself to Lucy in the Narnia chronicles, because she was alert and humble enough to see him, even at times when others couldn’t. Whether she always had the courage to act on what she saw is perhaps another matter!

Because each of us have different callings and different ways of seeing what we will see the Father doing will vary from person to person

I’m a wordsmith and an intercessor, so I don’t see with the sensitivities of an artist, except when the Lord gives me pictures or visions directly. Others see in different equally valid spectrums. That’s why the body of Christ is so important. To some He gives some gifts, to others other ones. It’s together that we see what the Father is doing. That is why it is so important to have forums in which we communicate what we believe the Lord is showing us or stressing as a major emphasis.

In all this the Lord is wanting to give us confidence to discern and perceive trends and trajectories, whether concerning secular events or particular developments in the spiritual world too, and to recognise where they are likely to lead to, and even to share in something of what the Lord feels about these things. So we can look at certain happenings and say, ‘The Spirit of the Lord is in this thing and I need to get behind it’, or ‘but that is going to lead to complications.’ Zechariah did not hesitate to say ‘This is wickedness’ (Zech. 5:8)

And then it is really important to check back whether what you may have felt really strongly at the time was the Lord’s leading to see whether you were deep in His presence or away with the fairies. Check your track record honestly, whether what you believed was from the Lord really was. If so, it may well be an area that you hear the Lord in so well that it is becoming an area of real ministry effectiveness – just as there may be other areas where you hear much less accurately, and where you need to have the humility to double and triple check your leading – preferably with the help of others who know you well before leaping to say, ‘This is what the Lord has said!’

Pondering in the darkness

Sometimes all that is required is a glance at the Lord to sense what is going on, and what He would have us do. Those pauses to seek God are precious beyond words, to Him as well as to us, and He makes good use of them by reminding us of people and things in ways that we would otherwise have missed.

At times, though, we will find we have ourselves having to wrestle in the darkness, when everything feels blank, and God a million miles away.

Every issue has many sides to it, and certain problems can’t be solved all at once. That’s when we need the perseverance of scientists and inventors who look at things now this way and now another, trying hard not to be too discouraged when a seemingly promising line conks out. It took hundreds of experiments to make the first light bulb work, just as the DNA code was not sequenced at the first attempt, as the film Life Story powerfully shows.

There will be much pondering and even grappling to do. We never hear Joseph speaking in the gospels – but we do see Him being told and shown things by the Lord. We also read that when he learnt that his fiancée Mary was with child that he actively considered what he should do. That sounds like a moment of calm contemplation. We can be sure that it wasn’t. That Greek word for pondering can also speak of a really acute tussling – which is precisely what Joseph went through then until the Lord showed him not to be afraid to take Mary to be his wife.

Pondering can be painful, but when the Lord gives us understanding into one thing, it often leads to Him being able to show us other things too – rather as everything began to open up when Peter began to realise that God was wanting to bless the Gentile world with the gift of the Holy Spirit and the knowledge of God.

Even more do we need determination to keep going when spiritual forces are opposing: to keep calling on the Lord and pushing through until breakthrough comes. PUSH. Pray Until Something Happens! Jesus’ whole ministry was wrestling to set people free from entrapping forces, just as Paul reminds us in Ephesians 6 what, or rather who it is that we are called to wrestle against. Not primarily against flesh and blood – although it give the enemy of our souls much satisfaction when we direct our energies to resisting and opposing other believers instead of getting on the real work of the Kingdom

And so we come to the last clause in John 5:19 For whatever the Father does, the Son also does

So much lies within that seemingly common-or-garden word: ‘whatever!’ ‘Whatever the Father does, the Son also does.’ The implications are just huge. Nothing the Father does is beyond Jesus’ knowledge, and He fully participates in the Father’s work. They are totally at one, totally engaged in the same work and mission. Jesus’ will and His Father’s will are one and the same.

It is a sad and tragic thing when a person sets his will on doing his or her own thing – or even worse when they align themselves with the enemy’s suggestions and assessment of things.

May we rather be living and moving in that deep and affectionate love and trust that enables the Lord to show us – the Greek word deiknusin means to point out to us. He has so much He wants to share with us. May we find our way to the people by the equivalent of the pool of Bethesda who are in need of the Lord’s help, and yes of our help too.

Enjoy this track set to beautiful music by Linda from our Spirit of Payer album that I called The Pool of Bethesda.

Pressing through the din to discern His voice

Even when we have to pray and ponder our way through much darkness, let’s not forget the romance that underlies the great creativity of Yahweh’s poema. God’s heart is to be found not just in commandments graven in stone and learnt by rote, therefore, but in a living and active partnership.

There is nothing prosaic about watching what the Lord is doing. Every jot and every tittle of His Word and working sparkles with His life-giving flow, and Jesus Himself is the wonder and beauty of the precepts of God. May He realign and re-create in us all that is not flowing with His life-imparting poetry.

I wonder, though, if we are not sometimes inclined to underestimate how hard the work of the Godhead is. We think that because Jesus and His Father are divine, everything must be as simple as flicking a switch or saying a word. But anyone who has worked with stubborn hearts knows how hard and painful it is to overcome a combination of fear, prejudice, and pride.

In reality, of course, it wasn’t easy for Him in any shape or form. Imagine having to deal with the din of crowds who all wanted a piece of Him, with friends and critics alike questioning His wisdom and authority, and leaders hating Him to the extent of wanting to do away with Him. Yet nothing stopped Him from looking to see what His Father was doing and saying to Him. He knew that everything that happened to Him was permitted by His Father, and He neither sought to blame others nor thought of Himself as a victim. Instead He carried profound peace and stillness in his heart.

It’s easy for us though to allow the din of all that is going on in our hearts to all but overwhelm any sense of the romance and beauty of this relationship, whether it be the din of pain, failures, pressures, desires – even, perhaps, the din of trying too hard to please the Lord . . .

What a telling word ‘din’ is! It comes from an old Norse word that describes a rumbling like thunder, or the sound of an approaching avalanche. When the hurt and the din becomes too loud in our hearts, it can be tempting to cast around for scapegoats to blame. Some of us give way to anger at this point; others withdraw and curl, turning our backs so to speak on God and others in order and protect ourselves – all of which serving only to leave our spirits either cold and wary, or complacently smug and self-satisfied.

Time to draw back perhaps and spend time in prayer and worship and in letting the word of God reach deep into our hearts.

He is so generous that He You receives the little that we give Him and multiplies it, just as He sees and values even the smallest sacrifice we make, and hears even our slightest prayers.

May we be on the watch this year, and hear his voice above and beyond the din of our own and other people’s demands and chunterings.

Jesus, as we enter 2025 we are in the pool of Bethesda with you, and we want to receive more of Your cleansing touch and the strength and beauty of Your presence and Your power. We respond to Your invitation, and come to You who cured the invalid at Bethesda, and say come to us we pray. In every part of our lives. Turn situations round. Be glorified in our hearts and throughout our lives.

Yes, Jesus, in amongst all the din and the cacophony of life, ‘Teach me Your way, that I may walk in Your truth. Unite my heart to fear Your name.’ That’s a brilliant prayer to pray. It is from Psalm 87:11 in the ESV. Yes, Lord, draw together all the bits of us that feel splintered apart, and let me hear Your voice clearly, and have the courage to do what You are asking me to do.

Show us more of who You are, and who we are in You. Minister Your healing, Your wholeness, Your rest, and Your peace to us. Set us free from all that hinders so that we can hear You speak, see You at work and do what You do. Let the Spirit of God and of power come upon us every more deeply this year we pray.

Let the flow of Your Spirit flow freely. so that we may not hinder Your work but instead give You pleasure.

In the Flow of the Spirit

Here is something that I think will bless you. Let weariness and dreariness fall away, along with hurts and failures as the lifegiving flow of God’s cleansing Spirit pours through you afresh.

Footnotes

(1) The Greek word hygiēs (John 5:9, )Strong’s 5199) (pronounced ‘hoo-ghee-ace’) encapsulates the ideas not only of physical wellness and wholeness, but also of something pure and wholesome and true.

(2) For the Jews, the sabbath is a weekly event; for secular westerners, perhaps the nearest we come is the annual celebration of Christmas, when most households still find time to prepare and eat a traditional meal. But while we enjoy hearing the old songs from our school nativity plays, there is often all too little of spiritual substance in the modern Christmas, rather than a deepening idea that it is about showing love and kindness, rather than the celebrating the birth of our Lord and Saviour.

It pains the Lord, too, to see many people going deep into debt with Christmas purchases and entertainment that they find hard to repay.

Imagine, though, how it would be if you and your family were just wiping away the last crumbs of Christmas pudding, pulling on your boots for a calorie-reducing walk to be followed by mince pies and a raucous board game, when your distant cousin from another branch of the family suddenly overturns all the plans for these precious hours, and presents you with an entirely different challenge – and then adds insult to injury by claiming it is God’s programme for the day! That is effectively what happened by the Pool of Bethesda on that Sabbath day two thousand years ago.

(3) See this post ‘You are the temple of the living God’.

(4) Here are the twenty-five occasions when Jesus used the phrase Verily Verily. https://www.scriptureway.com/uploads/1/1/7/0/117002031/the_truly_truly_verily_verily_statements_of_christ_current.pdf

(5) ‘Nothing will be impossible for you.’ (Matt. 17:20, Luke 1:37, Matt .19:26, Phil. 4:13)

See also biblestudytools.com

‘Nothing will be concealed that will not be made known.’ (Luke 12:2, 8:17)

‘Nothing that goes into your body defiles you; rather, you are defiled by what comes from your heart.’ (Mark 7:15, cf Rom. 14:14)

‘It profits me nothing if I have not love.’ (1 Cor. 13:3)

When the disciples had caught nothing, they were still prepared to obey Him and to cast their nets on the other side.

‘Nothing will injure you.’ (Luke 10:19)

Jesus answered nothing to Pilate – who admitted that he could find no fault or guilt in Him. (Mark 15:4-5)

‘When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am He and that I do nothing on My own but speak just what the Father has taught Me.’ (John 8:28)

Jesus could say that satan had nothing in him. (John 14:30) Oh that we could say the same!

Hitherto you have asked for nothing in My name – that is certainly not true for most of us, of course. Praise God for the many ‘somethings’ that we ask of the Lord all the time in His name. (Jn 16.24)

‘Therefore now nothing of condemnation is to them that be in Christ Jesus, which wander not after the flesh’. (Rom. 8:1 Wycliffe; ‘Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.’ NIV)

Photo by Saul Mercado on Unsplash