Tuesday 7 April 2009

In three months

I've been looking at learn Spanish books, I have a good collection of books on other languages, but not Spanish. There's Spanish in three months, Spanish in 15 minutes and Instant Spanish. What next learning Spanish yesterday?

However my attempts at foreign languages might be more termed not learning German after several years. It takes time.

Growing in faith is like that. There is no route to instant holiness. The Kingdom of God does not come at the click of our fingers. It takes time, it takes perseverance and it takes effort.

But surely, some people will say, we have instant holiness. Jesus died on the cross to take away my sins, and therefore by the grace of God I have been made holy. Well, by the grace of God we are made Holy. God may look at us and see us as holy because of what Jesus has done, but on this earth we have to try and realise that in our relationship with other people and it is then that we realise that though God may have forgiven our sins and made us holy - we still have to change

God does make us holy, God does make us clean, but I still sin, I'm still not perfect. I still make mistakes, and I am becoming like Jesus, but it is not instant, it is not in three months, not in 15 minutes, it is not instant.

How do we reconcile those problems, both with ourselves and with the people who we live with and "do church" with?

Paul writes in Ephesians Ch4v2 "Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love"

We are humble - we are not perfect.
We are gentle - other people are not perfect, just like we are not.
We are patient - we understand that there is a process, that it is not instant.
We bear with one another in love - we are committed to love, and so we keep going together.

It is not just humble and gentle, on some sort of relative scale, but be completely humble, completely gentle.

We know we are people in the process, and God may have made us Holy, but we have been made holy, we are being made holy and we will be made holy.

As we face Easter, and remember what Jesus did for us on the cross, the call that He makes to us, is not to some instant solution, but to pick up our cross and follow Him.

It is not to pretend that we are something that we are not, but to know that we are loved as we are. And it is not to pretend that others are something they are not, but to love them as they are.

Happy Easter.