In August I got together with my Love Westhill team and started planning for the autumn season at Westhill. We had enjoyed a busy summer of activities and in typical Emma style, because I am wired to be outward looking, I started thinking ‘what is the next thing’. What do we do in Autumn. We must make plans. But in both areas of ministry where my time is mostly invested, that is love Westhill and The Re-Store Hope Hub, I started to realise something was niggling me, something was bothering me and the only way I could articulate that is that I felt our overall expectation of Jesus and what Jesus could do was lacking. Across both teams, I started to think things like ‘Do we know who we are worshipping… Jesus is our saviour, the one who delivered us and delivers us from darkness. The one who is faithful to bring us through and out of every difficult situation. The one who is above sin, circumstances and satan’s power and yet we muddle through with our eyes low as if we have forgotten where our help comes from. I sensed that we had plummeted to living out of our current experience of God. Paul Harcourt talked about this last February when he said we have our expectation of God and our current experience of God. We often don’t live from our expectation but rather we live from our current experience. I started to feel that the spiritual temperature had dropped. At Love Westhill the excitement that we had before the summer was now gone. Where we had spent time as a team looking up to God expecting him to move and speak into our lives in new ways. Team prayer time felt a bit sluggish, I felt I was almost trying to convince others that Jesus is who He says He is and then I realised I was also trying to convince myself. At Restore and The Hope Hub we have team prayer and worship every Monday and Wednesday before the session. We purposefully made a change to this about 6 months ago to put more emphasis on worship. But here again was the niggle… Our worship to God seemed to come from our current experience rather than our expectation that Jesus is at work. A monotony had settled in and a 30-minute time of praise and prayer, intended to lift our eyes to the one who rescues the lost, felt deflated and filled with distractions. Jesus is who He says He is. He is the answer to everything, but if a sacrifice of praise is just a step too far…I told the team don’t waste a 30-minute opportunity to pour out your heart to the God who, according to Psalm 18, reaches down from heaven to rescue you. Time and time again He is the one who draws you out of deep waters and leads you to a place of safety. He is the one stoops down to look on the earth and as Psalm 113 tells us ‘He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap’ This is our God! HE DOES THIS! But if we don’t live from that place of expectation that God does this for us, how can we confidently be the good news to those we encounter who are broken and hopeless and in need of the same. If we don’t expect Jesus to move miraculously in our lives, how can we expect others to believe that for theirs. Oh, how we need to live out of that expectation….. To gaze upon the Lord and see his beauty…. To know Jesus doesn’t change even if we do… To know He is our constant…. and we do this by lifting our eyes. Psalm 121 1 I lift up my eyes to the mountains— where does my help come from? 2 My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth. “I lift my eyes to the mountains” was the worshiper’s declaration of trust and dependence upon God for help.
It’s God that our eyes are lifted to. The hills and the mountains in Psalm 121 where the psalmist looks for strength were external to him but the Spirit of Jesus resides within us and it’s God in us that we lift our eyes to. The God who knows us, sees us, strengthens us, guides us and leads us. A few months ago, I sensed the Spirit of Jesus within me telling me I was plodding along, and Jesus doesn’t want any of us to just plod along but rather move where He moves and discern what He is saying in all seasons of life. Jesus is our example of healthy discipleship and Jesus didn’t plod along. The life of a disciple is healthy when it incorporates all 3 relational dimensions, Up, In and Out. Jesus lived simultaneously in all 3 dimensions. He lived up with the Father. Out with the crowds and in with his disciples and He knew exactly when to withdraw to spend time with His Father. We don’t seem to be as good as Jesus at this stuff, but after all, He was Jesus! But when we are deficient in one of these areas we are off kilter especially the UP because everything we do flows from our relationship with God. In our September Leadership Huddle, Mark challenged us to start looking at season entry points. How can we enter into a season well so that we can make the most of the opportunity? Mark said ‘In our lives there are seasons and times. The Holy Spirit helps us to understand the times we are in and helps us to follow Jesus and disciple others well in each season. I decided our season entry was going to be one of sitting with Jesus, adoring Jesus, listening to Him, waiting on Him at Westhill, and leading others into a posture of worship at prayer times in the Hub. I realised that God moved both times in different ways. The first time I did it, God showed me what He had been doing that I had been too busy to see. He changed my perspective, and He gave me a new sense of vision for the next season. We received miraculous provision in team and resources. Something we had struggled with for 18 months. The second time we invested in the Up by sitting at the feet of Jesus and giving Him space to speak, we encountered a healing God amongst us. Someone had a word that ‘The healing is in the silence’ and as a result we saw 5 healings in that season. Both times our expectation of God increased, and we started living out of that expectation. We are now in our third season of carving out space as a team and are expecting God to move in a new way amongst us. We are not experts in this at all, but I think God just honours our willingness to read the times we are in, and humbly respond by lifting our eyes. We know we can do nothing on our own. Our help comes from Him and Him alone. Lifting our eyes changes our perspective. It takes our eyes off our failures and our circumstances. We meet a God who stoops down in the dirt and meets our gaze with love and compassion. Take for instance the story of the woman caught in the act of adultery. Frightened and ashamed she is dragged through the dusty streets and thrown at the feet of Jesus but as He stoops down in the dirt, she lifts her eyes to meet His and she is met with love and compassion and a fresh start. We have all been in situations where we have felt the weight of shame and fear. We have felt the stooping down of Jesus to meet us in the dust. We have looked up to Him and been met with compassion and love. I don’t know about you, but each time this seems to surprise me as if I expected to be condemned and cast aside. Yet every time, He has given me a fresh start, and sent me away with the words ‘neither do I condemn you and He has brought me back into the perfect love -union with God.
Lifting our eyes up to Jesus is an act of love and worship. Another story of another woman known as the sinful woman depicts an image of a God who sees exactly who we are, right to the core of our being and is moved by our movement towards Him. A woman who has no concern for her surroundings or the opinions of others falls at the feet of Jesus, cries and wipes His feet with her hair. She knew she needed Him and as a result she realises she is seen and loved, and she finds only forgiveness. Lifting our eyes strengthens us. It helps us to keep going, to persevere and throw off the sin that so easily entangles us. Learning to walk the Jesus way as He writes the story of our faith and then perfects us as we journey through it. The writer of Hebrews tells us how to stay the course and finish the race is by fixing our eyes on Jesus. The author and perfecter of our faith. In addition, as we lift our eyes our focus becomes about Jesus and nothing else… All effort, performance and what people think goes straight out of the window when we see Him clearly. Lifting our eyes to Jesus reminds us who He is and it is a form of trustful prayer Psalm 141 says “I lift my eyes to you oh God, you are my refuge, leave me not defenceless.” In 2 Chronicles as a vast army came towards Jehoshaphat and the people of Judah. Jehoshaphat prayed; the last line of that prayer says: “we do not know what to do but our eyes are on you”. When we repent, we also need to lift our eyes. St John Climacus, a seventh century monk said…. "To repent is not to look downwards at my own shortcomings, but upwards at God's love, it is not to look backwards with self-reproach but forward with trustfulness, it is to see not what I have failed to be, but what by the grace of Christ I might yet become. ‘When we lift our eyes to God things change, we change.’ When we lift our eyes to God things happen and we realise it is all about Him and precious little about us. At Love Westhill we are believing God is going to move in new and surprising ways in the months ahead. Jesus is who He says He is. He is at work. Let’s raise our expectation by lifting our eyes to the One who is able to do exceedingly more than we could ever ask or imagine. Where are your areas of deficiency right now? Do you need to spend some time lifting your eyes to Jesus? The One who is above your circumstances. The One who strengthens you and will change your perspective just by gazing at Him. Do you feel too unworthy to fall at His feet and gaze up at Him… He is the one who meets you with love and compassion every time and see’s the core of who you are… offering forgiveness and fresh starts. Do you need him to move in your ministries? Are you tired of striving… Jesus invites us to lift our eyes to Him…. To be refreshed and amazed as He creates the movement our efforts, alone, could never accomplish.