THE TELESCOPE OF FAITH

'When you have a telescope, you can look through the wrong end (which makes everything look much further away than it is). Or you can look through the right end, and the distance is compressed for a moment. Too many of us have the telescope of faith turned the wrong way round, and Christ looks further away. Too many of us are so fixated on this life, particularly on what's not going well for us, with life's disappointments. The telescope is turned the other way, and heaven just seems further away even than it does without it. 

Song 5:1 makes us turn the telescope the right way around. Christ invites us to look at that day through the lens of this text and make it more real, more immediate. This text is intended to offer healing for our greyness and grumpiness. As we struggle in this life, we look through the telescope and we see the wedding feast, the perfect world and the glory that will be ours for all eternity. We see that we have not missed out on anything that matters because we are heading into the centre of the universe of all history to which marriage and sexuality point - and to which all singleness and unexpressed sexuality points to - the final climax of intimacy that will be ours in Christ.'

Julian Hardyman, Jesus, Lover of My Soul, p.104. 

JESUS' LOVELINESS

'Lovely in his person, lovely in his birth, and Incarnation, lovely in the whole course of his life, lovely in his Death, lovely in his whole employment, lovely in the glory and majesty, lovely in all these supplies of Grace, lovely in all the tender Care, Power and Wisdom, lovely in his Ordinances, lovely and glorious in the vengeance he takes, lovely in the pardon he has purchased, altogether lovely.'

John Owen in Julian Hardyman, Jesus, Lover of My Soul, p.51.

WHERE OUR DESIRES LEAD US

'Life is full of experiences that exhaust us with unsatisfied desire. We are driven to fill ourselves with the good things of this world, but they simply leave us needing God all the more. As they turn out to be unsatisfying, we find ourselves longing for more, not always realizing that it is Christ we are missing, but experiencing the craziness of desire to fill that space with love. That longing is a longing for the strengthening and refreshing that only Christ can bring. Every single earthly disappointment presses us towards him.'

Julian Hardyman, Jesus, Lover of My Soul, p.51.

WHERE CREATION POINTS US

'Every aspect of creation points in one way or another to some truth about God as he relates to us. Solid and dense though a mountain may be, it is like a shadow of the sheer vastness of God. The whole created order and the whole human world - real though they are, of course - were created to portray spiritual realities greater than themselves.'

Julian Hardyman, Jesus, Lover of My Soul: Fresh Pathways to Spiritual Passion, p.11.

FOLLOWING JESUS

'...a crucified saviour who willingly embraces weakness in the incarnation and on the cross can only be properly passed on by servants who willingly accept weakness and vulnerability.'  

Julian Hardyman, The Joy of Service, p.41. 

AN HONEST MINISTER

'I still frequently sit down for that pre-service prayer time and feel that if everyone knew how empty and conflicted I am inside, they'd march me off to the creche so I could start all over again. I come back from a summer holiday and genuinely wonder how on earth I will find the energy that different bits of my job scream for if they are to be done even half-effectively. And I still find myself seeing folk with different problems and thinking I just don't know what or even how to share their pain.' 

Julian Hardyman, The Joy of Service, p.34. 

CROSS-SHAPED MINISTRY

'For me to want the benefits of the cross without its demands is not just rude, it's impossible. Not an option. Ministry without a cross is not ministry.' 

Julian Hardyman, The Joy of Service, p.29.

IDOLATRY

'We will not overcome idols simply with behavioural change through resolution and willpower. Even if we get rid of one idol we will probably replace it with another. So instead of worshipping sex, for example, we start to idolize the god of our own moral performance. Changing one idol for another is like giving up burglary for a life of internet fraud.

Instead we need to be persuaded in heart, mind and imagination that God's love is the ultimate reality of our lives. That we are loved - loved more than we could ever have hoped for, loved with a love that is pasionate and jealous and committed and powerful. That God knows our sense of need for security, control, approval, affection and comfort. That he meets those needs, as he sees best, in and through Christ.'

Julian Hardyman, Idols, p.176.

IDOLATRY

'It is important for us to realize that the first and chief reason why we should understand and repudiate idolatry is that it is so deeply insulting to Almighty God. If we start with its effect on us, we make ourselves the centre of everything: we simply analyse idolatry as a cause of depression or anxiety...But that would sell God short.

It is much worse than the source of my own pain: my idolatry sets the stratosphere howling; when I prefer idols to the living God, I send spasms of horror through the galaxy. My drinking from the cisterns of idolatrous sex, idolatrous attitudes to family, idolized careers and accumulated possessions appals the entire universe.'

Julian Hardyman, Idols, p.137.

GOD'S MERCY

'He is so merciful. We aren't. We are perfectionist and unmerciful. We refuse to accept ourselves.

He says, "I accept you. In Christ. He has paid for all your sin. He is the perfection you lack. And he is yours. You are in him,"'

Julian Hardyman, Idols, p.75.

PORNOGRAPHY

'Why is it that someone visits a pornographic website? Is it simply out of curiosity? Sometimes maybe. Much more often it is because of a deep sense of personal pain or worthlessness. A feeling of loneliness and need. It is an attempt to find something to dull the pain. Almost every kind of compulsive behaviour is an attempt to anaesthetize a deep personal pain. Unless you reach the core of that pain you won't really deal with the behaviour. So if you want to deal with lust, don't think the love of God is irrelevent. It is right at the heart of what you need.'

Julian Hardyman, Idols, p.56.

GREED

'...I said greed is when we love money more than God. That's true, but here's another thing to add to it. Greed is when we love money more than God and do not love God with our money. Refusing to share our money is a sign that we have made money our God.'

Julian Hardyman, Idols, p.43.

IDOLATRY

'The Bible used the picture of idolatry as a way of describing anything that takes the place of the true God in our lives. Not depictions of the Greek goddess of love Aphrodite, but mental images of naked bodies. Not literal temples where we go to worship real statues, but inner urges for more and more. Not stone altars to sacrifice on, but bragging about the money in the bank and the turnover of the market stall. It's all idolatry: putting something else in God's place.'

Julian Hardyman, Idols: God's Battle for Our Hearts, p.15.