DISCLAIMER: The Aquila Report is a news and information resource. We welcome commentary from readers; for more information visit our Letters to the Editor link. All our content, including commentary and opinion, is intended to be information for our readers and does not necessarily indicate an endorsement by The Aquila Report or its governing board. In order to provide this website free of charge to our readers,  Aquila Report uses a combination of donations, advertisements and affiliate marketing links to  pay its operating costs.

DISCLAIMER: The Aquila Report is a news and information resource. We welcome commentary from readers; for more information visit our Letters to the Editor link. All our content, including commentary and opinion, is intended to be information for our readers and does not necessarily indicate an endorsement by The Aquila Report or its governing board. In order to provide this website free of charge to our readers,  Aquila Report uses a combination of donations, advertisements and affiliate marketing links to  pay its operating costs.

By all means, let’s pray for our temporary, leaky tent to get patched up and thank God every time he does. But let’s long even more for the eternal mansion he has given us through Jesus Christ.

Christians can and should pray for healing. James 5:14 says: “Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord”. We believe in a God who heals. He is called “the LORD, your healer” (Ex 15:26). He sent his servants Elijah & Elisha with a healing ministry in the Old Testament, and he sent his Son the Lord Jesus Christ and his apostles to exercise a healing ministry in the New Testament.
But we need to see healing for what it is: it’s a camper, who owns a luxurious mansion, getting his leaky tent patched up. Of course, patching up a leaky tent is a good thing. Patching up a leaky tent is something to be very thankful for. But living in a patched-up, leaky tent is not very exciting compared to living in a splendid mansion. Paul compares our present body to a tent and our resurrected body to a “house…eternal in the heavens” (2 Cor 5:1).
So, when Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, Lazarus was getting his tent patched up, for 20, 30, 40 more years (John 11:44). But what Jesus has really come to give Lazarus (and all believers with him) is an everlasting house – “the resurrection of life” (John 5:29). Lazarus was never meant to confuse more camping with his move into a mansion.

[Your] body is not a defensive castle over which the sovereign “self” rules against the incursions of others, but a site owned by God, where he is to be served and glorified—a temple.

It seems to me there’s nothing more counter-cultural we can teach our children at the moment than the statement:

It’s not your body!

We’re (rightly) eager to teach our children the difference between appropriate and inappropriate touch. We don’t want them to be abused or to abuse others. But how do we arm them intellectually to resist such abuse? Western culture tells them to oppose abuse “because it’s your body”. In other words, what makes “abuse” so terrible is that it’s an invasion of the sovereignty of the self. But the Bible teaches exactly the opposite premise: “Don’t let people abuse you, because it’s not your body”. Your body belongs to God—as your Creator, and as your Redeemer (Gen 1:26; 1 Cor 6:19). “Abuse” is wicked not because it’s an attack on the sovereignty of the self, but on the sovereignty of God. That raises the stakes on abuse considerably—think millstones round the neck, and being thrown into the sea (Matt 18:6).
It’s important to see that these aren’t just two equal and equivalent ways of tackling the same problem; one is untrue and destructive. The other is true and, therefore, wholesome.
The Problem
Firstly, there’s the problem that the underlying logic of what our children are told is false. For example, you’ll often see the slogan “My Body My Choice” on placards at pro-abortion rallies; Amnesty International also use it. But the slogan simply isn’t true. When someone says: “You can’t tell me what to do with my body!”, the simple answer is: “Yes, we can!”. Every time you put on a seat-belt you’re showing that it’s not your body. Every person who puts on a seat-belt is recognising everyone else’s responsibility for your body. No one seriously believes the body is a strip of sovereign territory over which no politician can rule. The body is still very well policed in the UK. The body is political; it always has been and always will be. There is lots of legislation which says what you can and can’t do with your body. Try walking out of your house with no clothes on and it will quickly prove the point! So, firstly, the mantra that’s “it’s your body” is far too simplistic.
Read More

[Your] body is not a defensive castle over which the sovereign “self” rules against the incursions of others, but a site owned by God, where he is to be served and glorified—a temple.

It seems to me there’s nothing more counter-cultural we can teach our children at the moment than the statement:

It’s not your body!

We’re (rightly) eager to teach our children the difference between appropriate and inappropriate touch. We don’t want them to be abused or to abuse others. But how do we arm them intellectually to resist such abuse? Western culture tells them to oppose abuse “because it’s your body”. In other words, what makes “abuse” so terrible is that it’s an invasion of the sovereignty of the self. But the Bible teaches exactly the opposite premise: “Don’t let people abuse you, because it’s not your body”. Your body belongs to God—as your Creator, and as your Redeemer (Gen 1:26; 1 Cor 6:19). “Abuse” is wicked not because it’s an attack on the sovereignty of the self, but on the sovereignty of God. That raises the stakes on abuse considerably—think millstones round the neck, and being thrown into the sea (Matt 18:6).
It’s important to see that these aren’t just two equal and equivalent ways of tackling the same problem; one is untrue and destructive. The other is true and, therefore, wholesome.
The Problem
Firstly, there’s the problem that the underlying logic of what our children are told is false. For example, you’ll often see the slogan “My Body My Choice” on placards at pro-abortion rallies; Amnesty International also use it. But the slogan simply isn’t true. When someone says: “You can’t tell me what to do with my body!”, the simple answer is: “Yes, we can!”. Every time you put on a seat-belt you’re showing that it’s not your body. Every person who puts on a seat-belt is recognising everyone else’s responsibility for your body. No one seriously believes the body is a strip of sovereign territory over which no politician can rule. The body is still very well policed in the UK. The body is political; it always has been and always will be. There is lots of legislation which says what you can and can’t do with your body. Try walking out of your house with no clothes on and it will quickly prove the point! So, firstly, the mantra that’s “it’s your body” is far too simplistic.
Read More

Thinking Little is what Jesus did when he spent his first thirty years in quiet, obscurity, obeying his parents in Nazareth. It’s why he spent his three-year ministry training 12 disciples, and confined himself to a small area, in order to change the world. 

In 1970, the author Wendell Berry wrote an essay called “Think Little”. He argues that in order to sustain the Green Movement over the long-term, it can’t just be something we expect Big Thinkers in government to fix. It’s got to be dealt with by personal change in how we live. “For most of the history of this country [the USA] our motto, implied or spoken, has been Think Big. A better motto, and an essential one now, is Think Little”. P.54. By Think Little, he means we need to stop hiding behind general, vague slogans, and get specific. We need to build our marriages, care for a garden, and switch the lights off. There’s nothing Christian about the essay. But I love the basic idea.
“Don’t Think Big. Think Little.” I wish Christians would adopt this mindset.
This doesn’t sound obvious, at first, does it? As Christians, we have all kinds of reasons to Think Big. Our God is Big, after all. Isaiah tells us “the nations are like a drop from a bucket” to him (Isa 40:15). The Great Commission is Big; Jesus sends us out to “make disciples of all nations” (Matt 28:19). The consequences are Big—people will spend an eternity in heaven and hell depending on how they respond to Jesus (John 3:16). Therefore, having big ambitions for Christ’s kingdom seems only natural. Surely, we want the little mustard seed to grow big (Matt 13:31-32)? Jesus is Saviour of the world (John 4:42).
But it’s precisely at this point that the danger of Thinking Big appears. It gets very hard to disentangle our promotion of Christ from self-promotion. Every Christian ministry knows this, if they’re honest. It’s scary how building platforms and “brand” have become part and parcel of our thinking. We feel the pull of the internet, and the size and scale of the audience it offers (especially among the young), and we’d love to harness it for Jesus Christ. But before we know it, our well-meant enthusiasm gets sucked into the hype of Big Thinking. Fads and bandwagons periodically roll through the Christian church. So-and-so becomes “the Next Big Thing”. The Think Big slogan doesn’t fit very well with the spirit of John the Baptist, who said, “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30).
Read More