We put God in a box when we think He turns a blind eye to sin in our life, or when we worship the doings rather than the Do-er, or when we try to repeat what He did in the past, in our own strength. Putting God in a box is trying to control Him. Sometimes He just quietly leaves and sometimes He reacts dramatically...

We should love the church because Christ, its head, loves the church. We cannot approach church or God as consumers. Meaningful local church involvement is not an optional spiritual discipline, but the essential context in which believers are to grow in Christ. Therefore, God wants His church to be a learning church, a caring church, a worshipping church and an evangelising church.

Living out whole Christianity means embodying the greatest commandment. There are three postures that describe what this looks like: standing firm - using all our mind; kneeling - using all our heart and soul; and running - using all our strength. We need to stand in truth, wisdom, our thought life and choices. This is foundational. We also need to kneel before God in surrender and intimacy. Finally, we need to serve our neighbours, engaging our tithe, time and talents to reach the unloved, unreached and unknown.

Jesus didn’t fit preconceived expectations. He spoke of heaven and God’s kingdom, but the disciples heard only God’s people Israel. The Pharisees heard Jesus’ every claim as blasphemy because they saw only His questionable origins and the people wanted a military king. Jesus confounds our wrong expectations of Him also. We miss out on all God has for us when we put Jesus in a box or see Him as punitive or make our own plans expecting Him to bless them. Are our expectations of Jesus too small? Do we recognise when He comes to us wanting to do a new thing? He wants to use us to bring the kingdom of peace into the world.

It is a risk to be authentic and real, but otherwise we have to settle for superficial relationships. Jonathan shows what good friends looks like. They are loyal, they love, they’re honest and they share faith. At the centre of our lives we need spiritual encouragement that can only come from a trusted friend who accepts us, sticks by us but challenges us. Even then our best friends can let us down, but we have Jesus, who will never let us down. We know how much He loves us because He gave up everything for us. We can’t leave love like that on the table. We must respond to it.