Simon Ponsonby is a well-respected church leader, Bible teacher, and author.

He has written about how, after 30 years of ministry, he realised that his faith had grown somewhat cold.  He felt disappointed by the drift he saw in his own denomination (the Church of England), and discouraged by the moral and spiritual failings of some of his friends and former role models.  In his own life and ministry, he had become spiritually dry, tired, and inward-looking.

A key moment came in March 2019, at the funeral of the evangelist and writer Michael Green.  Here was a man, Ponsonby notes, whose life had been ablaze with the love of Christ, and who at the age of 88 was still proclaiming Jesus on student missions, around the hospital ward (while recovering from a heart attack!), and to anyone else who would listen.

Simon says that Michael Green’s single-minded focus on Jesus provoked him, and prompted him to return to his first love.  Meditating on the Gospels, Simon realised that, time after time, the reaction of people to Jesus was amazement.  And as he pondered this, he himself became freshly amazed with Jesus.

For how many of us has the vision of Jesus become distant, out of focus, obscured by other worthy, but less central things?

Let’s hear the call of Jesus to recover our first love.

Let’s steep ourselves in the story of Jesus, as recorded in the Gospels.

Let’s ask the Holy Spirit to freshly reveal Jesus to us.

Let us regain the wonder, and seek never to lose it again.

[Originally posted on 14th December 2019]