Turn To See

John 20:15-16 “ “Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?” Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.”Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She TURNED and said to him in Aramaic,“Rabboni!” (which means Teacher). “

Is it possible that the thing you are crying over is actually over and you don’t know it yet?

It was so with Mary Magdalene.  She had reached such a high point in her grieving and was so immobilized by it, that she couldn’t even recognize the Man in front of her to be the One who she was crying over. Jesus, the Risen Lord, stood in her sight as the living proof of the invalidity of her grief and yet Mary could not reconcile it with what she was seeing with her eyes. Are our eyes so clouded with tears that we cannot see that our prayers are being answered, are we mourning over unfulfilled promises, when they are in fact, fully-fledged out and asking us “who is it you are looking for?”

We can get so overwhelmed by what we see or know in the natural that it becomes impossible for us to comprehend when the supernatural occurs, even if it has been promised to us by the infallible word of God. Such was what happened with Sarah, that when she considered her body that had lived out its natural purpose and the age of her husband, she laughed at the promise God gave Abraham, that He would surely bless them with a son within the year (Genesis 18:11-12 “Now Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in years. The way of women had ceased to be with Sarah. So Sarah laughed to herself, saying, “After I am worn out, and my lord is old, shall I have pleasure?”“).

It’s a natural reaction, right? ….Well, should it be?

Mary crying at the grave side, is such an obviously expected behavior, that it should have surprised her when she was asked why she was doing it. I believe that Jesus was calling her attention to how she was perceiving what was happening around her, just as the Lord addressed Sarah’s hidden laughter (Genesis 18: 13-14 “The Lord said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh and say, ‘Shall I indeed bear a child, now that I am old?’ Is anything too hard for the Lord? At the appointed time I will return to you, about this time next year, and Sarah shall have a son””). You see, we are called to be spiritual beings. But when we try to process things as natural men and women, there is a gap in our understanding which can result in our perceiving things of the spirit incorrectly or partially and emoting to the confusion we see rather than the confirmation that it is  (1 Corinthians 2:14 “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.”)

YOU CANNOT SEE THROUGH THE FLESH WHAT CAN ONLY BE SHOWN TO THE SPIRIT

Please look at this image below:

What God speaks to us can look like this if we try to understand it in the natural. Just like an encrypted email can only be opened by the recipient who has the password given to him by the sender because of the confidentiality that he enjoys with him, the heavenly secrets can only  be accessed by the children of God who commune with Him in spirit and in truth. God is Spirit and He made us to be spiritual beings who discern things in our spirit and not in our flesh. He gave us the Holy Spirit to aid us in this endeavor. (John 16:13 “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth,…”) The real question is: Are we sometimes anxious, depressed, angry, fearful, doubtful or weary because we have been trying to reconcile the very real challenges we are going through with the promises of God based on our human interpretation and failing ? If we have, then we need to know that there is a disconnect in our life with the divine, because THE DIVINE CANNOT BE COMPREHENDED AT THE LEVEL OF THE HUMAN; NO MATTER HOW INTELLIGENT THE SAID HUMAN IS.

It is our own fleshly knowledge that veils our hearts. This veil is manifested as the grief in Mary’s heart that she wished for the body of the crucified Jesus while standing in the presence of His resurrected self and it is manifested as the defeat in Sarah’s heart that she dismissed the supernatural blessing as impossible. I wonder if we too are looking into an empty grave while the Lord is calling to us. I wonder if we too are standing behind a DOOR and listening to what God is speaking, instead of  meeting Him face to face (Genesis 18:9-10 “They said to him, “Where is Sarah your wife?” And he said, “She is in the tent.” The Lord said, “I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah your wife shall have a son.” And Sarah was listening at the tent door behind him.”) Our spiritual eyes can be opened wide enough to believe God only when we are truly facing Him. It was when Jesus called our her name that Mary TURNED to Him and realized the risen Lord (John 20:Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turned and said to him in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means Teacher).”)

2 Corinthians 3:16-18 ”  But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit“

When we turn to the Lord, we are are truly unveiled and guess what: not only is our understanding about spiritual truths clarified but we are freed from disappointments caused by our fleshly interpretations and our very countenance begins to reflect His glory. No more weeping in grief or laughing in disbelief, just boasting in the goodness of God, unveiled in Christ Jesus.

GOD BLESS

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Public Spectacle

Colossians 2:15 “And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.”

It’s the hour when the called out priesthood of the Lord of Hosts is once again reminded of the time when God made a public spectacle of His love by giving His Only Son Jesus to die on the cross for us. How often do we remember this when we absently comment on someone’s common mistakes or intentionally launch into a diatribe over the great injustice done by another- that the Lord not only took a stand to cancel every one of our merited condemnations, but has also taken His rightful seat to continue advocating on the behalf of the entire world? (Romans 8:33-34 “Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.”)

We live in a day and age when it’s possible to make known our views, opinions and judgements on any given topic or person, simply at the touch of a finger. The technology in communication which reinvents itself every nanosecond to supposedly bring people closer together, has endowed mankind with the power to raise an applause for one and an outcry against another, making anything and everything a sensational news item. There are several platforms on which the most mundane mistakes and the most private misdemeanors recieve avalanches of undue attention from across the globe. We, as the church of God, need to make the difference in the way we use these channels, by categorically manifesting the love of God at every given opportunity, because that is exactly what Jesus did- every time a group of people looked down on someone’s misdeeds, Jesus turned up to embrace that very person in full view of everyone (Luke 19:5-7 “And when Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today.” So he hurried and came down and received him joyfully. And when they saw it, they all grumbled, “He has gone in to be the guest of a man who is a sinner.””)

What Jesus did in that moment looking up at Zaccheus, was actually directed at the crowds that surrounded Him. Instead of pointing a finger at Zaccheus’ malpractices or demanding a public apology for his unethical means of money-making, Jesus simply made a scene of His reckless love for the sinner-man! He set the perfect example to show that we who are called to be in the business of building each other up in love shouldn’t be tearing each other down (Galatians 5:14-15 “For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another.”)

Christian exhorting is NOT mudslinging a miscreant with an audience watching. It is the private dealing with a sibling, done in utter meekness and under the influence of the Holy Spirit, with a heightened awareness of the ONLY God-desired outcome- to bring home the prodigal (Galatians 6:1 “Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted.”) And for those of us who would persist in unveiling another’s mistakes, the Lord admonishes that we first look into our own closet (John 8:7 “.. “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.”) An anonymous writer has rightly said, “for often he who is first to find fault, is the very one who has first transgressed.”

God bless

I am CARRIED!

ISAIAH 46: 3-4 “Listen to me, O house of Jacob, all the remnant of the house of Israel, who have been borne by me from before your birth, carried from the womb; even to your old age I am he, and to gray hairs I will carry you. I have made, and I will bear; I will carry and will save.”

So often when we feel like we are teetering on the edge of a cliff, we forget that – God, He has got a grip on us like none other! And it’s not like He’s just getting the hang of it…. He has been carrying us, safely ensconing us in His loving arms from before even we were conceived. Even before your parents decided pink or blue, and painted the room with soothing pastels, God chose you for Himself and carefully wove every particle of your being together to create what He already had begun bearing in His mind. We were conceived in His mind first before we were even a tiny embryo feeding off our mother’s sustenance from inside the womb and He already has a record of how every season of our lives is going to turn out (Psalm 139:15-16 “My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them” ).

He has promised us that He is the same God who first carried us, Who will also carry us until the very end. He prepared us, not so He could drop us when we are being too difficult to handle, but to bear us up in Him. He does not walk away when we are stubborn, He does not leave us stranded where we are, rather there is nothing we can do that can make Him give us up. It has always been us who have given up on God. It’s been us who have denied Him when it was inconvenient for us, but never Him. So we have no reason to fret or freak out, because He is always with us, upholding us in His righteous right hand (Deuteronomy 31:6 “Be strong and courageous. Do not fear or be in dread of them, for it is the LORD your God who goes with you. He will not leave you or forsake you.”).

When we make the resources and references we have carry us and not God who is the Source of all things, we will feel suspended of all support when the resources dry out or when there have been bitter experiences with flaky people and untrustworthy cords that frayed at the slightest hint of a flame. (Job 6:13 “Have I any help in me, when resource is driven from me?”) Unless we recognise that it’s God’s hands that keep holding us in place, where ever we are, and not any human or man made works or the works produced thereof, we are constantly in danger of feeling let down.

Let us rest in the knowledge that God is our potter and we are the clay in His hands, and He has never once taken His hands off of us.

God bless!

The Passion behind Compassion

1 Corinthians 13:4-8 “Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. “

If there is a quest for the source of the desire for expressing love or the root of the passion behind compassion, it would end at finding Jesus Christ who is the personification of love and who came down to explicitly express the Father’s compassion toward a dying world and the deep seated yearning in Him that none should perish (1 John 4:8-9 “God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.”) God Himself is the author of love and the express image of it.  And our capacity to love anyone or the will to be compassionate toward anybody has its genesis in Christ Jesus, who through His Spirit cascades love into our hearts (Romans 5:5 “… because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”)

Compassion is one expression of love just as mercy, grace and empathy might be. Has it ever happened that we’ve tried to show God’s love to some one, comfort someone in their pain, encourage someone is their backsliding, teach someone a spiritual discipline and somehow the action back fired or set in motion completely chaotic events? If we were to honestly check ourselves in that situation, we’d find that we had reached out  because of the enthusiasm of the flesh rather than the urging of the Holy Spirit. When our compassion is led by the prompting of the Holy Spirit within us it won’t have that effect (1 Corinthians 14:33 “For God is not a God of confusion but of peace”). Identifying the driving force or the passion behind our acts of love and kindness to one another is of paramount importance because if we are not careful to direct our actions according to the leading of the Spirit, then we are in the perilous position of switching to default mode- acting to satiate the lusts of our flesh which can have unwanted consequences (Galatians 5:16-17 “ But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do”).

 It is with the very intent of equipping us with the ability to fulfill the greatest commandment- to love God and to love others that Jesus Christ promised us ‘Another Helper’ (John 14:16 “And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever”). When not directed by the Spirit, our motivation to show love and offer comfort comes from unconsciously exalting ourselves. We think of ourselves to be in a better position, more enabled or simply wiser than the one we are reaching out to and somehow what is so holy and pure to God as love, comes out as condescension along with a need to be identified or graded for the benevolence. The office of any ministry for God is primarily service. To love someone with God-kind of love requires humility. Only a humble heart that is prepared to serve another can truly love and exhibit the right kind of compassion, without personal goals. God came down from His throne in heaven, was born as an infant much like the rest of us and served His life on a platter to show His love for us (Philippians 2:3-8 “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross“). 

The passion behind our compassion is Christ Jesus, Himself (1 John 4:19 “We love because he first loved us.”)  

Being a Christian is not standing on a pedestal, feeling self sufficient in our own ways and exhorting others who may not have fully climbed up yet, with passionate speeches. Rather it is in the going down and accepting that it is the grace of God alone that uplifts us and desperately depending on the Spirit of God to direct our compassion toward people with solid actions (1 John 3:18 “Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.”). 

God Bless

God Of All Comfort

Isaiah 66:13 “As one whom his mother comforts, so I will comfort you; And you will be comforted in Jerusalem.”

When we picture God as God the Father, it is natural to visualize Him in a perfectly paternal way as the Planner, Provider, and Protector. But we are also promised in the Word of God that we will receive a kind of nurturing care in God’s hands that is like that of a mother to her new born. Actually, even more mindful than that is He in His compassion toward us (Isaiah 49:15 “Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you.”) When we think of the Lord as compassionate we expect the expression of such a compassion to take the form of readily available soothing arms to hold us whenever we are hurting, lonely or in need for such an affection. But today, we are encouraged to have a bigger understanding of the greatness and timelessness of the love and the motherhood of our Abba Father, which is not just about hugs and kisses to make a boo boo go away but it is about the Great I Am using his own body to provide comfort to His people as nursing mother does her child!

The comfort of a mother’s arms paint a picture of a mother holding close to her bosom her child to satisfy every last bit of hunger and thirst that  the child was wailing because of.  Just as a mother cannot biologically turn away from the cry of a child but is compelled to attend to it so urgently because her body responds to that plaintive call even before her mind can process the situation, God cannot and does not miss the sincere cries of His people, instead He hastens to hear us and cannot help but respond in His great love for us (Psalm 66 :19-20 ” But truly God has listened; he has attended to the voice of my prayer. Blessed be God, because he has not rejected my prayer or removed his steadfast love from me!”)

Because we so often cry out against our situations and tear up about this thing, that thing or the other in our prayer, we might anticipate that our God who is the prayer answering God would rush toward us like a relay race runner with the answer like a baton which He would pass to into our outstretched waiting hands so that we can grab it and run forward without even looking back. Sometimes we simply want God to quiet our tantrums by handing us the exact missing pieces to fit the puzzle that we scattered all over the place- meet the immediate need with an immediate feed. But then no mother treats her child’s requirement like a drive thru fast-food joint does its customer’s order. A mother takes the time to read her child’s face and knows what her child is really hungering after, even without being told and feeds her child accordingly and certainly not with anything junk if she can help it! So does our Lord. He knows that though we may be famished and all cried out, our prayers don’t need breaded answers, rather a supernatural provision that comes not from the ground up but heaven down, the living Word which when we consume ravenously we would be satiated in a more real way (Deuteronomy 8:3 “And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.”)

We are not simply at the receiving end of the maternal care and nurturing at the hands of our God but are called to be an extension cord to whoever needs plugging into His love. The nursing mother comforting her infant with the warmth of her own body is also a divine display of how our God, the Balm of Gilead, intends for His body, the church, each and every one of His own chosen people who have received loving kindness at his hands to be the source of comfort for all the ailing and wailing who are in desperate need of soothing (2 Corinthians 1:3-4 “ Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God”).

God Bless