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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I am NO VICTIM!

PSALM 34:10 “The young lions suffer want and hunger; but those who seek the LORD lack no good thing.”

If your relationship is with your SUPPLIER is good, you’ll never have bad inventory. Suffering lack is not for those of us who are aware of our own identity as the sons and daughters of the Most High God (Ephesians 1:5 “He predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will”).

The children of the King of Kings are not victimised by the fluctuations in the economy. We who know the portion of the promises in store for those who worship God and belong to Him (Psalm 112:1-3 “Praise the LORD! Blessed is the man who fears the LORD, who greatly delights in his commandments! His offspring will be mighty in the land; the generation of the upright will be blessed. Wealth and riches are in his house, and his righteousness endures forever.”), also have the perfect perspective from heaven that fully convinces us of God’s ability to keep His commitments (Jeremiah 1:12 “Then the Lord said to me, “You have seen well, for I am watching over my word to perform it””). Only with such clairty in the line of our spiritual sight, do we confidently and consistently go to the throneroom everyday, not to beg and plead for a morsel, but to sit at His table and eat from His hand what we know has been prepared freshly just for us (Matthew 6:11 “Give us this day our daily bread”).

Being God-provisioned is way beyond getting our daily dietary requirements met by God. It is a lifestyle acquired by those who put their belief in the faithfulness of God’s love and choose to rest in Him and in His strength. It’s a place where He joyfully arranges free-flowing food, drink and favor in their lives as an expression of His manner of love toward them (Psalm 36:7-8 “How precious is your steadfast love, O God! The children of mankind take refuge in the shadow of your wings. They feast on the abundance of your house, and you give them drink from the river of your delights.”)

God delights in lavishing His love and care upon His own ‘flesh’- for that’s what we are (Ephesians 5:29 “For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church,”) and He doesn’t find any ask too difficult to fulfill (Jeremiah 32:27 “Behold, I am the Lord, the God of all flesh. Is anything too hard for me?”). The question about the needy and those suffering lack is never about God’s ability or inclination to provide for those that are His, rather it is always about will He be asked, as fathers are by their children. It is those that don’t go to the Father by rightful sonship that often complain that God is partial to some while ignoring others, but the reality is that the Abba Father has never turned away anyone who has lifted their eyes unto Him and asked of Him. It’s delusional to think that created beings know how to bless those that they beget and that He who is their Creator wouldn’t do infinitely more for those that He handcrafted and that depend on Him (Matthew 7:9-11 “Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!”)

Yes, we are previleged in Christ and we fixate on Him with our lives rotating on the axis of the cross, but we do so for far more than just a filling, and only those that truly seek Him enjoy the enormity of the feast that He has laid up for those that have RSVP’d to His invitation, and trust us – ‘the bread’ is just the sides!

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

 

 

God made us FLINT-STONES!

Ezekiel 3:9 “I will make your forehead like the hardest stone, harder than flint. Do not be afraid of them or terrified by them, though they are a rebellious people.”

There’s such a might in the provision of God’s grace for His people that allows us to give ourselves in perfect submission to His will and in doing that to still stand upright in the midst of unrepentant hearts. Through the wonderful power of the Holy Spirit, God prepares the spirit-man that resides inside of each of us with such immense strength, which our physical-man embodies as a boldness in our right-standing with God that won’t bend under the pressures of the shake-downs that the world puts us through (Ephesians 3:16 “that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man”)

When we put ourselves in the hands of our maker and know that He is molding us, we ought to expect that there will be a time and place where He will position us that will truly showcase His handiwork to every one that comes in contact with us, even when the viewers have got their blinders on (Acts 13:47 “For this is what the Lord has commanded us: “‘I have made you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth.””). While our original disposition is weak in itself to carry the weight of God’s call to its fulfillment in the face of the disobedience that reigns all around us, the Lord gives us sufficient grace that causes us to become flint-faced because if we are any less tough than that we would break under the pressure in our weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9 “But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness…”). To obey God and speak faith when everything around us speaks defeat, failure and discord with God, is to swim upstream and against the tide and it requires so much resistance that it is only the love of the Father, grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, quite literally and not just a pronouncement, that can uphold us.

The God-given steadfastness is provided to us to submit to Him and to His sovereign will. When we desire so much to hearken to His voice and do His bidding then He gives us the ability to  drown out the cacophony that surrounds us.However, there is a stark contrast between this resoluteness that is birthed from the Spirit of submission from the stubbornness that comes from the pride of being passionate about the things of God. Our Lord Jesus demonstrated His submission to His Father’s will in that He was focused in His path and nothing could distract Him from His purpose (Luke 9:51 “When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem.”) That Jesus would be given the grace to persevere in His divine mission upon the completion of which He would be lifted up to be seated at the right-hand of the Father was prophesied of Him years before His birth (Isaiah 50:7 “But the Lord GOD helps me; therefore I have not been disgraced; therefore I have set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame.) The strength that we require to fulfill God’s plans for us has been pre-deposited in our lives from the foundations of the earth by the choice that He made of calling us “in Christ”. It is God’s placement of us “in Christ” that makes us sharper and harder than flint so that we don’t flinch when the world happens to us (Ephesians 1:4 “For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love”)

Today’s “rebellious house” is more than just an atmosphere of unbelief and disobedience to God. It is also in the prevalence of deception even among the so-called people of the faith. There’s a lot of feel-good factor involved in the attitude of worship that doesn’t allow for the Holy Spirit  to really penetrate the hearts of God’s people. It is in such a setting that the Lord prepares His own chosen children with anointing to help them be discerning and remain genuine (1 John 2:20-21 “ But you have been anointed by the Holy One, and you all have knowledge. I write to you, not because you do not know the truth, but because you know it, and because no lie is of the truth.”)

God Bless.

 

 

 

 

Anoint the shield

Isaiah 21:5 “They prepare the table, they spread the rugs, they eat, they drink. Arise, O princes; OIL THE SHIELD“

For godly men and women, being engaged in warfare is nothing more than an exercise of  our spiritual office as we are always found in one of three stages – Going into war, in the middle of war, coming out of war (having been victorious or defeated until next attempt).We are called to suit up in the armor of God and be found armed and dangerous at all times not so we can instigate the enemy but to combat the assailant in the face of assault, and above all, to be preserved at the end of it (Ephesians 6:13 “Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm.”) Equipment for doing battle is both of the offensive and defensive kind, both of which require anointing. The preparation of arms with oil is done for a three-fold purpose – to preserve them, to polish them and to make them slippery and difficult to be countered by the enemy’s attack.

Now the ointment that we oil our artillery with is the anointing  of the Holy Spirit that is poured out upon us from above. We might have acquired our divine armor and ammunition but it is the heaven-sent anointing that turns it into a mighty spiritual weapon in God to fight our spiritual wars (2 Corinthians 10:3-4 “For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds.”) 

Two things happen when the Holy Spirit readies us and our equipment for battle- the enemy becomes a visible target and the Lord of Hosts sends an army to take its position behind us

The Enemy : 

It can be difficult at times to perceive what form and shape the enemy takes to come against us seeing as we are not fighting an incarnate (Ephesians 6:12 “or we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.”) But it is not the intention of our Heavenly Father that we be in the dark or be uncomprehending about our attacker. When we choose to use our faith under the government of the Holy Spirit, the formless enemy will not only be forced to reveal his identity but will also be unable to counter this deadly combo (Acts 6:8-10 “And Stephen, full of faith and power, did great wonders and signs among the people. Then there arose some from what is called the Synagogue of the Freedmen (Cyrenians, Alexandrians, and those from Cilicia and Asia), disputing with Stephen.  And they were not able to resist the wisdom and the Spirit by which he spoke.”)

The Army:

Seldom are we aware of all the help that God makes available to us in the face of peril. At best we feel ill-equipped with our faith being shaky at the knees and at worst we feel all- alone. But when we in our one-man capacity are willing to partner with God, our enemies are as good as conquered because He chooses to stand by our side and be our army and our ammunition rolled into one (Judges 6:16 “And the Lord said to him, “Surely I will be with you, and you shall defeat the Midianites as one man.”) But sometimes, we yearn for a physical evidence of support for our cause which we are convinced no one else cares about as passionately as we do (1 Kings 19:14 “He said, “I have been very jealous for the Lord, the God of hosts. For the people of Israel have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword, and I, even I only, am left, and they seek my life, to take it away.”) It is then that the Lord pours out His Spirit on us and causes a host of soldiers to be enlisted to back us up, only to comfort us and lift up our morale (Judges 6:34 “But the Spirit of the Lord came upon Gideon; then he blew the trumpet, and the Abiezrites gathered behind him.”)

Dear Church, let us ready ourselves for war-waging. All we need do is seek the instructions of the Commander in Chief of the Lord’s army, polish our armaments with His Anointing and wait and see His Salvation….because the battle belongs to the Lord.

God Bless

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reaching Out Without Doubt

John 20:25-27 “So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord!” But he said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.” A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.”

When persecutors to oppress us, judges to condemn us, centurions to arrest us are banging on the door that we have barricaded ourselves within, it can become hard to believe that a Living God is “ON THE MOVE” in the midst of us. That He is God and that He loves us isn’t in question. What is difficult to fathom though is that He cares enough to make His presence known to us so that we can take comfort in the fact that He is alive and “IN CHARGE” of whatever is going on. But HE DOES care that much!

When the Lord’s disciple Thomas wouldn’t believe that Jesus had indeed visited his comrades he staunchly refused to accept their version of the event as true unless He would be allowed to experience the touch of God for himself. Jesus encountered Thomas intimately a week later, not to prove Himself but to show him that his doubts were unfounded. Though we might have the awareness that God is with us even as we go through uncertainties and difficulties it is important to the Lord that we are able to truly identify His living, powerful presence with us rather than have just a vague sense of His indwelling. God is excited to meet with us personally and to grant us an exclusive interview with Him, but we are warned of desiring for it with doubtfully because to do so would put us at the peril of being blown away by the many kinds of turbulence  that threaten to throw us overboard (James 1:6 “ But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. “)

It was doubt in apostle Peter’s heart that allowed the stormy winds to put fear in him and influence his walk on the water toward Jesus almost causing him to drown in the process (Matthew 14:28-30 “And Peter answered him, “Lord, IF it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” He said, “Come.” So Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water and came to Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid, and beginning to sink he cried out, “Lord, save me.”) The cause of our doom is almost certainly the “IF” in our minds concerning the availability of God’s help at hand and the extent of its power over our foreboding circumstance.

The scriptures promise that God rules over the tempestuous situations that we encounter (Psalm 29:10 “The Lord sits enthroned over the flood; the Lord sits enthroned as king forever.”) The surface of deep waters is not just something that our God trod over as one of the manifestations of His miraculous powers, but it is His very seat right from the very beginning, out of which he called out a fully orchestrated creation of the world (Genesis 1:1-2 “ In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.”) Therefore, we can be sure that no matter what the chaos, Jesus is the master of it and is certainly going to birth something awesome in our lives through it.

Let’s be of good cheer! Even if are finding ourselves in over our heads and our doubts may have caused our feet to almost fail in the depths of the waters we find ourselves in, we are within the arm’s reach of our Lord and He is here right now, with us, to lift us up (Matthew 14:31 “Jesus immediately reached out his hand and took hold of him, saying to him, “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?”)

God Bless.

 

 

Prayer- A Two Way Street

Psalm 3:4 “I call out to the Lord, and he answers me from his holy mountain.”

When our prayer life is so congested with one-way traffic of petitions, thanksgiving, complaining and repenting there may be no room left for God’s answers, counsel, forgiveness and mercy to make the trip to our hearts.

Our God is a TALKER. He yearns for us to not only bring our requests to him but to also carry back the answers. If only we’d make time in our prayer to listen more, we’d realise the privilege of having a God with whom we can carry a conversation. 

God bless.

God-fearing Wisdom

Proverbs 9:10 “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.”

What does it mean to fear God and how does it lead to wisdom?The idea of fearing God is not to get us to be scared of the ‘Big guy in the sky’, but to be awe-inspired of God in the fullness of our knowledge of how great and mighty He is. When we recognize God as omnipotent and everything else as impotent just because He is with us, we are safely on the threshold of wisdom. To fear God is to have complete confidence that no matter what we face, God is able to deliver us from it. But if our fear of ominous tidings overtakes our fear of God it is because we lack in the knowledge of the Holy One in us.The bible recommends that we ask for wisdom when we find ourselves in such a place (James 1:5 “ If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him”). But it takes wisdom to ask for more wisdom.

King Solomon was a God-fearing man who spoke three thousand proverbs and wrote a thousand and five songs in his lifetime, all of which he owed to God-given wisdom and exceedingly great understanding that was granted to him in a divine encounter with the Lord. When he took the reigns of the kingdom of Israel from his father King David he had very real problems.He found himself in the precarious position of having to administer justice to the Lord’s chosen people, a nation so large and wide that he felt incompetent as a youth to preside over. King Solomon’s wisdom was kick-started by his fearing God more than he did his situation. He recognized the sovereignty of  God, that it had been He who had been merciful to his father David, faithful in His promises to keep him ruler and one of his sons on the throne forever. So when God showed up to bless him all he asked was for an understanding heart to know the difference between God’s goodness and the evil of men (1 Kings 3:8-9 “And your servant is in the midst of your people whom you have chosen, a great people, too many to be numbered or counted for multitude. Give your servant therefore an understanding mind to govern your people, that I may discern between good and evil, for who is able to govern this your great people?”)

We serve a God who is jealous over us and doesn’t tolerate our bowing down before any idol (Deuteronomy 4:24 “For the LORD your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God.) The real danger in fearing something that is not God is that the thing we fear most becomes our idol because we find ourselves constantly thinking about it, vexing over it and, in essence, ‘worshiping it’ instead of seeking the face of God (Ezekiel 14 :3 “Son of man, these men have set up their idols in their hearts, and put before them that which causes them to stumble into iniquity….”). The very posture we assume when we are faced with a tough cookie will tell what we fear more- God or the situation. When we are God fearing- we will bow ourselves to Him who holds all the answers instead of being bowed down by the problem itself. When King David learned that His child was struck with an illness by the Lord because of his sin with Bathsheba he didn’t rush to the side of his ailing son or seek healers, instead he sought the Lord with all of His heart to seek His grace (2 Samuel 12:16 “David therefore pleaded with God for the child, and David fasted and went in and lay all night on the ground.”) When we idolize our problems we foolishly display our ignorance of how big our God is and of all that He can do (Jeremiah 10:14 “But foolish men without knowledge of God bow before their idols.”)

 Oswald Chambers said

“The remarkable thing about God is that when you fear God you fear nothing else whereas if you don’t fear God you fear everything else.”

God knows how frail our hearts are, so when we look up from our troubles to Him in awe-struck wonder only to faint in the presence of His holiness and the fear of His majesty, he will gently pick us up and impart the wisdom we need by reminding us of Who He is and will tell us to FEAR NOT! (Revelation 1:17-18 “When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. But he laid his right hand on me, saying, “Fear not, I am the first and the last, and the living one. I died, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades.”

God Bless.

God Wrestles Our Jacob

Genesis 32:25-28 “Now when He saw that He did not prevail against him, He touched the socket of his hip; and the socket of Jacob’s hip was out of joint as He wrestled with him. And He said, “Let Me go, for the day breaks.” But he said, “I will not let You go unless You bless me!” So He said to him, “What is your name?” He said, “Jacob.”And He said, “Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel;for you have struggled with God and with men, and have prevailed.””

We are in the habit of contending with God in our frail selves to acquire forcefully from Him what He would freely give. God sees us as we are- gifted with authority as His sons and daughters but incompetent to use it. So, the nature and person of love in Him compels Him to come down to wrestle us out of the shackles of our mindsets that cause us to work works to beget blessings of God. We are so used to relying on our self-sufficiency to prevail against circumstances in our life that we take it for granted that we can strongarm the Almighty also into blessing us. In Jacob’s case, he’d been manipulating and striving against his own kin for birthright and their father’s blessing that he pulled the same stunt with the Angel of God who had come, precisely, to separate him from his works (Genesis 27:36 “Esau replied, “Is he not rightly named Jacob (the supplanter)? For he has supplanted me these two times: he took away my birthright, and now he has taken away my blessing…”). 

How have we been wrestling God ? More often than not, we tend to put our trust in our reverential attitude, attempts to be ‘holier than thou’, charitable deeds, in short our own rightheousness to earn brownie points with the Lord to try and extort a reward from Him ( Job 4:6 “Is not your reverence your confidence? And the integrity of your ways your hope?”). How petty our antics must seem to the Holiest of Holies, our Lord Almighty when we go to His throneroom to use prayer and fasting as bargaining chips to redeem what He out of His love for us as own His children, has already bequethed to us as our inheritance. To jolt us awake from this mis-direction, He cripples that very strength, our works of the flesh that we use toward Him, to rebuff us and to allow us to see that our righteousness is but dirty laundry  (Isaiah 64:6 “But we are all like an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags;”) and nothing when compared to His standards of righteousness (Romans 10:3 “For they being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and seeking to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted to the righteousness of God.”)

Our Heavenly Father comes down to wrestle us out of our rigid belief systems like a parent that tries to calm down a toddler throwing a tantrum by arresting his flailing arms and legs to get him to see that what he’s clamouring for is already granted to him. It is when the Lord touches our hip-socket, that is, when He impairs us from impressing Him with our strength that we learn to quit clawing and cleave to Him instead. We force God to fracture our works and amputating our self dependance. It is at this point of  being fatigued by travail and rendered invalid in contest with the Omnipotent One that we begin to lean on His everlasting arms and He calls us to renounce the Jacob in us because He has renamed us Israel- a prince with God, one who need not strive with Him for a blessing but as the rightful heir to the Kingdom is endowed with power to declare every promise in the covenant as his heirloom through Christ Jesus (Galatians 4:7 “Therefore you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ”).  

We may have stiven with men (that includes our selves!!) and with God in the past with our Jacobite efforts and have been allowed to fail. But it is now in our state of utter dependance that He  re-christens us Israel and perfects His strength in us to prevail over all things natural and divine.

God Bless.