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

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.

 

 

 

 

Boast in Christ Not in Past

2 Corinthians 10:17-18 “ “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.” For it is not the one who commends himself who is approved, but the one whom the Lord commends.”

We can be boastful without even meaning to. That’s the fact. Humility doesn’t come by accident. It is not the default position of the heart to be humble. If it is our desire to do the will of God, our heart must first, consciously, take the right position- an inclined posture leaning on His works, His testimony, His words of wisdom. Or else, we stand at risk of making a move or speaking a word that can unintentionally be self-serving or self-appraising (Psalm 119:36 ” Incline my heart to your testimonies, and not to selfish gain!”).  When we are constantly watching reruns of the past from which Christ Jesus has rescued us, it ceases to be boasting about God and turns into boasting about ourselves, even with the ‘Hallelujahs’ and the ‘Praise the Lords’. It is like looking at a picture in of you in a roller-coaster and remembering the ride and not the guy that opened the gate and let you out. 

The tendency to pat oneself on the back arises especially when we take a trip down memory lane. Oh those days! We see the great gulf between the ‘Where-I-had-been’ to the ‘Where-I-am-at’, and our heart swells with inadvertent pride. A splendid opportunity to accredit God with the logistics really! (Psalm 40:2 “He drew me up from the pit of destruction, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure.”) Sometimes, we reminisce about how lengthy the trials had been and how tricky the mazes were out of which God’s righteous right hand has navigated us.When we love telling tales about our own wicked past, we are indulging in a perverse glorying in the suffering or in the ignorance that was part of us in the past. If we are talking about “the bog” more than “the Rock”, we need to know that we are ‘gossiping’, because it is a story about someone that has died to those works (2 Corinthians 5:17 “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.”)

Our humility is in the boasting of God’s work that is alive in us, that is producing a new fruit in us everyday, not in the dead works that we have walked out of (Ephesians 2:4-5 “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— “). The difference between boasting in Christ and boasting in self is how often we remember what He is doing over and over again in us versus what we did once upon a time.  We are called to count our blessings, His benefits, and not keep the books of the losses before that. When we do this we truly enjoy the rewards of God’s approval- we soar high in His commendation of who we are in Him  (Psalm 103:2-5 “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, who satisfies you with good so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.”)

We need to be careful of what memories we choose to relive and what we choose to keep in their graves. If what God has chosen to forget is something we choose to remember, isn’t that prideful? And He has chosen to remember our past no more for His name’s sake. There is no glory to God in our resurrecting the dusty old bones from the closet (Isaiah 43:25 ““I, I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins.”) If we insist on doing it we need to be aware that we are idolizing our ‘has-been’ and actively blocking our visibility of the ‘will-be’ plans of God for us. That is why God asks that we let go of the past and look forward (Isaiah 43:18-19 ““Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?”)

Today is a great time to quit looking in the rear-view mirror and get the wipers going on the windshield ahead and put the gear on God’s Drive into our future.

God Bless.

 

 

 

 

 

Israel of God

Galatians 6:15-16 ” It is not what you and I do—submit to circumcision, reject circumcision. It is what God is doing, and he is creating something totally new, a free life! All who walk by THIS STANDARD are the true Israel of God—his chosen people. Peace and mercy on them!”

The most coveted identity for a child of God is to be the ” Israel of God”, God’s own, chosen set of people. The phrase brings with it such a strong feel of belonging and commitment between the Creator and His creation, a hope of God’s permanent accompaniment and a fulfillment of all of His promises. This is because that is exactly what God intended for us to experience according to His word to Jacob (Israel) in their very first encounter (Genesis 28:15 “Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land. For I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”)

The ONLY way for us to truly acquire the title of “Israel of God” is in our BEING and not in our DOING.

Can we take a moment to turn around, look back and watch ourselves in slow-motion? At those failed attempts to do the right thing, unsuccessfully trying to free ourselves from oppressive bonds, strenuously striving to live according to guidelines and rules, all in the name of “achieving” righteousness? What little success in our relationship status with God we birthed through our rule-keeping and sustained by our own strength has slowly but surely passed away. Cause of death: We did what we did nullifying the GRACE of GOD that was given to us through the finished work of the cross. We told God “We’ll be your people and we’ll DO whatever it takes to be that”, not taking into account that God already DID whatever it took for us to be His people (Galatians 2:21 “I refuse to do that, to repudiate God’s grace. If a living relationship with God could come by rule-keeping, then Christ died unnecessarily.”)

We can go to spas, boot camps, therapy, counseling, but rest assured that THERE IS NO REHAB LIKE JESUS! All the above mentioned facilities work from the outside in. They find out our needs and then attempt to restore us to the last known stable version. But in Christ Jesus, we are created newly all over again from the very first cell that joined together with another cell (2 Corinthians 5:17 “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.”) and restored us to our original version- that of the image of God. And we can be reconfigured to our new creation status as many times as needed as long as we opt to remain in Christ and allow Him to program it in us. After all, a corrupt software cannot fix itself, but can only be debugged by its Proprietor!

“Israel of God” is an exclusively all-embracing club with the only precondition that all members are required to live in the reality of God working a renewal in us. The Holy Spirit working the restructuring and re-fabricating of our lives to match God’s brand standards is one of the key benefits of our association with the identity, not a pre-qualification for it (Ephesians 2:22 “In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.”) This is something we ought to remember no matter for however long we have belonged to this privileged society. Occasionally, with the passage of time and the view of the skeletal framework that has taken shape we take false confidence in our ability to pursue the perfection of what was initiated by the Spirit of God in forking out the rubble and cementing in the new. But the license to carry out the rebuilding and renewal of our lives rests with the Holy Spirit alone and where He has already begun construction we cannot hope to take control back into our hands at a later date and complete it successfully (Galatians 3:3 “Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?)

 Shall we then issue God with the work permit and choose to receive deeply and personally the assembling of our lives into a new creation that is being granted to us so freely?

God Bless.