Spiritcode

God’s Grace in a Dark World

GOD’S GRACE IN A DARK WORLD

1Corinthians 15:10 But by the grace of God I am what I am 
When Paul made that statement, he knew that what he had become through God’s grace was God’s doing, and not his doing. He also said it was not him doing the work of God, but it was the grace of Jesus working with him. That grace was God’s activity upon his soul that empowered him to respond to God in love and the surrender of his will and to know that Jesus was working through him every moment of his life. That was his faith.
So what did Paul think he was before the grace of God took over his life?
He thought he was a top-class man of God.
Philippians 3:4 If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh (natural humanity), I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.

He goes on to say in another place in Galatians 1:14 … And I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people, so extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers. But he who had set me apart before I was born, and who called me by his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son in me, in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles…

Before Paul found grace, he was part of the disorder and violence of a treacherous world in a dark time in history. After he found grace, he became part of God’s answer of love and light that overcame the darkness of that world. Jesus had overcome the darkness through his death and resurrection, and then he sent forth messengers of his grace. God is doing the same thing today!

We might be inclined to think that Paul’s existence was of such significance and importance for what God called him to do, that the activity of God’s grace upon us could not be anything like God’s grace upon Paul. But we would be wrong to think that, as Paul wrote to Titus concerning the grace upon all of us through Jesus. 
Titus 2:11 For the grace of God that brings salvation has shone upon all mankind.

Grace is the loving activity of God upon a human soul, and when we know that we can access this grace through our faith we realize that it is sufficient for each one of us to do what God has called us to do (we don’t have to feel it – just know it). Like Paul we are what we are by the grace of God, and we do what we do by the grace of God. It is grace that bring us home.
God’s grace for Paul was waiting for him from before he was born, and he writes about this eternal aspect of grace in the Bible.
Galatians 1:15 But he who had set me apart before I was born, and who called me by his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me, in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles…
You also find grace in the eyes of the Lord to live the life of truth and love that you were created to live in, even before you were born, and this new life involves allowing Jesus to be the number one player in a team called you.

Paul had seen himself as a religious man of great competence and great commitment to the cause of his Jewish tradition. He served God through his own strategy and ambition, and he took great pride in his own achievements. His competitive and committed human nature had created a power base that drove him to religious success in his own eyes and in the eyes of other zealous Jews. That was Paul’s former ‘I am what I am’ – his spiritual identity. But Paul’s religion did not put God’s love or mercy in his heart or a humble and surrendered will towards God in his soul, or a oneness with Jesus in the Spirit. He had to find that grace in the eyes of the Lord Jesus on his road to Damascus. There are multitudes of people who are committed to the cause of doing things for God that have a similar zeal and passion for success like Paul did and they live out of a misplaced spiritual identity like the Saul who had to become the Paul. They have yet to find the grace of God for whatever God has planned for them. 

That misplaced spiritual identity is working in the religious fervour in a multitude of ideologies in the world today with a superabundance of commitment to self-proclaimed noble causes and virtues that have nothing to do with a commitment to a loving relationship with the living God. The religious fervour of these ideologies has found a place in the power bases of society, in sport and in the corporate world, in politics and in the media, and in education of young children and university students. These power bases are capable of punishing through fear and intimidation any citizen who does not acknowledge the virtues of these ideologies. The ideologies revolve around intense perceptions of issues that have become extreme causes such as gender identity, climate theory, racial differences, Marxist philosophy and economics and other inflated issues. For example, eaxtreme climate ideologists predict doom for the planet in a few years if all nations do not pay their dues or offer the sacrifices required for us all to survive, and an entire generation of young people has an unhealthy fear that the world will end if we do not all comply, and fear is a powerful motivation. 
There are unhealthy fears and there are also healthy fears regarding obvious dangers that we need to be warned about. God also uses fear to motivate people to change their ways, and it has its place in bringing lawless and ungodly people to their knees, but fear is not God’s first preference as a motivation even though the church has been using it throughout the centuries to get people to go to church and obey church tradition. The Gospel of grace is God’s first preference and that offers people God’s love and forgiveness and mercy and a way to live a grace filled life. 
That grace can come upon anyone in any ideological powerbase and convert them sovereignly as seen in the life of Paul. That is the Lord’s doing and I pray we will see many such miracles in the days ahead.

The world today is beset with more ‘unlove’ and bitterness and rancour than ever before. The powers of darkness are hurling chaos and disorder and lawlessness into peoples’ hearts and bringing contention and division into every aspect of our culture.
The Bible speaks of times like these regarding the kind of darkness that will exist on the earth in the end times. Nobody knows when the end times will fully come upon us, but the way things are today gives us some indication of what they will be like.
Matthew 24:9 many will be offended, and will betray one another, and will hate one another, then many false prophets will rise up and deceive many. And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold. But he who endures to the end shall be saved.
Those things abound now in the days in which we live, and in amongst the violence and corruption the most ominous aspect of life today is ‘the love of many will grow cold’.

Jude writes urgently about how ungodly people should fear God’s judgement, but he especially urges us to live out our grace filled lives as his antidote to these lawless attitudes and behaviours. 
Jude1:14. Dear friends, remember what the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ told you, that in the last times there would come these scoffers whose whole purpose in life is to enjoy themselves in every evil way imaginable. They stir up arguments; they love the evil things of the world; they do not have the Holy Spirit life.But you, dear friends, must build up your lives ever more strongly upon the foundation of our holy faith, learning to pray in the power and strength of the Holy Spirit. Stay always within the boundaries where God’s love can reach and bless you. Wait patiently for the eternal life that our Lord Jesus Christ in his mercy and grace is going to give you. Try to help those who argue against you. Be merciful to those who doubt. Save some by fear, snatching them as from the very flames of hell itself, but as for others, help them to find the Lord by being gracious to them

Satan gave humanity a rule of destruction to live by – a deadly commandment if you will – that you hate one another as I have hated you, and we are living in times where there is much fear and hatred, but God’s love which casts out all fear is on the rise today through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ who has given us his new Commandment – that you love one another as I have loved you. 
 Paul tells us that it was God’s love that compelled his heart to serve him and to serve the people he was sent to. He writes Whatever we do, it is certainly not for our own gain but because Christ’s love compels us. (2Corinthians 5:14).
Paul’s soul was bursting with that powerful love and he could hardly contain himself when he said, May your roots go down deep into the soil of God’s marvelous love; and may you be able to feel and understand, as all God’s children should, how long, how wide, how deep, and how high his love really is; and to experience this love for yourselves, though it is so great that you will never see the end of it or fully know or understand it. And so at last you will be filled up with God himself (Ephesians 3:17-19)

Paul lived within the intense yearning of God’s heart of love for him and that intense yearning of God’s heart is for us as well. That love is jealous for us which means that it wants the best for us and does not accept any harmful second best. That yearning wants to take anything out of the way in us that could stop us from responding to his love and stop us from spreading that love to others, as the Apostle James also writes, What do you think the Scripture means when it says that the Holy Spirit, whom God has placed within us, yearns jealously for us? But he gives us more and more grace to stand against all evil desires. (James 4:5)

Israel conquered the territory of Canaan to possess the wonderful blessings of the Promised Land. We have been given the territory of the hearts of men and women to conquer with God’s love. The activity of this love upon our hearts (God’s grace), is beginning to abound and it will continue to much more abound than the evil we see abounding in this dark world as we look forward to the moving of his Spirit in the earth. The Bible says that as we press on to know the Lord he will come to us like the rain, like the latter and former rain to the earth (Hosea 6:3).
There are two kinds of rain spoken of here. One is a gentler rain (former rain) and the other is a stronger rain (latter rain). The first rain is the gentle rain of God’s loving grace that softens the hearts of men and women as they faithfully receive the understanding of God’s love. The other is the deluge of God’s sovereign outpouring of grace upon the earth which will come in due time and where people of all ages will be touched by God and suddenly transformed by his grace. Let us remain constant in prayer and compelled by God’s love that we might witness these things. 

Finding Grace to Help

FINDING GRACE TO HELP

Hebrews 4:16 Let us then draw near with confidence (parresia) to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help (boētheia) in time of need (eukairos).

I believe that Scripture summarises the experience of the previous account of the Mountain of Transfiguration where I outlined the three stages of personal transformation (transfiguration). These stages were, climbing the mountain, being on the mountain, and coming down from the mountain.

What I’d like to share about today is ‘Finding grace to help’ which is the most significant aspect of stage two, about being on top of the mountain in the presence of God.

 

That Scripture starts off by encouraging us to ‘draw near with confidence to the throne of grace’, and that summarises the first stage of the process, of climbing up the mountain.

Our drawing near is the intention of our hearts to be closer to God. This happens as we climb and as we consider the issues of our daily life down below that are now going to be given to the Lord. We approach with confidence (parrēsia – frank and outspoken - the freedom of speech as from one citizen to another), being honest with the Lord about our doubts and fears and confusion about what to do or say in certain situations. We might question him by asking ‘why is this situation happening to me? Somehow, in one way or another we always get answers to questions like that, and they can be quite amusing. The Lord has a sense of humour and helps us to laugh at ourselves sometimes.

 

And all the while as we are climbing, we are ‘receiving mercy’. We would not dare draw near to him without knowing and believing that this mercy was available to us, and we would certainly not confidently discuss our weakness and failures and doubts and lack of faith in such an open and honest manner on the climb unless we were willing to receive this mercy.

On the climb we are anticipating reaching the ‘Throne of grace’, the place from where all the divine activity of God (which is what grace is) flows into the hearts of his human family in the earth. That is the mountain top where we will ‘find grace to help’.

 

God’s grace is always there for each one of us, and mostly we don’t know it.

That Is why we have to find it!

The Bible tells us that Noah ‘found grace’ in the eyes of the Lord’.

God told Moses that he had ‘found grace in his sight’

Being in God’s sight, or in the eyes the Lord means that those men knew that God was looking upon them, his countenance was shining upon them (countenance = face = presence). When something in our hearts tells us that God is mercifully and lovingly looking upon us, we know that we have FOUND GRACE! We are no longer self-conscious but God conscious, and that is GRACE (reflect upon that now).

 

We are simply experiencing God’s loving and powerful activity toward us as his children, and sometimes it comes to us by surprise - something happens in the core of our being that brings us closer to God. That is his sovereign grace. We could be empowered by his grace activity to soften our hearts and to surrender our will to him, or to ask him to change us and to create a clean heart within us. Sometimes it comes as an anointing of the Holy Spirit to bless and serve other people with a gift of grace from God. The Bible says that through Jesus we have access by faith into this grace where we can stand and rejoice in hope for the things God will do in our lives (Romans 5:2). We can ‘find grace’ at any time!

 

The Scripture goes on to says that we find grace ‘to help’. The word ‘help’ here does not simply mean to assist or to give aid in a general way. The word is boētheia and is of a very peculiar origin. It is defined as ‘a rope or chain for frapping a vessel’, and that entails the binding of four or five turns of a large cable or rope round a ship's hull when it is feared that the hull is not strong enough to resist the stormy sea.

The word boētheia occurs only twice in the Bible, here, and also in Acts 27:17.

Acts 27:14 But soon a tempestuous wind, called the northeaster, struck down from the land. And when the ship was caught and could not face the wind, we gave way to it and were driven along. Running under the lee of a small island called Cauda, we managed with difficulty to secure the ship’s hull. After hoisting it up, they used ‘helps’ to undergird the ship. (boētheia - frapping)

 

I had never heard of the word ‘frap’ in my life before but now I’m finding that it could be one of the most transforming and transfiguring words I’ve ever stumbled upon.

Paul took this word ‘helps’ from his experience on a stormy sea as a prisoner being escorted by ship to Rome. From Rome he wrote his letter to the Hebrews, and he used this same word help (boētheia) that we find in our text.

 

Holding our soul together

He uses this word to describe what kind of protective holding together that the ship needed on a stormy sea and applies it to the activity of God’s grace in holding our soul together when we face the uncertainties of times of need in our lives.

Our souls are comprised of our mind and our emotions and our will, and these three parts need to work in unity with one another and be reordered when they look like flying apart - and that takes more than a self-help program to hold our soul together.

 

We might have our routine tasks organized and stay calm, but our minds could be wandering all over the place, or we can have thought things through clearly and doing what needs to be done but find that our emotions are in a state of anxiety for no reason. And there are times when we find ourselves wearied in soul to the point that our will no longer has strength and we need to find rest for our souls. What holds us together is the activity of the grace of God that reorders our confused mind through the Holy Spirit, and the same activity of grace brings peace to our heart from the throne of grace as we draw near to God, and the same grace brings our will into a place of yielding to the will of God when we cry out to him.

 

Words of Grace from Jesus

This gives meaning to our hearing the words of grace from Jesus that say to us ‘come to me when you are burdened and heavy laden and I will give you rest for your souls’ (Matthew 11:28), and when we hear him say ‘my peace I give to you, not as the world gives do I give to you, so let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. (John 14:27

 

Grace seats itself first deep within our spirit and then it brings rest to our souls. That rest is not laziness or passivity but the soul’s relief from the nagging feeling of self-consciousness and the welcome enclosure of God consciousness.

 

Time of need - eukairos (the good moment)

Receiving mercy and finding grace are aspects of God’s love that are poured out in the provision of his protective help of holding us together. That provision arrives at the appropriate and appointed time. It is God’s eukairos – for the right time, the right moment, the right occasion. This grace that you have prayed for will hold your soul together (the frapping) at the time you ask for it, AND it will find you in a time of anticipated future challenge because you have prepared your heart of faith to receive it.

We can take hold of and embrace the activity of grace with all the energy within us, being grateful for having found grace in God’s grace filled world where he wraps us in his love. Titus 2:11 For the grace of God that brings salvation has shone upon all mankind.

 

Our rule of life

Finding grace becomes the rule of our lives and this amazing grace which is the powerful redemptive relationship between God and his human family merits our perseverance in faith and obedience. It is the discipline that makes the word disciple worthy of its description. We start each day with a time of finding grace in the loving gaze of the Lord, and then through the day we can have times of ‘recollection’ of this grace filled time of our souls being held together, that need only take a minute – twenty seconds of coming near and receiving mercy then twenty seconds of finding grace in his sight then twenty seconds of faith for the grace to help in the times of need ahead.

Grace has kept the church alive despite its being so much overlooked throughout the years, and in these days, God is holding it out to us to become the prize!

T'was Grace that brought us safe thus far
And Grace will lead us home

 

 

 

 

 

Down from the Mountaintop

DOWN FROM THE MOUNTAINTOP 

Mark 9:2 Jesus took Peter, James, and John with him up onto a mountaintop to pray. And as he was praying, he was transfigured before them, his face began to shine, and his clothes became dazzling white and blazed with light. Then two men appeared and began talking with him—Moses and Elijah! They were splendid in appearance, glorious to see; and they were speaking of his death at Jerusalem, to be carried out in accordance with God’s plan.
As Moses and Elijah were starting to leave, Peter, all confused and not even knowing what he was saying, blurted out, “Master, this is wonderful! We’ll put up three tents —one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah!”
But even as he was saying this, a bright cloud formed above them; and they were in awe as it covered them. And a voice from the cloud said, “This is my beloved Son; listen to him.” Then, as the voice died away, Jesus was there alone with his disciples. He told them not to tell anyone what they had seen until after his resurrection from the dead, but they did not understand what he meant. 

The greatest show on earth
The account of the transfiguration of Jesus on the top of a mountain depicts what could be called the most spectacular phenomenon to be described in the Bible. It was a time and a place where Heaven was seen to touch the earth, where Jesus shone in glory as a kind of preview of his glorified resurrected Heavenly self in the presence of the Heavenly forms of Moses and Elijah. The Heavenly Moses represented the Law and Commandments which speaks of God’s wisdom to his people, while the Heavenly prophet Elijah speaks of God’s word of purpose for his people.
This was also an astonishing historical record of an event that confirms for all believers the truth of the word ‘Incarnation’ which means the joining of the Being of God with the being of humanity in the glorified person of Jesus Christ. To those standing by it affirmed that Jesus was from Heaven and that he was known by the prophet Elijah and by the lawgiver Moses as the one who was the destined Lord and King of Heaven and Earth. If ever any Jewish person were to take seriously this magnificent occurrence as an historical account of seeing Israel’s holy prophet Elijah and their revered Lawgiver Moses speaking with the glorified Jesus as their promised Messiah, they would fall on the ground and worship him as God. (And they all will in time!).
Three gospels recount this story. Matthew 17:1–8, Mark 9:2, Luke 9:28.

The background story
Just before going up the mountain Jesus had been teaching his disciples about his going to the cross and dying and being raised up again, which was difficult for them to receive, and he challenged them also about following him and that only by losing their lives would they save their lives – all difficult sayings. 
The final thing that he said in those teachings was a remarkable statement; ‘there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God come with power (Mark 9:1).
The simple truth of that statement is that after the resurrection and ascension of Jesus and the sending of the Holy Spirit the Kingdom Age was about to arrive on the earth, and then would begin the time for people to see the Kingdom of God and to live in its power. 
The Kingdom age of faith
The Apostle Peter was one of those people who would not taste death till he had seen the age of the new Kingdom and to enter into it. He also writes about witnessing the mountaintop transfiguration in the Scriptures. 
2Peter 1:10 For we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For when he received honour and glory from God the Father, and the voice was spoken to him by the Majestic Glory, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased,” we ourselves heard this very voice spoken from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain.

That mountaintop reality was the portrayal of everything Israel was and had been concerning their spiritual history and now it was to become the vision of humanity’s spiritual future in living a here and now Kingdom of Heaven life on the earth. And we are now living in that Kingdom age of God and experiencing it through our faith.
Luke writes an epilogue to the mountaintop event, when he shares in the next verse about what happened when they came down from the mountain.

Luke 9:37 The next day as they descended from the mountain, a huge crowd met him, and a man in the crowd called out to him, “Teacher, this boy here is my only son and a spirit has seized him… 
Luke is telling us that the next thing after the mountaintop experience was now the Kingdom work for Jesus to do on the ground, a life of getting in amongst the spiritual chaos and disorder of the world around him and bringing love and wholeness into the physical and emotional pain of the people. The same kind of Kingdom activity was waiting for the disciples to enter into, and the same kind of Kingdom activity is waiting for us to enter into as well. 

The Jesus model of mountaintop prayer
When Jesus taught his disciples to pray, he modelled to them his way of exercising mountaintop prayer. That was always a place where Heaven touched earth in a very personal way, a time of inner transfiguration where the human heart of Jesus held the glory of God within himself.

Whenever Jesus went up onto a mountaintop to pray, he would mostly go alone, to be with his Father. That was the first of the three stages of his mountaintop prayer, climbing the mountain and leaving everything else behind. 
The second stage was being on the mountaintop in the presence of his Father.
The third stage was coming back down the mountain and engaging with the challenges of life below.

Jesus said to them ‘follow me’, and he is also saying the same to us in his modelling of mountaintop prayer to us.
The discipline of this personal devotional prayer is still a discipline that needs a willingness to attend to, but by following his guidelines this approach turns prayer into a rest and refuge for our souls rather than a struggle that wearies our souls.

The first stage of climbing the mountain is our willingness to take the trek towards the mountaintop while still carrying the struggles of earthly things to reach a higher place of being with God. It’s as though we have put all of our earthly burdens into a backpack that we are now going to lug up a mountain. And when we get to the top, we will place whatever we carried in our backpack into his hands as an act of surrender. Our minds will then be set upon him and not upon the problems. 
Colossians 3:2 set your minds on the things above and not on the things of the earth 
The more often our soul does that trek the easier it gets because we are exercising our souls into a more confident hope as we surrender those burdens to the Lord. We know that he hears our surrendered prayer, and we also know that he knows what is in our backpack before we even unload it onto him. It is the surrender that delights him, and it is the surrender that is our faith.

After placing all our cares upon him the second stage is completed by being on the mountaintop with the Heavenly Jesus as our brother and sharing time with our Father as his child. We now begin to have our souls transformed (metamorpho?? - transfiguration) by the power of the Holy Spirit as we sit and receive Kingdom of Heaven life from him. This is where the love and mercy of God captures our heart, and the wisdom of God orders our mind, and the purpose of God directs our way forward. This is where the Apostle Peter wanted to build three tabernacles for Jesus and Moses and Elijah and to stay there and not come back down, but there has to be a coming down from the mountaintop.

The third stage is coming down the mountain and finding faith to do the work of God in our simple everyday faithfulness to whatever task or whatever relational occasion will present itself. This is where we can allow his Heavenly life and love to bring words and deeds of meaning into the lives of those around us. 

A recollection process
If we start each day with a mountaintop time with Jesus and the Father and the Holy Spirit, we can have times of ‘recollection’ of this grace filled time of rest and refuge for our souls throughout the day for short periods of time. We recommit our surrendered prayer, and in this way, we maintain the flow of his kingdom purpose within our hearts. (It need only take a minute – twenty seconds reviewing the backpack trek up the mountain, twenty seconds receiving transforming grace, and twenty seconds preparing to re-enter the busy world while carrying his presence instead of a backpack of problems). Things will happen around us in the will of God that we could never have organized to happen by our own planning. 
But who qualifies for this kind of privilege? When I asked myself that question, I found the answer was a simple prayer.

A Kingdom Prayer
Dear Lord, 
I wish to see your Kingdom reality this day and to have entrance into your Kingdom activity. I believe I am qualified for this as I am an imperfect human being that you died for and rose again for and who is in constant need of your mercy. I delight to do your will O Lord but I need your help. I need the empowering grace of your Holy Spirit to do that. Thank you for hearing this prayer and attending to my cry at this very moment. 
I now surrender this day to you.
Your Beloved Child xo (see you on the Mountain)

 

 

In God’s Will in His Time

IN GODS WILL IN HIS TIME

Ephesians 5:15 ‘See then that you walk not irresponsibly but diligently and wisely, redeeming the time, because we live in times of much corruption. Therefore, do not be thoughtless, but seek to understand what the will of the Lord is. (NKJ)

The word used for ‘will of The Lord’ is thelema - God’s heart to bless us by bringing us into his will for our life. 
The word for redeeming used here is exagoraz??; to rescue from loss, improve opportunity, to buy up or ransom; 
The word used for ‘time’ here is kairos – God’s appointed time, not chronos – Clock time. 

There are times when God brings us to a place of surrendering our will to his so that we can become the person he has truly created us to be. These are times of change for us where there comes a break from our past way of seeing things and doing things, a change of thinking – metanoia - repentance. It is an ongoing experience.
That is God redeeming the time for us in his appointed timing for a new beginning for us in his will for our journey in life.

Redeeming means that God is able to buy back and restore all that we have grieved over as being lost. He won’t bring the same things back, the same years with the same circumstances, or the same people and the same events, but he brings something new and something better. His redeeming power renews time that we think has been wasted, effort that has come to nothing, and hopes that have been dashed. God’s redemption buys back for us all his plans and purposes and gets us on track with his great desire for our blessing as his child. It means new and better opportunities and a new and better understanding of his will for us in all things - it always gets better. That is the ongoing ‘Behold I make all things new’ promise of Jesus. 
 
When we become conscious that God is doing that reordering and redeeming work in our lives, that moment of redeemed time makes up for all lost time and places us in his will for an ‘all things new’ future. 
The apostle Paul made up for all the wasted time and effort of his evil persecution of Christians in one moment of time on the road to Damascus. But how could Paul know how to get into line with God’s design in God’s appointed time until he knew who he was meant to be?  God had to tell Paul who he was (Acts 9:15 Ananias). Jesus told the disciple Ananias in a vision to tell Paul that he was a chosen vessel to carry God’s presence with him at all times, and what things he would suffer in his name in the doing of his will.

God also tells us who we really are by being joined in the one Spirit with Jesus to realise that we can occupy the same eternal time frame as he does, knowing he is with us wherever we go. This becomes a new way of living.

John 12:26 If anyone serves me, he must follow me; and where I am, there will my servant be also. If anyone serves me, the Father will honour him.
The above Scripture shows us that who we are meant to be, and where we are meant to be at any given time is being with Jesus and sharing in what he is doing. Jesus was the only person who did not need redeeming of the time because he knew who he was all the time and where he was and where he was going with the Father in his empowering grace. Whatever plans Jesus made as a person were surrendered into the will of the Father.
Paul must have asked himself at times ‘Why am I in prison, why did I just get sick with a disease of the eyes, why did I get shipwrecked, beaten up, ignored and insulted? The answer is - that is where Jesus was, and you can be there where he is at any time in his grace. 

We can become fixated with chronos time (everyday clock time), which focuses on what happened yesterday or what might happen tomorrow. God is always in kairos time (God’s appointed times) and these are two different worlds of time that exist side by side. God is always drawing us out of our preoccupation with clock time and the pressures that it brings, like wasted time, lost time, not enough time, too late time. He is always drawing us out of there and inviting us into his Kairos appointed time.

An example of this occurs when the Holy Spirit prompts you to pray for someone and when you do you will be where Jesus is because he is also there with that person in their need (even if they don’t know it), and you are part of that ‘being there’ because that is where your prayer is going. God is blessed by this timing because at that moment, creatively arranged by God for you, your heart beats with his. The person you’re praying for is also blessed (in whatever way God may choose to bless them) and you are blessed because there is no greater meaning for you in that moment than in what you are doing. That moment releases you into God’s love and peace and joy and that moment brings about change for God’s will to be done.

We all want things to change for us and to change for the better. Many sincere people get swept up with the new ideas that roar through the world like a storm. They try harder with all the new ideas, new experiences, new challenges, and new pathways but life doesn’t bring the change that they want. Having new ideas is not the same as becoming a new person living within God’s idea of who we are. We are God’s vessels that carry his presence into where he is taking us. He accomplishes that purpose despite our going round in circles and getting distracted. However, when we are about doing our daily clock time routine and maybe think that our routine is separate from doing God’s will, we simply bring that chronos clock time into God’s Kairos appointed time and it becomes lifted into a place where we bring the Heavenly into the earthly things and we move forward with God.

Just let a person make this one discovery: The world cannot take us to where only God destined us to be. God moves forward with his overall plan for the world and he moves forward with his plan for our lives. There is an energy which directs us, moves us and carries us, even though we cannot see where it is taking us. That energy is the hidden power of the wind of the Spirit which blows where it wills.
We cannot see our final destination but with this kind of faith we see through the present disorder of this world system which is under the tyranny of clock time, and we enter the parallel realm of eternal time, God’s Kairos time. God’s grace lifts us across the bridge from the world of fear-and-stress time to stillness-and-trust time. That is the redeeming of life and of time. We can only be amazed and grateful that all of us are being carried by this power and perhaps only regret that we are not carried by it more willingly, joyfully, and completely. 

We can learn to practice being carried by the power of his grace and it need only take a minute of time where we consciously place ourselves in his time and in his presence. 
This does not have to be some rapturous feeling of his presence but a faithful acknowledgement of his nearness to us. The sense of God’s presence comes and goes in a way that I do not understand. Grace is grace - it is a gift.
This practice of coming into his presence closes the door on the power of anxiety and negative emotions and opens the door to receiving God’s love and peace, and it allows for a gracious transformation of our souls.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Being in God’s Will

BEING IN GODS WILL 

Romans 12:2 do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove (dokimaz?? - test, discern, examine) what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
Today I will be discussing what it means to discern and test what is the good will of God, the acceptable will of God and the perfect will of God in our lives. 
These are three measurable degrees of the will of God in the New Testament, but I will first outline the general principle of being in the will of God starting from the Old Testament.

God’s will (thelema) for our lives is God’s pathway of purpose and meaning for our lives that flows from his heart to our hearts on our journey of life with him. 

In the Old Testament Israel was sovereignly placed into God’s will by his choice! God took them on a journey under the leadership of Moses into the promised land of Canaan. He had rescued them from out of their slavery under the harsh rule of the Pharaohs in Egypt and He gave them the Commandments of the Law through Moses for them to know what his will was for them and to know his wisdom and to learn obedience. God took the nation of Israel to be his people whose way of life would glorify God by putting God on display to all those other nations. 
He gave them priests that would offer the blood of animal sacrifices for the forgiveness of their sins and for them to know his mercy and he worked miracles of provision of food and supernaturally won battles for them against their enemies to show them his power and strength.
And for about fifteen hundred years God also provided them with prophets and Kings to lead and guide them and to keep them in his will, but for all this they strayed from his path for them. There were corrupt prophets and evil kings and wicked priests who led them astray for the most part of that time as a nation. Their going astray can be summed up in one episode of disobedience and rebellion when he spoke to them through Isaiah.

Isaiah 30:1 Woe to my rebellious children, says the Lord; you ask advice from everyone but me and decide to do what I don’t want you to do. You yoke yourselves with unbelieving nations, thus piling up your sins. For without consulting me you have gone down to Egypt to find aid and have put your trust in Pharaoh for his protection. But you will be disappointed, humiliated and disgraced, for he can’t deliver on his promises to save you.

Despite their wilfulness they were still sovereignly in his will, but he had to warn them that their wilfulness was preventing them from receiving his saving power over them.
Isaiah 30:15 For the Lord God says: Only in returning to me and waiting for me will you be saved; in quietness and confidence is your strength… He will answer you, and with your own eyes you will see your Teacher (yara – to flow like water). The teachers for them were the prophets and the priests. The Teacher for us is the Holy Spirit.
And if you leave God’s paths and go astray, you will hear a voice behind you say, “this is the way; walk in it.” 

The only way that Israel could finally come into the perfect will of God for them was in the person of Jesus who walked in perfect harmony and oneness with his Father in spirit, soul, and body. Jesus said.
Hebrews10.5 a body have you prepared for me; ‘Behold, I have come to do your will, O God,
The New Testament reality for us is that we can be brought into God’s will through Jesus in our harmony and oneness with him. We who believe are now his body in the earth.

Israel’s consciousness of God’s will was the outward seeing of his works in action and the hearing of the words of the prophets. Our consciousness of God’s will is through the inner seeing by faith and the witness of the Holy Spirit and the renewing of our minds. 
We can confidently live in an ever-present consciousness of being in his will. Being in God’s will is more about flowing with God rather than receiving direct dictates about things for which we have options and responsibilities, like what house we should or should not buy, or what job to accept. As far as getting a job is concerned it is sometimes a matter of taking what is available at the time. Titus 3:1 Be ready for any honest work… God’s will can flow in our life no matter what our options are, and we do not always have to get a text message from God that eliminates our responsibility. 
We may even go down a blind alley at times, but God will always come down there with us and graciously bring us back again 
Isaiah 30:15… He will be with you to teach you—with your own eyes you will see your Teacher (yara – to flow like water). And if you leave God’s paths and go astray, you will hear a voice behind you saying “this is the way; walk in it.
As I mentioned earlier the ‘Teacher’ for us is the Holy Spirit as it says in one of my favourite Scriptures
1John 2:27 the anointing which you have received from Him abides in you, and you do not need that anyone teach you; but as the same anointing teaches you concerning all things, and is true, and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you will abide in Him.
 
I want to now return to the text Scripture that we read at the beginning.
Romans 12.1…Present your bodies as a living sacrifice…and do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove (test) what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
Our bodies become actively engaged in the physical doing of his will, and our minds become renewed with a new consciousness of living in the will of God. 
This Scripture also mentions three aspects of the doing of God’s will that can be tested or measured as to what sphere of God’s will we operate in at any one time. These are three degrees of the will of God, the good will of God, the acceptable will of God and the perfect will of God. 
Paul was not just modelling a spiritual theory but was outlining a transformative process of being conformed to God’s likeness in the doing of his will in spirit, soul, and body.

The three degrees of doing the will of God 

The good will of God - agathos; of benefit, good, productive.
We honour God by doing worthwhile and productive activities for ourselves and others, and God’s good things do not just happen, they are done on purpose, and we can begin each day with that purposeful attitude, knowing that God is with us in the doing of his will.
The Bible says that Jesus went about doing good (Acts 10:38), and as he did, miracles happened. When we do the good will of God, other good things happen around us.
Prayer and praising God and waiting on the Lord are all purposeful acts of doing good, and God responds to us in this by working all things together for our good (Romans 8:28). 
There is also our doing good in simple faithful service to others, whether we know them or whether they are strangers, and where we recognise that whatever good work we do is being done as unto the Lord.  
Just as sin and the selfish ego must be exposed to God’s light, so must the understanding of the will of God be brought into the light. This is God’s Kingdom reordering in this time.
How do we test that the good will of God is happening in us? We need to consciously ask ourselves where God’s will is fitting in to our thinking and doing at any one time. We can remind ourselves that when we are doing good things for other people we are also doing them for God, and with God and unto God. 

The acceptable will of God - euarestos - well pleasing. 
There are sacrificial things we can do for others that lift our doing good into a higher expression of relationships that bless and please the heart of God as well as other people. 
Hebrews 13:16 Don’t forget to do good and to share what you have with those in need, for such sacrifices are well pleasing to him.
Paul also mentions the giving of those in the church at Philippi towards the support of his ministry.
Philippians 4:14 … No church shared with me concerning giving and receiving but you only. For even in Thessalonica, you sent aid once and again for my necessities. I have received from Epaphroditus the things sent from you, a sweet-smelling aroma, an acceptable sacrifice, well pleasing to God. And my God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus.
Sacrificial giving brings a multiplication of what is given. (Proverbs 11:24 Luke 6:38)

The perfect will of God - teleios; mature in growth of spiritual and character, complete.
The Bible says that Jesus was made perfect through suffering.
Hebrews 2:10 For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering.
This means that God’s will involves going through adverse circumstances and learning to accept them with thanksgiving, even when they involve receiving unjust treatment at the hands of others. When Jesus willingly went through the injustice of his suffering at the hands of those who persecuted him and insulted him there was a power of God released into the earth that brought us to God. 1Peter 3:18 For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God.
When we go through times of suffering and adversity and place ourselves trustingly in God’s hands there is a power released from heaven that draws people to God.
We can be assured that the perfect work of Jesus is working through us by faith in these times and receive his joy in our hearts despite the suffering, and know we are being transformed. 

The highest state of consciousness that a human being can have is to know that they are in the will of God. Everything else has to make way for God’s will in his Kingdom even in the midst of chaos around us. We become part of the Lord’s prayer of ‘Thy Kingdom come; thy will be done’. 
We can invite God at any time to search our hearts as David did in the Psalms and show us any wrong attitude we may have.
Psalm 139:23 Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.

Having this attitude gives us confidence to go forward in faith even when we aware of falling short because of our weaknesses and failures, and if everything gets too hard, we humbly cry out to Jesus and ask him to do it for us. That’s called obtaining mercy and finding grace (Hebrews 4:16). That kind of honest transparency brings forth our faith to do God’s will.

The right pathway is an attitude of trust as God steers us into his peace in our hearts. Having that kind of peace and that kind of trust and faith is what it means to be in his will. 

The Early Church

THE EARLY CHURCH

The members of the early church still saw themselves as belonging to the Jewish religion even though they now had a revelation of the life of Jesus within them through the work of the Holy Spirit. They went to the synagogue every Saturday like good churchgoers, but they could not celebrate their newness of life in the Spirit together in the formal structure and liturgy of the synagogue so they met in households where they could grow their new way of life together in an informal friendly way and in the freedom of the Spirit.                
Their style of celebrating this way of life is described in the Book of Acts.

Acts 2:42 And they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in prayers. 

Apostles’ Doctrine.
The early apostles spoke God’s word and trusted the Holy Spirit to teach each person how to hear from Jesus and how to live their life in partnership with him in a way that pleased the Father. That was the challenge that the apostles and prophets and pastors and teachers gave to each individual and to each group who gathered together in Jesus’ name, to build up their faith in their walk with God. This was something entirely new and scary because of the personal and individual freedom and responsibility that it brought but Jesus had said ‘I am the way the truth and the life’ and ‘no man can come to the Father except through me’ (John 14:6)

Fellowship
Our fellowship (koinonia) is an ongoing conversation of sharing the blessing of the ‘Jesus within us’ life. The Community of Faith is us together heeding another person’s experience of Jesus, no matter how different that experience might be to ours. Paul wrote to the church in Rome commending them on their inner knowledge of Jesus and he was confident that they could speak comfort and wisdom into one another’s’ lives.  
Romans 15:14 I myself am satisfied about you, my brothers, that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge and able to put one another in mind of God’s Word.

Breaking of bread – Communion
We sit ‘at table’ with one another and beak bread and drink the cup together. There doesn’t have to be an actual table – just people of faith remembering the bread as the body of Christ and the cup as his life-giving blood. That table is a place of the revelation of God to us of who he is and what he does.
Abraham sat at table (??ulh?ân; a table - or spread out as a meal) and offered three loaves of bread to The Lord Adonai who revealed himself as God in the form of three angels.
Genesis 18:2 He lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, three men were standing in front of him. When he saw them, he ran from the tent door to meet them and bowed himself to the earth and said, “O Lord, if I have found favour in your sight, do not pass by your servant… And Abraham went quickly into the tent to Sarah and said, ‘please quickly make three cakes of bread of fine flour!’ and he set it before them. And he stood by them under the tree while they ate. 
There he received the revelation from God that through him all the families of the earth would be blessed.
King David sat at table with the Lord (Psalm 23) and experienced total security even in the presence of his enemies and received a revelation of the living hope from God for the future comfort and fulfillment of dwelling in the house of the Lord forever. 
You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life,
and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD forever.

The two disciples who walked with Jesus on the road to Emmaus did not recognize who Jesus was until the Holy Spirit opened their eyes and revealed the risen Jesus to them, as they sat with him ‘at table’ (kataklin?? - recline at a meal) and they broke bread together.
Luke 24:30 When he was at table with them, he took the bread and blessed and broke it and gave it to them. And their eyes were opened, and they recognized him.
Holy Spirit still does this with us today ‘at table’ with the Lord and with one another.

Prayers
Communion is a time to have prayer together ‘at table’.
1Timothy 2:1 First of all then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and gracious in every way. This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth

Was Blind but now I see

WAS BLIND BUT NOW I SEE

When Jesus was ministering in Galilee, he healed three blind men.  One man was blind Bartimaeus 
Mark 10:46 And so they reached Jericho. Later, as they left town, a great crowd was following. Now it happened that a blind beggar named Bartimaeus was sitting beside the road as Jesus was going by. When Bartimaeus heard that Jesus from Nazareth was near, he began to shout out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”
When Jesus heard him, he stopped there in the road and said, “Tell him to come here.”
So they called the blind man. “Be encouraged,” they said, “come on, he’s calling you!” Bartimaeus pulled off his old cloak and threw it aside, jumped up and came to Jesus.
“What do you want me to do for you?” Jesus asked. The blind man said, “I want to see!”
And Jesus said to him, “All right, it’s done. Your faith has healed you.”
And instantly the blind man could see and followed Jesus down the road! 

Another man who was healed from blindness was healed by Jesus putting spit in his eyes
Mark 8:25. And they came to Bethsaida. And some people brought to him a blind man and begged him to touch him. And he took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the village, and when he had spit on his eyes and laid his hands on him, he asked him, “Do you see anything?” And he looked up and said, “I see people, but they look like trees, walking.” Then Jesus laid his hands on his eyes again; and he opened his eyes, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly.

Another man healed from blindness by Jesus didn't have Jesus spit in his eye but rather Jesus spat on the ground and made mud.
John 9:7 As he was walking along, he saw a man blind from birth.
“Master,” his disciples asked him, “why was this man born blind? Was it a result of his own sins or those of his parents?” “Neither,” Jesus answered. “But to demonstrate the power of God.
Then he spat on the ground and made mud from the spittle and smoothed the mud over the blind man’s eyes, and told him, “Go and wash in the Pool of Siloam. So the man went where he was sent and washed and came back seeing! 

Now for some speculation - We can imagine how these wonderful faith healings would have been compared and examined closely by Bible teachers (back then and still today) to discover the deeper meanings behind these experiences of faith. This would probably have given rise to earnest truth seekers and perhaps a few opportunists to hold a conference to discuss which was the most effective and appealing teaching method for being healed from blindness. After that conference three new denominations could very well have been formed all in the name of Jesus.  
There would have been the Bartamites the Spittites and the Muddites. 

The key to the Bartimite doctrine would be his throwing off the cloak before Jesus prayed. The historical context shows that this cloak that Bartimaeus was wearing was most likely an official begging coat for licenced beggars.
This could begin a new method of faith that could develop into some kind of practice still seen today about say, treading on your glasses while waiting in a prayer line with the expectation of being healed of sight defects. I watched this happen to two of my colleagues many years ago when I was in ministry training college. My two friends stomped on their spectacles as they received prayer from a visiting evangelist, and they had to go to the optometrist a few days later and each get a new pair of glasses. 

The Spittites. This doctrine would not only reveal truth concerning the spittle from Jesus’ mouth, which can speak of the living water of the Holy Spirit, but it would also introduce the new method of first praying, and then asking the person if they can see, and then laying on hands a second time to impart more faith for a better result.

The Muddites. The Muddite teaching emphasises that it was not only the living water of the spittle but it adds the method of mixing the spittle with the dust of the ground, which could speak of the Holy Spirit being joined to mankind. And furthermore, because the blind man had to wash in the pool of Siloam before he received his sight it could lead to the person being baptized into the local Muddite Assemblies church. 

However, what these three men really had in common was that they had been blind and now they could see - and they had all encountered Jesus and the love of God. Christianity challenges each individual to meet with Jesus in his or her own situation. The moment we make an exclusive doctrine out of a method we can bring division to the body of Christ. We place something else above Jesus and God’s love to indulge our own self-interest and it is like a market place of ‘get in on the latest and the best doctrine’ deal on offer. (only love conquers indulgent self-interest). 
Self-interest is a perfectly normal and responsible attitude for a person to have, to survive, stay as healthy as possible and be productive enough to do all this and to care for others. But when self interest becomes a problem of anxiety or wilfulness and me me me, and the dodgy doctrine deals have not worked the answer is to know that you are loved by someone who always acts for your best interest because they love you. That is what the Holy Spirit imparts to our hearts concerning Jesus and the Father.

Paul wrote to the church in Ephesus about being loving and wise in the teaching and applying of the truth of God’s word in the church. Paul wanted them to become a community of faith and love that expressed God’s love and faith and power into their world.

Ephesians Chapter 4:11-16. And he appointed some to be apostles and some to be prophets and some to be evangelists and some to be pastors and teachers of his word
12. Who would equip those who live for God to live a life of serving others (equip the saints for the work of the ministry) and be formed together for the expression of Jesus to the world.
13. Until we all come into the unity of the faith in the knowing of the Son of God, to become a complete person who measures up to having the fullness of Christ within us.
14. When this starts to happen, we won’t be like children tossed about in all directions and running here and there after every new alluring teaching from cunning teachers who load the dice to prosper their own ends and ambitions. 
15. But when truth is proclaimed, and it is empowered by God’s love it causes us as a body to grow and develop in oneness and harmony with Christ who is the head of that body. 
16. From this placement of the body with its head, which is Christ, comes the perfect collaboration of a completely balanced and effective body, as each part contributes the best it has in the best possible way so that the whole body becomes the expression of God’s love and power.

The early apostles and prophets and evangelists and pastors and teachers were ministries appointed by God that were trying to transition people from religion with its rituals and regulations into depending upon Jesus in a spiritual relationship with him.  They were talking to people from many different cultures and religions which all had written laws and rituals of some kind. These people had learned to feel more secure when they had ritual sacrifices and a ritual code of truth that specified exactly what method of application would get them some desired outcome or favour with God. That belief system was not faith in a living God, but faith in a methodology. Real faith is our believing in a living loving God who dwells within us working in our hearts to bring about his will in our lives as we surrender our needs and petitions to him. All those ministries I just mentioned spoke God’s word and trusted the Holy Spirit to teach each person how to hear from Jesus and how to live their life in partnership with him in a way that pleased the Father. This was something entirely new and scary because of the freedom that it brought.  But Jesus had said ‘I am the way the truth and the life’ and ‘no man can come to the Father except through me’ and that was the challenge that the apostles and prophets and pastors and teachers gave to every individual, to build up their faith in their walk with God.

When Paul was knocked to the ground on his way to Damascus to persecute Christians, Jesus told Paul that he had chosen him to be his apostle to the Gentiles, or non-Jews. Paul had to bring the revelation of ‘Christ in you’ to unbelievers who had a multiplicity of views on religion and God and spirituality. 
Paul set about laying down what was the first goal of the Church, which was to come into the ‘unity of the faith’ – ‘Until we all come into the unity of the faith in the knowing of the Son of God, to become a complete person who measures up to having the fullness of Christ within us’ (Vs.13) 
The Community of Faith does not judge or criticize another person’s genuine experience of Jesus, no matter how different it might be. Our ongoing conversation can be sharing the blessing of the ‘Jesus within us’ life. Paul wrote to the church in Rome commending them on their inner knowledge of Jesus and he was confident that they could speak comfort and wisdom into one another’s’ lives.  
Romans 15:14 I myself am satisfied about you, my brothers, that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge and able to put one another in mind of God’s Word.
It is good for a local church gathering to have proven ministries in their midst that can encourage God’s people pastorally and prophetically and teach them in the counsel of God’s Word. And it is all about each one of us having a personal knowledge of Jesus being active in our lives. 
That kind of local church community is genuinely evangelical because the people live out the Gospel that speaks through their lives.

In the next verse (Vs.14) Paul warns us to not go after alluring teachings that promote methodologies for getting your prayers answered the way you want them to. All this does is bring about more division because people start focusing on the crafty methods to get their prayers answered rather than trust in the person of Jesus. The motivation behind these teachings/teachers is often human pride or ambition or financial gain and reputation.
Many of these methods, styles and brands of faith have been exposed in the last few years of this century and there is a lot of soul-searching going on now as people are being challenged to live for God and not for themselves.

There are many people seeking truth with a genuine heart and conscience that are of other faiths and spiritual practices. There are many who may have a concept of a God who is out there or up there somewhere and they must not be rejected and judged. God will judge each person one day and he alone knows their heart and conscience and their destiny. The Holy Spirit has been sent into the world to actively pursue the hearts of all of these people, as he did to Paul and has done to all of us.
But how sad it is that many seekers of truth see Christianity as divided and as worldly and as confused as any other religion. It does not have to be like that. 
We can be part of God’s drawing of people to himself as the one true God as we live in the ‘unity of the faith’ and allow Jesus to live out his life from within us. 
Paul writes to Timothy to encourage him about being part of this work of God.

1Timothy 2:1 The first thing I want you to do is pray. Pray every way you know how, for everyone you know. Pray especially for rulers and their governments to rule well so we can be quietly about our business of living simply, in humble contemplation. This is the way our Saviour God wants us to live.
He wants not only us but everyone saved, you know, everyone to come to the knowledge of the truth we've learned: that there's one God and only one, and one Priest-Mediator between God and us—Jesus, who offered his life in exchange for everyone held captive by sin, to set them all free, the evidence of this coming at the appointed time. This and this only has been my appointed work (I tell the truth I am not lying).

Amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see.

 

 

Wisdom from The Father

WISDOM FROM THE FATHER notes

God would walk with Adam and Eve in a beautiful garden every day and he would tell them about the wonderful creation that he had created for them. In this way he filled their hearts with knowledge about who he was and about who they were, in a perfect relationship with himself and with one another. And he told them how much they were loved. He didn’t have to teach them any rules or regulations that would instruct them in moral or ethical choices concerning their relationships to one another because that was perfect, therefore he did not have to instruct them in the relational wisdom of the Ten Commandants. He had only given them one commandment and that was to not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. 

Unfortunately, Adam and Eve disobeyed this critical commandment, and this permanently damaged their relationship with God and with one another. At that moment humanity gave entrance to the destructive forces of broken and disordered relationships. Darkness had simply tempted them to sin grievously against the greatest of all God’s values for his earthly family, that of loving and trusting relationships. They had failed to trust the one who was the source of everything concerning who they were and what was theirs. 
They and their descendants would from now on struggle with a damaged conscience concerning the difference between good and evil for many thousands of years. The heart of mankind was filled with a mistrust of God. Humanity had become separated in its mind from the knowledge of God and had begun to find other options to replace God with gods of its own choosing and its own making. People began ambitiously struggling to fashion their own identity and destiny and their soul found no rest in this separated state of mind. They also began to mistrust one another and to do one another violence and harm and to steal from each other and to lie to each other, and about one another.

In due time God spoke to another man called Moses on the top of a mountain and he gave him the solution to all of this relational damage and harm that people did to themselves. He gave Moses the Ten Commandments, which was God’s wisdom concerning how to heal and restore and strengthen relationships between God and mankind and between people with one another. These relationships would be lovingly defined and wisely regulated by a loving Father God. Moses would have the task of overseeing the instruction of the Commandments to God’s people Israel for forty years in their journey through the wilderness, after God had miraculously set them free from their four hundred year bondage of slavery in Egypt.
The Ten Commandments were purely and simply the wisest and most straightforward external means that God could use to regulate what was most precious to him in the lives of his people in their community, and that is loving, joyful and fulfilling relationships with himself and one another. Everything else in life is secondary to this and grows out from this.

God also spoke intimately to a man named David, the king of Israel whom the Bible calls ‘a man after God’s own heart’. He was devoted to the wisdom of God that resided in the Commandments. David wrote powerfully in the psalms about his longing for the wisdom of God’s Commandments to transform his heart and soul.
Psalm 19:7 The law of the LORD is perfect, converting the soul;
the testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple;
the precepts of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart;
the commandment of the LORD is pure, enlightening the eyes;
the fear of the LORD is clean, enduring forever; the rules of the LORD are true,
and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold;
sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb. Moreover, by them is your servant warned, and in keeping them there is great reward.

God’s personal loving intervention into the lives of his people Israel was the prelude and the curtain raiser for the way humanity was being prepared to receive God himself in human form in the person of Jesus who would personally reside within humanity and join us to himself forever. Jesus embodied the ultimate truth of his Father’s Commandments and there came to mankind through Jesus a new way for this perfect wisdom concerning relationships to be grafted into the very being of the human heart and to make that heart willing to relate lovingly to God as a Father, and to other people as Jesus did. Jesus also spoke of the Commandments as being the expression of this perfect loving relationship between God and his people and between people with each other. 
One day a religious lawyer asked Jesus which was the greatest commandment and Jesus replied. ‘You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbour as yourself.' On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets."
Jesus spoke life into his teaching of the commandments and turned his emphasis of them from ‘’you shall nots into ‘you shall be transformed’. The apostles then continued this New Testament emphasis of redeeming faith in their teaching on the Commandments.
It was prophesied in the Old Testament that there would be new life-giving way of living the Commandments from a willing heart of faith through the loving work of Jesus. This prophetic word of Jeremiah was also recorded for us in the New Testament as being for all of humanity, not only for Israel.

Hebrews 8:10 ’For this is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, says the Lord: I will put My laws in their mind and write them on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. And no one will instruct his brother or teach his neighbour regarding knowing the Lord for all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them. 12For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more.’

The following presentation of the Commandments from Commandment One through to Commandment Ten is a reading of the words of love and wisdom and entreaty that I believe our Father God would speak to us today. 
The first four Commandments deal with our relationship to God and the next six Commandments deal with our relationships with one another.

I will first read the Commandment from Scripture (Exodus Chapter 20) and then I will share the transformational aspect of each Commandment as I see it reflected in the Gospels and the New Testament Scriptures.

1. I am The Lord your God. You will have no other gods before me.

I alone as your loving God can give you a life that is worth living if you trust me and look to no other god. Depend fully upon me for wisdom and guidance in your life choices and for fulfillment in loving relationships. Even your demands for total independence from me or stubborn rejection of me do not make me go away or stop me from intervening in your lives.

2. You shall not make yourselves any idol nor image or ever bow or worship it in any way; for I, the Lord your God, am jealous of you. 

Learn to accept that I give your life its true meaning, which is that you mean everything to me and I want to mean everything to you. I am jealous for you and that means I don’t want you to invent another self-conceived god instead of me. And don’t create some self-image – another identity that replaces the identity I have given you. I have created you in my image. 

3. You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain, for the LORD will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.

Only put God’s name to something you know he am doing in you and through you. You will know you have truly done this when you receive his peace in your heart through surrendering it prayerfully in faith for his will to be done in the matter. It is futile to presumptuously use God’s name to promote your own projects. If you do this you must own it all and take all the consequences of your presumption. In the same way it is unethical to presume the use of other peoples’ names and reputations for your own advantage. God’s name has great authority and power and it reflects his very nature, so he desire that you learn to bear his name and allow people to see his nature come through in the things that you do in his name.  

4. Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.

God worked on his creation for six days and rested on the seventh day. he took this rest so that he could enjoy that creation with his new family on the earth. So learn to take time out from your constant work to draw aside and give time to be with him and enjoy his company and the company of your family and friends whom you love. In that time of rest in his presence, you will receive faith that he is working with you and for you for his will to be done in your life. You will go out from that time of rest with peace in your heart giving thanks to him for his grace upon you and his provision for you.

These next six commandments deal with our relationships between one another.

5. Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land

It is good and right for children to honour and obey their parents, despite the parents’ imperfections, and the Bible also says that parents should not provoke their children to frustration and anger (Ephesians 6:2). Parents can impart wisdom and understanding of life principles through good instruction and especially by good example and God will bless through a secure authority that serves but not one that is insecure and self-serving because self-serving authority is ultimately rebellion against God’s loving authority that serves his people. Under secure and caring authority children can then hopefully learn to respect and trust the authority that God has placed over them in other areas of life and become responsible and accountable in their decision making. They will in time become equipped to give others help and wisdom and guidance and will do well in life and people will trust in them and walk in the way of peace instead of in suspicion and anger. This can help them exercise caring and competent authority towards other people in their area of influence.

6. You shall not kill

No one likes to be around angry and suspicious people because anger and violence leads to killing relationships and that is what leads to killing other people. 
People can learn to accept others for who they are and build friendships with kindness and trust. They can gain control over emotional reactions and become a reconciler and be ready to forgive people when they don’t live up to expectations. 

7. You shall not commit adultery 

The strict definition of adultery is unlawful sexual activity in marriage. However,
Jesus expanded this definition to include the inner attitude of the heart of wrong desire and not only the outward activity when he said ‘But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart (Matthew 5:28). This lustful intent is simply self-gratification and is a form of unfaithfulness. We can be unfaithful at any level of committed relationships, whether it be towards God or in friendships or even in work relationships where we can be disloyal to our employer and not put in a faithful performance. That is also cheating.
God’s love for us is a commitment of loving sacrifice and his love for us remains faithful even when we are unfaithful to him (2Timothy 2:3).
He wants to reveal his loving faithfulness to us so that we can be drawn to him and drawn away from harmful self-gratifying habits and become free to become fulfilled in faithful relationships
This is the pathway of return for many prodigal sons and daughters to the embrace of a loving Father where they learn the value of a loving relationship and are given worth.

8. You shall not steal

Stealing happens when a person loses sight of the worth of other people and what belongs to them, and in time they finally lose sight of their own worth as a person. 
God desires to touch the life of that person, to show them that they are of greater worth and value to him than all the other forms of creation and if he feeds the birds of the air and beautifies the flowers of the field how much more does he want to provide for them (Matthew 6:26). 
God wants to teach us all to value other people as he values them and to value what other people have worked honestly for. 
Paul writes ‘Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labour, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need Ephesians 4:28).
This is how God transforms people from being takers to becoming appreciated as givers.

9. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour

Satan is called 'a liar and the father of it' and the power that he wields starts with his own self-deception and ends with his deceiving of others. He told the first lie that was ever told on earth which led to the destruction of mankind’s relationship with God. He told them that God had deceived them by saying that they would die if they ate of the tree. Satan lied to them, telling them that they would not die and that they had been overlooked by God and deprived of his wisdom and spiritual and material provision.
And all of that demonstrates the power of what is called false witness. 
That lie causes the devaluing of another person’s name and reputation and honour, which means demolishing their essential being and nature.
The person who lies never has to change, because they never have to see themselves as they really are. God wants to show people who they really and lovingly persuade them that they do need to change
'You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free'.
They become set free from destroying their world with the power of lies, and they become people who build their world with the power of truth and love.

10. You shall not covet anything that belongs to your neighbour 

When a person covets another person’s identity or status or what they possess they live out the lie of taking the things of someone else’s’ life into the desolation and discontent of their own soul. 
They have forsaken God as being the source of their identity and blessing and fulfillment and replaced God with the identity or possessions or privileges of another person. They have created another god, a false idol, into whose image they want to be formed.
It is only when they can let God mercifully show them the futility of living the wrong life with the wrong goals that will only frustrate and torment their souls, that they can graciously surrender to God’s passionate and determined good will for their lives.
This opens up for them a courageous new horizon that they become drawn towards with the Heavenly energy of God’s loving grace and faith. ‘Behold I make all things new’.
God can show that person the futility of living the wrong life pursuing imaginary goals and he gives them the grace to surrender that past pursuit and sets before them a courageous new horizon which gives them a future and a hope.

 

 

Secret Prayer

SECRET PRAYER
  
Much of what Jesus taught his disciples had to do with being sincere and real. They had grown up under the influence of an external Jewish religion where there was an outward show of pretence in the prancing around of their religious observances, from giving to fasting and praying. Jesus wanted to teach them to become real in the inner faithfulness of their heart towards God, and not to be concerned with the praise of man. 
Matthew 6:1 “Take care! Don’t do your good deeds publicly, to be admired, for then you will lose the reward from your Father in heaven. … When you do a kindness to someone, do it secret, and your Father, who knows all secrets, will reward you.

At this particular time of instruction Jesus was especially interested in telling them about the need for this inner quality of the heart in regard to prayer.
Matthew 6:5 “And now about prayer. When you pray, don’t be like the hypocrites who pretend piety by praying publicly on street corners and in the synagogues where everyone can see them. Truly, that is all the reward they will ever get. 
So go into your room and close door behind you and be with the Father in secret, and the Father who sees in secret will reward your going out… for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

Jesus taught them to do as he did when he would leave the company of others and settle into a place of silent humble stillness where he would capture the truth of who he was in the presence of his loving Father. He would walk out from that place of prayer with a clear understanding of the will of his all-knowing Father. He taught his disciples his process of ‘secret prayer’. He had to close the door on the outer busyness of life and on the many human demands and challenges that acted upon his mind and emotions.

Jesus taught them how to close the door of their minds and emotions to their own outer troubling circumstances and to be with the Father in secret, where they would find his reward of peace and find faith to overcome the world in his strength. 
Jesus said to them. ‘follow me’, and he is also saying the same to us in these Scriptures, about how to follow him into his secret prayer life with his Father.

When Jesus went up onto a mountain to pray, he would not have had a room to go into, and there doesn’t have to be any formal room as such. The word for room (tameion) means an inner chamber. That inner chamber for Jesus was his heart, and that was where he met with his Father. That is also where we meet with our Father, in secret.  When Jesus ‘closed the door behind him’ he was talking about shutting out the soul’s current burdens and perplexing challenges of life. Closing that door was a deliberate decision of his will. 
When Paul wrote about his ‘reaching forward to those things that are ahead’ (Philippians 3:13) he first of all talked about ‘forgetting those things that were behind’ That wasn’t about Paul having amnesia, it was as with Jesus a deliberate act of the will!
Paul was very open in the Scriptures about the mental perplexities and the emotional disappointments he suffered, and he didn’t deny them or suppress them, but he also didn’t obsess about them. He knew the only faithful and intelligent way forward was to put them aside by closing the door of his soul on them while he let his mind occupy a better and more powerful place of the peace filled presence of God which is always there waiting to be occupied by all those who believe. He went on to say ‘…let any of us who think maturely act this way…’(Philippians 3:15)

There are three clearly defined parts to this orderly process of secret prayer that Jesus taught 
‘Go into your room and close the door behind you…’ 
The first part, before going into the room, is to do some ordering of the soul concerning the scrambled array of competing burdens and concerns both past and present that can flood the human mind. We need to diligently check what those things are that we leave outside the door when we close it because they will still be there when we come out of that inner place of being heart to heart with God. And while the Father knows all these hidden things, we need to be clear about them too, so that we can finally surrender them willingly into his hands. This diligence takes a little time, but the Holy Spirit helps us by shining the light where it is needed. 

‘Be with your Father in secret…’
The second part is to open the door of our heart to the flow of love and goodwill of the Father so that when we close the door on the past, he can reorder our soul and energize our heart with faith for the future. This is not a time of discussing our needs with God but purely a time of receiving the flow of his life into ours. That flow of life is the divine energy that created and ordered the Universe through the Logos of his Word, and that energy continues to work creatively upon us. During that time we can echo the words of David ‘My heart is fixed, my heart is ready (Psalm 57:7) as our faith expands in anticipation of God’s will being worked ‘in secret’ into our heart and into our circumstances. 

‘…and the Father who sees in secret will reward your going out for your Father knows what you need before you ask him’.
The third part is to come out of that inner place and into our outer world knowing that our Father has ordered our future and prepared our heart with faith to discern his will for our life concerning those areas of our present circumstances.
We now present these needs that the Holy Spirit gives us witness to, and that he wants us to willingly surrender to the Father. He gives us his faith that these things are being brought into the perfect will of God, and that faith and peace is the reward of the Father. The Bible says that Jesus lives forever to intercede to God on our behalf (Hebrews 7:5). We have surrendered these to the Father and we know Jesus ‘has our back’, as it were. We then give thanks for this and allow his peace to fill our hearts as we go out from there and into the activities of our lives. And now we are assured that we will see in his time what he has done and give more thanks, when our faith becomes our sight.          
Jesus went on to give them a general outline of how they could speak personally and openly to God, both in reverend awe of his greatness but also in the warmth and consolation of his love and goodness. 
He taught them what we call ‘The Lord’s Prayer’ (Matthew 6: 8)

Dear Heavenly Father I respect and honour you as God over all things. I regard your Heavenly Kingdom order as being perfect in every way and I ask that you bring that perfect order more and more into this world so that your will can be done by us here on earth as you devise your perfect will for us from Heaven.
I depend upon you for everything that I have in this earth that sustains my life and keeps me going. Help me to live in the peace of your forgiveness and to show that same forgiveness to others who have done me wrong.
Please keep your hedge of protection from evil around me and my loved ones and strengthen our souls against being tempted and drawn away from your path by wrong desires. May the power of your Heavenly Kingdom be gloriously on display for all to see in this age and for all the ages to come. Amen

 

Sin and Faith and Missing the Mark

SIN AND FAITH AND MISSING THE MARK

Luke 7:36 One of the Pharisees asked Jesus to come to his home for lunch and Jesus accepted the invitation. As they sat down to eat, a woman of the streets heard he was there and brought an exquisite flask filled with expensive perfume. Going in, she knelt behind him at his feet, weeping, with her tears falling down upon his feet; and she wiped them off with her hair and kissed them and poured the perfume on them.
When Jesus' host, a Pharisee, saw what was happening and who the woman was, he said to himself, “This proves that Jesus is no prophet, for if God had really sent him, he would know what kind of woman this one is!"

The Pharisees judged the woman harshly and they also judged Jesus harshly in this situation. This was bad press for Jesus – ‘Immoral sinful woman publicly kisses the feet of Jesus at a party

Then Jesus spoke up and answered his thoughts. "Simon," he said to the Pharisee, "I have something to say to you."
"All right, Teacher," Simon replied, "go ahead." Then Jesus told him this story: “A man loaned money to two people--$5,000 to one and $500 to the other. But neither of them could pay him back, so he kindly forgave them both, letting them keep the money! Which do you suppose loved him most after that?"
"I suppose the one who had owed him the most, “Simon answered. "Correct, “Jesus agreed.
Then he turned to the woman and said to Simon, “Look! See this woman kneeling here! When I entered your home, you didn't bother to offer me water to wash the dust from my feet, but she has washed them with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You refused me the customary kiss of greeting, but she has kissed my feet again and again from the time I first came in. You neglected the usual courtesy of olive oil to anoint my head, but she has covered my feet with rare perfume. Therefore her sins--and they are many--are forgiven, so she loved me much; but one who is forgiven little, shows little love."
And he said to her, “Your sins are forgiven. “Then the men at the table said to themselves, “Who does this man think he is, going around forgiving sins?" And Jesus said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace."

Jesus described the beautiful logic of a person who owed much greatly appreciated being forgiven much. She loved Jesus in return for this forgiveness and she publicly demonstrated her love to him. Jesus compares her love and honour for him with the neglect he received from the owner of the house.

The woman was a sinner (harmaton - one who misses the mark) and she was forgiven for all her sins, which were many. Sin (harmatia - missing the mark) means disobeying The Commandments and religious rules in the Old Testament.
The men at the table had said “Who does this man think he is, going around forgiving sins?" And Jesus said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace."

In that one final sentence Jesus prophetically declared the difference between missing the mark or target in the Old Testament and missing the mark or target in the New Testament. She was being judged by people of missing the mark according to the Old Testament but she was responding by faith in Jesus and hitting the target according to the New Testament, which had not yet come into effect!

The mark to be missed in the Old Testament of being judged by the Commandments had been met fully by Jesus whom the Bible tells us was without sin. Jesus took his sinless life through the cross and was killed even though death had no claim on him according to the Scriptural law of sin and death 
Romans 5:12 Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, so death came upon all men because all sinned…
He then rose from the dead and ascended into Heaven and then sent the Holy Spirit upon humanity. Then there came a new way that sin was to occur with a new kind of mark to be missed. The New Testament mark to aim for was of belief in the fact that we have received the gift of the sinless life from Jesus’ death and resurrection and can now live in the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus. This is why Jesus said very clearly 
John 16:7…if I do not go away, the Holy Spirit (paracletos) will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you. And when he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin … because they do not believe in me.
So the new definition for sin that the Holy Spirit is constantly convicting the hearts of all people about today is unbelief in the indwelling life of Jesus. God wants that life of his to be expressed through us. 
The Bible says ‘the just shall live by faith’(Galatians 3.11. Romans 1:17)

There are other words in the original language in the New Testament Scriptures used for deliberately disobeying God that occur a few times only, such as lawlessness and transgression, but the one and only word for sin as missing the mark , hamartia, is used over two hundred and fifty times as in the above Scriptures and elsewhere throughout the New Testament Bible.
Missing the mark, or sin in the Old Testament is hata – turning from the path or missing the mark. That was a much easier target to see and to judge in the Old Testament because it was the observable outward behaviour concerning the Jewish rules and the Ten Commandments. There were many sinful acts of behaviour to be observed such as idolatry, anger, violence and killing, sexual immorality and unfaithfulness, stealing, lying, coveting and these were judged by man and by God. The mark that we miss in the New Testament is an inner hidden quality of the heart of faith that only God can judge. 

The overarching fact is that God still requires that we obey his Commandments. 
Matthew 5:17… Jesus said… ‘I come not to destroy the law but to establish it’. 
How do we fulfill God’s requirement of us to obey his Commandments?
Paul writes that our heart of believing in the life of Jesus within us is the only way that we can please God and willingly desire to obey his Commandments. This is because of the work of the Holy Spirit within us giving us the same desire as Jesus had to do the will of his Father. This is God’s gift of grace to us.
Romans 8.4 the righteous requirement of the law might now be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to our human nature but according to the Spirit. So that the right living that the law commanded could now flow freely from us who live a shared life together with Jesus in his divinity instead of a life isolated and limited by its own flawed condition.

Why would someone miss the mark (sin -hamartia) under this New Covenant of grace?
A person would miss it if they were totally ignorant of any knowledge of God and his covenant. They would miss it if they worshipped other gods. They would miss it if they were not interested in God. They could also miss the mark if they had been told incorrectly that it was about rules and Commandments and outward observance rather than about being about grace and faith and an inner commitment of the heart of faith. These errors of understanding remain and abound today.

This new understanding took time to transition out of the religious mindset of the Jewish apostles who thought it was still a matter of being under the Law of the Commandments and the Jewish religious rules, while still passionately believing that Jesus Christ was God and that he died for the forgiveness of our sins. Those early apostles were taught by the Holy Spirit how to receive the revelation of this New Covenant and through those struggles of faith they came to understand that they could preach the full Gospel of grace and faith to the Gentiles also. 

The apostle Peter was told to preach the good news to a Gentile centurion called Cornelius and he resisted that command from God at first because it broke the Jewish Laws of entering the home of a Gentile, not to mention the eating of Gentile food which was sinful and unclean for a Jew (even a Christian Jew, according to Peter). Peter did as he was told and he was amazed to see the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit revealing Jesus to them and filling them with his divine life. Peter later describes to the other apostles the supernatural work of God upon the hearts of the Gentiles 
Acts 11:15 ‘If then God gave the same gift to them as he gave to us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could stand in God's way? God has granted repentance that leads to life to the Gentiles also. Peter went on to say ‘And God, who knows the heart, bore witness to them, by giving them the Holy Spirit just as he did to us, and he made no distinction between us and them, having purified their hearts by faith. (Acts 15:9).

It was finally Paul who unfolded the truth of the universal grace of God through Jesus Christ. Universal grace means that Jesus died for the sins of all mankind and that all are forgiven. And we saw that the apostle John writes that the Holy Spirit is at work in ‘the World’, not just in ‘the Church’, and that means every human heart. Paul also states ‘For to this end we toil and strive, because we have our hope set on the living God, who is the Savior of all mankind, especially of those who believe. (1Timothy 4:10). 

That is not ‘universalism’ because the question remains – how many people believe what God wants them to believe?
Many who call themselves Christians today may be unaware of what ‘sin’ is and unaware of what the mark is that they are supposed to aim at, namely, a full commitment to living as a partaker in their inner life of the divine Spirit of Christ.

I have to seriously ask myself that question every waking hour of my life. Do I believe? 
All I can say is “Lord I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24).

It is easy to look at peoples’ behaviour in the outside world and legalistically judge them as ‘sinners’, but Paul warns us against doing that; 
‘For what have I to do with judging outsiders (1Corinthians 5:12).
So who gives account to Who and who gives account to what? 
In the Old Testament God’s people were accountable to God and UNDER the Law, so they were accountable to the Law and judged by the Law.
In the New Testament we are ALL accountable to God and UNDER grace, so we will each give account to God about receiving his grace that works by faith. 
2Corinthians 13:5 Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Or do you not realize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you 
……………………………

1Corinthians 4:5 Therefore judge nothing before the appointed time; wait until the Lord comes. He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of each one’s heart. At that time each will receive his praise from God.

The Church has become more occupied with judging one another than with loving one another. God might say to someone on that day – look your doctrine was too pushy and legalistic and brought condemnation however I loved your heart of sincerity to do your best for my Kingdom or yours was too pushy and self-serving and promised healing and prosperity on demand and brought confusion – however I loved your heart of generosity to do your best for my Kingdom. Or he might say ‘you felt so bad about yourself that you kept giving up and running away and doing yourself more harm than good, but I Ioved your humble heart of transparency’ give me a hug. PLUS TEN OTHER SCANARIOS - And then he might say – come on all of you and give one another a hug and stop arguing about how everybody missed the mark and by how much they missed it. 

Romans 14:7
For none of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself. For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's. For to this end Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living.
Why do you pass judgment on your brother? Or you, why do you despise your brother? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God; for it is written,
“As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me,
and every tongue shall confess to God.”
So then each of us will give an account of himself to God. 
Therefore let us not pass judgment on one another any longer, but rather decide never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of a brother. For if your brother is grieved by what you eat, you are no longer walking in love. 

So do not let what you regard as good be spoken of as evil. For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. Whoever serves Christ in that manner is acceptable to God and approved by men. So then let us pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding…

The faith that you have, keep between yourself and God. Blessed is the one who has no reason to pass judgment on himself for what he approves. But whoever has doubts condemns himself if it is not from faith. For whatever does not proceed from faith is sin – misses the mark...
Faith is surrendering your spiritual agenda into the heart and hands of God who alone can bring about the supernatural outcomes.
Paul nonetheless sets that mark as the highest goal of life – the upward call/invitation of God. He is saying that if you don’t have faith in this grace that works in you through the Holy Spirit then you are missing the mark one way or another. 
Paul admits his own struggle.
Philippians 3:12 Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have fully made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward that mark which is God’s Heavenly invitation to us all. 

It is God’s great love that draws us towards himself by the Holy Spirit to respond to his invitation to reach this mark because our being with him is the highest mark that he desires for us to reach. He knows that is what will fulfil our heart’s desire because that is what fulfills his heart’s desire. And his great love is matched by his great mercy as he sees us stumbling forward. He sees our imperfect efforts, but when he also sees a perfect heart of intent that is what blesses him – and us. 
There are barriers in our human thinking that prevent this truth of grace from becoming established in our hearts. One barrier is that we can feel that we are too insignificant or unworthy to receive this kind of gracious love from God. That could be the greatest barrier of all because it seems like such a paradox that such an Almighty Holy God would be interested in such flawed human beings like us. The Bible shows that thinking like that is a lie. 
Isaiah 57:15 For thus says the High and Lofty One Who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: “I dwell in the high and holy place, with him who has a contrite and humble spirit, to bring to life the spirit of the lowly, and to bring to life the heart of the contrite ones.

Even with the highest intention of our heart of faith we can still get disappointed in our falling short of fully believing and trusting in this gift of grace. We find ourselves saying with Paul ‘the good that I want to do I do not, and the bad things I do not want to do I do’.
But Paul knew that the Spirit of the life of Christ within would always lift him above the limits of his frail and feeble human nature if he pressed towards the mark and didn’t give up. When we do that we are exercising the greatest kind of faith and love towards God that exists, just like the woman who kissed the feet of Jesus. 

The only way we can truly appreciate and give thanks to our God who is in the highest place, is to know him as the one who loves us in our lowly place and that is in fact the most perfect place.  We need never be ashamed of our place of lowliness because that is where he wants to dwell with us. This is the glory of the cross and the resurrection. We can now truly sing ‘Amazing Grace who saved a wretch like me’.