Spiritcode

Entering The Kingdom

ENTERING THE KINGDOM

Luke 4:42 Early the next morning Jesus departed from the people so he could be in a solitary place, but the crowds searched everywhere for him, and when they finally found him, they begged him not to leave them but to stay at Capernaum. But he replied, "I must preach the Good News of the Kingdom of God in other places too, for that is why I was sent." Jesus kept talking about a Kingdom, and people wanted to know what this Kingdom was, especially the religious leaders and the Pharisees – Where was it? – When would it come? – What did it look like? 
Jesus’ answer to them was that His Kingdom was not in a geographical place, and you couldn’t plan its arrival with a calendar or describe its outward appearance as a visible organization. He said it was not an external system but an internal reality. He said it was in us and amongst us - something shared between us and God and us and one another.
Luke17:20,21 When asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, he answered them, “The kingdom of God is not coming in ways that can be observed, nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There!’ for behold, the kingdom of God is within you.

Jesus was underpinning that ‘within you’ life as he withdrew into the place of solitude with his Father as we saw in the opening Scripture and he would be fortified by his Father’s love which then flowed forth from him to the people. Jesus was telling them that he was bringing in a Kingdom that was not a place but rather a realm of God’s supernatural activity and order which was to operate here and now within those who had surrendered their authority to God’s authority and their will to God’ will. They would be people who have desired that their human nature be transformed by God’s nature of love and justice and mercy so that the power of that Kingdom within would not be corrupted like the power of the kingdoms of the world.

When Jesus was betrayed by Judas and arrested by the temple guards, he was tried by the Jewish High Priest and the council of elders and then handed over to Pontius Pilate the Roman Governor of Judea. When Pilate questioned Jesus about being King of the Jews he asked him why he had been tried by his own people and why they had brought him to a Roman Governor for trial. He asked Jesus what he had done, and why was he claiming he was their king.
Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting for me and not allowing me to even be put on trial. But my kingdom is not of this world.”-Jesus also added that if God had not willed for this to happen then Pilate would not have had any authority to put him on trial  (John 18:36 ff)

Jesus did not ever urge his disciples to protest against Roman authority or consider any hostility towards Roman rule. They were all convinced that the Kingdom would be an outward Kingdom ruled over by Jesus, and that the Roman Empire would be overthrown and that they would rule alongside of him with great power and authority.
But Jesus did not come to try and change the outward kingdom in which his disciples lived; he came to establish the kingdom that would live within them. He said to them once when he was given a Roman coin ‘whose face do you see on it?’ and they said to him ‘Caesars’ and he said to them ‘therefore give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s’. That day Jesus established the principle of the separation between Church and State. Jesus went on to say that they could not behave like the Roman rulers, or their own religious leaders who use their authority and positions of power to dominate others to get what they want out of them. 
There was one occasion when the mother of James and John asked if her sons could sit next to Jesus on his throne, one on the right hand side and one on the left, when he established his Kingdom. It became clear by the reaction of the other disciples of anger and resentment at the two brothers that all of them were coveting some special place in the order of this new Kingdom that would be happening any time soon.
Matthew 20:24 And when the ten heard it, they were indignant at the two brothers.

He told them that what they were all wanting for themselves was not even his to give. He said that Father had given them all to him, and that Father alone gives place and position as he sees fit. He said that if they were to follow him then they must follow all the way. 
He told them that true authority was serving one another, not competing with one another, and that he had been sent to serve, not to be served, and to lay down his life for others. That day they learned a lot about God and a lot about themselves and a lot about the Kingdom. 

Jesus had to correct their tendency towards the power plays of political zealotry and activism, some of them more than others. Peter would not be slow in lopping off the ear of the temple guard when Jesus was being arrested on the night he was betrayed by Judas, and Judas was the most zealous political activist of all who was bitterly disappointed when he realized that Jesus had planned no imminent earthly Kingdom. Those two brothers James and John whose mother wanted a place for them on the left and the right-hand side of the throne of Jesus were also quite happy one day to ask Jesus to let them bring judgment upon the Samaritans, their political and religious opponents by hurling some fire from Heaven against their rejection of Jesus’ message. Jesus rebuked them and said ‘you don’t know what spirit you are of. (Luke 9:54).

Many Christians today have a similar zealous political activism to that of those disciples, and it is a common and understandable misunderstanding to have, because of the indignation that rises up in all of us when we see the corrupt power plays in the politics of this day. Jesus had to correct his disciples and prepare their hearts and minds to live in the power of a Kingdom within them rather than seek the power in an earthly kingdom around them. 

There are many Christians that believe that the Church will reorder every political and commercial and educational institution and every family and relational arrangement in the earth and bring it under God’s rule so that Jesus can return to a Kingdom of God on the earth that is ready and waiting for him to take up his rule. We can certainly have a transformative influence upon the political and civil landscape when called upon to speak or act in a way that honours God and shines light into darkness in a situation that God has ordained for us.
However, the Bible is clear that we cannot achieve a perfected earthly kingdom in this age where every kind of corrupted kingdom authority contests the Word and the ways of God to maintain its flawed and limited power base, and the Bible says we are not here to judge the world – that is for him (1Cprinthians 5:12). The Kingdom of God cannot be perfected until Jesus returns from Heaven to put down all rebellion in the earth and in the heavens.
1Corinthians 15:24 Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. 

And at that time, it will come to pass; ‘that at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Philippians 2:9).

We finally take our place with him in a New Kingdom of a New Heaven and a New Earth. Until the time of his return, we live in an age where every kingdom on earth is being shaken. The only Kingdom that cannot be shaken is the Kingdom of God that is dwelling within us. (Hebrews 12:28) 

God’s Kingdom is the experience and the influence of a community of people that love God and love one another. The other world is the world of division, competition, self-advantage and independence from God. 

Jesus asks us to choose what world and what kingdom we will be active in.
Jesus asks us how much we care for him, and how much we care for one another.

God wants us to attract people to His Kingdom, and The Holy Spirit will take the love that we actively pour into being with God and with one another and he will draw people towards that love. We are creating a Kingdom community for people to come into, not encouraging anxious or pushy or demanding people with political agendas but growing people with a simple and meaningful walk of faith in God, not trying desperately to impress the world but seeking to care for a broken world that God wants to heal with his love.

The Holy Spirit is working within us to make us willing to do whatever The Father puts before us each day, in the big things and the little things.
If we provide the willingness, He will provide the grace and love and the power to do.
He will give us wisdom in ethical and moral decisions that change lives.
He will give us strength to be there for someone else and help carry their load.
He will comfort us in our affliction so that we can comfort others in theirs.
He will demonstrate to the world that the Kingdom is here and now and in those who have truly entered into it because of their love for one another. 
Then others can be brought in. 
Jesus came to bring in The Kingdom. He will come again to complete it.

 

Seeing and Not Seeing

SEEING AND NOT SEEING

This story shows us how differently we can live our lives if we see things as they truly are in the realm of the spirit and not shrouded by darkness, the darkness of the world. The story, from 2 Kings ch.6, starts off with the king of Syria trying to plot his misguided strategies of war against Israel. Every time he plans to ambush Israel’s army in a certain place, Elisha is told by God what is going on and he warns the king of Israel so that he is always ready for action.

2Kings 6:17 Once when the king of Syria was at war with Israel, he told his officers to mobilize their forces at such and such a place (naming the place). Immediately Elisha warned the king of Israel, "Don't go near such and such a place (naming the same place) for the Syrians are planning to mobilize their troops there!"
The king sent a scout to see if Elisha was right, and sure enough, he had saved him from disaster. This happened several times.
The king of Syria was puzzled. He called together his officers and demanded, "Which of you is the traitor? Who has been informing the king of Israel about my plans?"
"It's not us, sir, “one of the officers replied. “Elisha, the prophet, tells the king of Israel even the words you speak in the privacy of your bedroom!"
"Go and find out where he is, and we'll send troops to seize him, “the king exclaimed.
And the report came back, “Elisha is at Dothan."
So one night the king of Syria sent a great army with many chariots and horses to surround the city of Dothan. When the prophet's servant got up early the next morning and went outside, there were troops, horses, and chariots everywhere.
"Oh no Master, what shall we do now? “he cried out to Elisha.
"Don't be afraid! “Elisha told him. for those who are with us are greater than those who are with them. “Then Elisha prayed, “Lord, open his eyes and let him see! “And the Lord opened the young man's eyes so that he could see horses and chariots of fire everywhere upon the mountain!
As the Syrian army advanced upon them, Elisha prayed, “Lord, please make them blind. “And he did.
Then Elisha went out and told them, “You’ve come the wrong way! This isn't the right city! Follow me and I will take you to the man you're looking for. “And he led them to Samaria!
As soon as they arrived Elisha prayed, “Lord, now open their eyes and let them see. “And the Lord did, and they discovered that they were in Samaria, the capital city of Israel! (at that time)
When the king of Israel saw them, he shouted to Elisha, “Shall I kill them? Shall I kill them?"
"Of course not! “Elisha told him. “Do we kill prisoners of war? Give them food and drink and send them home again."
So the king made a great feast for them and then sent them home to their king. And after that the Syrian raiders stayed away from the land of Israel.

This story of Elisha defending Israel from the attacks of the Syrian army unveils the activity of God in the world of the unseen against the enemy of darkness. God opened the eyes of Elisha to this supernatural realm to show him that God was in command of the earthly activity and that he would guide Elisha step by step to fulfill his Heavenly purpose for his people.
The Bible tells us that we can be made aware of the tactics of our enemy the devil, and so prevent our minds and hearts from being emotionally overwhelmed by darkness and deception and fear. That understanding is of great encouragement to our faith especially in these present troubling times of global pandemic.

 2Cor2:11 so that we are not outwitted by Satan; for we are not ignorant of his devices.
Darkness will try to introduce fear which is a spiritual power. Fear fires up peoples’ imaginations and brings confusion and incites suspicion and division and unforgiveness. The devil tries to hijack the emotions to disrupt a normally ordered soul where it can go into reaction and become suspicious and fearful rather than trusting in God and acting wisely.

There are some things about seeing and not seeing that are worth knowing.
Only God knows what is really going on in the realm of both the seen and the unseen.
The devil does not know the future (if he did why let Jesus die on the cross).
The devil cannot read our minds. (2chron ch.6)  
The devil can blind our minds by getting us into emotional reactions such as resentment, anxiety, fear, deception concerning half-truths and conspiracy theories, and harsh criticism of people who do not share the same opinions. 
These reactions do not help to solve the problem at hand, and they end up causing more emotional and mental and spiritual unrest than the problem itself.
What does help is adopting a new mindset of faith in God (repentance).
We can learn to consciously redirect our faith to the reality of God’s command over the situation and his supernatural work on our behalf in the world of the unseen. 

Just as the prophet told his servant that there was a greater army with them than there was against them. Elisha had to pray that God would open the eyes of his servant to see the work of God in the unseen realm.
The Bible tells us ‘Greater is he who is within you than he who is in the world (1John 4:4). 
He that is within us is Jesus working with us through the power of the Holy Spirit. He is our strength and he has overcome the darkness of the power of the world and only he can help us us to see what is happening as he sees it - in the unseen realm. God has not only allowed this global pandemic but he is using it to bring darkness and deception and corruption to the surface like never before in history. Everything will get to be seen for what it is as the Holy Spirit shines light upon the darkness and deception that is causing so much of the current chaos and disorder being seen in the world today. 
He that is in the world is Satan who brings darkness and chaos and disorder into this world to blind it to the reality of the supernatural work of God that he does on behalf of those who believe. 

We are being called to stand still and see the salvation of The Lord.
We can learn to quietly calm our souls and resist fear - and find faith.
We can learn to resist the ambush of our emotions and order our minds.
We can receive God’s love and wisdom into our hearts. (1John 4:18, 1Corinthians 1:30).

God’s love in our hearts will be seen through the practical caring or comforting response we can give to someone in distress in these present difficulties. It is also seen in our non combative response if we are personally criticised for our position on how we manage the current difficulties based on our faithfulness to God and to one another.

God’s wisdom in our heart will be seen through our personal responsibility in making decisions that support the well-being of others, especially those that are vulnerable. 

God blinded the eyes of Elisha’s enemies so that they went into confusion and lost their way and had to give up their misguided plans as a lost cause.
God opened the eyes of Elisha to what he was doing in the overall scheme of his purpose for Israel, and Elisha’s request was granted in opening the eyes of his friend who could not see what God was doing.
This empowerment of God’s grace to us of having our eyes opened by God to see what he is doing and what darkness is doing is being given to us in these days as we faithfully wait upon God and trust him to have his way with us and through us in these troubled times. As God opens our eyes he will give us the prayer of faith to see eyes being opened in those in our world that we bring before him. In quietness and confidence will be your strength.

 

An era of Hope and Peace

AN ERA OF HOPE AND PEACE 
Forty days after Jesus was born in Bethlehem, Mary and Joseph had to bring Jesus to the temple in Jerusalem at that prescribed time for dedication and purification according to Jewish Law. 
A man named Simeon was also in the Temple, The Holy Spirit having prompted him to go to the Temple that day. The Holy Spirit had revealed to him that he would not die until he had seen Jesus, God's anointed King, which was Simeon’s lifelong prayer, forever waiting and expecting the Messiah to come soon. And so when Mary and Joseph arrived to present the baby Jesus to the Lord in obedience to the law, The Spirit bore witness to Simeon that his prayer had been answered, and he greeted them, taking the child in his arms and began praising God.
‘Lord’ he said, I have seen him as you promised me I would. I have seen the Saviour you have given to the world. He is the Light that will shine upon the nations, and he will be the glory of your people Israel! now I can die in peace. (Luke 2:29)
On that day this prophetic man Simeon took his place in entering the era of new hope and peace that had come upon all of humanity. 

Joseph and Mary stood there, marvelling at what was being said about Jesus.
Then Simeon blessed them all and said to Mary about her blessed child;
‘This one is assigned for the fall and rise of many in Israel and as a sign that will be opposed and denied by multitudes in all the earth, so that the thoughts of their hearts might be revealed. 
This momentous prophesy declares Jesus as the one who stands at the centre of the scales of every life, where we weigh the major decisions of our lives. This challenges us to either respond to or reject the truth of his virgin birth, his perfect life, his voluntary sacrificial death and his glorious resurrection. These truths are the challenges that provoke opposition and denial in the human heart, where all inner conflicts between light and darkness are deliberated and judged, bringing every human heart to account. 
Jesus now stands in the middle of every decision we make, to give us his wisdom and truth. This is ours if we let him into our heart - and it is on offer for all of mankind, and sadly ignored.

A woman named Anna was also there in the Temple that day, a prophetess of the Jewish tribe of Asher, and was eighty four years old. She lived a cloistered life in the Temple, dwelling there night and day, worshiping God in praying and often fasting.
She came along just as Simeon was talking with Mary and Joseph, and The Spirit gave witness to her spirit that this was the promised Saviour and that the Messiah had finally arrived. She began thanking God and proclaiming this truth of hope to everyone in Jerusalem. She too had now entered the era of hope and peace that had come into the world.

Meanwhile, a group of highly esteemed Wise Men called Magi set out from Babylon in the East, and they were asking about the birth of the new king of Israel and his whereabouts. Babylon was the first civilization in the East from 700 BC to study and interpret the movement of the stars and planets (wandering stars).
They would study any unusual or momentous activity of a night star in the heavens, as this was often interpreted by astrologers to be the sign of the birth of a great ruler. They had been following an exceptionally bright star for some weeks in the eastern night sky to the region of the special birth and had been asking questions around Jerusalem.

These men also knew the writings of the Jewish scrolls and would have had knowledge of the prophesies concerning the Messiah and the predicted whereabouts of his birth. This was because of the influence of the Jewish religion during the seventy years internment of Israel in Babylon, and the impact of such an inspirational prophetic hero as Daniel, and many scribes and teachers knew from the Scriptures the Bethlehem region of the child’s birth;
Micah 5:2, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, you are but a small Judean village, yet you will be the birthplace of my King who is alive from everlasting ages past!" God will abandon his people to their enemies until she who is to give birth has her son; then at last his fellow countrymen--the exile remnants of Israel--will rejoin their brethren in their own land.
And he shall stand and feed his flock in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God, and his people shall be secure, for he will be greatly honoured all around the world. He will be our Peace

The presence of these men in Jerusalem and the line of questioning and discussion they were having with the local people came to the ears of the local ruler, Herod The Great, who had been appointed by Caesar Augustus to rule the Jews of Judea and Jerusalem. Herod was a local tribal king who acted as an intermediary to Caesar, and he had become extremely agitated about the news of this supposed special child whose birth had been predicted, and he was threatened by it. He didn’t want that sort of competition. He had his own dynasty to create.
Herod summonsed the Wise Men to his palace and told them there were vague reports about the general whereabouts of the region where they might find news of the child. He asked them to come back and inform him of the child’s exact location, deceitfully telling them that he too wanted to worship this new king. 
After their meeting with Herod the Wise Men followed the star which remained bright in the sky and were guided to the house where Joseph and Mary and the child Jesus were still staying. When the men were invited to see the child they went down on their knees and worshipped him. They then presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. These peculiar gifts have a spiritual message for us today who seek to understand what it means to live a life shared with God.
Gold speaks of the nature of God on display through the Holy Spirit in a human life. 
Frankincense speaks to us of prayer and praise arising out of a true heart. 
Myrrh speaks to us of the necessary reality of suffering, and its meaning for our life, as we give thanks to God in all things, because without that there is no spiritual growth.

That same night Gabriel gave a message to the Wise Men in a dream warning them not to report back to Herod, so the men departed and returned to their homeland another way. After their departure the Angel also appeared to Joseph in a dream and told him to take Mary and Jesus to Egypt, and to stay there until he brought further word. He warned him that Herod was seeking the young child to destroy him. Herod had commanded a garrison of soldiers to go out and put to death all the male children who were in Bethlehem and in all its surrounding districts, from two years old and under. This tragic event was prophesied by Jeremiah; 
Jeremiah 31:15, In Rama a voice of weeping was heard and lamentation and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, unable to be comforted because of her loss. 
So Joseph took Mary and the young child and departed for Egypt that night. 
Herod died soon after this, and Gabriel spoke to Joseph in another dream that it was now safe to leave Egypt, fulfilling another prophecy which was spoken through the prophet Hosea; ‘Out of Egypt I called My Son’ (Hosea 11:1). 
However, when Joseph learned that Herod Antipas the son of Herod The Great, who now ruled in his father’s place, was as treacherous and murderous as his father, he was afraid to go back to the area, but Gabriel appeared to Joseph again in a dream and told him to go to a quiet lakeside village in Galilee where they would be safe. So they came and settled in a city called Nazareth, and another prophesy was fulfilled, ‘He shall be called a Nazarene’ (Matthew 2:23). They settled there as a family, where Jesus grew from a child into an adult. 
Luke 2:52 And Jesus grew in wisdom and in stature and in favour with God and man.
The word ‘grew’ in that Scripture is the word ‘prokopto’ in the original language, and it is a military term which means ‘moving forward blow-by-blow’. The life of Jesus was a continual blow-by-blow journey of overcoming the self-centred nature of all of humanity from the time of Adam. Jesus bent back the crooked independent disposition of the Adam that still distorts the human heart in each one of us. He straightened out that bent and crooked nature and he straightens it out in us too and grows us as we walk into each blow-by-blow experience of our lives empowered by his enabling grace to call upon his strength in our constant experience of weakness.

During this growing up time in the life of Jesus there is an account of one special incident when Jesus was twelve years old. His parents took him to Jerusalem for the Feast of the Passover, which they did every year. The feast was always very crowded and lasted for seven full days and there was a lot of activity and celebration of Israel’s exodus out of Egypt, and they travelled to and from the feast in a caravan of hundreds of people, pitching tents and camping on the journey. 
When they were on the journey home, and one day out from Jerusalem Mary and Joseph noticed that they had not seen Jesus for the whole day, and they supposed that he was mingling with relatives and friends in the crowd, but when they asked around it was clear that he was not with the caravan, and when they couldn't find him, they went back to Jerusalem to search for him. It was only after three days of searching and making inquiries that they finally found him in the Temple, sitting among the teachers of the Law, discussing deep questions with them and astounding everyone with the depth of his questions and the wisdom of his answers. However, his parents were perplexed, not knowing what to think, and his mother asked him in her distress why he had done that to them. Mary told him that she and his father had been frantic, searching for him everywhere.
Jesus asked them why they felt they had to search for him and why they didn’t realize that he would be here in his Father’s house, sharing in his Father’s work. But they didn't understand what he meant. It could have appeared to be insubordination, which was puzzling and very uncharacteristic of him, to not respect his sonship in their family.

But Jesus had not betrayed his sonship. In this encounter with his distressed parents, this maturing child was wisely coming to grips with the complexity of the relationship between his identity as Son of God and as a son in the family of Joseph. He did this for us too, knowing we would grapple with this earthly and heavenly fatherhood quandary in our own lives, and would be made whole in Father’s unconditional love. So he went home with them and was subject to them. Jesus grew in wisdom and in stature and in favour with God and was admired and respected by all the people in that place. 

Through the birth of this child divine life had been embedded into human life. This had never happened before, this new form of life, God and man together, a new creation. Because of this new creation a new connection between man and God would be possible. Through what this man would accomplish in his short journey in the earth, the bond of oneness (peace) which he would experience with his Heavenly Father would become available to all of us, to grow and mature together as sons and daughters in his family. And through this man a new hope would sit in the hearts of those who found the peace of that bond of oneness through their faith. The Bible says that faith is the basis of hoping – the assurance of the unseen activity of God. That hope blesses you because you can now live a life knowing that someone is personally thinking about you continually, working life out for you far better than you can for yourself. That is a living hope that lasts forever.

 

 

 

The Christmas Story God with Us

THE CHRISTMAS STORY GOD WITH US

The appointed time finally came to heal the earth. It was twisted and torn and it could not heal itself. There were many religions apart from Judaism, and all the rituals, the pomp and ceremony, had only allowed that gap between God and man to remain. God was about to give humanity the perfect answer, not a religion, but Himself. The Divine Being, Jesus God, was to make his transition from eternity into time, from heaven to earth, from pure Spirit existence to human flesh existence.

Father had always planned that a new species was to be born into the earth. He had planned for his son to begin this new species of being, a Spirit species, a Spiritual species in the earth. Humanity has been known as ‘Homo Sapiens’ (Mankind +knowledge) – one who has knowledge and knows. But I believe that this new species that came into being at this time is ‘homo Divinicus’ (Mankind +God) – God with us.
Now was the time for Jesus to go to earth as The Father’s Son, to become the pain of what human life had become, and to walk the path of its sorrow and its lost hope, and to lift human life into a place of shared friendship with The Three in One. Jesus knew and had agreed before the beginning of time that this was to be the plan. He knew that it was the only way for the love of God to be known by humanity. Jesus knew that he would become the expression of that love in the most perfect way.
Holy Spirit was to become a partner with Jesus in the completion of this glorious plan. It was not just Jesus God who would inhabit the earth, but Holy Spirit would also become a person of this planet by sharing every moment of life with Jesus, and in that way, he too would experience human life.

Father would send a divine seed of life from heaven, and He had chosen a young woman called Mary to receive that seed, which was to contain the full genetic potency of their love and goodness and truth. He sent an angel to announce this amazing news to Mary.
Gabriel entered the place where Mary slept. She awoke startled and afraid and sat upright, staring at the heavenly being. Gabriel motioned her to be still and stood quietly in her small room.
Mary was told she had been chosen amongst all women on the earth to give birth to a child who was to be 'God the Son' and that she was to call him Jesus. She answered back that it was impossible and that she never been with a man. Gabriel told her that the birth of this Child will not have anything to do with Joseph, her betrothed, and that The Holy Spirit would shine his life over her and divine life from heaven would come alive in her womb, even though she was a virgin. He told her that this was the will of Father God, and of Jesus and of the Holy Spirit, that they had chosen her to be the mother of this special child who would be the liberator of all mankind. Mary humbly surrendered her being to the magnificent will of God.

Meanwhile Gabriel visited Joseph in a dream also and told him that Mary had been chosen by God to give birth to a son, who would be ‘God The Son’. This was to be a divine work of The Holy Spirit who would cause a holy life to ignite within her being, and that this was the fulfilment of a prophecy in the Scriptures with which Joseph was familiar ‘A virgin shall conceive and bring forth a son, and his name will mean ‘God with us’ (Isaiah 7:14).
Joseph awoke suddenly, and faith filled his heart, and he declared loudly to himself that there would be no shame, and that Mary would become his wife immediately - they would have this wonderful child and he would care for him as his earthly father.

In due course Gabriel put it into the heart of Caesar Augustus to do a census and register every person in the known world. Everyone had to go to their place of birth to be registered, so Joseph had to take Mary back to Bethlehem because he was of the house and lineage of David. Micah 5:2. "O Bethlehem, you are but a small Judean village, yet you will be the birthplace of my King who is alive from everlasting ages past!" God will allow the conflict and chaos until she who is to give birth has her son. And he shall feed his flock in the strength of the Lord… and  he will be greatly honoured throughout the world. He will be our Peace.
Joseph and Mary were sent to the right place at the right time for the birth of Jesus, fulfilling the seven hundred year old prophesy of his birthplace.

Joseph walked beside the donkey that carried his wife. He was getting weary and the journey was tiresome for Mary and he knew he had to get his wife to the place of his family’s household and out of the cold, and the time was getting close for her to give birth. They finally arrived at the family home where they were warmly welcomed and invited inside. The dwelling complex was the usual cluster of rooms surrounding a central courtyard and it became clear to Joseph that the house was overcrowded, and that all the guestrooms were occupied. The word for guestroom in the Bible is kataluma, and this is the word for ‘Inn’, as in Luke 22:11 which states in the narrative that ‘There was no room at the Inn’. So we are not talking about two travellers trying to book into a local tavern that had already filled its quota in such a busy season. They did not have to go and look for a stable in some paddock up the road. What the story is saying is that Joseph and his wife would have to stay in the stable of the family home, downstairs, in that warm place near where the animals slept and fed. 
He saw the signs of the oncoming birth in the drawn face and the discomfort in Mary’s eyes and he settled her as quickly and gently as he could.  A mother sweated through her mother pain and a baby cried its baby cry of shock as it entered the world. The smile upon Father’s face in heaven became a laugh of joy, which was echoed by Joseph in the earth, who would now adopt the role of the child’s earthly father. Loving mother hands washed the newborn child in a water trough. 
On earth it was the natural and familiar scene of new birth. In the universe it was the most supernatural of any birth in history. It was also ordained that this birth would become the most celebrated event for all time, celebrated annually by millions upon billions down through the ages, many of whom had no idea why or what they were really celebrating.

Nearby, where shepherds were looking after their sheep upon the hills a huge shining star having reached its zenith was lighting up the entire night sky. The shepherds looked up in wonder at this light and suddenly the lights of shining angels dazzled them and they became terrified and ran and huddled together. The Angel Gabriel appeared above them, sent to tell them of the birth of Jesus. He told them not to be afraid, and that he had great and marvellous news for them, for all the world to hear. He told them that they would find a child, the newborn king of the universe, God the Saviour, wrapped in simple clothing in a nearby stable. Suddenly Gabriel was joined by a multitude of angels as the brilliant night sky resounded with their voices singing, and they listened enraptured at the magnificent words. “The glory of God is being seen in the heavens, and his love and goodness is creating a new era of peace for all mankind.” Their singing of this new creation was the magnificent sequel to their song of the first creation – ‘When the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy’ (Job 38:4,7,8).
When the singing had stopped and the angels had left they were guided to the place where this extraordinary and singular event was taking place in the earth. These simple shepherds became the emissaries to the world of the birth of this king of kings, this child, and all who heard them were astounded and amazed.

A great light shone that night. The light shone upon a newborn child who would bring light into this world, to every person born into this world (John 1:9). And this light would be contested by darkness as always, but the conflict now rose to a new height. Time waited for the outcome, the verdict, the final encounter between light and darkness on a cross one dark and stormy day. Time would wait until Father was ready, then this light would be able to overcome darkness in every single life.

God with us means more than just alongside us. It means he is within and through our being, and more than that, we are within and through his being. This is how we get to ‘know God’. Holy Spirit speaks into our spirit the mind and words of Jesus, and we ‘see and know’ Jesus in this way. Faith lets us speak to him as a person, person to person. 
1John 2:27 But you have received the Holy Spirit, and he lives within you, so you don’t need anyone to teach you what is true. For the Spirit teaches you everything you need to know, and what he teaches is true.
This does not mean we disregard Scriptural teaching. This Scripture simply makes alive and real the personal and individual whisper of God into our spirit as the wisdom and understanding of the mind and heart of God that we need, in any given situation and at any given time. That becomes the light to our path allowing us to express our unique and truest self in the best possible way. That is our faith.
Christmas waits to be truly celebrated. Without Christmas there is no way we could ever have known God and become one with him.

 

Peace on Earth

PEACE ON EARTH
Luke 2:8 For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be the sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.” And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of heavenly angels praising God and saying: “Glory to God in the highest, Peace on earth, goodwill toward men!” 

THE SIGN – life and growth
A newborn baby, born from above (John 3:8) safely wrapped and cradled, ready for life and growth. God in Heaven could now be seen on earth in human form. It was the beginning of the plan of God to join his life to humanity and to live his life through those who believe in him.
Jesus would live a life of struggle and challenge conquering evil and adversity as a forerunner on behalf of us who were to follow him. His eternal oneness with his Father gave the human spirit for the first time a new perspective of ‘aboveness’ – called transcendence which is not just a consciousness of being born from above but also a conscious experience of living from above.  He would die and rise again and send his Holy Spirit for his ‘born from above’ life to dwell in us. It is from this living from above life in people that peace on earth and goodwill toward men can occur. 

When we look at the Old Testament prophecy of Christmas (Isaiah 8:22-9:1) we see a world that was in great darkness waiting for a great light. 
The background to this prophecy was something that was happening in real time for Israel as Assyria was about to attack them from the north, but Israel and their king could not accept God’s ways and his plans for them, and so they were left without hope.  
Isaiah 8: 22. People will look up to heaven and down at the earth, but wherever they look, there will be trouble and anguish and dark despair. They will be thrown out into the darkness. Chapter 9:1 Nevertheless, that time of darkness and despair will not go on forever. There will be a time in the future when Galilee of the Gentiles, which lies along the road that runs between the Jordan and the sea, will be filled with glory. 
Those who walk in darkness will see a great light. For those who live in a land of deep darkness, a light will shine. For unto us a child is born. Unto us a son is given. The government will rest on his shoulders. And he will be called: Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace, and His government and its peace will never end.

This prophecy would find its future fulfillment through Jesus the King of Kings that has fought and won the battle for our souls. The Christmas story for us is also a story of our spiritual victory through Jesus as a reality in our hearts and minds, as it conquers all darkness and fear in us and governs our hearts with peace.
Over two thousand years on from that first Christmas we still see a world that is in great darkness waiting for a great light. The odd paradox is that the world celebrates Christmas each year while not understanding the miraculous significance of that great light.
The events of great darkness that happen around about us become the signs that a caring God who wants only the best for his people is waiting to act on behalf of his people. And his people are also his signs of hope in today’s world, and when you exhibit that kind of hope people will want to know why (1Peter 3:15). 

OUTER DARKNESS AND INNER DARKNESS.
Outer darkness is the manifestation of disorder and corruption and violence that is seen in the world where groups and individuals contend with each other in power struggles to dominate and do harm to others. This is being seen at present in the media and in politics and in personal relationships.
Inner darkness is described in the Bible as the work of Satan who is called the ‘god of this world’ who uses deception to blind our minds to receiving the revelation of a loving and forgiving God in Jesus Christ.  
The Christmas story is a message of God’s intervention of his great light into the lives of his people who are in times of earth-shattering distress and darkness. 
That great light shines into the outer darkness and into the inner darkness so that we can see things as they truly are. At the present time God is bringing many things to the surface that have been hidden but are now being exposed so that they can be justly dealt with.

We saw in the prophetic Scripture from Isaiah that Jesus would be called the Prince of Peace and that the government would be upon his shoulders. 
Jesus is showing himself in this way at this time in the world as he reorders our lives even in the midst of upheaval and loss and gives us his peace. Only he knows what things lay ahead as he determines the course of each day of our lives for us and we become drawn into his perfect will for us. 
John 16:33 I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”

And Jesus spoke of two different kinds of peace, the peace of God and the peace of the world.
John 14:27 Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.
The peace of the world is not an inner lasting peace, but it is more like a short-term relief that a person feels because they have trust in their own skills and experience and financial reserves to control the circumstances in their world. These resources are effective against many threats and obstacles and hazards, but when the threats and obstacles and hazards overcome their resources their peace is gone. 
The peace of the world is also the one-upmanship of having the upper hand against rival opposition when it comes against us. This is seen blatantly in the fragile peace of global politics and national security with its treaties and strategic alliances that are negotiated instead of having to stand alone.
The peace that God gives us is not fragile and short-lived like the peace of the world.
We never stand alone, as we trust in the alliance of ‘God with us’ in all things so that we never have to just depend upon our own resources in order to feel safe and secure. 
Psalm 37:5 Commit your way to the LORD; trust only in him, and he will act.
God is always acting on our behalf in the world of the unseen. That is the essence of faith.
That is the source of our peace.

We are not saved from facing the struggles and the adversity, but we are saved from having our souls being defeated and made to feel hopeless. That is what being saved is. He has overcome the world’s power to crush our souls. We are given grace to receive his peace and to administer that peace and good will to others, to be the Gospel of peace in a broken world. You were created to be ‘good news’ in different ways and at different times to different people by the grace that God has already made ready for you to step into.

Isaiah 26:12 – Lord, You will establish peace for us, For You have also done all our works in us (done = ordained – devised a plan). In other words, God has ordained, before the day starts for you, those times and places where God will meet you in your challenge and you will receive his peace and pass it on and it will be displayed in you as the good news of peace, the Gospel of peace, of the God of peace. Amen

Decrease and Increase

The father of John the Baptist, the priest Zechariah gave this prophecy regarding the ministry of his newborn son, John.
Luke 1:76 And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people
in the forgiveness of their sins, because of the tender mercy of our God, whereby the sunrise shall shine from on high to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”  

John the Baptist lived within the awe of this promise of his destiny - preparing the way for the Messiah. He had drawn crowds out to where he had been living out in the desert regions on a diet of locusts and wild honey where the people listened to his preaching declaring that the Messiah was coming and that everybody had to repent.  Then at the appointed time the Holy Spirit prompted him to make his way to Jerusalem to preach about the Kingdom of Heaven and repentance of sins, and he and his disciples began baptizing people in the Jordan River. 
Then on a certain day the Pharisees began questioning John about who he was because there were rumors abounding that he was the Christ or perhaps Elijah. All John would say was that he was one who was like a voice crying in the wilderness ‘Make straight the way of the Lord.’ 
And the next day John saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! This is he of whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who ranks before me, because he was before me’ (John 1:29).
Then John goes on to say, ‘I saw the Spirit descend from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. I myself did not know him, but he who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain, this is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’ And I have seen and have borne witness that this is the Son of God.” (John 1:32)

And then the time came in John’s ministry where he knew he had to decrease and make way for Jesus to increase. When John baptized Jesus in the Jordan river and the Holy Spirit descended like a dove upon him, an entirely new ministry of the Spirit started on the earth as Jesus went out into the wilderness in the power of the Spirit to be tested by the devil. In the plan of God to bring in the new wine of the Spirit the old had to pass away, so John had to pass away, literally. 
John was arrested and taken into the custody of Herod at the time that Jesus went out in the Spirit into the wilderness. 
When Jesus began to move out into his anointed ministry John started to become uncertain about many things as he languished in prison.  He began to doubt whether Jesus was truly the Messiah, and he began to become concerned about his own future. We don’t know if John even comprehended the fact that Jesus would be resurrected from the dead even though at Jesus’ baptism he had said ’Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world’. The prophet John was told only what the Holy Spirit needed him to know.
Matthew 11: 2 John the Baptist, who was now in prison, heard about all the miracles the Messiah was doing, so he sent his disciples to ask Jesus, "Are you really the one we are waiting for, or shall we keep on looking?"
Jesus told them," Go back to John and tell him about the miracles you've seen me do-- the blind people being healed and the deaf who hear…and tell him about my preaching the Good News to the poor. Then give him this message, `Blessed are those who are not offended in me.'" 
Jesus was quoting from Isaiah 61:1 the words that were prophetic of his ministry as the Messiah, and these were words that John the prophet would have known very well. It is significant that Jesus did not mention the second half of that prophecy from Isaiah 61:1 which says ‘to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound; And John was offended that Jesus had not set him free from prison.

John was disappointed and he began to lose trust in Jesus because he was offended! He would have had all kinds of ideas about how the kingdom of God would be ushered in, but those ideas had to be surrendered and die because he had only received a partial revelation of how the Kingdom would operate. Just like the disciples and anyone else who was waiting for Messiah to come, the expectation of Jesus the Messiah was that he would set up a powerful earthly Kingdom which he would reign over upon a throne in Jerusalem. John had to accept the yet unknown bigger plan for the kingdom of God, that Jesus would reign within us - even though John was the one chosen by God to go about telling people that ‘the kingdom of God is at hand’. John could have imagined himself as the prophet in the courts of the new King – who knows? 
His disciples went back and told him about their conversation with Jesus, John began to understand that he was not the one to live alongside Jesus but to simply prepare the way for him, he realized that he now should decrease while Jesus increased.
And John’s reaction was, John 3:26 “A person cannot receive even one thing unless it is given him from heaven. You yourselves can testify that I said, I am not the Christ, but I have been sent before him.’ The one who has the bride is the bridegroom. The friend of the bridegroom (the Best Man), who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom's voice. Therefore, this joy of mine is now complete. He must increase, but I must decrease.” John’s personal vision was dethroned. He remained the friend of the bridegroom but made way for the ‘alongside life’ of the bridegroom and his bride – the new Kingdom model of love and unity.
That was a beautiful picture of Jesus and his bride that the Holy Spirit finally gave to 
John that emphasized the ‘two being made one’. That speaks of us as New Creation beings, made one in the Spirit in our ‘alongside life’ with Jesus. 

Then Herod had John beheaded at the request of the daughter of Herodias because Herod was deeply offended at John because John had publicly rebuked him over his 
illegal marriage to Herodias, his brother’s ex-wife.

John was a prophet and both his life, and his death were prophetic for all who would be born into a new life with Jesus through the Holy Spirit. It would mean the decrease of self-life within us and the increase of the Jesus life within us in our new ‘God with us’ life. This ‘newness of life’ was destined for each individual who entered by faith into that new Kingdom life which was to come upon the earth after the resurrection and ascension of Jesus. Everything was about to pass away, and all things were to become new.
We will go back to the time when Jesus told John’s disciples to tell John to not be offended in him. When John's disciples had gone, Jesus began talking about him to the crowds.
Matthew 11: “When you went out into the barren wilderness to see John, what did you expect him to be like? Grass blowing in the wind, or were you expecting to see a man dressed as a prince in a palace? Or a prophet of God? Yes, and he is more than just a prophet. For John is the man mentioned in the Scriptures--a messenger to precede me, to announce my coming, and prepare the way for people to receive me. 
"Truly, of all men ever born, none shines more brightly than John the Baptist. And yet, even the lesser lights in the Kingdom of Heaven will be greater than he is!”
After his praise of the powerful prophetic ministry of John, Jesus made the further astounding remark of the greater spiritual stature of every New Testament spiritual believer who enters the ‘KINGDOM WITHIN’ life. That life was to be greater than the spiritual stature of John for whom that Kingdom life was not available at that time. For while John had the most powerful anointing of any man in the earth besides Jesus, he was not joined in one Spirit to Jesus as would be those who would receive the Holy Spirit after Pentecost, and that includes us. 

John had come to realize that as far as he and Jesus were concerned, he was just the ‘best man’ and that it is between the bridegroom, Jesus, and his bride, who are all those who live with him in oneness of Spirit. We now as his bride allow the Holy Spirit to take us on an alongside journey with him and at one with him in all that he does in our lives. Our life is now one of total trust in the one that walks alongside us. 

John had to change his expectations because he had a misplaced expectation of Jesus that caused his own offence. People get offended with someone when that person does not live up to their expectations, to do for them what they want. And so will we have to change our expectations. It is no longer what we expect God should do for us, no matter how fervent the prayer is, nor is it us including Jesus in what we are doing, but it is Jesus including us in what he is doing. This becomes our new and absolute mindset of how to walk by faith, and this is what he expects of us. This becomes our repentance.

There might be an initial time of confusion for us as the full reality of a life with God begins to assume it’s real meaning for us, because that life challenges the autonomy and independence of our big plan for our own lives, even in our plan or vision of how we will serve God. We must surrender the old us and allow our ideas of our future to die in the same way that John had to decrease and even die to his plan for his future. We now make way for the new work of The Holy Spirit to take us on in our walk alongside Jesus in a heart-to-heart relationship of surrendered partnership. Jesus sent the Holy Spirit as a comforter, and the word ‘comforter’ is ‘paracletos’ which means ‘one who comes alongside’. This ‘alongside walk’ is the operation of the love of God that we yield to. It is now an ‘alongside’ life, and certain things in us must decrease so the expression of Jesus in us can increase.

God is not playing hard to get in this relational encounter - we are! And what excuse are we left with if we have been told the truth of his ongoing love and forgiveness for us? Is it that we are not interested or is it that we just cannot believe it or trust it to be true? The biggest error is in our being too busy and concerned about our own plans and opinions instead of becoming still and drawing near.

If we take a step back and look at our past hopes and disappointments, we might wonder why we may sometimes have feelings of being deprived, or that God has forgotten us and wonder why we have become disheartened. We have all had expectations that have not come to pass, and these may have been sincere intentions that were meant for good, but they were simply misplaced, or even mistimed. God honours our efforts to achieve those things we believe to be right for us just as he paid honour and tribute to his cousin John the Baptist.

But just like John, it is when we realize that what we pushed for, was not what God wished for, because he had something different and better. It is then that we realise that he resisted our efforts and outcomes just as we unwittingly resisted his grace to bring us alongside his blessed will for us.  We also realise that many times we walked alone and did not walk alongside him. Paul said ‘I do not frustrate (athete?? -ignore or resist) the grace of God’. Paul did not make the error of letting busyness or self-concern hinder his becoming still and drawing near.

Now look at the smaller view and see what has happened today and yesterday in our efforts and how we may have neglected to be still and enquire and wait and trust the one that walks alongside us – because that is where miracles are and that is where they abound. His good will catches up with us in the end as we learn through failures and honest mindful retrospection to stop and return to being alongside him. Even though we are often uncertain in our steps forward because of our human frailty, we can be getting it right in his eyes as long as we are giving him thanks in every situation for; In everything give thanks for this is the will of God for you…’. 
Our attitude of faithful trust is that he is at work supernaturally in the world of the unseen to bring all things together for our good, despite our faltering steps. He can bring everything together in a very short time, and nothing is lost. The past is redeemed by our present moment faith for his work being done. He waits for us every moment to return to that NOW place of faith.

 

Commandment 10 episode 11

"You shall not covet your neighbour's house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor’s."  Exodus 20:17

In this final commandment episode, we discuss the following questions...

What is the link between this Commandment and with Commandment Nine, which says ‘do not bear false witness against your neighbor? And also what is the link between this one and Commandment One  -‘I am The Lord your God have no other gods before me?

Many people seem to have a ‘the world owes me a living mentality’.  Is there a resentful kind of coveting in this attitude?   What about in people protesting for their special identity demands in society?  Is this attitude linked to coveting?

In Romans 7, did Paul discuss a unique struggle with coveting specific to him, or is there a general principle? And how did the Commandment come alive to him and kill him? 

What do you see as the transformational aspect of this Commandment in the New Testament Scriptures?

Paul tells us about his breakthrough in Philippians where he says he learned to be content…

Philippians 4 :11 I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content (safeguarded like a walled city). I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me.

God makes available a revelation of His grace, and the contentment that can be ours by accepting the godliness of our true self instead of an image we have constructed for our fulfilment.

The answer is taking hold of Commandment One which is always available and always the answer. It is always being at home with God where things work out okay just as they should because he runs that home and we are part of it.

 

 

 

Waiting and Hoping

WAITING AND HOPING

The Book of Isaiah is a story of how God’s people live in hope, waiting for God. There are times that they start to trust in their own strength and turn away from him, and there are times when they are reminded to turn back to God, and when they do, they are mightily surprised by him, and it all comes into focus in this message in Chapter 30.
God had been calling upon Israel for more than fifty years since the days of King Uzziah to take on a non-reactive role in international politics so that they could be given a new place of being God's spiritual representative as his servant to the world. and this role becomes clear in the later chapters of Isaiah, ‘arise shine for your light has come’ (Ch.60). 

He called for a willingness on the nation's part to stop gazing out at the other nations and getting involved in their chaos and disorder and to rather search inward to find faith and to rest in God's grace and commitment to grow them and form them and do them good. He had said he would make them the head and not the tail, and that they would be above and not beneath (Deuteronomy 28:13). The world around them would then see that God was with them. God had his timing for Israel to position them in the best possible way and much would be expected of them, but they had to learn to hear God.
In the following Scripture we see a cry from God’s heart to the people of Israel (and also to us). He was speaking through His prophet Isaiah, and He said:

Isaiah 30:15 For the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel, says: Only in returning to me and waiting for me will you be saved; in quietness and confidence is your strength; but you'll have none of this.
‘No,’ you say. ‘We will get our help from Egypt; they will give us swift horses for riding to battle.’ But the only swiftness you are going to see is the swiftness of your enemies chasing you! 
18 Yet the Lord still waits for you to come to him so he can show you his love; he will conquer you to bless you, just as he said. For the Lord is faithful to his promises. Blessed are all those who wait for him to help them. You shall weep no more, for he will surely be gracious to you at the sound of your cry. He will answer you.
20 Though he has given you the bread of adversity and water of affliction, yet he will be with you to direct you, and with your own eyes you will see. And if you leave God's path and go to the left or to the right, you will hear a voice behind you say, ‘No, this is the way’, so you can walk in it.

These words were said to God's people during a time when they had become tired of waiting for God to do something and were agitating to organize things for themselves. but God was waiting for them to do nothing! They were in a position where there was a fierce army from the north that was about to come and plunder them – and they were planning a political alliance with Egypt. But they had been told by God to wait for him to act on their behalf - 'In quietness and confidence you shall find your strength'. 
This would require quietness in the midst of turmoil, and trust that God would control the great forces that were devastating the world around them. That would be a braver and wiser kind of leadership than trying to control the politics of the day. 

It is the same with us as his people in these challenging days we live in now. We don’t sit around passively but we let him position us in his way and in his time. There are good things that are God things that God has ordained for us to do and we need his wisdom to make the right decisions at the right time.
The Holy Spirit teaches us that wise activity comes from a place of peace not emotional reaction or ambitious ideas that come from self-importance.

The final blessing in verse 18 is dedicated to those who are willing to listen and who wait.
‘Yet the Lord still waits for you to come to him so he can show you his love; he will conquer you to bless you, just as he said’.
What Jesus conquers in us is our independence from him as a savior and friend and brother. God had engineered a situation for Israel in which no matter how much skill and ingenuity they thought they had, they were acting without his direction, and they were not only going to fail but they were going to make matters worse for themselves and come under God’s judgment. God does this kind of thing for a reason for all of us because there are some things that are just beyond us, beyond our ability to solve. But we still try – and we still fail. 
God is waiting for us to wait for him.

God assured Israel that he wanted to take them back again to a place of hope where he would look after them. He repeats to them that He will do good to them. He concedes that He has allowed them to go through tough times of adversity, and that He has even contrived it for a good reason, but that now it is time for rest and peace to come to them instead of anxiety, and that when they cry out to him, he will hear and act.

God is saying the same to us in this time of anxiety and uncertainty that has come upon the whole world, where there is strife and contention on many different levels. People are in conflict and causing offence to one another over things that once would never had bothered them, and the emotion that gets attached to the offences gets amplified by all forms of media to stir up political and relational strife in the community and even in families. It seems like everybody is waiting for something good to happen because too much bad and sad has happened, and they don’t know how to make the good thing happen because the world is broken and so are they. 
And God’s wants his people to know that they are not here to ‘fix’ the world but to bring healing to the souls of individuals and families and the community, to bring hope for those lives to become fulfilled and meaningful, trusting in a loving God.
The hope is that God wills to do good at this time in this world for all that call upon him with a true heart, to bring rest for their souls, and it is only when we are in a place of peace that we can impart this living hope to those around us. 

Philippians 4:6 Let your steadiness and calm be seen by those around you. The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Does this Scripture mean that God will give us the answer to every prayer that we pray?
No. This Scripture tells us to wait for the peace of God that surpasses all understanding.
So why don't we wait? 
Well, just like Israel - we feel we can't just wait around and do nothing - we must solve the problem our own way and try to make something happen or maybe decree things in God’s name that he hasn’t authorized and then end up anxiously waiting to get the answer we want. We need to receive God’s peace first.

How does this peace give us hope?
When we know that there is a person that we can trust in totally to look after all our needs and problems in the best way possible, we can be at rest and let them do what they know is best for us. That allows God’s peace to sweep over our souls.
When we wait and receive that peace it becomes the signal that God has arrived on the scene. Suddenly, we see things in a different way – we lose our anxiety and fear, and we re-gather hope and expectation for things to change for the better – better than we could have ever planned for them to be. We can then live with the hope that he will surprise us with his outcome because his gift of peace guards our hearts and guides our minds saying to us; And if you leave God's path and go to the left or to the right, you will hear a voice behind you say, ‘No, this is the way’, so you can walk in it.

This becomes something that we learn, sometimes the hard way, that God waits for us to wait for Him, to give us his peace!
God also loves to share that moment with us of showing us what he has done for us, and to reveal more of himself to us so that we can get to know him better.

 

 

 

Nourishing Faith

NOURISHING FAITH 

The Apostle Peter died shortly after he wrote his second epistle and in the first verse of that letter he tells us that we have received ‘faith of equal standing with his (isotimos; of equal value or honour). He goes on to write about how that faith grows and brings forth the fruit of the true person that we were created to become. I see that being like a tree of life growing within us. It took many trials of faith for Peter to come into the fulness of that fruitful faith experience, and he wants to impart that experience to us in this epistle. He came from being a godly man under the Law who strived to say and to do the right things as a man of God, into becoming a man of faith who lived in the flow of God’s divine nature within. 
2Peter 1:3 His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to (pros move forward to, bring about) life and godliness, through the (intimate personal) knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, through which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises (commitments), so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of wrong desires (epithymia). For this very reason diligently add to your faith virtue, (epichor??ge?? - nourish -vitalise the organic nutrients of the tree of life within you with) and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. 

How do we add to our faith? Do we say we believe in Jesus and his death and resurrection and then having settled that, we start to become a better person by making an effort to becoming virtuous and gaining knowledge and being kind and trying to sacrificially love people?
It could seem that this Scripture is saying this, and if that were the case we might as well have a Christian belief system and then live under the Law by doing our best to obey the Ten Commandments. Now that is not a bad thing to do and perhaps that is what James is saying when he says that ‘faith without works is dead’ (James 2:26), which could look like a contradiction to what Paul says. 
Romans 3:28 Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith alone not by the works of the law.
There is no contradiction. James and Paul are both saying the same thing, and so is Peter in this passage of Scripture - that everything in our Christian faith, from being forgiven and receiving the life of Christ and being made one with him through the holy Spirit depends upon our conscious dependence upon what he has done and is doing for us. Peter and James and Paul all assume that we will undertake to live a life in participation with God that produces the fruit of his Spirit within us. Faith is always about depending upon God while nourishing his divine activity within.

The following episodes of Peter’s life I am about to describe are not meant to disparage this Apostle of God, but they reflect to us how we too can struggle like Peter did, with all good intentions to be who God wants us to be. And like Peter we learn to realize that we can only be changed into who God created us to become, through a surrendered faith in the work of the Holy Spirit within us. That is the obedience of faith.
Peter was a man of good intentions and great aspirations, a man who wanted to give everyone the best advice but who often didn’t know what he was talking about. He told Jesus that it was not God’s will for him to die on the cross. He said to Jesus, ‘No Lord, far be it from you, you’re not going to the cross’. 
Peter was also a man who wanted to be so friendly he would swap sides if being on the wrong side made him look bad to his other friends. When Peter visited Paul and Barnabus in the new gentile church in Antioch which they were growing, Peter accepted their gentile Christian lifestyle which was free from Jewish rules and regulations and rituals and was happy to share their expression of Christianity. That was until James and some other Jewish Christians decided to come and check out how things were going in this new church, and immediately Peter stopped eating with the gentile Christians and stopped associating with them and convinced Barnabus to do the same. Paul became incensed about this hypocrisy and berated Peter in front of all the other Apostles (Galatians 2:11).

Peter was a man of such self-conscious mood swings that he could say to Jesus ‘no you won’t wash my feet’, and then realizing his foolishness say, ‘please not just my feet but wash all of me’.         

On one occasion Peter went with Jesus up onto a mountain with James and John where Jesus was transfigured, and his face shone like the sun. Moses and Elijah appeared, talking with Jesus in a bright cloud and Peter decided to break in on their discussion and he said to Jesus, ‘If you like, I would be happy to put up three tents here right now, one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.’ Then from the cloud another voice broke in on Peter and said ‘This is my Beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased, Listen to him!’ When Peter heard that he fell flat on his face on the ground, terrified.  
                                         
Peter was a man who was so loyal to his religious opinions that he let his opinions give him permission to say no to God – ‘Not so Lord I can’t eat what you’ve offered me it’s religiously unclean’ (Acts 10:14). Peter was then told by God to preach the Gospel to a Gentile centurion called Cornelius, and he did so, but upon being invited into the man’s house the first thing he said was;  ‘Do you know it’s not lawful for a Jew to enter a gentile house?’
Peter was a man who found it so difficult to control his emotions and reactions that after praying in the garden of Gethsemane with Jesus, and continually nodding off to sleep, he lopped an ear off the guard who came to arrest Jesus for his trial, and he then ran and hid in the crowd and told people he didn’t know who Jesus was. 
Peter was a man who learned the hard way, and for many years to surrender in faith to God’s grace and his idea of who he was and who he could become and he humbly let God’s grace allow him to become that man God created him to be, beyond all of his good intentions and all his personal aspirations.

Peter’s life is a lesson to us of how not to become victims of our own strong opinions about who we are, who other people are and what is going on. We think we have opinions but often they really have us, and they’re mostly borrowed from other people anyway.

Peter went on to become a hero of faith. He became a man who humbly lived and spoke from the Tree of Life and not the tree of knowledge (which was mostly the religious knowledge of rules and regulations). 
Peter is telling us that the spiritual growth activities that he mentions in his letter from verse 3 will be brought about by the divine life of the nature of God in us. They are not a compulsory set of regulations enforced upon us in order to gain merit or favour or achieve some kind of status as a Christian. These are the overflow of the life principle (Divine nature) that spills into our heart and mind and soul and body from Jesus through the Holy Spirit. This is what our faith opens up for us and what flows out into the people and the world around us.

Do we dare to believe this? So what does faith do? How does this tree grow?
For any plant to grow it needs good soil and sunshine and rain.
The sunshine is God’s love – the universal energy that causes life to flourish. 
The rain is the Holy Spirit that joins us in oneness of the values of God’s mind and heart. The soil is our heart that is broken up and softened by the rain and the sun and by our desire to have that tree of life planted into our value system with real intention and aspiration. This is what makes our life one of fulfillment and joy, and all the while we are painfully aware of falling short but we give our best to this work of nourishing our faith and there is always the now to come back to.

Virtue; arete – The character traits of courage, honesty and integrity. 
We ask ourselves the question; Why will I not face this challenge of obedience to God? Am I avoiding this because of fear of failure or rejection? Am I taking shortcuts because no one is watching? If I fail I’ll feel ashamed.
If the answer is yes, we can ask the Holy Spirit to reveal to us that we can trust God to honour the smallest step of our yes to him even if it looks like there will be a cost to our yes of being opposed or of suffering disadvantage – for example admitting to getting something wrong with no excuses and taking the consequences. We will then see God honour his commitment to bring about his good and perfect will for us in the situation.
We also learn in trusting God this way that he is purifying our conscience to see more clearly his right rather than being at ease with our own rationalisation of our actions. We the get to trust in our own heart with more confidence and so grow in faith.

Knowledge; gnosis - understanding of what is worthwhile knowing as far as growing in a living faith is concerned. 
Do I want to know spiritual concepts and doctrinal facts things because it gives me significance or influence with others?
If yes, then we need to ask God about the things he wants to reveal to us about who he is and to trust the Holy Spirit to give us his wisdom from above so that we can know his will for our lives in order to make right choices. He will teach us by His Spirit and his Word what is worthwhile knowing, and also how to impart wisdom to others.

Self control; egkrates – Management of boundaries in our life. 
Do I want to live without boundaries in my life that limit my self-determination to do things my way or that limit my self-indulgence to have what I want?
If yes, we can ask God to help us reorder the spiritual and moral priorities in our lives, starting with ourselves, and if we choose to live like that we become part of the reordering of the people and things around us.

Perseverance; hypomeno – abiding patiently under circumstances. 
Do I find myself impatiently complaining about the way things are or the way other people are and resisting rather than accepting the things that I cannot change?
If yes, we can ask Holy Spirit to give us his grace to give thanks in all things – for this is the good will of a loving God for us, then he will reveal to us that he is working all things together for our good.
 
Godliness; eusebiea - spiritual focus, devotedness. 
Do I find myself being more attracted to the things of the world rather than to God?
If yes, then we can ask The Lord to create in us a clean heart, and to renew a right spirit within us. He will then touch us with his presence and purify our hearts so that we begin to see God in everything around us.

Brotherly kindness; Philadelphia - care and compassion. 
Do I find it is an irritation or an annoyance when I have to go out of my way to assist someone, and turn away or find reasons why I shouldn’t have to? (Good Samaritan)
If yes, ask The Holy Spirit to help us understand the feelings of helplessness or heartache that another person is suffering. The blessing for us is that we will find the compassion and comfort of God coming upon us in abundance in our times of despondency.

Love; agape – selfless sacrificial love.
Do I find myself not heeding what God says about what love is and what it is not?
1Corinthians 13:4 Love is very patient and kind, never jealous or envious, never boastful, or proud, never haughty or selfish or rude. Love does not demand its own way. It is not irritable or touchy. It does not hold grudges and will hardly even notice when others do it wrong. 
If we knew how much we were loved by God we would find delight in heeding those words and living this life that he has given us and finding delight in loving and blessing others

Attending to this process of spiritual growth makes our life one of fulfillment and joy, and even though all the while we are painfully aware of falling short, we give our best to this work of nourishing our faith. When we fall short there is always the now to come back to. Faith only works in the now. We don’t go back to regretting what we got wrong, and we don’t make a resolution to try and get it better tomorrow. We come into the now immediatelyknowing that at that moment God is loving us and forgiving us and increasing our faith to produce the fruit of his tree of life in us.  
    

 

 

We the Temple

WE THE TEMPLE 
 
During the closing few months leading up to the final week of the life and ministry of Jesus the momentum of his public appearances began to build up, and supernatural works of miracles and healing among the blind and the lame and the infirm were taking place everywhere he went. These sensational public appearances of Jesus and his engagement in open conflict and debate with the Scribes and Pharisees created a fame and notoriety that he had not deliberately set out to achieve. But he saw his Father ‘s power and love being glorified through him in these things, especially in the final most astonishing miracle of his raising of his friend Lazarus from the dead, and it was during that time that he began to be questioned by the many that followed him if he was indeed the Christ. 

All this uninvited fame and notoriety and political power polling posed an enormous threat not only to Herod who was the legal king over the Jews, but it also signalled a threat to the Roman Empire as the people were urging him to establish his own kingdom. And when he finally rode into Jerusalem on a donkey at the beginning of the week of the Passover the Bible says; ‘The Pharisees spoke to one another saying, “You see, we can do nothing. Look, the whole world has gone after him!’ (John 12:19)
They feared that Jesus would decide to rule over the Jewish religion and keep on working miracles like feeding hungry multitudes and raising people from the dead, and they were anxious about the fervour of the hero worship of Jesus and the anticipation of his rise to spiritual power. They feared He would be invincible and topple their religious power base. They had feverishly been trying to discredit the resurrection of Lazarus to the point that the chief priests plotted to have Lazarus put to death, and for him to stay dead this time (John 12:10).

The passionate dedication of Jesus for the Temple, his Father’s house, had been most evident in those last few months of his ministry as he placed intense focus on the final three Temple feasts.   
For Jesus each Temple visit was not just like a visit to church as a good religious Jew. There was a distinct purpose for each visit because each feast had a message about how Jesus had been intricately involved in the record of Israel throughout history. At each feast he made statements that declared that he was the spiritual fulfillment of what that feast was all about. At each feast he declared what was happening in the here and now for Israel in that present moment. And for each feast he declared our future participation with him as the new Temple to be - in the prophetic fulfillment of our lives, as history would move forward in the plan of God for this age.

The first of the final three Temple visits was when he attended the Feast of Tabernacles, called ‘the feast of booths (tents)’, celebrating the miracle of the living water that flowed from out of the rock that Moses struck with his rod in the wilderness. (Exodus 17:3) 
Jesus had taken the back roads to Jerusalem to avoid the now common busy interaction with the crowds because he wanted to appear at the feast about midway into it to be ready for the moment for him to speak the words that would be immortalised for us throughout time. On that meandering way to the Temple he would have passed many hundreds of tents camped upon the hillsides because thousands of people gathered on these hills for the week of the ‘feast of booths (tents)’.

During that feast people had been dancing and singing as the water drawing ceremonies and rituals were acted out each morning. Women would get water from the surrounding springs and wells in their water pitchers and take them up to the temple singing with the men and the children from Isa 12:13 ‘Therefore with joy you shall draw water from the wells of salvation.
The feast had a closing ceremony on the 7th day and the main feature was the drawing of the living water commemorating the living water that God had provided for them at the Rock in their wilderness travels, and Jesus had arrived for that special part of the ceremony
On that day, as the large golden water bowl was carried by the people up the temple steps, the huge crowd stood around watching and cheering, amidst the sounding trumpet blasts. This was the high point of the feast, and at the top of the temple steps was a special altar with a priest selected by the Sadducees, waiting for the big moment to arrive. When the bowl was presented to him he would raise his hand to indicate that the call was about to be made for people to ‘Come, you who thirst, drink of the water’. 

This would have been the moment, when the priest raised his hand, that Jesus would have stood in front of the crowd and called out in a strong loud voice as we see in the Scripture, ‘On that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, ‘If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, As the Scripture has said, Out of His heart will flow rivers of living water’. He was speaking of the Holy Spirit, whom those believing in Him would receive (John 7:37)
Those words that Jesus said at that time in front of all the Jewish pilgrims from all over the Middle East, Asia Minor and Greece would have hit their ears like a thunderclap. Everybody would have known whose cry it was, and many would have seen its significance, namely that Jesus had come to embody all that past experience of Israel in the wilderness. 
The Scriptures tell us (John 7: 40-44) that division and argument broke out amongst the crowd. Many in the crowd said, ‘This is The Prophet’ while others said ‘This is The Christ’, while the temple police officers said ‘no one has ever spoken like this man’. Jesus had turned their historic feast into a proclamation of their salvation and our salvation, our present faith and our future hope, an astounding fulfillment of prophecy. And this audacious performance further provoked the priests and the teachers of the Law.

The second Temple visit was when he attended the Feast of Hanukkah. Hanukkah is the feast of the re-dedication of the Temple at Jerusalem. This feast is not mentioned in the Old Testament as it occurred between the time of the last book (Malachi), and before the time of Jesus. However, it is mentioned in the New Testament. It came in December, a little while after the Feast of Tabernacles, and before the Feast of Passover in March/April of the next year.
John 10:22 Now it was the Feast of Dedication in Jerusalem, and it was winter. And Jesus walked in the Temple, in Solomon's porch. Then the Jews surrounded Him and said to Him, “How long do You keep us in doubt? If You are the Christ, tell us plainly.”
And then Jesus declared ‘I and the Father are one’ and the Bible tells us that the Jews picked up stones again to stone him, but Jesus answered them, “I have shown you many good works from the Father; for which of them are you going to stone me?” The Jews answered him, “It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you but for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself God.” (John 10:31)

Then in the last week of Jesus’ life and ministry, which we call Holy Week, Jesus rode down from the Mount of Olives near Bethany into Jerusalem on a donkey that had been prepared for him by his disciples, while the crowds laid palm leaves on the road in front of him calling out ‘Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, the King of Israel!’ (John 12:12) That last week, which was to culminate in the feast of Passover was also the week of the Last supper, and the week where he was betrayed by Judas, and where he agonised in the Garden of Gethsemane, and where He was denied by Peter, put on trial, and crucified. 
That spectacular visit of Jesus to the feast of Passover was the third significant visit to attend special Feasts at the Temple that Jesus had made in the last five months of his ministry.

This third visit was a week before the Feast of Passover, and this time he came to cleanse the temple from the corruption of the money changers and to heal many of the blind and the infirm who were only allowed to enter the outer Temple area.

Jesus had made clear to his disciples that the procession was to be the fulfillment of a prophecy by the prophet Zechariah.
Zechariah 9:9 cry aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! See, your king is coming to you; he is righteous and able to deliver, he is humble and riding on a donkey and a colt, the foal of a donkey. 
Jesus had also told everyone that he was not interested in an earthly kingdom, and that his kingdom is a spiritual one, but his followers did not want to believe this.  

After Jesus had entered Jerusalem and the noisy and boisterous procession was over, with palm leaves left strewn everywhere, Jesus headed straight for the Temple, his Father’s House, to which he was dedicated with a passion. 

When Jesus entered the vast outer court of the Gentiles he went to where the money changers were selling animals and birds for sacrifice. It was into this area where multitudes of Jews from other regions like Syria and Persia and Chaldea and Asia Minor would come during this special week for the Feast of the Passover. The grandeur and vastness of this Temple complex that Herod had built covered an astounding area of about 35 acres, and the outer court of the Gentiles would have accommodated the space of many many football stadiums. It was a massive wonder described by Josephus the historian as ‘the greatest ever heard of’. Because these foreigners didn’t have the silver Temple shekel currency, they had to exchange their foreign money. The money changing tables were not the problem for Jesus, because these people needed to buy turtle doves, lambs, and such things to offer sacrifices, but his heart burst with indignation at the greed and corruption of the money changers because they charged from twenty to three hundred percent interest. This was not only criminal, but it was an abomination that his Father’s House which was supposed to be used for prayers and worship and sacrifice had been turned into ‘a den of thieves’ (Matthew 21). So he threw over their tables and chased them out of the temple. His actions were hard-hitting and forceful, but they were driven by a zealous and protective love for his Father’s house, the house of prayer and the presence of God. 

There were many others quietly mingling among the crowd in the outer court that boisterous day of the incident with the money tables, they were the silent ones who had learned to accept their lot and not lift their voices above the crowd. They were the blind and the lame and infirm who were forbidden by the decrees in Leviticus 21 to enter into the Temple proper to ‘appear before the Lord’ and worship in his presence. They were separated and cut off and mostly despised by the Pharisees and some others of the Temple worshipers and Jesus had great compassion for them. They would have heard the life-giving words of this prophet/teacher who healed the sick and even forgave sins, and they would have held a humble hope in their hearts that this man was indeed the Messiah. They had held back when the commotion of the money tables was going on and when it had at last ceased and Jesus was left standing alone for a long moment they rushed towards him with outstretched arms and Jesus stood in their midst and healed everyone of them from their diseases. Jesus had come to change their pitiful state that day and to turn those outsiders into insiders.
Matthew 21:14 the blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he healed them.

The Temple was the one Old Testament fixture that was emblematic of everything holy for Jesus throughout his entire life. He was dedicated there, and twelve years later when he came to the Temple with his parents for the feast of Passover he sat with the teachers of the Law there for three days speaking words of wisdom there to them and astonishing them, and when his distraught parents found him after they had supposed him missing, he said to them, ‘Don’t you know I must be about my Father’s work?’(Luke 2)

The Temple was the place where it was ordained in the Old Testament that God would meet with his people – it was his habitation. But this Temple was about to change its nature from a man-made structure to a Heaven-sent person. This was paramount for Jesus, who was in fact the living breathing walking Temple who knew that his death and resurrection would mean that the material Temple, called in Scripture the ‘Temple made with hands’ would no longer be the place where God met with his people. In fact, a short time after his death and resurrection the Temple would be destroyed and cease to exist. His prophecy concerning this reality actually became the charge of blasphemy that was made against him at his trial.
John 2:9 So the Jews said to him, “What sign do you show us for doing these things?” Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The Jews then said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?” But he was speaking about the temple of his body.

The final dramatic transfiguration of the Jewish Temple at Jerusalem from the place of worship and God’s presence into a spiritual reality of ‘God with us’ through Jesus Christ was marked by a supernatural sign at the time of his crucifixion. When Jesus died on the cross at Golgotha the Scripture says; ‘And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit, and behold, the curtain of the Temple was torn in two, from top to bottom, and the earth shook, and the rocks were split’ (Matthew 27:50) .

When that curtain was torn it was the last barrier to come down between God and mankind in the earth. In a few weeks the Holy Spirit would be sent from heaven to the earth on the day of Pentecost and access into the holy place of God’s presence would be an act of faith and love as people received the risen life of Jesus to dwell within their hearts and become living Temples of the Holy Spirit. 

So just as Jesus was able to say I am the Temple, he said that so that we can now say we are the Temple. And just as Jesus declared he was the living water at the feast of Tabernacles, so now we have that river of the life of the Holy Spirit flowing within us. And just as Jesus said ‘I and the Father are one’ at the feast of Dedication, we can say we are now one with he and the Father (John 14). And just as he spoke the words ‘It is finished’ on the cross at the Passover feast, so for us there is nothing we can do by our own works to add to his perfect work of salvation other than to believe.

No matter how many cathedrals and churches we build there is no longer any man-made sanctuary in this earth, or any altar. The altar is in our heart of love and surrendered faith in Jesus, and wherever we meet and however we meet in his name we are his Temple (1Corinthians 6:19), and he joins with us there in worship to the Father.