Spiritcode

Heart and Soul

HEART AND SOUL 
I am following on from the previous talk called ‘Saviour of all mankind’ regarding the spiritual exercise of the soul in moving from its expression of our natural spirit to our ‘God with us’ Spirit. I want to discuss a further aspect of the salvation of our soul today by considering the place where this soul and spirit activity takes place. That place is the heart. Guard your heart with all diligence; for It is the outflowing of your life. (Proverbs 4:23)

Let us do a brief recap of the function of the soul;

Our soul – our mind and our emotions and our will, process the inner senses of the spirit as well as the five outer senses of the body. The soul is the loudspeaker of what both our inner spiritual reality and our outer world reality is going through. It does all the oohs and ahs and groans and moans and hurrahs and hallelujahs. It laughs and cries and sulks and sighs. It is the public broadcast of our being – the person we think we are, (that could become much better as far as God’s idea of us is concerned). These expressions of our souls that contend with the expression of the souls of other people, can be quite intense but they are often more surface than real. Our soul is looking for something deeper in a safe place, a home where it can be rested and healed and made to settle. Where is that place where God invites us in to be where he is, where is that place where he knocks on the door to be where we are?

Again; That place is our heart. The heart is where our spirit is nested, and it is where God has always met with mankind (He has put eternity in their hearts - Ecclesiastes 3:11). This is where he reserved a space in the hearts of men and women to speak into from all tribes and Nations since the beginning of time. The Scriptures record his conversations with Adam and Abraham and Sarah and Rahab and Deborah and David and many others, including all the prophets up until John The Baptist. And then God came to us as Jesus, to live as one with him in the fullness of his heart. This was more than humanity just having a ‘God space’ in the heart for God to communicate into. This was the fulness of God’s own heart dwelling within the heart of humanity within the heart of his Son Jesus.  
Colossians 2:9 For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily;
And the Bible tells us that from that time on that He dwells in our hearts by faith so that we may know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge so that we may be filled with all the fullness of God ( Ephesians 3:20) 

Our hearts were created to live in that relational atmosphere of closeness and belonging to God and we are invited in there by God himself. God, whose own heart expresses the fulness of this environment and invites us into it. What a miracle - That God can live in loving fullness in a human heart that has become a new heart, by faith.!

This new heart was what the prophet Ezekiel spoke about that God would give us at the appointed time (Ezekiel 36… a new heart I will give you, and a new spirit will I put within you). It is fashioned after God’s own heart and it can begin to emerge through us into a world that needs the love and compassionate action that comes from the heart of ‘God with us’ though Jesus and the Holy Spirit.

How does this new heart take shape in us and live and become the announcement of our being, instead of the surface reactions and self-focussed demands of a restless soul?
We start by giving attention to the nature of God’s heart of closeness and belonging that draws us into itself. This is where we were appointed to live. 
So why do we tend to resist and separate off? 
Unfortunately, other things get our attention. But if we start to appreciate and choose the highest spiritual goal of our life, to know and love God, and to be with Him forever, we will choose to not be distracted from that goal. 
There is a story in Greek mythology of a footrace where one of the runners (Hippomenes) sets his heart fully on winning the race against a swift and well-trained female athlete (Atalanta). His trick to win the race was to throw a golden apple upon the ground from time to time, which distracted Atalanta who would stop running to pick up the golden apples and so lost the race. Hippomenes won the race, won Atalanta as a bride, plus a huge bunch of golden apples!
Paul tells us that God has set the race of faith and endurance before and for us not to get hindered or distracted (Hebrews 12:2)
We are not competing against anyone else except ourselves, and we can choose to run the race set before us and so win the eternal prize of ‘God with us’ life.

Running this race of faith properly comes through surrender and release. This is the real effort. We learn to ‘let go’ of the many unproductive distractions to the inner life of our soul, where the racing mind and its imaginations and our emotional unrest do not hijack our soul from achieving its goal of faith, which is the soul finding its place in the heart where we find that place of closeness and belonging with God. (1Peter 1:9). 
 

The mind

We cannot turn off our minds and go blank but we can redirect our minds to contemplating God’s idea of what he thinks is important about us and our situations, instead of debating with ourselves about our idea of what is important about life. We let go of following one train of thought and embrace another train of thought.

When we do this, we are bringing our mind into the heart. We align our minds with the mind of Jesus who emptied himself from ‘me-self’. This is a renewing of the mind, the saving of the soul-mind from its anxious and uptight fixation on the problems that invade our outer world of conflict and disorder. We can practice this exercise of shifting the focus from the outer world to the inner world of God’s heart, for short periods of time as we find opportunity. I call this the Pathway of Presence Prayer. 

The pathways of the soul into the heart are being formed each time we let go of one direction of the mind and move into the other. 
We keep returning to ‘God with us”.
We can then start solving our problems in our ‘God with us’ minds.
This starts to become not so much about what we think but more about how we think.
The attitude of surrender has brought the soul home to the heart where it finds God’s wisdom (James 1:5)

The emotions/feelings

The heart is also where we can choose to set our feelings and affections upon God and his love for us.
Colossians 3:3 Set your affections (phroneo – sentiment or fervent opinion) on things above, not on things on the earth.

Just as our mind can be distracted by all those outer problems so our feelings and emotions can be side-tracked by focussing more upon the negative feelings we have of ourselves rather than the loving feelings that God has about us.
We can get weighed down by guilt and shame or feeling too unworthy to be receiving God’s love.
Once we have come to this point we need to know we can enjoy having a clear conscience, not being weighed down by guilt and shame or feeling too unworthy to be engaging with God in this way. This is where The Holy Spirit shows us the bigness of God’s loving heart towards us and he shows us how precious are his thoughts towards us we are in his sight (Psalm 139). He loves us just as much as he loves Jesus (John 17:23) sees us as the finished product of our new heart self in Jesus, and his reality of who we are is greater than our own heart’s reality of who we are. 

John 3:19-20. For if our heart accuses us, God is greater than our heart, and knows all things. 21Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence toward God. 22
And whatever we ask we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments and do those things that are pleasing in His sight.

We can confess our own sinful nature and its weakness and fallibility and receive the love and mercy and greatness and goodness that is God’s great heart. As we appreciate more of the loving nature of God we begin to set our affections upon God and grow to love and trust him more and more. This is when he so often makes his presence known to us and we become aware of being ‘found in him’. 
When we realise that our hearts are so small and judgmental even upon ourselves and that his heart is so big and accepting of us in his mercy and forgiveness, this is where we learn to ‘give thanks in all things because this is the will of God’ (1thessalonians 5:18).

It is difficult for our emotions to say ‘thank you God’ when we are going through an unpleasant circumstance because our emotions get stuck and we tend to resist what is happening. 
What is really happening at that moment is not just the unpleasant circumstance – it is our unpleasant emotional reaction to it, like anxiety or impatience or frustration or even annoyance. This inner conflict is what is hard to live with more than the circumstance itself in the present moment, and this is where the bigness of God’s heart comes into the picture once more. So we confess honestly to a merciful and forgiving God the fact that we are stuck in those negative and hurtful emotional feelings. 

God is greater than our heart and lovingly accepts us in that human weakness and he then releases a healing grace of peace that lifts us out of our painful ‘me with me self’ of our reactions into our ‘God with me self’ freedom to be able to accept that circumstance. We begin to experience the closeness and belonging environment of the heart of God and we regain confidence that he is still supernaturally working all things together for good for us and we set our affection upon God and give him thanks. This is another opportunity of surrender of letting go.

The will
Once we have begun to set our affections upon God, with the awareness of ‘being found in him’ we find that he begins to change the desires of our heart. Our will has become nestled in the embrace of God and we begin to live in the ‘not my will but your will be done’. We begin to ‘do those things that are pleasing in His sight’.

This is the letting go of one desire and taking hold of a new desire of the heart – a gift of God’s transforming grace – another act of surrender.

When God puts this new desire into our hearts we get a new perspective of who we really are in Christ because we are becoming a person after his own heart and that is where we know we belong.

There is a story about a cluster of acorns laying underneath a huge oak tree on a grassy slope in the shady sunshine. They were boasting to one another how fulfilled and satisfied they felt about themselves as a group, and how splendid and shiny they looked. Then a smaller drab looking acorn fell from a great height though the branches of the oak tree and landed in their midst. They scoffed at the sight of this newcomer and continued to discuss how splendid they thought themselves to be and then one of them asked the little acorn; ‘where did you come from?’ and ‘who on earth do you think you are? They didn’t think he really belonged.

The little acorn said humbly that he dropped from way up in the top of the tree and that as he was falling past the huge branches he heard a whisper from the great oak tree saying about him ‘he’s one of us’. The little acorn knew that would one day come to pass. He knew where he really belonged deep down, with other oak trees, not other pretentious acorns.
Just as an acorn contains an oak tree so our new heart can contain God. The acorn lets go of remaining an acorn and sheds its outer shell and germinates as a seed to become an oak tree. We are found by God within and God is found by us within. God with us.
 ‘Us in him and him in us’ (John 14:20). Our new heart functions authentically in the infinite greatness of God’s love.

I encourage you to stay with the thoughts that I have shared with you today to allow the inner shift of faith to occur, that the Scriptures hold out to us, and let the soul find its home in your heart. As the Apostle Peter said;
1Peter 1:8 You love him even though you have never seen him; and though not seeing him, you trust him; and even now you rejoice with the joy that comes from heaven itself, receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

So let us to do an exercise of Presence Prayer again in a moment for three minutes or so, and to meditate again upon some spiritual realities of God’s words to us from Scripture.
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Your sight, O Lord, (PSALM 19:14)

I am going to read some of the Scriptures I read the last time we sat in the presence of The Lord and add a few others that speak particularly of the heart. You may find that one of the following Scriptures speaks to you in a special way, and if so hold on to that one thought throughout the week and let that Word become flesh in you.
So let us come into his presence now and be still and know that he is God.

Blessed are the pure in heart, For they shall see God. (Matthew 5:8)

I am receiving from you Lord the salvation of my soul (1Peter 1:9). 

I am seeking first your Kingdom O Lord and knowing that you add all the other things that I need according to your will (Luke 12:31). 

You give me the spirit of power and of love and of an ordered mind (2Timothy 1:7)

I know that it is you that is working within me to will and to do that which pleases you (Philippians 2:13)

I am coming to you just as you asked me, to find rest for my soul (Matthew 11:28). 

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. (Matthew 6:21)

I will be still and know that you are God. 
I will be still and know that you are the Lord that heals me. (Psalm 46:10)

How precious are Your thoughts to me, O God! How great is the sum of them (Psalm 139:17)

I know that your presence will go with me and you will give me rest for I have found grace in your sight and you know me by name. (Exodus 33:14)

I trust in you O Lord
I say you are my God
My times are in Your hands 
My times are in Your hands (Psalm 31:14)

I Know that you doing exceedingly abundantly above all that I ask or think according to your power that is working within me. (Ephesians 3:20)

I know the thoughts that you have towards me, of good and not of evil, to give me a future and a hope (Jeremiah 29:11)

I am confident that you Lord who has begun a good work in me will complete it until that day (Philippians 1:6)

Guard your heart with all diligence; for It is the outflowing of your life. (Proverbs 4:23)

He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water. (John 7:38)

Saviour of all Mankind

SAVIOUR OF ALL MANKIND

We are continuing the discussion of the goal of our faith – the saving of our souls.
The saving of our souls is a collaborative work between us and the Saviour of our souls.

1Timothy 4:7 train yourself for godliness; for if physical training has some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come. For to this end we struggle and make an effort because we have our hope set on the living God, who is the Saviour of all Mankind, especially of those who believe. 
Saviour - g4990. ????? s??t??r; from 4982 sozo; saviour, rescuer, healer, protector.

I want to note especially that this saving work of the soul was achieved by Jesus for all of Mankind – everybody - That is the heart’s desire of a loving God for his creation, but it only becomes a present reality to those who have faith in that work of God through Jesus Christ.
Paul compares the effort for spiritual fitness to training ourselves for physical fitness, and physical fitness is only effective if the discipline is regular and ongoing. The same goes for our training in spiritual fitness, or godliness.
How do we train ourselves for godliness, the inner work of spiritual fitness?
Paul tells us that we have to make an effort - an inner spiritual work of the soul – a labour of entering into the rest of faith, as our Saviour works supernaturally upon us and for us in all things. 
All of us have a natural human spirit that was created in the image of God before the foundation of the world, but when the Holy Spirit was poured out on humanity on the Day of Pentecost God’s Spirit was made available to be joined to our human spirit through our faith (God with us). 
The soul expresses both the natural human spirit, and our ‘God with us’ Spirit, and these are two different spiritual realities for us

Our human spirit reality is instinctively influenced by what is happening to us in the world around us and that stamps its identity of our idea of ourselves (who we think we are) upon our soul. Our God with us Spirit reality is influenced by what The Holy Spirit is doing to transform us and that stamps the identity of God’s idea of who we are upon our soul. It takes work and effort on the inner life of the soul to move from one reality to the other and that work includes what the Bible calls being renewed in the spirit of our mind (Romans 12:2).

The human spirit always has a sense of falling short – the have not, am not, know not, cannot and do not. These can seem irrational to our minds if we analyse them but the emotions and feelings are what they are and they are not always rational because our imagination can escalate the drama of any situation whether good or bad.  . 
We often deal with this falling short am not, have not in our natural minds by deciding to put on a front or go into denial or blame a whole lot of circumstances or other peoples’ behaviour, but our self defence mechanisms and coping devices end up failing and wearing us out emotionally, and all kinds of harmful or destructive behaviour can result from these efforts. 

God sees each one of us in our human spirit as his child created in his image. But those who believe the lifechanging truth, that God has caused our spirit to be joined in oneness to his Spirit are told in the Bible that they are being transformed into the image of Jesus by the Spirit of the Lord (2Corinthians 3).  This only has meaning and power for those who believe in this truth and choose to live in it.
Holy Spirit seeks to awaken us to a new Reality of who we are. On the one hand we need to have a grasp of how to honestly admit our own sinful nature and its weakness and fallibility. On the other hand we need to have a grasp of the nature of God’s forgiveness and love and mercy. God is bigger than our opinion of ourselves, and our opinion of God is always immeasurably deficient. As his Word and his Spirit informs our spirit more and more of the loving nature of God we grow to love and trust him more and more. 

Our experience of the outer life and the inner life.
The outer life is experienced as a series of events and happenings with the world.
The inner life is experienced as a series of moments of connection with God. 

The outer life
Our outer life experiences dominate the attention of our natural mind which is the mind of our natural human spirit. The natural mindset in relationship to the outer life and the world goes down the pathway of wanting to ‘know the world’ and wanting to be ‘known by the world’ and this is where our mental and emotional energy is spent. That is the place where our sense of ‘I have not, I am not, I cannot, wants to ‘know the world’ and find answers of self-help and self-mastery. That is also the place where our need for belonging and feeling some measure of significance causes us to want to be ‘known by the world’ and find answers to these basic human needs. These are not wrong pursuits for the natural mind and emotions to have, because for most of the world that is the only kind of mindset that exists as a reality, and that is what has brought us all individually and collectively to the place of whatever measure of material attainment and success we have all reached at this time in history - and this is where our natural and emotional energy has mostly been spent and where we call upon the reserves of our acquired skills and learning and God given gifts.
However, this natural mindset has also brought us to whatever measure of evil and disorder that also exists at this time in history – our failure to live in love and be at peace with one another, and this is where our natural and emotional energy has mostly been spent.

The inner life
The inner life is experienced as a series of moments of connection with God. 
Connecting with God is not just the mental knowledge of the fact that God exists remotely in the universe and if you try hard enough you might get his attention. He is there within you wanting to get your attention. As far as you and he are concerned you are his only concern - his concern is your inner life, your inner world, and we need to learn that we can give any given moment of time to that reality, no matter what else is going on. Otherwise Jesus is not your Saviour but a concept of someone you can read about in the Bible who did wonderful things on the earth two thousand years ago.
Your present reality is that he is actively at work in the world of the unseen on your behalf concerning every detail of your life. You are his creation and have been brought into oneness with him, which is a reality for us only if we believe it, even though God’s oneness with us is his objective for humanity – ‘the Saviour of all mankind, especially of those who believe’(1Timothy 4:7)

The spiritual ‘God with us’ mind goes down the pathway of wanting to know God and be known by him (Galatians 4:9). Knowing him is more than just having information about him. It is experiencing the warmth and friendship of Jesus in his humanity and his divinity. The Bible tells us that those who love God are known by him because knowing and being known is a two-way self-disclosure between one person and another. 
We give ourselves to him by sharing everything about ourselves with him and he gives himself to us not only by revealing to us what his Word says about him but also by the whisper of the Holy Spirit who reveals who Jesus is to us in any given situation. We focus upon that and connect with God in that moment. 

We’re talking about going down this pathway of connecting with God, but this pathway has to be formed first, for us to be able to get on it quickly and freely, in any circumstance or situation, and this takes practice – it takes spiritual work, the exercise of godliness. This becomes what we give our time and energy to. 
So where is our mind at any one stretch of time? Is it stuck on ‘‘am not - have not - cannot - will not? 
If we can focus on ‘God with us’ and his goodwill towards us in the events and happenings of life, those things of the world assume their rightful place in the big scheme of our lives, and that captive moment of oneness with him turns into a moment of faith, where I am assured that God is at work for me in that situation and that, in turn brings rest and peace and blessing. That is the ‘when I’m weak I’m strong’ exchange in real time, and at so little cost. New pathways of faith and hope get laid down and get formed more permanently in our minds every time we do this exercise of godliness, and more space is created in our hearts to contain his loving presence and rest. 

So we need to establish these pathways of faith and hope by setting aside quality abiding time with God, as Jesus did when the Bible speaks of him retiring to be away from others and to be with his Father on a mountain top, a metaphor of putting our minds upon things above and not on the things of this earth. I call these structured times of collaborative work with God ‘Presence Prayer’. 
The practice of presence prayer establishes these pathways of faith and hope. Our work is the being still and holding on to him in our minds and hearts - a work of receiving – the labouring to enter into the rest of the soul.
We focus upon God’s spiritual reality that he is supernaturally at work in the world of the unseen on our behalf concerning every detail of our inner life – his Spirit changing us into his likeness and opening our eyes to his miraculous ordering of all things in our life, and becoming our peace and hope and consolation. We practice focussing upon this instead of focussing on our human spirit ‘have not’ reality concerning all of our problems. We can do this often and for extended periods of time just as Jesus did. It is something we can do when we choose to. 
I would like us to do an exercise of Presence Prayer now for a couple of minutes, and to meditate upon some spiritual realities of God’s words to us from Scripture, as David said;
PSALM 19:14 Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Your sight, O Lord,
So just sit quietly and meditate upon these words of encouragement from the Lord.

 

Meditations

I am receiving from you Lord the salvation of my soul (1Peter 1:9). 

I am seeking first your Kingdom O Lord and knowing that you add all the other things that I need according to your will (Luke 12:31). 

You give me the spirit of power and of love and of an ordered mind (2Timothy 1:7)

I know that it is you that is working within me to will and to do that which pleases you (Philippians 2:13)

I am coming to you just as you asked me, to find rest for my soul (Matthew 11:28). 

I will be still and know that you are God. 
I will be still and know that you are the Lord that heals me. (Psalm 46:10)

I give you thanks Lord, with a grateful heart. 

How precious are Your thoughts to me, O God! How great is the sum of them (Psalm 139:17)

I know that your presence will go with me and you will give me rest for I have found grace in your sight and you know me by name. (Exodus 33:14)

I trust in you O Lord
I say you are my God
My times are in Your hands 
My times are in Your hands (Psalm 31:14)

I Know that you are doing exceedingly abundantly above all that I ask or think according to your power that is working within me. (Ephesians 3:20)

As you said Jesus; I can of Myself do nothing. As I hear, I determine; and My judgment is right, because I do not seek My own will but the will of the Father who sent Me. (John 5:30)

I know the thoughts that you have towards me, of good and not of evil, to give me a future and a hope (Jeremiah 29:11)

I am confident that you Lord who has begun a good work in me will complete it until that day (Philippians 1:6)

 

Salvation of the soul

SALVATION OF THE SOUL

 

We will be looking at the meaning of these two words today – Soul and Salvation.

The Bible tells us that as human beings we have a body and a soul and a spirit.

1Thessalonians 5:23 may your spirit and soul and body be kept strong and blameless …

 

Our soul sits between our spirit and our body. It receives information from our spirit through our conscience and intuition which informs our soul about what is happening in our inner world. The soul also receives information from our body’s five senses which informs it about what is happening in our outer world.

 

The soul processes each of these areas of information through its three modes of activity, which are the mind, the emotions and the will.

The mind receives information and orders it according to what it ranks as being of value to our life.

The emotions/feelings react or respond to information as to whether it is helpful or harmful

The will finally decides how to act upon the information when it has evaluated what the mind has considered, and how the emotions and feelings move it one way or the other.

 

Our area of focus today concerning the salvation of the soul is about how our soul responds to the inner world of our life in the spirit.

And this is where the soul actually relates to the two different worlds of our inner spiritual life and they are a) the natural human spirit and b) the human spirit that is joined by faith to God’s Spirit.

All of us have a human spirit that was created in the image of God before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1:4) and that is the reality of the inner world of humanity since Adam. It is perhaps the most vulnerable part of our being and is open to being wounded and isolated and feeling deprived. It can see itself in a place of ‘not having’ even when it is in a place of relative plenty. It yearns for fulfillment, and God know this, and so does the devil.

When the Holy Spirit was poured out on humanity on the Day of Pentecost God’s Spirit was made available to be joined to our human spirit. Our faith brings into being our new inner world reality of ‘God with us’ (Acts 2:16).

 

This soul of ours is the critical measure of who we will come to be during this life of ours, the person that will give an account of itself on the day of judgement before God. It will either struggle through life following its own choices as to how to have the needs and demands of its own vulnerable human spirit met, perhaps doing its best to take on this world and being overcome by its chaos and disorder.

Or this soul of ours will be found of God and transformed and have its mind reordered and renewed, its emotions healed and restored, and it’s will subdued into harmony with God by The Holy Spirit. This will be what we can really call Salvation.

 

As afflictions and burdens weary the mind and body, and the soul follows a weakening will, looking for rest, God waits to heal and to save the soul – come to me all you who burdened and heavy laden… and you will find rest for your souls (Matthew 11:28).

 

When the Apostle Peter writes to the Christians he tells them what the Good News is all about, the Gospel of the Salvation of our lives. He speaks about the faith and grace that has come to us that was not available to God’s people in the Old Testament. He tells them that the prophets told God’s people that something wonderful was coming one day but that even the prophets who proclaimed it did not understand when and how it would happen. He was talking about the Salvation of our souls.

 

1Peter 1:8 Though now you do not see Him, yet believing, you rejoice with inexpressible joy, receiving the goal of your faith - the salvation of your souls. 19 This salvation was something the prophets did not fully understand and even though they wrote about this grace that would come to you; they had many questions as to what it all could mean… these things have now been revealed to you by the preaching of this good news through the Holy Spirit, things which angels also long to look into.

 

What did the prophets say? Let us look at what Isaiah said – He talks about the pain and suffering and grief that Jesus went through when he overcame the world of chaos and disorder that he was born into. He tells us what this suffering saviour would do for humanity. He would heal the inner life of humanity by restoring our peace, carrying our griefs and sorrows and forgiving our sins. 

 

Isaiah 53.4 Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; Yet we esteemed Him stricken, Smitten by God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes (wounds) we are healed (made whole – strengthened).

 

And then further on in the next chapter Peter actually repeats what Isaiah the prophet said.

 

1Peter 2:24 He himself carried our sins our sins in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his stripes (wounds) you have been healed. For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the shepherd and carer of your souls

 

What is being healed here?

Guilt, shame, feeling lost and uncared for - Our soul – the inner life.

This gives new meaning to the phrase ‘saving the lost’.

 

Healing for the body is a different matter. Physical healing is always a separate act of grace and faith in us and it occurs by the sovereign will of God.

1Corinthians 12:9 to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles… All these are empowered by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one accordingly (‘kathos’ as to how and when) as he wills (boulomai – to intend, be disposed). This means that healing of the body is always a sovereign act of God, even though in his sovereignty he allows us to be partners with him in these acts of grace by our faith. This is so that we can be used of God to bring healing to others. (We can obviously acknowledge that God also heals people with such sovereignty that they are healed without any human participation at all).

 

These gifts can be operated by all believers and there are some who have been notable in the use of these Holy Spirit anointings, but it is clear that the supernatural act of grace is always at the disposal of the will of The Holy Spirit. This means that these gifts operate with the same surrendered heart of submission that Jesus had, just as he said;

 

John 5:30 I can of Myself do nothing. As I hear, I determine; and My judgment is right, because I do not seek My own will but the will of the Father who sent Me.

 

 

The word ‘Salvation’

 

The original Greek Scriptures were written in pure colloquial Greek but our English Bible developed very differently and was not presented in simple colloquial English when it at last began to be read by Christians at around the time of the reformation. Many of the important doctrinal terms were words adopted from Latin that was adopted from Greek and then translated back into difficult English along the way and then into the cherished poetic prose of The Kings James Bible.

 

So we had pure Greek with the Church Fathers (Athanasius, Irenaeus), through till 380 AD which was translated into Latin by St. Jerome for 1000 years which dominated most of Christendom right up to the Reformation in 1517AD.

 

Along the way there was an awkward Anglo Saxon version (680-900 AD) then the English Wycliff translation (1380 AD) then the English Tyndale version (1526), and Tyndale was the first one to use the word Salvation in the English Scriptures and he used it only once, in John 4:22 … for salvation commeth of the Jewes…

 

For a thousand years the Latin Jerome version used the Latin word ‘salut’  which meant ‘health’ (as in drinking a toast – good health! - Salut). This word salut became the word

that we would eventually read as Salvation in our English King James vesion

 

The original Greek word we now call Salvation is sozo which had the meaning of being healed and to be made safe and made whole.

After the fine robust old English word ‘health’ dropped out and was displaced by an imported and now most important Latin word, ‘Salvation’, that the whole world of Christianity could at last read, that word came to mostly mean going to Heaven for any struggling human being of good conscience.

 

It was meant to be a present experience of the spiritual reality of the healing and wholeness of a New Creation life that comes from the forgiveness of sin and the joining of God’s Spirit to ours through the Holy Spirit (as well as going to Heaven!)

 

The problem is – What does it mean?  The Greek is much clearer and simpler.

 

 

The Salvation (saving, restoration and healing) of the Soul

We saw in the Scripture of Isaiah about Jesus suffering and being wounded for our healing, and we saw how Peter repeated that Scripture in the New Testament concerning the saving of our souls. So how is this good news healing and saving experienced by us in our everyday lives? How do we live it out.

 

Our souls are constantly being buffeted by the adversities and the contradictions of life generally, and these experiences cause us emotional suffering and feelings of grief and loss that can overwhelm us and rob us of our peace and take away our hope. The constant bombardment of bad news that circulates in today’s global community can affect our souls massively. this has become a kind of negative consciousness that hangs over everybody.

Where can people find that sense of certainty and confidence and hope?

 

It comes by our growing in faith, trusting that a merciful God is with us and inspiring us by his Spirit to live out that godly (healed and saved) life. When Paul writes to the Philippians he urges them to take this healed and saved life seriously as an awesome responsibility. He tells them to … ‘live out your salvation (sozo) with awesome fear and respect, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to do what his good will desires for you. (Philippians 2:12)

 

Our will can be healed and saved as he puts his desires in our hearts and transform our wilfulness into willingness.

Our mind can be renewed and re-ordered by receiving not just knowledge about God  but receiving spiritual truth from God by the Holy Spirit who is joined to our spirit.

 

Our emotions can be healed (saved) as God’s love comforts and encourages our hearts of faith, which is then able to express the love and peace and joy of the Holy Spirit.

Romans 14:17 For the kingdom of God is … righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.

 

 

Commandment 5 episode 6

How do the next six commandments from Commandment Five to Commandment Ten differ in nature from the first four commandments?

These next six commandments differ from the first four because there is a new framework of relationships. The first four commandments dealt with our relationship to God and the next six deal with our relationships to one another. The relational scope of the Ten Commandments is for us to live in harmony with God AND at peace with other people.

The Fifth commandment tells children to obey their parents. This only seems to be written to children – or is there another way to apply this to us all as adults? 

The fifth commandment ALSO teaches us how to understand and respect the nature of authority itself, as it brings order into our lives at many levels. God ordains authority to be instrumental as the ordering of our relational reality. In thus Commandment we see how life now becomes a series of lessons divinely designed starting with this commandment and through the following commandments to transform our hearts relationally till we learn to live in harmony and order with other people.

What are some other areas of responding to authority as we grow up?

After experiencing parental authority there is school life, and that is mentioned in the Bible. (Galatians 4:2) 

Then a young adult comes under the authority of his employer in the work place (Colossians 3:22-4:1). 

Then we all come under the authority of the State (Romans Ch.13).

There is also the authority structure of the Church (Hebrews 13:17). 

NB. All of the above authority structures operate under a two way agreement between those in authority and those under authority – AND – All authority is under God Who also operates under a two way agreement with us through His Covenants.

 

Gideon getting faith

GIDEON GETTING FAITH

Hebrews 11:32 And what more do I need to say? It would take a long time for me to tell of Gideon and Barak and Samson and Jephthah, also of David and Samuel and the prophets: who through faith subdued kingdoms, ruled the people well, obtained promises, kept from harm in dens of lions, and in a furnace of fire, escaped death by the sword, and out of weakness were made strong

‘Out of weakness and being made strong’ was how Gideon learned how to respond to God in faith. He thought ‘I’m not worthy so God would not bother with me’. He had to learn and to understand the partnership arrangement that God desired to have with him. This message of Gideon getting faith is also God’s message to each one of us,
where life and power can be released into any situation through our faith partnership with Jesus, which is simply trusting that God is at work for good in the situation.  We learn to focus upon the fact that God invites us into that partnership with him. 

Gideon’s response to God’s invitation.
Judges 6:11 Gideon was threshing wheat in the winepress Not where wheat was usually threshed!, in order to hide it from the Midianites (which were an oppressive nation that God had used to punish Israel for seven years because of their continual disobedience). And the Angel of the Lord appeared to him, and said to him, “The Lord is with you, you mighty man of valor!” Gideon said to Him, “O my lord, if the Lord is with us, why then has all this happened to us? And where are all His miracles which our fathers told us about, saying, ‘Did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt?’ But now the Lord has forsaken us and delivered us into the hands of the Midianites.”

There is a lot of ‘O, if, but, why, where,’ in there. That is because Gideon had a very low estimation of himself and he also underestimates God’s desire to have us work with him. God has to remind Gideon that salvation is his idea and that he will accomplish what he sets out to do and we will have the privilege to be part of what he is doing. So God overrides the ‘O, if, but, why, where,’ and tells him to get on with it.

Then the Lord turned to him and said, “Go in this might of yours, and you shall save Israel from the hand of the Midianites. Have I not sent you?”

Gideon makes one more attempt to wriggle out of the assignment and explains his lack of status and qualifications to God and outlines his CV that identifies him as unemployable.

Judges 6:15 So he said to Him, “O my Lord, how can I save Israel? Indeed my clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my father's house.”

But God shuts down Gideon’s resistance by assuring Gideon that all he needs to know is that God will be with him and that the project will succeed. 
And the Lord said to him, “Surely I will be with you, and you shall defeat the Midianites as one man.”

Then Gideon does certain sacrificial offerings as directed by the Angel of The Lord. 
Judges 6:24 And Gideon built an altar there and named it ‘The Altar of Peace with Jehovah’ (peace speaks of oneness with God) and he burned down the altars of Baal (burning the  idols was the signal to all of Israel about trusting only in God). 
Vs.33 Soon afterward the armies of Midian, Amalek, and other neighboring nations united in one vast alliance against Israel. They crossed the Jordan and camped in the valley of Jezreel. 
Then the Spirit of the Lord came upon Gideon, and he blew a trumpet as a call to arms, and the men of Abiezer came to him. He also sent messengers throughout Manasseh, Asher, Zebulun, and Naphtali, summoning their fighting forces, and all these tribes responded.

So Gideon has amassed a vast army of 32,000 men and The Lord said ‘Sorry Gideon, that’s too many’.

Judges 7:3 If you win, Israel will boast that it was because of their massive army – so tell any of them that are scared to go back home, and 22,000 went home, and there were 10,000 left. But the Lord told Gideon, ‘There are still too many! Bring them down to the spring and I'll show you which ones shall go with you and which ones shall not.’ So Gideon assembled them at the water. There the Lord told him, ‘Divide them into two groups decided by the way they drink. In Group 1 will be all the men who cup the water in their hands to get it to their mouths and lap it up. In Group 2 will be those who kneel, with their mouths in the stream.’ Only three hundred of the men drank from their cupped hands; all the others drank with their mouths to the stream. So God said ‘I'll conquer the Midianites with these three hundred! Send all the others home!’

God then instructed Gideon to take his servant down into the vast valley and creep into the enemy camp where many thousands of them had swarmed within the entire countryside like the sand upon the seashore, and the camels were too many to count. When they got close enough they heard one soldier telling his friend that he had had a dream that they would all be defeated by Gideon and massacred.

Judges 7:24 When Gideon heard the man talking about the dream all he could do was just stand there worshiping God! Then he returned to his men and shouted," Get up! For the Lord is going to use you to conquer all the vast armies of Midian!"
He divided the three hundred men into three groups and gave each man a trumpet and a clay jar with a torch in it. Then he explained his plan. ’When we arrive at the outer guardposts of the camp (on high ground) do just as I do. As soon as I and the men in my group blow our trumpets, you blow yours on all sides of the camp and shout, ‘We fight for God and for Gideon!'
Suddenly they blew their trumpets and broke their clay jars so that their torches blazed into the night. Then the other two hundred of his men did the same, blowing the trumpets in their right hands, and holding the flaming torches in their left hands, all shouting, "For the Lord and for Gideon!"
Then they just stood and watched as the whole vast enemy army began rushing around in a panic, shouting and running away. For in the confusion the Lord caused the enemy troops to begin fighting and killing each other from one end of the camp to the other, and they fled into the night to places far far away… 

It is amazing to see the intervention of God as he works in partnership with Gideon. He is told to do some simple things that whittle down Gideon’s chances of seeing the victory as anything else but God’s strategic wisdom and God’s supernatural power.
He will do the same with us as we accept that God wishes to break through our everyday routine lives and manifest the riches of his wisdom and power through us.  
We are not going to be told to do anything as mad as what Gideon had to do but we can expect God to put us into everyday situations where God puts it into our hearts to do simple and often little surprising things that express his heart of love and peace and blessing, and his wisdom will be seen to act. Those promptings are signs of the intervention of Jesus in his vision for our lives of partnership and friendship with him.

The amazing interventions of God for Gideon were made for the express purpose of showing Gideon that the work was of God and not of him. We saw this with the peace offering he had to offer on the altar, which spoke of his oneness with God, and burning the  idols - the signal for all Israel about trusting only in God. That was the starting point. All the other signs were framed within situations where the conditions were turned from one extreme to the other, to show Gideon that it was not in his strength but in God’s; He went from 32,000 troops to 300; the battle became one of the enemy fighting against one another instead of fighting against Israel; the reason for the confusion of the enemy was that one man had a dream that Gideon’s army would annihilate them and they had better flee, and his panic threw panic into all of them - and that was all God’s work, not some smart strategic negotiation from General Gideon, who blew a trumpet and ran down a hill with  300 men all shouting and carrying vessels full of fire that they smashed to pieces as they ran. 

All of these signs were tests of faith set up for Gideon by God. However there was one test that was set up by Gideon for God, very early in the story; and that was the riddle of the sign of the fleece. This happened before he sent out the messages to gather all the tribes of Israel together. It was when God said that Gideon would have an army that would defeat the Midianites as one man.
Judges 6:36 So Gideon said to God, “If You will save Israel by my hand as You have said— look, I shall put a fleece of wool on the threshing floor; if there is dew on the fleece only, and it is dry on all the ground, then I shall know that You will save Israel by my hand, as You have said.” And it was so. When he rose early the next morning and squeezed the fleece together, he wrung the dew out of the fleece, a bowlful of water. Then Gideon said to God, “Do not be angry with me, but let me speak just once more: Let me test, I pray, just once more with the fleece; let it now be dry only on the fleece, but on all the ground let there be dew.” And God did so that night. It was dry on the fleece only, but there was dew on all the ground.

This test was also framed within a situation where the conditions were turned from one extreme to the other; the fleece had to be either wet or dry according to Gideon’s request. The Bible makes no comment about why this was the request or even about what Gideon thought or said afterwards, or what God said. It just happened - and Gideon got faith – God’ s faith. 

In simple terms, a fleece of wool can only exist if a lamb has been slain/sacrificed. This is prophetic for us of Jesus, who gives us HIS faith for every situation 
Galatians 2:20 … the life I now live, I live by the faith OF the Son of God….
No matter what the extremes are of our circumstances, or how little faith we have that things will work out for good, the reality of our faith is our trust in the faith of Jesus who asks the Father on our behalf for his good will to be done. 

The fleece was going to be there for Gideon no matter how implausible the test was for God to show that he was there for him. Jesus was going to turn up for Gideon – wet or dry - and he will turn up for us OUR FAITH, in a way that assures us by his Spirit that it is really him who is doing the supernatural for us and through us as his vessel. 

2Corinthians 4:7 But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us…

When this rest of faith has been entered into and we know that the power of God is at work it becomes clear that it is not about our estimation of ourselves anymore (in our weakness he becomes our strength). When we activate this kind of faith we will be in partnership with God, being guided along the way forward by the Holy Spirit and not by our own drivenness, and being prompted by him about what to do. Our battle is against our unbelief that God is with us in everything that is happening and even if we do not understand why it is happening we trust that God is bringing about the best for us right now – it is a present moment experience.

As earthen vessels we battle against;
The unbelief that there is an excellence of power within us.
Not understanding why what is happening to us is happening.
Trusting that God is bringing about the best for us right now.

When we know by faith that the earthen vessel and the treasure always act together;
It is no longer about our wrong estimation of ourselves as an empty earthen vessel.
It is about God being with us in everything that is happening.
It is about God bringing about the best for us in the situation right now.

Thank you Lord for being our faith, and our strength in our weakness. Amen

 

 

 

 

Why God andHow long Lord

WHY GOD AND HOW LONG LORD? (Questions from Habakkuk to God)
Whether we are discussing events in the Old Testament or in the early New Testament church there were two certain questions for which it was hard for people to get an answer to from God, and it is the same in our present-day situation.
Those two questions - WHY has God done something (or not done something) and asking God WHEN he is going to do something. The answer we usually get from God is WAIT – AND YOU WILL SEE! 

In due course God will let us know why the timing was the way it was and why you had to wait, and why he allowed things to happen. But there is one thing that you can know for certain – and that is that God IS at work in the situation and that we must never give up trusting him to bring about his will for us. 
No matter what the situation happens to be, God is telling us to live by faith, trusting him totally. We can’t trust God totally and be anxious at the same time. He wants us to bring our anxieties and doubts to him but at some point we have to be able to laugh at our own anxiety.

What God wants us to get is a greater revelation of who he is, not just a better explanation from him of what he is doing (show me the science please Lord – the formula - so that I can be confident about pulling this off myself when I need to).
No, he always gives us what he wants us to know, not always what we want to know. We get a new view of God and we grow in faith and trust – but we learn to hang in there and endure and be patient and have a living hope. On the journey of patience he shows us his goodness and what he is doing by the many little things that happen - the odd happenstances. He guides us with his eye. He then doesn’t have to drag us along like a horse or a mule (Psalm 32:8). 

There is the story in the Old Testament of a man called Habakkuk. Everything seemed to be going wrong and the prophet thought that God had forgotten them. They had been terrified by the cruel oppression of the Assyrians and come through with God but now he could see that Babylon who had defeated the Assyrians were now going to come and attack them… He still believed in God but the circumstances caused doubts to come into his mind. Habakkuk was writing just before the rise of Babylon (Chaldea) and God was using Babylon to discipline and correct Judah. The big question of Habakkuk is, why does God use a wicked nation such as Babylon for his divine purpose? And how long till Babylon is judged. He could not understand all the strife and injustice that was happening in the nations round about him, nor could he understand the way God’s own people had become unfaithful in breaking God’s laws. This is very much what we see happening around us today. What happened to Israel is always a message for the Church and always a personal message for us
Habakkuk 1:1 O LORD, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not hear? Or cry to you “Violence!” and you will not save? Why do you make me see iniquity, and why do you idly look at wrong? Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention arise. So the law is paralyzed, and justice never goes forth. For the wicked surround the righteous; and justice is perverted.
He wanted a move of God but he was told by God that God’s plan of action would be revealed at an appointed time and ‘It would surely come and it would not be late’ 
Habakkuk comes to realize that though God’s ways are sometimes hidden, his people shall live by his faith as they wait. These words are quoted three times in the New Testament (Rom. 1:17; Gal. 3:11; Heb. 10:38).

Habakkuk 2:3 ‘the revelation is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak, and not lie: though it tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not be late… For the just shall live by faith.

God understood that Habakkuk had doubts and God was waiting for Habakkuk to ask some tough questions. God always wants us to go to him when we have doubts, and he knows we will have them. He lets us know that he is at work in the situation in his way and he asks us to wait and have faith in him. God answers tough questions with direct answers.

When Paul wrote to the Hebrew Christians they were having the same problem – they were doubting whether God was going to rescue them from the persecution from the Romans (and Jews) that was going on in Jerusalem at the time. This was written just a little while before The Roman armies destroyed the temple in Jerusalem, which was prophesied of by Jesus [Matthew 24:1-3] and which was fulfilled in 70AD.  (Why Lord? how long Lord?). Many of the Hebrew Christians wanted to give up but Paul quoted the same Scripture that God gave to Habakkuk – ‘Don’t give up, just wait!’ 
Hebrews 10:32 remember when you were first enlightened by God and you went through persecution and affliction and insults and stayed the distance. Some of your friends even went to prison (some at the hands of Paul himself) and you had compassion for them, then your possessions were plundered but you knew that you had a far more precious and abiding possession on the inside than all of that. Therefore do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God you may receive what is promised. For, “Yet a little while, and the coming one will come and will not delay; but my upright and faithful one shall live by faith, but if he shrinks back, I will feel disappointed in him.” But we are not of those who shrink back and are rendered useless (go to waste - ap??leia), but of those who have faith and preserve their souls.
This is exactly what God had said to Habakkuk.
Our discouragement will always say ‘Will God come and help, and when?’
The answer of faith will always be ‘Yes, wait for him and trust in him’
The very next verse in Hebrews is the beginning of a new chapter (11) which says that ‘faith is the basis of our hope, the assurance that God is at work on our behalf in the world of the unseen (the evidence of things – pragma – not seen). 

For us personally in whatever are our present-day circumstances the answer to how long means that Jesus will arrive in time to reveal to us that he is there NOW and that he has a plan of action. Our faith is not confidence in what we can do, but confidence in what Jesus IS doing. Be still and know that he is God – IN ACTION!
(Ezekiel 37:3 the switch from the natural to the supernatural)

He wants us to have an opportunity to get to know him in a greater way through this warm and familiar experience of hope and faith and to learn that we can share our hearts and minds with him in any situation.  We can be assured that he hears us and brings about the will and purpose of The Father into our lives. 

Habakkuk finally gave glory to God by accepting the fact that it was not about how he could deduce or determine the solution about what he saw going on around him, but it was the fact that he believed that God was at work in a great way – and he said ‘I am going to laugh AND sing about this’. He finishes his message with a great statement of faith.
Habakkuk 3:17 Though the fig tree may not blossom, Nor there be no fruit on the vines; Though the labor of the olive fail, And the fields yield no food; Though the flock be cut off from the fold, And there be no herd in the stalls—Yet I will rejoice in the LORD, Yet I will rejoice in the LORD,  I will joy in the God of my salvation. The LORD my God is my strength; He will make my feet like deer's feet, And He will make me walk on my high hills.
His message has the following footnote: A note to the Chief Musician. ‘’Accompany with stringed instruments.”

 

 

 

1

 

Jesus our friend in faith

JESUS OUR FRIEND IN FAITH 

In Psalm 22 as Jesus was suffering and dying for us on the cross he cried out to his Father and said;
Psalm 22:22 I will praise you to all my brothers and sisters; I will stand up before the assembly (the gathering of my friends) and testify of the wonderful things you have done… Let all Israel sing his praises, for he has not despised my cries of deep despair; he has not turned and walked away. When I cried to him, he heard and came."

in Paul’s letter to the Hebrews he quotes these words of Jesus to encourage them to not give up because they are going though times of affliction.  
Heb.2: 12 [Jesus is saying] ‘I'll tell my good friends, my brothers and sisters, all I know about you; I'll join them in worship and praise to you. Again, he puts himself in the same family circle when he says, Even I live by placing my trust in God’. And he goes on to say, I'm here with the children God gave me’. 
14. Since we, God's children, are human beings--made of flesh and blood--he became flesh and blood too by being born in human form; for only as a human being could he die for our sakes. (so that we could raised with him-Ephesians 2:6)
16 For surely it is not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham

That means that Jesus stands in the place for all humanity towards the Father and he stands in the place of the Father towards all humanity. He has made us one with him as a brother and as a friend in faith. 
Jesus is not only the heavenly example to us but a partner with us in a walk of faith – in the way that he trusted totally in the love of his Father to guide him through his life on earth. Jesus is saying that he is one with his earthly friends, his brothers and sisters, and that when they go through their afflictions and trials of faith he will give them his faith to go through their sufferings. In other words we can receive now the very faith that he has always had in the Father. Jesus call us his friends (John 15:15 – for all that I have heard from the Father I have made known to you)

Galatians 2:20 I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me. I do not bring to naught the grace of God…otherwise Christ died in vain.
Tineke and I lived in the Philippines for about eight months many years ago setting in the Filipino leadership in a church that we had been involved in helping to get established established at the time. At the end of one meeting where I’d been talking about faith, a lady asked me to pray for her concerning the shared ownership of their extended family of a small community store, called a sari sari store. There were many opinions as to who owned how much of the store. When I heard her prayer list, of how she felt God needed to give favour to some of the family, and to deal with some of the others to teach them a lesson, I thought it would need a Philadelphia lawyer to deal with the complexity of it all. She said she didn’t have enough faith to pray and that she had told her friends she would use Pastor Paul’s faith. This hadn’t been my plan when I had just taught about having faith but I was quite agreeable about praying and I found myself praying that she would be set free from anxiety and resentment about the situation and find the kind of wisdom spoken about in James re making peace and using entreaty and not starting a family feud etc.  
I felt that The Holy Spirit was with us and she was in agreement and surrendered it all into God’s hands and the Amen was real.
That was just a shadow of what I came to understand about having the faith OF our friend Jesus not just faith IN Jesus.

Our prayers depend on the faith OF Jesus – that is our ultimate act of faith IN him.
Romans 8:25 For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts (Jesus) knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because HE (Jesus) intercedes for the saints according to the will of God (verse 34…it is Jesus who is interceding for us).
Paul knew the Hebrew Christians were fading in faith so Paul is fervently keen for them, and for all of us, to realize how Jesus desires to impart his own faith to us and bring our needs before his Father on our behalf as we go through the trials and testing of our faith. 
Then Paul tells them that we are not to think of our life as one that is doomed to affliction but rather as one that is destined for faith.

After Paul tells us about the heavenly example and heavenly participation of Jesus, he tells us about the earthly example and model of Abraham’s struggle of faith, in Abraham’s awkward attempts to develop that complete trust in a loving Father God.

Verse 16 For surely it is not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham 

Paul honours Abraham as the ‘father of faith’ (Galatians 3:7) 
Abraham was also called the friend of God because of his faith (James 2:23)
Jesus and Abraham as ‘friends in faith’ have much in common concerning their faith life, in that they both had to leave their world behind and enter a new one, they learned to trust God totally in times of uncertainty, and they understood ‘resurrection reality’. 
We also have these same challenges in our lives as friend of faith.  

Abraham is called by God to leave the place where he grew up and leave his family behind, taking only his wife Sarah into a new and unknown land, where he was promised he would have many descendants and be the father of a great nation.  He gets the order half-right - he takes his father and his cousin Lot with him too. This was to cause him trouble on his journey. 

We are reminded by this that we who have responded to God to follow Him, can find ourselves still clinging to things 'back there'. We have to leave the old world of thinking that we can control things in life to have them work the way we want them to.
We also cling to trusting in the things of the world that have given us some sense of certainty for our safety and security and satisfaction.
Abraham faced many uncertainties and made mistakes of judgment but he learned to trust in God through them all. He told half truths 
 

The hardest challenges are the uncertainties of life. 
Before Abraham left he was promised a son and many descendants, but he had to wait because despite God’s promise Sarah did not have a child, so Abraham acted impatiently by having a child through Hagar, his wife’s servant girl.  However this did not stop the promised of a son from arriving in due time. 
It meant Abraham had to bear the consequences of his impatience but he had God as a friend (James 2:23… Abraham was called a friend of God) and we have Jesus as a friend.

A miracle happens. God has not forgotten His promise to Abraham. Sarah, in old age gives birth to a son, Isaac. But this is not the end of Abraham's journey. God tells him to sacrifice his only real God given son on an altar on a mountain. This time his obedience is complete. He puts Isaac on the altar of sacrifice, trusting God that He would either provide another sacrifice, or raise Isaac from the dead. 
This is called 'resurrection faith'. 'Resurrection faith' is surrendered faith whereby we place our faith in the hands of the faith of Jesus, who brings forth the will of the Father in our lives... God intervened for Abraham and provided a ram for the sacrifice and tells Abraham He has spared his son. The Father has provided Jesus for us – our resurrection faith. 
This was Abraham’s pinnacle of faith, but what a journey! This is the place where God wants to get us, where He wants to get His Church. 
Jesus left his heavenly world and became one of us. Then he took us back with him into his heavenly world when he rose from the dead and we stay with him, on earth but living from heaven (resurrection faith).

This is where resurrection life flows out of our sacrifice of surrender to God. This where the Church lives in the arena of the miraculous. 
We may have had some false starts like Abraham, we may have an Ishmael or two, where we’ve tried to do God's thing in our own way. 

But God has us on His journey and He will provide supernaturally the completion of our faith. We can live in His resurrection life, partners and friends with Jesus.
Resurrection faith is at the meeting point, where we leave our old world behind and enter into the world that Jesus has prepared for us. That is when we experience the supernatural walk with Jesus that he wants us to have, sharing in his very own faith. This is where there is answered prayer and that is where there is love and hope and faith (1 John 3:19-21).

 

 

 

 

The hidden seed of Logos

THE HIDDEN SEED OF LOGOS 

1Peter 1:23 since you have been born again, not of corruptible seed but of incorruptible seed, through the living and abiding (logos) of God; 

Our New Creation lives are the expression of the logos seed of life implanted within us through the death and resurrection of Jesus, the logos Word of God. God is always ‘bringing us into being’ of that New Creation life and our faith causes us to always be ‘coming into being’ of that life. We attend to that hidden seed of spiritual life within.

LOGOS THE BIG IDEA
The Logos was the Word that spoke creation into being, and that designed and ordered everything in the Universe.
John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word (Logos), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things were made through Him. 

As a Pharisee, Paul used to have what he thought was the best and biggest idea for his life living under God’s Law, but then he was walloped by the greatest idea that had ever existed – the Logos, in the form of Jesus, The Word. Before Paul received a revelation from Jesus on the road to Damascus he was an enemy of Christianity. He had a very stable and strongly approved religion where everybody in his entire personal world validated him. When he was converted he was perceived as an enemy of Judaism by those of the Jewish religion even though they were not seen as enemies by him, and his whole personal world turned upside down.

Paul met the logos, Jesus, born from above, who joined God to humanity for all time. 
John 1:1 And the Word became flesh and lived amongst us. Jesus Christ, the Logos now sustains and upholds all of creation with that Word of power. (Hebrews 1:3).
It is hard to grasp the wonder of this magnificent creative power that is able to order and reorder our whole life as we consciously cooperate with God in that process of transformation. Jesus the Logos Word unfolds to us who God is through the Holy Spirit, and as we get to know who God is, he gets to show us who we are.

THE HISTORY OF THE WORD LOGOS
The Word Logos had been around in Greek culture and philosophy for hundreds of years before Jesus was born. Logos was the one overarching thought in ancient Greek philosophy that expressed the wonder and design of an ordered Universe. When John wrote that Jesus was the Logos that created the world as God and that he became a human being that had come to live among us, it gave to everyone who read those words with a responsive faith, a profound understanding of who Jesus really was, as God joining himself to his own creation in us.

It was the Greek belief that Logos is some form of intentional idea or principle that can be seen everywhere; it makes up the earth, trees and even us as humans, and logos does not just give everything form; it also gives it order. In the Greek mind, this meant that logos determines who is who and who is placed where, because logos contains the master plan for all things, and constitutes the ideal way to order them. 

So as Logos had become the big Idea for the Greek culture and indeed for much of the then known world, we now see that God had prepared that then known world with this word logos to describe the person of Jesus – In the beginning was the Logos…and the Logos was God…and the Logos became a human being. 

Logos was the big idea and design plan of God’s own purpose and intention for humanity. When Paul was spoken to by the Logos, Jesus, that totally re-ordered his belief system and his personal world and his whole life. He began to live each day alongside Jesus as his disciple consciously allowing the Holy Spirit to bring the DNA of the implanted logos seed into the unfolding of his life’s destiny and purpose.

THE MORAL CONSCIENCE AND THE LOGOS

The apostle Peter’s tradition gave him a moral conscience of what was right and wrong according to the Jewish religion. Peter had already lived alongside Jesus, the Logos, the Word made flesh, for over three years as his disciple, and he knew him and loved him as a friend, but it took Peter a long time to let go of his former belief system of living under the Law of Judaism that he grew up with.  His Jewish tradition gave him a moral conscience of the letter of the Law, but it was no longer fully aligned with what the Holy Spirit was saying according to the Logos, or Word of truth in the spirit. 
New Testament Scriptures point out the difference between two different types of conscience (Hebrews 9:14, 10:22,6:22). These Scriptures show us that there is
the natural moral conscience and there is the Spiritual conscience which is aligned with the mind and heart of Jesus the Logos. 
Hebrews 9:14 how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from bondage to the morality of human tradition (dead works) into life-giving service the living God.

All of humanity has been given a natural conscience by God, to discern the difference between right and wrong. Adam and Eve had that conscience before they disobeyed God because they were told that it was wrong to eat of the tree of knowledge. That is why they felt guilt and shame and covered their shame with fig leaves and hid from God. Humanity has been doing that ever since, hiding from God and covering their shame. 

Our personal moral conscience about what is right and wrong has been formed broadly by our culture or religion and it guides our values and our decisions. This means that our natural or personal conscience can only inform us of the right and wrong of our culture or tradition, and in many areas we can be calling right wrong and calling wrong right.
God once showed Peter a vision of all kinds of animals that were forbidden for Jews to eat and he then told Peter to eat those animals as food.  Peter refused to eat what he believed to be unclean food, alright maybe for gentiles but not fit for Jews, and so Peter told God that he was wrong! He said ‘Not so Lord’. 
It is actually a contradiction to say ‘not so’ and ‘Lord’ in the same statement. God then had to say to Peter ‘do not call unclean what I have cleansed’. God was telling Peter that he was inviting all of humanity, and their food, into the Kingdom of God alongside his people Israel as his children and as brothers and sisters to his Son Jesus.
A natural conscience of human tradition is called in the Bible an evil or a harmful (poneros) conscience (Hebrews 10:22). 
Peter was judging all of humanity outside of Judaism as being unclean and not worthy or eat with or to even enter into their house. That judgment was now a morally harmful and unloving act in the eyes of God, who then told Peter to go into the house of a gentile (Cornelius) and preach the Gospel of Jesus to him. 
Peter had to have his harmful conscience gradually transformed by the work of the Holy Spirit who brings our conscience into line with God’s heart of Logos truth and love. 

Jesus had told his disciples that when he went to be with his Father he would send the Holy Spirit to convict the world of sin. That means all of humanity after Jesus has the Holy Spirit actively working upon them in their spirit, where the conscience resides, bringing an awareness of the love and forgiveness of God for their sins and turning their hearts (repentance) toward God and away from darkness (like a plant turns towards the sunshine). When we respond to this movement of the Spirit and acknowledge what Jesus has done for us we then actively receive the Holy Spirit so that it is now an abiding of our spirit with the Holy Spirit in a pathway forward of our transformation from a natural life to a spiritual life in Christ.

Paul was literally exploded out of his natural and religious moral conscience under the Law. He had been a hostile enemy of Jesus until he met him on the road to Damascus. 
Paul had been hunting down Jewish Christians and putting them in jail and sentencing them to death. He had actually just been part of the stoning to death of the martyr Stephen before he set off on the road to Damascus. The last thing that Stephen said to the Jewish elders and Pharisees before he died was ‘You are always resisting the Holy Spirit as your fathers did, you obstinate and hard hearted murderers of those who were sent to proclaim the coming of the Messiah’ (Acts 7:51).

Those words were still ringing in Paul’s ears when he was confronted by Jesus on that road that day, and when he was spoken to by Jesus Logos on that road, he had already been getting pricked in his conscience and angrily kicking against those promptings of Holy Spirit

Jesus knew what was happening in Paul’s conscience and he said to him ‘It is hard for you to kick against the pricks’ (Acts 9:5). Paul then asked Jesus ‘What must I do Lord?’
Paul’s conscience was then brought into line with Logos truth and he began to live not as a hostile enemy but as a close friend of Jesus. 

All of humanity have a corruptible human seed of life from the DNA of our parents, and since Jesus we now have the incorruptible seed of life from the spiritual DNA of God implanted by Jesus, the Logos, through the Holy Spirit.  We are encouraged to humbly reach in our hearts and minds and embrace the Logos.
 James 1.21 Receive with meekness the implanted (emphytos) Logos that is able to save (restore and reorder) your soul. 

ONLY BY FAITH IS THAT IMPLANTED SEED GERMINTATED INTO GROWTH AND FRUIT BEARING
Satan has planted into the minds all of humanity the seed of the Lie that we are all alienated from the life of God in Adam. 
God has planted the seed of oneness with himself into the life of all humanity in Jesus.
(Romans 5:18) 

We have both those seeds within us, the natural from Adam and the spiritual from Jesus.
We choose which one to cultivate and live from. The natural seed tends towards disorder and the alienation in our minds from the life of God and the spiritual seed (Logos) tends towards order and oneness with God and the renewing of our minds.
A seed brings something into being. which one will we invest in?
The natural seed is about self and what things I want for myself.
The Logos seed is about working together with God to release to others the goodness of God that we have received.

The Jesus Word of Logos is our blueprint that will live in us and bring understanding, truth and wisdom into any and every situation we face. As we still our hearts and minds and give attention to that one big Idea of the life giving and life changing seed of life within us Holy Spirit will inspire in us acts of virtue and courage, feelings of joy and peace, and God’s love deep within our hearts. It is an odd wonder that the Christmas event of the birth of Jesus, the ‘Word made flesh’ is celebrated around the world every year – even by people who do not understand or believe in the cosmic truth it contains. That is just one more welcome for Jesus to be  believed in by ALL of humanity because it is for ALL humanity, but our lives of love and grace to others is the greatest welcome for so many who are desperately waiting for something better to happen in their lives. So let us gratefully receive that seed of life and invest in that seed and cultivate it so that it grows and bears the fruit of the blessing of God’s love and care that will go out and be that blessing for all those in our world in Jesus name Amen.

 

Commandment 4 episode 5

Some Christians DO observe the 7th Day as their Sabbath, but Most Christians don’t keep this one.  So who is right and who is wrong?

For this Commandment the question of right and wrong involves the problem of us judging one another, as we do about many other things. It was a contentious issue between the Pharisees and Jesus in the Gospels and between Christians in the early church in the epistles. And we still judge each other today.  
Romans 14:1-6. Receive one who is weak in the faith, but not to disputes over doubtful things...One person esteems one day above another; another esteems every day alike. Let each be fully convinced in his own mind. He who observes the day, observes it to the Lord; and he who does not observe the day, to the Lord he does not observe it. 

What is the Scriptural reason for most Christians to not observe the 7th day?

New Testament scripture reveals that this commandment refers not to a ritual observance of one day in each week, but to the every-day life of faith, which is the rest that we enter into as Christians, in the finished work of Christ. This rest is spoken of in the epistle of Paul to the Hebrews. 
Hebrews 4:9-11 There remains therefore a rest for the people of God. 10. For he who has entered His rest has himself also ceased from his works as God did from His. Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest, lest anyone fall after the same example of unbelief and disobedience. 
ALSO
Colossians 2:16-17 Therefore let no one judge you in food or in drink or regarding a festival or a new moon or Sabbath days, 17. which are a shadow of things to come but the substance is of Christ. 

Did Israel fully obey the Sabbath Rest?
Yes and no. They obeyed the seventh day but they missed the essential aspect of FAITH and trust in God. They were told to rest for one year in seven and enjoy relating to each other as a family and a community together and to watch God supernaturally grow the crops for them. So they failed to observe that for 490 years since the time of King Saul. Divide 490 by seven and you get seventy. The bible says that they would go into captivity for 70 years in Babylon because they failed to give the land rest… 
2 Chronicles 36:20-21  And to those who escaped from the sword he carried away to Babylon, where they became servants to him and his sons until the reign of the kingdom of Persia, 21. to fulfil the word of The Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed her Sabbaths, ... to fulfil seventy years.  
ALSO (concerning Israel)
Hebrews 4:4 For the Scripture mentions the seventh day saying: “And God rested on the seventh day from all His works”; and in another place: “They shall not enter My rest.” 

 

The hidden commandment

THE HIDDEN COMMANDMENT 
There is a commandment that does not get a mention in the Ten Commandments but that is being indicated right throughout the Scriptures from Genesis to Revelation, especially in the Prophets and in many Psalms (Isaiah 12:6, Psalm 31:14  John 14:27). 
It the New Testament the commandment is stated as ‘Be anxious for nothing’. 

Philippians 4:6 Be anxious for nothing, 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 minds through Christ Jesus.

It is about trusting God and having the ‘peace of God’ instead of the ‘peace of the world’, which is what Jesus stated to his disciples that he wanted us to have (John 14:27).
This is a fervent commitment that God wants us to make for our own sakes, but also for him, so that we can develop a loving and trusting relationship with him, which is what he desires above all else.

We are living in a time when there is a pressing need to appropriate God’s peace. 
The elusive peace of the world is the illusion that you can remove any threat to your safety and security and satisfaction in your personal world if you’re smart enough or tough enough or lucky enough. However it is a well known fact that watching or listening to or reading any form of news media these days is mostly an experience of hearing about all the bad things that are happening. Even when good things happen the media does not tend to report them let alone feature them because the bad news gets more attention and getting more attention in a competitive industry like news media means more success and more followers and more influence. 
There are good things that are happening, but the bad things make the news. So, pursuing the peace of the world is problematic, complex, elusive and ultimately false, and all of this of course gets magnified on social media

There is something called the negativity bias. It is that giving attention to a negative experience even if it is overwhelmingly surrounding by positive experiences will cause a longer lasting negative emotional impact upon us than the positive experience. For example if you work with ten people and nine of them say good things about you and one is always speaking negatively about you, guess what will keep you awake at night.

This condition of anxiety and uncertainty because of negative bias is the state of our global emotional existence today, particularly in times of trying to manage a global pandemic. 

There are many good things happening but the bad things make the news.

Let me to some extent offset the effect of negative bias a little by presenting some unnoticed global facts that don’t make headlines in the media. These are some of the many good things that have happened over the last forty years that go unreported.
There are plenty of sources for this information but a handy compendium of facts can be found at - Our World in Data – (Google it)

Here is a handful of good news items…
Global absolute poverty has decreased from 40% in 1980 to 10 % in 2020.

Starvation has been dramatically reduced in India and Africa and China (apart from political agendas) by the introduction of better and stronger strains of the many varieties of wheat grasses amongst many other things. 

Despite the fear of overpopulation in the1970’s and the threat of running out of resources, the world population has grown by 70% over the last forty years but has resulted in more wealth and better health and disease eradication. 

There are also many countries over the last forty years that have a more sustainable lifestyle balance regarding health and longevity and well-being.

There are no horizons to these improvements because of technological advancement and global agreement about them.

Focusing upon the bad news creates an enormous amount of personal anxiety and social instability because of the pressure of having to overcome so many obstacles that threaten our inner peace. This is not only in regard to world news but it touches deeply the anxieties within our own personal emotional and spiritual lives as we carry the burden of our own personal situations and the burdens of those we care for.

The hidden good news in the world is also a reflection of the hidden good news of our personal faith (Hebrews 11:1 faith is the assurance of God’s activity in the world of the unseen) - but we still get drawn in by the devious negative bias in our emotional and spiritual lives.

The word for the Gospel ‘The Good News’ is euaggelion. In ancient times this was the traditional message of victory that was dispatched by the conquering kings and rulers that had to be declared to all the citizens in the region. 
This would mean that everyone could now live in peace.

We live within the blessing of the ‘Gospel of Peace’.
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 heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.

There is a way to predispose our mind to God’s perfect peace, whatever the problematic or dismal conditions are that exist. We cannot imagine some set of flawless and ideal circumstances or direct how everyone should behave so that we would not have one single problem in the world. What this perfect peace requires is for our hearts to be awakened to God’s perfect peace under any imperfect conditions. Then we can bring that peace into any situation and respond with effective action and God’s presence. 

How does our heart get awakened to God’s peace?
Peace means oneness, Eirene and that is the key. We share God’s life through the Holy Spirit and he awakens us to the peace and oneness of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Joined to thr lord
How can we live as though our problem or affliction is something to not worry about?
The only way is for a person to believe that someone else is taking care of that for us.

How do we know that they will sort it out just the way we want it?
We don’t. It’s not a matter of getting everything the way we want it. We have to trust that the person we hand the care over to will do the sorting out in their own perfect way. 
1Peter 5:7 casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you. 

This is a commitment. We commit our strategy of sorting it out to someone else.
The strategic activity is now being planned by experts, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
So do we forget about the whole thing and ignore what is going on?
No. 
So what do we do?
We attend to the situation responsibly, with a new measure of patience and calm, confident that God is strategizing situations for us in the world of the unseen. Then we stay on the alert to respond to any signpost that is a pointer to act upon or to speak into the situation as it evolves. One signpost may simply lead to another signpost but our patience in this is our sign of persistence in prayer as we continue to bring before him our faith that he has it all in hand, for his outcome.

We have an anointed guide, the Holy Spirit who teaches us as we go forward 
1John 2:27 But the anointing that you received from him abides in you, and you have no need that anyone should teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about everything, and is true, and is no lie—just as it has taught you, abide in him.

There are actually more good things than bad things happening in our lives as we see things this way, that everything is working together for God’s best for our inner life and inner peace when they are placed in God’s hands. As we trust him and partner with him in this way there are many other things that God is reordering in his hidden way in the circumstances of our lives and in the lives of those we care for. The transformation of our inner lives involves God helping us overcome the hopelessness of the past to open us up to hopefulness for the future. That overcomes anxiety – it surpasses what our mind can grasp about overcoming anxiety and allows faith and trust in God’s hidden power in us, and that surpasses all understanding. That is the peace of God.

The moment we take the anxiety back upon our-selves we have stopped having faith, and things start looking bad again and so we can end up persevering in our anxiety instead of persevering in faith. Faith is about what God is strategically doing, not what we are anxiously claiming what he should do. Faith is about God’s activity not ours. He gives – we receive. What is not of faith is sin (we miss the mark)
Philippians 4:6 Be anxious for nothing, 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 minds through Christ Jesus.

So we pour out our anxiety to God and let him pour in his peace. We can bring to mind the ten second pause of ‘be still and know that I am God’. These precious segments or times of attention if applied more frequently and faithfully in our lives allow us to live more and more in the peace of God, being anxious for nothing. I call this presence prayer.

I was asked very recently whether fasting a good thing to do spiritually. My response was that fasting is not a supernatural activity but it is a spiritual discipline in the sense that it brings us to the place of letting something go so that we can draw closer to God. It is not transactional as in telling God you will fast so then he will do something for you. Letting go of something of self is the opposite of wanting to add something to self. We do not let go of things in order for God to add other things – we let go of things in order to gain Christ. That means food, it means time and it means anxiety. That is the cross bringing about resurrection. How much do we want to gain Christ? We don’t stop eating or using our minds or stop solving problems. We live a balanced life of thanksgiving for the blessings in our lives.  At your right hand there are pleasure forevermore (Psalm 16:11) Footy in wonderful company including The Lord’s. 

We have something to bring into each and every situation – 

A Reality regarding the facts. Face what is happening as things really are. The negative bias is a cunning ally of darkness. Afflictions and challenges are part of the pattern of real life and different challenges happens to us at different stages of life. Where these things occur God’s grace much more occurs.  

A plan of action- we attend to the situation responsibly, trusting that God is at work  doing the hidden good thing that is needed. We don’t give up simply because we are  aware of our human weakness and limitation. His strength is made perfect in our honest 
Confession of our weakness. 

A commitment to persevere. We commit to continually returning to that place of trust when anxiety tries to overwhelm us. We come to you now Lord that we may let go of things that we may gain you. Amen.