Spiritcode

War in Heaven

WAR IN HEAVEN

The distress and confusion and uncertainty that people are experiencing everywhere in the earth at this time is not just because of our own limited and vulnerable humanity. And it’s not totally because we are in the midst of a global calamity – a pandemic that is getting worse by the day. We are also in the midst of a global spiritual battle. There are spiritual forces that are active in the heavens that have been operating for thousands of years upon the human soul to oppress and deceive and provoke people into reactions of fear and anger and despair, and greed and resentment and malice – imprinted onto the soul of humanity for the first time – then Cain and Abel. In this current world crisis the spiritual activity of the dark powers is ramping up. These powers seek to blind peoples’ minds from believing in an all loving and all- powerful God and to influence them in their minds and will and emotions. These powers intensify the sense of conflict and hostility we are seeing acted out on our streets and on our tv screens and media as news reports in real life - not just a movie. There is a battle going on in the heavens and on the earth. 

THE BIBLE TELLS S WE ARE IN THIS BATTLE STRATEGICALLY 
Ephesians 6:12… be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. Put on the whole armour of God, that you may be able to stand against the deception of the devil. because we are not wrestling (pallo/ballo – throw down) against flesh and blood, but against principalities (arche), against powers (exousia – delegated influence), against the rulers (Kosmokrator) of the darkness of this age, the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.
So we are not fighting other people - the battle is against spiritual beings.
There are three major categories of spiritual activity involved;

Powers (exousia) influence individuals – To assail peoples’ minds and will and emotions and create confusion, division and separation.
Principalities (arche) influence demographic areas to shape an ungodly culture. This involves cities and regions and towns. It is a feed-back loop of human power struggles being fed by spiritual power bases of darkness and then the earthly confusion and deception and hostility is fed back into the heavens again, and around it goes.
Rulers of darkness (kosmokraters) These exercise strategic global influence to disrupt God’s plan and purpose in the earth and to incite corruption at high levels of government. Much of this corruption is being brought into the light in these tumultuous times.

All of these spiritual entities are under the sovereign power of God and he uses them for his purposes. So why does God allow this? 
So that God’s people will grow in courage and character and faith and spiritual authority and be a demonstration of his Kingdom power in the earth – (Jesus in the wilderness Matthew 14. AND Peter being sifted as wheat Luke 22:31).
There is really no neutral ground. 
Every spirit and angelic power exerts a spiritual energy into the spiritual, emotional, cultural and relational atmosphere in which we live and breathe. 
We either come under the influence of God’s Spirit or under the influence of a dark spirit.
This has been happening since Adam came under the influence of Lucifer in the garden of Eden. Darkness began to hold sway over humanity.
1John 5:19 We know we are of God and the whole world lies under the sway- (influence) - of the evil one).
BUT WE HAVE THE UPPER HAND. Please do not forget the heavenly hosts of good angels that God sends to minister to us – (Hebrews 1:14) and the angels that stand before the throne of the Father on behalf of little children (Mathew 18:10)
 
What do the Scriptures say about where we stand spiritually in all of this?
Colossians 1:13 He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
He is the image (Eikon – representative NB 2Corinthians 3:18 regarding ourselves) of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or kdominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. (again – his purposes)

Jesus was the image (eikon) of God which means he represented the nature and being of his Father and his Kingdom of Light, imprinting his image of Truth and faith and love upon humanity. 
John 1.9 That was the true Light which gives light to every man coming into the world.
That was his work for his short time on the earth. Jesus working his image into us through the Holy Spirit.
We are all ‘imagers’, bringing the influence and spiritual energy of Light or Darkness.
An imager imprints that image on the world. We are here to bear the image of Jesus (2Corinthians 3:18) and imprint his influence and energy into this age in which we live.
Satan bears the image of the kingdom of darkness and imprints his pride, rebellion and deception upon humanity.
The dark angels imprinted their images onto the idols that were worshiped throughout the Old Testament. 

So we are no longer having to break through from below because since Jesus was raised up to seated above all powers in heavenly places in god’s kingdom we are now seated there with him.(ephesians 2:6).
We are now above all those angels…but in the old testament everyone was underneath those heavenly powers and here is an example of the Old Testament pattern of spiritual warfare. 
Daniel 10:12 Then the angel said to me, ‘from the first day that you set your heart to understand, your words were heard; and I have come. But the prince power over the kingdom of Persia withstood me twenty-one days; but Michael, one of the chief rulers came to help me, for I had been left alone there with the prince power of Persia. Now I have come to make you understand what will happen to your people in the last days, for the vision refers to many days yet to come.”
“O man greatly beloved, fear not! Peace be to you; be strong, yes, be strong!”
So when he spoke to me I was strengthened, and said, “Let my lord speak, for you have strengthened me.”
Then he said, “Do you know why I have come to you? And now I must return to fight with the prince of Persia; and when I have gone forth, indeed the prince of Greece will come. But I will tell you what is noted in the Scripture of Truth. (No one upholds me against these, except Michael your prince.

We do not operate that way anymore. Jesus has also given us his power over the principalities and powers that seek to influence us
Colossians 2:15 he disarmed the spiritual rulers and authorities. He shamed them publicly by his victory over them on the cross.

We now have a new perspective of our place with Jesus ABOVE those powers of darkness.
God has given us a new kind of faith and the grace that empowers us in a new kind of prayer with a new kind of understanding that we are partners with God in his reordering of all things in accord with his will and purpose in the earth - truth and faith and love. This means that we will see the supernatural effect of his working in our lives and in those we bring before him in our prayer. 
We assume our place of authority with Jesus ABOVE the powers of darkness.
We become aware of our measure of faith through which we enter into the grace that empowers us. 
We realise that the battle is ongoing until God’s a victory is apparent for all to see . 
We accept that the current adverse or confusing situation is being used for God’s greater purpose and we give thanks in purposeful prayer. 
We declare that we are serving the purpose of God in our generation.
We choose what we will image and imprint and WE CAN apprehend how we are influencing our world for the will and purpose of God.

We choose this life alongside Jesus as being the centre of purpose and meaning for our lives.

 

 

 

Age of Innocence

AGE OF INNOCENCE 
We were chosen by God to live our lives in a state of innocence before him.
Ephesians 1:4 even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be set apart for him (holy) and blameless before him, In love.

Our English word ‘innocence’ comes from the Latin word IN-NOCERE – not to harm, blameless, and also means not harmed or violated – a sort of spotlessness. 
There is also the Biblical Greek word akeraios; of pure motivation – KJV blameless and harmless also 'unharmed,'. 'Intact,' 'innocent.

Where do we find this innocence? In our natural lives it is our early childhood experience. And today I will discuss the spiritual reality of our innocence in the eyes of God.

Let us look at those years of early childhood, up to about the age of seven. Here is where it is required that we receive unconditional attention and love from our parents, but we must keep in mind that there are no perfect parents.  
This is the requirement because we have not yet learned to manage our way through this world of accountability for doing wrong, or developed any resolute commitment for doing what is right. This period of time is our age of innocence where we start to become obedient and cooperative and be spontaneous and even be annoying, but it is here where we do get heaps of mercy and forgiveness and at the same time become aware of consequences for breaking the rules, as there are rules and we accept these rules as being authentic because we trust our parents that they know how life works, and for the most part we are patiently nurtured through this formative time. This is the same in most cultures. And of course, so much depends upon the relational integrity and empathy of the parents. Some parents and especially some cultures are more aware of this requirement and even formalise it up to about age seven.IE the Japanese culture.
I experienced this when I ministered in evangelical churches in Tokyo and the kids ran around and played right through the church service and everyone was smiling, even me after a little while. One of the mothers explained that this is the way it is with children up to about age six or seven- and then they really get into the discipline – for the rest of their lives.

Going back to the opening Scripture - This was the destined state of our life experience from eternity from God as our Father.
That word blameless (innocent) becomes a way of life as a grown responsible adult when we discover by faith that we have been given that status through Jesus. He has won back that place of innocence for us that we fell from when Adam disregarded his place of oneness and trust in his Father God by disobeying him. Adam and Eve were charged with the responsibility of being obedient to the commandment about not eatig from that tree of knowledge. They then suffered the consequences of guilt and shame and the disintegration of their souls and they hid from a loving God. And so did all of us.
Then Jesus, the second Adam, or last Adam, lived a complete and sacrificial innocent life before God on our behalf. He sowed that innocent life as a seed into death, and then the seed germinated and his life sprung to life in the earth through the Holy Spirit,who was sent after his death and resurrection and ascension into Heaven.
Paul tells us that we can now live our lives out from that state of bestowed innocence. 

Philippians 2:15 … that you may be blameless and innocent (akeraios; of pure motivation – KJV harmless also 'unharmed,'. 'Intact,' 'innocent.), children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world,

Jesus explained this state of innocence by using the innocence of children to show us what it meant to be able to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. 

Matthew 18:1 At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, “Who then is greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” Then Jesus called a little child to Him, set him in the midst of them, and said, ‘Truly, I say to you, unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven. If you receive these you receive me!’
Matthew 19: Jesus said, “Let the little children come to Me, and do not forbid them; for of such is the kingdom of heaven.” 
The Kingdom of Heaven that Jesus spoke about is the relational framework of the unconditional love that we receive from our Heavenly Father, just as a perfect parent would bestow that unconditional love and attention upon a little child. The Kingdom of Heaven is not just a destination of going to Heaven one day – it is a state of relationship with God and with one another here and now on earth. We enter into this childlike trusting place through faith.

Why do we lose this lovely freedom and sense of innocence after our early childhood.
It is after these first seven years that we learn to devise our own ways of getting the love and attention we want. We suffer from the clumsy attempts at trying to earn or demand that unconditional love and attention and we get hurt by others who also want the same thing. Unconditional becomes harder and harder to find – hurt people hurt people. We can only find the unconditional loving attention by becoming as a little child and entering the Kingdom of God, which is the relational framework of unconditional love that makes us whole – that is the saving of our soul. 

This integrates all of our pain from our past and our anxiety about the future into the place of oneness and communion with God. 
Discovery is the act of faith that allows us to dwell in the unconditional love of God towards us that is God’s framework of relationship towards us from eternity. This is where we experience the wholeness of our soul in our mind and in our emotions because we are joined in oneness of spirit with God’s Spirit.  

This is entering the kingdom of God. It is living another kind of life.
It is called in the bible ‘living in newness of life’. It is another world. It is becoming as an innocent child as Jesus said we should do.

His righteousness – His innocence
We are told many times (over 70 times) in the epistles that we have the righteousness of Christ. I believe we are also told that we have the innocence of Christ. I found that the Greek word for righteous (dikaios) is also translated innocent. 
g1342. ??????? dikaios; from 1349; equitable (in character or act); just, right(-eous). innocent, holy (absolutely or relatively): — 
Many people find it difficult to see themselves as ‘righteous’ before God in Christ even though that is the profound truth of being in ‘right standing’ with God because of what Jesus did for us. However the picture that many people get is that ‘righteous’ only applies when we do everything ‘right’, and can end up making us feel we are falling far too short of the mark that we can never believe it. 
Having the innocence of Christ gives us a picture of receiving unconditional care and attention from a loving Father God.  He sees our still imperfect falling short, but also sees the yielded trusting heart of a child that is growing more and more responsible for cooperating with our loving Father and desiring more and more to please him. This is something we can believe in and confidently aim for and hit the mark.
This act of faith allows our innocent self to now ‘act out’ the peaceful life of being unconditionally loved. The word ‘peace - eirene’  means oneness - oneness with God, the source of our being. So we come to him confidently and wholeheartedly trusting in his powerful work of renewal within us. Everything that has been put out of place in our disintegrated souls is put back in its right place. Everything becomes integrated into our shared life with God as we bring ourselves into that place of abiding in him. 

This yielding response can be practised till it is entered into without struggle. We set aside time to be mindful of our oneness with God, and of the continual flow of his Spirit to us and through us that touches everything within us and in our world around us with transformation and renewal.  We learn that when life makes us feel ‘upset’ we are being ‘setup’ (Up-set = set-up) to spiritually enter the innocence that Jesus spoke of when he said ‘let the little children come unto me’… 

We are also fulfilling the prayer of ‘Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven because we are causally connected to God in the outworking of this as co laborers , participating with God in his Kingdom in action here on earth.

Carrying this presence as a reality of faith in our life changes the people and the circumstances in our world that is around us. We are not trying to change it, because we can’t. God can and God does and we are co-workers with him. 
This is living life ‘on purpose’ – it is The purpose.

 

 

Jericho

JERICHO 
Today we are looking at the story of Joshua leading Israel in the defeat of the city of Jericho, where a miracle of God caused the walls of the city to fall down so that Israel could begin their actual entrance into the Promised Land after crossing the river Jordan. This city was the first of many that Israel was to occupy in their conquest and possession of the Promised Land.  

We saw how God brought Israel through the Jordan into the Land of Promise through the miracle of holding back the waters of the flooding Jordan River. The miracle came about through the ark being carried into the water by the twelve priests. The ark represented the presence of God - and the twelve priests, one for each tribe represented ALL the people. This also represents ALL of us as humanity, entering into a new way of life through Jesus (our Joshua)

It could have seemed at the time of the crossing of the Jordan that Israel had arrived at last and were now IN the Land, and in one sense they had arrived and were IN the Land, but in reality, possession of the Land had only just begun. The promise of possessing the Land was tied to the promise; 
Deuteronomy 6:11 I will give you large and beautiful cities which you did not build, houses full of all good things, which you did not fill, hewn-out wells which you did not dig, vineyards and olive trees which you did not plant. 
All this was yet to come and besides, they were to grow into a mighty Nation in the Earth that represented a living God in the Heavens. 

We now come to the first obstacle in their way to going in and possessing the Land – They had to conquer Jericho. They were told that Jericho had to be defeated and devoted to God as his holy place, and it was for Israel an enemy enclave occupied mostly by the Amorites.
Jericho means ‘a place of favour’ and ‘the place of palms’, regarded as the oasis of all oases in Canaan. Jericho is the most ancient walled city in history, its walls having been destroyed and rebuilt over thousands of years. In Joshua’s time it had outer walls 2 metres thick and 5 metres high plus one tower, with higher inner fortification walls. Surrounding the outer wall was a ditch over 8 metres wide by 3 metres deep, cut through solid bedrock. The total area of the upper city and fortification system was about nine acres, and the city at the time housed only a few thousand people. However more people from the surrounding area would have fled to Jericho at the time, terrified by the sight of over two million Israelites with thousands of head of cattle creating an enormous cloud of dust that would have been visible from afar as they slowly advanced.  

Everything that would happen from now on for Israel would belong to a new order of the plan and purpose of God. They were now called upon to take responsibility for their part in the accomplishment of God in his purposes. One small example was that now having crossed the Jordan the manna ceased falling from Heaven and they had to get their own food from the land. The battle of Jericho was a strategic disciplined operation for all the people of Israel. 

THE BATTLEOF JERICHO

Joshua 5:13 Joshua went and stood before Jericho. He looked up and saw a man standing in front of him, with his drawn sword in His hand. Joshua went to Him and said, “Are You for us or for our enemies?”
He said, “Neither, for I am the commander of the army of the LORD. Now I have come.” Then Joshua fell with his face to the ground and worshipped. Then he said, “What does my Lord wish to say to His servant?” The commander of the army of the LORD said to Joshua, “Remove your sandals from your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy.” 

This special place was not just to remain an enemy fortress but a holy place of God and everything in Jericho had to be devoted to The Lord. The commander of the army of the Lord was obviously Jesus and not an angel, because he allowed Joshua to worship him (Whenever people worshiped angels in the Bible the angels told them not to worship them because they were not God but just an angel), and Joshua called him lord (the same root word as Adonai).

Joshua 6:2 the Lord said to Joshua, "Jericho and its king and all its mighty warriors are already defeated, for I have given them to you! Your entire army is to walk around the city once a day for six days, followed by seven priests walking ahead of the Ark, each carrying a trumpet made from a ram's horn. On the seventh day you are to walk around the city seven times, with the priests blowing their trumpets. Then, when they give one long, loud blast, all the people are to give a mighty shout, and the walls of the city will fall down; then move in upon the city from every direction."

When they first came to the Jordan after being in the wilderness for forty years they all crossed the river safely because the twelve priests were obedient in their responsibility to carry the presence of God, even into the turbulent Jordan. The rest of the people just had to follow at a distance, but in this new way of life they were partners with him in the execution of his plans and purpose as his children and as the heirs of his inheritance.
This was a disciplined operation of both marshalled action and restraint from every one of them. Israel were not a battle-ready trained army and they didn’t have to be just yet, because God was giving them the victory in a miraculous way.

This time instead of twelve priests carrying the ark, seven priests carried the presence of God. There were another seven priests in front of those priests blowing the trumpets. A company of armed men was to lead the priests and a rear guard of armed men was to march behind the priests, and as they were to keep silence for the whole period of that time – in contrast to the murmuring and complaining from the previous generation that wandered in the wilderness. 
And ALL the people were to give the victory shout at the end to bring down the walls.

The number seven is significant in the Bible and is symbolic of the completion and fulness of meaning of the finality God’s purposes in the earth.
(Seven days creation and rest – the complete work of both the creative work of God and of our communion with God). 
Seven priests carried the ark. (The completeness of the presence of God).
Seven trumpets were blown. They walked once around the city each day and seven times around the city on the seventh day, and the seventh time on the seventh day the trumpets were to sound the victory blast then everyone gave the victory shout, and the walls.  

THE STORY OF US TODAY.
1Corinthians 10:11 Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were lessons for us, written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the age has come.
These lessons for us, is the ‘us’ of all humanity. The Apostle Paul did not just write this to a church in Corinth but to all of humanity, to know the story of the redeeming work of God throughout history.  

WHAT IS REDEMPTION? 
To redeem means to bring something that was lost into being found again, something that was out of order to be reordered, something that was malformed to be transformed, something that was broken to be restored. 
What had been broken between God and ‘us’?
Communion with God and humanity had been broken in Adam, but God did not give up on the fulfillment of his original purpose for the whole human race, to be in communion with him and to be his friend and partner in his plan and purpose for his creation. God chose one Nation Israel to represent all of us as the example of his redemption for all mankind. So Israel had to go through trial after trial of faith and trust in God, and the trial of those lessons show that they could not fully trust God. Finally Israel gave birth to Jesus, who fully and completely trusted God on our behalf. 

So what do the walls of Jericho represent spiritually, for us today?
For us those walls represent the wall of resistance around our hearts which is our human struggle of independence. We need to allow the presence of God to surround us just like the presence of God was walked around the walls seven time seven and the walls came down. God desires to capture our hearts and is able to bring us into communion and partnership with himself by surrounding us with his presence.

In those days the territory of the Promised Land was actual land but now the territory is the soil of our hearts. They were told that Jericho had to be defeated and devoted to God as his holy place. So just as Jericho behind the walls had to become holy so do our hearts. God also made a decree that the walls of Jericho were never to be rebuilt – and they weren’t! (Joshua 6:26). This work of God in capturing our hearts is a step by step process and it can be painful as there are lots of things in our personal garden that have to be uprooted or pulled down. 

This becomes the unrelenting redeeming process of the mindfuness of God toward us in bringing order out of disorder. Our response of faith to God in his creative reordering of all things trusts in his working all things in our lives together for good. God’s first act of creation was one of bringing light into darkness, and that creative act has never ceased to operate.  Everything at any one moment in time is in need of that reordering process because nothing is yet completely transformed. We ourselves constantly create disorder within our lives because of our own limitations, and creation is always colliding within itself, changing from one form of arrangement and energy into another. But we have within ourselves in union with God the creative power to see our lives and everything in them being transformed according to God’s plan, from hope to hope, one moment and one day at a time.

We can be co-workers with God in creating the future with God through what we do with him and through him in the present moment. This is the responsibility we are given. The world at this time is in its greatest need of change. You or I cannot change the world; we cannot even change another person, but we can let God change us. When we do that, that is when everything in our world is invited into the space of creative transformation that we have created. This is how the world could be changed. If there were enough people today ready and willing to accept and embrace that privilege and  responsibility we would witness the transformation of humanity, spirit, soul, and body.

This is the hope that is always before us, that this transformation is happening moment by moment as we become consciously mindful of his presence and creative goodwill towards us at all times and in every situation. 

Mindfulness and collective suffering

MINDFULNESS AND COLLECTIVE SUFFERING

God’s mindfulness towards us is a two way thing -  God starts the process of mindfulness towards us and invites us to respond. And right there begins a divine process of inner wholeness and transformation. (Romans 12:2 -  being transformed by the renewing of the mind). So What becomes transformed? – it is more than just behaviour - it is the consciousness of who we really are in union with God through Jesus. This consciousness is what captures the present moment and It fills the now with its fulness and focus. It is not simply hanging around in the background somewhere – It is front and centre in the mind. It becomes the eternal Now of our existence – always active. 

We develop in the growth of mindfulness with God through the challenges of life. We each have different personal situations to contend with; relational, financial, self-worth, general fears and anxieties. But the greatest challenge is not what the actual external situation is but the fear on the inside that needs to be faced and met with faith.

Our state of mindful faith in these situations determines the quality of peace and stability in our personal lives. Otherwise life becomes a series of reactions because we are not in that settled place of mindful faith within ourselves and this affects the quality of our wisdom in decision making and the ability to recover from the consequences of our mistakes and from the mishaps that happen unexpectedly.  

When we are flowing in mindfulness with God we can not only find a place of peace within ourselves but a place of empowered faith in God that makes us more aware of his compassion for the pain and suffering that others are going through so that we can touch his compassion and be more effective in providing help and care and prayer.

In this way we can come together in many places as communities of faith, love and care, being mindful of one another that we are all going through different things at different times at different levels, and being aware of a ‘faith safety net’ of common goodwill and care in the group.

But - when the entire global community comes under a shared existential threat of common adversity and danger there is a level of collective stress and anxiety that intensifies each person’s personal challenges and causes a collective consciousness of unresolved hardship or suffering. It is felt or discerned as a silent suffering that seems to hang in the air over people everywhere as a spiritual energy of darkness and uncertainty. This causes an accumulation of distress, physically, emotionally, financially, politically and spiritually, as fear and darkness invade the minds of people. 
Light has to come into this darkness.

It is at times like this that God provides grace for us to operate at a deeper level of focussed faith that his power is at work in the entire situation. 

At times like these there is such a thing as standing in the gap. The Bible says God looks for someone to stand in the gap for others on his behalf. 
Ezekiel 22:30 So I looked for someone among them… who would stand in the gap before Me on behalf of the whole Land (eres-  earth), that I should not destroy it; but I found no one.

This is the cry of the Father’s heart that was answered by Jesus almost two thousand years ago when he stood in the gap for us in his death and resurrection, and brought us into union with himself and the Father through The Holy Spirit. 
There is a story of this in the Bible that represents this standing in the gap principle. It is the story of Joshua when He led Israel across the river Jordan, out of the wilderness into the Promised Land. (Joshua is the Old Testament name for Jesus, Yeshua)

Joshua 3:1 Joshua and all the people of Israel left Acacia and arrived that evening at the banks of the Jordan River, where they camped for a few days before crossing.
On the third day officers went through the camp giving these instructions:"When you see the priests carrying the Ark of God, follow them. You have never before been where we are going now, so they will guide you. However, stay 2000 cubits behind, with a clear space between you and the Ark; For tomorrow, the Lord will do a great miracle."
In the morning Joshua ordered the priests, "Take up the Ark and lead us across the river!"And so they started out.
"Today,"the Lord told Joshua,"I will give you great honor, so that all Israel will know that I am with you just as I was with Moses. Instruct the priests who are carrying the Ark to stop at the edge of the river."
Then Joshua summoned all the people and told them; Today you are going to know for sure that the living God is among you and that he will, without fail, drive out the Canaanites, Hittites, Hivites, Perizzites, Girgashites, Amorites, and Jebusites--all the people who now live in the land you will soon occupy. Think of it! The Ark of God, who is Lord of the whole earth, will lead you across the river! "Now select twelve men, one from each tribe, for a special task. When the priests who are carrying the Ark touch the water with their feet, the river will stop flowing as though held back by a dam, and will pile up as though against an invisible wall!" Now it was the harvest season and the Jordan was overflowing all its banks; but as the people set out to cross the river and as the feet of the priests who were carrying the Ark touched the water at the river's edge, suddenly, far up the river at the city of Adam, the water began piling up as though against a dam! And the water below that point flowed on to the Dead Sea until the riverbed was empty. Then all the people crossed at a spot where the river was close to the city of Jericho, and the priests who were carrying the Ark stood on dry ground in the middle of the Jordan and waited as all the people passed by.

Joshua told the company of twelve priests (representing the twelve tribes) to carry the ark upon their shoulders. The ark contained the presence of God.

The people were to follow this company at a distance of 2000 cubits. Everything that happened to them was a pattern for us to learn from in these days. 

The priests were commanded to stand at the edge of the Jordan River and God said he would do a great miracle and drive out all their enemies before them. The people were told ‘When the priests who are carrying the Ark touch the water with their feet, the river will stop flowing as though held back by a dam and will pile up as though against an invisible wall (all the way back to Adam!’).
This was the work of God, not the work of the priests; all they had to do was to carry the ark, the presence of God, but they had to have faith that God would do the mighty miracle work in the world of the unseen. Their natural minds would have said ‘You are going to drown in there’, but they would have had no doubt that they were bearing the presence of God on behalf of all those people.

Then all the people crossed at a spot where the river was close to the city of Jericho, and the priests who were carrying the Ark stood on dry ground in the middle of the Jordan and waited as all the people passed by.

The people would never have entered into the Promised Land or entered into a new life under God where they could give thanks to have his spiritual blessings and his provision of fields and crops and houses. They had become used to struggling and straggling in the wilderness without hope or confidence – and now their time had come. But it required that the priests stood in the gap. 

THE STORY OF US TODAY.
1Corinthians 10:11 Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come.
The people were told in that Scripture to keep at a distance of 2000 cubits as they followed the priests who were carrying the ark of the presence of God. The obedience of the priests carrying the presence of God and stepping into the turbulent Jordan river prepared the way for the miracle of God in stopping the river from preventing all the people to cross over on dry land into the blessings of the Land of Promise.

Those priests were a prophetic picture of Jesus as our High Priest overcoming darkness and death for us so that we could enter into the fulness of the Promise of God in Jesus.
What could this 2000 cubits signify? 
Consider the fact that it was about 2000 years ago that Jesus was born, but it was some years later at around thirty years of age when Jesus was baptized in the river Jordan and carried the presence of God in that river for all of humanity. His baptism in the Jordan river was a picture of his death and resurrection, just as our water baptism is described in the Bible.
Romans 6:3 we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death. We were buried therefore with him through baptism into death: that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we can also walk in newness of life. 
Jesus stood in the gap for all of us so that we could be included in his life.

In these days of global confusion and darkness God is calling for a people like those priests, to stand in the gap and to create a pathway for others to find light and truth and to enter in to a place of confidence and hope in the fulness of God. 

Today we can be that company of priests that can stand in the gap for others. We can carry the presence of God. We carry that presence in our hearts by faith. We are able to live in the two-way mindfulness of God, being conscious of his desire to express his life through us and with us.
We can become the light of God in the midst of great darkness.
What does it mean for us to put our feet in the Jordan like those priests did? They faced a huge challenge of faith; they would have thought they could have drowned in that turbulent river, but they trusted God because they had been told; ‘The Lord will do a great miracle’.

We are following in the footsteps of those priests, but more than that, it means that we are following Jesus in our willingness to experience the cross in our lives, for ourselves and for the sake of others. Taking up our cross is that same kind of challenge of faith that those priests faced. It is the challenge of denying ourselves for the sake of being aligned to the miracle working power of God.

This is because we know that the experience of the cross always leads to the experience of his resurrection. We find faith for his supernatural working in the world of the unseen for us, not only in our lives, but also in the challenging situations of those people in our world that we stand in the gap for.

There are many people that you may have been praying for, that are struggling and straggling, but God wants to make a way for them to enter in to a new life of faith and hope and love. He hears the cry of the suffering hearts and he has made a way. There is still time for them.

 

Mindfulness The Eternal Now

MINDFULNESS – THE ETERNAL NOW

I would like to talk about the practice of mindfulness today which is something practised by people of many belief systems. However I am starting with a Scripture that speaks about God’s mindfulness towards us, because that is where mindfulness originally came from . 
Hebrews 2:6 What is man, that you are mindful of him, or the son of man, that you care for him? (This speaks to all of us (mankind) and also Jesus (Son of Man)
The root word for mindful in that Scripture is mnaomai (the idea of fixture in the mind - a mental grasp). 

So how is Mindfulness to be applied in practice?
Mindfulness can be described as the practice of paying attention, with an intention, and in the present moment. 
People in our Western culture have been engaging in the practice of mindfulness for some years now. It is a discipline that helps people to stop anxious or distracting thoughts from coming into the mind, helping them to appreciate and pay attention to what is central to them in their here and now experiences and in the inner space of what is meaningful in their life. People use mindfulness as a tool for sharpening their focus of attention and efficiency in doing productive things or for engaging in leisure or creative skills, and also as a form of emotional therapy for staying calm in times of stress. It has generally become a psychological discipline that is useful for finding some order in a busy and agitated world. That is well and good and helpful but it does not reach the highest goal of conscious mindfulness that God has prepared for us. 
Our mindfulness of God does more than just help us to pay attention to the inner space of what is meaningful in our life, it puts us in touch with the source of all meaning in our life, God himself.

So we have seen that it was God who invented the practice of mindfulness and we can see that he is focussing his full attention upon us with an intention of seeing us becoming the person we were created to be from eternity, and he has the attention, the intention and the eternal now, his present moment. And he wants us to get to know him and also to know that we are known by him, and can communicate with him at a level of close and intimate relationship – so it is a two way thing -  God starts the process of mindfulness towards us and invites us to respond. And right there begins a divine process of inner wholeness and transformation. (Romans 12:2 -  being transformed by the renewing of the mind). So What becomes transformed? – it is more than just behaviour - it is the consciousness of who we really are in union with God through Jesus. This consciousness is what captures the present moment and It fills the now with it’s fulness and focus. It is not simply hanging around in the background somewhere – It is front and centre in the mind. It becomes the eternal Now of our existence – always active. 

God wants us to know that we are known. God wants to help us locate that known self within himself in us – that is our inner source of power and love- the treasure in the earthen vessel. That is the wellspring, the fountain of living water. We can’t find it on our own, we are taken there by the Holy Spirit. 
John 16:14 he takes of what Jesus has said and of who Jesus is and reveals it to us. 
He takes us on this journey of mindful focus and intention.
The Holy Spirit hears the cry of our heart to the Father which says;
I want to know someone who really knows me and can help me find who I really am and who understands how I feel so that I can be who I really should be. That is powerful – and that is why David exclaimed ‘What IS man that you are mindful of him – are you that interested and focussed?

Our life (as part of the human race, created to be part of God’s family) is about knowing God and becoming KNOWN! – Known of God; 
Galatians 4.9. But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world
(how can you lose that focus and get bound up in the darkness etc of the world)

Being really heard is being really known
When a person really feels heard they are tremendously grateful. They feel like saying – ‘how wonderful to know that someone is beginning to understand what it is like to be me’ 
Can you imagine God feeling like this about us? 
God says; ‘how wonderful to know that someone is beginning to understand what it is like to know me and to be KNOWN by me’ 

This is how we feel when we understand that God is always being mindful of us and that we are known by him in all things.
Can you imagine that God is hearing you and that he understands what it feels like to be you? 
That is the work of the Holy Spirit who knew what it felt like to be Jesus as a human being just as Holy Spirit knows us as a person in everything that we feel and understand.
He hears the outpouring of our own inner conflicts, our self-defeating attitudes, and our harmful or careless relational conduct towards others.
We have to know we are being heard without being judged, condemned, rejected or even evaluated for performance. This is because we are serious about knowing God.
When we begin to understand this and believe this that we are known like this we are entering into a healing dazzling light where our darkness can be conquered. 

Entering into this two way mindfulness with God is our wrestle with God and with ourselves. 
Just as Jacob wrestled with God who was in the form of an angel, at a time when he was wondering what his life had been all about, and where was it going in the future. Jacob had been cheating and competing all his life, even trying to beat his twin brother out of the womb, and he ended up cheating him out of his patriarchal inheritance, and he had cheated his father in law out of the best of his cattle. But now he was heading for an encounter with his brother Esau who was on his way to meet up with him – and he was very very worried. Jacob engaged in that wrestle with God that God had set up and this wrestle was the time set for Jacob to come to terms with himself and who he was and to come to terms with God – and he said; ‘I won’t let you go until you bless me’, we enter into the same kind of wrestle with the same kind of feelings and with a heart of saying ‘I won’t let you go until you bless me’. I want to know who you know I am.
Jacob was given another name by God after that wrestle. It was Israel. It means ‘you have prevailed with God’ – that means he stayed the distance and endured and hung on to God no matter what is cost him. It was an eternal Now moment for Jacob’s destiny. That is the story of inner transformation because in this encounter he actually prevailed against himself in his own inner being. He was touched by God on his thigh and his hip was put out of joint in the wrestle, and from then on he walked with a limp. That was the outward sign of his newfound vulnerability and humility. He was a changed man. He was known of God and he knew himself.

The word for mindful  (Mnaomai)in the Scripture comes from the same root word as ‘abiding’ -(meno).
Meno - to stay (in a given place, state of expectancy): — abide, continue, to be present,

That is what it means to abide in Him.

Jesus said to his disciples and to us;
John 15:4 Abide in me, and I will abide in you. For a branch cannot produce fruit if it is severed from the vine, and you cannot be fruitful unless you abide in me.
“Yes, I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who abide in me (are ever being mindful of me), and I in them (ever being mindful of them), will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing.

So this abiding, or mindfulness, is always a present moment experience. You cannot be present yesterday, or tomorrow – only now – the eternal Now. Mutual mindfulness between God and us is our eternal destiny. Or does God want us to live eternally in a chaotic conflicted life here on earth? It is a creation at war with itself when you see the destructive storms, earthquakes, animals killing each other, and killing people, and people killing people and bacteria and virus destroying populations. This will not be the case in eternity – no more sorrow no more tears no more death. BUT Jesus said that in this world we would have tribulation, pain, suffering, conflict, but he said ‘be of good cheer, let a supernatural joy fill your life in the midst of all these things – I have overcome the world. That is what it means – That is the outworking of our two way mindfulness with God in the here and now – that is salvation – The Bible says we are ‘being saved’ and ‘Now is the day of salvation’ – even though Jesus did the saving two thousand years go – our faith appropriates NOW as a conscious reality.
We can arrive at a place of faith where we can say that no matter what important or momentous things are happening I my life, the biggest thing that is REALLY happening is that God is mindful of me!

It is difficult to take our attention off ourselves and our struggles and practice our two way mindfulness and abiding with God.
There are some things that you will find good to be mindful of at the start of each day. 

Remember that God is still the same. He never changes, even if yesterday everything around you changed. His mindfulness means he cannot forget you – your name is written upon the palm of his hand.
Remember that his love for you is an everlasting love, and the reason you exist is because he wants to share his love with you today. 
Remember that he can do all things, and that nothing is impossible for him; who created you, and the Universe, just for you. 
Remember that he only wants the best for you, and he will surprise you with his goodness. 
Tell him you will not worry or be anxious today, for there is no need for that – He will make life work out for you if you let him.
Remember ALL this only becomes a reality when your mindfulness of faith is operating. Outside of that is the darkness of a shadowy world where chaos and anxiety take over the mind. 

we can actually hear God saying this to us, ALWAYS NOW, and we can really listen, and become mindful about how God truly feels about us. When we become willing to make mindfulness of God the centre of our lives we can finally find peace within ourself. There is a peaceful harmony in being a whole person. We also find hidden aspects of self that we have denied to our awareness, and each such discovery of our shadowy self can give us uneasy and anxious moments. But we can come to terms humbly and honestly with these shortcomings knowing we are not rejected but accepted. We live like Jacob had to live with his limp humble but prevailing into a revised and changing picture of self, a challenging, sometimes disturbing, but exciting and never- ending adventure in this present life.

Consider these aspects of God’s mindfulness towards us in the Scriptures

Hebrews 2:6 What is man, that you are mindful of him, or the son of man, that you care for him?

Hebrews 13:8 ‘Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever.’

Psalm139:17 How precious are your thoughts (rêa – intentions, purposes) towards me, O God! How great is the sum of them!

Isaiah 49:16 Behold, I have written  your name on the palms of my hands;

Jeremiah 29:11 ‘For I know the thoughts I have towards you, thoughts of good and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.’

Jeremiah 31:3 ‘I have loved you with an everlasting love, therefore with lovingkindness I have drawn you to me.’

Luke 18:37 ‘There are things that are impossible for men, but with God nothing is impossible’

Psalm 32:8 I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will guide you with My eye.

Exodus 33:14 My presence will go with you and I will give you rest, for you have found grace in my sight and I know you by name.

Philippians 4:6 ‘Do not be anxious for anything, but talk to me about what your needs are, with hope and thanksgiving in your heart.’

What can separate us

WHAT CAN SEPARATE US

God’s love created us and God’s love has joined us to Himself (John 3:16). But what is our experience of God’s love? Our experience will be one of being joined to God and his love or one of being separated from his love and even from God himself. We are going to look at why so many people feel separated from the love of God, and what the Bible says about the experience of being joined to God and his love.
Romans 8:35 What can ever separate us from the love of Christ? Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or hungry, or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death? I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow— No power in the sky above or in the earth below can separate us from God’s love—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.
 ‘no power in the sky above or in the earth below’. 
God does not withdraw his loving, but we can withdraw our receiving of his love. What power causes this, when we just read that no power can separate us? The only power that can do this is the one that lies within us as it did in Adam, to separate ourselves, as we shall see. We are provoked in this by the power of our own desires, and by the power of darkness that seeks to blind our minds, or the bitterness of adversity that makes us feel uncared for. And that lies within us in our mind and heart, either by way of turning away from his love or by not having any inner basis for believing in his love.

Personal turning away
There is an Old Testament Scripture that speaks of God talking to his people about separating themselves through deliberate turning away.
Isaiah 59:2 But your iniquities have separated you from God; And your sins have hidden His face from you.
This separation was not from God’s point of view, but from theirs. His face is hidden from them only because they were pursuing their own desires and not God’s. The word iniquity means lawlessness – being a law unto one’s self. It is our face that turns away and we go where our face turns to (have you ever noticed that?)  It is being separated from letting the activity of God’s love flow in their life. 

Personal ignorance 
There is also the warning of separation through not knowing, not seeing and not hearing in the New Testament for us today.
Ephesians 4:17 don’t live like the Gentiles (ungodly unbelieving world) –who live in the futility of their minds, having their understanding darkened (not knowing), being alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them (not hearing), because of the blindness of their heart (not seeing).
People who have no idea cannot receive God’s life and love. They are not separated from God (from God’s point of view,) but they are alienated from his life as an experience of being joined to him (that is sad). Their experience is separation from God. Mark 4:12 so that while seeing, they may see and not perceive, and while hearing, they may hear and not understand, otherwise they might return and be forgiven.
(The invisible gorilla and the wrong point of view having persuaded them to look for the wrong thing))

Personal disgruntlement
Magnifying negative circumstances – separation virus – just as widespread as the Corona virus - highly contagious – but it’s caught through negative talk and negative example. However there is a vaccine called being renewed in the spirit of the mind (repentance) and receiving faith.
Separation from the life of God is a mindset that was sown into the minds of Adam and Eve and into all of humanity. This causes us to magnify the negative or difficult things in our circumstances and get bitter and disillusioned and stop trusting God, which blocks us off from the consolation of God’s love and encouragement to stay the course in difficult times. 
We are living in a time of global distress and affliction and disappointment, and a lot of bitterness. The whole world sees chaos and disorder and confusion and uncertainty everywhere at this time – but the Scripture says;

Hebrews 2:8 … You have put all things in subjection under his feet… but at the present time, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him - but we see Jesus… (the invisible gorilla)

When we see Jesus with eyes of faith in the midst of all that is happening we are not separated from God’s love but are more single-mindedly joined to God, who is with us and loves us, and we see God in all that happens – we see all things working together for good and God reordering our lives and helping us to let go of the unnecessary and focus on the necessary etc. This is God’s big work in the earth today (Isaiah 28:21). This is the time to have a single mind and to focus with a single eye of faith and see the supernatural work of God bringing order out of chaos and joining people to himself through his love. 
We see victory instead of defeat, hope instead of despair, faith instead of fear. Nothing is separating us from his love. We are joined and not separated.
1Corinthians 6:7…He that is joined to the Lord is ONE SPIRIT.
We are able to see through all of this disorder and uncertainty and say we are well able to overcome. 
Joshua and Caleb saw the challenge of the giants that had to be defeated for them to be able to enter into the Promised Land and said ‘We are well able to overcome’. 

A little while after Israel finally entered the land after their forty year journey in the wilderness Joshua blesses Caleb – we made it Caleb! and invites him to have a say – A big shout out for Caleb… this is what Caleb said;
Joshua 14:6 The people of Judah came to Joshua at Gilgal. Caleb spoke: "You'll remember what God said to Moses the man of God concerning you and me back at Kadesh Barnea. I was forty years old when Moses the servant of God sent me from Kadesh Barnea to spy out the land. And I brought back an honest and accurate report at Hebron with the huge branch full of grapes so big that it needed the two of us to carry it. the other spies discouraged the people, but I stayed the course, totally with God, my God. That was the day that Moses solemnly promised, 'The land on which your feet have walked will be your inheritance, you and your children's, forever. Yes, you have lived totally for God.' Now look at me: God has kept me alive, as he promised. It is now forty- five years since God spoke this word to Moses, years in which Israel wandered in the wilderness. And here I am today, eighty- five years old! I'm as strong as I was the day Moses sent me out. I'm as strong as ever in battle. So give me this mountain that God promised me. You yourself heard the report of what I said that day, when the Anakim giants were there with their great fortress cities –‘ We are well able to overcome’ - If God goes with me, I will drive them out, just as God said. "Joshua blessed him and he gave Hebron to Caleb as an inheritance.

Hebron was the city where Joshua and Caleb brought back the grapes and the good report. The word Hebron means joined together – the opposite to the word badal – which means separation . Hebron was the place of David’s royal residence where he was anointed king and began that royal line that joined  Jesus to his Kingly Heritage. Hebron was the home of Abraham where the three angels appeared to he and Sarah and announced his inheritance of becoming the father of many nations, joining God to his people Israel. 
God wants to give us our Hebron in these times of challenge – Nothing can separate us and like Caleb, we are well able to overcome.

In these days of pandemic the whole world is grieving the loss of so many elderly people and there is much care and compassion felt for them because of their vulnerability. It is a good thing that a younger generation feels this empathy and gives honour to their elders. But there is another side to this picture, and the eighty five year old Caleb is the message of hope and endurance, and fortitude and faith to all generations that follow on behind. I see daily in the eyes of many of my venerable (and often vulnerable) brothers and sisters the same message, the same report that Caleb gave of ‘Give me this mountain’. Yes there are giants in the Land but I have seen an inner strength in these people, won through faithfulness and patience and perseverance, and a wisdom that has aged like an oak tree. They remain as a shelter and a source of strength and loving comfort to the many younger people in their world, that they safeguard in their prayers and in their peaceful presence. This current Caleb generation is a is a sign board in these days that announces victory and not defeat. It is a testimony of God’s faithfulness.

The narrow gate

THE NARROW GATE
We are offered a choice in life to go down one of two pathways, the pathway to life or the pathway to destruction or ruin. There are many metaphors of this choice in the Bible, starting in Deuteronomy when God offers Israel a pathway to life or a pathway to death, one of blessing and one of cursing. Paul talks in the epistles about walking in the Spirit or walking in the flesh, and also about the spiritual mind and the natural mind. In the following Scripture Jesus speaks about the narrow gate and the wide gate. The narrow gate leads to a fulfilled life and the wide gate leads to a destroyed or wasted life. We have one lifetime on this earth and it does not have to be wasted. This choice lies before us all the time.

Matthew 7:13 Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate to destruction (ruin, waste) is wide and the way is easy that leads to it, and many enter in by it. But the gate that leads to life is narrow and the way is hard, and those who find it are few. 

When we enter through the narrow gate we enter into THE LIFE. When we enter in through the wide gate we can enter into A LIFE. There are two words for life in the New Testament in the Greek language, Zoe and Psyche. Zoe is spiritual life – that means Eternal life. Psyche is the word for soul and that means a soul life or a sense life including the experience of our five physical senses. We can experience both of these lives, because we are spirit, soul and body.
Entering into THE LIFE is Eternal life – zoe - we are in the most fulfilling place we can be, within the fulness of God’s life. In this place are able to manage every other aspect of our life because of our hope and expectation of God working with us and within us.

When we enter in through the wide gate we can enter into A LIFE (psyche) which we choose and which is short term and where all things pass away (lead to destruction or waste)
(apolleia – used about 15 times in the New Testament as ruin, loss or waste, not as hell). We are talking about a here and now lifetime on this earth, either as a time of spiritual fulfillment, conscious that we have God with us in every aspect of our life, or a life of relative or mediocre fulfillment and conscious of experiencing the waste of time, money, effort and concern. 

The wide gate
The wide gate can be as wide as a person wants it to be where a diverse number of scattered non-defined ideas and activities go back and forth through the gate and don’t last very long. The wide gate can be narrowed down as much as people want in order to focus on their ideologies or meaningful activities that have intensity but still have a limited energy that fades or wastes away. 
Most people would settle for a relatively fulfilling earthly life entering through the wide gate if there were some worthwhile goals and sufficient focus (EG, family life, or success at work or at other skills or creative pursuits – they put themselves through relatively narrow gates and feel they are who they want to be in that space). But through that wide gate there is will also be a logjam of stress and disorder because other random and unpredictable things always get in the way and lead to too much scattered focus. So let us look at focus.

Focus – wide gate focus and narrow gate focus
Matthew 6:22 The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is single (haplous -  sharply defined - focussed), your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad (ponerous – corrupted, unclear), your whole body will be full of darkness…
In the physical realm, our eyes get drawn to what grabs our attention – a shiny object. But seeing does not only mean physical eye sight. Seeing something can mean understanding something conceptually or at a deeper level seeing something spiritually. This is spiritual vision enlightens the mind and soul, and the heart…
This is where focus is important as we can only physiologically or conceptually or spiritually focus on one thing at one time. A Personal worldview is an individual's philosophy about how life should be and about what forces influence human living. That is what takes their attention and gives them their personal perspective – A POINT OF VIEW! People have been taught one way or another many different stories of what life is all about and they get drawn to certain values and persuasions through what is affecting them in the circumstances that they are in. But because the gate is wide and there is too much distraction their vision becomes scattered instead of focussed. 
This can cause us to fail to see what we need to see even if it is right in front of us. We are going to look at a situation where a physical focus can seriously affect a conceptual focus.
The basketball players on stage and invisible gorilla - Daniel Simons experiment https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJG698U2Mvo

The Narrow Gate - Our Goal
When we enter in by the narrow gate and our eye is single it is like a spiritual laser beam. Laser beams can have what is called a coherence or wholeness of one or more kilometre without scattering, and so entering by the narrow gate allows us to get an eternal quality of accurate vision to know what we need to avoid focussing on because it is a distraction to staying faithful to God’s will for our lives., for what he wants us to see. We are given grace to see what is going on and what is going wrong so that we can take responsibility. We can replace the unhelpful for the purposeful and meaningful. The Holy Spirit draws people towards Jesus, expressing the heart of the Father who draws us to his Son, and draws us away from other distractions and influences. 
John 16:13 When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth… he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine;

We are being trained by God in the spirit, the soul and the body. 
1Thessalonians 5:23 May the God of peace sanctify you completely (set you apart completely for God’s purpose – His goals for your life), spirit soul and body…
Spirit – Revelation to bring light and truth.
Soul   -  Light and truth to bring Love peace and joy.
Body  - Wholeness – to bring rest recovery and restoration. (Vagus nerve stimulation from the brain to the plexus points of the body)

That is the part of the power of what I call Presence Prayer where we are trained by The Holy Spirit to learn focus. 
Presence prayer is sitting quietly focussed upon the love and goodwill of God towards us, his thoughts and intentions for us and his work in the supernatural world of the unseen on our behalf. This is surrendered faith, cooperative faith, shared faith with God.

When we focus on the life of the Spirit we inhabit that place of communion with Jesus and the Father and Holy Spirit. Their thoughts towards us then become the influence upon our life. We get their point of view.
This needs to be connected to a present moment reality that is always available – feelings might come and go and time might pass away, but zoe life and God’s Eternal time (kairos) never disappear, they remain coherent and whole.
At the narrow gate there is a two-way flow of exchange of zoe life between us and God because of our mutual clear focus of shared intention to be there for one another. We are there for Him and He is there for us.
Remember Father’s love for you is as great as it is for Jesus – you are one in the bond of the love of The Holy Spirit. See yourself as part of their circle of love. You are not an outsider, you are an insider. Anything less than that is not the Gospel (Hebrews 4:16). See yourself standing in a prayer huddle with Father, Son and Holy Spirit and receive their faith, and believe. 
This is part of presence Prayer. 
Romans 8:25 the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we should, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. Now He who searches the hearts (Jesus) knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God.
When you are focussing on God with that single eye of faith God is focussing on you as the apple of his eye.
Psalm 17:8 Keep me (that means shield and protect me) as the apple of your eye; hide me in the shadow of your wing… 

Finding meaning

FINDING MEANING
A life without meaning is a life without hope because it means not moving forward to higher things but just going around in futile or unnecessary things. It is important to know that we are being led forward by God on a journey into a higher purpose in God at this time of spiritual challenge. When Israel was taken out of Egypt and led by Moses through the wilderness to get to the Promised Land they found themselves on a journey of discovering the meaning of their life and purpose, and there are lessons for in us these days that we can learn from how they reacted to the challenges of enormous change and disruption so that we can be led by God into our destiny.

1Corinthians 10:1 I don’t want you to forget, dear brothers and sisters, about Israel in the wilderness long ago. All of them were guided by a cloud that moved ahead of them, and all of them walked through the sea on dry ground. They drank from the spiritual rock that travelled with them, and that rock was Christ. Yet God was not pleased with most of them, and many died in the wilderness. Nor should we put Christ to the test, and don’t grumble as some of them did. These things happened to them as examples for us. They were written down to instruct us who live at the end of the age.

It was too hard for Israel, on the inside, to totally to leave the situation they had been in because it meant too much change. When they got to the Red Sea they were too afraid to go across but God did the miracle of parting the waters and they went through. They were also too afraid to enter straight into the Promised Land almost two years later because they saw themselves as helpless grasshoppers in the face of the giants in the land (except for Joshua and Caleb – 10 spies saw nothing but danger and threat and that caused the people to rebel and refuse to go in - Joshua and Caleb saw nothing but fruitfulness and marvellous potential and triumph). So God told Moses that they would wander for another thirty eight more years – forty all together. The actual trek from where they came out of Egypt to Kadesh Barnea, which is the entrance point into the Promised Land can be hiked in eleven days!- by a hiker, not two million people walking slowly (It is across the top of the triangle that is the Sinai Peninsula) However God led them to Kadesh Barneaby their following the cloud of the Holy Spirit on a particular route down to the bottom of the Sinai Peninsula and back up again. That was the two-year part of the journey during in which time he challenged their faith and trust in him by testing their attitudes and reactions to real life survival challenges. 
It would have been like a reality TV survival show where all the worst attitudes in the survivors come to the surface. They went without water for three days and complained bitterly to Moses against God - so God did the miracle where Moses strikes the Rock with his rod bringing forth water (Christ the Rock releases the living water of the Holy Spirit to us). They despised the miracle food called manna that God provided for them and complained that it didn’t taste as good as the food they had in Egypt. They gave up on God when Moses disappeared for six weeks up on top of Mt. Sinai to get the Commandments on tablets of stone, and they made the idol of the golden calf. From the time that God had Moses go to Pharaoh and say ‘let my people go’ and then to go through all the plagues and warnings to Pharaoh who finally said ‘get out of here’ it was at least forty days. The saying goes; It took forty days to get Israel out Egypt  but it took forty years to get the Egypt out of Israel. This meant an unnecessary going around for forty years instead of going forward and going straight in to their land, but they had to learn the meaning and purpose of God for them as a people and that had to wait for the next generation who went into the land under Joshua and Caleb.
Their journey was an example and a warning for us in our generation about not coming to a standstill and going round and round without a sense of meaning or purpose, but going forward in that purpose of God as his people. The world today is experiencing a time of crisis of endurance and survival where many things have come to a standstill, and many people are going round and round, having lost a sense of meaning and purpose in these challenges. We are on a journey with God. This is a time for us to pause and assess where we are individually and as God’s people and to assess where we are going. It is important to know that we are being led forward into a higher purpose in God at this time of spiritual challenge. It is also important to know what we have to do to find meaning on this journey. It means wanting to be where we are going more than staying where we are, and not going round and round as Israel did for forty years. 

A life without meaning is a life without hope. Finding meaning in life is an inner experience of pursuing our highest spiritual goals. For us this means finding partnership with Jesus in every challenge of our life’s journey. The challenge becomes magnified when we are experiencing totally unforeseen situations that require radical change, and the world is in that kind of situation at present. 

We face challenges like survival against an invisible virus, managing an economy that has been overburdened with unanticipated demands upon resources, because the workplace is being demolished. This creates a sense in people of a lack of meaning
We face challenges like the devastating emotional and mental consequences of the hopelessness and confusion and despair of so many needy people. Lack of meaning

Politicians are overwhelmed with such grave responsibilities and many are so preoccupied with grasping for political survival that they are making dangerous errors of judgement, like inviting interference from Communist China to inveigle us into disastrous alliances. Lack of meaning. 

Attempts by people at various levels of government and by political activists to manipulate the uncertainties of our social situation because of special interest ideologies are both foolish and sinister. Ideologies go wrong when people apply an intense narrow focus on things which are not the big picture. Lack of meaning

Many people including some Christians have gone into denial with conspiracy theories that beggar belief, and saying that the virus is a hoax, and ignoring or scoffing common sense precautions. Lack of meaning.

Many regular people who were managing things well enough now find things unmanageable because these challenges have not been faced before. Lack of meaning and sense of futility (giants in the Land)
So for many, the entire situation can appear to have little or no meaning.

That means getting new perspective and understanding and wisdom. It means finding deeper faith, deeper courage and deeper meaning in what we do. But there is meaning in everything that happens in God and we can find that meaning. Reality never disappears when you work at what is real and not just imagined. 
So, are we going forward or just going around? We have everything we need to go forward and find meaning in everything we do.

Here are three pathways for finding meaning in challenging circumstances;

Creative action – When God created the world the Bible says it was without form and void. God brought order into this disorder, or chaos through his Word. We have that creative Logos within us giving us the faith to bring God’s creative order out of disorder. Whenever we do something out of the creative spiritual gift or ability given to us by God we act with that same reordering action of faith! It is a scientific fact that anything left to itself unattended deteriorates or corrupts into a state of disorder- the atomic and sub atomic nature of particles in material things causes them to perish either from the inside out or the outside in. It is the same with things that we have to attend to, like in our relationships or wise self-management of our health or finance or material possessions, we are bringing order out of chaos or disorder, and that is always a meaningful thing to do. We live in a world that has fallen into disorder and corruption in so many ways. It requires energy and action and willingness to be part of the reordering of life in this world and you are called to be a part of that. God is a God of order. 
2 Timothy 1:7 –Not fear (deilia- intimidation) but Power and love and an ordered mind. 

Enduring suffering – Finding hope and strength in times of stress or loss or anxiety or weakness or sickness. This is where miracles of faith happen because Jesus is always with us in those times. That is what having a Saviour is all about, a rescuer in stormy and perilous times 

Matthew 14:24 Meanwhile, the disciples were in trouble far away from land, for a strong wind had risen, and they were fighting heavy waves. About three o’clock in the morning Jesus came toward them, walking on the water. When the disciples saw him walking on the water, they were terrified. In their fear, they cried out, “It’s a ghost!”
But Jesus spoke to them at once. “Don’t be afraid,” he said. “Take courage. I am here!”
Then Peter called to him, “Lord, if it’s really you, tell me to come to you, walking on the water.” “Yes, come,” Jesus said. So Peter went over the side of the boat and walked on the water toward Jesus. But when he saw the strong wind and the waves, he was terrified and began to sink. “Save me, Lord!” he shouted. Jesus immediately reached out and grabbed him. “You have so little faith,” Jesus said. “Why did you doubt me?”
When they climbed back into the boat, the wind stopped.

Recall the times that Jesus has rescued you in the storms - and expect that to continue. 

Loving care – It was out of love that God created us and it is his love that gives meaning to our lives. There was great meaning for God in creating the universe but what had greatest meaning for God was creating you out of his overflow of love. You were adopted (placed in his family) alongside of Jesus. 
John 17:26 I I will continue to make your name known so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them…vs.23…and you have loved them even as you loved me. The Father loves us a much as he loves Jesus. That is his secret weapon for transforming our lives, not force or coercion but knowing his love.
knowing the greatness his love for us not only gives our personal lives our greatest meaning but it makes loving others more meaningful. Caring for the needs of others in family or extended family, friends or strangers that come across your path gives our lives together its Real Meaning.

 

Prisoners of Hope

PRISONERS OF HOPE 
I want to speak today about the hope that can be found during times of uncertainty when many have lost hope and are grieving that loss. I am framing this within the time frame of Israel trying to find their way forward and still floundering after being in captivity in Babylon for seventy years. The prophets at that time knew that God was preparing them for a new hope and were encouraging and challenging them to prepare for that time. 
Zechariah 9:11 Because of the blood of my covenant with you, I will set you prisoners free from the dungeon. Return to your stronghold, you prisoners of hope; today I declare that I will doubly restore all to you.  

Jeremiah and Ezekiel and Haggai and Zechariah and Malachi all wrote to Israel before there was a four hundred years of silence during which time there was no king and no prophetic voice until the time of John the Baptist and Jesus. Jeremiah wrote the book of Lamentations about the hopelessness felt by Israel in bondage in Babylon during their time of standstill as God’s people. They had lost all sense of a future and were grieving their past. They needed to find hope.
For almost two generations they had been oppressed by cruel leaders of other nations and many had put their hope inother gods of other nations, and many had felt that God had abandoned them, but he hadn’t. Jeremiah captures their mood in the following Scripture from the book of Lamentations.
Lamentations 3:11 He has dragged me into the underbrush and torn me with his claws, leaving me bleeding and desolate. He has bent his bow and aimed it squarely at me, and sent his arrows deep within my heart.
He has filled me with bitterness and given me a cup of deepest sorrows to drink. He has made me eat gravel and broken my teeth; he has rolled me in ashes and dirt. O Lord, all peace and all prosperity have long since gone, for you have taken them away. I have forgotten what enjoyment is. All hope is gone; my strength has turned to water, for the Lord has left me. Oh, remember the bitterness and suffering you have dealt to me! For I can never forget these awful years; But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope:
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness. “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.”
The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him.
It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.

The prophecy of Zechariah about being prisoners of hope speaks to us today, just as it spoke then to Israel. It is a prophesy of renewed hope.
Zechariah 9:11 Because of the blood of my covenant with you, I will set you prisoners free from the dungeon. Return to your stronghold, you prisoners of hope; today I declare that I will doubly restore all to you.

This is being set free from a dungeon of disappointment and returning to God’s prison of hope in him. 

Disappointment has to do with what we expect of life, of ourself, and of others. This can lead to a wrong hope because we can have wrong expectations of all these things. Our only true hope is because of a true expectation of God.
Our hope is not based upon what we can do, or others – Our hope is based on what God does do and is doing. Our faith is the foundation of this hope. 
Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is the substance (foundation - hypostasis) of things hoped for, the evidence of things (deeds-pragma) not seen. That means the things (deeds) that God is doing in the world of the unseen, what he is doing! That is what our faith is, and that is what our hope stands upon.
Our hope is not always reliable when it is in something we want to have.
Our hope is always reliable when it is in Someone who gives us what he wants us to have, doing the good thing (deed) for us. Faith is not trying to believe as hard as we possibly can, that God will give us what we want to see happen – that can be a wrong expectation and lead to disappointment and lead to giving up on God. Our faith undergirds our true hope in God, that he will do his good thing (deed) that is his will for us.
So what do we expect from God concerning his prison of hope, and not living in the dungeon of disappointment.

Jeremiah 29:11 For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of grief, to give you a future and a hope. 
Psalm 139:17 How precious it is, Lord, to realize that you are thinking (purposefully) about me constantly! I can't even count how many times a day your thoughts turn toward me. And when I waken in the morning, you are still thinking of me! (God’s thoughts are about his deeds that he will to do for us in the world of the unseen, the world of faith – which reinforces our hope).
Zechariah 9:11 Because of the blood of my covenant with you, I will set you prisoners free from the dungeon. Return to your stronghold, you prisoners of hope; today I declare that I will doubly restore all to you. 

It is not the circumstances that defeat us. It is our reactions to them that defeat us – we lose sight (faith) of God.
Our stress or discomfort or frustration can awaken us to hear the message of hope and to put our hope in God. 

What does our future hope depend upon?
Our future hope does not depend on our controlling our circumstances.
Our future hope does not depend upon what we have failed in in the past that may dash our hopes for the future.
Our future hope makes us ready for action. 

1 Peter 1:13 Therefore, preparing your minds to be ready for action (not reaction), and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. 
We take on a mindset of moving forward in God’s empowering grace. That means that when God reveals to us what his is doing, and that is seen in the circumstances he places before us after we have surrendered a situation into his hands. We then are empowered to respond to that in a God given faith that Holy Spirit gives to us. Remember what Jeremiah said in that last part of Lamentations;

The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him.
It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord 

Our future hope depends upon how we are responding to what is – now. 
Miracles become familiar occurrences with The Holy Spirit composing and arranging situations with supernatural creativity beyond our ability to organize them. It is not so much seeking these things, but expecting them - our hope is imprisoned in God. 
He is in this situation, and is with me in this situation, and is transforming me, and is transforming my future.

But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope. The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.” The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him.
It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.

This is waiting for us to take hold of, in every challenge that seeks to rob us of a true hope. Get yourself into this hope – it is the true understanding of your faith!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Prepare the way of The Lord

PREPARE THE WAY OF THE LORD

Twelve years after the rebuilding of the walls and gates of the city at Jerusalem had been accomplished the prophet Malachi wrote the last prophetic book of the Old Testament. God’s people now had all they needed to present themselves to the world as a people of God who would be a testimony to the fact that an all loving, all powerful, just and good God was alive in the Heavens. They had rebuilt the altar of sacrifice, laid the cornerstone and true foundation and rebuilt the temple, then re-established the Word of God through Ezra and the priests, then rebuilt the walls and gates of the city, and everything looked so good. There had been such a lot of ‘rise up and build’ on the outside - but unfortunately there had been very little ‘rise up and build’ on the inside that God wanted from them.

Prophets like Haggai and Zechariah’s had been speaking a message of the coming of the Messiah and the completion of the temple (516 b.c). And now a mere twelve years after the completion of all the gates and walls and temple there came the final prophesy of Malachi, who was also prophesying that The Messiah would come to this completed temple. Here is the key verse;

Malachi 3:1 Behold, I will send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me. And the Lord (Messiah) whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple, the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, behold, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts.

You would have thought that now was the time for something wonderful to happen, but nothing wonderful happened – everything stopped, came to a standstill. There Then there was time of silence for four hundred years – a prophetic pause! The next prophet to speak was John the Baptist. 
What does a time of silence of four hundred years speak of? What does a prophetic pause like this mean?
It speaks of preparing the way of The Lord even in a time of scarceness and insufficiency with a full hope and expectation for something wonderful to happen. I believe we are in a global prophetic pause in this current global catastrophe. But the pause is full of the purpose of God, and a moving forward  in the purpose of God, with the promise of worldwide Holy Spirit activity.

So, There was a silence of four hundred years after the final word from Malachi, no prophets and no revelation of God’s word or priestly instruction in the ways of God. Then something wonderful happened – John the Baptist prepared the way for Jesus.
There was also a silence of four hundred years from the time God’s people became slaves in Egypt and then became free, and during that time there were no prophets and no revelation of God’s word or priestly instruction in the ways of God. Then something wonderful happened. God set Israel free to be led on a journey to the Promised Land.

A four hundred years experience is a time of preparation, the time of expectation for something wonderful to come, while at the same time knowing that things should and could be a lot better now. A four hundred years experience in the Old Testament does not have to be a literal four hundred years in the New Testament (Kairos prophetic time). It simply indicates a time of preparation, a time of expectation, and of waiting for God to presence himself among us. 

Paul told us that what Israel went through in the forty years in the wilderness was a prophetic pause for them to be ready to go into the promised Land. He spoke of Israel in their forty year wilderness experience as an example for us of learning how to trust God individually and corporately so as to enter into the fulness of the promise of God in Christ. For us that obviously doesn’t mean forty years – it means the challenges of faith and trust in God that can be jammed into whatever time frame God has to get our attention, to get our response.
1Corinthians 10:11 Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come.

This preparation time of waiting and expectation for us becomes the time of understanding how we can be part of the preparing of the way of The Lord, for the powerful presence of God to come, in His time. There are also things we need to attend to that we may need to change, or at least get done with more faith and understanding and revelation from The Holy Spirit. who is our anointed teacher (1John 2:27).

The next prophet to speak after Malachi four hundred years later was John the Baptist, spoken of in Malachi as Elijah, a messenger to prepare the way for the other Messenger who was Jesus the messenger of the New Covenant. Can we presume this ? Jesus said it! 
Matt. 11:13 “For all the prophets and the Law prophesied until John, and if you are willing to accept it, John himself is Elijah who was to come.  

The Holy Spirit as our anointed teacher instructs us in the way we should go and challenges when we need course correction through neglect or distraction and inspires us when we need motivation to reach a higher spiritual vision – they needed prophets, we have the Holy Spirit. And at that time the anointed prophet Malachi begins to set a higher goal for God’s people by addressing the priests, who were not honouring God and had become corrupt. Worship had become routine and unfaithfulness in marriage was widespread. Their vision had to be lifted higher. Social justice was being ignored and tithing was neglected. “Will man rob God?” the Lord asks (3:8), and he promised to “open the windows of heaven” (v. 10) if they honoured Him in this way. Malachi assures his people that God knows those who fear him and those who do not. 
now let us look at seven things that Malachi said God’s people would need to attend to for that time of preparation to be fruitful. Malachi was actually seeking to set their vision higher for their sakes, not just to admonish them in their insufficiency. God sets our vision high because it the most efficient way to inspire us to embrace a life full of meaning and purpose. The most positive emotion we can experience physiologically is that of pushing toward the highest most worthwhile goals (emote = Pootho’ Grk = push forward). God created us with a neurological hormonal pathway from a certain part of our brain, the Hypothalamus that stimulates and motivates us into a sense of purpose and meaning when we aspire to higher goals. A substance called dopamine is released and energizes our entire motivational attitude when we set our heart on achieving what is worthwhile and meaningful to us (in fact the artificial administration of this substance makes a person feel that whatever they are doing seems amazingly meaningful – thus the popularity of illegal recreational drug taking. But God always has something for us to aspire to that is full of his reality and purpose for our lives. 

Seven pathways of preparing the way

1. Preparing the way as a priest in the role and example of worship and instruction and faithfulness because a priest was a ‘go-between’ from God to His people. Angels could bless people and mediate the Old Testament Law but they are not authorized to preach the Gospel ( and many strange religions have claimed angelic revelation- the warning of this is in Galatians).
Malachi 2:1 Listen, you priests—The words of a priest’s lips should preserve knowledge of God, and people should go to him for instruction, for the priest is the messenger of the Lord. But you priests have left God’s paths
We are ALL his priests and able to give Words of life as God’s messengers of hope in a bleak and disheartened world. (1Peter 2:9 …you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood). So who gets us back on the path, the Holy Spirit, who makes the truth of God’s word alive to us so that we can make it live in other people.

2. Preparing the way as bridge-builders of trust in God’s Covenant.
Malachi 2;10 Are we not all children of the same Father? Are we not all created by the same God? Then why do we betray each other, violating the covenant of our ancestors?
We can see all of humanity as belonging to God the Father, and we can be bridge-builders of trust in a world where many people are polarized because of tribalism and identity politics. Holy Spirit can give us wisdom when we become engaged in conversation with people who are being overwhelmed with all the negative talk they are hearing these days, and the abusive criticism they see people attacking one another with constantly on TV or radio. 
Mark 4:24 Take heed what you hear. With the same measure you use, it will be measured to you; 
We have the choice of what to have multiplied within us.

3. Preparing the way through loving relationships
Malachi 2:14 You cry out, “Why doesn’t the Lord accept my worship?” I’ll tell you why! Because the Lord witnessed the vows you and your wife made when you were young. But you have been unfaithful to her.
God honours faithfulness in marriage and wants to see healing in our land because of the wounding caused by unfaithfulness. He wants to see faithfulness in all of our relationships and because we are His beloved as His bride we have a special work of the Holy Spirit releasing a loving faithful response back to Him from our hearts -what an aspiration!

4. Preparing the way through showing justice and mercy
Malachi 3;5 I will speak against those who cheat employees of their wages, who oppress widows and orphans…says the Lord.
True leadership is demonstrating integrity and honesty and mercy in the workplace. When we work as unto The Lord he resources us and rewards the work of our hands (Colossians 3:23)
God’s people can be blessed in the workplace in their faithfulness and their faith and be seen as givers and not takers of all God given blessings. We are here to be blessed and to bless.

5. Preparing the way by embracing trials of faith
Malachi 3:1-3 I am sending my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me. Then the Lord you are seeking will suddenly come to his Temple. Who will be able to stand and face him when he appears? He will sit like a refiner of silver, burning away the dross. He will purify the Levites, refining them like gold and silver…
Malachi is talking to the priests again here (that’s us!) and we can only pass on to others what we have actually received from the Lord and then we have the authority  declare the purposes of God – and you will do that by living out the purposes of God.’ That comes by embracing the trials of faith that purify our hearts, knowing that they transform us into his likeness, which is the gold that speaks of the nature of God. (1Peter 1:7). 

6. Preparing the way by honouring God financially and materially
Malachi 3:8-12 Should people cheat God? Yet you have cheated me!
“But you ask, ‘What do you mean? When did we ever cheat you?’
“You have cheated me of the tithes and offerings due to me. You are under a curse, for your whole nation has been cheating me. Bring all the tithes into the storehouse so there will be enough food in my Temple. If you do,” says the Lord of Heaven’, “I will open the windows of heaven for you. I will pour out a blessing so great you won’t have enough room to take it in! Try it! Put me to the test! Your crops will be abundant, for I will guard them from insects and disease. Your grapes will not fall from the vine before they are ripe,” says the Lord of Heaven. “Then all nations will call you blessed,
New Testament tithing is a willing response of grace filled gratitude for God’s provision. It is not a legalistic way of earning God’s blessing or negotiating a deal with God.  We do not tithe to an Old Testament levitical priesthood. We tithe out of grace to Jesus our Melchidisek priest. In all my years of ministry I’ve never believed in putting people under the law in this truth because no human pressure or manipulation  should touch this this act of faith. I have been blessed to witness the response of many hearts of such and grace, and seen the blessing of God upon that.
Hebrews 7:8 Here mortal men (Levites) receive tithes, but there (Heaven) He (Jesus) receives them, and that is our witness that we believe that he lives.
(I have expanded on this special priesthood of Jesus in Commandment eight in my podcast on the Ten Commandments – click the link at   uncreated.podbean.com  ) 

7. Preparing the way through family harmony and honour. This is the final Word for us to hear and respond to in our time of silence, our time of hope and expectation to see the blessing of God upon this world. 
Malachi 4:1 The Lord says, “But for you who fear my name, the Sun of Righteousness will rise with healing in his wings. I am sending you the prophet Elijah before the great and dreadful day of the Lord arrives. His preaching will turn the hearts of fathers to their children, and the hearts of children to their fathers. Otherwise I will come and strike the land with a curse. (So let there come a blessing and not a curse upon our land)

In these times in which we live this is not only a word spoken by Malachi in the very last verse of the very last book of the Old Testament about Elijah/John the Baptist – it is the Word being spoken to us in these days.
Jesus has made us one with Himself and with His Father. That was his great work to make us a part of his family. We have the power of The Holy Spirit drawing us into his family bond of love with them and with one another.

These times of challenge are the times to expect to see the blessing of the healing power of Jesus for families in spirit, soul and body. Pray for reconciliation to happen in families to bless our land of hope and faith and love. There may be ones who feel they have reached out and done all they can, and what more can be done? Remember – We keep our hearts aligned with God’s and It is God who turns the hearts of people. God wants to bring this final blessing upon the earth in these days.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Malachi’s message is in the context of preparing the way for the Father’s heart of 
blessing to be received by his children
And now Malachi writes. The opening statement from God through Malachi (Ch 1:2) is in the context of a loving Father whose inheritance is not being appreciated. He uses the illustration of Jacob and Esau, where Jacob regarded the inheritance and Esau did not. Then a few verses later (CH1:6) God says ‘A son honors his father, and a servant respects his master. If I am your father and master, where are the honor and respect I deserve? You have shown contempt for my name! 10 How I wish one of you would shut the Temple doors so that these worthless sacrifices could not be offered! I am not pleased with you,” says the Lord.’
The theme of the honour due to a father is not only spoken of in the first few verses of the book, the aggrieved fatherhood theme is also emphasised in the centre of the book where God speaks as the Father/Creator of all of humanity. 
Malachi 2;10 Are we not all created by the same God? Are we not all children of the same Father? Then why do we betray each other, violating the covenant of our ancestors?
The theme of the honour due to a father is also the theme of the last verse of the book (Ch4:6) I am sending you the prophet Elijah before the great and dreadful day of the Lord arrives. His preaching will turn the hearts of fathers to their children, and the hearts of children to their fathers. Otherwise I will come and strike the land with a curse.
In the last few verses of this book Malachi speaks of judgment and of blessing to come, and so it commands the attention of everyone who reads it.

 

As in the previous accounts of this reset and rebuild of God’s people after a strange time of standstill and disorientation, there are parallels to the Church in this strange time in which we live, in a time of standstill and disorientation. The Church today appears to have all it could need in the form of resources such as churches and worship and leaders and helpers and programs and marketing, but is God calling for something more? What we want and need is the presence of God in our midst, rather than just the presence of all the sincere and wonderful human ability and performance and Bible knowledge in our midst.

From the first few verses of this book Malachi’s purpose was to assure his people that God still loved them and was keeping his Covenant with them (Ch.1:2-5 - "I have loved you," says God. But you say, "In what way have you loved us?). Malachi tells us throughout the book that God calls for respect and honor, and faithfulness and love.

But my name is honored by people of other nations from morning till night. All around the world they offer sweet incense and pure offerings in honor of my name. For my name is great among the nations,” says the Lord.