Spiritcode

Temple Prayer

In ancient times people believed in gods of one kind or another and the gods lived in a different world, an unseen world, so they made idols. There’s a simple logic in this. Something bigger than us it seemed was in charge of what happened at a mega level of cosmic activity and design, the weather, the seasons, life and death, what appeared to be good fortune and bad fortune etc. So they did their best to manage the moods or whims of the unpredictable gods with a thousand superstitious rituals ranging from the trivial to the murderous. But our Creator God of the Bible did reveal himself to his beloved humanity to do them good, and he finally asked his people to make a home for him to dwell in upon Earth, where he would come and meet with them.

The man he asked was Solomon. Solomon’s prayer to dedicate the temple held within it this extraordinary idea of a meeting place on earth between man, and the God who lived in a world of his own. Their heart was to have heaven come to them upon the earth.

2Chronicles 6:18 But will God really live upon the earth with men? Why, even the heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain you--how much less this Temple I have built!
(Acts 7:48 AND 17:24) (Job 19:25 I know that my redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand on the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my body I will see God)

"O How I pray that you will heed my prayers, O Lord my God! Listen to my prayer that I am praying to you now! Look down with favor day and night upon this Temple--upon this place where you have said that you would put your name. May you always hear and answer the prayers I will pray to you as I face toward this place.
1. Prayer for God’s justice in oppression 2. Recovery from the blows of the enemy
3. Providing resources to prosper the work of our hands
4. Healing and remedy of the plight of one who knows their own burden and their own grief and spreads out their hands to God. 5. That a foreigner can pray to you and be heard so that all people who don’t know you will come to know your name and know your temple is called by your name 6. Victory when we enter into battle. 7. Supernatural release after being taken captive.

John 2:18 So the Jews said to him, “What sign do you show us for doing these things?” Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The Jews then said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?” But he was speaking about the temple of his body
The temple was destroyed 40 years later and was never rebuilt. It did not have to be rebuilt as now we are his temple, just as he was the temple.

1Cor 6:19 Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought with a price;

John 14:23 We will come and make our home with you

How can we contain God?
Only by being an open vessel, always filled and overflowing..

Ian Heard - Grace at Ha Makon

Psalm 26:8; Psalm 27; Psalm 91; Hebrew 4:16
The fallen-world system can only offer uncertainty and chaos. It can assure nothing. Everywhere, people try to mitigate uncertainty by placing faith in superannuation, the stock market, investments, medicine, alliances, formulas. Millions of dollars go into prognostication, yet fear, depression, paranoia and stress abound. These are in fact, disorder! If that environment becomes ‘home’ to us , we will speak, work and live from that centre. We will live and speak uncertainty, doubt and fear, even though a different and superior place is available; a place of security, out of which we can live and speak certainty, grace and faith. It’s not God’s intention for us to live from disorder. He is righteous—meaning everything in his realm (kingdom) is in right order and alignment—and, if we know him, he bestows on us his righteousness (government of right order… ‘I bestow on you a kingdom’ Lk. 22:29) , intending us to live out of the same place as he! Here’s a typical description of where it’s possible for me to live (typical because these descriptions occur again and again in God’s word!). This place (see Psalm 91) provides for us...

*Deliverance from traps deliberately set to bring me to harm and from plagues of mischief. * Protection as a hen protects its chicks; ‘You can’t hurt them without hurting me’! *Absolute Truth shielding me.
*Freedom from fear...the dreads that night awakenings can bring or the danger of attack in the light of day. *Angels taking charge over me, to watch, protect and deliver. *Authority over that which would either eat me or poison me (lion and cobra). *Answered prayer, assurance of salvation and length of days! (What’s not to like!?)
Is this where I want to live? How does it become reality? Who gets this? Those who learn to live where David lived. This is the ‘come what may’ place! The, ‘though the fig tree does not blossom….yet will I rejoice in the Lord’ place of Habakkuk 3: THIS IS…

THE SECRET PLACE: (Psalm 91:1 and 26:5 ) David knew about the ‘secret place’, HaMakom (The Place) where God settled among his people. In the tent, among them, yet hidden. He lived then, and now, in hidden accessibility. The people could not enter the most holy place; only their representative could go there, once a year, taking the blood! That meant that faith was required to draw near—a heart response. God still lives in this ‘hidden accessibility’ but the difference now is that the veil has been torn away and all may enter into the Presence freely, but it’s still by faith because it’s a heavenly room; the heavenly holy of holies! Still the Secret Place—but we’ve been allowed (indeed, invited) in—it’s by the blood of Jesus! Our High Priest now takes us in for we are in him! This is our HaMakom, from which we are to live!

THE PRESENCE PLACE: the word translated ‘dwells’ in Psalm 26:8 and ‘dwell’ in Ex. 25:8 is from the Hebrew SHAKAN from which the word ‘shekinah’ (a Rabbinic word not in the Bible) is derived. It describes where His presence and its glory settles! They had to believe he was in there….above the mercy seat, between the wings of the cherubim, just as he said he’d be—THERE…for them and with them! (‘Have them make me a sacred place [miqdash—sanctuary] that I may dwell [settle] in amongst them’ Exodus 25:8). This was what made them a distinctive people. We, no matter where we are physically, can be in the Presence. Paul was there on a sinking ship with 200 unbelievers, assuring them and instructing them. He and Silas were there in a Philippian jail. No matter our physical location…we can be at HaMakom. This is what made it, for David—

THE BELOVED Place: David said, ‘LORD, I have loved the habitation of your house, HaMakom where your glory dwells’ (Psalm 26:8). David’s heart was always there. Wherever he went his heart was connected by a cord to the Locus of his life; into battle, among liars and cheats, facing Goliaths and dealing with Sauls. Like the sons of Korah (Psalm 84:5-6) he could say, ‘blessed is the man whose strength is in you; in whose heart are the highways to Zion’—that is, those who, even though separated physically, make pilgrimage in their hearts into God’s presence in Zion. For such people, says the Psalm, ‘as they pass through the Valley of Weeping they make it a place of springs’!

THE PRIORITY PLACE: For David, HaMakom was the priority in his life. He said, ‘one thing have I desired of the Lord (Yahweh), that will I seek; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord….’ This was David’s first desire; the one nothing else could supplant. It’s why God described David as a man ‘after my own heart’ (1 Samuel 13:14 & Acts 13:22). David said, ‘I have set the Lord always before me; because he is at my right hand I shall not be moved’ (Psalm 16:8). By faith, wherever he went, he was dwelling there! (And this, under an inferior covenant!)

THE MEETING PLACE: God’s heart and David’s heart met at HaMakom. It was where David’s desires became one with God’s so they flowed together…the place of answered prayer! He wrote, ‘when you said, “seek my face” my heart said, “your face Lord will I seek.” Jesus said, ‘if you abide in me and my words abide in you, you shall ask what you will and it shall be done for you’ (John 15:7). The meeting place is where our will becomes subsumed in his and his desires become ours and ours, his. God’s heart is that we seek his face. He has provided a place where this can occur. He longs to meet with us.

THE SECURE PLACE: ‘In the day of adversity He shall hide me (as treasure) in his hiding place (den), in the secret place of his tent he shall hide me.’ It was where David found utmost safety. Here was a security nothing in the world could provide; not David’s armies and valiant men; not fortresses and palaces; not wealth or power or success. This is not escapism, but the place from which to function in total security!

THE EXALTING PLACE: ‘And now my head shall be exalted above my enemies all
around me’; being properly in the Presence and living from there, guarantees that God is taking care of those spiritual (or physical) enemies against us. Why is this? Because if we will humble ourselves in his presence, he will exalt us. Peter wrote ‘humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God (that in due season he may exalt you), casting all your care on him.’ We humble ourselves by casting ALL our care on him! And from that place THE PLACE, he is then able to exalt us.

His grace for me, for us, flows at HaMakom, THE PLACE. As soon as I allow my heart to go to another ‘place’ there’s a sense in which I’m on my own, becoming independent. THE PLACE is where he calls us to live from and to live out our days.
‘Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need’ (Heb 4:16)

Ian Heard - Sept. 2/2018 www.until-we-see.com

Living waters

THE TEN TRIALS – Trial - THE LIVING WATERS
Exodus 17:1… There was no water for the people to drink... and they complained against Moses
And the Lord said to Moses, ‘Take in your hand your rod with which you struck the river. I will stand before you there on the rock between you and Mount Sinai; and you will strike the rock, and water will come out of it, so that the people may have water.” So he called the name of the place Massah (testing) and Meribah (dissatisfaction), because they tempted the Lord, saying, “Is the Lord’s presence among us or not?” That was the real test and the real complaint!

1Corinthians 10:1 I don’t want you to forget about our ancestors in the wilderness long ago.. . All of them ate the same spiritual food, and all of them drank the same spiritual water. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that traveled with them, and that Rock was Christ. These things were written down to warn us who live at the end of the age so that we would not crave evil things as they did.

So from Christ our Rock pours forth the water (The Holy Spirit) satisfying thirst and giving life.
So what is God saying to us here?
GOD IS SAYING THAT HE WILL JUST KEEP SHOWING UP FOR US. BUT HE WANTS TO GIVE US A HUNGER AND A THIRST FOR HIM.
John 6:35 And Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst.

JESUS AT THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES (Jesus prophetically fulfilled all the feasts of Israel)
John 7:37 On that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink, he who believes in Me.” As the Scripture has said, “Out of His heart will flow rivers of living water.” (The Temple Ezek 47, and the Rock Exodus 17, Zech 14). He was speaking of the Holy Spirit, whom those believing in Him would receive (embrace)

The activities of the FEAST OF TABERNACLES were something to make a song and dance about

1. The ceremonial drawing of water each morning from the pool of Siloam (reflected in 7:37-38)
2. A reminder of the water that came from the rock smitten by Moses, when the people were in danger of perishing from thirst (Exod 17:1-6)
3. A golden pitcher was filled with water and carried back to the temple.
4. Trumpet blasts and singing of Isaiah 12:3, "With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation."
5. A chosen priest ascended the altar then the priest called for people to come and get the water.

When Jesus "stood and cried out" at that moment when the priest at the altar lifted up his hand to signify the calling to come and get the water, the effect of the cry on the multitude would have been as a thunderclap from heaven. Everybody would have known whose cry it was, and many would have seen its significance, namely that Jesus had come to embody all that past experience in the wilderness. (vs. 40 Surely this is the Prophet etc.) The police officers said ‘no one has ever spoken like this man. Nicodemus defended Jesus saying the Law couldn’t judge unless people have heard what the man has to say. Jesus had turned their historic feast into a proclamation of their (and our) salvation, our present faith, and our future hope, an astounding fulfillment of prophecy.

The Bread of life

THE TEN TRIALS – Trial 3 - THE BREAD OF LIFE
Exodus Chapter 16:3 “If only the Lord had killed us back in Egypt,” they moaned. “There we sat around pots filled with meat and ate all the bread we wanted. But now you have brought us into this wilderness to starve us all to death.” Then the Lord said to Moses, “Look, I’m going to rain down food (manna vs.15) from heaven for you. Each day the people can go out and pick up as much food as they need for that day. I will test them in this to see whether or not they will follow my instructions. On the sixth day they will gather food, and when they prepare it, there will be twice as much as usual.” Vs.16 … “This is what the Lord has said: ‘Tomorrow is a Sabbath rest, a holy Sabbath to the Lord. Bake what you will bake today, and lay up for yourselves all that remains, to be kept until morning

This was the next test and was also prophetic of Jesus being our ‘Bread of Life’, and our ‘Sabbath Rest’

JOHN 6:48 I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and are dead. This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever;

God had to let them get hungry to reveal to them that their craving for food was not about hunger but about appetites (a good test). This relates to food for the soul. Appetites are essential for a normal life but can be disastrous if their intensity not managed. They are attached to an emotional loop system but hunger is attached to nourishment and wholeness. What we want and what we should have are often two different things.

John 4:34. Then Jesus said: “ My food (for strength) is to do the will of him who sent me and to make his work complete” (He didn’t say ‘My duty is to…’)
Just as the healing (not bringing forth) of the waters of Marah was for the healing of their bitter disappointment by being touched with the Tree of Life for new hope, so there is also the provision of supernatural food that nourishes our heart and soul, as we share in the supernatural work of the doing of God’s good will to others. The powerful energy of God’s love to others feeds our soul as well as theirs. (Jesus fixes our thirst before dealing with our appetite).

Matthew 5:6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied (filled).

Doing the will of the Father is towards God before it is toward others. Toward God is something we arrange purposefully as an act of worship. But doing the good will of God for others we cannot always arrange (other than in prayer). The opportunity tends to land on your doorstep unexpected. How many interruptions last week were actually opportunities to eat the bread of life and be nourished and strengthened. But we so often don’t get it. Jesus can often seem like an interruption to our day. He comes disguised as our everyday up and down life.

The Sabbath rest means that we don’t work in our own strength but we do the good will of God on our new (everyday) Sabbath, that is, in His life giving energy as we rest in the faith of His work being done.
JUST BE READY not striving in your own strength - Sabbath IS Sabbath. OR THE MANNA GOES OFF!
Vs.20 But of course some of them wouldn't listen, and left it until morning; and when they looked, it was full of maggots and smelled terrible; and Moses was very angry with them.
It is on the Sabbath that the Manna is most enjoyable because we are not even gathering it – it has already been gathered and waiting for us to eat it and be nourished. Doing the Sabbath goodwill of God is always fresh and refreshing.
What’s waiting for you today?

 

Disappointment and the bitter waters

THE TEN TRIALS – Trial 2 - THE BITTER WATERS
Exodus 15:22-25 So Moses brought Israel from the Red Sea; then they went out into the Wilderness of Shur, and they went three days in the wilderness and found no water. 23 Now when they came to Marah, they could not drink the waters of Marah, for they were bitter. 24 And the people complained against Moses, saying, “What shall we drink?” So he cried out to the Lord, and the Lord showed him a tree. When he cast the tree into the waters, the waters were made sweet 25…and there He tested them.
God wanted to reveal to Israel their reaction to disappointment, shown by their bitter complaining. It was after a three-day thirst (just about the limit). When God showed him the tree, it healed the waters.
This was a picture of Jesus, the Tree of Life, who heals our disappointment.

TWO TREES
Proverbs 13:12 Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but when desire comes, it is 'a tree of life’.
We become conditioned to living out of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. That ‘wrong tree’ leads to ‘wrong expectations’ of life and of God, and this leads to disappointment. Jesus shows us how to live out of the Tree of Life.

THE DEVIL’S OFFER OF THE WRONG TREE TO ADAM AND EVE - AND THE REST OF US
A. THE LIE
Genesis 3:1 The serpent was the most cunning of all the other creatures God had made. One day he asked the woman, “Did God really say you must not eat the fruit from any of the trees in the garden?”
“Of course we may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, It’s only the fruit from the tree in the middle of the garden that we are not allowed to eat. God said, ‘You must not eat it or even touch it; if you do, you will die. “You won’t die!” the serpent replied to the woman. “God knows that your eyes will be opened as soon as you eat it, and you will be like God, knowing both good and evil.” (Hebrews 5:14)
The woman was convinced. She saw that the tree was beautiful and its fruit looked delicious, and she wanted the wisdom it would give her. So she took some of the fruit and ate it. Then she gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it, too. At that moment their eyes were opened, and they suddenly felt shame at their nakedness. So they sewed fig leaves together to cover themselves.

B – (If the devil were telling the truth)
‘Go on, you know that the moment God said you were not to eat the fruit from that tree, you knew you wanted to try it, so just eat it, have your own way. But you will find you’ll never be sure that God really wants the best for you. Go on, find out for yourself. This tree will drive you crazy. You will think you are wise and that you know everything but you will get anxious and reactive and disappointed with life rather than peaceful and proactive and satisfied. And you will become suspicious of what God is going to do next to make you pay for being so foolish and irrational. This tree will cause you all your problems yet you will think it gives you all your answers. You will become like me (haha). It’s scary, so learn to live with it because it’s all this world has to offer.’

Signed ‘Diabolos – (To throw something without knowing where it will land - missing the mark)’

P.S. Best of luck – you’ll need it!

So selling humanity the choice of the tree of knowledge was the first experience of our being robbed of hope because it caused us to move away from trusting God to trusting in self. This misplacing of trust and hope is the cause of all our misplaced expectations, and the cause of all our disappointment.

AVOIDING DISAPPOINTMENT
The Holy Spirit will activate the true behaviour of the ‘right tree’ self in us, as we spend more and more time with Jesus. That is why Jesus tells us to abide in the vine, so that we can bear his fruit.
Matthew 7:16 Can you pick grapes from a thorn bush, or figs from thistle tree? A good tree produces good fruit, and a bad tree produces bad fruit. A good tree can’t produce bad fruit, and a bad tree can’t produce good fruit.
Some natural trees are better trees to pick from than others. What we will have expectations of depends upon who and what we trust. There are some things that prove to be relatively better trees than others, but ultimately only the Tree of life can be fully trusted.

We can put our trust in a) self b) other people (from friends to someone you don’t know, on the internet maybe c) the odds of differing circumstances (from preferred choices to gambling)
d) God.

To put our trust in God we are also putting our trust in His right and good principles and we usually have to do something proactive in making a choice or a decision.

Exodus14:13 Do not be afraid. Stand still, and see the salvation (Jesua) of the Lord, which He will accomplish for you today...The Lord will fight for you, and you shall have peace. And the Lord said to Moses Tell the children of Israel to go forward

REVERSING DISAPPOINTMENT - The remedy for a sick heart of disappointment
1. Proverbs 11:24 One person gives freely, yet gains even more; another withholds unduly, but comes to poverty.
Give what we’ve lost to God and hold on to our faith/hope in him.
2. Proverbs 17:22 A glad heart is its own remedy but a broken spirit depresses the soul

 

God's got your back

THE TEN TRIALS - THE RED SEA
Hebrews 3:8 Do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, in the day of trial in the wilderness, where your fathers tested Me and tried Me, and saw My works for forty years.
Numbers 14:22 All these men who have seen My glory and the signs which I did in Egypt and in the wilderness, have put Me to the test now these ten times, and have not heeded My voice,
THE PURPOSE OF THE TRIALS Deuteronomy 8:2 And you shall remember that the Lord your God led you all the way these forty years in the wilderness, to humble you, and to test you, and to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not.
Israel had to be humbled, tested, and shown their heart. This deals with the pride (independence), rebellion (passive resistance), and deception (believing the lie) that are the marks of the flawed human nature of man.
TRIAL NO. 1 CROSSING THE RED SEA - And Israel’s reaction to their first challenge of faith:
Exodus14:11 Have you taken us away to die in the wilderness? Why have you dealt with us this way, to bring us up out of Egypt? Didn’t you hear what we told you in Egypt (independence), saying, “Let us alone that we may serve the Egyptians’?(passive resistance) For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than for us to die in the wilderness.”(believing a lie)

Even though the angel of death had passed over Israel, they could not trust God for their lives. They had no concept of a loving, protective God (400 years without a Word). The first trial of faith for a Christian is to see the hand of God upon our lives in working all things together for our spiritual and emotional good.
The Word comes through Moses
Exodus 14:13-16 And Moses said to the people, “Do not be afraid. Stand still, and see the salvation (Jesua) of the Lord, which He will accomplish for you today. For the Egyptians whom you see today, you shall see again no more forever. The Lord will fight for you, and you shall hold your peace.”And the Lord said to Moses, “Why cry to Me? Tell the children of Israel to go forward. Lift up your rod, and stretch out your hand over the sea and divide it. And the children of Israel shall go on dry ground through the midst of the sea.

Israel had to learn to stand still and see the salvation (Jesua) of God, while God acted supernaturally on their behalf. Then it was time to move forward. There was no going back, because God has our back.
Exodus 14:19 …and the pillar of cloud went from before them and stood behind them. So it came between the camp of the Egyptians and the camp of Israel. Thus it was a cloud and darkness to the one, and it gave light by night to the other, so that the one did not come near the other all that night.
The spirit of darkness cannot see into the light of our hearts, lit by the Spirit of God. The devil does not know your mind or your heart (2Chronicles 6:30), but he can watch and listen, so we must be careful what we say and do as we move forward in faith in God. God is the one that fights for us.

Vs. 24 Now it came to pass, in the morning watch, that the Lord looked down upon the army of the Egyptians through the pillar of fire and cloud, and He troubled the army of the Egyptians. And He took off their chariot wheels, so that they drove them with difficulty; and the Egyptians said, “Let us flee from the face of Israel, for the Lord fights for them against the Egyptians.”

1Corinthians 10:1 I do not want you to be unaware that all our fathers were under the cloud, all passed through the sea, all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea,

The inner journey

We can wonder where we are on our life journey. We can have ideas about where we should be by now and who we should be by now and what we should have by now. When we look at the external features of all this, the ‘outer journey’ there may be some real disappointment or discontent – where is life going for me?

Sometimes there’s a crisis, and God watches as the crisis is set up. He prepares our paths. It’s not so much as God always setting it up The Crisis, because it is often us do that for ourselves, or the will of others. But God graciously intervenes in the process. We are right where God has us on his ‘inner journey’ of fulfilment and completeness in him, that really leads somewhere giving us new hope and expectation of God’s supernatural goodness in our life (Abundant life). He always starts right where we are and with just who we are and with what we have, and what we are doing.

Acts 17:26 ‘And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their pre-appointed times (kairos) and the boundaries of their dwellings, 27so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might search for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us;’

He moves within our heart to go with him, to search for him and to find him. We can simply call upon him.
Ephesians 2:10 (AMP) For we are God’s [own] handiwork (His workmanship), recreated in Christ Jesus, that we may do those good things which He planned beforehand (predestined) for us, taking paths which He prepared ahead of time, that we should walk in them living the life which He (prearranged and) made ready for us to live.

He doesn’t motivate by fear or outside pressure but by inside inspiration from the Holy Spirit.
We can have our ideas about how our life should go but God has his complete idea. It’s a perfect idea.
The challenge is that we trust in God rather than in our own strength.
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In 1Corinthians 9:25 Paul speaks about how athletes compete to obtain a temporary crown, but we obtain a permanent everlasting crown. If athletes can put their heart and strength into their aspirations even more so can we. So that whatever the thing is that we are busy with right now on our life journey means that our attitude to it is that it is meaningful and that it prospers and brings peace and contentment.

Colossians 3: 23. Approach your work with the same kind of integrity and sincerity as if you were working for Jesus. 24. Be conscious of the fact that God will reward this faithful attitude and make his resources available to you, because you are really serving the Lord Jesus Christ.

 

 

Redeeming time

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

The word used for ‘time’ here is kairos – God’s appointed time, not chronos – Clock time.
The word used for ‘will of The Lord’ – thelema - God’s heart to bless you by bringing it into line with his design for your life. Whenever we choose to be still and know that, we are receiving his will for us.

We see time as a currency that we have to spend on ourselves and we are fearful of losing it, wasting it, or being pressured by it.

Redemption means that God buys back and restores all that is lost. That includes time you think has been wasted, effort that has come to nothing, and hopes that have been dashed. He won’t necessarily bring the same things back, or the same people and the same events, but he brings you back as new, and ready to go, in the right place at the right time to think the right thing and do the right thing. That is the ongoing ‘Behold I make all things new’, which constantly reoccurs for us and this means a new here and now understanding of his desire for us to be living the best life we could be living.

With this kind of faith we see through the present disorder of this world system ordered by the tyranny of clock time, and we enter the parallel universe of eternal time, and our isolated independence and anxiety fall away. God has to get us across the bridge from the world of fear-and-stress time to stillness-and-trust time. That is the redemption of life and of time.

We see our past as being a journey of a whole lot of experiences that have brought us to who we are supposed to be because of who God originally created us to be.
We see our present as being our faith that God is at work in bringing our real self into being and giving new meaning to everything we do, no matter how ordinary it seems, because in any ordinary thing we are able to know that we are being loved by God and allowing his love to flow through us.
We see our future as being the hope and expectation that he will reveal to us his goodness in action for us to see.

Redeeming time is vitally linked to knowing that we can occupy the same eternal time frame as Jesus
John 12:26 If anyone serves me, he must follow me; and where I am, there will my servant be also.
You can be there where he is at any time. God is always in kairos time and we are fixated with chronos time, which focuses on what happened yesterday or what will happen tomorrow. These are two different worlds of time that exist side by side. But God is always inviting us into his time and drawing us out of our preoccupation with clock time and the pressure that it brings, like wasted time, lost time, not enough time, too late time. All of these clock times can be redeemed in one moment of God’s time. He gets us across the bridge.

An example is;
No matter who you choose to pray for at that time you will be where Jesus is because he is there with them in their need. God is blessed by this because at that moment, creatively arranged by God for you, your heart beats with his. The person you’re praying for is also blessed (however God may choose to bestow that blessing) and you are blessed because there is no greater meaning for that moment than in what you are doing. That moment releases to you God’s love and peace and joy.

 

The seed of resurrection faith

John 12:18 The crowd that had been with him when he raised Lazarus from the dead and called him out of the tomb continued to talk about this event, and the reason why the crowd went to meet him as he entered Jerusalem was that they heard he had done this sign. So the Pharisees said to one another, “Look, the world has gone after him. No-one is listening to us anymore. ” Now among those who went up to worship at the feast were some Greeks. So these came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and asked him, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” Philip went and told Andrew; Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus. And Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified” (John 7:30, 8:20).

After Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead the Jewish leaders asked for anyone who saw Jesus to tell them, so that they could put him to death (They were plotting to kill Lazarus also). So Jesus stayed out of sight with his disciples (and Lazarus) in the surrounding area. Then a few days before the Passover Feast when the crowd that had seen Lazarus raised from the dead had spread the word about Jesus, the locals and the visitors streaming in from the surrounding regions to attend the Passover Feast had swollen into a massive crowd, all wanting to see Jesus. Then they heard that Jesus was about to enter Jerusalem and the crowd became a huge parade that lined the roadway and threw down palms for Jesus to ride in on the donkey. Jesus then went into the temple and threw down the tables in the ‘court of the Gentiles’ the only area that the Gentiles were allowed to enter and pray. (Mark 11:17 …House of prayer for all the Nations), and where the money-changers extorted money from the foreign visitors.
And now some Gentile Greeks wanted to see him too but weren’t sure whether Jesus would talk to them so they went to Phillip and Andrew, who may also have been uncertain (Matthew 10:5). These Greeks would have also seen or heard of the overturning of the tables in the temple. The seeking of him by the Gentile Greeks was a sure sign for Jesus to now proclaim that he was going to die on the cross and be resurrected for the salvation of the whole world (The hour had come), but the disciples only realized all this afterwards when Jesus had risen. The Pharisees could see ‘The whole world going after him’ and knew that no one was listening to them anymore - an amazing prophecy.
Vs.24 Then Jesus said ‘Truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit (The world). Whoever loves his life (isolated independence) loses it (inner Spirit life), and whoever hates (loves less) his (isolated independent) life in this world will preserve it (inner Spirit life). If anyone serves me, he must follow me; and where I am, there will my servant be also. If anyone serves me, the Father will honor him.
A new kind of resurrection life was about to come into existence in the earth. The curtain raiser was Lazarus but what Jesus was about to do would change the entire world forever. Jesus said in effect ‘You will look the same and mostly feel the same and the world will seem the same but you will be entirely different. This is what I came to do, to be the seed of your new life, my life hidden within you.’
1. The seed - The hiding place of a life that dies to live and grow and bear fruit.
2. The soil – The nurturing environment that anchors the new emerging life in its caring soil.
3. The outer shell – The barrier between the waiting inner life and the nurturing environment of care.
4. Abiding alone – Our isolated independence that resists trusting God for the inner life to come forth.
6. Dying – Allowing the hard outer shell to soften for inner life to be nurtured and to grow. We would think that dying means isolation but it is just the opposite. In Christ it is life before death!
7. Bearing much fruit – The inner life that has now emerged out of the soil to receive the sun (God’s love), and rain (Holy Spirit) and air (New life) from above and multiply its life.

From shame to glory

John 9:1 Now as Jesus passed by, He saw a man who was blind from birth. And His disciples asked Him, saying, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but that the works of God should be revealed in him… He then spat on the ground and made clay with the saliva; and He anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay. And He said to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam”. So he went and washed, and came back seeing.

Jesus revolutionised their stance about this man’s sin or his parents’ sin being the cause of his blindness. He was prophesying His New Kingdom era whereby no sin could be passed on from one generation to another because he was cancelling all curses for all sin on the cross (Galatians 3:13, Ezekiel 18.3).

The mud was prophetic of the dust of the earth of mankind’s old creation humanity, made into mud with the living water out of the mouth of Jesus, to become a new creation. Jesus as the Son of God had performed that old creation about 4000 years earlier. He was now prophesying through this picture of putting the mud in the blind man’s eyes the man’s new creation eyes of faith. These new eyes would see who Jesus really was and in so doing the man would see who he himself really was in the eyes of Jesus, free from shame to now become who he was eternally meant to be (from shame to glory).

The blind man was a beggar who had been shamed all of his life. But he was created with a divine virtue that had never yet been truly expressed because he had become a poster child in that community as a reminder in their eyes of the curse of sin.

He and his neighbours and his parents are then subjected to a series of shameful interrogations by the Pharisees who were obsessed with sin and the Law because that was their weapon of intimidation, and they were intent on keeping sin and judgment alive. The Pharisees branded the man, his parents, and also Jesus as sinners, and they cast the man out of the temple.

The devil takes over the ministry of the Pharisees now in seeking to blind our eyes to the work of Jesus. He has filled the culture of today’s world with the torment of guilt and the weapon of shame, and just like the Pharisees he uses this as a weapon of intimidation. Shame is a negative emotion of feeling wrong about ourselves because of our imperfect humanity, which gets magnified by what we imagine other people think about us. God wants to magnify in us his thought about us.
John 9:35 Jesus heard that they had cast the man out; and when He had found him, He said to him, “Do you believe in the Son of God?” He answered and said, “Who is He, Lord, that I may believe in Him?”
And Jesus said to him, “You have both seen Him and it is He who is talking with you.” Then he said, “Lord, I believe!” And he worshiped Him.

The Old Testament could never take people from shame to glory in this way.
Hebrews 9:6 The sacrifices were symbolic for that time where gifts and sacrifices were offered which could not make them perfect in regard to the conscience (feeling right or wrong about yourself).
Hebrews 10:3… in those sacrifices for sins there was an ongoing reminder of sins (ongoing shame).
Hebrews 10:14… by one offering Jesus has perfected forever those who are being sanctified.

Being sanctified is a process and we are all being given individual grace for our individual progress, invited by Jesus to walk alongside him every moment of the day. And we each have unique God given virtues and giftings for which God’s grace is present to us through faith. Our shame is in proportion to our not finding God’s grace, and setting our own unrealistic goals to be perfect or trying just as unrealistically to do someone else’s thing – wrong self-expectations. (Hebrews 4:16). But Paul used shame as a wake up call to the church in Corinth for his valid expectations of them to live righteously as Christian disciples and to stop living like they had no knowledge of God (1Corinthians 15:33)

Romans 12:6 In his grace, God has given us different gifts for doing certain things well. So if God has given you the ability to prophesy, speak out with the faith as God has given you. If your gift is serving others, serve them well. If you are a teacher, teach well. If your gift is to encourage others, be encouraging. If it is giving, give generously. If God has given you leadership ability, take the responsibility seriously. And if you have a gift for showing mercy to others, do it gladly.