Category Archives: Christian Life

SLAVEDRIVERS

Christian Life, ,

SLAVEDRIVERS

Have you ever thought about how your life may be controlled by “slavedrivers”?

When God’s people were slaves in Egypt, their lives were controlled by their taskmasters. They cried out to God and He responded like this; “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slavedrivers and I am concerned about their suffering. So, I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land….” Exodus 3:7, 8.

God sent Moses to rescue His people because He had heard their cry and seen their suffering; however, they came out of Egypt with their slave mentality still intact. All they had known was the dehumanising cruelty of their Egyptian masters. They had been treated like machines, only valuable because they made bricks. Their dignity had been assaulted by their slavedrivers who thought they had the right to take their wives, their property and even their lives with no recourse to justice. And so, in their immaturity, God’s people were treating each other as they had been treated.

God called them into an intimate relationship with Himself at Mount Sinai and, through His Word, began to teach them how to live in freedom from fear, guilt, and shame and how to care for one another and to treat one another with dignity and humanity.

Many of us have never lived in literal slavery although some have. Worse than the misery caused by people who oppress us is the misery that the Evil One subjects us to because of the internal ”slavedrivers” that hurt us. Emotions like guilt, fear, anger, jealousy, envy, and coveting keep us captive to the people who ensnare us. What about addictions like gambling, alcohol, drugs, food, sex, cigarettes and pornography? We think that we can get free whenever we want to, but we know in our hearts that we are enslaved.

The apostle Paul said, “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.” (Galatians 5:1, NIV). Jesus bought our freedom at a great price. He still hears the cries of those who are oppressed by slavedrivers. How can we be set free? The children of Israel cried to God. The first step to freedom is to acknowledge that you are in bondage and to cry to God. Just as He heard His people long ago, He will hear you. It takes humility and courage to be honest about what is driving you, but it’s a small price to pay for freedom.

Jesus claimed Isaiah’s prophecy as a picture of Himself. “The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners. He gives beauty for ashes….” (Isaiah 61:1, 3, NIV)

The second step is to forgive…forgive all who have ever hurt of demeaned you. Addictions are pain-managing ways to mask your pain. Forgiveness is the only way to free yourself from those who ”own” you by your anger, resentment, and hatred. When you cancel the debt of those who hurt you because Jesus has cancelled your debt and theirs, freedom is the prize.

RESURRECTION IS COMING

Christian Life, ,

RESURRECTION IS COMING

2 Consider it pure joy, my brothers, and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, 3 because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. 4 Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. 5 If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you. James 1:2-5

For 15 months I inched my way through Luke’s Gospel, and what a fascinating journey it was! I walked with Jesus from the cradle to the cross. I watched and listened as He interacted with all sorts of people, from hypocrites to hooligans, from pious people to pagans. I was amazed at how He mirrored and modelled the Father in all He said and did. Now I also have a much clearer picture of who the Father really is.

I uncovered many treasures on this journey. Let me share one with you. Jesus is lying dead in the tomb. A small group of women stumble through the early morning light to carry out their last act of love – to anoint His body with spices, a gesture for which they had to wait until the Sabbath was past.

In their grief, they want to freeze this moment in time, to hold on to their pain and get the most out of it because of their love for Him. Beyond this moment, they must forget about Him and move on, but right now they don’t want to let go. All their hopes lie broken with the body in the tomb. They want to savour the memory of touching Him once again and of saying a final goodbye.

But when they got to the tomb He was not there. The tomb was empty. God was moving on. How much grief they had wasted! How much pain they had endured! If they had only remembered that Jesus said He would rise again! If they had only trusted Him, they could have saved the devastation and disappointment they had felt and the time and the work they has wasted preparing for His burial.

How frustrated He was with the two on the road to Emmaus. They were speaking as though their whole world had come to an end. “We had hoped…” they whined in the presence of the risen Jesus!

How much like them we are! We don’t enjoy our pain and yet, somehow, we want to hold on to it just for a while, to feel the emotion of it so that we can lock it in our memory forever. We want to freeze our moment in time. We are so caught up in our fear, anxiety, and anguish that we forget that nothing takes God by surprise. His plans and His agenda are in place. While we sit and mourn our situation, He moves on and we are in danger of being left behind.

We discover too late that, if we had only trusted Him, we could have saved ourselves the pain and wasted energy of our disappointment grief or loss. If we had simply waited on God, we would have seen the next step opening before us.

James said, “When you don’t understand your trial, trust God, and ask Him for wisdom. He’ll give it to your freely and then you’ll know and experience joy because you’ll realise He is maturing you.” (LAC)

PRAYER – VALUING THE NAME

Christian Life, ,

PRAYER – VALUING THE NAME

9 “This, then, is how you should pray:
“‘Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name, Matthew 6:9

Prayer is a fascinating subject.

I regret that it’s taken me so long to learn from Jesus what prayer is about rather than from listening to others pray.

Take for example praying in Jesus’ name. In our prayers, saying “In Jesus’ name, amen” is rather like an “over and out” ending to a two-way radio conversation, or like saying, “You have to answer me, God, because I prayed in Jesus’ name.” Is that what it really means?

At Mt Sinai, God gave “Ten Commandments” to His people as a guideline for living the best kind of life. The third commandment said that they were not to take God’s name in vain. We have reduced that to getting mad when people at work or on TV say “God!” or “Jesus!” and not doing it ourselves. But is that really all it means?

Part of the covenant God set up with His people was the right to use His name. That means that He gave them power of attorney to “sign cheques” in His name for whatever they needed to get the work that He assigned to them done.

Jesus passed that assignment on to us. “As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you…” To do what? Basically, to live like He did to show the world what the Father is like.

There are three ways in which we can take God’s name in vain; we can justify what we are saying or doing wrong by claiming that God “understands”. We do this by rationalising. ”I know it’s wrong to have an affair but I love him and I don’t love my husband any more. God is love, so what’s so wrong with that?”

Secondly, we claim to speak in God’s name things that contradict who He is or give “a word” to people that He didn’t authorise. In our enthusiasm for God, we forget that it is a serious thing to speak for God what He has not spoken. False prophets were severely dealt with in the Old Testament.

The third way is by making demands of God in prayer and tagging Jesus’ name on the end like a magic formula. Jesus gave us a tough assignment – to be like Him in the world so that the world would know what the Father is really like. That means that He expects us to live exactly opposite to the way the world lives.

The world is greedy – we must be generous.

The world criticises and condemns – we must be merciful.

The world wants to be first – we must serve.

The world lives for self – we must die to self.

To pray on the name of Jesus is to be so one with Him in heart and mind that we think what He thinks and ask what He wants so that He can carry out His will through us here on earth. It means praying only what He authorises according to who He is. Praying in His name is to honour Him so much that we would not dream of saying, doing, or asking for any thing outside of who He is.

PRAYER – NOT WORDS OR NEEDS

Christian Life, ,

PRAYER – NOT WORDS OR NEEDS

“And when you pray, do not keep babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask Him.” (Matthew 6:7, 8 NIV).

Prayer is a part of most people’s lives. What is true prayer and what makes Christian prayer different from all other prayer?

In His preamble to what we know as “The Lord’s Prayer”, Jesus explained that prayer is not about performance, or about words or needs. If we take those three things out of our prayers, most of us will have nothing left! What did He mean? For the believer in Jesus, prayer arises from the invitation and the need to have fellowship with a loving heavenly Father. Prayer is not about trying to get God to do what we want or to meet our needs; it is about getting to know Him, worshipping Him and growing in our confidence in Him, that He is a holy, loving and good Father and that He keeps His promises. Prayer is, first, about changing our focus.

Jesus warned, “Don’t be like the hypocrites. Their prayers go no further than the street corners where they like to perform. That’s all the reward they will get.” Prayer is not a showcase to impress either God or our fellow pray-ers.

His next comment comes closer to home; “Don’t babble like the pagans.” Most of us are guilty of thinking that we must explain our needs to God or instruct Him in detail about what He must do. Does that make us any different from the pagans?

This brings us to what Jesus gave us as the heart of prayer; “Your Father knows what you need before you ask Him.” If prayer is not about words or needs, what is it? Words and needs arise out of our all-controlling self-absorption. Our world is centred on us and our needs and wants. If all we do in prayer is make God aware of those needs and wants so that He will do something about them, we are no different from the rest of the world.

Jesus taught us that prayer is not about us but about God and our awareness of Him. He honours us with the invitation to be part of His big story and to take our place in the bigger picture. We can only become fully ourselves when we lose ourselves in His story. To pray, therefore is, first of all, to become more aware of God and who He is than of ourselves. Jesus put it this way, “Pray like this: Our Father who is in heaven, hallowed be your name.” Self-awareness shrinks our vision of God and places our focus on our needs. God-awareness opens us up to all He is and increases our confidence in who He is and what He can do.

So, when we pray, let’s start there. Let’s grow a big vision of God, our Father by gazing at Him. (LAC)

ONLY THE JONAH-SIGN

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ONLY THE JONAH-SIGN

“The Pharisees and Sadducees came to Jesus to test Him by asking Him to show them a sign from heaven. He replied, “When evening comes, you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red’, and in the morning, ‘Today it will be stormy for the sky is red and overcast.’ You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times. A wicked and adulterous generation looks for a miraculous sign, but none will be given it except the sign of Jonah.” Then He left them and went away.” (Matthew 16:1-4 NIV)

Jesus had yet another exchange with the Pharisees. For the umpteenth time they were on His case about signs, not because they wanted to believe in Him but because they were looking for reasons not to believe in Him.

His response was abrupt, as though He had had enough of their nonsense. “You guys know how to read the weather,” He said, “but you have no clue how to read the signs of the times. The only sign you’ll get is the Jonah-sign.” with that He turned on His heel and walked away.” (Matthew 16:4 The Message)

What is the Jonah-sign?

I used to think that the Jonah-sign was the resurrection of Jesus. Just as Jonah was in the fish’s belly for three days and three nights, so Jesus came back from the dead after three days. But then I asked myself, “What was the point of that?”

I have since come to believe that the Jonah-sign was the mercy of God. God caused Jonah to be flung into the sea and swallowed by the fish because He really wanted him to go to Nineveh to deliver His message. He could have wiped Jonah out for his disobedience but in His mercy He spared him and gave him a second chance to warn the Ninevites in case they repented.

Why did God give the people of Nineveh forty days before He rained down judgment on the city? Was it not because He was giving them time to change their minds and turn away from their wickedness? The fact that He forgave them when they repented is proof of His mercy. Jonah knew that God was merciful. That’s the reason he fled in the opposite direction because he hated Nineveh for the evil it had done to his people and wanted God to destroy them.

In the same way, God reveals His mercy to us because He sent Jesus to die and to rise again so that we can be forgiven and freed from our sins to live a new life. We do not deserve God’s rescue plan. We deserve the same justice that Nineveh did, but God, in mercy, reached out and rescued us because mercy is who He is.

But, like Nineveh, we must respond or perish, believe Him, or take the consequences.

How great is our God! How great is His mercy! (LAC)