Monthly Archives: April 2015

This One Thing

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THIS ONE THING

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race set out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfected of faith. For the joy set before Him He endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God (Heb. 12: 1-2).

Why did the writer call the people he had written about in chapter 11 “witnesses”? Witnesses can be one of two things – people who are the process of seeing something happen, or people who bear witness to what has already happened. Are these witnesses those who sit in the grandstand and watch the readers perform or are they those who bear witness to what they have already experienced in their lives of faith?

I believe that these witnesses are people who trusted God and obeyed Him in spite of adversity and opposition. They have gone ahead and are even now reaping the reward of their faith. They bear silent witness to us who are still in the arena of life that God’s promises are true and that there is a life beyond the grave which is worth the suffering.

To run the race of life as winners requires letting go of the encumbrances which hinder us, whether they be legitimate or illegitimate. There are many things that entangle us and hinder our progress towards the goa. Legitimate things can become distractors which pull our attention away from our purpose – activities, money and possessions, friends and even family, books we read or programmes we watch on television can so occupy our attention that we drift away from the Lord and become entangled in the affairs of this life.

There is nothing wrong with any of these things in themselves but, when they take our attention away from Jesus, they slow down our progress and even cause us to veer off course and lose sight of the one who has called us to follow Him

Of course there are also illegitimate interests and activities which we must shun at all costs – anything and everything that goes against the nature of God. On this race course of life there are many “No entry” signs which warn us of danger if we trespass in these areas. They are clearly spelled out for us in God’s word. Sin not only takes us off course, it also ensnares us so that we become slaves to its power all over again.

The writer warned us not to allow ourselves to become entangled in the things of this life that are necessary – we must do what we must do, but no more – and we must avoid at all costs those things that ensnare us and pull us back into slavery again.

How do we do that? He gives us a simple prescription for staying on course – keep looking at Jesus. He is both the pioneer and perfecter of faith. What is a pioneer? One who goes ahead and charts an unknown way. He is the way to the Father and, by His life and example, He opened the way to the Father through His death, He showed us how to live to please the Father and He gave us His Spirit to live within us so that we have the power to do as He showed us.

In every awkward and difficult situation He shows us Jesus if we are willing to pay attention. Instead of going it alone and living out of our old sinful nature and reacting in our old fleshly ways, through the Holy Spirit God provides the grace to die to our sinful ways and to live out of our new nature which is a reflection of Jesus. Instead of worrying, we trust; instead of bearing grudges, we forgive; instead of hating, we love; instead of getting even, we respond with kindness because Jesus showed us how to be true sons of God.

How did Jesus overcome? He kept His eye on the goal. What people did to Him because they hated Him paled into nothing compared with the reward that lay ahead for Him because He persevered and endured. Every marathon runner keeps going because he wants to win the prize. No matter how long the course or how many obstacles he has to overcome, he keeps going because the reward far outweighs the suffering.

So it was with Jesus, and so it is with us if we want to gain the eternal prize. There are others who have gone before us who bear witness that it was worth it. The worst that human beings could do to them could not deter them from trusting God and believing His promises. What about us?

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Have you read my new book, Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart (copyright 2015, Partridge Publishing)? You’ll love it!

Available on www.amazon.com and www.kalahari.com in paperback, e-book or kindle format or order directly from the publisher at www.partridgepublishing.com.

Check out my new blogsite at www.learningtobeason.wordpress.com

 

Future Faith

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FUTURE FAITH

These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised since God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect (Heb. 11:39-40).

How would you have liked to have been in the shoes of these who died trusting God but having no idea what their future held for them? They knew nothing of the finished work of their Messiah, which was effective for them as well as for us except that they did not know Him.

They had never seen the face of God in a human being who was God and who came to earth to reveal the Father. They had never seen the Father’s love in action, healing the sick, giving sight to the blind and opening the ears of the deaf, casting our demons and raising the dead. They did not know that God Himself would pay the price He demanded for the debt of sin. They had no idea that He would conquer sin and death, defeat the devil and rise from the tomb, never to die again.

They had no indwelling Holy Spirit, a gift from the Father to be with them forever and to make Jesus real to them in their everyday lives. They had no written word to light their way, to nourish their spirits and to reassure them that God was with them when life was tough and when the enemy of their souls harassed them and tried to lure them back into sin. They had no past with Jesus to secure them to their unknown future.

Like their ancestor Abraham, they had the promises of God to guide them towards their future like a distant light in a very dark cave. To this they clung and faced their tormentors and certain death because, in the depth of their hearts they were sure that death was not the end. Like a shipwrecked man in a vast ocean, they had a single lifejacket that kept them afloat and they refused to let go.

Did they know that they were not alone, that there was an army of people who would join them in their search for the permanent dwelling God had promised to those who remained faithful to Him? What lay ahead for those who refused to trade the temporary pleasures of sin in a short and transient life for an uncertain future?

It was their confidence in the promises of God that secured for them their place in His hall of faith. That alone was enough to gain them a standing in righteousness which no amount of good works would secure. It is trust in God’s word alone that pleases God. Just imagine that! He values our trust in Him far more than anything we can do to try to gain His favour. When we take Him seriously, believe what He says and act in obedience to His instructions, we become fully accepted and reckoned as righteous.

It is on this basis that God releases us from the penalty of our past because Jesus paid our debt and secured the forgiveness of our sin and a place in His family. But, if we don’t believe Him, there is no way that we can ever enjoy the benefits of what He did for us. How tragic that there is a world of people for whom Jesus died but they either don’t know it or they refuse to believe and receive His forgiveness because they think they know better.

We must never be like the philosopher, Bertrand Russell who said, “Forgiveness is a beggar’s refuge. We must pay our debts.” How sad that his pride prevented him from enjoying a place in God’s family which is reserved only for those who believe what He says.

Is belief in God’s forgiveness a form of escapism? It might be if it is based on wishful thinking but it cannot be if it is based on the historical fact of the execution of a righteous man and the indisputable reality of His resurrection. All these who died in faith, choosing to remain loyal to God despite the treatment they received at the hands of people hostile to Him, await the resurrection promised through Jesus. They share in the hope that believers in Jesus carry in their hearts.

We are all in it together.

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Have you read my new book, Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart (copyright 2015, Partridge Publishing)? You’ll love it!

Available on www.amazon.com in paperback, e-book or kindle version or order directly from the publisher at www.partridgepublishing.com.

Check out my blogsite at www.learningtobeason.wordpress.com

A Better Resurrection

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 A BETTER RESURRECTION

There were others who were tortured, refusing to be released so that they might gain an even better resurrection. Some faced jeers and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were put to death by stoning; they were sawed in two; they were killed by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated – the world is not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, living in caves and in holes in the ground (Heb. 11: 35b-38).

What a register of nameless, courageous people! What faith!

We cannot even begin to guess who these people were. A few names come to mind of those whom we can identify with the things they suffered. Many remain anonymous as far as the world is concerned, but never in God’s eyes. It’s one thing to trust and obey God when He has an assignment in mind. It’s quite another to believe God – with nothing but His promise for a future life to go on, no reward for believing Him in the present, and no hope of a fair deal in this life.

Their faith carried them beyond this life into the life to come. They had no guarantee that the promises they put their confidence in were true. They did not even have a written document to substantiate what they put their faith in. No one had come back from the dead to affirm that there was something better for those who loved and obeyed God. Their hope lay in what they knew of God from their own experience.

The bitter persecution and murderous hatred of God’s people is evidence of Satan’s enmity against God which he channels through ungodly people to those who have allied themselves with the Almighty. We are a world at war. In the beginning, Satan challenged God for His place in the universe. Beaten though he was, he has not given up the challenge and will not until he and all who follow him are forced to bow and to confess that, after all, Jesus is Lord!

We continue to live in the environment of war and the evidence of it is everywhere. From the subtleties of religious prejudice and the outright promotion, even legislation in favour of everything that contradicts God’s holy standards – abortion, prostitution, Satanism, homosexuality and same-sex marriage, etc. – to the murder of Christians, simply because they believe that Jesus is the only Saviour.

Why did believers still cling to God’s truth when they had to pay such a high price for refusing to recant? Some suffered death in unspeakably cruel ways and some still do today, but they refused to give up on God.  What held them to the conviction that there was something better for them up ahead? A better resurrection. Why are people still willing to face cruel torture and death today rather than give up on God?

God has built into the human spirit the conviction that there is an afterlife. Some religions have fabricated fanciful ideas about the idyllic existence that awaits them beyond death. Some go through elaborate burial rituals to send the departed spirit on its way. There are a few who deny that there is anything beyond death – but that does not change the hope that exists in them whatever they choose to believe. These are all efforts to deny the truth that there are only two destinies awaiting the human race, with or without God.

Because He is our Creator, we are all accountable to Him whether we choose to believe it or not. What we believe or do not believe cannot change the truth.

He has also set eternity in the human heart . . . (Eccles. 3: 11b).

God created human beings – people who are both body and spirit. Without our bodies we are disembodied spirits, not human beings. His plan of restoration includes the resurrection of our bodies, not the perishable state we are in now but an eternal and indestructible body like the resurrection body of Jesus. He is the firstfuits of the resurrection and, because He conquered death, we shall live again in our eternal bodies, human and complete as God intended from the beginning.

Our lives on this earth in these mortal bodies is transient.

The life of mortals is like grass, they flourish like a flower of the field; the wind blows over it and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more (Psa 103: 15).

Human imagination cannot venture into the realm of what lies ahead beyond the grave. This is God’s realm and He has not told us in detail what to expect. But He had told us to anticipate something unspeakably wonderful for those who love Him, and that is enough to hold us when everything in this life turns sour. We may not all have to suffer for our reward. It is the gift of faith, not suffering. Some may gain it through suffering, others through persevering faith in everyday circumstances. The question is, “Do we love Him?”

However, as it is written: “What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived” – the things God has prepared for those who love Him – these are the things God has revealed to us by His Spirit (1 Cor. 2: 9-10a).

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Have you read my new book, Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart (copyright 2015, Partridge Publishing)? You’ll love it!

Available on www.amazon.com in paperback, e-book or kindle version or order directly from the publisher at www.partridgepublishing.com.

Check out my blogsite at www.learningtobeason.wordpress.com

 

The Positives of Faith

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THE POSITIVES OF FAITH

And what more shall I say? I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson and Jephthah, about David and Samuel and the prophets who, through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised; who shut the mouths of lions, quenched the fury of the flames and escaped the edge of the sword; whose weakness was turned to strength; and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies. Women received back their dead, raised to life again (Heb. 11: 32-35a).

In this glorious hall of faith, there were many who experienced massive victories in the face of overwhelming odds.

During the time of the judges, when the Israelites had no strong leader after Joshua’s death, the lure of the paganism of the Canaanites around them sucked them back into idolatry and brought God’s anger upon them. Their enemies overran them time and again. When they cried out to God for mercy, He heard them and sent deliverers like Gideon, Barak and Jephthah to drive back the enemy. Gideon, for example, triumphed over the hoard of Midianites with a measly three hundred men because God fought for them.

David and Samuel were giants in the history of God’s people. Samuel’s birth to a barren mother was a miracle to begin with. Against all odds, he led Israel in a time of apostasy, and kept the Canaanites at bay although he was not a military man. He appointed David to be king at God’s command after Saul’s failure to live up to his anointing.

David’s faith is legendary. As a stripling teenager, he ripped wild animals apart to protect his father’s sheep. He brought down the Philistine champion with a sling and a single stone. He rose in the ranks of the Israelite army to become a great warrior and loyal supporter of Saul in spite of Saul’s jealousy and murderous hatred. During his reign, he extended the borders of Israel to its greatest in Israel’s history by defeating the surrounding nations. He became known as “a man after God’s own heart” and the model of all of Judah’s kings.

God raised up great prophets after Samuel to walk beside the kings as advisors and confidantes. Some were valued as partners by godly kings. Others were imprisoned and even murdered because their message was unpalatable to evil men who insisted on polluting God’s people and God’s land with filthy idols.

Some had a powerful influence on kings and rulers in foreign governments where they were taken as exiles. Daniel served in the empires of Babylon and Persia from teenage to old age as a wise administrator and loyal subject to pagan kings. His faith in the God of Israel, however, took him through exposure to possible death more than once but he did not flinch. Whether he lived or died was irrelevant. He remained faithful to the God he served. He and his companions were miraculously rescued time and again, and Daniel even led the great Babylonian king, Nebuchadnezzar, to faith in his God.

Elijah and Elisha served God in the idolatrous northern kingdom of Israel, moving among the people to call them back to Yahweh. Elijah took on the wicked Jezebel and her four hundred prophets of Baal in a contest of faith on Mount Carmel. He stood alone against them but God was there. God sent divine fire so hot that it burned up everything, reducing even the stones of the altar to ash before the eyes of the watchers.

These two prophets raised dead boys to life through their faith in God.

God was alive and active among His people in response to the faith of those who loved Him because He loved His people and because they needed His intervention. Through their faith He revealed His authority and power over the false gods they worshipped although they turned their backs on Him time and again.

The history of God’s people is alive with God’s involvement with them. If ever a people should have known that the God they served was real and was with them, it was the Israelites – and yet, they turned away from Him to worship the gods of wood and stone. Was it because they preferred the sinful lifestyle their idol gods stood for? Their God demanded a standard of righteousness and holiness that was unattainable except through faith, and most of them had no appetite for Him.

But those who did, few as they were by comparison, made it into God’s book of life and were the recipients of His miraculous partnership with them because that’s who He is, the God who is still with us and for us if we are for Him.

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Have you read my new book, Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart (copyright 2015, Partridge Publishing)? You’ll love it!

Available on www.amazon.com in paperback, e-book or kindle version or order directly from the publisher at www.partridgepublishing.com.

Check out my blogsite at www.learningtobeason.wordpress.com

Three Huge Events

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THREE HUGE EVENTS

By faith the people passed through the Red Sea as on dry land; but when the Egyptians tried to do so, they were drowned. By faith the walls of Jericho fell, after the army had marched around them for seven days. By faith the prostitute Rahab, because she welcomed the spies, was not killed with those who were disobedient (Heb. 11: 29-31).

Three huge events! Whoever heard of people crossing a sea on dry land or a city falling without a shot being fired? What about a pagan prostitute helping the enemy because she believed in the enemy’s God? But it happened.

The Israelites were in a bit of a spot. A few million of them and they were cornered on a stretch of beach on the shore of a 5,000-feet-deep sea. On both sides were mountains, and behind them the advancing army of Egyptians, determined to force them back to slavery in Egypt.

But they had a God who was watching. He stepped in with some pretty miraculous interventions! He put Himself between the Egyptians and the people all night in the form of a fiery pillar. That should have been enough to scare off the Egyptian army after everything they had gone through in Egypt. Funny how people never learn!

Then, without warning, the wind began to blow – nothing unusual in the desert except that this wind blew in the right direction, cutting a path through the sea and drying up the sea bed. It blew all night. When the sun rose the next morning the Israelites were astonished to see dry ground in front of them. Not only was that, but the path through the sea level, not 5,000 feet down. At Moses’ command they began to walk – right through to the other shore.

The Egyptian soldiers thought they could do the same, but they were on the wrong side of God. They didn’t reckon with the need for faith. The only faith they had was determination to get the Israelites back but their kind of faith didn’t work. The same water that protected God’s people, wiped them out and left the people free of their enemies – for good.

And what about Jericho? This was no ordinary city in those times. The first city God’s people encountered inside the border of Canaan was Jericho. It had to be heavily fortified because it guarded the entrance to Canaan from the eastern border – the Jordan River. It was impenetrable from below, with a vigilant people inside to boot. The Israelites had no chance of breaching the walls. They had no military equipment, an untrained and untested mob.

From a human point of view their case was hopeless – and the Jericho-ites knew it.  The first day it was a joke. They poked fun and shouted insults at the motley crowd of ex-slaves marching silently around the city walls. The second day they crowded onto the city wall to watch the spectacle and to throw rubble at them. The third, fourth and fifth days drew fewer and fewer spectators. On the sixth day, hardly anyone bothered to watch.

On the seventh day something changed. Instead of dead silence, the priests began to blow their shofars. The eerie sound echoed across the hills and bounced off the city walls, sending shivers of fear down the backs of the people barricaded inside the city. What were these strange people up to? They soon found out when the silly army ended their seventh lap around the city with a mighty shout. With an ominous rumble increasing to a roar, the city walls disintegrated right in front of their eyes. The walls they thought were protection melted like butter in the sun.

They fled in every direction but it was of no use. The same people they mocked turned into merciless killers, destroying everything until the city lay in ruins and the inhabitants lay in silent heaps, a bustling city turned into a historical relic in one short day. Impossible in the natural but terribly possible with God.

What about Rahab? She heard about the goings-on in Egypt – news travelled fast, even in those days – and she knew in her heart that the God of these Israelites was not like the gods of the Canaanites. She didn’t know much about the people or about Him, but she knew enough to be afraid. She wanted to be on His side rather than against Him. She put her confidence in the promise of the spies and waited.

When the walls of the city collapsed, the piece where her house stood remained intact. Imagine that! It stood like a defiant pillar in the middle of the ruins. No one bothered to watch as the “traitor” escaped with her entire family – unharmed while everyone else perished.

None of these miracles were possible except for God! History? Yes, but it’s worth trusting Him, don’t you think? He’s still the same God today.

If God is for us, who can be against us? (Rom. 8: 31b).

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Have you read my new book, Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart (copyright 2015, Partridge Publishing)? You’ll love it!

Available on www.amazon.com in paperback, e-book or kindle version or order directly from the publisher at www.partridgepublshing.com.