Monthly Archives: June 2015

Fruitful Or Unfruitful?

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FRUITFUL OR UNFRUITFUL?

Still others, like seed sown among thorns, hear the word; but the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful. Others, like seed sown on good ground, hear the word, accept it and produce a crop – some thirty, some sixty, some a hundred times what was sown. (Mark 4: 18-20).

One kind of soil – no growth. Another kind of soil, little growth, no plant. Another kind of soil, no fruit. Only one kind of soil produces a crop and even then the measure of the harvest varies. Why?

All four kinds of people hear the word. The word falls on their ears. Some hear it and fail to respond – the pathway kind of people. Their hearts are hardened by their own thoughts and behaviour patterns and they have no intention of accepting change. The word has no impact on them at all. They carry on living as though they had never heard it.

Some hear it and respond joyfully but it doesn’t last. When the first hint of trouble or opposition comes, they back off and their faith and commitment dies. They are in it only for what they can get out of it. If God does not come to the party, if things don’t go the way they expected, they’re out of there, back to their old way of thinking and living. They tried it but it didn’t work because their expectations were not met.

The third kind of soil receives the seed eagerly but it is already occupied by other things. Jesus identified two already-growing plants which will not give way for the seed of the word; the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of riches. These thought patterns are already entrenched and will not make way for the truth. Both ways of thinking cause a person’s mind to be split.

Worry takes two forms; “what if” and “if only”.

“What if” projects the mind into an unknown and uncertain future. Worry produces fear which obliterates faith. Faith is calling those things that are not as though they were. Fear is calling those things that have not happened as though they had. Worry so overtakes the mind that it is impossible to think rationally until the worrier makes a deliberate choice not to worry and replaces negative thoughts with the truth. Worry has no end because it has no answer.

‘If only” is just as pernicious because it overtakes the mind with regret. Just like worry, regret has no end. It churns over circumstances that belong to the past, cannot be relived and cannot be changed. Satan uses these two powerful ways of choking out the seed of God’s word so that it cannot take root in the heart.

Another powerful “weed” that takes over the mind is the desire for riches. If worry splits the mind so that I am “here” in my body but my mind is “there” where my anxiety or regret is, greed also splits the mind so that I am “now” in the present with my money and possessions but also “then” when I make more money in the future.

Both of these mind-sets leave no room for the word of God to take root in the mind, change the heart and produce the fruit of the truth in the life.

There is only one answer to these pre-occupied minds. It begins with the “want to”. If there is no desire for God, there will be no appetite for His word. Desire begins with a sense of need. We get hungry when we have not eaten for a while. How do we develop an appetite for God’s word? By reading it! Our taste and appetite for certain kinds of food is developed by what we eat. Children who live on junk food will have no appetite for meat and vegetables. If we want to live fruitful lives, we must change our diet.

Those who receive and act on God’s word begin to change. Their roots will go down into the soil of truth and soon the fruit will begin to grow. At first it will be green and immature but, given the continuing nourishment of the word, the fruit will eventually mature and be food for others.

What kind of fruit does the one bear who receives the seed into good soil? It is the fruit of character and behaviour that reflects the nature of the seed.

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. (Gal. 5: 22-23).

How can we tell what a person thinks? Listen to the words that come out of the mouth and watch the fruit of the life. How do people respond to adversity? What comes out of their mouths when they are offended or concerned? What is inside will always come out. Squeeze a lemon and lemon juice will come out! Squeeze a person and what is inside will come out.

These are the kinds of people Jesus had to deal with. These are the kinds of people we encounter in our lives. What kind of soil are you?

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 Blog site – www.learningtobeason.wordpress.com  

 

 

 

Footpaths And Rocks

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FOOTPATHS AND ROCKS

Then Jesus said to them, ‘Don’t you understand this parable? How then will you understand any parable? The farmer sows the word. Some people are like seed along the path, where the word is sown. As soon as they hear it, Satan comes and takes away the word that was sown in them. Others, like seed sown on rocky places, hear the word and at once receive it with joy. But since they have no root, they last only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away. (Mark 4: 13-17).

Parables are stories about everyday things that bring understanding of deeper things. Have you ever asked the question, ‘Why do people respond to the gospel differently? Why do some receive it and believe while others remain untouched by the same message?’

Is Jesus saying that understanding this parable is basic to understanding all parables? Is all mankind divided into four groups – according to their response to God’s word? What if they never hear the word?

Is seems that this story, if it does not answer our question fully, at least acknowledges that people are different and their response to the word is different. The problem does not lie with the seed. God’s word is a seed. Like any good-quality seed, the power to grow and reproduce lies within the seed itself. The environment in which it is placed influences its capacity to reproduce.  It needs good soil, sunshine and water to kick start the growth process. People’s attitudes affect the productivity of the seed.

Today we look at two kinds of soil. The first is the “footpath” ground – hard and impenetrable. Any seed dropped on this ground lies exposed. It cannot penetrate the soil because the ground where it fell has been tramped hard by many pairs of feet. The ever-vigilant opportunist, Satan, will snatch away the seed as soon as it lands on the footpath so that it will never have an opportunity to send out a root and anchor itself in the ground.

What makes people so hardened to God’s word that they don’t even hear it? I suppose there are many reasons, one of them being the religious ones. Jesus met some of them on His travels through Israel – self-righteous people who refused to acknowledge any need. They thought they were right and defended their right to be right at the expense of the truth. Anything He said to them bounced off their self-righteousness and made their hearts even harder until they eventually murdered Him to silence His voice.

Then there were the ones who were hardened by greed. Judas Iscariot may be a good example. We don’t really know the motive behind his betrayal of Jesus but money certainly came into it until he had a light-bulb moment when the money no longer mattered. What about the rich young ruler? He also heard the message but his money held his heart so tightly that he forfeited the opportunity to follow Jesus for the love of his possessions.

Others are so hardened by responding to life’s troubles in the same way over and over again so that they are no longer able to think differently. They see themselves as victims; God is often the reason for their hardness. He gets the blame for “allowing” these things to “happen” and any other explanation just rolls off them.

Sin is a common reason for hardness of heart. “The pleasures of sin” the Bible calls it. Sin either captivates people’s hearts or there are held captive by it. When people are enslaved by sin, they are ensnared by hopelessness and despair. They are deaf to whatever God’s word has to say about their situation. It might work for others, they think, but not for me.

What about the rocky ground? There may be a bit of soil in between the stones but not enough to sustain the growth of the seed. It germinates readily enough but the heat of the sun soon causes the seedling to wither and die. Life happens – the good and the bad, and we cannot escape it. Some people’s lives are filled with the “rocks” of wrong thinking – belief systems that do not give way to the truth which the seed brings. “Trouble or persecution,” Jesus said, “because of the word, causes the seed to be choked and the seedling dies.”

How does this happen? Bad experiences in childhood, for example, give rise to false notions about ourselves and God. Anything that triggers those memories and the wrong thinking that comes out of them causes us to doubt or blame God. The result – we become offended with God and walk away.

The solution to “rocky” thinking is to renew our minds with the truth. God loves us with a furious, crazy, unconditional love. What happens is not His fault but He is always with us and will turn bad to good if we trust Him. If we don’t believe that through thick and thin, His word in us will never take root and anchor us in times of trouble.

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 Blog site – www.learningtobeason.wordpress.com

 

A Simple Story

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A SIMPLE STORY

Again Jesus began to teach by the lake. The crowd that gathered around Him was so large that He got into a boat and sat in it out in the lake, while the people were along the shore at the water’s edge. He taught them many things by parables and in His teaching said:

‘Listen! A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants, so that they did not bear grain. Still other seed fell on good soil. It came up and produced a crop, some multiplying thirty, some sixty some a hundred tines.’

Then Jesus said: ‘Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear.’ (Mark 4: 1-9).

One kind of seed, four kinds of soil, four responses to the seed! What could be more ordinary than that?

Jesus had the opportunity of a lifetime. There were people everywhere. The crowd was so large that He was in danger of being pushed into the water by their jostling to get the best positions. Using a boat as a pulpit, He told them a four-point story. We know it well, but did they get it? They must have stood there scratching their heads and wondering, “What on earth is He getting at?” His disciples were just as puzzled because they questioned Him afterwards about the meaning of the story. Jesus’ stories were never complicated but they packed a powerful punch.

They would have asked two questions: “What is the point of the story?” and “Who am I in the story?” That’s how Hebrew people would have responded to a parable. First of all, they had to realise that He was talking about people and their attitude to God’s word.

When He was alone, the Twelve and the others around Him asked Him about the parables. He told them, ‘The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those on the outside everything is said in parables so that,

‘they may be ever seeing but never perceiving, and ever hearing but never understanding, otherwise they might turn and be forgiven!’ (Mark 4: 10-12).

“What are you saying, Jesus? You can’t really mean that!” Did He mean that He told them believe? But why? Didn’t He want them to believe in Him and be saved? What was the point of coming to earth to reveal the Father and to take them to the Father if He told stories for the opposite reason? It just doesn’t make sense.

Jesus quoted from Isaiah 6 – God’s commission to Isaiah during his vision of God’s glory in the temple. He was to go and preach to the people until they were blind and deaf to His word (Isa. 6: 9-10). What was Jesus saying? God’s word has a powerful effect on people. It will either harden or soften their hearts depending on what they choose. If they have no interest in responding to His word, every time they hear it, their refusal to respond with make them less able to understand and believe.

In a sense, Jesus was teaching the people in parables to confirm what was already in their hearts. His disciples were open to learning the truth. Was that the reason why Jesus chose men from ordinary walks of life instead of from the recognised streams of learning – because they were open to the truth rather than already moulded into the ways of their teachers?

In a crowd like that there would have been people who were hungry for God as well as people who had no sense of need – who were satisfied with the status quo and who had not desire to change. Those were the ones whom His stories hardened into callous indifference or even outright opposition and resistance.

Of course, the Pharisees and religious leaders were everywhere. They hounded Him wherever He went, looking for opportunities to accuse Him. They had murder on their agenda although they would not admit it. He had to go because He disturbed their stranglehold on the people and exposed their ungodly hearts. Every time He told a story, they were stripped naked and they hated Him for it.

Why did Jesus speak in parables? To make soft hearts softer and hard hearts even harder. It had to be because each person must, in the end, be his own judge. That’s what happens, and we don’t like it. When we open our mouths, we reveal out hearts. When we resist the word of God, we reveal the condition of our hearts. Jesus was being absolutely fair – giving each person an opportunity to hear and respond to His word because, in the end it will be His word that will be our judge.

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 Blog site – www.learningtobeason.wordpress.com

 

 

 

Who Are My Mother And Brothers?

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WHO ARE MY MOTHER AND BROTHERS?

Then Jesus’ mother and brothers arrived. Standing outside, they sent someone to call Him. A crowd was sitting around Him, and they told Him, ‘Your mother and brothers are outside looking for you.’ ‘Who are my mother and my brothers?’ He asked. Then He looked at those seated in a circle around Him and said, ‘Here are my mother and brothers! Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.’ (Mark3: 31-35).

That’s a bit harsh, isn’t it? Especially since they came all the way from Nazareth to see Him.

As we travel through the Gospel of Mark, we will learn something about Jesus that we should never forget and that it would do well for us to apply in our own lives as well. Jesus always viewed life from the perspective of the Father and never from an earthly viewpoint. As far as He was concerned, the kingdom of God took precedence over earthly considerations.

What was He saying? That He didn’t care about His family or even that He repudiated them, that He did not acknowledge that He had a blood family at all? Had He cut Himself completely loose from them so that they no longer mattered to Him? I don’t think that He meant that at all.

We have to ask, first of all, why they were there. A few verses back we learned that they thought He was crazy. They had come to get Him to take Him home. Why? Was it to protect Him from Himself or to protect Him from the crowd? Perhaps one or both. Why did He need to be protected? Obviously, because He could not look after Himself. He had lost it, so they thought.

What did Jesus mean by His question, ‘Who are my mother and brothers’? He looked beyond mere family ties to a family that He had come to redeem and restore to the Father that was far more important and of lasting value than the ties of human families. Although He belonged to a human family, they had to learn that in the end He headed up a family of people more closely bound together than blood ties because they would become His true “blood” brothers through the shedding of His own blood for them.

His brothers rejected Him and His claims to be the Son of God until after the resurrection. They refused to believe in Him and even taunted Him (John 7: 2-5). The same once-unbelieving family members were together with the other believers when the Holy Spirit fell on the day of Pentecost. Letters from His brothers, James and Jude, were included in the inspired Scriptures. Their faith in Him promoted them from being part of His earthly family to being members of God’s forever family.

How do we know this is so? Mary Magdalene, according to John’s report, was the first to meet Jesus after His resurrection. She was so overjoyed that she wanted to take hold of Him and never let Him go. He remonstrated with her.

Jesus said, ‘Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and to your Father, to my God and your God.’ (John 20:17-18).

Did you get that? He called His disciples, ‘My brothers.’ He had called them servants and friends but never brothers. He put them on the same level as Himself – calling God “my Father and your Father, my God and you God.” Did you get the significance of what He said? Those who sat around Him listening and hanging onto every word that came from His mouth were potentially part of the family of God which spans time and eternity. His death and resurrection sealed the reality of that family.

It was God’s intention, from the beginning, to have a family of sons and daughters who were exactly like His Son. Sin interrupted His plan but He never gave up on it. He sent His Son to reveal His true self to people whose understanding of Him was distorted by the devil’s deception, and to redeem and reconcile mankind to Himself. Through faith in Jesus and the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit, He works in us to restore and recreate His image in us.

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose. For those God foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. (Rom. 8: 28-29).

Can you see, now, why Jesus was not willing that His human family lay exclusive claim to Him? Family He might be, but that was earthly and temporary. His intention to rebuild God’s forever family overshadowed any earthly ties. It was imperative that His mother and brothers get the message as quickly as possible and release Him to fulfil the will of the Father of all fathers.

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 Blog site – www.learningtobeason.wordpress.com

 

 

 

 

Demon-possessed?

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DEMON-POSSESSED?

Then Jesus entered a house, and again a crowd gathered, so that He and His disciples were not even able to eat. When His family heard about this, they went to take charge of Him, for they said, ‘He is out of His mind.’

And the teachers of the law who came down from Jerusalem said, ‘He is possessed by Beelzebub! By the prince of demons He is driving out demons.’ (Mark 3: 20-22).

Crazy? Demon-possessed? What made people reach this conclusion about Jesus?

Does a demon-possessed man heal the sick and cast out devils? What symptoms did He show that they should call Him “demon-possessed”? Was He raving like a lunatic, cursing and foaming at the mouth? Was He crazy because people followed Him in droves when He brought relief to their suffering? Were they so used to being ill-treated by their religious leaders that anyone who came to them in mercy and treated with compassion was classed as mad?

Anyone with half a brain should have recognised that Jesus was the sanest person who ever lived. If sanity was gauged by the way He treated people, then no one on earth ever was or ever will be more “with it” than Jesus. What prompted His family to think that He has lost it? They had lived with Him for thirty years. His heavenly Father had affirmed Him at His baptism with an audible voice from heaven. Could there be better approval than that? Did His godly life so offend them that they classified Him as “out of His mind”? Even His mother sided with His siblings.

And what of the religious leaders? Wasn’t “possessed by Beelzebub” going a bit far? Of course their logic was illogical, as Jesus pointed out:

So Jesus called them over to Him and began to speak to them in parables. ‘How can Satan drive out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand. And if Satan opposes himself and is divided, he cannot stand; his end has come. In fact, no one can enter a strong man’s house without first tying him up. Then he can plunder the strong man’s house.’ (Mark 3: 23-27).

This statement is loaded! Logical, first of all, to show up the foolishness of the so-called educated ones. But also loaded with hints about who He really was, if they were wide awake enough to recognise the clues. What was He saying? Who was the “strong man” of whom He spoke? What was His mission? Of course He was telling them in cryptic language that He was the “strong man” who had come to “tie up” the strong man and plunder his house. Wasn’t He doing that right in front of their eyes? Wasn’t that why they called Him demon-possessed because they had never seen anything like that before?

‘Truly I tell you, people can be forgiven all their sins and every slander they utter, but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; they are guilty of an eternal sin.’ He said this because they were saying, ‘He has an impure spirit.’ (Mark 3: 28-30).

These men were skating very close to what Jesus called “blasphemy against the Holy Spirit”. What was that? According to Jesus, anyone who attributes the work of the Holy Spirit to the devil is cutting himself off from any possibility of the Holy Spirit’s work in his heart. Such a person is doomed because the Holy Spirit is the only one who can awaken a dead spirit to the things of God. When someone deliberately rejects the work of the Holy Spirit as demonic, he has no recourse to the power and the presence of God.

Believers are sometimes plagued with the fear that they have committed the unpardonable sin when they have done something or other which has driven them into guilt. First of all, the Holy Spirit is not the accuser. That is Satan’s title and Satan’s job. He can say nothing else because he is under divine judgment and he can only speak what he hears. Condemnation is his voice, not God’s voice.

Secondly, God does not tell us what we are as far as our past is concerned. He tells us what we are as far as His work is concerned. He has attributed the righteousness of Jesus to us and that is what we are (2 Cor. 5: 21). The Holy Spirit speaks to us of righteousness (John 16: 10), not of guilt. He does not drive us by guilt or fear. He draws us towards Jesus who is everything we are and everything we need.

To repudiate the work of the Holy Spirit and to speak blasphemy against Him takes a deliberate and considered choice and is a very serious move for anyone to make. Anyone who loves Jesus would never go that far, even in a moment of passion because he is held in the grip of His love.

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 Blog site – www.learningtobeason.wordpress.com