Daily Archives: March 17, 2016

Complete!

Pastor's Desk

Dear Family

I am so glad that our Heavenly Father sees us as complete in Christ. Whilst we are on a journey of being conformed to His image, we are, from His perspective, a perfected item waiting to happen. It’s like the concept of “back to the future”. We have not yet arrived but we are already there. Confused? Me too! Which is why I love what the psalmist says in Psalm 116:13: “I will take up the cup of salvation, and call on the name of the LORD.” The psalmist says this in response to his question as to how he could ever repay the LORD, the incredible God who saved him from the “chords of death” and the “anguish of the grave”. (Psalm 116:5). He has decided that the very best way to “repay” what God has done, is to declare God’s salvation boldly and unashamedly call upon His name.

The Bible is full of injunctions to offer to the LORD a sacrifice of praise. The words of our mouths, as reflections of our hearts in love with Him, are a pleasing aroma to God. We cannot be silent when we consider all that He has done, past, present and future. We deserved nothing, He gave us everything, and now we need to praise.

It is a strong indictment against our level of maturity when we find ourselves only able to praise Him when things are going well. A little child will struggle to see a bigger picture when a parent removes their toy from them because it’s bath and feed time. Whilst they have the toy and are playing with it, the world is bright and full of life. But take it away and everything becomes instant tantrum material. We are so often like this. When the weather is good, there is money in the bank, our children are behaving and our health is great, it is easy to praise the LORD. But when things are not looking too rosy, we struggle. Why? Well, quite simply because we need to grow up in Him and to realize that He does not leave us when things go wrong. In actual fact, maybe things have gone wrong for a specific purpose known only to Him. Maybe that toy is bad for us. Maybe it’s bath and feed time. But whatever it is, He is still there, working everything out for our good. He sees the end picture and knows what it will take to get me there.

So, as we journey with Him, let us leave the details to Him, take up the cup of salvation, and call upon His name.

What is man?

Pastor's Desk,

Dear Family

If we truly take a good, long, honest look at ourselves as the human race, it takes very little effort or imagination to realize that we are indeed a motley bunch of creatures. We have enormous capacities to injure one another, to hate, to deceive, to trample on and to do just about anything else which, if left unchecked, would ultimately result in the extinction of mankind in a ridiculously short space of time! The bible puts is like this in Jeremiah 17:9: “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” Is it any wonder that when God adopts us into His family that He deems us “new creations”?
And yet we have a Father, the God of all creation, who has said of us in Psalm 8:4: “what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?” I find it incredible that God actually has us in mind in the first place. That He actually loves us, and actually sees us as we can be, and actually invites us into His kingdom, and actually chooses to adopt us as His sons and daughters. Mind blowing stuff! Is it just not possible to meditate on these things without being gobsmacked by how wonderful, loving and kind our God actually is, especially seeing as we do not and cannot deserve His kindness.

Psalm 103:13-14 puts everything into perspective: “As a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those who fear him; for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust.”
What a relief—He knows we are dust and He chooses therefore to have compassion on those who fear Him!
As we witnessed the goings on in parliament recently and saw the gods of our country doing their very best, we became acutely aware again that outside of submission to Almighty God and the fear of Him in our land and powers of parliament, we have nothing and instead find ourselves bent on a road of self destruction. We will continue to point fingers and blame until we all find ourselves on another planet, but nothing can change until we remember who we actually are and who God actually is.

He has compassion on those who fear Him. He knows how dusty we are. He knows how to fix and what to do. He knows! Now more than ever we need to be in secret in our cupboards praying for our kings—the pattern to use is simply “The LORD has compassion on those who fear Him”. Let’s keep on keeping on, praying our leaders into the will of God.

A New Command

Pastor's Desk,

Dear Family

This edition of “Chronicles” has several articles referring to Pastor Colin and Judy and deservedly so! We shall greatly miss them and their amazing personalities. Our lives were immeasurably enriched just because we knew them and for that we are grateful to our loving Heavenly Father. We do not idolize them, but we do as the scripture calls upon in Romans 13:7 “Give everyone what you owe him: …if honour, then honour.”

I was just thinking about some of the things that I learned from Pastor Colin and one thing really stuck out for me. He would often remind me that we should be careful to tell people how much they mean to us while they are still alive. He would say that it’s pretty useless to wait for a funeral to hear how much people appreciate you. He would then proceed to tell me what I meant to him and I would then reciprocate. A little ritual we held every now and then!

But how true this is! I’m sure all of us have been to funerals where there is either so much syrup flowing from the eulogies that we do not recognize the person, or where we sit in regret that we did not say what we could have said while the person was still with us.

Of the more than 1000 commands found in the New Testament, there is only one which an author claims as “new”. The Apostle John records Jesus as saying: “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” John 13:34,35
The concept of loving one another has its roots in Jesus, our example giver. This was different to any other explanation, this was about the example that Jesus himself modelled for us. Totally un-deserving, totally unselfish, totally without reciprocity and very, very specific—one another. The spin off is obvious—the world will know!

How sad it is when we instead live in a world where Christian chews Christian and spits him out without a thought. A world in which the church spends a fortune in courts of law fighting against the church for their denominational or other rights. We are the laughing stock of the earth and will be until we decide to heed Christ’s new command. And it starts with appreciating one another.

Will you join me in 2016 in finding ways to value the people in our lives?

In His Presence

Pastor's Desk,

Dear Family

I am enjoying our “Journey through the Psalms” on a Sunday morning so much. Never before did I realize just how rich and complete the psalms actually are. It’s clearly no wonder that these were used by the ancient (and present) lovers of God to express their devotion, confidence in, inner feelings, fears, faith, hope and pure love for the God of Gods. They are filled with real life people, in real life situations, with real life questions and answers as they interact with a real life God.

One of the many questions which can be found in the Psalms is David’s human attempt to understand who is actually entitled to be found in God’s presence. In Psalm 15 he provides an answer to his question, “Lord, who may dwell in your sanctuary”, listing 11 things:- blameless walk, does what is right, speaks truth, no slander, no wrong to neighbour, no slur against fellow man, despises a vile man, honours those who fear the LORD, keeps his word, lends money without interest, does not accept a bribe. That’s quite a list! It would become a burden above burdens were we to attempt to follow that for the sake of following it by the letter, every day, all day. If you think otherwise, just start with always walking blamelessly and always doing the right thing or being righteous. It’s just not going to happen—if you think you are then you’ve already missed the plot!

I prefer to think that these things are the fruit of true God-lovers. These things will follow those who follow hard after God, who love him with fullness of heart, soul, mind and strength. God’s attributes flowing through his people. The new covenant teaches us in many different ways that “It does not depend on man’s desire or effort, but on God’s mercy.” It’s really all about what he has achieved on our behalf—his righteousness become ours because of what he has done for us. What a relief! My end of the agreement to is keep loving him and allowing him to change what needs to be changed. Co-operation with his ways, led by his Spirit is what’s needed, not an exhausting attempt to keep a list of rules and regulations.

When I look around at the practices of some “Christian” churches and see the cloaks of religious practice in order to please God, I am just so thankful that this is not what Jesus came for! I choose to enter His rest rather than my struggle.

THE SPIRIT OF CONVICTION

Christian Life, , , ,

THE HOLY SPIRIT – THE SPIRIT OF CONVICTION

The disciples had a powerful role to play in the spread of God’s kingdom on earth, but so did the Holy Spirit, and they were to be sure that they did not get their roles confused. The disciples’ role was to make disciples by identifying them with and initiating them, through mikvah – ceremonial washing – Into the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them everything Jesus had taught them. Nothing less, nothing more (Matt. 28: 18-20). This was what Jesus had authorised them to do.

The role of the Holy Spirit was the inward part. It was His work to convince three categories of beings who they were and how they were to respond.

When He comes, He will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment; in regard to sin because men do not believe in me; in regard to righteousness because I am going to the Father, where you can see me no longer; and in regard to judgment, because the prince of this world now stands condemned. (John 16: 8-11)

This statement of Jesus will confuse us if we do not separate the three categories from one another and apply the appropriate truth to each. Who was He talking about?

  • The world

These are the ones who do not believe in Him. What is the role of the Holy Spirit in the world? No disciple can convince an unbeliever that he is a sinner. One can use logical arguments and even get him to admit that he is a sinner but that will not convince him to the extent that he will turn to the Lord and receive forgiveness of sins and new life. All he does is give intellectual assent to the truth, but that will not save him.

Only the Holy Spirit, working within the heart and conscience of the sinner, can bring life to a dead spirit by awakening him to the truth of who Jesus is and what He has done. The role of the Holy Spirit in the unbeliever is twofold; He convinces him of sin and points him to the Saviour.

  • The believer

It is not the Holy Spirit’s primary role to convict believers of sin. We may think it is because we feel bad when we have sinned. We are tormented by guilt and keep on begging for forgiveness as though we need to be saved all over again. But the Holy Spirit is not the accuser – that’s the devil’s role in the world.

Then of what does the Spirit convince the believer? Jesus said that He convinces believers of righteousness. Why do we need to be convinced of righteousness? Satan plays a pivotal role in the life of a believer. He is called “the accuser of the brethren”. He works very hard to get us to believe that the work of Jesus on the cross was not enough. Every time we wander off the path, he comes at us with all his guns blazing. “You see! You can’t be saved. Look what you’ve done? How can you call yourself a Christian when you did that?” Condemnation heaped upon condemnation! That’s who he is and that’s what he does.

The Holy Spirit comes to convince us that we have been made righteous by the gift of righteousness that comes through Jesus. It’s not what we have done for God. It’s what Jesus has done for us. His sacrifice took care of all our sin for all time. In order to lose our salvation, we would have to make a conscious choice to renounce and walk away from what He has done for us.

God expects us to fail from time to time because we still have the pull of the old nature in us. He does not stand over us with a whip to beat us when we fail. He calls us to live up to the righteousness He has already given us through Jesus. We are His sons and daughters. We are in the process of becoming replicas of Jesus, our rabbi and His Son. We are both righteous in our standing with God and becoming righteous through the purifying work of the Holy Spirit in us.

Righteousness, not condemnation, is our motivation for living in obedience to Him.

  • The devil

The devil hears only one word from the Holy Spirit – judgment! He hears no word of comfort – only condemnation 24/7. What he hears, he speaks. How can he hear anything else but judgment when he has sealed his own fate? How can he speak anything else but condemnation when that’s all he hears? He wants to take God’s people down with him, to unsettle them and drag them into doubt with his lies. He is a liar. Lies are the only language he knows.

Jesus had this to say to the religious leaders who claimed that God was their Father in spite of the fact that they were planning to kill Him:

You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desire. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies. (John 8: 44)

How important that we learn to identify the voices we are constantly hearing! The voice of the Holy Spirit in the heart of the believer is always positive – pointing to Jesus and speaking the truth.

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

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