Daily Archives: March 20, 2019

MOLLY AND ME – ONENESS

Christian Life, ,

MOLLY AND ME – ONENESS

How I wish that Molly and I could be truly one…especially on our daily walks! She wants to go her way and do her thing but I’m supposed to be the pack leader. A great part of our walking consists of me pulling her as though she were a trailer with brakes on because she is following scents. When she finds an interesting one which she must investigate, all four of her short little legs dig in and we come to an abrupt stop while she thoroughly checks out the scent. Sometimes, she walks quietly beside me, and at other times, she pulls me as though we were drag racing if there is something interesting ahead.… and I mean “drag” in the true sense of the word.

Of course, I realise that Molly and I have different natures. She is a hunting dog and she was programmed by God-given instinct to investigate, interpret and follow scents. She experiences her world though her senses at ground level. She is also naturally inquisitive and stubborn which makes training somewhat of a challenge. What she learns, she learns well, especially how to train me!

While Molly is programmed by instinct, I have been given the freedom to make choices and decisions which are determined by my world view and the values I embraced as I grew up in my world. I was born with the freedom to choose, but my choices were limited by my sinful nature which the Bible describes as “dead in trespasses and sins”. It was only when I responded to the call of the Holy Spirit to recognise and acknowledge Jesus as the Son of God and to confess Him as Lord that my dead spirit was made alive. From that moment, I was set free from the guilt and power of sin. I could choose to follow Jesus or to follow my fleshly desires. The more I chose to follow Jesus, the less attractive the world and what it has to offer has become.

Do not love this world nor the things it offers you, for when you love the world, you do not have the love of the Father in you. For the world offers only a craving for physical pleasure, a craving for everything we see, and pride in our achievements and possessions. These are not from the Father but are from this world. And this world is fading away, along with everything that people crave. But anyone who does what pleases God will live forever. (1 John 2:15-17 – NLT)  

Just as it was Jesus’ passion, as the Son of God in human flesh, to guard the unity He had with the Father regardless of the cost, so it is becoming my desire to be one with God by choosing to submit to His will rather than insisting on my own.

On my long journey with Jesus of 63 years, I have become more and more aware that union with God is His highest and supreme goal for His children. He is training us, through our lives of ups and downs while we are on this earth, to become like His Son, trusting His love in the bad times and living by the truth of His Word at all times.

My desire for myself, as it is for all God’s children, is that we would become the answer to Jesus’ prayer in John 17:21 (NLT).

I pray that they will all be one, just as you and I are one – as you are in me, Father, and I am in you. And may they be in us so that the world will believe you sent me.

As much as I desire it, Molly and I will never be one because we belong to different species, but, on the other hand, oneness with God, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are infinitely possible because Jesus was made like us so that we can become like Him.

God, for whom and through whom everything was made, chose to bring many children into glory. And it was only right that He should make Jesus, through His suffering, a perfect leader, fit to bring them into their salvation. So now Jesus and the ones He makes holy have the same Father. That is why Jesus is not ashamed to call them His brothers and sisters. (Heb.2:10-11 – NLT)

THE BOOK OF ACTS – UNITED AS ONE

Bible Study, ,

UNITED AS ONE

“While they were praying, the place where they were meeting trembled and shook. They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak God’s word with fearless confidence.

“The whole congregation of believers was united as one — one heart, one mind! They didn’t even claim ownership of their own possessions. No one said, ‘That’s mine; you can’t have it.’ They shared everything. The apostles gave powerful witness to the resurrection of the Master Jesus, and grace was on all of them.” Acts 4:31-33 (The Message).

Talk about miracles! The healing miracles done by Jesus and even the apostles had nothing on what was happening on the inside of these people. Never in the history of mankind after Adam’s fall had so large a group of people lived together in such unselfish harmony for so long as was happening here in Jerusalem. This had to be God.

People start an enterprise with good intentions. They determine their aim; set up their constitution; begin with a flourish and things go well for a while. A few months or years down the line however, things begin to fall apart. People have different ideas about how they want things done; leaders emerge with opposing ideas; a power struggle begins; before long self-will and self-interest erode good intentions and, without a harsh dictator kind of leadership, the enterprise flounders.

What made this group so different? The command centre of their lives was being manned by a power outside of themselves. The Holy Spirit in them was the unifying power. This was God’s plan from the beginning. He made man in His image with the capacity to be one with Him and with each other.

Scientists who believe and propagate the theory of evolution try to persuade us lesser mortals that we evolved upward from animals. In the animal kingdom no creature lives in harmony with other creatures, even of their own species, by choice. What about a hive of bees or a colony of ants, you may ask? Yes, they may exhibit unity but not by choice. They were programmed by their Creator to function as a unit for their survival.

Not so among mammals, There is often a battle for the alpha position and the top dog wears his crown uneasily because there is another aspiring leader waiting in the wings to snatch it from him, often in a bloody battle.

We discern a different atmosphere among the people in the early church. They were not forced to comply by a harsh dictator. They lived together in harmony because two of the most crucial areas of their lives were submitted to Jesus – their wills and their bank accounts. Bring those two ambitions under the Lordship of Jesus and you have the whole person submitted to Him.

Isn’t it true that the most destructive power in the human race is greed for power and money? Where the Holy Spirit is not in charge of a person’s life, this is the motive that drives us. Jesus was the only human being who was free from greed. His life was a perfect mirror image of the Father, gracious, compassionate, generous and merciful. He showed us that God is a giver, not a taker.

Jesus gave us a fool-proof test to discern what spirit is controlling a person – their fruit. In this case the fruit of God’s work of transformation was the undeniable miracle of unity.   Unity becomes a reality when people are submitted to Jesus and to one another out of reverence for Christ. Greed is replaced by the kind of generosity that touches our hearts and our pockets. Now that’s real power!