Tag Archives: glorified

Just Trust

Bible Study, , , , ,

JUST TRUST

“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. And those He predestined, He also called; those He called, He also justified; those He justified, He also glorified.” Romans 8:28-30.

How rich with meaning and promise these words are for God’s children!

With confidence in the character and faithfulness of God, Paul declared, “We know!” How did Paul know? Revelation, faith and experience! That’s how we know anything about God and His ways. Some only have revelation knowledge. They read the information contained in God’s Word. It lodges in their brain as something they remember but it makes no difference to their lives. This goes no farther than knowing about what God has said about Himself and His ways.

Others may go a little farther by believing what they have read and giving assent to it as the truth. But, until they act on it, it remains nothing more than information. However, when belief becomes action and becomes personal experience, like Paul, they can say, “We know!”

Hardships and trouble come to all of us. They are unavoidable, but the way we interpret and respond to them makes all the difference between stress and rest. Paul rested in God because, through experience he had learned that God was able to bring good out of the worst of situations. It all depended on his perspective on life. Like Joseph said of his brothers, Paul was able to say, “You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.”

Of course it all depends on our attitude to God. If we view Him as an enemy, we will blame Him for everything bad that happens to us. If we recognise Him as our loving Father, we will wait and look for the good that will eventually be revealed, even in the worst of circumstances. And we will understand the motive behind the situations He allows us to go through. He’s got a plan.

So much of our old sinful nature still clings to us. It must be chiselled away through tough experiences which drive us onto God’s mercy. Like little children we take shelter in Daddy’s lap. We learn that the temporal things of this life, possessions, activities, useless baubles and trinkets that decorate our lives and act as distractors, cannot support us when we are in physical or emotional pain. We need the comfort and love of our Abba to give us strength and reassurance in our suffering.

We learn to value the things that really matter – people, family, relationships, friendship, love, tolerance, forgiveness, patience, generosity, peace – and loosen our grip on the transient things of this world. God wants a family; sons and daughters who are like His Son Jesus. The raw material He has to work with, His new-born children, is not anything like His Son but, through the process of discipline and moulding, He slowly transforms us into the image of Jesus.

The outcome is sure because it is God, not people, who does the moulding. He shapes us according to His blueprint, His son, secure in the knowledge that, from His perspective, the work is already complete. When He predestined us, He had sons and daughters in mind. When He called us, He could see the end result. When He worked on us we were already innocent because He justified us through His Son’s death. As He crafted us, he could see Jesus mirrored in our faces.

What more can He do than He has already done? What does He want from you in return? Trust! Just trust! Instead of kicking and screaming, biting and scratching whenever life tightens its grip on you, just be still. He is at work in you. He will never do anything to hurt or destroy you. Because He loves you, He has a goal – to set you free from every destructive way so that you will become as beautiful and glorious as His own Son.

Acknowledgement

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

 

Greater Works

Bible Study, , ,

GREATER WORKS 

“Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these because I am going to the Father. And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. You may ask anything in my name and I will do it.” John 14:12-14 NIV.

At face value there was nothing unusual about Jesus’ statement that His disciples would do greater things than He was doing. This was what was expected of the disciples of rabbis who had authority. They would take their disciples beyond where they were.

But there was something more than what was expected of the ordinary disciples of a rabbi with authority. This was Jesus speaking, not just any rabbi. “Going to the Father” had greater implications than just dying and was the key to the “greater things”.

1. Going to the Father meant that He was returning to the one who sent Him. Jesus was on a mission to the earth. He did not come into existence at His conception.

“He was with God in the beginning” John 1:2 NIV.

2. He had come from the Father to accomplish something and He was returning to the Father because He had completed what He had come to do.

“Therefore, when Christ came into the world, He said: ‘Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me; with burn offerings and sin offerings you were not pleased. Then I said, ‘Here I am — it is written about me in the scroll — I have come to do your will, my God'” Hebrews 10:5-7 NIV.

3. The Father had sent Him to the earth to reveal Him to His people. He had become distorted in the minds of His people through centuries of rabbinic study and interpretation which had overlaid their ancient Scriptures with layers and layers of rules and additions until He was no longer recognizable as the God who revealed Himself to His people through the prophets.

“In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days He has spoken to us by His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things and through whom also He made the universe. The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of His being…” Hebrews 1:1-3a NIV.

4. He came to restore what was broken at the Fall. Adam and Eve broke the unity between themselves and God through their disobedience, and brought the whole universe into disrepair. They incurred an unpayable debt which Jesus came to pay to restore them to unity and fellowship with the Father so that they could fulfil the Father’s will.

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.” 2 Corinthians 5:17-18 NIV.

“For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.” Romans 8:20, 21 NIV.

5. He came to create a body (the church) of which He is the head, to reproduce Himself on the earth and to bring heaven to earth by the way they live. Through His death which provides forgiveness of sins and reconciliation to the Father, He is building a family of sons and daughters who are just like Him to represent Him to the world and to do the works He did and much more.

How can we do greater things than He did? Perhaps not greater in nature but greater in volume because, wherever His children are, He is by His Spirit in them and He is able to spread His message of God’s kingdom by multiplying Himself through them across the entire globe.

Dynamite In A Small Package

Bible Study, , ,

DYNAMITE IN A SMALL PACKAGE

“When he was gone, Jesus said, ‘Now the Son of Man is glorified and God is glorified in Him. If God is glorified in Him, God will glorify the Son in Himself, and will glorify Him at once. My children, I will be with you only a little longer. You will look for me and, just as I told the Jews, so I tell you now. Where I am going you cannot come.

“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.'” John 13:31-35 NIV.

Was Jesus talking to Himself at that moment? Is almost sounds like it, doesn’t it?

As soon as Judas was out of the picture, He breathed a sigh of relief, With Judas gone, the tension in the room lifted. He could now concentrate on what was most important to Him, putting His Father’s glory on display during the coming hours of His passion. It was up to Him to live through those hours right to His last breath in the disposition of the Father — gracious, compassionate, slow to anger and full of love and faithfulness, forgiving sin…

He had another important task to fulfil. This was the moment when He would gather up all the teachings of the Old Covenant into one pithy but powerful instruction couched in three words — “Love one another!” Paul caught the spirit of Jesus’ words when he wrote, “Let no debt remain outstanding except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law…Love does no harm to his neighbour. Therefore love is the fulfilment of the law.” Romans 13:8; 10 NIV.

There is a positive and negative side to this commandment which Paul sums up in Romans 13. There is no sentimentality in this kind of loving, just practical involvement with others. Here is a simple definition of this love — meeting the needs of others at one’s own expense. Isn’t that what Jesus did? The other side is simply refraining from doing anything that would hurt another person.

There is much discussion, preaching and teaching about what believers in Jesus are supposed to do with the law. It is subdivided into moral law and ceremonial law. Some say that we are obliged to keep the moral law but not the ceremonial law. Some groups teach and practise strict adherence to parts of the ceremonial law, like the dress code and the food laws. Others insist that, because we are under grace, the law does not apply to us at all.

Firstly, we must ask, “Why did God give His people the law in the first place?” For two reasons: To show them what He was like, and to show them how impossible it was to live up to His perfect standards. Jesus was a perfect human being and He perfectly kept the law. We cannot possible hope to live like He did, perfectly loving God and His neighbour.

Secondly, if God knew that we could never reach His standard, did He do away with the standard? No way! What did He do with the law? He placed it and all our debt to the broken law on Jesus at the cross. Jesus gave us a new commandment which perfectly sums up everything He requires of us in three words — LOVE ONE ANOTHER.

Now instead of rummaging through the Ten Commandments and all 613 laws of the Old Covenant to find which one would suit the circumstance, we can turn to the Holy Spirit who is in us and ask, “How do I love in this situation?” He not only shows us how but gives us the power to do it.

“And hope does not put us to shame because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who had been given to us.” Romans 5: 5 NIV.

Is Jesus command impossible to keep? Not if we love Him. “’If you love me, keep my commands.'” John 14:15 NIV.

“This is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.”1 John 4:10, 11 NIV.

This is dynamite in a very small package!