Tag Archives: truth

YOUR WAY

Pastor's Desk, ,

Dear Family

We live in society of choice, perhaps otherwise known as a free society, or so it seems.  We have the right to decide on so many issues every single day. This may sometimes feel like a burden, and at other times feel like a blessing.  Sometimes we may even feel like we have not been given enough choices, and at other times we may long for someone just to decide for us.  Depending on how much expendable income one has, the scope of choices can also vary.  The bottom line: in South Africa at the moment we have a wide range of choices we need to make on a daily basis and these choices do affect our quality of life, health, emotional, psychological and spiritual well being. Most often than not the choices we make today will determine what our future will look like. Where we base our choices on prevailing societal trends, we are certain to be subject to them consequentially.  But for the believer, we have the potential to base our choices upon the enduring Word of God, and, when we do so, to enjoy the benefits of full obedience.

In Psalm 86:11 we find the key to be ably to choose wisely: Teach me your way, O Lord, and I will walk in your truth; give me an undivided heart, that I may fear your name.”  Here we find a prayer, deep from the heart, for God to be the Teacher of His Way, so that the psalmist can “walk in your truth”.

God delights in the person whose heart is committed to learning His way of doing things.  When we know and are dedicated to following His way, we then are empowered to make choices that will benefit ourselves and others around us for eternity. No longer will we be choosing and hoping for the best. God’s way is always best in any and in every situation.

Romans 12 teaches us: “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.”

Wow! Go for God!

 

Jesus And His Enemies

Christian Life, , , ,

JESUS AND HIS ENEMIES

If Jesus loved the down-and-outs like that, what about His enemies? When we read the gospels, it seems that He had it in for them. He took every opportunity to tell them off in public and to make them squirm and look like fools. Did He tell His disciples one thing and do the opposite? He was big on “Love your enemies; do good to those who hate you. Don’t take revenge. Let God avenge the wrong they do to you.” But He mercilessly exposed the wicked hearts of the religious leaders. How loving was that?

We have to concede that Jesus was always guided by the truth. When He collided with the Pharisees and the religious leaders, what was His motive? What was the difference between the “sinners” and the Pharisees? Need!

Jesus did not have to tell the “sick” ones how sick they were. They knew it. Just like a medical doctor whose job is to prescribe treatment for the sick, not condemn the patient for his condition, it was not Jesus’s role to beat on those who knew they were sick. They flocked to Him because He had treatment for their diseases, both physical and spiritual. They hung on His words because He supplied answers for their need.

The religious ones, on the other hand, were so full of their own self-righteousness that they didn’t need Jesus or the message He came to bring. They were quite satisfied with the status quo, thank you very much, and even hated Him for showing up their shallowness, emptiness and hypocrisy. They needed to hear the diagnosis, whether they wanted it or not because, unless they understood how deathly sick they were, they would die without even trying to find a cure.

Jesus revealed His love for them in the very truth He told them which they refused to hear. Once He had told them the truth, it was up to them what they did with it. If they chose not to respond, their guilt was theirs on Judgment Day when they had to give an account of what they did with their lives.

Surely, speaking the truth is the most loving thing a person can do, regardless of whether the other person wants to hear it or not, or will respond or not. The responsibility becomes his when the words have been spoken.

This is where attitude and motive come in. What was Jesus’s attitude? His very words and tone conveyed anger. Why was He angry?  Was it right for Him to be angry? Anger is not sinful if it directed at the right object and for the right reasons. Jesus’s anger was not selfish. He had nothing personal to defend. His anger was directed at those who misled the people they were supposed to be teaching the truth.

The whole of Matt. 23 is an outburst of anger against the Pharisees for misrepresenting God and His Word and for increasing the load of rules and rituals on the people and then judging them for failing while they basked in their hypocritical self-righteousness. Righteous anger has a redemptive purpose if it is heeded, but brings judgment if it is ignored. It was Jesus’s anger that eventually took Him to the cross because he never gave up on exposing those who opposed Him.

What was His motive? Once again it was the truth. He wanted them to hear and to respond to the truth. If they refused, it was on their own heads.

As for the person who hears my words but does not keep them, I do not judge him. For I did not come to judge the world but to save it. There is a judge for the one who rejects me and does not accept my words; the very word which I spoke will condemn him at the last day. (John 12: 47-48)

Jesus’s words of accusation were never vindictive or directed towards settling a personal grudge. He was fighting for justice for those who were wronged by the attitude and behaviour of the Pharisees.

His exasperation with those who refused to listen to Him culminated in an outburst of tears.

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing. Look, your house is left to you desolate. For I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord,’ (Matt 23: 37-39)

Is that not the expression of love?

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.

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

ISBN: Softcover – 978-1-4828-0512-3,                                                                              eBook 978-4828-0511-6

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

Do you like this post? Then buy your own copy of my book, Learning to be a Disciple, which is also available from www.amazon.com or www.takealot.com in South Africa. You can also order a copy directly from the publisher at www.partridgepublishing.com

Watch this space!

My latest book, The Heartbeat of Holiness, will also soon be available.

 

 

Honesty Is The Key

Bible Study, , , ,

HONESTY IS THE KEY

If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make Him out to be a liar and His word is not in us. (1John 1: 8-10)

I had a recent experience when this Scripture came home to me very vividly. I was in a group of believers and told a story which contained a lie. It came out so unexpectedly that I was caught out and could not wriggle out of it without great embarrassment. On reflection I tried to tell myself that it was nothing and that it didn’t matter, but I could not shake it off my conscience.

This passage of Scripture came repeatedly to my mind. It was not the content of the story that mattered but the fact that I had embellished it with a lie that bothered me. Not even confession to the Lord and taking responsibility for what I had done would give me peace. I knew that I had to own what I had done to a trusted fellow believer.

I am very close to my pastor and I chose to write a letter of confession rather than speak to him because I am able to express myself more freely in a letter. His response was kind and gracious. He said something like this: “Don’t you just love the Holy Spirit? He so gently does everything He can to protect our fellowship with the Father.” That’s it, my dear readers! And the moment I received his message and knew that I had acknowledged my sin to another person, God’s peace once again flooded my heart.

How difficult it is for us to face our sin and own it! Why are we so reticent to acknowledge what we have done when we leave the path of God’s Word and go our own way? John said that we deceive ourselves. Self-deception is just as damaging as Satan’s lies because they have the same source – the devil; and his intention is to disturb our fellowship with the Father and keep us away from enjoying our union with Him.

From God’s perspective, it is not our sin that is the problem – He has taken care of that through the death of His Son. It’s our unwillingness to own it and to come clean with Him. Why do we keep lying to ourselves and to God when we know that He knows our deepest and most intimate thoughts and actions? Pride keeps us from being honest with ourselves and God and robs us of the fellowship we could and should enjoy with Him.

He did everything possible to restore us to Himself so that we could return to the state of innocence and righteousness that Adam and Eve enjoyed before they chose their way above His. It cost Jesus His life to bring us back to the Father. Why do we forfeit the honour of closeness to Him just because we won’t acknowledge that we have sinned?

God is not demanding that we drag up everything we have done since birth. That’s not the issue although some people tag the same refrain onto their prayers over and over again, “And forgive my sins,” as a blanket statement just in case they have forgotten something that God might be holding against them.  Have they forgotten that God has cleaned the record, once for all?

John’s first chapter is about fellowship. What is it that gives us the confidence that we can have fellowship with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ; and what disturbs our fellowship with Him?

We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ. 1 John 1: 3

Did you get that? We have fellowship with one another and with the Father and the Son because we know and believe the truth about Jesus. What disturbs our fellowship with one another and with God? Not our sin but our dishonesty. We are still in the flesh and in a fallen world. Sin will still be a part of us until we shed this body and depart for the realm where we are no longer subject to sin.

The Holy Spirit does not convict us of sin; He convicts us of righteousness (John 16: 8-10). He holds up God’s standard of righteousness so that we can come back into line with God’s Word. When we are honest enough to take responsibility for our sin, He responds by washing away our unrighteousness and restoring our fellowship with the Father.

Isn’t that worth a little bit of humility?

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 first book, Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing)? You’ll love it!

ISBN: Softcover – 978-1-4828-0512-3,                                                                              eBook 978-4828-0511-6

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

My second book, Learning to be a Disciple – The Way of the Master (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing), companion volume to Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart, has been released in paperback and digital format on www.amazon.com.

For more details, check my website:

http://luellaannettecampbell.com/

Have you read my blogs on www.learningtobeason.wordpress.com ?

 

 

No Darkness In God

Bible Study, , , ,

NO DARKNESS IN GOD

This is the message we have heard from Him and declare to you: God is light; in Him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with Him yet walk in the darkness we lie and do not live by the truth. (1 John 1: 6-7)

John did not mess around with theological concepts and abstract ideas. He came right to the point. He assured his readers that the one of whom he wrote was indeed the one who came from the Father, who lived on earth as a real human being and who was the living Word, representing the Father in all He said and did.

John and his fellow disciples were eyewitness of the truth that Jesus was a man and yet more than a man. They had seen, heard and touched Him and their lives had forever been changed because He came, not only because He lived and died as a perfect Son, but also because He had a message from God for them.

What was that message? Jesus reaffirmed the message of the prophets who spoke for God against the backdrop of His people’s persistent disobedience over centuries of calling them back to Himself. Their constant refrain was: God is holy! He has no part with anything that is tainted with corruption or imperfection.

Even the effects of Adam’s sin over which they had no control, like the shedding of blood during childbirth was an affront to Him because any form of bloodshed was the outcome of sin. Every hint of corruption or imperfection had to be atoned for by the shedding of blood. Death was the penalty He demanded for imperfection, the death of a perfect and innocent animal as a foreshadowing of the death of God’s perfect Lamb.

John declared that God is light. Like love, light is the essence of who He is. If God were only love, there would be no guarantee that He would act in perfect justice towards those who transgress His laws. To be love without the balance of light would leave us with a wishy-washy God who would gloss over every infringement of His perfection in the name of “love”.

That’s the way some people want Him to be, and even believe Him to be so that they can continue in their evil ways with the assurance that God will do nothing about it. But where does that leave others who suffer at the hands of the perpetrators of evil?

We do have the assurance, however, from the mouth of God Himself that His nature is in perfect balance. He is both love and light. He loved the world of sinners but He could not pass over their sin without demanding just payment for what they had done. When the time came, He sent His Son into the world to live out a life of perfect obedience to Him, and then to die as a sacrificial lamb to atone for the sins of the world.

Where does that leave us?

He calls for a response from us to what He has done, not only to deal, once for all, with our state of alienation from Him when we respond to His invitation to believe in His Son, but also to enable us to live in daily fellowship with Him. That means that we remain in oneness with Him by walking in the light of who He is and what He requires of us as His sons a daughters. There is no value in believing that Jesus is the Son of God and that God raised Him from the dead if we do not follow through with a life of transparency with Him and in fellowship with Him and with our fellow human beings.

Unfortunately, so devious is the human heart that we fool ourselves into thinking that we are okay even when we have sinned. Like Adam, we blame others and make excuses for our sin. We may even acknowledge our sin but . . . taking responsibility for it is another story.

That’s where God wants us to be with Him – not just acknowledging we have done wrong when we are caught out, but coming clean with God. The Holy Spirit never, let me repeat – never – beats us over the head with our sin. Accusation is the devil’s work. Our conscience, if trained by God’s word, will point out where we have gone wrong. The Holy Spirit points us back to who we are – holy and beloved sons and daughters of God whom Jesus has made righteous by His blood.

We do ourselves a terrible injustice of we insist that our deviation from God’s way are “mistakes” or “indiscretions”. God calls it sin. If we are unwilling to acknowledge that we sinned because we chose to, not because “the devil made me do it” or “because of what my father or mother did to me” or for any other reason, we remain in the darkness of self-deception and self-denial, and forfeit the delight of fellowship with the Father.

Painful as it is to have to acknowledge that we are deliberately walking in the darkness, and come back to the way of truth, it’s the only way to keep our faces towards Jesus who is the Way, The Truth and the Life and who will take us to the Father.

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 first book, Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing)? You’ll love it!

ISBN: Softcover – 978-1-4828-0512-3,                                                                              eBook 978-4828-0511-6

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

My second book, Learning to be a Disciple – The Way of the Master (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing), companion volume to Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart, has been released in paperback and digital format on www.amazon.com.

For more details, check my website:

http://luellaannettecampbell.com/

Have you read my blogs on www.learningtobeason.wordpress.com ?

 

 

Jesus Did Not Say That The Truth Will Set You Free

Apologetics, , ,

JESUS DID NOT SAY THAT THE TRUTH WILL SET YOU FREE

“O yes He did!” you might vehemently protest, and I will just as vehemently protest that He did not, at least that is not what He meant.

Let’s read what He said, in context, of course.

To the Jews who believed Him, Jesus said, ‘If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.’ (John 8:31-32)

How many times have you heard someone quote Jesus’ words out of context: ‘The truth will set you free’?

The whole truth of what He said hangs on the issue of being His disciple. Unfortunately, even being a disciple of Jesus is misunderstood today. In Jesus’ day, a disciple was a person whom a rabbi (teacher and model) called to follow him. The rabbi had implicit confidence that, after spending time with him day and night, not only learning what he believed and taught, but also learning to imitate him in every possible way, those who followed him would become a replica of him. They, in turn would teach his yoke to others.

A disciple had to learn his rabbi’s yoke – his understanding of Yahweh’s original intention in the Torah – His instructions for living that would guide him on his journey towards his destination which was Zion, the place where He had established His name. Only a rabbi with sh’mikah, the authority recongnised by two witnesses, was permitted to have his own yoke and to teach his yoke to his disciples.

Jesus had sh’mikah, authority from the Father to which both the Father and John the Baptist bore witness at His baptism, to override every other yoke and “bind” His yoke on His followers. Unlike the yoke of rabbis like Hillel and Shammai, who placed heavy burdens on people which the Pharisees and religious leaders slavishly followed, Jesus’ yoke was easy and His burden light.

Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. (Matt. 11: 28-30)

It was in this context of discipleship, not to the casual observer who had no commitment to follow Jesus as his model and mentor, that Jesus spoke these words. True freedom can only be experienced by those who understand Jesus’ yoke and put it into practice in their everyday lives. The core of His yoke lies in His disposition as the Son of God and His representative on earth. He said, ‘I am gentle and humble in heart.’ Slavishly trying to follow a set of rules can never bring the rest He promised.

What is this rest He promised? It is the rest of soul that has received forgiveness of sin through Jesus and has been reconciled to the Father by faith in Christ. He is no longer obligated to keeping a set of rules to gain favour with God. He has been reinstated into His family as His son or daughter; he has received God’s gift of righteousness through Jesus; he has been redeemed from the slave market of sin and transferred from the dominion of darkness to the kingdom of God. He has a new nature and a new Master.

All this is God’s doing; it cannot be taken from him. He can rest in what God has done for him, and he is free to walk in God’s truth through the power of the Holy Spirit. This is the freedom Jesus offers to those who throw in their lot with Him in loyalty, trust and obedience.

This is a far cry from what some people believe He said, if they even know the source of the statement! There can never be true freedom outside of Jesus and outside of being His disciple by holding to His teaching. It is not the truth that sets us free but the experiential knowledge of the truth when we believe and practise the teachings of Jesus in the disposition of the Master.

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.

Watch this space. My second book, Learning to be a Disciple – The Way of the Master (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing), companion volume to Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart, will soon be on the bookshelves.

Check out my Blog site – www.learningtobeason.wordpress.com