Tag Archives: blessed

Are You Crazy?

Bible Study, , , ,

ARE YOU CRAZY?

 Then He spoke: ‘You’re blessed when you’ve lost it all. God’s kingdom is there for the finding.

“You’re blessed when you’re ravenously hungry. Then you’re ready for the Messianic meal.

“You’re blessed when the tears flow freely, Joy comes with the morning.

“Count yourself blessed every time someone cuts you down or throws you out, every time someone smears or blackens your name to discredit me. What it means is that the truth is too close for comfort and that that person is uncomfortable. You can be glad when that happens — skip like a lamb, if you like — for even though they don’t like it, I do…and all heaven applauds. And know that you are in good company; my preachers and witnesses have always been treated like that.'” Luke 6:20-23 (The Message).

What is He talking about? He almost sounds like some sort of killjoy; only happy when everything goes wrong; glad to be miserable!

This would sound crazy if it came from anyone’s lips but Jesus’. What is He getting at? You cannot go very far into the gospels before you realise that Jesus lived in the environment of God’s kingdom. Don’t get me wrong — He was a very down-to-earth person, in touch with reality, especially the need of the people around Him, aware of their suffering and full of compassion for them.

But He also knew that there was no permanent solution for them in the present world system. He could heal them now but they would be sick again. He could raise the dead but they were destined to die again. As long as the world system they were in prevailed, there would always be sorrow, sickness and suffering, because it is an imperfect fallen world and will remain that way unless God intervened.

The good news is that the present world system, with all its sin and imperfection, is temporary. He had come from the Father to get rid of the obstacle to restoration and reconciliation, the huge debt of man’s sin. God had set the course for restoring everything that was broken, distorted and out of joint and it culminated in Him. What God started in Genesis 1 and 2, He would complete according to Revelation 21 and 22.

Through Jesus, God provided the forgiveness that restored the broken relationship between Him and His estranged sons and daughters, but there was also the matter of choice. Would they want to come back to the Father’s house? How did the lost son in the far country come to his senses? He looked at his circumstances, starving and looking after pigs, and realised that he had been much better off at home.

Jesus said that it is very difficult for rich people to enter the kingdom of God. Why? Is it because they have money? No. It’s because they use their money to satisfy their own need. Money is a good servant but a bad master. Wealth is good if it is used to serve others but bad if it feeds greed and selfishness.

Therefore, according to Jesus, loss and hunger and persecution are not blessings in themselves but they are if they create an awareness that life is much more than what we eat, what we drink and what we wear. Life is transient, like mist that is here in the morning but gone by midday. It is foolishness to place our faith in and live for what is passing away.

God allows these kinds of circumstances into our lives to draw our attention to a kingdom that is permanent and eternal; a way of life that echoes the eternal character and values of the Father. Greed and selfishness belong to this transient, imperfect world and will eventually go out with the trash. We might be ridiculed and side-lined if we side with Jesus now. His way may seem puny to those who believe in control and force and power, but in the end, He won then and He will win again.

If you open up to Him, He will change your heart and set you on a course of generosity and unselfish service that will bring you joy and the realisation of who you really are, a son or daughter of God, created in His image to be like Him.

Mary’s Song

Bible Study, , , ,

MARY’S SONG

“And Mary said, “‘I’m bursting with God-news; I’m dancing the song of my Saviour God.
God took one look at me, and look what happened — I’m the most fortunate woman on earth! What God has done for me will never be forgotten, the God whose very name is holy, set apart from all others. His mercy flows in wave after wave on those who are in awe before Him. He bared His arm and showed His strength, scattered the bluffing braggarts. He knocked tyrants off their high horses, pulled victims out of the mud. The starving poor sat down to a banquet; the callous rich were left out in the cold. He embraced His chosen child, Israel; He remembered and piled on the mercies, piled them high. It’s exactly what He promised, beginning with Abraham and right up to now.’

“Mary stayed with Elizabeth for three months and then went back to her home.” Luke 1:46-56 (The Message).

Mary was so ecstatic about the great things God had done for her that, at this stage, she was not concerned about the practical realities of having a child out of wedlock. I don’t think she was unaware of the consequences, but she was not troubled by them because she knew that her pregnancy was a miracle of God, whatever people thought of her.

Had she told Joseph of the angel’s visit and her subsequent pregnancy yet, or did she only tell him on her return to Nazareth? The Bible does not tell us when she told him. We only know that when he found out he was deeply troubled. It took an angelic dream to reassure him that Mary had not been unfaithful to him during their betrothal period. He married her as planned but did not consummate the marriage until after Jesus’ birth.

If Mary was highly favoured of God, so also was Joseph. He was an honourable man, not wanting to disgrace his fiancée’ publicly when he thought that she was guilty of fornication, and refraining from demanding his conjugal rights until after the birth of the child conceived by the Holy Spirit.

Mary was blessed and favoured of God in many ways. Unlike ordinary people who never make it into the history books, her name would never be forgotten. She would always be associated with Jesus the Messiah as the young village girl who was privileged to bring Him into the world.

Never for one moment was she intended to be worshipped as the “Mother of God”, nor did she ever see herself as anything but an ordinary mother. How ridiculous to think that a human being can ever “mother” God. She was the vessel who bore His human form, but Jesus was more than just human. He was Emmanuel, God with us, as Charles Wesley so aptly put it, “Our God contracted to a span, incomprehensibly made man.”

Mary recognised that, in the Son she was going to bear, the promise God made to Abraham was finally about to be fulfilled. And He was bringing it about, not in the palace of a great king or as the offspring of a noble family, but through the womb and in the home of a nobody. That’s just who God is and how He works!

Who Are The Really Blesses Ones?

Christian Life, ,

WHO ARE THE REALLY BLESSED ONES?

“While He was saying these things, some woman lifted her voice above the murmur of the crowd, ‘Blessed is the womb that carried you and the breasts at which you nursed.’

“Jesus commented, ‘Even more blessed are those who hear God’s word and guard it with their lives.'” Luke 11:27-28 (The Message).

Jesus was always realistic. Some woman in the crowd was loudly commenting on His mother’s good fortune to have a son like Him. ‘Your mom was blessed to have a son like you,’ she shouted. She was probably thinking what a pleasure it must have been to raise a son like Jesus.

Did she have sons of her own? What problems did she have with them when they grew up – teenagers perhaps rebellious, perhaps failing Beth Safar (Elementary School), perhaps not interested in going to the synagogue every Sabbath? Had they disappointed her expectations? What prompted her to call out like that? We do not know but, whatever it was, it was a cry from her heart.

Jesus did not ignore her cry. Instead he redirected her thinking to something far more important and realistic than what was on her heart. Who are the really blessed ones? Not those whose children never give them any trouble, who don’t add to their grey hairs by disappointing them or abandoning them when they need them. Not those whose earthly circumstances are ideal.

He changes the ‘blessed’ (baruch – the supernatural favour of God) to ‘blessed’ (asher – the happiness that a person experiences by making the right choices, i.e., doing life God’s way). Yes, it is true that God’s favour is a blessing but to live God’s way brings happiness now and eternal rewards in the hereafter.

Jesus consistently and persistently turned people’s attention to what really mattered in life, to embrace God’s word and obey it faithfully. To Jesus, personal obedience to God was more valuable than any earthly benefit in life.

When His own family came to ‘rescue’ Him because they thought He had lost His mind, He shrugged off their concerns by asking, ‘Who are my mother and my brothers?’ Pointing to the crowd He answered, ‘Those who do the will of my Father are my real family.’

The really blessed people are not those whose family life is ideal, or whose earthly circumstances are uncluttered with trouble and hardship. These may be blessings from God but, at best, they are temporary because everyone lives in a fallen world which will inevitably produce trouble of one kind or another.

Who are the really blessed people? Those who have received the gift of eternal life – the life of the spirit, connected to Jesus, the source of life, through faith in Him. Whatever happens now cannot take away the promise of life in its fullness with God in the hereafter. Earthly blessings have no influence on the life to come. It is only guaranteed to those who embrace and obey God’s word.