Tag Archives: confession

GENEROSITY – THE MEASURE OF ETERNAL REWARDS

Christian Life, ,

GENEROSITY – THE MEASURE OF ETERNAL REWARDS

Because of the service by which you have proved yourselves, men will praise God for the obedience that accompanies your confession of the gospel of Christ, and for your generosity in sharing with them and with everyone else. And in their prayers for you their hearts will go out to you, because of the surpassing grace God has given you. (2 Cor. 9: 13-14)

It’s not only important that we give. It’s also about why we give.

God condemns giving to be honoured for our sake but giving to honour God brings glory to Him and gives others encouragement to follow suit.

Our generosity should be based squarely on who God is. We give because He has freely given to us.

Freely you have received; freely give. (Matt. 10: 8b)

When we give out of the motivation of mercy, God promises to meet all our needs and the light of our good works will reflect on Him.

In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise you Father in heaven. (Matt. 5: 14)

Jesus took the issue of generosity to an even deeper level than giving simply because we are obliged to take care of those who cannot take care of themselves. Everything we do for others reflects how much we value God’s mercy towards us. Generosity is not about giving to others because we are being benevolent towards them, or even because of their need. Generosity is our duty because God is generous towards us. Withholding our money and possessions when we can meet the needs of others, from God’s perspective, is the same as stealing.

Jesus told a parable to illustrate what our duty is all about.

Suppose one of you has a servant ploughing or looking after the sheep. Would you say to the servant when he comes in from the field, ‘Come along now and sit down to eat’? Would you rather not say ‘Prepare my supper, get yourself ready and wait on me while I eat and drink; after that you may eat and drink’? Would you thank the servant because he did what he was told to do? So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.’ (Luke 17: 7-10)

Why is it that we want accolades from people and rewards from God when we do what is expected of us? We treat God as though He owes us something because we have obeyed Him! Generosity is not about earning Brownie points. It’s about showing how deeply we value God’s mercy to us that He has rescued us from our self-destructive greed and changed our hearts towards Him and towards the people around us. We show it by the way we treat people who have wronged us or who are less fortunate than we are.

Jesus taught something about stewardship which we either tend not to notice or to ignore because it seems to out of keeping with who He is.

Jesus told the story about a manager who was about to be fired for mismanaging his master’s finances (Luke 16: 1-9). The man quickly bought favour from the master’s debtors by reducing their debts. When the master found out what he had done, instead of condemning him, he commended him for his shrewdness. Jesus ended His story with a very puzzling comment. What do you make of this Scripture?

I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings. (Luke 16: 9)

First, we need to be careful about spiritualising this parable. The story is about a dishonest man who was generous with his master’s money to win friends so that, when he no longer had a job, they would be generous to him. Jesus did not commend his dishonesty but the principle – generosity gains you favour with people. 

His next few comments open the meaning even more.

Whoever can be trusted with very little can be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with little will also be dishonest with much. So, if you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches? And if you have not been trustworthy with someone else’s property, who will give you property of your own? (Luke 16:10-12)

The point of the parable is that the manager was the steward of his master’s property. He had a greater obligation to be trustworthy with what was not his than with what was his own, because he was accountable to his master for what he did with it.

In the same way, we are stewards of what God has given to us and we are accountable to Him for the way we use it. He has instructed us how to apportion it so that we care for those in our circle of responsibility before we take care of our own needs. When we are faithful to carry out our Master’s instructions and use what He has given us in obedience to Him, only then can He give us greater responsibility in the life to come.

Does it shock or surprise you to realise that the level of authority you will have in God’s eternal kingdom will depend on the way you handle your money and possessions in this life? This is how seriously Jesus took the issue of money and why He had so much to say about it.

This leads me to the final point about the way a disciple uses his resources. There are serious consequences for greed, selfishness and disregard for the poor, the widow, the orphan, and the alien.

(To be continued…)

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.

4 – ENGAGING THE POWERS OF THE KINGDOM – THE POWER OF REPENTANCE

Christian Life, ,

4 – ENGAGING THE POWERS OF THE KINGDOM – THE POWER OF REPENTANCE

We ARE God’s children but we live in a fallen world. Most of us, from birth, were influenced by family, friends and the wider environment of the world to think and react like the people of the world. (Some of us were fortunate enough to have had godly parents who taught us the truth).

However, we were all born with a nature corrupted by sin and responsive to the devil’s lie… You don’t need God. You can be God.

When we were born again by the Holy Spirit, we received a new nature responsive to God and sensitive to His realm but… the sin nature still remains with all its ungodly beliefs and ideas.

So, under the direction and teaching of the Holy Spirit, we began the journey of renewing our minds by exchanging the lies we believed from birth with the truth contained in God’s Word. This is a slow and tedious process because our old nature clings tenaciously to the deception deeply grooved into our thought processes, that has prompted our sinful responses.

We have discussed the place that the TRUTH and the PROMISES play in this process of engaging the powers of the kingdom, but what God has said will be of no value to us without REPENTANCE.

We need to get rid of the idea that repentance has to do with feeling sorry for our sins. Repentance is not about emotion. It’s about transformation. Repentance is our response to the CONVICTION of the Holy Spirit.

Conviction is not about feeling guilty. It’s about revelation – the Holy Spirit reveals truth to us through the Word and we respond by believing and receiving the truth in place of the lie we have believed.

For example, somewhere during our early years, someone of significance… parent, teacher, family member, friend or peer, said something derogatory that confirmed our feelings of helplessness, uselessness or worthlessness.

But the Word says we are holy and beloved of God. The Holy Spirit convinces (convicts) us that God’s Word is true. We respond by repenting, changing our thoughts to line up with God’s Word.

That is REPENTANCE. Repentance is always our response to CONVICTION which is a work of the Spirit.

So, repentance is the next and vital step in our learning to overcome the world. If we are to use the powers of the kingdom to overcome the powers of the world that have driven us in the wrong direction, we must continually repent of the lies we have believed (unlearn) and learn who God is and who we are so that our faith is firmly rooted in the truth.

New Living Translation Bible NLT Bible. Hebrews 8:10

But this is the new covenant I will make with the people of Israel on that day, says the Lord: I will put my laws in their minds, and I will write them on their hearts.I will be their God, and they will be my people.

CONFESSION is or should be our response to anything the Holy Spirit reveals that is out of line with God’s Word. Again, confession isn’t about emotion, it’s about speaking. The Greek word translated “confession” is homologia (from which we get English words beginning with “homo-” meaning “the same” e.g., homosexual), and  “logeo” – to speak. It means “to speak the same words” or “to agree” .

When we agree with the Holy Spirit, we confess that He is right. Remember David when Nathan came to him after he had committed adultery with Bathsheba. His immediate response was, “I have sinned…” No excuses, no blaming or passing the buck. Confession paves the way for repentance.

CONFESSION can apply in different contexts. We agree with the Holy Spirit when we have believed a lie or transgressed God’s Word. This kind of confession leads us to repent or change our mind about what we have done or believed.

We can also confess something that is true.

“If you declare with your mouth, (same word homologeo), “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” Romans 10:9 NIV

A positive confession is a powerful way to imprint the nature of God in our minds. God is love; God is good; Jesus is the way… etc. The ancient Hebrews used every opportunity to declare or confess, “Give thanks to the Lord for He is good; His covenant love endures forever.”

Let’s put these three interactions between the Holy Spirit and us together; CONVICTION, REPENTANCE and CONFESSION, and we have a powerful way to redirect our minds away from our sinful nature towards what the Spirit wants to do in us to reshape us into the image of Jesus.

This is kingdom power at work in us. We work with the Spirit to bring about the changes in the way we think that translates into who we become…

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

All Scripture quotations in this series

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

Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2007 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

THE BOOK OF ACTS – CONVINCED AND CONVERTED

Bible Study, ,

CONVINCED AND CONVERTED

“Saul spent a few days getting acquainted with the Damascus disciples, but then went right to work, wasting no time, preaching in the meeting places that this Jesus was the Son of God. They were caught off guard by this and, not at all sure they could trust him, they kept saying, ‘Isn’t this the man who wreaked havoc in Jerusalem among the believers? And didn’t he come here to do the same thing — arrest us and drag us off to jail in Jerusalem for sentencing by the high priests?’

“But their suspicions didn’t slow Saul down for even a minute. His momentum was up now and he ploughed straight into the opposition, disarming the Damascus Jews and trying to show them that this Jesus was the Messiah.” Acts 9:19b-22 (The Message).

“Who do men say that I am? Who do you say that I am?” That was Jesus’ question and challenge to His disciples at Caesarea Philippi, Israel’s “red light” district where both Caesar worship and the worship of the goat god, Pan and his associates took place.

This “worship” was accompanied by the most blatant expressions of sexual perversion, co-habiting with goats to lure the evil spirits from their winter hiding place in the underworld. A cave in the rock from which a natural spring flowed to join the melting snows of Mount Hermon to source the Jordan River was regarded as the “gate of hell”.

It was here, in full view of the goings on, that Jesus asked His question. If He was not the Son of God in an environment like this, what power did He have to rescue people from their sordid and perverse religion and behaviour and bring them back into fellowship with the Father?

It was here that He assured His followers that He would build His church and not even the place which the devotees of Pan believed to be the “gate of hell”, the place of access to the underworld, would be able to withstand the power of who He was and what He came to do.

How subtly the proclamation of the gospel has changed from the focus on who Jesus is to what He can do for us? Saul’s message in Damascus was not, “I received Jesus as my Saviour”; “I asked Jesus into my heart”; “I prayed the sinner’s prayer” or even, “I was born again.” Like Peter on the Day of Pentecost, the message of the early church was, “Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God.”

What are the implications of that confession? Everything that we experience and receive through Jesus comes to us because of who He is. Our response should never be what He can do for me but my attitude of absolute reverence, submission and obedience because He is the Christ, the Son of the Living God. How He treats me flows from who He is, not from the demands I make on Him because I have done Him the favour of believing in Him.

Could it be that His church would become again what it was at the beginning if we trusted Him, not because of what He can do for us but because of who He is? Would we still bow the knee and acknowledge that Jesus is Lord if He never ever did another thing for us? He doesn’t have to, you know!

The world is offering us many counterfeit “lords”, which are all Satan’s subtle way of usurping Jesus’ place. If we continue to live our self-centred and self-absorbed “Christian” lives, expecting Jesus to serve us, we will miss the purpose for which He came, for which He died and rose again and for which He rescued us from the clutches of the devil, transferred us into the kingdom of God and supplies us with everything we need to live this life.

“But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His wonderful light.” 1 Peter 2:9 (NIV).

Dying To Rule

Bible Study, , ,

DYING TO RULE

“He then asked, ‘And you — what are you saying about me? Who am I?’ Peter answered, ‘The Messiah of God.’ Jesus then warned them to keep it quiet. They were to tell no one what Peter had said.

“He went on, ‘It is necessary that the Son of Man proceed to an ordeal of suffering, be tried and found guilty by the religious leaders, high priests and religion scholars, be killed and on the third day be raised up alive.'” Luke 9:20-22 (The Message).

Peter was rosy with enthusiasm and inspiration when he declared, ‘You are God’s Messiah,’ but he had no clue what it meant.

It was imperative that Jesus correct their misconception of what the Messiah was all about, but it was as though He were talking to a stone wall. In this situation the disciples had selective hearing because they did not want to believe that Jesus was anything else than a deliverer from their hated enemy and oppressor, Rome. They saw and read everything through the spectacles of their misunderstanding.

He didn’t even need to tell them not to broadcast what He had revealed to them because it was as though He had never said it. It was an invisible barrier between Him and them. I believe that He longed for them to understand what He was telling them so that He would have emotional support, especially when the time drew near for Him to go to Jerusalem for the ordeal.

Jesus often used the term, Son of Man, to refer to Himself in preference to “Son of God”, which had a double-barrelled meaning. It was much more than a reference to His humanity.

In Daniel 7:13, 14, Daniel saw in his vision a human-like figure approaching the throne of God. “In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into His presence. He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshipped Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and His kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.”

“Son of Man” seems to have a three-fold meaning: He was human; He was representative man, and He was anointed of God to have the authority and power to rule. But, at the same time, He was recognised as more than just a man because He received the worship of all nations and His kingdom was supreme and eternal.

Would the disciples have recognised in His use of “Son of Man” to refer to Himself, that He was clearly stating who He was? Possibly, but they only saw half of the implications of that title. Daniel spoke of His authority, power and glory, but Isaiah spoke of His suffering.

We get the clearest prophetic picture of the character and the suffering of the Messiah in Isaiah’s “servant songs”. With hindsight it is easy for us to see in Jesus the fulfilment of these prophecies but those who lived before the cross could not make sense of them as long as they missed the atoning work of the Messiah as essential to His mission.

As we wait for the return of our Messiah to take His place as king over all the kingdoms of the earth, it is easy for us the miss the clues to His coming if our focus is on the geographical and political. We scan the horizon for some evil political figure who will brazenly declare that he is God, but miss the fact that the spirit of antichrist operates in every religious figure within the church who lures people to follow him instead of Jesus.

These charismatic figures have huge followings, and people flock from all over the world to hear them and yet, as the Father urged the disciples on the Mount of Transfiguration, ‘This is my beloved Son; listen to Him,’ Jesus is as near to us as our breath. Not even Moses or Elijah can take His place.

Once again I urge you, “Follow Jesus. You will never get lost.”

Convinced and Converted

Christian Life, ,

CONVINCED AND CONVERTED

“Saul spent a few days getting acquainted with the Damascus disciples, but then went right to work, wasting no time, preaching in the meeting places that this Jesus was the Son of God. They were caught off guard by this and, not at all sure they could trust him, they kept saying, ‘Isn’t this the man who wreaked havoc in Jerusalem among the believers? And didn’t he come here to do the same thing — arrest us and drag us off to jail in Jerusalem for sentencing by the high priests?’

“But their suspicions didn’t slow Saul down for even a minute. His momentum was up now and he plowed straight into the opposition, disarming the Damascus Jews and trying to show them that this Jesus was the Messiah.” Acts 9:19-22 (The Message).

“Who do men say that I am? Who do you say that I am?” That was Jesus’ question and challenge to His disciples at Caesarea Philippi, Israel’s “red light” district where both Caesar worship and the worship of the goat god, Pan, and his associates, took place.

This “worship” was accompanied by the most blatant expressions of sexual perversion, co-habiting with goats to lure the evil spirits from their winter hiding place in the underworld. A cave in the rock from which a natural spring flowed to join the melting snows of Mount Hermon to source the Jordan River was regarded as the “gate of hell”.

It was here, in full view of the goings on, that Jesus asked His question. If He was not the Son of God in an environment like this, what power did He have to rescue people from their sordid and perverse religion and behaviour and bring them back into fellowship with the Father?

It was here that He assured His followers that He would build His church and not even the place which the devotees of Pan believed to be the “gate of hell”, the place of access to the underworld, would be able to withstand the power of who He was and what He came to do.

How subtly the proclamation of the gospel has changed from the the focus on who Jesus is to what He can do for us? Saul’s message in Damascus was not, “I received Jesus as my Saviour”; “I asked Jesus into my heart”; “I prayed the sinner’s prayer” or even, “I was born again.” Like Peter on the Day of Pentecost, the message of the early church was, “Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God.”

What are the implications of that confession? Everything that we experience and receive through Jesus comes to us because of who He is. Our response should never be what He can do for me but my attitude of absolute reverence, submission and obedience because He is the Christ, the Son of the Living God. How He treats me flows from who He is, not from the demands I make on Him because I have done Him the favour of believing in Him.

Could it be that His church would become again what it was at the beginning if we trusted Him, not because of what He can do for us but because of who He is? Would we still bow the knee and acknowledge that Jesus is Lord if He never ever did another thing for us? He doesn’t have to, you know!

The world is offering us many counterfeit “lords”, which are all Satan’s subtle way of usurping Jesus’ place. If we continue to live our self-centred and self-absorbed “Christian” lives, expecting Jesus to serve us, we will miss the purpose for which He came, for which He died and rose again and for which He rescued us from the clutches of the devil, transferred us into the kingdom of God and supplies us with everything we need to live this life.

“But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His wonderful light.” 1 Peter 2:9 (NIV).