Tag Archives: Creator

DIARY OF THE FATHER OF FAITH – 3

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So, Abraham’s faith in God took a leap forward. Through his growing confidence in Him, he recognised the Most High God as his source. He refused the spoils of the war he had won against the kings, choosing rather to trust God for his physical and material needs.

‭Genesis‬ ‭14:21‭-‬23‬ ‭NLT‬
[21] “The king of Sodom said to Abram, “Give back my people who were captured. But you may keep for yourself all the goods you have recovered.” [22] Abram replied to the king of Sodom, “I solemnly swear to the Lord, God Most High, Creator of heaven and earth, [23] that I will not take so much as a single thread or sandal thong from what belongs to you. Otherwise you might say, ‘I am the one who made Abram rich.’ “

What a revelation for a man raised in unbelief and idolatry! He had confirmed his shift from the seen to the unseen, from a vain hope in the idols that never spoke or acted to the real God whose signature he recognised in creation and who communed and intervened for him.

Abraham’s next step of faith catapulted him into a new standing in God. His choice to believe what God said despite all the evidence against its fulfilment is the same criterion by which all who believe God’s promise are declared righteous.

‭Genesis‬ ‭15:1‭-‬4‬ ‭NLT‬
[1] Some time later, the Lord spoke to Abram in a vision and said to him, “Do not be afraid, Abram, for I will protect you, and your reward will be great.” [2] But Abram replied, “O Sovereign Lord, what good are all your blessings when I don’t even have a son? Since you’ve given me no children, Eliezer of Damascus, a servant in my household, will inherit all my wealth. [3] You have given me no descendants of my own, so one of my servants will be my heir.” [4] Then the Lord said to him, “No, your servant will not be your heir, for you will have a son of your own who will be your heir.”

‭Genesis‬ ‭15:5‬ ‭NLT‬
[5] Then the Lord took Abram outside and said to him, “Look up into the sky and count the stars if you can. That’s how many descendants you will have!”

Abraham and Sarah, a barren, elderly couple beyond the possibility of ever having children! A son! Descendants as numerous as the stars! A physical impossibility!

But….

‭Genesis‬ ‭15:6‬ ‭NLT‬
[6]…. Abram believed the Lord, and the Lord counted him as righteous because of his faith.”

God’s response to Abraham’s faith – his decision to throw himself unreservedly on God’s promise – brought him into a new standing in God. Righteous… despite his times of disobedience, failure, unbelief! Abraham was now and forever in right standing with God no matter how often he failed.

Many of God’s people under the Old testament Covenant followed him by trusting God for a better life to come. They saw it by faith and lived in the hope of its fulfilment.

‭Hebrews‬ ‭11:39‭-‬40‬ ‭NLT‬
[39] All these people earned a good reputation because of their faith, yet none of them received all that God had promised. [40] For God had something better in mind for us, so that they would not reach perfection without us.

This same standing in grace, in tthhe New Covenant, is offered to everyone who stakes everything on God’s promise. For Abraham, God’s promise was yet to be fulfilled. For us who believe, it has been fulfilled.

Romans‬ ‭5:1‬ ‭NLT‬
[1] “Therefore, since we have been made right in God’s sight by faith, we have peace with God because of what Jesus Christ our Lord has done for us.”

On that day, to cement this promise forever, in the custom of the time, God entered into a covenant with Abraham, guaranteeing the fulfilment of every promise in that agreement.

‭Genesis‬ ‭15:9‭-‬10‬ ‭NLT‬
[9] The Lord told him, “Bring me a three-year-old heifer, a three-year-old female goat, a three-year-old ram, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.” [10] So Abram presented all these to him and killed them. Then he cut each animal down the middle and laid the halves side by side; he did not, however, cut the birds in half….
[12] As the sun was going down, Abram fell into a deep sleep, and a terrifying darkness came down over him. [13] Then the Lord said to Abram, “You can be sure that your descendants will be strangers in a foreign land, where they will be oppressed as slaves for 400 years. [14] But I will punish the nation that enslaves them, and in the end they will come away with great wealth….
[16] After four generations your descendants will return here to this land, for the sins of the Amorites do not yet warrant their destruction.” [17] After the sun went down and darkness fell, Abram saw a smoking firepot and a flaming torch pass between the halves of the carcasses. [18] So the Lord made a covenant with Abram that day and said, “I have given this land to your descendants, all the way from the border of Egypt to the great Euphrates River— [19] the land now occupied by the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, [20] Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, [21] Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites, and Jebusites.”

Signed and sealed – God’s covenant with Abraham, sealed in blood, now to becomes the foundation of all His heart dealings with Abraham and His descendants to the end of time.

‭To be continued….

LISTEN TO THE OCEAN

Devotion, ,

LISTEN TO THE OCEAN

Listen to the ocean; she’s waking,

Whispering her greeting to the primeval dawn that breaks over her dark deep;

She dances with joy, her breast swelling with the hope of innumerable creatures

Alive with the new life that shivers through their myriad shapes and forms,

Singing a universal symphony of praise with the heavens,

Greeting their Creator.

Listen to the ocean; she’s thundering,

Her waves beating in time to the heartbeat of an enraged God;

Men have sealed their doom; the shattered flesh of creation’s crown floats helplessly in death;

A single sturdy craft tossing on the storm, sheltering a fragile thread of life,

Breathes hope of a better race of men and creatures

To greet their Creator once again.

Listen to the ocean; she’s sighing,

Restlessly surging in grief, for men have not learned the lesson of the past;

Their evil hearts care nothing for the cradle that nourishes and nurtures

The intricate web of life her shining surface hides.

They plunder and pollute at will, thinking her nothing but a depot or dump for their greed,

Heeding not their Creator’s plan. 

Listen to the ocean; she’s rising,

The heat of her passion melting snows and floes, the great glaciers of her poles

Slipping, sliding, plunging into her sullen depths, dying in her murky brine at men’s hands;

The men whom Creator God chose to be His partners, have long turned traitor,

Spitting in the face of the One who embraced them

And oceans weep with Him.

Listen to the ocean; she’s resting,

Her great struggle over, she lies quietly at her Maker’s feet,

Silent and still in her submission to His command;

She still reflects His mood, for in some mysterious way she is His face

As the face of one who gazes into a silent pool – and sees himself,   

And she is satisfied…

For she has told His story.

THE BOOK OF ACTS – THE LINE IN THE SAND

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THE LINE IN THE SAND

“God overlooks it as long as you don’t know any better — but that time is past. The unknown is now known, and He’s calling for a radical life-change. He has set a day when the entire human race will be judged and everything set right. And He has already appointed the judge, confirming Him before everyone by raising Him from the dead.

“At the phrase “raising Him from the dead”, the listeners split: Some laughed at him and walked off, making jokes; others said, ‘Let’s do this again. We want to hear more.’ But that was it for the day, and Paul left. There were still others, it turned out, who were convinced then and there, and stuck with Paul — among them Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris.” Acts 17:30-34 (The Message).

Here is an evangelist at his best! First of all, he knew his audience. They were mainly Greeks with a philosophical background and, at the same time, steeped in the traditions of their Greek and Roman idolatry. Paul’s point of contact was the shrine he found to the God nobody knew. At least they acknowledged that there was a God out there somewhere that humans didn’t invent.

He set out to introduce them to this God, first of all as Creator, and then as Judge. That must have been a shock to his hearers. Creator, yes, but Judge? That meant that they were accountable to Him, and some didn’t like that. The implication was twofold — what did He require and when would this happen?

In their religion, life was a haphazard affair. It was their role to appease the gods to avert annoying them, with dire consequences. They needed their protection and their intervention when necessary but there was no guarantee that either would happen. Anything bad was attributed to the wrath of the gods, but they were, unfortunately, unpredictable and capricious. There was no knowing what they would do.

Worst of all, the gods didn’t always see eye to eye. They were selfish and self-centred and acted just like humans. They were powerful in their own portfolios but they didn’t always use their power for the benefit of their devotees, and they often encroached on one another’s territory. That’s a problem when there are too many gods!

To introduce one God who had set a day to judge the world was a new thought altogether. That meant that He had a standard by which He would judge and that there would be some sort of punishment for those who didn’t measure up. Oh and, by the way, He had also chosen the Judge — a guy who died and came back to life again! That put the cat among the pigeons!

Gods could do that because they were gods, but a man! No way! The hearers immediately split into the three typical groups: Those who dismissed his words as a joke, those who were interested and wanted to know more, and those who accepted his words as the truth and embraced them.

As always, it was the resurrection that caused the parting of the ways. Why? It did not fit their world view. Paul understood that the world views of the Jews and Greeks were vastly different.

“For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know Him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” 1 Corinthians 1:20-24 (NIV).

What was it that exposed the attitude of Paul’s hearers? It was the foolishness of the message. A dead man rising — that’s what caught them out. Funny how many people who claim to be believers are happy to talk about God? But Jesus, dying and rising? Yet that is the cornerstone of our faith — and the line in the sand.

THE BOOK OF ACTS – A TRAGIC TRADE

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A TRAGIC TRADE

“When Paul and Barnabas finally realised what was going on, they stopped them. Waving their arms, they interrupted the parade, calling out, ‘What do you think you’re doing? We’re not gods. We are men just like you, and we’re here to bring you the Message, to persuade you to abandon these silly god-superstitions and embrace God Himself, the living God. We don’t make God; He makes us and all of this — sky, earth, sea, and everything in them.'” Acts 14:14-15 (The Message).

O, what a message the world needs to hear! We didn’t make God; He made us!

How can it be possible that millions of people have swallowed the lie that the universe came into being by sheer chance and that we can invent our own gods? Surely the wonder of creation itself should lead us to the Creator! Has anything that we use every day just happened — motor vehicles, aircraft, great ocean liners, buildings, computers, cell phones; you name it — they had to have a designer and a craftsman to fashion them.

Surely any rational and sane-thinking person must realise that there is no such thing as spontaneous change or interim stages in a creation of such complex and intricate function. If any component is missing in a machine, it will not work. Anything in a human body that malfunctions or is not there causes deformity and disease. A single extra chromosome is enough to produce Down’s syndrome.

And what about the unity of creation? How can the entire created order function in such perfect harmony, even galaxies of stars millions of miles apart affecting each other, so that the universe has never gone haywire? Without the laws of nature, humans cannot harness the natural world for their benefit. Scientists could never have put men on the moon without them. The universe functions as one to reflect the perfect oneness of the God who created it.

And what of the gods humans have so cleverly invented? Does a single one of them come anywhere near the nature of the God who had revealed Himself in His Son? Can anyone think that up! We can only imagine what we know. Every god humans have ever invented is a taker, demanding, unpredictable and without love or justice.

Only the God of the Bible, who has revealed Himself to us in Jesus, is a gracious and generous giver and a perfectly righteous and just God. We only need to look at the cross to see love and justice coming together in perfect harmony so that God is free to forgive and restore everything humans have messed up by their irrational and rebellious independence.

We cannot hide behind the excuse that we did not know. “But God’s angry displeasure erupts as acts of human mistrust and wrongdoing and lying accumulate; as people try to put a shroud over truth. But the basic reality of God is plain enough. Open your eyes and there it is! By taking a long and thoughtful look at what God has created, people have always been able to see what their eyes as such can’t see: eternal power, for instance, and the mystery of His divine being. So nobody has a good excuse.” Romans 1:18-20 (The Message).

Why is the world like it is? We brought it on ourselves.

“What happened was this. People knew God perfectly well, but when they didn’t treat Him like God, refusing to worship Him, they trivialised themselves into silliness and confusion so that there was neither sense nor direction in their lives. They pretended to know it all, but were illiterate regarding life. They traded the glory of God who holds the whole world in His hands for cheap figurines you can buy at any roadside store.” Romans 1:21-23 (The Message).

What a tragic trade! And what was the outcome?

“So God said, in effect, ‘If that’s what you want, that’s what you get.’ It wasn’t long before they were living in a pigpen, smeared with filth, filthy inside and out. And all this because they traded the true God for a fake god, and worshiped the god they made instead of the God who made them — the God we bless, the God who blesses us. Oh, yes!” Romans 1:24-25 (The Message).

Learning To Be A Son – Chapter Thirteen – Lest We Forget

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LEARNING TO BE A SON

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

LEST WE FORGET

Fellowship with God as His sons and daughters can lead to problems if we forget who our Father is. We must beware that intimacy with God does not become familiarity which borders on disrespect for who He is and contempt for His word.

Moses had problems in the Israelite camp with two of Aaron’s sons who offered profane fire on God’s altar. God put them to death. Moses himself was refused entry into the Promised Land because he disobeyed God and struck the rock twice. The people in Malachi’s day were sliding back into sloppy worship and had to be warned.

David knew that God was inescapable, but it comforted him, not terrified him because he knew that God responded to those who fear Him. Jesus was the perfect model of one who feared the Lord. He honoured the Father by His submission and obedience to Him.

What is friendship with God? Abraham was known as the friend of God. How did he get a title like that? God put him to the test and he trusted God so implicitly that he obeyed Him immediately. Prompt and complete obedience is the acid test of true friendship with God.

Jesus called His disciples His friends but He qualified His statement with these words:

You are my friends if you obey what I command. (John 15:14)

The fear of the Lord opens the way to intimacy with Him (Psa. 25:14). The fear of the Lord is also the foundation of true wisdom. Everything we do in life in obedience to God’s word works and shows us that respect for God which issues in obedience is the foundation of success in life.

Our relationship with God stands firmly on two legs. He is our Father and He invites us into fellowship with Him. He is also our Creator, source and sustainer. He is sovereign over us and we honour Him and obey Him because He is the Almighty God.

We are to keep these two aspects of our relationship with Him in balance. He calls us to separate ourselves from the world and its evil desires and to be His holy temple in which He dwells by His Spirit.