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BIG DADDY IS WATCHING YOU!

Christian Life, ,

In the six-plus years I have lived as a tenant at 29 Braemar Road, my worst sin has been the many times I have inadvertantly left the electric gate open! Recently, I drove off, leaving the gate open again, (the remote didn’t respond at the first press of the button), blissfully unaware that my landlord was watching at the window.

On my return, my landlady confronted me as usual. “You left the gate open AGAIN!” Oh dear, the worst was that her husband was watching me do it, or not do it! Now, I remind myself, every time I back down the driveway, “Big daddy’s watching you!” It does help, a little!

Several years ago, I wrote a poem based on Psalm139 which, I think, is the most beautiful and inspiring psalm in the whole book of Psalms.

‭Psalms‬ ‭139:1‭-‬18‬, 23-24 ‭NLT‬
[1] O Lord, you have examined my heart and know everything about me. [2] You know when I sit down or stand up. You know my thoughts even when I’m far away.
[3] You see me when I travel and when I rest at home. You know everything I do.
[4] You know what I am going to say even before I say it, Lord.
[5] You go before me and follow me. You place your hand of blessing on my head.
[6] Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too great for me to understand!
[7] I can never escape from your Spirit! I can never get away from your presence!
[8] If I go up to heaven, you are there; if I go down to the grave, you are there.
[9] If I ride the wings of the morning, if I dwell by the farthest oceans,
[10] even there your hand will guide me, and your strength will support me.
[11] I could ask the darkness to hide me and the light around me to become night—
[12] but even in darkness I cannot hide from you. To you the night shines as bright as day. Darkness and light are the same to you.
[13] You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb.
[14] Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it.
[15] You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion, as I was woven together in the dark of the womb.
[16] You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed. [17] How precious are your thoughts about me, O God. They cannot be numbered!
[18] I can’t even count them; they outnumber the grains of sand! And when I wake up, you are still with me!…
[23] Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.
[24] Point out anything in me that offends you, and lead me along the path of everlasting life.

As I wrote a few weeks ago, there are many benefits to living in the bubble of God. What happens when we find ourselves, through faith in Jesus, aware that we are encased in God’s presence?

God rakes through our minds, scrutinising every thought, belief, and desire, because these are the sources of our words and behaviour. God’s internal scouring can be unnerving if we do not take control of and discipline our minds to think God’s revealed thoughts and not follow the dictates of the flesh.

God knows what we do with our bodies too; how we use and abuse them, what we put into them through our senses, where we go with them. He made our bodies, watching and supervising every stage of our development in utero, overseeing our birth and growth through all the phases of our lives from infancy to adulthood.

When we try to run from Him because of our rebellious nature—fear, guilt, shame driving us from Him, there is nowhere to hide. We are encased in Him wherever we go. Heaven and hell might try to hide us but He is Jehovah Shamma—God is there! Even deepest darkness is no obstacle to Him. God can see in the dark!

What’s God’s motive for all this observation, supervision, and involvement in our lives? Why is Big Daddy watching us?

David was God’s friend. It makes sense, according to God’s promise as David found out, that God should reveal to him the deep secrets of His covenant.

‭Psalms‬ ‭25:14‬ ‭NLT‬
[14] “The Lord is a friend to those who fear him. He teaches them his covenant.”

So, what did God teach David through His covenant?

God wasn’t interested in all David’s failures. He wasn’t fazed by David’s mess-ups. He had a perfect solution to deal with those.

Psalms‬ ‭32:1‬, 2 ‭NLT‬
[1] Oh, what joy for those whose disobedience is forgiven, whose sin is put out of sight!
[2]” Yes, what joy for those whose record the Lord has cleared of guilt, whose lives are lived in complete honesty!”

After all, this was part of God’s covenant!

God’s passion, as David discovered, was to accompany, guide, support, and bless His child. He had already written David’s history before he was born. Every day was accounted for in His book. All David had to do was to live his story written by the divine Author, trusting His love and following His instructions.

Psalms‬ ‭139:5‬, and 9-10 NLT‬
[5] You go before me and follow me. You place your hand of blessing on my head….
[8] “If I go up to heaven, you are there; if I go down to the grave, you are there. [9] If I ride the wings of the morning, if I dwell by the farthest oceans, [10] even there your hand will guide me, and your strength will support me…
[17] How precious are your thoughts about me, O God. They cannot be numbered! [18] I can’t even count them; they outnumber the grains of sand! And when I wake up, you are still with me!”

So, what was David’s response to this revelation of God’s overwhelming goodness, favour, and blessing?

“Here’s my heart, Lord. I throw it wide open and give you permission to scrutinise every part. I want you to lead me in your way without obstacles and hindrance from me. I want you to be my Supreme Authority in every department of my life.”

Where was all this leading? God had a destiny and destination for David and for all of us who follow his direction. Our destiny…

‭Romans‬ ‭8:29‬ ‭NLT‬
[29] “For God knew his people in advance, and he chose them to become like his Son, so that his Son would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.”

Our destination…

Let David tell us in another beloved psalm

‭Psalms‬ ‭23:6‬ ‭NLT‬
[6] “Surely your goodness and unfailing love will pursue me all the days of my life, and I will live in the house of the Lord forever.”

My beloved fellow believers, take heart! Big Daddy is watching you!

So Much More…

Bible Study, , ,

SO MUCH MORE… 

“‘I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on His own; He will speak only what He hears, and He will tell you what is yet to come.

“He will glorify me because it is from me that He will receive what He will make known to you. All that belongs to the Father is mine. That is why I said the Spirit will receive from me what He will make known to you.'” John 16:12-16 NIV.

Hallelujah for the Holy Spirit!

Jesus had such confidence in the Holy Spirit that He could anticipate His departure with the knowledge that He, His unique and intimate partner in the work of salvation, would most competently carry on where He left off. In the emotional state His disciples were in at that moment, most of what He was telling them was probably lost to them. They could not cope with the revelation, but the Holy Spirit in them after Pentecost, would be the supreme teacher of the truth they could not at that moment bear.

It is difficult for us to conceive of the closeness between Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Everything that belongs to the Father is at the disposal of the Son and the Son, in turn, makes every truth and every resource that the Father owns, available to us through the Holy Spirit. Although the disciples may not have grasped even that, their failure to understand would not negate the truth Jesus was telling them. It would all become clear when the Holy Spirit came.

What did that mean to the disciples then and what does it mean to us now? We may not grasp, believe or accept the truth that we are everything to the Father just as His Son Jesus is. He has made us equal to the Son. “In this world,” said the apostle John, “we are like Jesus.” 1 John 4:17b. “Now if we are children of God, then we are heirs — heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ,” declared the apostle Paul (Romans 8:17). According to the writer to the Hebrews, “Both the one who makes people holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters.” Hebrews 2:11 NIV.

But how can this overwhelming revelation become reality to us? Only as we are willing to set aside our suspicions about God and our reservations about what He has said about us, can we embrace unreservedly the magnitude of what Jesus has done for us through the cross.

Jesus promised His disciples, and us through them, that He would send the Holy Spirit and that He would make known to us every truth about Jesus and every resource of the Father for us as we can bear them. Why then are so many believers of many years still in spiritual kindergarten, unable to move on to spiritual maturity and certainly unable to bear witness to the new life Jesus gave us through His death?

Transformation only comes to us through the renewing of our minds. As we think, so we are. Until we are prepared to fill our minds with truth from the Word of God instead of absorbing what comes from the world, the flesh and the devil, we will remain spiritual “spaghetti”, unable to stand up and become who we are.

The apostle Paul used the word “count” which is an accounting term. Write it in the credit column of who you are — sons and daughters, heirs and equal to Jesus as His brothers and sisters — and live as though it were true because it is. The debit column has been erased. It no longer exists. “He forgave us all our sins, having cancelled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us; He has taken it away, nailing it to the cross.” Colossians 2:13b-14 NIV.

“Now if we died with Christ, we believe that was will also live with Him. For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, He cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over Him. The death He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life He lives, He lives to God. In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.” Romans 6:8-11 NIV.

Not only are we alive to God but we are also alive to everything He has made available to us in His Son, and the Holy Spirit administers to us all His resources as we receive them by faith.