Tag Archives: see

Love So Amazing!

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LOVE SO AMAZING! 

“‘Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.

“‘Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you and they know that you have sent me.

‘”I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.'” John 7:24-26 NIV.

This beautiful, intimate communication between the Son and His Father breathes the atmosphere of tender love. After a physical and geographical separation from Him of thirty three years, Jesus’ taste of living as a human being in time and space, He was on the brink of experiencing the worst that a human being could ever suffer. It was the necessary gateway to His return to His beloved Father to take His place once again with the Father in the eternal realm.

A new position awaited Him if He completed His mission — to reveal the greatest measure of the Father’s love for His fallen world by being obedient to death, even death on a cross. He would be exalted to the highest place and given the highest name in all the universe. He would be elevated to king, ruling over everything, and head of the church, His body, the composite woman who was destined to be His bride when the universe was restored to its original perfection.

Jesus had spent three years imparting to this group of men whom the Father had given Him, the nature of the Father and the enormity of His love for His human race by teaching and showing them what the Father is like and wooing them back to intimacy with Himself so that they would understand how much the Father loved them and desired their love in return.

He had done what He could and finished the task, sowing the seeds of the words God had given Him into His disciples in the confidence that, when He had returned to the Father, the Holy Spirit would continue the work of nurturing in them the knowledge of the truth.

It was time to go. In one last expression of desire, He poured out His soul to His Abba. So precious had these men become to Him that He wanted them to be as close as they could ever be to Him, with Him, by His side so that they could gaze on His glory, the glory He shared with the Father before the beginning of time.

Yes, they had been with Him on earth, listening, watching and marvelling at a human being so different from all other humans that it took every effort of His to teach them that He was truly the Son of God. But this was only preparation for what was yet to come, something so otherworldly that the Apostle Paul could only declare, “No eye has seen, no ear had heard…” No imagination could stretch to embrace so glorious a being whom they were yet to see.

So deep was His love for them that He wanted to share it all, not only His place in eternity with the Father but the environment of love so pure and so all-embracing that He would give them not only His love and the love of the Father but His very position of power and authority in His universe — His throne. To be “in Him” is to be in everything He is and share in everything He owns.

Who can fathom the mystery of being “in Christ”? Through His Spirit we are in such intimate union with Him that our spirits have been fused to His Spirit, inseparably joined to Him so that we have become one. This does not mean that we have become gods! Nowhere in God’s word does He even suggest such nonsense. No, He has restored us to the place of oneness with Him that He created in His first human pair.

It was God’s intention that Jesus, through His death on the cross, would reconcile all things to Himself — “For God was pleased to have all His fulness dwell in Him, and through Him to reconcile to Himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through His blood shed on the cross.” Colossians1:19, 20 NIV restoring perfect harmony in the universe, the environment He prepared as a home for His children.

A Plan Comes Together

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A PLAN COMES TOGETHER 

“At first His disciples did not understand all this. Only after Jesus was glorified did they realize that these things had been written about Him and that these things had been done to Him.

“Now the crowd that was with Him when He called Lazarus from the tomb and raised Him from the dead continued to spread the word. Many people, because they had heard that He had performed this sign, went out to meet Him. So the Pharisees said to one another, ‘See, this is getting us nowhere. Look how the whole world has gone after Him!'” John 12:16-19 NIV.

Although John was writing as though he were an objective observer, we must remember that he was one of the disciples and he knew the inside story. He was one of those who did not realize that Jesus was busy fulfilling prophecy in front of their eyes. Once again, like all the other events in Jesus’ life, none of this would make sense to them until it was all over, and they could put all the pieces of the puzzle together and see the bigger picture.

We cannot blame the disciples for their slowness to understand and believe. Everything that was happening was outside their experience and their frame of reference. Like the women who went to the tomb to anoint the body of Jesus, (and found the tomb empty and a glowing figure sitting inside who told them an outlandish story about Jesus being risen which was enough to terrify the wits out of them), the disciples could not correctly process these events until they had time to make sense of them with hindsight.

It seems that the Lazarus incident set off a wave of popularity for Jesus that sent the Pharisees into a frenzy. Things were getting out of hand and it was time for them to take action rather than to keep meeting and planning.

In the meantime…

“There were some Greeks among them who went up to worship at the Feast. They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, with a request. ‘Sir,’ they said, ‘we would like to see Jesus.’ Philip went to tell Andrew; Andrew and Philip in turn told Jesus.” John 12:20-22 NIV.

Two stories are running parallel here. There were dark forces egging the religious leaders on to get rid of Jesus, stirring up the jealousy, hatred and anger that dragged them deeper and deeper into their ungodly intentions. At the same time there were men, Gentiles and foreigners, who were moved by the stories they were hearing about Jesus. Was it mere curiosity that prompted their request, or was there a genuine interest in what they were hearing about this man because there was answering response in their hearts?

John stated the reason for their presence in Jerusalem. They had come to worship at the Feast. That put them squarely in the camp of the “God-fearers” – Gentiles who had abandoned their idolatry and had become adherents of Judaism, not yet inducted into the covenant but participating in the ceremonies and festivals of the Jewish people. Somehow, in spite of the ritualistic rigmarole of Judaism, they had been attracted to their monotheistic religion that worshipped an unseen God who received and embraced them though they were not part of His covenant people.

As the events of this saga unfold, in the sovereignty of God He was slowly moving the two camps closer together — antagonists who wanted to kill Jesus and sympathisers who were interested in what He was saying and doing. The two stories converged at the cross; the killers accomplished, in the perfect plan of God, what the enquirers would need to complete their search after God!

Only a wise and sovereign God could devise and put into action a plan so complex and yet so precise that prophecy, human hatred and divine love could meet at one strategic moment in time and effect a deliverance so great that embraces all of time and eternity and shines the spotlight on the mercy and grace of the One who put it all into action.

Walking On The Word

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WALKING ON THE WORD

“After saying this He spat on the ground, made some mud with the saliva and put it on the man’s eyes. ‘Go,’ He told him, ‘wash in the pool Siloam’ (this word means “Sent”). So the man went and washed, and came home seeing.” John 9:6-7 NIV.

What was that; a new kind of eye salve? That was a strange way to heal a man, or was it? What was it that Jesus asked the man to put his trust in — the mud on his eyes, or in the word that He spoke?

How easy it would have been for the blind man to have been side-tracked by what Jesus did to him, and put his faith in that rather than in the simple instruction Jesus gave him. Had he not obeyed Jesus he might have sat around with mud on his eyes waiting for his miracle until the day he died.

Remember Elisha and Naaman the Syrian general? He was also given an instruction by the prophet which he pooh-poohed because it didn’t suit him. It was humiliating for him to wash in the muddy Jordan rather than in the clear stream in his homeland. He almost missed his miracle because of his silly pride!

Washing in the Jordan River and washing off the mud in the Pool of Siloam were only the means of testing the obedience of the sufferers. Acting on the word was what triggered their healing.

In John 1 John introduced Jesus as the Word who was with God from the beginning and who was God. Like the spoken word, Jesus is the manifestation of the Father in another form. He is the embodiment of what God has spoken. When He speaks He reveals and reflects the Father. Therefore, whenever He gave an instruction, the Father backed up His word by the action that brought the word to pass.

In John 8 we read that He sets us free from our slave-drivers — implied — when we put His teachings into practice. When we weave His word into our lives, we are like a wise builder who establishes his house on bedrock so that, when the storm blows in, it will not dislodge and destroy the house.

How often do we not put our faith in our faith rather than in what God has promised! Faith in the Word releases the power of God to honour His promise. The blind man’s simple obedience brought the miracle he was not even expecting.

“His neighbours and those who had formerly seen him begging asked, ‘Isn’t this the same man who used to sit and beg?’ Some claimed that he was. Others said, ‘No, he only looks like him.’ But he himself insisted, ‘I am the man.'” John 9:8, 9 NIV.

Strange, isn’t it, that a blind beggar believed Jesus and risked making a fool of himself by obeying His word and was rewarded with a miracle! Yet some of the bystanders made fools of themselves by denying that the man who used to beg was the same man who now could see. How stubborn and wilfully blind can a person be to deny the obvious and forfeit the miracle of spiritual sight.

Were the people who denied the identity of the healed man afraid of the Jews? Probably, otherwise there is no reason for their foolishness unless they too, stubbornly resisted the idea that Jesus was their Messiah.

It reminds me of the men and women who stubbornly believe that the universe just “happened” when common sense screams out that everything that is made has to have a maker. Nothing just “happens”! Slime doesn’t become complex creatures who perfectly function in their environment. Behind their foolish insistence that evolution is fact is the refusal to believe in a Creator God because they do not want to be accountable to Him.

Unfortunately for those who refuse to believe the truth, it will not change or go away to suit them. Like some of the people who denied that the healed man was the erstwhile blind beggar, those who deny the existence of God rob themselves of the miracle of true sight. How surprised they would be if, in the process of acknowledging Jesus, they found out what life is really all about and experience the joy of being reconnected to their Creator!

Are you walking on the Word?