Tag Archives: walk

MOLLY AND ME – WALKING OR BALKING?

Christian Life, ,

Walkies” can sometimes be a test of willpower between Molly and me. When we started our daily walking routine, Molly hated the harness. I tried one that went over her torso. It didn’t work because she easily pulled out of it.

Problem!

Next, we tried the neck/body harness. It worked better except for the time when she got out of it while we were walking on the pavement down the main road! Freedom!!! Off she went in a flurry of excitement. She was free to run…anywhere! And ran she did, across the street and back, several times, especially when she wanted to face, at close quarters but on the other side of the gate, of course, that BIG dog that irritated her the most!

Fortunately, we were close to the side street that took us back home. I nonchalantly walked down the road and, true to habit, she followed me until we reached our own gate.

The next time she escaped her harness, now a few yours older, she stood dead still, looked up at me and asked, with her eyes, “Now what must I do?” I quickly secured her in her harness, grateful that she had come of age!

These days, my mature older dog has another way of enforcing her reluctance to walk…she puts on brakes on all four legs, as efficiently as the ABS braking system in my car! I know that part of her problem is the lesion in her spine that sometimes makes walking painful. However, it’s that look of defiance when she puts on brakes that makes me think it’s also a power struggle.

So, I ask her, “Molly, are you walking or balking?”

How like us when we don’t want to do God’s will! We put on our inner brakes with that attitude of defiance that says, “No, I don’t want to do it!”

I find this attitude rising up in me when I need to put right something I have done wrong. My pride, my ego, my perceived reputation is at stake. I must defend myself at all costs!

What about those times when the Lord requires me to do something that will cost me? Someone needs help. My involvement may cost me time, effort, money or whatever the Lord asks of me. My first response may be…brakes on all four paws! It may take a little time for me to release the brakes and do as I am told!

It’s a long, hard lesson for me to learn to walk with God, not to balk at God. Sometimes my old, emotional pain gets in the way of my willingness to obey. I take time to deal with the “what ifs” of reluctance or fear, my “no” of unbelief, my hesitance to cast myself on the Lord and step into the unknown.

God’s ministry in our hearts is, probably, 90% focused on teaching us faith, trust, reliance on Him because He is faithful, what He says is true, and what He wants of us is obedience without fear. He is always working, in all things, for our good and His glory.

Although Molly can’t understand that walking is for our good, I CAN understand that my Father is always working what is good for me. Why, then, am I balking instead of walking with the Lord? It’s that old nature again, the self-will with which I was born. It takes a lifetime of learning to accept the “leash” of obedience and walk where the Master leads me.

HOW MANY BRICKS?

Bible Study, ,

HOW MANY BRICKS?

“The day on which this took place was a Sabbath, and so the Jewish leaders said to the man who had been healed, ‘It is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your mat.’

“But he replied, ‘The man who made me well said to me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’ ‘So they asked him, ‘Who is this fellow who told you to pick it up and walk?’ “John 5:9-12 (NIV)

The Sabbath — a hot issue for the Pharisees, but why? Anyone who violated the Sabbath got them going. Was it because it was the one thing they could control? Breaking the Sabbath was an outward violation of the law and they could come down hard on the culprit to show him who was boss.

However, to them Sabbath-breaking wasn’t about “breaking” the fourth commandment as much as it was about contravening their petty laws which were added to the fourth commandment as their interpretation of God’s law. The fourth commandment was about keeping the Sabbath, not breaking it, and it all depended on what was meant by “keeping” the Sabbath!

In order to understand the Sabbath, we have to go back to the time and place where this commandment originated. The Sabbath was a creation ordinance and it became part of God’s marriage covenant with the children of Israel at Sinai when they came out of Egypt. Why was it necessary for God to give His people an instruction like this? Was it to put restrictions on them? No, it was to set them free.

The only life the Hebrews knew in Egypt was a life of slavery. Seven days a week they made bricks. Their value for their masters lay in what they could produce. God sent Moses to deliver them from Egypt and everything Egypt stood for. Without an instruction like that, they would have gone on thinking that their only worth to God lay in what they could achieve or produce and not in who they were. 

They had to be reprogrammed into realizing that their work did not make them who they were. They were of worth to God because He had created them in His image to be a reflection of Himself, not only for His own sake but also to train them to treat one another with dignity and respect.

When God’s work of creation was complete, He rested but He did not sit back, fold His arms and do nothing. He supervised what He had created to ensure that everything functioned together in perfect harmony. He wanted these newly-freed slaves to remember that it was He who set up the Sabbath as a legitimate day of rest and it was the Egyptians who had contradicted His instruction.

For the Jews, the Sabbath was intended to be a gift from God to set them free from viewing themselves in terms of what they could produce, and to give them time and opportunity to catch their breath, recover their strength and get ready for another six days of labour. They were to remember that God set it up for them because He had rested on the seventh day after His work was complete. It was a “sign” of His covenant with them established at Mount Sinai.

“Say to the Israelites, ‘You must observe my Sabbaths. This will be a sign between me and you for the generations to come, so you may know that I am the Lord, who makes you holy.'” Exodus 31:13 (NIV).

The religious leaders had turned the Sabbath into a day of restrictions and religious rules so that they could monitor what the people were doing and jump on them when they stepped out of line. They prescribed what “work” was in such petty detail that the people were hardly able to move.

Jesus refused to be dictated to by these religious slave-drivers. He was not intimidated by their accusations and threats. Carrying a mat was not work; it was part of legitimate daily activity. He insisted that the Sabbath was a gift of God’s love, not prison bars to dehumanize them, and that He was the author of the Sabbath, not some human rule-makers who failed to understand why it was needed in the first place.

The Sabbath was a visual aid of a rest that went much deeper that just one day of not working. It was prophetic of a day which God called “today” in which we would rest form every effort to please God by our own “work”. When we enter into Jesus, we enter into His rest, because He satisfied God’s requirement for a perfect life and then died to pay the debt of our imperfection. He calls us to enter that rest by trusting in His finished work.

Have you entered His rest?

Acknowledgement

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.

WHICH WAY?

Christian Life, , ,

Psalm 86:11 has been my prayer since 2008. It’s a prayer and a response. Teach me your way, O Lord, and I will walk in your truth.

The rest of the verse is also a prayer and a response. Give me an undivided heart that I may fear your name.

What are God’s ways? He told the prophet Isaiah that His ways are higher than our ways, and His thoughts than our thoughts. Our ways are often patterned on the world’s ways, what works to our advantage, forgetting that what we think is the right way is often the wrong way.

God gave Adam a simple test. “Do not eat the fruit of that one tree.” We think that the fruit was the issue. There must have been something wrong with the fruit of that particular tree. However, the fruit wasn’t the issue at all – the real issue was; would Adam trust God enough to believe what He said and not try it out for himself?

Just like our children who don’t believe our warnings until they get hurt trying out what we warned them not to do, Adam followed Eve who was deceived into believing that God was not telling the truth. Satan insinuated that God was withholding something good from them.

Adam brought death on himself and the entire human race by mistrusting God’s word and deciding for himself what was good and evil.

If and when we pray David’s prayer sincerely, it means that we relinquish the right to decide what is good or bad for us, and trust that God’s ways are always the best, although we may not always understand the things He reveals and the way He works.

God’s ways are always in harmony with who He is. God is love. His ways, though sometimes mysterious and incomprehensible, are always loving towards us. When we follow our own ways, we often get into lots of trouble. When we walk in God’s ways, His love guides us towards knowing Him better and learning more of His truth.

How much better it is to abandon our own stubborn independence and ask Him to show us His ways. In the end, Jesus is the way, and when we follow Him, we will find the path of truth that leads us to the Father. Jesus’ way is the way of gentleness and humility. Caring for and living for others instead of always thinking about and living for ourselves is the beginning of learning God’s ways. It is the way of unending peace.

 

The Power Of The Cross – Purified By The Blood

Gospel, , , ,

THE POWER OF THE CROSS

PURIFED BY THE BLOOD

But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, His Son purifies us from all sin. (1 John 1: 7)

How much truth is encapsulated in this one verse!

First of all, what does it mean to “walk in the light”? Unless we understand the Hebraic thought behind this statement, we will invent our own interpretation and make nonsense of its meaning. To understand it accurately, we must go back to its use in the Old Testament.

“Remember, words used by the New Testament writers were not created in a vacuum. They have their meanings established in the Tanakh. The writers of the New Testament do not spend time defining words or phrases to the reader. The meaning of the terms are assumed. Assumed from where? The Scriptures. So let’s see how the New Testament dictionary defines light.

Psalm 119:105 – Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path.

Psalm 119:130 – The entrance of thy words gives light; it gives understanding to the simple.

Proverbs 6:23 – For the commandment is a lamp; and the law is light; and reproofs of instruction are the way of life:

“This would be the dictionary of the New Testament writers. Their understanding of the words they used came from the Scriptures they already had. When the Bereans were commended in Acts 17:11, it was because they went back to the Tanakh to verify everything that was being taught by these early disciples. Why? Reason number one is because that is all they had. The New Testament had not yet been penned. Reason number two is because the Hebrew people had been taught for centuries that if someone does not speak according to the law and the testimony there is no light in them. So, when the New Testament writers, especially Yeshua‘, used the term light, they used it in a way that was already understood. Let’s go over a few New Testament verses again. This time we will see them in their proper context.

John 8:12 – I am the light of the world …” (i.e. I am the words of ’Elohiym.)

Matthew 5:14-16 – Ye are the light of the world …” (i.e. Now you are the words of ’Elohiym.)

Matthew 5:16 – Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.” (i.e. Proclaim and DO the words of ’Elohiym, so that the world can see who you are and glorify Him).

http://www.wildbranch.org/teachings/lessons/lesson4.html (-retrieved October 2015)

We have established that to walk in the light means to live our lives in obedience to the Word of God. It stands to reason that, if we are all walking in the light, we will be in harmony with one another. The Greek word, for fellowship is koinonia. It means having things in common or being in harmony, communion.

Firstly, to have fellowship with one another, we must be in fellowship with the Father, which He brought about by redeeming us from slavery to sin and reconciling us to Himself through the blood of Jesus.

Secondly, Jesus made peace though His blood, bringing Jew and Gentile together into one family, creating a new race which is characterised by spiritual birth rather than by natural human birth and condition. We are citizens, first of all, of the kingdom of God which takes precedence over citizenship in the land of our birth.

Thirdly, obedience to Jesus as Lord and to the Word of God brings us together as one. Fellowship with the Father and with His Son, and fellowship with one another is the evidence of a spiritual cleansing by the blood of Jesus. God promises to purify us when we acknowledge our sin, and to keep us pure when we live in harmony with Him and with one another.

The word for “purify” is in the present continuous tense. It implies a continuous action, something like a windscreen wiper that continually wipes the rain off the windscreen. Cleansing by the blood of Jesus is not a once-off action but a perpetual washing as we live in obedience to His word. It cleanses us from our impure intentions, attitudes, motives and failures to be perfect.

Hallelujah! This lifts the burden of trying to live up to God’s perfection because we are already perfect in Christ. Our job is to keep our eyes on Jesus and His job is to keep us clean and pure by His blood.

What do we have in common? We have a common Father, a common Lord, a common Holy Spirit, a common citizenship, a common salvation, a common hope, a common purpose, a common destiny and a common destination, and even common resources because we are one family.

This is the power of the cross!

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.

Have you read my first book, Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing)? You’ll love it!

ISBN: Softcover – 978-1-4828-0512-3,                                                                              eBook 978-4828-0511-6

Available on www.amazon.com in paperback, e-book or kindle version, on www.takealot.com  or order directly from the publisher at www.partridgepublishing.com.

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Ghost Or God?

Bible Study, , , ,

GHOST OR GOD?

Immediately Jesus made His disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of Him to Bethsaida, while He dismissed the crowd. After leaving them, He went up on a mountainside to pray. Later that night, the boat was in the middle of the lake, and He was alone on land. He saw the disciples straining at the oars because the wind was against them. Shortly before dawn He want out to them, walking on the lake. He was about to pass by them, but when they saw Him walking on the lake, they thought He was a ghost. They cried out because they all saw Him and were terrified. Immediately He spoke to them and said, ‘Take courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid.’ Then He climbed into the boat with them and the wind died down. They were completely amazed, for they had not understood about the loaves; their hearts were hardened (Mark 6: 45-52).

Another well-known story, so well-known in fact that we ignore a phrase in Mark’s narrative that makes it a revelation, not just a story.

It was Jesus’ purpose to reveal who He was to His disciples. Before He left them to return to the Father, these twelve men had to be convinced that He was the Son of God, so convinced in fact that they would obey His instructions implicitly and serve His loyally, even to death for the sake of the message they were to deliver and the work they were to do. These men were first-century disciples, not wishy-washy “Christians” like so many are today. That meant that they were learning to be accurate replicas of their rabbi in everything He was in His character and everything He said and did. Anything less disqualified them.

Mere intellectual faith was of no value for the Hebrew person if it did not issue in a response. For the disciples to believe in Him meant to stake everything on who He was and to become like Him. Simply telling them that He was the Son of God would not have been strong enough to convince them. He had to show them, and not just by doing supernatural things. What He was, and what He said and did was to match the Old Testament revelation of God. Jesus took every opportunity to convince them by using the circumstances to reveal His glory so that He could reflect the Father’s glory to these men.

Here was a golden opportunity to add another piece to the growing weight of evidence that He was a man but much more than a man. Since New Testament scholars tell us that Mark used Peter’s memoirs or Peter’s preaching as the basis of his gospel, Peter must have understood the significance of Jesus’ action and recorded it in words that give us the clue to Jesus’ intention.

We will miss the phrase “pass by them” if we are not familiar with its use in the Torah – the five books of Moses which form the basis of the rest of the Bible. Mark wrote, “He was about to pass by them”, the only gospel writer to use the phrase. What did he mean? It makes no sense for Jesus to walk on the lake to go to His disciples and then to walk past them as though He had missed them in the storm.

Let’s look for the use of the phrase in the Torah.

It was a significant moment for Moses. God’s people had broken the covenant. They were dancing around a golden calf and calling it “God”. Moses was up on the mountain pleading with God to forgive them and receive them back as His people. He had persuaded God not to abandon His people in the desert but to accompany them to the Promised Land. Then he asked God a favour. “Show me your glory” and God agreed. Moses was going somewhere with this request.

Then the Lord came down in the cloud and stood there with him and proclaimed His name, the Lord. And He passed by in front of Moses, proclaiming, ’The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger and abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin . . . (Ex. 34: 5-6).

Did you get that? God “passed by” – a euphemism for revealing Himself to Moses. This was a significant action because it formed the basis of Moses’ intercession for his people. If God revealed Himself as compassionate and forgiving, Moses had grounds for asking God to forgive His people and renew the covenant.

If Jesus’ disciples were familiar with the Torah, they would have picked up the clue.  Jesus was saying by His action that He was the very same person who had revealed Himself to Moses on Mount Sinai. After all, did He not infuriate the Pharisees by declaring, “Before Abraham was, I AM”?

But they missed it. Instead of recognising Jesus’ beautiful revelation for them, they panicked. They cried out in terror. “It’s a ghost, a ghost!” What was meant to be another moment of faith for them became a moment of fear.

How like the disciples we are! When Jesus “passes by” in our crisis, we think He’s a ghost, not God – so near and so ready to reveal His presence in our problem. Where Jesus is there, everything falls into place but often, like the Twelve, we don’t recognise Him because our hearts are hardened. Fear blots out our recognition of the Saviour’s presence and we lose the joy of receiving another piece of evidence that He is God and we can trust Him, after all.

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.

Have you read my new book, Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart (copyright 2015, Partridge Publishing)? You’ll love it!

Available on www.amazon.com in paperback, e-book or kindle version or order directly from the publisher at www.partridgepublishing.com.

Check out my Blog site – www.learningtobeason.wordpress.com