Sunday Messages

The messages below are from the two lockdown periods as well as some abridged written versions of Sunday messages after the lock down for those who cannot attend.

 

There are PDF versions that are easier to read alongside the web versions.

 

28/2/2021 Walking by Faith

 

He said to the Levites, who instructed all Israel and who had been consecrated by the Lord: “Put the sacred ark in the temple that Solomon built. It is not to be carried around on your shoulders. Now serve the Lord your God and His people Israel.
2 Chronicles 35v3

 

Last week we started to look at Josiah who from an early age sought the Lord and through that relationship with the Lord brought about many reforms in Judah and the surrounding area (2 Chronicles 34v3-7). Not only did his relationship with the Lord lead to the removal of the altars of Baal and the Asherah poles, but it also led to a recognition that the temple of the Lord was also in a terrible state both physically and spiritually, for the temple had been neglected by the people including the priests. Notice it is this young man who through his relationship with the Lord is telling the priests what they should be doing, for the priests, the so called men of God, because of their lack of relationship with the father had been going their own way and so instead of being led by God had been turning God Almighty into the god they wanted. Despite their position they had no idea of the leading of the Lord and this really becomes evident in 2 Chronicles 34v14-21 when the book of the law is found. Just think about the gravity of this moment. The temple has been functioning for years without it, slowly drifting off course and going in whatever direction seemed right at the time. The holy ark of the covenant had been reduced to a religious icon that was taken out before the people as the Levites saw fit. Put into context, the priest instead of being led of the Lord just dragged God around to suit themselves having no idea of the spiritual disaster that had come upon them. Only as the Word of God is read do they start to grasp the disaster that lay right in front of them (2 Chronicles 34v24-25). It is a reminder of the words of Jesus in Matthew 7v21-23 that in our pride we can become so blinded to the truth and to the true state of our relationship with the Lord that we have no concept that disaster is staring us in the face. It was only as the word of God came back into their lives that once again the revelation from God returned to the people and the Lords ways became clear again.

 

This week we will start to look at how the Word of God is crucial to the walk of faith and we will start by defining walking by faith. Over the years the idea of walking by faith has been polluted and distorted to the point that like the Levites, we drag the ark around to the place where we want God to be. In the same way faith has become about our ability to generate enough belief that God will hear us and do what we want, be it health, wealth or happiness, delivering these things in the way that we want them. We need to recognise that this is not walking by faith for the Lordship of the relationship is backwards, we have turned “thy will be done” into “my will be done”. What we need to understand is that walking by faith is not us generating enough belief for God to trust in our abilities and plans, but about us trusting in His abilities and plans. Walking by faith means walking the path that the Lord has called us to, trusting Him step by step through fair weather or the storms of life until we reach the end of the journey. This is not based on an intellectual understanding of the Word of God, but comes from a humble relationship with the Father Himself and that is the place we will start.

 

As we think about the Word of God it is very easy to reduce it to an intellectual knowledge of the Bible, a knowing of the rules. Let us be clear that we can have an intellectual knowledge of the Bible without a relationship with God Himself. We can have our theories and doctrines, our rules and regulations and yet miss God completely. We can become like someone who owns a manual for a car, knowing every little detail of how it works, yet never having learnt to drive. We see it in the days of Josiah, we see it in the days of Jesus and we are fools if we think that man's heart has changed today, for these same old issues fill the church today.

 

As we think about the Word of God we need to understand that God’s word is eternal, if it is from God, then what He says will happen, will happen. It’s why the Bible is trustworthy, because God has given us His word and His word can be trusted because like the Father himself it is unchanging. Yet even as we think of the Bible we need to understand that it was created from individuals personal relationships with God. People wrote down what the Lord said through those people, men and women, old and young, in high position or low. However, we also need to understand that these revelations, without the relationship with the Lord will just become dry bones, rules to be obeyed. Let us remember that Jesus spent the most time arguing with those who claimed to know the scriptures the best, yet didn’t recognise the Son of God when he stood right in front of them. It is something we all need to be careful of, for it is easy to substitute a relationship with God for a relationship with the Bible and change revelation from God into intellectual understanding. For one is about us in our intellectual pride finding the way, while the other is about us humbly admitting our need of instruction and leading on a daily basis and that if we are going to understand His revelations in the Bible there is no better teacher than the Holy Spirit Himself. For when the Holy Spirit explains the Bible to us we experience the same burning of the heart that the disciples had on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24v32). This is when the Lord speaks and the revelation cuts through to our Spirit as seen on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2v37). It’s when God’s word becomes alive in our hearts and leads to action based on obedience, faith! For true faith is always an action that is a response to the instruction of the Lord and the Lord alone.

 

As believers this hearing from the Lord is crucial and is an area that has been constantly under attack with clever religious substitutes put in place. It is so easy to think that because we have the right books, the right versions of the Bible, the correct pastor or online ministry that we are alright, when so often we are following another rather than following the Lord Himself. Instead of having a surety of direction that comes from clear revelation from God we run around looking for someone else to speak the Lords word into our lives, displaying by our actions that our relationship with the Lord is not what it should be. For if we read about the great men of faith in Hebrews 11 we see a list of people who walked in obedience after hearing clearly from the Lord. Many of them never had the written word, but they had relationship, they had hearts after God that humbly sought to know Him. It’s the same heart that Paul constantly prays for in his epistles. His desire for each person to be hearing from the Lord, to have Gods revelation in their lives, what is His revelation? It is God explaining things as He sees them that we may know Him and His ways better (Ephesians 1v17-23). It is what we see in the life of Jesus as he walked with his disciples, he didn’t give them a discipleship manual or some other book of instruction, but instead spoke into their lives by word and deed as different situations arose and is the role that the Holy Spirit now plays in our lives as he promised (John 16v12-15).

 

It is the feature that struck the High Priest and the leaders as they spoke to Peter and John after the healing of the lame man. They realised that these men were unschooled, not spiritually educated as they were, yet moved in the power of God as they walked in obedience to the leading of the Holy Spirit (Acts 4v13). The leaders had all the theory and knowledge, the traditions and the authority of this world, yet the power of God was not with them, for their pride in what they knew had blinded them to their lack of relationship with the Father, the very thing Jesus died on the cross for (John 14v6). In many ways that has become the picture of the church today, knowing a lot about God, proclaiming our theories and doctrines yet lacking the walk of faith that comes from a true knowledge and trust in the Lord. For to walk by faith we must hear the instruction, the revelation and then trust the Lord to fulfil that instruction no matter what He asks us to do and no matter how we are seen before the world. That is what made the great men of faith we read about in Hebrews 11, a knowing the Lord that led to a trusting obedience in the face of opposition and mockery from the world. It is why we are inspired by the testimonies of great men and women of God who heard the Lords calling and set off even at the cost of their lives. The Holy Spirit speaks through their lives today because they fulfilled the calling of God on their lives in the same way that our lives speak when we fulfil the Lords call on ours be it overseas or at home.

 

One of the great benefits of walking in the obedience that comes from faith is that it brings peace into our lives. I have lost count of the difficult, sometimes impossible, situations I have found myself in after following the Lord in a step of obedient faith. Often finding myself in far off lands with no human way to move forward, yet knowing that the Lord will provide because He called me to that place. That blessing grows as we walk in obedience, allowing the Lord to take us further and further from the safety of our own provision and plans. For too often we can find ourselves either running round in endless circles hoping to find the Lords will by chance, for we need to always remember that being busy doesn’t make us obedient (Matthew 7v21-23). Many years ago I had a fantastic programmer working for me, he developed an amazing piece of software that did lots of very clever things while looking fantastic. He came to me expecting congratulations, but went away disappointed, for he had not built what I had asked for. In his enthusiasm he had forgotten the task I had given him and allowed his own imagination to take over, a failing that comes from a pride that assumes it knows the whole plan, something we all so easily fall into. The amazing peace that comes upon us even in the darkest of situations is a crucial part of our walk of faith, it is the demonstration to the world that the Lord is truly Lord of our lives (Philippians 4v11-13). When we are unsure of our calling, when we are not fully in communication with the Father we start to fear as the storms gather and our lives instead of displaying the peace of this world display the frantic plans of men.

 

For our walk of faith to progress, we need to increase our knowledge of the Lord, to draw closer and allow Him to lead us in the small training steps that lead to the larger leaps of faith. For if we do not know God in the way we should we will not trust Him in difficult situations. Many years ago I was involved in a lifeboat drill in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Even though the sea was calm I hated the experience because in all honesty, I did not trust the integrity of the lifeboat. Others who worked with the life boats all the time had no such fear, they had a trust that was built up on their knowledge and experience of the boats and so it is with the Lord. I may have had the intellectual knowledge that the life boat was unsinkable. By my actions and attitude I displayed a fear that came from a lack of faith.

 

As we look to move forwards in faith, we need to humbly recognise our need to know the Lord, not just know about Him, and the key to knowing the Lord is taking the time to listen. In any relationship we only come to truly know the other person as we spend time listening to them. If we are doing all the talking then the other person may know a lot about us, but even after many hours together we will know little if anything about them or their desires. So too in our times of prayer we need to get the Lordship in the correct order, for all we can do is pass on our worries and concerns that the Lord already knows. To know His plans, to know His will for our life we need to humbly listen. For the one who is listening is displaying the servant heart, the one giving instruction is taking the position of teacher.

 

It is the simple lesson Jesus tried to teach his disciples in the Lords prayer; Who is Lord and whose will needs to be done? Followed by our daily needs to carry out that will and the recognition that we are just sinners saved by grace (Matthew 6v9-13). It displays an order that leads to a true walk of faith and no matter how much we may think there are short cuts, there are none. If we want to be the great men and women of faith, the sons and daughters that the Lord desires and deserves, it will all start with a humbling of ourselves as we take the time to sit at the feet of the Lord and listen. If we are not willing to sit and listen, then servant hood is out of our reach and the walk of faith becomes impossible because we are worshipping another God.

 

When we stand before the Lord it will not be our intellectual knowledge and understanding or our position or rank before others that gets us a reward, it will be our faithfulness in serving in obedience as he called and instructed us. This is the walk we see in the life of Christ and is the path we are to follow.

 

“His master replied, ‘Well done my good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share in your master’s happiness!’”
Matthew 25v21

 

21/2/2021 A New Beginning

 

In the eighth year of his reign, while he was still young, he began to seek the God of his father David. In his twelfth year he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem of high places, Asherah poles, carved idols and cast images. Under his direction the alters of the baals were cut down; he cut to pieces the incense altars that were above them, and smashed the Asherah poles, the idols and the images. These he broke to pieces and scattered over the graves of those who had sacrificed to them.
2 Chronicles 34v3-4

 

Over the last few weeks we have looked at how pride infects the different areas of our life, bringing with it a hardening of the heart, the deadliest of spiritual cancers that leads to a spiritual deafness towards God, a deafness that will block us from being able to be led by the Spirit and acting as true sons and daughters of God (Romans 8v13-14). This week we will start to look at how we turn things around, restoring and renewing our relationship to the way the Lord would want it to be.

 

Of course one of the strange things that always happens when challenged on a subject like this is that in our pride we instantly claim that all is well. However, if all was well, if we truly walked according to the Spirit and had nothing left to improve, then in our pride we have raised ourselves to the level of Christ, without truly realising what the life of Christ entails. Even the great apostle Paul, after all he had been through and the incredible revelations God had given him still admitted there was work to be done in his life (Philippians 3v12-14). He recognised that he had not finished the race and that is was something that he would have to strain and struggle to attain. If Paul still had plenty to attain, I’m sure we have more. In reality the fact that we become so defensive when challenged is because we don’t want to admit the truth about the prideful lie that we live, proclaiming to be more than we are. It’s a spiritual embarrassment that we do not live up to what we proclaim and do not know the Lord in the way that we should, in other words we are living in conceit.

 

“What do you want me to do for you?” Jesus asked him. “Rabbi, I want to see.”
Mark 10v51

 

I always have to smile when I read of the encounter between blind Bartimaeus and Jesus. There is a blind man crying out and when he approaches Jesus, Jesus asks him what he wants? At first you would think Jesus was stupid, does the Son of God not recognise a blind man when he sees one? Yet the question is very relevant to us for the question has to be asked: What do we want? Bartimaeus, knew he was blind, he recognised his need. Yet if he was healed, life as he knew it would totally change for certainly he wouldn’t get much money begging if he got his sight back. Being able to see would mean a complete transformation of his life bringing about a change in just about every relationship he had.

 

As Christians we have to ask: “What do we want?” Do we really want a relationship with the Father or do we just want a ticket to heaven. Do we really want to know the Lord, to meet with Him and hear what He has to say? Or do we just want someone to deal with our complaints and who will run around after us to make life how we want it to be? This question is crucial at this point because if we are going to go about this half heartedly the relationship will fail.

 

You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.
Jeremiah 29v13

“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
Jesus replied: “’Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind’”.
Matthew 22v36-37

 

As we can see, loving God with all our heart is something that is a foundational requirement for knowing the Lord. As we read about the events on the day of Pentecost, one of the key events to notice is in Acts 2v37 when the people who heard the word were cut to the heart. This is where true repentance and turning to God starts from, a change of heart direction. It’s not an emotional state, although it may generate emotion at times, rather it is a heart felt desire and goal for which sacrifices will be happily made. When my daughter was ill in Birmingham, often we would have to travel once or twice a day. It cost a lot of money and the rest of life was cast aside because we had a hearts desire for her. At times that meant being tired and frustrated, we certainly didn’t walk round with big smiles on our faces, yet the sacrifice continued to be made because there was a loving hearts desire that came from sacrificial love that was greater than our love for ourselves. This is the sort of love that Jesus talked about, a love that put the Father right in the centre of all we do, just as He has done for us as we see in the true message of the cross.

 

If we read the famous passage on love in 1 Corinthians 13v4-8 we see that true godly love is humble and sacrificial. It is not about us, but about the one we love, the one we have a desire for. Too often in our modern churches we want a different type of love, a love that puts our feelings front and centre, a love for God that is only pursued if we feel good about ourselves first. It is interesting that the first attribute listed is patience, for if we are going to “wait” on the Lord we may be waiting some time (Psalm 40v1), but that patience in itself is a demonstration of our heart felt love and desire and if we are going to hear from the Lord it is a requirement, not an optional extra.

 

It is at this point we need to look honestly at ourselves and access the true state of our hearts desire, to ask the Lord to show us the truth, although if we truly have a heart after the Lord the Holy Spirit should already be convicting us. If the Holy Spirit is not able to convict us then our hearts truly have become hardened with pride. As we wait on the Lord, as we allow the Holy Spirit to speak and our our eyes are opened to the truth, we may not like what we see. And if our ears are opened to the truth, we may not like what we hear. For as we move forwards in the Lord it is the life of Christ that will start to be replicated in our lives, not warm fuzzy feelings, but a true dying to self as we follow in the footsteps of Jesus. Do we want that? Or like so many before us, will we turn back to the world out of the love for self? For scripture tells us that many disciples turned back and as we read in the epistles, others in the church followed them back into the world, the ways of Satan (1 Timothy 5v15, 2 Timothy 4v10, 1 John 2v15-17).

 

Have our hearts become so set in their ways, that we refuse to change? Let us be honest, the older we are, spiritually and physically, the more set in our ways we become. Again we can make our excuses, but what we are displaying is stubborn pride. It is amazing how often Christians will talk of a desire to want to grow closer to the Lord, yet are not willing to change their lives in any way.

 

In our opening passage we should note that Josiah was only eight years old and yet despite all his privileged upbringing he was able to humble himself, and though just a child, walked in the right paths. How was this possible? Simple, because he sought the Lord (2 Chronicles 34v3). Through seeking the Lord, not only did it purge his own life, leading to a walk of obedience, but as we see within a few years it overflowed into his leadership of Israel. Starting young was an advantage as he had not had time to make his own paths, yet for each one of us, no matter how long we have been saved and no matter how old we are in this world, the Lord is waiting if only we would allow the Holy Spirit to cut us to the heart.

 

So often the thing that stops us moving forwards in the Lord is the thought of the things we will need to give up, the sacrifices and changes that will need to be made. What we need to understand is that when we think that way, what we are really saying is that those ways are the true love of our lives and they are more important than our love of the Lord and so we stay put, worshipping our favourite idols.

 

It is why we see new believers lives change so quickly when they first meet with the Lord. That first love catches hold of them as they rejoice in their new found relationship with the Father. Things of this world are easily cast aside in sacrifice as the passion for the Lord burns within. That change does not come from rules, it is the overflow of the relationship. Yet as that relationship grows cold, as it starts to just become another part of our lives and our progress slows down. We take pride in how far we have travelled, not realising that we have stopped. We may be learning more, yet our time with the Father himself in prayer has grown cold. No longer is the Lord able to move as He did, no longer does the zeal to be led of the Lord burn within, we become like the church in Ephesus, full of action, yet cold in heart towards God (Revelation 2v4-5) with a spiritual light that is slowly deminishing.

 

The call to repentance, is not a call to give stuff up. It’s a call to once again set our hearts on the Lord, to desire Him. If the love is there we will willingly sacrifice the time and effort, if the love is not there, neither all the rules in the world or all the books and messages a church can offer will make any difference, for our hearts desire is set on another.

 

So as we humbly examine ourselves, the painful question we need to ask ourselves is “What do we want?”

 

I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.
Philippians 3v10-11

 

14/2/2021 Pride in Ministry

 

Now Moses was a very humble man, more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth.
Number 12v3

Over the last few weeks we have seen how pride infects and destroys our spiritual lives in various areas and this week we will look at how it creeps into ministry. Now as we have seen before, pride is a very difficult thing to see in ourselves, for pride itself blinds us. For many the idea of pride in their ministry is instantly rejected, why? Because of pride! Our response is that we are serving the Lord, how can that be prideful?

So before we get on our spiritual high horse and deny the truth, let’s be reminded of Moses, the most humble man on the face of the earth.

But the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, “Because you did not trust in me enough to honour me as holy in the sight of the Israelites, you will not bring this community into the land I give them.”
Numbers 20v12

Moses despite his godly humility was not above raising himself up in pride, for as we read in Numbers 20v1-11 Moses was having a bad day in ministry, the people had been moaning again, panicking over a subject that the Lord had delivered them from before and Moses suddenly loses perspective and raises himself up above the people and cries out “Must we bring you water out of this rock?”

At first we can easily miss the truth of what is happening here, for God had told him to bring water from the rock, but He had also given clear instruction as to how the water was to be brought forth, not as in Exodus 17v5-7, this time he was just to speak to the rock. But more importantly, it was the Lord who was bringing forth the water, not Moses. Moses has raised himself up to the position of God before the Israelites, allowing himself to become their provider rather than the Lord.

It is a trap that we all very easily fall into, and it comes from a misunderstanding of what ministry is, for too often we think of ministry as ministering unto others, when in fact our job is to minister unto the Lord; He is the one who we are serving if we claim to be his servants. Our ministry to others is the overflow of our ministry to the Lord and is done only in obedience to the Lord in the way he desires the ministry to be done. If we jump ahead of the Lord and just launch out on our own we are actually ministering in pride, assuming we know what the Lord wants done in someone else's life. We are claiming that we do not need to know the Lords command and have no need of knowing his plans in respect of the person or persons we are ministering to. At this point we have assumed spiritual superiority and are ministering in the flesh and may well finish up working against the plans of the Lord.

Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the father except through me.
John 14v6

Let us humble ourselves and remember the whole point of Christ dying on the cross; it was to allow us, sinful man, to be able to come to the Father through the forgiveness and mercy found in the blood of Jesus. Notice that Jesus death was not just about the forgiveness of sins, the forgiveness of sin was a ministry that allows the individual to come to the Father, to bring fallen man back into a true relationship with the Father. Too often we look at the goal as the forgiveness of sin and treat ministry in the same way, often looking for how many “we” can save. True salvation is much more than the forgiveness of sins, eternal salvation is about coming to the Father through that forgiveness of sins (John 17v3). Anything less and we have given people a substandard gospel, it would be like buying a car that has no wheels, all that power, yet it has failed to fulfil it’s job to take us to our destination, knowing God!

To understand the dangers of pride in ministry, we need to think back to the fall of man. For as we have read before, one of the great temptations to Adam and Eve was that they would be like God (Genesis 3v5), the one who is to be looked to, sought after and revered. It is at the very root of pride and was the desire of Satan himself and as we read in Matthew 4v9, it has always been his desire to have people bow down and submit to his authority, to give themselves in a way pleasing to him, the very basis of worship (Romans 12v1). This pride of the flesh, to be seen and honoured is in total opposition to the life of humility that Christ displayed (Philippians 2v6-8), for he was totally submitted to the will of the Father. That was the desire and drive that powered his life (John 4v34). The great danger we face from pride is that our ministry is not powered by doing the Fathers will, rather our drive is from being seen and revered by others.

And do not go up to my alter on steps, lest your nakedness be exposed on it.
Exodus 20v26

Frontline ministries, those ministries that entail speaking, singing or praying before people are fertile fields for pride to grow in. For in these ministries it is very easy to start to be praised and lifted up by others and for us to think of ourselves more highly than we ought (Romans 12v3). It is why in all these ministries it is crucial to understand that we minister unto the Lord. For the preacher that means that the message must be the message that the Lord has given, it matters very little what the congregation think or want, for the ministry is unto the Lord. If our concerns become about how we are perceived before men, how our preaching and teaching is ranked, then pride has already drifted into our lives and the spiritual fruit will be spoilt and unfit for consumption. The same with worship, for as we see in this modern age, it is frightening how worship groups and singers are becoming idolised with people going to a church because of the music. That is not Godly obedience to the leading of the Holy Spirit, rather it is a seeking after the desires of the flesh and using a spiritual veneer to cover over the truth. God does not need coloured lights, multi media and smoke machines, for He looks to the heart of men and if their heart is set on being entertained, rather than offering sacrifice, their worship, no matter how great it may sound, will be rejected. A church’s goal is always to lead people to the Father and that is a spiritual relationship, to encourage each other to follow in the footsteps of Jesus, helping and encouraging each other in the Lord so that we may finish walking on the path the Lord has set before us (Philippians 3v7-15). If we concentrate on puffing up the flesh, of endlessly trying to make people feel good about themselves we will see gain in the short term, but in the long term eternal loss.

Again as we think of ministry, what is our goal? To have people following us or following Christ? It is amazing how many Christians will spend hours listening to their favourite preacher or worship group, yet spend little or no time seeking the Lord; the preacher or worship minister has become their route to God, moving Christ aside, having a form of godliness without God. A knowledge about God, but not a relationship with God, something we are warned of in Matthew 7v21-23. All this comes from allowing ourselves to be elevated in pride. In all our ministry, in all our teaching, it is Christ and him crucified that needs to be lifted up, he is the message and example we are to preach and follow (1 Corinthians 1v23). It may be a message that is unpopular, it may be a message that leads to rejection by man and a smaller congregation, but it is the way of the Spirit and the power of God (1 Corinthians 1v18).

Follow my example as I follow the example of Christ.
1 Corinthians 11v1

One of the dangers of pride that we easily slip into is the desire to be seen as part of something big and important, wanting to be seen as part of something special easily becomes more important than how we are seen by the Lord. We start to aspire to being like another minister, desiring to have or be part of their ministry, their following, preaching, confidence or musical ability etc. Much as it is a good thing to desire the Christ like attributes of Godly men and women, the danger comes that we try to hang onto their coat tails, and pride slips in as we associate ourselves with their ministry. Very quickly our association with that person and the assumed reputation that comes with it blinds us to the fact that it is now pride and self esteem that is driving us rather than our desire to serve the Lord. It’s nothing new as we see in 1 Corinthians 1v12 and it shows just how quickly our association with a minister, ministry, a project or even certain doctrines can quickly lead us to serving and listening to them rather than seeking and serving the Lord. The person we aspire to always needs to be Christ, he is the one we are told to fix our eyes and thoughts on (Hebrews 3v1 & 12v2). Let us make sure that our offer of discipleship and service is to him and not changed to the worship and service of man. As Paul says, we are to be servants of Christ who are called to whatever the Lord calls us to, but it starts with the humble servant heart (Romans 1v1).
As pastors we need to watch and pray about this trait of pride, not only in ourselves, but in those who we minister to, for it is too easy for us to try and push people forwards before humility and servant hood has truly taken root in their spiritual life. Often we will try to push someone to the front because of their natural ability to speak or sing, or even to manage things. Yet if we have not waited on the Lord and sought His direction and timing we are not blessing these people, rather we are putting them in a position of extreme danger as we read in 1 Timothy 3v6, for if the soil has not been cleansed of pride, the fruit that grows will be tainted.

The final area we will look at in regards to pride in ministry is our ability to try and replace the Lord in individuals lives. For if we think back to Satan and his fall, his desire was to be looked up to, to be relied on and worshipped (that is what worshipping idols is all about). The desire to be looked up to and to be seen as the provider for the needs of others. It’s interesting to hear Christians talk about those that rely on them, their church, their house group, about the ministry that needs them. This is actually the root of pride, for it assumes that the other person or ministry cannot move forwards without us, as if we are now God. If that is the case we have totally failed in our ministry, for the goal of all ministry is to lead others to the Father through Christ and allow Him to be their provider, their comfort, their strength and their guide; when we try to take control of these things we are not a blessing, we are a curse.

As an example, many years ago I worked with a man who did not speak until he was about three years old. Obviously his parents had great concerns, but he explained to me why he didn’t speak; he had no need to! He would just cry out, or point to whatever he wanted and his brothers and sisters would run round after him doing whatever he wanted because he was the baby of the family. In their concern to fix all his discomforts in life they removed his need to speak and also his need to learn to do things for himself. He was comfortable because all his fleshly needs had been met by those around him, but it was not a blessing to him.

When we start to raise ourselves up in pride, especially in caring for others, the danger is that we remove the individuals need to seek and communicate with the Lord for themselves. Just like a toddler, there comes a point when you have to hand them the spoon and let them feed themselves and as any parent knows, it will be slow and messy. It would be far quicker to feed them, but they would never learn to feed themselves. In our pride we need to be very careful that we do not try to take on the role of the Holy Spirit in their lives, becoming the one who will seek the Lord for them, becoming their physical and emotional provider. That does not mean that the problem the person has is not real, that they do not have needs, but are we the one who should meet those needs? Very often we have to be able to humble ourselves and allow the Lord to work through others to make sure their dependency grows in the Lord rather than in us.

We read in 1 Chronicles 17v1-14 how king David wanted to build a temple for the Lord and even Nathan the prophet starts to go along with him for it sounds a great and worthy idea (1 Chronicles 17v2). At this point David sees himself as the man for the job, he has the power, the authority, the resources and experience to carry out the work and his mind has been made up. The Lord had to speak to Nathan to humble David and tell him not to build the temple, that this was a ministry for someone else to carry out. Interestingly the one that this ministry was given to had no experience or wisdom and would have to seek the Lord for it. If David had carried out the work, Solomon would not have grown in the Lord and become the man he did.

Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.
1 John 4v1

As we have seen, pride can so easily infect our ministry, removing it of the power of God. It is so easy for us to launch out in assumption and pride without seeking the Lord; to be sucked in by the big and spectacular or the desire to have the needs of the flesh met and our self esteem pumped up. When we talk about evil spirits we instantly think of some terrible physical form of sin and corruption, yet what we fail to recognise is the soil that all that uncleanliness grows in is pride, the original sin of Satan himself.

Humbling ourselves before the Lord and allowing the Holy Spirit to reveal the truth about our hearts, to show us the fruit of pride that taints our spiritual life and ministry will be a painful process, but if our desire is to humbly serve the Lord it is the only way forward and if we will allow the Lord to humble us it will bring glory to His name.

Search me, O God and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.
See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.
Psalm 139v23-24

 

7/2//2021 Pride in Prayer

 

When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command locusts to devour the land or send plague among my people, If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.
2 Chronicles 7v13-14

 

Over the last few weeks we have looked at the impact of pride, the root of sin, and how it impacts the various areas of our life. As we have seen before, one of the biggest problems with pride is that once our hearts have become hardened, we find it very difficult to see the pride in our own lives and the devastating effect it has on our spiritual lives. In the opening scripture from 2 Chronicles 7v13-14 we read the words spoken by the Lord to Solomon in response to Solomon's prayer of dedication of the temple (2 Chronicles 6v12-42). It is a response that as Christians we really need to think about as “pride in prayer” is something that, as we will see, is not only common, but can become something that we actively teach and encourage.

 

Over the years I have read and heard many messages on prayer and how to get God to answer them, and sadly in almost every case it’s been about methodology. How to present ourselves in the right way before God with the right words so that we can boldly tell Him what needs to be done, yet rarely is humility mentioned and yet as we have seen in the life of Jesus (Philippians 2v6-8) and in the instruction from God to Solomon, humility is crucial for Gods instruction to Solomon starts with humility and humility was at the centre of the life of Christ. God is basically saying that if we do not approach Him with a humbled heart we have lost perspective of who is Lord and we are approaching Him as if we are equal or above Him, assuming that we have the right to tell Him how to run the world. We may not realise it but this is from the root of pride, for as Jesus said at the end of Luke 6v45:

 

For out of the overflow of his heart the mouth speaks.
Luke 6v45

 

If we have pride in our hearts, not only does that pride come out in the way we speak to others, but it overflows into the way that we speak to the Father himself. For this pride that is totally “anti Christ”, that is totally opposite to the ways of God, it is the fruit of the fall of man. For when we come in pride before the Father we come to Him in the same attitude that Satan did, an all knowing, self elevating attitude that is totally offensive to God. We display in our attitudes and the overflow of our hearts the fruit of the fall of man, thinking that we are like God (Genesis 3v5), knowing how things need to be sorted in our lives and in the world around us.

 

One of the great problems we face in the world as a result of the fall of man is that it’s attitudes teach us that we should be at the centre and everything should revolve around us. Our rights, our self esteem, our needs and our desires and dreams, even our view of how the world should be and what is fair and unfair. That same attitude, that comes from the root of pride, has become so part of “normal” life that it remains with us and infects our spiritual life and we come to God with the same fallen attitudes of the world. Coming before Him with pride of heart that forgets who God is and who we are, for let us never forget while we may serve a Holy God, we are mere sinners saved by grace (Ephesians 2v8-10). When we come to God we need to humbly focus more on His will, the works he has for us to do and the needs of the Kingdom (Matthew 6v33) that come from the humble servant heart towards God, allowing Him to meet our needs as he sees fit.

 

A simple example of the pride we can bring in prayer is seen in John 9v1-5. In this passage we read how Jesus was walking along with his disciples when they came upon a blind man. The disciples are already sure they know the cause of the blindness, sin. So their question to Jesus is about who has sinned, the man or his parents. This is a great demonstration of pride in action and notice how when they ask Jesus what is going on they give him the options of the man or his parents, they do not consider any other cause and it is a reason why we so often find it hard for the Lord to speak to us, because although it may seem like we are asking Him and seeking His will, what we so often do is give him our options and ask him which is right based on our formula or opinion of events. We fail to conceive that Almighty God is a few steps ahead of us and if we want to know the plans, we have to seek Him. This was supposed to be the lesson for the Israelites during the exile.

 

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
Jeremiah 29v11

 

God knew the plans he had, but the Israelites had no idea. They rebelled against the idea of exile expecting the Lord to work a miracle and set them free. I can imagine their petitions to the Lord now, “Deliver us O Lord from this oppressive injustice that has befallen us, deliver your holy people and bring glory to your Name!” Not for one minute did they consider that they they had fallen away from the Lord, seeking foreign gods, and were no longer a holy people and therefore this was not the hand of an oppressor, it was the hand of the Lord carrying out one of the forms of discipline He speaks of in 2 Chronicles 7v13. They have no understanding of this because in their pride, even when seeking the Lord, they see themselves as something they are not. What they needed is some sober judgment (Romans 12v3) that comes from humbling themselves before the Lord and seeking His ways so that their minds might be transformed and they can then understand His will. Understand what He is doing in the same way that Jesus had to explain to the disciples that the man's blindness was there so that in that moment the glory of God could be displayed. It is similar to the situation in Jeremiah 29v10-14, the exile had happened to discipline the Israelites and get their attention with the goal of getting them to humble themselves and seek the Lord with all their heart (Jeremiah 29v13). How often have we in our pride petitioned the Lord to fix what we view as an injustice before seeking Him to ask what is going on.

 

Another more recent example I came across was when someone asked me to pray about the new president in America because he did not have the same views towards Israel as the previous leader. At first this sounds good, but actually it is showing the prideful assumption that Israel needs the protection of America. However, let us think for a moment: Who is Israel's protector? It’s the Lord! How He delivers them is His business, we run into the danger of actually working against the will of God by desiring a different outcome, assuming in pride that we are correct. Let us step back and look at the bigger picture, what is the Lords desire for Israel? Paul sums it up very well when he writes:

 

Brothers, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for the Israelites is that they may be saved.
Romans 10v1

 

God in His eternal mercy is looking for ours and their eternal well being, and as we all know, for God to get our attention He often has to put us in desperate situations before we will cry out to Him in humility rather than demanding in pride. So our danger is that we pray that the Lord will change the attitude of a president so that the Israelites can trust in him rather than the Lord.

 

We need to be careful in prayer, for prayer starts with humbly seeking the Lords will and not assuming we know it. It’s why Paul’s constant prayer for the church was for revelation and wisdom from God. A revelation and wisdom that comes from seeking His will and not assuming we already know it. Paul does not pray for worldly blessings upon the church, his desire is always for spiritual revelation of God, for people to know Him better. For that to happen the Lord often has to lead us into tough situations, not for others to be telling the Lord to end our trial, but for us to gain understanding through the trial and learn the perseverance in the Lord that will bring glory to his name and bring spiritual maturity into our lives (James 1v2-5). Teaching us to seek the Lords wisdom in all areas of our lives and then walking in obedience to the revelation He brings.

 

Too often we are like Peter in Matthew 16v21-23, actually rebuking the Lord for the plans He has for us. Let us realise what Peter was doing, for Jesus had just explained to him the will of the Father, but as far as Peter was concerned, God had got it wrong and no suffering should be allowed in the life of Jesus. It’s a good job that Jesus was resolute in his ways and rebuked Peter for his prideful rebellion against the will of God. For if he had worked to Peters plan there would have been short term physical gain for Jesus, but eternal loss for all through sin. Peter in his intellectual and emotional flesh meant well, but his heart was far from the ways of the Lord, for he had not taken the time to seek or consider the Fathers will.

 

This pride in prayer can be a difficult concept for us to grasp because most of the time, to our shame, we are walking according to the flesh and our actions and prayers are based on what will make ours or the other persons flesh feel better, as if that will somehow draw them or us closer to the Lord. If we do not seek the Lord first we fail to understand His plans, even if they may seem painful or unfair to us. If we truly want to be walking according to the Spirit and praying in the will of God we need to spend a lot more time in humility, bowed down and listening, rather than dictating our terms to the Father. The plans he has for us, the discipline He pours out in love towards us, and those we know, are for our and their long term spiritual benefit. So before we raise ourselves up and start to tell the Father how to run the world, let’s take a moment to humble ourselves and seek His face before we ask God to change His plans to our plan.

 

Finally as we continue to think about prayer and pride, let us think about the words spoken by Jesus to his disciples in the garden of Gethsemane.

 

“Why are you sleeping?” he asked them. “Get up and pray so that you will not fall into temptation.”
Luke 22v46

 

Here we see how the lack of prayer leads us into temptation, now as always we tend to jump ahead and think of the physical act of sin, the actual item or event that causes us to sin. However as James tells us (James 1v12-15), the action of sin comes from the evil desire within our heart, pride. One of the benefits of true “seeking” prayer is that it reinforces humility as we are actively acknowledging our constant need for the Lords leading and teaching with no assumption that we already know. For as we read in John 16v12-15, God wants to speak to us by His Holy Spirit and the only way to hear that still small voice is to humble ourselves in prayer before Him. Not voicing our opinions, but waiting to hear His. Not just waiting for a moment, but as it says in Psalm 40v1-2, waiting patiently in teachable humility, not moving forward until His instruction is given, even if it means waiting in the slimy pit. If we want to be those who claim to walk according to the leading of the Holy Spirit, then we need to not only acknowledge the need for humble prayer, but we need to practise it as well. For if we do not, although we may deny it, in our pride we are declaring we have no need for the Lords instruction and guidance, we can manage quite nicely without Him.

 

Solomon was a king above his people, but he bowed down in humility before God (2 Chronicles 6v13). It was only when he ceased to humble himself and chose to go his own way did disaster befall him (1 Kings 11v1-13).

 

31/1/2021 Pride in Decision

Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
Who being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death – even death on a cross!
Philippians 2v5-8

 

This week we will continue to look at how pride affects our lives, for if our goal is to follow after Christ then humility is a requirement in our lives. For as we have seen, pride and conceit is the exact opposite of humility and as such is "anti Christ", against the ways of God. It is difficult for us to conceive at times just how pride controls the attitudes of our lives, but as we continue to look into this subject let us pray that the Holy Spirit will start to shed light on the areas of our life that need to change, not by adding a set of rules, but by a change in heart attitude. For as we humbly start to see how pride has controlled and motivated us, it should bring us into a greater realisation of the miracle and power of the life of Christ and how he walked his earthly walk facing the same temptations as us, yet was without sin.

 

But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: “Be holy because I am holy”.
1 Peter 1v15-16

 

As Christians it can be very easy to lose the true focus of holiness. We understand what it means to be consecrated and dedicated to the Lord, but as pride seeps into our life, that dedication and consecration can once again be reduced to a set of rules, a set of “do and do nots”. We fail to understand that Jesus’s life was not governed by a set of rules, in fact many times we see he came into conflict with the religious leaders of the day on this very subject. Instead his daily life was governed by his relationship with his Father, the time he spent alone with Him and the decisions Jesus made were based on the instruction of His Father. This is true holiness, a holiness that is based on a constant leading of the Lord. It is a holiness of being set apart for the use of the Father to do His will when He wants it done, it is the holiness of servant hood, the holiness that Satan threw off in his pride. This holiness through obedience is the type we are encouraged to pursue in Romans 12v1 out of thankfulness for all we have received in Christ. The great danger we constantly face from pride is that it causes us to bypass the seeking of the Lords will and move forward in what we assume it to be, and as we shall see in our examples today, this trait is nothing new and can affect even the greatest men of God.

 

Our first example is found in 2 Samuel 6v1-23 and tells us how King David brought the ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem. Now David as a man of God wanted to be closer to the tabernacle, to bring the ceremonial presence of God as close to him as possible. Now this in itself was a good thing, we should all desire to be as close to the Lord as possible, but what we see in this passage is that David failed to seek the Lord. He did the classic example from the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3v5-6) and went with his own intellectual knowledge and decision making (1 Chronicles 15v13). In his intellectual pride he was trying to be more spiritual, but his pride in turn made him assume he knew what the Lord wanted, without the seeking that comes from a servant heart, and by putting the ark on a nice new cart he could do the job quickly and efficiently. David in his pride thinks he is doing the right thing, he’s got the worship group going flat out, a big congregation, everything looks perfect, except he is walking in rebellion to God. He’s not walking in holiness before God, even if he looks holy to those around him. He’s actually walking in pride, having made the decision for himself on how, when and by whom the ark should be moved. Now we can look at this and ask ourselves, does it really matter? Would God really be upset?

 

“Does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as on obeying the voice of the Lord?
To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams.
For rebellion is like the sin of divination and arrogance like the evil of idolatry.
Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, he has rejected you as king.”
1 Samuel 15v22-23

 

In our second example we read these very serious words spoken by Samuel to Saul, David's royal predecessor. They show the seriousness of not seeking the Lord and taking matters into our own hands. For no matter how great we might think the praise party is or how great in our mind the offering is or how successful we may judge the event or ministry, if we have not sought the Lord and have gone off in our own direction we are walking in rebellion. What the Lord is saying here is that listening to his word and the obedience, humility and heart change that comes from this is the thing that He values far more than the physically seen things that we can assume are so important, for He judges the hearts of men.

 

What we see with both Saul and David is that when we run ahead we put ourselves and those around us in a very dangerous place before the Lord. David’s sin of presumption, assuming he knew the will of God without seeking Him, came from a root of pride, of self knowing and we see that it led to the death of Uzzah and David actually getting angry with God (2 Samuel 6v8). Only later as he cooled down and thought it through did he start to realise the consequences of what he had done and at that point went from arrogant pride to true humility, realising that he was wrong and being in fear of the Lord once again (2 Samuel 6v9). Sadly, we live in an age when holy fear of God has been removed from the church, for in our intellectual pride we have changed God and assumed that He thinks as we do. We look at the God of love and transform God’s love into a love fashioned to suit our flesh. We miss the fact that a major part of God’s love includes discipline (Hebrews 12v10), it is His discipline, if heeded, that changes our hearts into the heart of Christ. If God just gave way to our temper tantrums and desires of how we think the world should be run, then our hearts will never be transformed into the image of Christ.

 

Too often in our presumption, even when we have partially listened to the Lord, we assume the solution is to get the job done in the quickest and most spectacular way possible, at least in the eyes of the world. It is why churches have become more and more drawn in by the"“big" event, the "big" speaker, the endless boasting of numbers. What we so often miss is that for the name of the Lord to be glorified, we have to learn humility. The ark needed to be carried on the shoulders of those set apart to serve, lifted high with the priests literally under the feet of the ark, the presence of God. It is this humility that lifts up the Lord today, it’s not something physical to see, it’s spiritual, it’s of the heart. Without that humility of heart towards the Lord, the humble seeking and following in obedience, we risk wandering into rebellion before the Lord.

 

Earlier we read how when the Lord rebuked Saul he used the examples of divination and idolatry to describe rebellion and arrogance, these are strong words and at first we may not be able to see what the link is between them, but if we look at the Hebrew word for "divination" (qesem), we see that it is the process of seeking direction through methods other than seeking the Lord, reading the "signs" of the world, and then making decisions based on what we see. Basically excluding the Lord from the decision making process and seeking the gods of this world instead, those gods being ourselves and our own assumed abilities. For we do exactly what David did when it came to moving the ark, we make our plans and preparations, and David had made preparations, he got a good crowd together and had a new cart made. He then proceeded with his plan assuming it was the Lords plan and when disaster struck got angry and frustrated. In his pride he was making the decisions the Lord should have made based on how the world would proceed. How often have we done the same, moving forward with our own plan and asking for a quick spiritual blessing of our assumption.

 

When we read 1 Corinthians 1v18-31 about the message of Christ crucified, we read that it is a stumbling block and foolishness to many, for it does not rely on man's wisdom but on the Lord’s and the only place we will get that wisdom and instruction is by spending time in the presence of God, not telling Him how to fix the world as we see it, rather seeking Him and allowing Him to show us the workings of the world as he sees it. For God’s ways, although they may look weak and foolish in this world, display the power of God by showing that His ways are above the ways of this world, the ways of man’s intellect. Only as we are willing to humble ourselves in obedient service is the Lord able to show us the world from His point of view (Romans 12v2), until then we will find ourselves, through our own pride and assumptions, fighting against the very will of God. It takes true faith to walk in the paths of God, because they will be in constant conflict with our worldly intellect. The step of faith risks losing in the eyes of the world, of being humiliated before man, and so we try to organise the safe route, then wonder why we don’t see the miracles of the Lord’s provision. As I learnt in missions over the years, when the Lord speaks you step out in obedience. You don’t need to check the finances and other provisions, for the Lord is our provision when we walk in His paths. If we look by the worlds standards we will not move forwards, we will stop, waiting for everything to be right and organised to a standard that meets the safety requirements of our pride so that we will not look foolish if God fails!

 

When king David was willing to humble himself, to walk according to the plans the Lord gave after seeking Him, God was brought into the midst of the people and his name was honoured... except by one person. Michal, daughter of Saul, despised the humility of David before the people. It was below her royal upbringing and we read that as a result of her pride she had no children. Despite being David’s first wife, she would not be the one who gave birth to a child that would continue the royal line and the same is true today. For the children the Father desires, the church, are those who are brought up in the humble image of Christ and for that a humble bride is required.

 

Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Saviour. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
Ephesians 5v22-24

 

Humbly submitting to the Fathers will in everything is not something we find easy, but if we truly want to be led of the Spirit it is the only way, this is the way that our hearts are humbled before the Lord.

 

We may think many of the decisions we need to make are not worth seeking the Lord about, we can manage on our own. What we fail to realise is that the parts of our life, the decisions that we seek the Lord about, those are the parts of our life walked in submission to the Lord. The rest we assume we know what we are doing and exclude Him from our plans. It is a sobering thought to realise just how little of our life is truly lived in the holiness that comes from a humbled heart and how much is lived in divination, making decisions through the ways of the world.

 

 

24/01/21 Letter 8 - The Fruit of Pride

 

For by the grace given me I say to everyone of you: Do not think of yourselves more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgement, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you.
Romans 12v3

Last week we started to look at the issue of pride and it's a subject we shall return to this week because pride in it's various forms is a spiritual cancer that eats us away from the inside. The problem with pride is that just like cancer, it can go undetected for years only revealing itself through symptoms that can easily be missed or confused with other things, for what we often don't understand about pride is that it is the breeding ground for sin, the place where other sin puts it's roots.

If we think back to the beginnings of sin and Satans fall, it's root was in pride and conceit. Pride is a boasting in what we have achieved, conceit, it's deadly brother, is pride in what we think we have achieved. I can have pride in coming first in a race, conceit is when I have pride in being victorious before the race has even been run. It is the sin we see in Satan as we read Isaiah 14v12-15 as we see how Satans position in the heavens (Ezekiel 28v14) went to his head and suddenly he went from being a servant of God Almighty to seeing himself as equal. This blameless being (Ezekiel 28v15), the pinnacle of spiritual beauty (Ezekiel 28v13), fell because he thought he was more than he was. He lost his servant heart and served himself instead and as soon as he started to serve himself he proclaimed himself lord in his life, removing God Almighty from His deserved position (Isaiah 14v14).

 

Pride is a battle, a spiritual sickness that we all fight against. It is something that controls the sinful nature, for that sinful nature comes from the father of sinners, Satan himself. It is the exact opposite to the godly servant heart we see in Christ (Philippians 2v6-8). Let us remember that in our sinful nature we are descended from Satan and pride is the core of that fallen nature. The fruit of the sinful nature that we see growing in our lives come from our pride and conceit, that demands that our fleshly desires are met at any cost (Galatians 5v19-21), they are in constant rebellion to the will of God. Likewise the fruit of the Spirit, the godly life that the Father desires in us comes out of a humbled heart that has been willing to set aside it's pride by crucifying the sinful nature (Galatians 5v22-24).

 

If we look at all the great men of God in scripture, they all had a common trait, humility, the exact opposite of pride and conceit. Moses was described as the most humble man that had ever lived (Numbers 12v3), as we look at other great men, Abraham, David, Solomon. All these men on their good days humbled themselves before God. Only as their pride rose up and they lost their servant hearts do we see them falling into sin. Thankfully most of the time they became aware of their sin and that led to repentance, a true repentance that led to a change of heart, a humbling. So often when we think of repentance, it's treated as a way of saying "sorry" for the bad we have done. The sin we have done is from a heart attitude. Without the change of heart towards God the same sin will return as we read in Luke 11v23-26. For if the heart direction does not change, we may throw things out of our life, but without the heart change they will just be replaced by something else. Our hearts cannot be empty, they are either set on ourselves or on the Lord; if we will not turn to the Lord in humble service then the enemy will return and bring friends for he knows he has found a heart that's in line with his. It is why whenever we read about repentance in scripture it is always associated with an action that follows. The action in itself is not as important as the heart attitude behind it, for the action should come out of a heart of humility before God, the action is the overflow of the heart, the fruit of being led by the Spirit.

 

One area we need to be very careful of when it comes to pride is ministry, it is very easy to think of ourselves as having "made it", of being above others. It is why Paul warns Timothy when looking for elders by saying:

 

He must not be a recent convert, or he may become conceited and fall under the same judgement as the devil.
1 Timothy 3v6

 

What Paul is warning about here is that if the humbled servant heart attitude has not taken over from the crucified flesh, then lifting the person up to a position of authority will bring about exactly the same downfall as happened in Satan's life. We see this in the lives of those who "want to be" in the church, those who want position, authority, control. This is not from the godly nature but the sinful, prideful nature and the danger when promoted in pride is that the spiritual cancer grows into a full blown case of conceit leading to a total hardening of the heart towards God even while supposedly going about His works . It is why some of the most overlooked verse s in the epistles contain some of the most important statements.

"Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be..."
Romans 1v1

 

Paul, the man who went from a heart of pride and conceit to a servant heart, is a true picture of repentance. The acknowledgement of the servant heart that is called to be, according to the Lords timing is found in the introductions of just about every letter in the New Testament. The constant acknowledgement that they are in their roles by the grace of God and the calling that the Lord has placed on their lives in response to their humility before him. The higher the position we are called to, in the eyes of men, the more we need to watch our pride, for don't forget Satan was in the highest place when his pride destroyed him. Let us not think we are any less susceptible to pride striking at any time. It is a warning to us all, but especially those in ministry.

 

At the same time it is a warning to those who are trying to get themselves into a position in the church. Stop pushing and allow the Lord to be the one who lifts you up. Concentrate on the daily obedience that comes from humbly listening to the Lord, for you will only be ready for promotion when your heart has truly been humbled, not when in your pride you assume it has been humbled. For the humility that God is looking for is not a humility towards man but a humility towards him. We can easily use our humility towards men as a way of manipulating them, for our fleshly humility can manipulate their pride. When it comes to true Christlike humility, what men think is irrelevant, it is what the Father thinks that matters , for He will not be deceived by our false humility and flattery for He sees the truth of the heart.

 

The acts of the sinful nature are obvious:...
Galatians 5v19

 

Although the outcome of the sinful nature may be easily seen, the blindness that comes upon us through sin easily deceives us from the root cause of these sins, pride! It means that we often try to treat the illness by treating the symptoms rather than going to the heart of the matter, for changing the heart will lead to a change of the overflow of that heart (Luke 6v43-45). As an example of this today we will look at forgiveness and how it is hampered by pride, not only the asking for forgiveness, but the receiving as well. For with pride we lift ourselves up above others, we see ourselves as being better and worth more.

 

I experienced a simple example of this in my own life when the insurance was being sorted out for my motorbike crash. Because the accident was not my fault I was entitled to compensation for the damages caused and I had received a lot of damage during the accident. I didn't realise that there are standard calculations for how much compensation is received for different injuries. Somehow it's all been costed out so that if you lose a finger it has a value, lose a hand it has a greater value. However when I was told the compensation value of my injuries, especially to my arm I was upset, for I placed a higher value on my arm than the courts did. I felt I deserved more because it was "my arm" and so greater recompense should be made towards me. Why, because of pride, it was me that had been hurt and my injuries took priority over anyone else's. In my pride I saw my arm as being of superior value to other peoples arms and therefore I deserved better compensation. Needless to say the judge did not view me as superior in any way and he saw no reason why an exception should be made for me because of who I thought I was or the perspective I had of the offence towards me.

 

We tend to do the same when it comes to forgiveness, we see ourselves as being superior and therefore more deserving than others, the root being pride at work. It is an area where we desperately need to fix our eyes and thoughts on Jesus as the example of putting the flesh and it's pride to death.

Let us think for a moment about injustice, for in our pride it is always us that has suffered injustice. Yet when we look at Jesus, we see the Son of God, the sinless one. Think about that for a moment, the sinless one! Anyone who was offended by anything Jesus said or did was offended because of their rebellion against God, Jesus himself never sinned. He didn't break any laws, he hadn't stolen or deceived. He was the most innocent of the innocent, he had not committed any offence so had no penalty or punishment due him. So if anyone had any claim to self righteousness it was Jesus alone; for the rest of us, let us deal with our self righteous pride by considering the following:

 

For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
Romans 3v23

 

Sadly in our pride, we measure ourselves against other men and women. Somehow we see ourselves as falling short of the glory of God yet being superior to other sinners around us, not realising that the same core sickness, pride, infects us just as much as it infects them, and our very attitude displays it.

 

As we think of the righteousness of Christ, his total innocence, we see that it did not go to his head and that he remained humbled and obedient before the Father even when that obedience led to death on the cross (Philippians 2v8). It is an aspect of the cross that we can easily overlook, but Jesus, the perfect sinless Lamb of God suffered the worst atrocities and punishments that man could think of and yet did not become bitter or angry towards those who inflict ed these totally unfair and undeserved punishments upon him. Even more, he was so humbled before God that instead of wishing hellfire and damnation upon the inflicters of his agony he did exactly the opposite with the immortal words from the cross:

 

Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.
Luke 23v34

 

Here the totally innocent Jesus asks the Father to forgive the inflicters of his pain and suffering while they are still carrying out the offence. He doesn't allow self righteousness, self pity, or self justification to start to breed in pride, rather in humility he kills any pride dead before it can start to take root, that is godly humility in action.

 

This attitude is not something that is reserved for Jesus, rather it is to be expected of all followers of Christ (Philippians 2v5). It is the attitude we see Stephen displaying as he was stoned to death having committed no crime (Acts 7v60); it is the true attitude of picking up the cross daily and following after Jesus (Luke 9v23-25). So often, even when we say we have forgiven, the remnants of anger and bitterness remain, that self righteousness that comes from having been wronged. Sadly as we dwell on these things and allow them to deepen their roots we miss the fact that what is really happening is that pride and conceit is spiritually killing us, without realising it, we have become deceived by our pride hardened hearts.

 

True forgiveness can only be asked for and received from a humbled heart, the heart with pride will always struggle in this area, for pride is the breeding ground for anger and bitterness . It is not about what others are doing, waiting for them to act first. It is about where our heart is before the Lord and we need to realise that if there is pride, Satan will attack us over and over by working on our pride, the sense of injustice towards us that in turn feeds bitterness and anger. Satan as the great deceiver, and our flesh that follows after him, will always give us an excuse, a reason, a justification for our anger and bitterness, be it towards an individual, a church, an organisation, company or government. We will even use scripture to justify ourselves, yet whenever we try to justify ourselves, all we are doing is allowing our pride to rise up in rebellion against the ways of God. For we, just like them, have all fallen short of the glory of God and rebelled in our pride in our own way.

 

"If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her."
John 8v7

 

Turning from pride is not easy, the hardest part is even recognising the issue exists, but even when we see the truth how do we combat it. The answer is simple, by seeking the Lord and walking in obedience on a daily, hourly, minute by minute basis. Training our heart to submit its ways before Him who humbled himself for us.

 

17/01/21 Letter 7 - Lost in Pride

For by the grace given me I say to everyone of you: Do not think of yourselves more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgement, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you.
Romans 12v3

 

Many years ago while on ministry in Norway I took a mountain bike out into a mountain forest in the mountains. In those days I was quite fast and after a couple of hours and many miles found myself quite deep in the forest. I raced down one track after another and then as I noticed the time made the turn for home, only to find I had no idea what direction home was in. Although it hurt my pride, I have to admit that in all the excitement of racing around I had become lost, not only was I lost, but I was lost in a very remote area and t here was not going to be anyone else around to ask for directions. Because of the type of ground I had been riding over I didn't even have any tracks to follow, I was stuck. With trees all around there was nothing to get any sense of location from local landmarks and I must admit it was getting a bit concerning. Sadly, like so many of us, it was only when I had exhausted my own abilities that I started to pray!

The solution was easy, even if the journey was tough. I fixed my eyes on a very high mountain in the distance, it was a peak that stood above all the others and was probably over forty miles away, much further than I needed to go, but it acted as a landmark above all the trees and I started travelling towards it, not by trying to follow the paths others had made, but by literally going in a straight line. After a few miles of scrabbling through the forest including a few streams , some of which was done with the bike on my shoulder, I finally found myself in a valley with a road, at that point the rest of the journey fell into place.

That day I learnt a spiritual lesson that I remember to this day, even though the rest of the trip has faded, and it is a lesson that has continued to be a blessing to this day.

As we have seen in the verse above, a simple lesson to be learnt is "not to think of myself more highly than I ought". It's often easy to reject the idea of having a pride problem, but when we put this verse into context we see that it comes after two verses that have been a challenge to me for over thirty years, two verses the Lord constantly brings me back to, Romans 12v1-2; the living sacrifice and the transforming of the mind to know the ways of God. It is after these two verses that the challenge comes about not thinking more of ourselves than we should. Sadly, just like my ride into the woods, we can be very busy with our "spiritual business" while not realising that we have become totally lost. It's a theme we see in the warning of Matthew 5v21-23, plenty of action, but lost before the Lord, and is something we all suffer from over the years, however in our pride we try to hide it from others and even from the Lord. We start to look round for others to ask for directions or try and look at the paths that others have made in the hope that they will put us back on course, when the solution is simple. Look up and fix our eyes into the distance on something that never moves, the Lord himself and then start our journey directly towards Him, no matter what gets in the way or how stupid we may look before others. It's what we see in the life of Jesus as he endured the cross (Hebrews 12v2), he was looking to the end point of the journey and was not distracted or led astray by the situation he found himself in, for he knew he was right in the middle of the Fathers will.

Sadly for so many of us, pride prevents us from looking at ourselves with sober judgment. Sometimes because we think we have achieved or know so much that we can't imagine the possibility of being lost. Other times we know the truth, yet because of our pride and the thought of having to do something about it, we bury the truth in the hope that somehow everything will just work out alright in the end, while in reality we continue to drift further and further off course. It takes a real step of humility to cry out to the Lord that we are lost and need His directions to get back onto the right path.

Crying out to the Lord and admitting we are lost is only the start of the of the journey, like reading a map it doesn't get you to the place you are going to, for that you have to start the journey itself and follow the instruction. I could have fixed my eyes on the mountain all day, but until I started to walk I was going nowhere, even if I knew I was lost and the direction I needed to go in. What we need is a step of faith, a step of obedience to the Lord. Now at this point it's very easy to allow our pride to lift us up as we tell ourselves how we obey all the rules and as such are a good Christian. However, obeying the rules can often mask the true state of our heart towards God. It's what we see in Mark 10v17-31 as we read of Jesus and his encounter with the rich young ruler. For here was a young man that was obeying all the rules, yet when asked to follow the Lord sacrificially, as we are called to (Romans 12v1) he walked away. His measure of faith, walk of obedience, was not what he thought it was and was not something he was willing to commit to. He just liked the idea of feeling good about himself before God because he had obeyed the rules.

Let's just think about the rules for a moment. Why do we have rules? Why do we have to have endless laws? Sadly it's because of our selfishness and the desire to do what we want to do when we want to do it, no matter what the cost to anyone else. If murder was legal, people would kill others just for annoying them. Most laws are put in place to stop us harming others, the rest are supposed to be there to stop us from hurting ourselves.

When God put the various laws in place it was to stop His people going astray, to give them a line in the sand that told them that this was the edge of the path. Sadly the laws didn't change their hearts towards God, for when our hearts are set on fulfilling the will of God we do not need rules and laws. If we are walking in daily obedience, listening and following the guidance of the Lord we would not even get close enough to edge of the path to see the line in the sand that marked the boundary and we certainly wouldn't see it as we would be looking at the Lord as we read earlier in Hebrews. It is the lesson Jesus tried to teach to those around him as he stood on the mountainside in Matthew 5v 17-48. Here Jesus tried to explain that just following the rules was not enough, the rules just stopped them fulfilling the worldly desires of their heart. Jesus was trying to show them that they needed to be transformed, by the renewing of their minds so that their hearts desire became the will of God. As Jesus said in Matthew 5v17-20, he was not abolishing the law, rather he was saying that if they truly lived with a heart after the Lord they would never break the law, it would be obsolete .

The danger we face is that our lives become driven by a love of the rules as we see in the lives of the Pharisees, rather than a heart after God himself. It is very easy to slip from having a relationship with the Lord into a relationship with the rules. Our words and actions are driven by the desires of the heart (Luke 6v45), therefore if in our lives we keep being stopped by the rules, then we have to question what our hearts desire is. What is it fixed on that takes us to the boundary of the path?

There are often times in our life when the Lord has to bring us to a halt, times when He tries to get us to see how lost we have become. Times when once again we need to examine the true desires of our heart. For like any relationship that is failing, if we are humbly willing to make the sacrifices required, it can be rebuilt. However, if our heart is hard, if there is no true desire for that person or the Lord himself, then any cost will be seen as a burden and not worth the price to be paid. It is at that moment we get a true glimpse into the desires of our heart.

The problem with these times is that if we have pride in our heart, the word from the Lord is rejected. If we think of the parable of the sower (Matthew 13v1-9 & 18-23), only the seed that fell on the good soil was taken in and produced a crop that lasted. Hardness of heart, pride, caused the rejection of the seed that landed on the path. The seed that fell on shallow soil or among the weeds just landed in hearts that had a superficial love for the Lord, yet their true desire was set on other things. It is a hard challenge, but it shows how we deceive ourselves about our own heart state towards the Lord. The heart of Christ was humbled and obedient (Philippians 2v6-8), it's a heart attitude that we should aspire to, yet we turn back at the first obstacle. I four hearts are not truly set on the Lord, we will never be willing to pay the sacrificial costs involved. That is the true state of our hearts, our faith, that we are asked to consider in Romans 12v3.

If we think about our whole Christian life, it is all based around the foundation of our heart desire towards Him; our desire to "know Him". It is so easy to slip and replace "knowing Him" with "knowing about Him", follow ing the paths that others have made instead of seeking the Lord for our selves. Let us take a moment to think of ourselves with sober judgement and then fix our eyes on the Lord and start walking straight towards Him. There will be obstacles and struggles, things that our new heart attitude reveal, but our act of faith is to continue to keep our eyes fixed, walking in the direction of the Lord and allowing Him to guide us in how to deal with the obstacles and issues that are revealed.

The Christian life is a life of love, a heart desire towards God, that leads to a life of faith; a desire to listen to and do His will. It is the foundation of the Christia n life, for seeking the Lord allows Him to speak into our lives that then leads to repentance; the action of changing our current direction to the path the Lord would have us walk in. That repentance to obedience is the path of salvation in which the Lord would have us walk (2 Peter 3v9). It is not a one off decision when we accept the Lord, it is a daily calling , for when it ceases to be daily, our hearts have grown cold towards Him. It's time to once again to evaluate ourselves, check our direction and examine the desires of our heart; to once again fix our eyes on the Lord and step out in faith to follow the path towards Him.

But if we judged ourselves, we would not come under judgement. When we are judged by the Lord, we are being disciplined so that we will not be condemned with the world.
1 Corinthians 11v31-32

 

 

10/01/21 Letter 6 - Who is my influencer?

 

Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
Ephesians 5v1-2

If ever there was a New Years resolution for the believer, this scripture should be it. A renewed vision to follow in the footsteps of Jesus. Sadly there should not be a need for this kind of resolution, for it should already be our central goal in life, yet as we all know things influence us and cause us to go astray and drift back to our old ways. Sometimes even our idea of following Christ is drawn astray by following a different type of Christ, a Christ we have made in our own image. We read in 1 Corinthians 1v18-25 Paul tells the church of the gospel we are to preach and the core of that message is found in 1 Corinthians 1v23 “We preach Christ crucified.”

Now as Christians we would immediately say our "Amen" to that statement and yet not comprehend what it actually means in practise. For the life and death of Christ is summed up in the following few verses that tell us so much about the lifestyle of Christ crucified:

Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death- even death on a cross!
Philippians 2v6-8

So often we think of Christ crucified as just the final moments of Jesus life on the cross, but the life of "Christ crucified" includes the whole of the life of Christ, from decisions made before the beginning of time through his coming into the world and his daily walk from birth to death. It is only as we contemplate on what that meant, not just a following of the rules, but a daily walk in obedience to the daily instruction from the Father himself. On a moment by moment basis, sacrificing his own personal desires and goals in submission to the will of the Father. As I think on these things it only makes me more in awe of just who Christ was and what he did for me. It is a life that was led with a single influencer, the Father himself.

As we read those verses in Philippians 2 we realise why Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1v18 that “the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing…” For to live a Christ like life goes against all the influences this world puts before us and as those influences come upon us we don’t realise but we slowly change our view of what the Christian life is all about.

If we think about the life of Christ, it was a servant life, a life of humility. Jesus did not raise himself up, but instead made himself nothing, the idea of being nothing does not sit well with us and yet crucially when it talks of Jesus it tells us:

Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
Philippians 2v5

The life of Jesus is not something to be watched and admired at a distance, it is to be something that we live on a daily basis to bring glory to the Father in thankfulness for the grace and mercy we have received, but more than that, it is our attitude of love towards the Father. It is not about trying to pay back some of the debt we owe, it is about wanting the same love relationship with the Father as Jesus had.

When people read Ephesians 6v10-12 there is often an image of trying to fight against demons and claiming dominion over locations and worldly forces, a conquering of territory for the Lord and yet we miss the fact that the battle is for our hearts and who will reign. Whose will are we submitting to, the will and way of the Father or the will and way of the forces of darkness. Whose influence guides the way we live?

Of course in our pride we claim to be followers of Christ as he is our influencer. Well if that was true we would all be living sacrificial lives and imitating the life of Christ, the type of life Paul was talking about in Galatians 2v20. A life that was given over just as Jesus said when he told us that to be his disciples we need to pick up our crosses daily and follow Him (Luke 9v23). The truth is that far too often our influencer is not Christ but the ways of this world, it’s just that we don’t see them for what they are because not only have they become normal, but they have an appeal to the uncrucified flesh.

The first thing we need to understand about influencers of this world is that they do not come across as evil. Think about going into a shop, you look around and an assistant approaches you. The assistants job is not to assist you, their job is to influence you into making a purchase. They will tell you how the product will benefit you and how it is superior to what you had before. A really good sales assistant is one who can work out your inner desire and find the item that will fill that need. As they carefully influence you, your need and desire for that item grows, for in it you now see satisfaction. In all this the assistant is always polite and seems to be on your side, for you buy from those you like. If the assistant is rude the chances of you buying from them are pretty remote and this is important to understand about all influencers, they will project an attitude of wanting the best for you when actually it is about the best for them. As we are told, these false influencers can seem so nice that they appear like an angel of light (2 Corinthians 11v13-15), in other words they appear to be on our side yet have ulterior motives.

Let’s take a look at the first great influencer, Satan himself in the Garden of Eden. Satan did not appear to Adam and Eve with a burning pitchfork, venting anger, profanities and rebellion against God. Instead he appeared as someone of beauty, full of knowledge and wisdom of the ways of God and the world (Genesis 3v1, Ezekiel 28v12-14). This wisdom and beauty gave him an air of success and power before Adam and Eve, here before them was someone who had a self confidence and inner strength and not only that, was willing to help them to attain the same. He starts out by quoting the words of God himself, but as we read through the account of Genesis 3v1-6 we see that his sales technique, his method of influence, was to show what they lacked in following Gods ways and to offer them a better way through his. Through his influence the ways of Satan became the desires of Adam and Eves hearts (Genesis 3v6) and although from the outside it all looked like the great "special offer"; only when they had bought into the ways of Satan, the ways of the world, did the true cost of the purchase become clear, spiritual death. However, more than that, they became servants of their new influencer for something that is often not understood is that the influencer is using you to meet their needs, which is usually their need to be recognised and lifted up. In other words being an influencer builds up their ego in the sight of man, put simply, it builds up their pride.

It is why we need to constantly watch out for pride in our lives, the desire to be desired and noticed. It was the downfall of Satan (Ezekiel 28v17) and quickly becomes our downfall (James 4v6), for pride requires acknowledgement from others. We want others to constantly recognise how good we are in certain areas, both in the ways of the world and even in spiritual things for our self esteem comes to rely on how we are seen by others rather than the Lord. In our modern society with social media, this has been taken to new levels. With each post on Facebook or Twitter our self esteem becomes based on the number of likes and comments or the number of followers we have. The danger here is that just like Satan we try to raise ourselves up so that others will follow us, we are looking for our needs to be met by recognition from man, rather than the Lord (1 John 2v15-16). We will tell them what they want to hear, often because it is what we wanted to hear, yet we are no longer following the ways of humility, the ways of Christ crucified, we have become ear ticklers, puffed up and puffing others up, teaching and encouraging them to be lovers of themselves (2 Timothy 3v1-8). Please note that the scripture in 2 Timothy 3v1-8 is written about those in the church. The great danger with pride and self confidence is that it is always someone else that has the issue; in our pride we refuse to see the finger of God pointing at us as we see ourselves as the influencer rather than the influenced.

Even as believers it is so easy for us to be influenced by those we perceive to be successful, powerful and self confident. When we look at others ministries we are so easily influenced in a worldly way, measuring by the worlds standards instead of the Lords or being led by those who say what we have a desire to hear or trying to follow their pattern of perceived success rather than seeking the Lord for His plan for our lives. We need to understand that all of us can be deceived and in turn deceive others (2 Timothy 3v13). When it talks of these deceivers as being evil, it does not mean they have set out in a deliberate way to mislead any more than Adam and Eve understood the consequences of their sin. Sin is evil before God, not just the breaking of the rules, but the act of rebellion against God, the act of seeking a different influencer rather than the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

To ensure we are going the right way, we need to make sure that our chief influencer is God himself and that our example of godly living is Christ himself. We are told to keep our eyes and our thoughts fixed on Jesus (Hebrews 3v1, Hebrews 12v2), to make God our influencer. Let us look again at who we are truly following, who do we seek first? Do we look for the answer in a message from another or do we seek to be influenced by God himself? Do we seek the truth found in a book or is it taught by waiting for revelation from God? The truth is seen in our actions, for the one we go to is our influencer.

If we want the Lord to be our influencer, we need to be those who will humbly sit at his feet and wait on his call and instruction. There are no short cuts, that is the influence of the ways of this world. Satan always offers shortcuts to godliness that avoid spending time in the presence of the Lord. He did it with Adam and Eve and he did the same with Jesus in the wilderness (Matthew 4v1-10) and he continues to do the same to us (1 Peter 5v8). The noisy, the visible, the one who looks successful offers us the same, if only you will follow his ways, the pattern of this world.

The greatest influencers in our lives are those we spend the most time with, those we follow and look up to; those we seek out first in times of trouble. Sadly in the church we only have to look at our prayer lives to realise how little influence the Lord has on us, for even when we pray we do not sit at His feet, but rather lecture Him on what needs to be changed in the world based on our own wisdom and knowledge of how we see that things need to be done, not realising that in our pride we think we have become more knowledgable than God himself. How we need to wake up, to recognise the depths to which we have fallen. Let us not worry about how we will look before man, but let us humble ourselves out of concern for how we look before the Father.

Jesus said he would build “his” church (Matthew 16v18) and that is the church he will return for. It is a church that follows after Christ crucified. It is a humble servant church that sits at the feet of the master. Many wonder when the Lord will return or how that return can be speeded up. Let us think on the words of Peter:

The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.
2 Peter 3v9

Again words that are written to the church not to the world. What is it we need to repent of? Our rebellion, our pride, our worldly attitudes and assumptions. Our rebellion against the ways of the cross and most of all our rebellion against the Father himself. Our casting aside of his influence by not seeking him as we should and instead taking up the enemies offer of a short cut and wanting a godliness without God. We may see ourselves as important in church, a leader an influencer, but what direction are we influencing people in?

Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophecy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles? Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!”
Matthew 7v22-23

A final thought on influencers and the dangers they pose to us can be seen as we look through the history of the world and the church. For as we look back through history we see how the best influencers have been able to distort peoples views until what they knew to be wrong is now seen as right and that the influencer, the one they follow is perfect in all he says. If we look back to the 1930’s the best influencer in the world was Hitler, a man who said what the people wanted to hear and who became so idolised that his word could not be questioned. Going back further in time if we look at the crusades and how religious leaders influenced kings who in turn went out and committed huge atrocities in the name of the Lord we see how dangerous influencers can be. Similar things have happened within the modern church, leaders with such power that even when they go astray no one dare speak or challenge and the truth is covered over. Even now as we look at some of the scenes coming out of America we see how one man's word and views is taken as truth without question. It is important to understand that in these various examples people welcomed the influencer into their lives as they saw him as the one with the answers and this included and includes Christians.

As we look through scripture and read about the anti Christ, let us understand that he will be an influencer, one who will appear to have the answers and one that mankind will welcome without question, even if in practice his answers are totally against the ways of God. These kind of people will not be discerned through the intellect, for they will appeal to our worldly knowledge that will acknowledge his ways as making sense, they will only be discerned by following the instruction Jesus gave to his disciples.

“Why are you sleeping?” he asked them. “Get up and pray so that you will not fall into temptation.”
Luke 22v46

Time with the Lord, Godly revelation and instruction that leads to a walk of obedience is our ultimate weapon against the influence of the evil one and the way to defeating him in every area of our life. Only if we can see past our pride and look again at the life of Christ crucified will we find our way back onto the right course.

Submit yourselves to God. Resist the devil , and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double minded. Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.
James 4v7-10

 

6/12/20 Letter 5 - The Perils of Conspiracy

 

"You are a king, then!" said Pilate.

Jesus answered, "You are right in saying I am a king. In fact, for this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me."
"What is truth?" Pilate asked...

John 18v37-38

In this day and age we are bombarded with conflicting information from every side and from all sorts of sources, each with their own motives and slant on the truth. Some is fully true, some is fully false, and some, often the most dangerous, contains an element of truth and falsehood. Because there is so much conflicting information it becomes very difficult to know who to trust, especially if someone has lied to us before and at this point it becomes very easy to start a conspiracy.

So what is a conspiracy? If we look in a dictionary it comes down to the action two or more persons planning an unlawful or wrongful act to manipulate others or situations to bring about the results that they desire.

Now before dismissing conspiracies out of hand, we need to remember an old saying:

Just because you are paranoid doesn't mean they are not out to get you!

Every day there are people who try to manipulate the way we see and think about things. In it's most simple form let's look at advertising. The purpose of advertising is to change our mind or influence the way we think about a certain company or product by promoting the positive with the purpose of getting us to favour a company or product over another. The flip side of this is to give negative information about a competitor or their products to take them out of the running and so lead us to buy the oppositions product or view. This goes on in the business world on a daily basis and in the world of politics it happens hourly. On top of this of course is the way that the media then report any information, for let us be under no illusions that any media outlet is impartial. All favour certain views either as an organisation or as a reporter and so even the truth is seen and told through the eyes and views of the reporter.

A simple example of this is the case of a youngster running out into the road and being hit by a car. A tragedy by any standards, but the truth is influenced by the views of those watching. The car will be doing various speeds depending on the viewpoint of the witness. For a friend of the child the car will be driving at a crazy speed, for the child could never be at fault. For a friend of the driver, the child was at fault and the driver had no chance to stop. For someone who has a bad experience of the child, it was bound to happen, he was always doing stupid things and for the local activist who wants a blanket 20mph speed limit the car driver was going too fast. All have watched the same event and are reporting the same facts, but each is influenced by their own views and relationships to those involved. So in the words of Pilate, "What is truth?"

Even from this simple example we can see that in many ways we are all subject to manipulation and again as we think about conspiracy we need to understand that just like the witnesses to the accident, the person or viewpoint we favour, will also effect our viewpoint of the information we are given.

At other times we cry conspiracy when something happens that we just can't believe. A classic example of this is the attack on the World Trade Centre in New York. How could these mighty structures fall? How could no one have seen the attack coming? There must be something or someone working behind the scenes and so the conspiracy starts. Then as one person passes snippets of information to another the conspiracy grows and part truths are used to build up a picture of our preconceived idea of what has happened.

Now this happens in the world, but sadly it also happens in a place where it should never happen, the church. For Christians can be very susceptible to conspiracy theories especially when they think something is trying to undermine their faith or their rights as a Christian or that something or someone is trying to lead them into sin. The classics of this are the mark of the beast, the anti Christ, the State of Israel or the temple, but they include things like the European Union and the latest being the Coronavirus and the conspiracies about the various vaccines with many believers spending hours trying to intellectually research and find out the "truth" behind these different things.

I said earlier that these conspiracies should never take place in the church and we will now look at why.

Let us start with the verse at the top of the page, John 18v37-38 . Jesus said "everyone on the side of truth listens to him,"while Caesar representing the world does not even know what the truth is. Just think on that verse for a moment, the truth is found in Christ, for Jesus is the truth and always tells the truth (John 14v6). God is not a man that he should lie (Numbers 23v19), God always tells the truth and if we follow Him we should walk in the truth. If we listened to the Lord and allowed the Holy Spirit to lead us and guide us we would never fall into sin, for the Holy Spirit cannot lie or lead us into sin; q uite the opposite. T he Holy Spirit leads us in paths of righteousness as we walk in obedience. It is Satan and the world that does not know or recognise the truth and that leads us astray as it has done from the beginning.

Let us go back to the fall of man in Genesis 3. Satan, the great deceiver, starts up a little conspiracy theory that God is withholding information from Adam and Eve (Genesis 3v5) and that if they did a bit of research and went their own way they would be as wise as God (Genesis 3v6). This would mean that they could bypass seeking God in their decision making and would know what to do without any input from Him. Of course they didn't see the full picture, they just saw what was in front of them and took the words of the deceiver that appealed to their flesh and intellect to heart, and a bite of the fruit later, had gained everything that Satan had promised, yet lost their relationship with God himself.

The results of the fall are still with us today, especially the idea that we have wisdom like God. Satan is especially good at pushing the intellect button in Christians and allowing them to think that they understand what is going to happen or at least how things should happen.

A classic example of this is in politics, be it the general election, Brexit, the American election or even elections in Israel. Christians will build up an intellectual picture in their mind as to who should be winning and why, based on the views of the different parties and arguments. Once we have built up our picture who is right we then assume that God agrees with our interpretation of the truth. Therefore anything that goes against what we see as the right way is a conspiracy or it's of Satan. We miss the fact that God himself says that there is no authority or government that has been established except at the will of God (Romans 13v1-2). Our job when it comes to an election is quite simple, we don't need to sit through hours of political broadcasts and read endless editorials on what each party says they are going to do, for let's be honest, t hey are only trying to manipulate us into giving them our vote. Save yourself a lot of head scratching and intellectual brain ache and spend some time in prayer. Ask the Lord to show "you" who to vote for. Note I said to show "you!" I t's not your job to influence others, that is the job of the Holy Spirit. When we try to win over others viewpoints we are not allowing them to be led of the Spirit, but instead are trying to manipulate their intellect.

And when the election is over, there is no need to lose sleep, whatever the result, because in the great scheme of things, its the Kingdom of God that matter s . Let us think about that, for if we are seeking first His k ingdom (Matthew 6v33) we do not need to be worrying about the things of this world. Fix your eyes on Jesus (Hebrews 12v2) and his attitude towards politics. He lived in a time when his nation (Israel) was under occupation by the Romans. The Jews wanted a spiritual leader who would lead them to independence and yet Jesus, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, didn't get involved. He was above it all, working daily for his Father in the work of the Kingdom of God, that is what he had his mind set on. It is so easy to fall into the deception that all these things are important for the Kingdom of God while the truth is that God knows what is going on and all we need to be worrying about is our instruction for the day.

The same is true with conspiracies about the Coronavirus vaccine or any other vaccine or medical treatment for that matter. As a believer all we need to do is simply ask God if we should have it or not and allow Him to give us a simple "yes" or "no", being aware that the answer may be different for each one of us . The problem is that once we have started to look into things in the intellect, our ability to hear the Lord is diminished because H e has to speak over our preconceived ideas. Our chasing of intellectually gained information is therefore not a blessing but in fact a curse just like in the garden of Eden . If our spiritual walk is truly one of faith then we need to trust that the Lord knows best and will never lead us into sin . However, it gets even worse if we start to spread it to other believers for we not only pollute our own ability to hear clearly from the Lord, but pollute theirs as well as we start to lead them down the path of human reason and intellect, sowing of the flesh rather than the Spirit (John 3v6). It is why in 1 Timothy 1v3 Paul tells us that we must command people to stop teaching these endless myths that lead to controversies instead of the work of God which is by faith. To the rest of us he tells us to have nothing to do with it, but rather train yourself to be godly (1 Timothy 4v7). How do we do that? By following the example of Christ (1 Corinthians 11v1).

Jesus told us to pick up our cross daily and follow (Luke 9v23), denying self, including the intellect. For as we are told in Romans 12v1-3 , we need to offer ourselves as living sacrifices, Holy and pleasing. That is the priority of our walk with the Lord and comes down to seeking the Lord, spending time listening to him in prayer and following His leading. Only then will we start to truly understand what the Lord is doing in our lives and in the world around us (Romans 12v2). It mean s humbling ourselves (Romans 12v3), especially in the area of our intellect and humbly admitting that we don't know what we thought we knew and that the real truth is only found in Christ and following in his footsteps. Maybe when we are truly seeking the Lord for the actions of the day and walking in obedience to that instruction will the Lord be able to explain to us the bigger picture, for you can be sure that the way forward will not be found through our intellectual pride, but rather through the humble obedience we see in the life of Jesus.

"Do not call conspiracy everything these people call conspiracy; do not fear what they fear and do not dread it.
The Lord Almighty is the one you are to regard as holy, he is the one you are to fear, he is the one you are to dread, and he will be a sanctuary; but for both houses of Israel he will be a stone that causes men to stumble and a rock that makes them fall. And for the people of Jerusalem he will be a trap and a snare.
Many of them will stumble; they will fall and be broken, they will be snared and captured."
Isaiah 8v12-15

 

29/11/20 Letter 4 Works of Service - Where do we start?

For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God has prepared in advance for us to do.
Ephesians 2v10

Over the last few weeks we have looked at the various types of ministries, from humble helps and administrators right up to even more humble Apostles and Prophets. We’ve also looked at the difficulties of ministry as well as the blessings. This is all good, but without action it is just something else that we add to our intellectual beliefs. We are very good at deceiving ourselves that faith and belief are the same thing, yet they are very different. Belief will acknowledge the truth, it has an intellectual understanding of the word of God, yet does nothing about it. The man or woman of faith not only believes, but that belief leads to action. It is similar to repentance; it is easy to understand what sin is, even to be convicted by the Holy Spirit, at that point we believe. Yet only when we take action do we repent. Saying sorry and acknowledging the truth is not repentance, repentance is an action, a change of lifestyle and direction.

So if we are going to be true children of God, who want to grow up to be the great sons and daughters of God, the men and women of faith; it is going to mean action in our lives, for without action, without service, our faith is dead (James 2v14). The great danger we face is that we deceive ourselves, listening to the truth, even being convicted, yet never acting (James 1v19-25), missing out on the true blessings of service.

When Liz and I worked with Operation Mobilisation there was a saying that is so true of all ministry, it was:

You can teach a servant to preach, but it is much harder to teach a preacher to serve.

The same is true for all type of ministry, it starts as Jesus did with the humbling of our hearts (Philippians 2v5-8). This sounds simple, but humility before God is not something that comes easy to any of us. We like the idea of serving God, but we want to serve Him our way, in other words we are serving ourselves. We want to tell God how the job needs to be done rather than allowing Him to tell us. In doing so we make ourselves lord and Christ our servant. Even in prayer we need to understand that the servant listens while the master gives the instruction. So often our prayer life is reduced to telling God what He needs to do to make our life better, the true servant is always going to be a listener first.

Over the years I have been in ministry, the biggest issue I have come across is the lack of listening in the church. We will acknowledge how important it is, but the truth is that many even in leadership struggle in this foundational area of our faith. Listening to God is not something for the spiritual elite, it is for all God’s people. As Jesus said "My sheep listen to my voice"(John 10v27). This is not something that certain sheep do, it is what all the Lord’s flock do, it is a recognition of who the shepherd is. The danger we face is that instead of dealing with this root problem, we follow the other sheep assuming they know the way.

This week we are going to take a look at 2 Kings 5v1-18 and look at some of the lessons we can learn from the account of Naaman. Now Naaman was a well known person, by today's standards he would have been a celebrity, a war hero who led the army in battles and spent his time at the palace being honoured by the king himself. It’s not an upbringing that encourages humility and yet it’s through his weakness that the Lord was able to reveal himself to him, that weakness was his health.

What is interesting is that the Lord was only able to reveal himself to him through his weakness. His pride and ability prevented him being approached in any other way and it is a pattern that is mirrored in many of our lives, for when we approach the Lord we do not come to Him in power or ability, rather as we stand before the glory of God we see our weakness and need. This is crucial when seeking the Lord because without recognising our need and lack of knowing, we come to Him assuming we know part or all of the answer. Once we have set our mind on what the answer is and how the Lord will speak and instruct us, we become deaf to the voice of God, only able to hear if He says what we want Him to say in the way we want Him to say it.

The Lord has a habit of speaking through the most unlikely people, a simple example of this is the person that starts Naaman’s journey to seeking the Lord. She is not a princess or a member of the royal court, she is actually lower than a servant, a slave girl, a prisoner in a foreign land. Too often we assume that the Lord is going to lead us by someone important, that his word will come to us by some great pastor or prophet when the Lord is able to use the nobodies of this world. It is so easy for us to become judgemental and so miss the word the Lord sends to us. As we think of ourselves with sober judgement (Romans 12v3) we are humbled before God, but can then see others as equal or above us and so become open to the Lord using those in humble circumstances to speak to us.

Despite the initial message coming from a slave girl, we see that Naaman still hasn’t understood how the Lord works. He’s used to dealing with men of importance, so if someone can heal him, they too must be important and so would be found at the palace. So Naaman heads off to the king of Israel to find this special prophet and being an important man, he expects to be at the front of the queue for his cure, so takes plenty of money and gifts to bribe his way. Those bribes can be financial, giving to buy God’s blessing. We can bribe Him with our actions, maybe using fasting as a means to force the Lord to speak. Sadly at other times we will even try to use repentance to buy His favour, offering to stop our sin “if” He will give us something in exchange, as if we are offering Him something special rather than acknowledging our failings. When we come before the Lord we are in no position to demand the when and where the Lord will speak to us. Our job like any servant is to wait patiently on him for his timing and place and the only thing we can offer Him is a broken and contrite heart (Psalm 51v17).

Once again we find that Naaman is confounded by the Lord, because his solution was not found at the palace. It is a lesson for us all to learn, for it is easy to assume that the Lord will speak in the big meeting with the famous preacher, again our assumption blinds us to many of the ways that the Lord speaks to us; for as Jesus taught His disciples, seeking the Lord is best done in the quiet place alone with the Father, rather than in front of the crowds. For the Lord does not need the big and the spectacular to speak, that is the way of the world, the flesh. God’s kingdom is a spiritual kingdom (John 18v36) and the ways of the Spirit run in opposition to the ways of the world.

So now we find Naaman outside a small house with all his entourage, once again expecting a great spectacle as some man of God comes out and says some special words or performs some ritual. Instead he doesn’t even get to meet Elisha, all he gets is a messenger who tells him to go and wash in the Jordan seven times. Now at this point the Lord has spoken to Naaman and offered to heal him so you would think that he would be happy, but instead we see Naaman storm off in a rage (2 Kings 5v11) because the word that he has received is not what he wanted. He would have been happy with some great or expensive challenge. Instead he is told to wash in the muddy waters of the Jordan, the sort of river that would require a bath after swimming in it.

Here again we see why so often we refuse or ignore the word of God when it comes to us. It’s asking us to do something simple, Naaman was being asked to wash! It’s the most basic message that the Lord has for His people, the message of repentance, cleansing from sin, to be humbly washed in the blood of the lamb. So often we are two steps ahead of the Lord, we are seeking to find what He wants us to do and instead of getting the instruction to go, He gives the instruction to repent and prepare our hearts and attitudes. He starts to do the foundational work to prepare us when we think we are ready to go. These simple tasks can often be the most difficult. Just like Naaman, we will complain about the location or the method, even the humiliation of the task. Yet it is these basics that build in us the heart of Christ and transform our spiritual lives. For the most important change in Naamans life was not the cure for his leprosy, it was the obedience to the word of the Lord that led to a change of his heart. Once humbled his biggest concern was about making sacrifices for the Lord and not bowing down to foreign gods (2 Kings 5v17-18), again it is the part of the word of God that we so often miss and why what may seem like a small request from the Lord has far bigger implications in our life than we can imagine.

Too often when we approach the Lord we bring Him the problem and tell him how it needs to be fixed. Then frustration and disappointment set in when the Lord does not move as we expect because we again have not listened to his voice. Often, just as in the life of Naaman, the problem is in the heart, not in the flesh. A change of heart can transform the circumstances we find ourselves in as we start to see them from the Lord’s point of view. Also as our hearts are transformed into the heart of Christ, our interaction with the issues of this world brings peace instead of conflict. It is the progression that we see in Romans 12v1-2, humbling ourselves as a living sacrifice that brings pleasure to the Lord, but also brings us into a knowledge of His will as we follow in the footsteps of Christ.

There are many books that will try to teach short cuts to hearing the Lord or give ways to try and manipulate God. Others teach us to seek Him through others instead of going directly to the Father, the very thing that Jesus died on the cross for (John 14v6). The truth is that there are no short cuts, it all starts with taking the time to seek the Lord, not just occasionally but constantly. In 1 Thessalonians 5v17 we are told to "pray continually". As Christians it’s so easy to reduce this to having an endless shopping list to put before the Lord, rather than understanding that this is about having our ears open to God at all times. For real prayer is listening to God, to being open to hearing His voice at all times; not just in the few minutes we allocate to Him in our quiet time. Cultivating the listening ear is a crucial part of our spiritual growth and sadly is an area that is so often dismissed, for you cannot serve if you do not hear. It’s the constant question Jesus has for the churches in the book of Revelation (Revelation 2v7, 2v11, 2v17, 2v29, 3v6,3v13, 3v22) and is the question we need to ask ourselves today; the lack of ability to listen to the Lord is probably the greatest weakness in the church today. It undermines any kind of obedience and service towards the Lord, for without listening we cannot be led of the Spirit and become the Sons and Daughters the Lord wants us to be (Romans 8v14).

Jeremiah 29v11 is a scripture that is often quoted by Christians, of how the Lord has plans to bless us. It’s true, he does have plans to bless us, it’s just we don’t know what those plans are because we have not read the following verses. For you will know the plans of God when you “seek Him with all your heart”. For how can we minister to others if we cannot hear the Lord for ourselves? This means putting the effort in and admitting to the Lord and ourselves the true position we find ourselves in.

About ten years ago I rode my motorbike all the way to the top of Norway, as far North as it’s possible to drive in Europe. It was an amazing ten days travelling over six thousand miles alone with the Lord and the trip was a complete success. It was an achievement that I was very proud of. However, it was an achievement that was made possible by understanding my failings, for I had set out to do the same trip the year before and had failed. I got distracted along the way, called in to see friends, and enjoyed their hospitality. In doing so I ran out of time with several hundred miles still to go. On my second attempt I was single minded, I didn’t allow myself to be distracted by other things and kept my mind firmly on the goal. One of the great stumbling blocks to hearing the Lord is being distracted by other things.

One of the great blessings of the Christian life is that no matter what our current or past failings may be, the Lord still calls us to come to Him. It’s easy to look back on our failings in prayer and give up or make excuses that we just can’t hear Him. The solution is to continue to wait patiently and to act on the simple instructions He gives us. Listening to the Lord is tough, it requires a daily and ongoing sacrifice. But if we will persevere, the reward is a true walking with the Lord and a peace of knowing we are in just the place He wants us to be.

I waited patiently for the Lord; he turned to me and heard my cry.
Psalm 40v1

 

22/11/2020 Letter 3 Works of Service - The Blessings

 

It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God's people for works of service, so that the whole body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.
Ephesians 4v11-13

 

Over the last few weeks we have looked at the various types of ministries listed above as well as ministries of helps and administration. I n each case the ministry is always based on a servants heart, a servant not of this world or even the church, but a servant of God. The one we serve is the one we take the time to listen to and is why it is so easy for the believer to finish up serving the world or even the church instead of serving the Father. F or what the world wants and even what the church wants when it walks according to the intellect or flesh is rarely the same as what the Father wants. So no matter what ministry you are called to, it always starts with seeking the Lord and listening to the leading of the Holy Spirit. You can read all the books, know you r B ible from cover to cover, yet if we are not willing to seek the Lord and listen, we have missed the very foundation of the servant heart. T he heart that Jesus had and showed by his life as the way that we need to walk in. For if Jesus, the sinless Son of God needed to seek the Father, how much more do we need to seek him.

 

Let us be clear, if we do not want to seek the Father, no matter how our minds deceive us, the truth is that we do not have a heart after God! It doesn't matter how we try to dress things up or how spiritual or knowledgable we think we are. If we are not willing to spend time seeking the Father, then we cannot claim that H e is the desire of our heart, for we seek the things our hearts are set on. We can claim we are too busy, that there are other priorities that get in the way, yet when something is truly important, if our heart is set on it, we will make the time to fit it in .

 

A simple example is our eldest daughter Abi. Liz and I both lived very busy lives with no space to fit anything extra in, yet when she went into hospital, suddenly we found time to make the trip to Birmingham day after day, month after month. It just meant that things of lower importance had to be set aside. It's wh at we see in the life of Jesus; when he was very busy with constant interruptions, he would make the time to be alone with his F ather by going out late in the evening or early in the morning to pray on the hills. He was willing to sacrifice his sleep, his bed, for the Father which is far more than many of us are willing to sacrifice.

 

Even as old age comes upon us, when our ability to minister physically starts to fade, we are still called to pray. It's interesting how one of the qualifications for a widow in 1 Timothy 5v5 is one who is seeking the Lord for themselves. That despite all the issues, including their health, their focus is still on seeking the Lord. Without seeking the Lord, the heart turns inwards and focuses on the issues of the flesh, the problems of this world become bigger than God and our desire becomes about meeting our physical needs. At that point Jesus is no longer Lord of our life, for the driving force is not the Holy Spirit and the needs of the Kingdom of God, but rather the needs of our flesh.

 

So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly father knows that you need them. But seek first the kingdom and his righteousness and all these things will be given you as well.
Matthew 6v31-33

 

This is why so many of us do not see the Lords provision in our lives in the way that we should; our focus is on self and what we are going through. As we look at Jesus we see that he did not look at himself with pity, even on the cross (Hebrews 12v2). Instead his joy was in serving the Father and meeting the needs of the Kingdom of God.

 

So often as believers we want all our problems solved before we are willing to serve. We get things back to front and then wonder why God is not blessing our rebellion. Let us understand that the Lord provides for the needs of His servants, we just need to make sure that we are doing what we are called to be doing and that starts with seeking the Lord with all our heart. Luke 10v27 tells us that the greatest commandment is to love the Lord our God. That is far more than an emotional feeling. True love makes sacrifices, true love gives of itself for the one it loves. If we are not willing to make the sacrifice then our love has grown cold.

 

It is why we see in the parable of the sower (Matthew 13v1-23) that there are a series of heart conditions , the hard heart, the shallow heart, the worldly concerned heart and the receptive heart. Each of the conditions shows an attitude towards the Lord and shows us that only the good soil, the receptive soil is capable of receiving the word of God and allowing it to take root deep enough to cause growth that will bring blessing. S adly this is the part that so many Christians do not understand; that there is true blessing in service! There will be struggles, trials, and by world standards even disasters, yet through them all we grow in our knowledge and understanding of Christ. Not a knowledge of God from a book, but a real knowing of God, an intimate loving relationship as Christ had with His Father. For if we are being transformed into the image of Christ (2 Corinthians 3v18), that transformation comes from spending time with the F ather, seeking Him and allowing the Holy Spirit to lead, teach and transform the way we think and see the world and His kingdom (Romans 12v2). Only then do we truly start to experience the blessing of working alongside the Father and being partakers in His work. For we are told:

 

For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God has prepared in advance for us to do.
Ephesians 2v10

 

God has works of service for each one of us. Jobs waiting for us to do, and all we have to do is set our hearts on Him and seek Him for direction. We need to come to the Father as Jesus came to the Father, to become God dependant. If we don't set our hearts towards doing these works then we are telling the Father that we do not want to do what He wants us to do. It's the same rebellion we see in Adam in the garden, a rebellion that has it's root in Satan himself. For Satans rebellion was a refusal to serve God Almighty and instead put his own kingdom first.

 

Serving the Lord is a fundamental of the Christian walk and we need to understand that in service there is a route to spiritual growth and blessing that cannot be found in any other path. Jesus said his food was to do the will of the F ather (John 4v34). While Paul said "He who doesn't work doesn't eat" (2 Thessalonians 3v10). Quite literally, when we refuse to serve the Lord, when we refuse to work for Him we are literally starving ourselves of the provision s of God, we finish up having to eat the food of this world because our spiritual food is gone. It's nothing new, even the Israelites did the same with the Manna in Exodus 16v20 & 27. They ruined the Lords provision on some days and missed out on other days because they refused to listen to the word of the Lord and went their own way instead. R efusing to follow in service led to a lack of food in their daily lives.

 

So let us think about the blessings of service.

 

The first blessing to think about is that as we serve, the flesh is put to death. As we walk according to the Lord we will grow spiritually as we feed on Him, yet in growing spiritually the flesh will die, f or the flesh and the spirit want the opposite to each other. You may wonder why I have put this first; well if our goal is to walk according to the Spirit and grow up to be the true sons and daughters of God, then this obedience is a blessing as it produces in us the spiritual desires of our heart (Romans 8v12-17).

 

The next blessing that we find as we serve the Lord is that our faith grows. For God does not lead us in the paths of the possible, He leads us down the paths of the impossible, that we may see His power at work in our lives. Many Christians wonder why they do not see the signs and wonders of old. Well take a look at them and you will find that they occur when Gods people are seeking after Him. As we look at the miracles of Jesus and the miracles that took place in the church, they occurred as people walked in obedience to the Lord and devoted themselves to his ways (Acts 2v42-43). The early church did not seek miracles, the Lord blessed them with miracles as they walked in obedience. Some of the miracles saw peopl e ge7ng healed, but noce, most of this did not occur in the church. Just as the disciples obey ed Jesus when He sent them out and experienced God's miracle working power, so we see the same in the early church in relaon to their obedince "to go into all the world." If we want to see the Lord moving with power, we need to be walking in step with Him, following in the obedience that lead s to service.

 

In my own life I have lost count of the ways the Lord has provided in impossible situations as we have stepped out to serve Him. It causes our faith to grow as we experience His provision in various formats and this provision does not just have an effect on my own faith, for the next blessing of service is the blessing to our friends, family and even the world around us. For as we walk in obedience and the Lord moves in power in our lives, our Christian walk takes on a new dimension, it becomes real and this reality overflows in our testimony to others. For when we talk about the Lord He is no longer remote, instead we are talking about how he interacts in our lives in a real way. This is especially important for our children, for as the Lord blesses us, our children experience this blessing first hand, not as a story they have been told, rather they get to see the reality of the Lord working in their lives. If we want the Lord to be real in the lives of our friends and family, then we need to let the blessings of our obedience overflow into their lives.

 

The next blessing of serving the Lord is th e knowledge of knowing our part in the Kingdom of God. Knowing the roles that he has set aside for us that is perfect to fulfil His desires in our life. There is a peace and comfort in knowing our calling, for if we know we are in the right place we know that whatever struggles we face, the Lord is with us and will continue to lead and guide us. We start to understand the steps of faith that He asks us to take will each in turn bring us closer to Him. There is also the blessing of knowing that the Lord ha s entrusted a work to us. We are working alongside the Father for the furtherance of the kingdom. This leads to another blessing in that it keeps us anchored, for many believers find themselves drifting from one place to another, one meeting or ministry to the next, because they do not k now the calling on their lives. This also serves as a blessing for the 'over busy' as well, for when we know what the Lord has called us to do we know what is of Him and what is from the world. It stop s us from getting bogged down in works that are just a distraction from our true calling and allows us to rest when we know that our work has been done.

A final blessing from serving the Lord is in the tough times. We all go through tough periods, times when there seems to be no way out and it's at this time also that the blessings and miracles that we have seen through service become a constant reminder of what the Lord can do. They help us to lift our eyes off the situation and once more fix them again on Jesus in even the most difficult of situations for we will have k now n his provision in the past, not as a theory but as a reality.

 

If Jesus could look on the cross with joy (Hebrews 12v2), then we in turn need to look at serving the Lord as a joy rather than as an unwilling burden that we have to carry. Service is an opportunity for us to grow in the Lord in the way that He desires. Jesus came as the servant king, let us in turn become imitators of Christ that we may bring glory to the Father.

 

Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, 'Lord, Lord' did we not prophecy in your name and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?' Then I will tell them plainly, 'I never knew you. Away from me you evil doers!'
Matthew 7v21-23

 

So let us all take the time to seek the Lord and find out His will for our lives for it would be a tragedy if the first time we truly heard the Lord was for Him to tell us He never knew us!

 

15/11/2020 Letter 2 Works of Service - The Apostle

Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God.
Romans 1v1

As we have worked our way through the ministries in Ephesians 4v11-13 as well as the ministries of helps and administration as mentioned in 1 Corinthians 12v28 we have seen that in each ministry, the foundation, the actions taken, always need to be built on a clear calling from the Lord. Not just as a one off, but a daily constant communion. For without listening to the Lord we can never claim to be a follower or servant for our directions and actions are based on presumption rather than instruction through listening and waiting on the Lord.

This week we are going to look at the ministry of an apostle, in many ways the pinnacle of Christian ministry. For when it comes to the church, the first apostle was Jesus himself (Hebrews 3v1). This is important because as we look at the ministry of an apostle we are seeing in many ways a copy of Christ's ministry. Not just in what he said and did, but the way he lived, his heart attitude and the way the Holy Spirit worked through him. In Romans 1v1, Paul is called to be an apostle, it is not just a calling to the ministry but to a life of complete servant hood such as Christ had. It is one of the attitudes that is attributed to Christ in Philippians 2v5-11. An attitude that will require us to deny ourselves, pick up our cross and die daily (Matthew 16v24). The apostles calling is a high calling for In many ways an apostle has to take up the role of a pastor, prophet, teacher and evangelist as part of his ministry because he is having to perform these roles, often alone and without support just as when we look at Christ, our true apostolic example. However, alongside these ministries there should be a visible working of the Holy Spirit working through the ministry with signs and wonders and miracles as the Holy Spirit leads (2 Corinthians 12v12), not as the apostle demands.

As with all ministry there needs to be a foundation built on a constant communion with the Father. We see in the life of Jesus that despite him being the Son of God, he still had a true servant heart that was willing to constantly go before the father in prayer to seek His will for the day. This was so normal in the life of Christ that when he was missing the first place the disciples knew to look for him was in a solitary place, for the foundation of his ministry was not found in the crowds but in the time he spent with his Father. It is this attitude that overflowed unto his disciples around him and that was seen in their lives by the teachers of the law (Acts 4v13). For apostleship is not a ministry that is learnt in a Bible school, it is a calling that comes through servant hood, a process that takes a life time. Let us not be fooled in any way, apostleship was not learnt from a book, the disciples learnt it by spending time with the Lord, day after day, week after week, month after month. The sad truth is that they spent more time with the Lord in three years than many Christians will spend with the Lord in thirty, if we are not willing to make the sacrifice in time spent with the Lord we will never be fit for this type of calling.

Just as we see in the life of Christ, a crucial attribute of the apostolic ministry is humility. This is especially true in a ministry that will see miracles, signs and wonders. In the age we live in it is normal for people to boast of their achievements. Sadly this has crept into the church, so that the Christians are wooed by impressive numbers and buildings, likes on Facebook, numbers of books sold and of course a silvery tongue to deliver the message. Yet in the life of the true apostle there is no place for boasting, indeed when Paul defends his ministry he says that he is not talking as the Lord would (2 Corinthians 11v17) and even says he must be out of his mind to talk this way (2 Corinthians 11v23). However, when Paul defends his ministry he does not defend it by the numbers saved or the churches planted or miracles performed. Instead he talks about the sacrifices and dangers he has faced for the Lord (2 Corinthians 11v23-33). In other words he starts by talking about what he has been willing to lose for the Lord and the sacrifices he has been willing to make to fulfil his calling and yet in all this we see that his strength is in the Lord, for anyone called to an apostolic ministry there will be great sacrifices to be made just as Christ was willing to make the ultimate sacrifice. Let us not lose sight of the fact that we know that of the early apostles almost all finished up dying for the Lord. That willingness to die could almost be seen as a requirement of the calling. If we read the reinstatement of Peter in John 21v18-19 we see that Jesus tells him quite plainly the cost of his calling and once he has explained the cost asks Peter to follow him, for God is not a God of deception; He tells us clearly the cost of discipleship. As Paul puts it:

For it seems to me that God has put us apostles on display at the end of the procession, like men condemned to die in the arena. We have been made a spectacle to the whole universe, to angels as well as men.
1 Corinthians 4v9

So as we start to look at the ministry of an apostle, let us be clear that it is not a ministry for the proud or power hungry, for those who want fame before men or riches and comfort. Rather it is for those who are willing to humble themselves and give up everything they have and are for the Lord; to risk it all in the service of the King. But also let us remember it is a ministry to be aspired to, just as we aspire to be like Christ. As it is a ministry that revolves around the power of the Holy Spirit working through the person rather than the apostles natural abilities, we need to understand that the only thing preventing us moving forwards is our willingness to step out in faith and pay the cost in the flesh.

As with all the ministries we have looked at over the weeks, it starts with a calling. Jesus called the his twelve apostles (Mark 3v13-19) and if you notice it wasn’t just a calling with a title, it was a calling with a mission! The first part was to spend time with him, the second part was to go out and minister. It’s at this point that people often miss the crucial part of the apostolic ministry; it is about going where the gospel has not gone before. If we think of Christ in his apostolic role (Hebrews 3v1), he brought the gospel into the world. He pioneered the gospel message with a ministry that was aimed at the heart rather than bringing a set of laws, and through that ministry, which included the full sacrifice of himself, brought the message of salvation to the lost sheep of Israel.

His disciples, the followers of Christ that he designated apostles continued that ministry, first with the planting of the church in Jerusalem, but then spreading out to take the gospel into the world. Later as we read about the apostle Paul, we see a man who is willing to give up everything to travel and take the gospel to places where it has not been preached before (Romans 15v20). At first you could think this is the same job as an evangelist, but with an apostolic ministry the apostle goes into new areas, not just to take the gospel, but to plant new churches and this is why in many countries missionaries are called apostles. However, that is not always the best of descriptions as not everyone on missions is an apostle. An example from my own past was that I was involved in evangelism for a particular church plant, I was not the apostle, the one who had started the work in the new area was in many ways the apostle, I went as a helper just as we see that Paul had helpers.

One of the other things that we see with apostles is that they are working in areas, often long distances from any other church. In the Western world, when we think of a church plant, we will often think of taking a group of believers from a church and planting another church within a reasonably close distance so that the new church can be supported by the older church. For the apostle this is just not possible. They will usually be working in a new area, often a long way from any possible support. They are not going to be able to go out and steal a few people from other churches to start the work, instead they are going to have to start from scratch and on top of that may have to learn a new language before they can even start. Added to the burden is the need to survive in a foreign environment, this may require a tent making ministry to allow the person not only to fund themselves, but also to meet requirements to be in a country. And as if that was not enough there are also the dangers of taking the gospel to new areas. As Paul put it so well, there are a huge number of dangers to be faced (2 Corinthians 11v26-29) and even in my own experience I have seen that those dangers exist even today. The dangers of travel are very real. The first missionaries I knew who died on the field both died in travel accidents and I have lost count of the incidents I have been involved in while travelling in remote areas. On top of this as Paul mentions, is the danger that the local people or even the traditional church will turn on the apostle. Over the years many people taking the gospel to new areas, have taken it at the cost of their lives, and let us remember that this is the pattern the first apostles laid down. Most of the early apostles finished up as martyrs for their faith in different parts of the world. That is something in our risk averse lifestyle that we find hard to contemplate, that the Lord may call us to make the ultimate sacrifice, just as Christ made the ultimate sacrifice for us.

So as we think about this kind of ministry we see that it is not something that you just rush into. Many think of this kind of ministry through romantic rose tinted glasses, in the short term there is the novelty of the new way of life, but that novelty soon wears off. When visiting missions I have often been astounded as to just how much time and work it takes just to live in a new location, on one mission in Guinea Bissau, just collecting the water for the day took over an hour. That’s not an hour of preaching, that’s just carrying water. Having visitors just increased the amount of water to be moved. A simple trip to the shops to get supplies was a two day trip, so learning to go without became normal. At first there was the novelty factor, but when you have been moving water day after day for years the novelty wears off. Even the burden of paperwork can be huge; in Europe and more Westernised countries movement is easy, especially if we are just visiting. However, to live in many countries requires endless paperwork, days waiting in offices for a stamp from an official.

Finally, and one of the biggest issues, is separation from family. In remote areas a call home can be impossible, even in our modern age and even when possible, there is still the sense of distance. On my first visits to Poland phone calls home would have to be booked the day before at the local post office. It basically meant phoning home was impossible and so I would often be away for a month with no contact. In those times the enemy puts all sorts of thoughts in your mind as to the safety and health of your loved ones, it is a constant battle of faith to hand their safety over to the Lord. Even when there is contact the feeling of helplessness can be overwhelming. I remember the first time I was able to make a call to Liz from Poland, I was so excited to speak to her only to find out that she had broken her toe, Daniel had been in hospital, the vacuum cleaner had caught fire and the central heating had broken and there I was helpless, two days drive away. Praise God he had provided for all the situations, but even after the call, it was still a battle to focus on the ministry at hand when all I wanted to do was be home to help out and I was only away for a month. Other sacrifices that are often made are the missing of family events, weddings and sadly funerals, these often unseen sacrifices are not easy and can lead to criticism from friends and family alike.

So when we think of apostles, those taking the gospel to new areas, we start to see that this is a tough calling, a calling that comes with a sacrificial cost, true worship (Romans 12v1). It’s a ministry that requires a very close relationship with the Lord for there will often be no brothers or sisters to confer with or be encouraged by. It is going to require the ability, not just to seek the Lord for how to minister to others, but also a reliance on being fed daily by the Lord alone, spiritually and often physically. For just as we see with the early apostles, the strength of their life was that they had been with Jesus. This becomes even more crucial when working in a remote area, often facing struggles and frustrations for years at a time. Even more amazing to me is that when I look at someone like the apostle Paul, he would work in a new area, often for years facing struggles and rejection until a small church had been planted and then instead of sitting back and relaxing in the fruits of his labour, he would move on to the next area to face the same struggles all over again. When we read in James 1v2-4 of the struggles that develop perseverance, those working in a true apostolic ministry will need it in large quantities.

This may at first seem to be a very negative view of the apostles ministry, but when we are called to something, God does not deceive us for if we will listen He will tell us the costs involved. However, there are huge blessings from following in the footsteps of Jesus. For as we follow Christ's example we experience the Father as Christ experienced Him. We see His provisions in ways that we would not experience elsewhere and grow in our understanding of what his life was like, seeing the world as he saw it. Our walk of faith goes from being a theory to becoming a testimony that we can share and look back on with amazement.

For the Lords calling with all it’s struggles may lead to the death of our flesh, but it will bring true life to our souls. If we will allow the Lord to lead us, it will bring us into a new life that we never thought possible.

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.
John 10v10

Over these last few weeks we have looked at different types of ministry, now the question we have to ask is what is the Lord calling us to do as individuals, as couples, as families? Do we truly know and if not why not?

The first steps to ministry are always the same, a servant heart out of love for God. A heart that makes a priority out of seeking the Father, not to tell Him what to do, but to humbly sit at His feet and listen, only then will we be able to hear clearly His call on our lives.

 

08/11/2020 Letter 1 Works of Service - The Prophet

 

Over the last few weeks we have looked at Ephesians 4v11-13 and how in the church, ministry is not there to entertain or inform us, rather it is about a heart change that leads to a desire to submit ourselves to the will of God and serve Him. It is the response that Paul writes about in Philippians 2v5-11. A heart attitude that leads to us following sacrificially in the footsteps of Christ, of being willing to submit our will to the will of the Father.

As we have started from the bottom, working through the unseen ministries of helps and administration and seeing the basic lessons that we can learn about constantly seeking the Lord even in what may seem insignificant tasks, we find that these lessons go on to form the foundation of all ministry. To have a heart to seek the Lords will, to wait on Him until we clearly hear and then to act in obedience to that calling.

As we see this progression of ministries, one of the trends we see is that the further up the list we go , the more struggles and rejection we will face in this world. Teaching and then Pastoral work all have their difficulties that mean that the pastor or teacher needs to know clearly from the Lord the direction they should be going in, especially when others around start to pressure them for change to suit their own agenda. We then saw last week how the calling of an Evangelist, going into the world, will be constantly met with rejection. Once again we need to know that we have a clear call and direction from the Lord and that our self esteem and self worth are based on how the Lord sees us rather than how we are received by the world.

In Romans 1v1 Paul describes himself as "A servant of Jesus Christ, called to be..." and this is important with all ministries. It is not a choice that we make, it is a calling, an act of faith on our part in obedience to the word of the Lord. The servant does not get to choose the work the master gives them. The master decides who will be doing what and when based on his understanding of what needs to be done, rather than the servants. This is crucial when it comes to any ministry because the Lord is looking at the heart attitude towards Him rather than our worldly abilities. If the foundation of the servant heart has not taken root, our ministry will always be subject to our own egos, desires, and intellect which cloud our hearing of the Lord to the point that we see in Matthew 7v21-23, even those who would consider themselves in important ministries for the Lord can find themselves totally rejected by God because they ran off and followed their own instincts and direction, rather than humbly waiting on the Lord for His instructions .

This week we will look at the ministry of the prophet, a ministry that over recent years has been degraded, almost to something that anyone can have a go at. I've even seen morning courses offered to learn how to be one. Let us be clear; this is a calling not a hobby, and you cannot learn a servant heart in a morning and without that right heart attitude, the implications for the person, as well as those who hear them, can be nothing less than catastrophic and is why it is so important to have learnt the servant heart lessons in other ministries as the Lord leads us.

The Bible is full of warnings about false prophets, the most dangerous of which are not from the world, but from within the church just as in the old testament the most dangerous false prophets arose from within Israel. Jesus warned his disciples about this in Matthew 7v15 and when speaking of the end times in Matthew 24v11 He said:

"many false prophets will appear and deceive many people."

Notice that we are warned about "many", Jesus has warned us to expect these things in the church and that many will be deceived. When reading things like this we often gloss over an y concern with a veneer of spiritual superiority. "We could never be deceived", we say to ourselves. "We are too well taught, we know what our Bible says". Jesus was talking to His disciples, those that he had taught, so let us put aside our pride and realise that any one of us can be led astray by false prophets.

False prophets are a danger to God's people and as such put themselves in eternal danger. God wants his people cleansed of the false prophets, in the Old Testament God gave a clear instruction: that they be stoned to death (Leviticus 20v27 ). You will notice the verse talks about stoning a medium or spiritist, those who gain a message by a means other than the Lord. That is a very clear picture of what a false prophet is. Someone claiming to give a word of direction from the Lord that is not of the Lord. As the Lord said through Jeremiah:

"The prophets are prophesying lies in my name. I have not sent them or appointed them or spoken to them. They are prophesying to you false visions, divinations, idolatries and the delusions of their own mind."
Jeremiah 14v14

Notice a bit later that these prophets will come to a very bad ending (Jeremiah 14v15).

From Jeremiah 14v14 we can see what the false prophet does, so let us use that verse to help us understand what a true prophet of God is and how the Lord works through him.

As we have seen before, the prophet does not choose to be a prophet. A true prophet is always sent by God. They have a clear calling from the Lord and go in response to that call. The prophet does not choose the time, the place or the message; all of that is from the Lord and this in itself shows the need to die to self, to die to our own prejudice, politics and national pride, because the message the prophet is given may well go against the inbuilt desires of the prophet himself as we see in the account of Jonah. For we see in Jonah 1v1 that the message the Lord gave to Jonah was not to a people that he wanted to see blessed, quite the opposite. Jonah would have been quite happy for them to have been destroyed (Jonah 4v2).

The next thing to think about as we consider the messages delivered by prophets is that they are almost always warnings from God. True prophets from God do not have a reputation for bringing glad tidings, they are those who deliver the truth, usually to those who are hard of heart.

We read in 2 Chronicles 18v1-17 how the kings of Israel and Judah decided to go and attack Ramoth Gilead and so the king of Israel gathered together about 400 prophets who instantly gave him the answer he wanted to hear. However, the king of Judah wanted to hear from a real godly prophet rather than an ear tickler and so Micaiah was brought before the kings. The king of Israel was not happy about this, in fact it says he hated Micaiah, because he always prophesied bad news (2 Chronicles 18v7). The reason Micaiah was always the bearer of bad news was because the king of Israel was in rebellion against the Lord. Micaiah gave the kings the word of the Lord and as a reward got locked up (2 Chronicles 18v26). Who would want to be a true prophet of God if that is going to be the outcome?

This really brings us back to the need to have learnt the servant lessons of having died to self, of having crucified the flesh and to be truly seeking after the Kingdom of God because our flesh has it's own set of desires. Those desires can be very subtle, but so often we want God to want what we want. To agree with our politics, our view of the world, of who we see as godly and ungodly to favour our family and friends and to work against our enemies. We also need to be aware that our fleshly desire to feel wanted and appreciated can cause us to want to change the message.

At the same time, if we allow our pride to get in the way, we start to see ourselves as superior, the instrument of Gods wrath; this attitude pollutes the message as it will lose the love aspect of God. For even when the Lord declares his anger and judgement through the prophet, it is always done as a loving Heavenly Father who desires to see His children come to repentance. When we see the Lord reveal his message to the great prophets such as Daniel we see that rather than talking down to those around him, he recognised that he too was a sinner and was the first to confess his sin (Daniel 9v1-6), we see again it is a message of power given in humility and love.

This is especially important as we think about the messages that prophets have given in scripture. Rarely do we read of a prophet turning up to say "God is happy with you!". The prophets tend to be sent when Gods people have gone astray or when they are about to face great trials. If we think about this it makes spiritual sense. For when God's people are walking in obedience, when they are seeking the Lord for themselves and walking in His ways, the Lord is able to speak to those people directly. However, as our hearts harden towards the Lord through sin, then it becomes harder for the Holy Spirit to convict us until we become so hardened that our ears become blocked to the truth of God. It is at this point that the Lord sends in a prophet, someone who will deliver a message to those who have hardened their heart and rejected His convictions. When you think of a scenario like that we start to see that the repentance in Nineveh (Jonah 3v19) was actually a rare situation. Sadly, most of the time the prophet was sent to a people who had become so hard hearted towards God that they just rejected the message because it did not offer them what they wanted. It is one of those things that makes the prophets life so tough and show s again the great need to be close to the Lord. F or when we look at someone like Jeremiah, we see a prophet who gave the message as he should have, yet was totally rejected throughout his entire ministry. In fact the strange thing about Jeremiah is that apart from his sc r ibe, the only pe rson who agreed with his message was the conquering Babylonian commander (Jeremiah 40v1-3).

Another type of message the prophet can be given is seen in Acts 21v11. This time it is the prophet Agabus and he brings a message of warning and encouragement to Paul as he announces that Paul will be bound and taken to Jerusalem. The message is important for Paul because it is a confirmation to him that he is wa l king the right path and that although things, from the worlds point of view, might look bad. God knows what is happening and will be with him through the struggles. You would think that a message like this would be readily accepted by God's people, but notice how in Acts 21v12, the people, rather than gathering around Paul in prayer and asking God to strengthen him for what lies ahead, instead plead with Paul to abandon his plans to return to Jerusalem. At the same time we also need to understand that Agabus would also have had a tough time with this message. How much easier it would have been for him to make a message up to tell Paul to abandon his plans. Here again we see the need for the prophet to be able to deliver the message from the Lord even when friendships are involved. We see similar situations for Nathan the prophet in the times of King David. In 2 Samuel 7v1-2 King David has this idea about building a temple for God. A vision that even Nathan was enthusiastic about and yet he was able to put his natural enthusiasm aside and humble himself and go back to David with a message that he was not to be the one to build the temple. Later we see that it was Nathan who was tasked with confronting king David with his sin with Bathsheba (2 Samuel 12v1- 13). A prophet needed to be sent because David had hardened his heart as he overlooked his sin. Nathan had to overcome any friendship with the David or any fear of the kings position to deliver a message of rebuke, not an easy situation to be in. It would have been so easy to be the false prophet and offer false hope and comfort, yet Nathan delivered the word just as God had commanded him.

At this point we also need to look at the dangers a prophet can so easily fall into, for becoming a false prophet is a place that is easy to slide into.

Most of these spring from either pride or the fear of men and so once again show us just how crucial it is for anyone with a prophetic ministry to stay humbled before the Lord.

One of the biggest dangers, and this applies to any ministry, is that the ministry takes over our relationship with the Lord. An area that I have to be careful of is that I spend a lot of time seeking the Lord about what to preach and teach which in itself is a good thing, however, the danger is that my relationship with the Lord starts to revolve around preparing messages. So no longer am I seeking the Lord about anything else and the other changes He may want in my life. My heart could start to grow hard through sin but I would be deaf to the Lord because all I'm seeking is the message for others. Before we know it the ministry has become more important than the one we minister for. We need to always keep in mind that the job of the priest was to minister unto the Lord and through that minister to the people. If we get that back to front then other issues will quickly follow.

When the ministry starts to become the priority rather than the Lord himself, the next problem we face is that our relationship with the Lord slowly starts to deteriorate and we start to rely on self, rather than the Holy Spirit speaking into our lives as our hearts slowly harden. We start to deceive ourselves that all is well rather than humbly being able to see the truth. This becomes a problem when people start to expect a word from the Lord on demand and the prophet then feels pressured to deliver and so the prophet starts to slip into the delusions of his own mind just to please the people and keep his reputation.

The solution is easy. We need to tell the person we must seek the Lord first for His advice and wait patiently for His answer as Jeremiah and Zechariah said so well: "The word of the Lord came to me..." (Jeremiah 1v2, Zechariah 4v8), however as pressure builds our pride so often causes us to miss th is step and just prophecy whatever comes to mind. To pass on our judgements rather than the Lords. At this point we are in great danger of going from being a prophet of God to someone guilty of the sin of divination, of seeking a word other than from the Lord. He has slipped to nothing more than a spiritual fortune teller! For one of the things we need to understand is that there are times when the Lord does not speak to people. If we look at 1 Samuel 28v6 we read that Saul has sought the Lord, but the Lord had not answered. Why had the Lord not answered? Because Saul was in sin. A prophet should not feel pressured, the word of the Lord comes when it comes. If the prophet is not careful they will finish up being used as an alternate route to God, an alternative to Christ.

The final danger is that as the prophets relationship with the Lord fails, the pressures build and the Lord does not speak, so instead of waiting, the prophet steals someone else's word or vision. We read about this in Jeremiah 23v30, how as the prophets spent no time in the Lords presence, instead they copied each others words, assuming the other had heard and wanting to be part of the "club" when in fact none of them had truly heard from the Lord. Each one out of shame and pride was hiding the fact that they had not heard for themselves and was making it up.

A final thought on the subject of prophetic ministry is for those who seek out the prophets. Why are you seeking a prophetic word? Why are you not seeking the Lord for yourself?

So often we desire to have our flesh pampered by a nice word from our friendly prophet, a nice ear tickler who wants to make us feel happy in our sin . False prophets prosper because people would rather go to them than seek the Lord for themselves , people want a short cut. Let us get our own house in order and make sure that we are seeking after the Lord and not trying to get someone else to do it for us. The whole point of Jesus dying on the cross was to make a way for each one of us to be able to come to the Father (John 14v6 ). If we don't get that sorted out then the Lord may well have to send us a prophet, but it will not be a message of comfort that he brings, rather a call to repentance.

 

Letters from Lock down 1

The following is from the first lockdown. I have included a link to the entire series in PDF format for those who may want to print it out or be able to enlarge the text.

 

 

As a pastor, my goal for the church has always been that our individual relationships with the Lord would be strong enough to withstand any trial. The idea of being in prison in solitary confinement without a Bible, the church or the pastor; yet still able to seek and hear from the Lord as to the direction we as individuals should go in has been an important target to aim at. It's been a statement that at times can be looked at as being a bit extreme, after all we live in the United Kingdom, yet here we are... under house arrest conditions!

 

Our last Sunday service was a blessed time, even if it seemed a bit weird with everyone so far apart. For me it was an end to a series of teaching that the Lord has led us through as we have followed the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt . We have seen the Lords ability to provide food and water, his ability to protect us in battle and in our last service, our response as servants of God. The Lord has not sent us into this situation unprepared, rather, He has been preparing us even if we hadn't realised it at the time. I thank God that our last act together was to be able to take communion and to once again remember the Servant King who died on the cross for our salvation.

 

Despite the trend towards compulsory closures of churches being inevitable, it was not until the Prime Minister gave his address that for me, a sudden reality came about. I'm now a pastor that cannot minister, a teacher that cannot teach, it wasn't so much a loss of faith, but a loss of ability as to how to share the gospel message when confined to home.

 

However, the Lord is good and as I escaped for my hours exercise, He was there to comfort and to guide, not only on what to do, but how to do it. For although there are all sorts of technologies out there, we need to meet the need of our own congregation and so, for the time being, I will be writing a short letter each week to give us all a challenge from which to seek the Lord. Why write? Well as the Lord explained, it's a technology that He has used from early times as we see in Exodus 17v14 & Exodus 34v27, but it was also the method of communication of the New Testament as we realise that the New Testament was created as a series of letters. Even the gospel of Luke starts off with the statement from Luke that he was writing an orderly account, Luke 1v3 . So the series will be called:

 

Letters from Prison .

 

I apologise in advance for my poor grammar and spelling, but unlike the leaflets, I cannot pass the message around to a number of people for checking and unlike the Apostle Paul, I don't have a Luke to take a dictation. I have deliberately not included the verses as each one of us needs to keep in practice, looking up scriptures for ourselves, to ensure they are being used in context, but also it will save Nigel calling me up to tell me how many words and commas I have missed.

Messages will be uploaded on Sundays and posted to those who do not have internet connections.

 

28/06/2020 Letter 14: Living within the walls

Nehemiah 6v15-16

 

When Nehemiah made his initial survey of the city walls (Nehemiah 2v17-18) the task to rebuild must have seemed huge. The destruction, the rubble that lay in the way, the ruined materials and the need to build new gates would in themselves all seem massive tasks at any time, but add to this that the people were few in number and had families to support and at the same time needed to build and stand watch while enemies looked on; the job could be seen as almost impossible, a job that would take years to complete; yet fifty two days later the walls had been finished and their enemies instantly lost their self confidence.

 

These two verses are important verses for us to keep in mind as over the last few weeks we have looked at ourselves and the church with sober judgement (Romans 12v3); the task that needs to be undertaken can seem impossible and our little bit of building may look as if it will hardly make an impact; yet we see that with the Lords help and strength, in under two months, the city walls had been rebuilt and the same is true of our spiritual walls today. It is at times like this that we need to understand that starting a work that seems impossible is what real faith is all about, undertaking a job that in our own strength seems impossible, yet trusting that the Lord will lead, guide and fulfil His plans for us (Philippians 4v13); for our God is a God of the impossible.

 

This week we will start by looking at the builders themselves to see what we can learn and the first lesson is the walls were rebuilt by a whole variety of people, from the small to the great. Priests and rulers, craftsmen and traders all worked alongside each other with the goal of completing the task in hand. One thing we notice though is that the men led the work, we read in Nehemiah 3v12 that the daughters of Shallum helped in the work, and I am sure other women helped elsewhere, but what is important to understand here is that the men led their families by example. This is an important spiritual principle for any leader and highlights the difference between management and leadership. A manager tells people what to do, a leader shows people by example, by going first. This was the way Jesus taught his disciples and we see the same principle when Paul writes to Timothy to tell him what to look for in leaders for the church (1 Timothy 3v1-10). He was to look for those who led their families by example as this is the real fruit of the spirit that the Lord wants to see in all our lives (Galatians 5v22-24). This means that the men of the church need to step up to the job and get to work and lead by example. In this day and age I hear complaints about churches putting women in positions of leadership in conflict with the guidance of Paul as we saw earlier in 1 Timothy 3v1-10. However, the real issue is not "Why are the women leading?" The real issue is "Why are men not leading?" Why are the so called "Men of God" not willing to take their place of leadership? It is easy to complain about things while sitting and watching, the Kingdom of God is not a spectator sport, it is an active living walk with God, a calling on our servant hearts (Romans 1v1) and one in which the men of God need to stand up and lead the way, not in talk but in action.

 

These same issues occurred during the rebuilding of the walls. Some men saw themselves as being above doing manual work (Nehemiah 3v5), and even worse, some of these men, instead of helping the situation, actually made the work harder for those doing the rebuilding, putting an extra burden on the workers (Nehemiah 5v6-8) to the extent that they even finished up making slaves out of the workers; wanting the protection of the wall, while to their shame, exploiting the workers building them. For them, business, making money and building their own little kingdom was far more important to them than the work being done, exactly the opposite to the ways of God (Matthew 6v33). As the walls are rebuilt, men of God need to be willing to stand up and lead by example, individually knowing what the Lord has called them to and not waiting for others to go first. This hypocrisy has to stop if the Kingdom of God is going to move forward; everyone starting with the leaders and family heads needs to show by example the seriousness of the work at hand, but also the need for each one of us to live within the walls and the restrictions those walls may bring. It is so easy to want to see everything done in the right way, providing it does not impact our own lives. As we see in Nehemiah, once the walls had been built, a call was put out for people to leave their homes and move in behind the walls (Nehemiah 11v1-36). For the church to move forward, for the walls to be defended, needs a lot more than just the pastors and elders to live within the walls. It needs the whole church to take up its position of being a holy nation before God (1 Peter 2v9-12), for revival has always come from a foundation of prayer and repentance that leads to holiness; not a holiness that leads to a separation from the world, but a holiness that stands out in the world and shows love to the world around while being able to return to the safety of the walls that surround and protect the temple and the altar of sacrifice.

 

Ten weeks ago we looked at the idea of the church being in exile and how exile was a period that God used to bring the Israelites to an understanding of just how far they had fallen. The promises God made to the Israelites in exile is as true today as it was in the days of Jeremiah (Jeremiah 29v10-14). They would endure exile, but through that exile they would come to know the blessings of God when they once again sought Him with all their heart. As churches in the UK and indeed all over the world, we will have had over one hundred days of exile. Over one hundred days to think and ponder on the things of God. Over one hundred days to have sought Him and asked Him what needs to change in our lives and in the life of the church. In many ways we have been given a huge task, removing rubble and rebuilding on the message of Christ crucified. The difficult question we need to ask is; Have we been changed in the last one hundred days? Are we looking forward to a new start or are we just anxious to get back to the way things used to be, to go back to the comfort of the old routine?

 

Nehemiah 9v1-38 is the confession of the Israelites of their sin, their constant walking away from the ways of the Lord and the understanding that the Lord in His discipline has been just and merciful towards them. It is as if at this point they have understood the ways of God and regained a holy fear of the Lord. Nehemiah 10v28-39 is their response, their repentance. Not a set of words, but a set of actions to be undertaken to ensure that Gods laws would be fulfilled within the walls and that the verses we started with in Nehemiah 6v15-16 would continue to be fulfilled in their lives and the generations to come bringing glory to God; it looks like everything is going to finish with a glorious happy ending, if only that was true.

 

After some time Nehemiah had to return to Babylon for a short period and in that short period we find that foreigners once again had been given rooms in the temple (Nehemiah 13v6-9) and that people had once again let business take over from the things of God (Nehemiah 13v15-22) and finally the people quickly intermarried with the nations around them creating a nation that no longer knew it's own language (Nehemiah 13v23-31). It was a pattern that continued for the years to come and that Jesus saw when he entered the temple and found that it had become a marketplace (Mark 11v15-17); yet let us remember that the Israelites thought everything was alright. Even more alarming is that the spiritual leaders, the Pharisees and Sadducees, were the ones that opposed the ways of Jesus more than anyone else and led the call for him to be crucified (Luke 22v1-6 & 23v1-2).

 

Let that last thought sink in for a moment. Those who regarded themselves as the spiritual elite, the guardians of the laws of God, led the call for the rejection, removal and crucifixion of Christ, the Son of God, rejecting his teaching and his ways, and even accusing him of being of the Devil (Matthew 12v22-32). Meanwhile, those who recognised themselves as sinners found salvation through Christ then and to this day, as they humbled themselves and repented of their sinful ways.

 

The Bible warns us that in the end times there will be a great falling away (Matthew 24v10), it is so easy to think of that falling away as meaning that churches will be empty, however Jesus is not talking about falling away from church, He is talking about falling away from faith in Him. Faith in walking in His footsteps, faith in walking in the ways of Christ crucified; falling away from the message of Christ crucified is easily done while still attending a church. He reinforces this message in Matthew 11v6 after the death of John the Baptist, warning those around that following the path of Christ crucified is difficult in this world and will face opposition and persecution even unto death. As we have seen before in Matthew 7v15-23, we are warned that if we stray from the true message of Christ crucified that brings about the true fruit of the spirit (Galatians 5v22-25), we may be active in our church, yet be far away from the Lord himself.

 

For us, as individuals, are we willing to work hard to build on the foundation of Christ crucified or do we want to find teachers who will tell us what our itching ears want to hear (2 Timothy 4v3-4)? For you can be sure that in the end times, those false prophets will not be preaching to empty churches, it is why Timothy was to stay calm and continue to preach the true message of Christ crucified (2 Timothy 4v2). False prophets have always given the people what they want to hear while God Almighty gives us the truth in Christ. These are all things that we need to spend these last days of exile thinking and praying about so that once again we are clear on the direction in which the Lord wants us to go.

 

So as we come out of our exile, rather than having our heads held high, let us walk in true humility and repentance and obedience before our God (Micah 6v8), that we may bring glory to the name of Jesus for all He has done for us through the cross.

 

1 Peter 1v13-16

 

21/06/2020 Letter 13: Rebuilding the walls Part 3

Exodus 13v1-16

 

This week we will continue look at some of the issues around rebuilding of the spiritual walls of our lives and in turn the church, but before we look at some of the problems that can arise, we need to take a close look at ourselves as although problems always arise when walls are built up, some of these problems can be averted by us having the right heart attitude. Sadly walls have been built in many churches and many Christian's lives have missed the foundation of Christ crucified altogether and instead of bringing blessing, have brought division and opposition. So once again, we need to keep a careful eye on our foundations.

 

In the passage above we need to remember that Israel at this point is coming out of the world and moving towards the Promised Land, a land that they have not earned in any way shape or form, but one that the Lord God Almighty was taking them to so that they would be a holy nation under God; a living example to the nations around of the way that they should live before God. In this passage there are a couple of verses to highlight in Exodus 13v8-9. These verses highlight to us an important principle we need to have in place for any spiritual walls that we are going to build, the motivation behind building them.

 

Far too often believers have built walls that on paper may seem good, but the motivation behind them is all wrong. If we are not careful we can become a kind of "Holy Club", becoming those who see themselves as spiritually superior to those around them and acting like a kind of spiritual police force who impose the law on those around them to make sure everyone obeys the rules because we like everything to look neat and tidy. At this point we have failed to stand on the foundation of "Christ Crucified" because, instead of walking in humility, we are walking in pride and superiority. Jesus when dealing with sinners, never approved of their sin, his message was always a message of repentance to turn from their sin (Matthew 4v17, John 8v11), but that message came from a heart of love, rather than a spirit of condemnation and it is this heart attitude we see highlighted in Exodus 13v8, "I do this because of what the Lord did for me." The motivation behind building the walls must come out of reverence for God rather than an attempt to make ourselves look special before men, but also as is shown in Exodus 13v9, these walls are a sign and a reminder to keep the word of the Lord on our lips, that as Jesus pointed out is the overflow of our hearts (Matthew 12v34). So in all our building we need to keep in mind that we are only sinners saved by grace as the great apostle Paul pointed out in 1 Corinthians 15v9-10. As such, our purpose in building the walls is to bring glory to God alone, not to ourselves or to the church. God glorifies those who humble themselves before Him, not those who glorify themselves before the world. As the church in Ephesus found out, it is possible to have everything legalistically correct, yet have lost the foundation of repentance that comes through a loving relationship with God (Revelation 2v1-7); doing the right thing, from the wrong heart. We need to be especially careful in this area when we have been saved for a long time; it is very easy for the momentum of what we know to take over from our daily relationship with the Lord and as we grow in knowledge of the Word of God we need to be careful that our intellectual knowledge does not become a pride that deceives us into thinking that we are more than we really are; we need to keep a sober judgement about ourselves (Romans 12v3). The same applies when we are part of Christian families that have a long spiritual heritage, especially in ministry. It is so easy at this point to see ourselves as something special, raising ourselves up and forcing the rules on others from a position of superiority; Romans 3v23 needs to be a constant reminder to us that all have sinned, all have rebelled and we have nothing to boast about (Romans 3v27). Let us remember the walls are about our lives and are to be built as we are led of the Lord to bring glory and honour to Him and the Name of Jesus; not built as we see fit and for our own purposes. Everything that God asks His people to build is always according to the pattern and the ways of heaven (Exodus 25v9 & 40, Acts 7v44), not the pattern and the ways of men and this world (Romans 12v2). We need to keep a constant eye on our motives for we build as servants of the Lord, as the Lord has called us to be, not as we choose to be (Romans 1v1) and our pursuit of holiness is not to show off to the world, but is in view of Gods mercy (Romans 12v1) and His calling on our lives (1 Peter 1v15-16).

 

These attitudes become especially important when we start to face opposition from the world and even other believers as without the correct heart foundation and motivation, our response is no longer from the heart of Christ, but from the heart of man. We see in the life of Jesus that when he deals with us he understands the battles and struggles we are going through because he has been there (Hebrews 4v15). We need to be careful as we build, for often opposition will come from those who will feel convicted or rejected because of their exclusion due to the walls. As we deal with this type of situation we, even more than Christ, should understand and sympathise as we have all sinned and fallen short. However, that does not mean we compromise the walls or reduce their height. This attitude is something that we need to persevere in, often over very long periods of time. How often have we seen children, and sadly adults too, get their way because they kept putting pressure on the walls until those inside grew tired of defending and surrendered? Again, at times like this, we need to make sure we understand whose walls we are defending and why. We are to defend the walls that the Lord has called us to build because that is the calling of the Lord; we do not need to justify ourselves before man, for it is the Lord Himself who justifies us, He is our Lord and Master. This is especially important when the pressure comes from family or close friends for those are the ones we are most likely to compromise for.

 

Often, as in Nehemiah 4v17-18, we also need to recognise that the enemy will strike as soon as we start to build the wall; he does not wait for it to be finished. As such we need to be fully armed and alert at all times, even as we build (Ephesians 6v10-18), making sure that we are strong in the Lord. This is not about us arming ourselves with the Lords armour; rather it is about making sure we are in the centre of His will so that He is surrounding us with His protection, for as always, our strength is in the Lord alone.

 

We need to remember that very important fact as building and defending the walls can be a very lonely task . We may be working hard on a section as the Lord has led, but at times we can feel like we are distant from any other worker and alone when attack comes. There are times when attacks come that we need to be able to put out the trumpet call to others (Nehemiah 4v19-20), not to help defend us, but to help us defend the wall. It is so easy when the attack comes to take it personally rather than understanding the attack is against the walls; as we understand this, it helps us in our prayer life as we start to see the purposes of our prayer and move from it being self seeking to Kingdom defending. This can happen very easily as we watch the walls. For we need to understand that for a watchman on a wall, the night time is the most difficult time to maintain a state of alertness. Watch keeping can be very lonely, and it is a loneliness that is compounded by being surrounded by the darkness. At times like that it can be very easy to become insular and see ourselves as being alone in our work, not realising that the Lord has put others in place, and we cannot see them due to the distance and the darkness around us.

 

One last thought about being a watchman, as someone who spent two years watch keeping on a ship. The golden rule was never sit down; keep walking, keep moving, especially in the darkest hours when it is so easy to fall asleep. It is the same in our spiritual life, it is so easy to sit down and take a break, only to find that before we know it we have fallen asleep and the enemy has entered the city. For me, as a ships watch keeper, there were always jobs to be done and endless checks to be made.

Similar in those dark hours when we feel alone, it is so easy to stop looking outwards and start looking at our own needs and wants and once again, before we know it, the enemy has struck. For us as believers, as we build the walls and keep watch over them we also need to constantly be checking and working away as the Lord leads, building and defending to the glory of God and remembering clearly what we are doing and why.

 

Proverbs 6v9-11

 

14/06/2020 Letter 12: Rebuilding the walls Part 2

Last week we started to look at the idea of building walls and their purpose of keeping the enemy out of the city, figuratively our lives and our churches. We saw how Jerusalem was seen to be in great trouble and distress (Nehemiah 1v3) because these boundaries had been removed and as such their enemies could come in and exert influence any time they wanted with no ability to control their access in any way. This week we will continue on this theme to try and get a better understanding of the work that needs to be done.

 

Nehemiah2v13-17

 

In the passage above we read that the first thing Nehemiah did on arriving in Jerusalem was to go out and inspect the gates and walls. He had been told before he arrived that the walls had been broken down, but one person's idea of damage is very different to another person's view, so Nehemiah went out and did the inspection himself so that he had a clear idea of what needed to be done, he was not taking other peoples word about the situation.

 

1 Corinthians 1v18-25

 

Last week we looked at the need for the foundations of the walls to be strong and built totally on the message of Christ crucified. Not just the message that Jesus died for our sin on the cross, but that in view of God's mercy shown to us at the cross our lives should be lived in love and worship towards God, following in the footsteps of Jesus (Romans 12v1). This means that there will be loss in this world, a sacrifice of self will for the love of God (Luke 9v23-27). A sacrifice that will come about by standing on the Word of God without watering it down to suit the ways of the world.

 

This week we will think a bit more about the practical application of this because far to often we are trying to build halfway up the wall before we have got this foundation firmly in place; and let us be under no illusion, if we get this foundation wrong the consequences will be eternal, not just to ourselves but to those who receive the false message we preach (Galatians 1v6-10). In this passage in Galatians, Paul makes it very clear about the penalties for straying away from the true gospel message so this week we are going to do some "Nehemiah" wall inspection and start to check our foundations.

 

I will start with some examples that I hope will help us to see more clearly how easily and deceptively these foundations can be undermined, the first of which is an issue that is really starting to have huge effects around the world, the subject of church unity.

 

Now at first glance we would all say that church unity is good. Jesus told us clearly to love and care for each other and we see in the early church examples of the churches caring for each other and for other groups of believers (churches), but this is often when we start to run into trouble; when the "unity" becomes the foundation rather than "Christ crucified". When unity becomes the foundation of the wall it means it is the first test that we apply when checking what is coming in through the gates. At this point we put ourselves in a dangerous situation because unity becomes more important than Christ crucified. As such our joy at the unity means that we do not check the more important message of the gospel with the thoroughness we should and so weaken our defences by including rubble in the wall.

 

We read in Romans 15v5 about a spirit of unity as we follow after Christ Jesus. In other words the foundation is the message of Christ crucified, if that test is passed it is only then that we move on to unity. So if the message they are preaching alters the message of Christ crucified, no matter how big or strong, helpful or nice we think this other group may be, sadly we need to keep the doors closed.

 

A similar example that I first came across overseas but that is now far more common in the UK is the idea of the Charismatic Catholic and indeed many other Charismatic groups. Here we see churches uniting around spiritual gifts, signs and wonders, while compromising the basics of the gospel message. We find that in unity, the foundation becomes based on something other than the basis of Christ crucified. If we looked at Christ crucified, it would be obvious that our beliefs are very different, but in our euphoria we skip this foundational check and move much higher up the wall, making something else the focal point. At that moment we may not realise it, but our foundation has been removed from "Christ Crucified" and the repentance that comes from acknowledgement of our sinfulness to focus on the signs and wonders etc. Our gospel has been built on a different foundation, a different Christ and we are warned of the results of this in 1 Corinthians 3v10-15; even more seriously by Jesus himself in Matthew 7v21-23. When we read in Matthew 24v24 we see the elect, God's people being deceived by signs and wonders and false Christ's and prophets. When we start to base salvation on spiritual gifts, they have become the false Christ. For we have changed the gospel from one of repentance and following after Christ through a change of heart and instead have replaced the sign of salvation with someone speaking in tongues or some other spiritual gift. Sadly, as we inspect our walls we may find that our foundation has been damaged a lot more than we first thought and the repair job may be a lot bigger than we at first imagined. As the returning exiles found out, removing the rubble was a huge job, as big and tiring as building the wall itself (Nehemiah 4v10), but if the job is not completed and the site cleared and sorted, the new walls will be built on poor foundations and with poor quality stone and will collapse at the first attack.

 

Another example of the way the foundations of the walls get compromised is through the danger of the cult of personality. I find it amazing how many Christians will quote a preacher, a book or some podcast or online media, yet when asked what the Lord is saying directly to them they have no idea. The danger here is that it is very easy for the person or organisation, including a church, to take over the role of Christ and the Holy Spirit in the believer's life. In John 14v6 we read that Jesus through his death on the cross made a way for us as individual believers to come to the Father. Sadly, if we are not careful, we can replace coming to the father through Christ to coming to the Father through our favourite author or preacher. So instead of the individual coming to the Father and seeking wisdom and revelation through the Holy Spirit (John 16v12-14, Colossians 1v9) as we see in the daily life of Jesus; this in turn means that the message we receive is second hand at best, but also makes us dependant on someone or something other than the Lord. When they become our foundation, any movement in their lives has an instant impact on our own lives and if they start to drift we easily follow as our anchor is not in the Lord but in another person or group. Not only that, but in our dependence on the organisation or person, we easily blind ourselves to any failings in our desire to stay aligned with them and so we will allow parts of the wall to be demolished and bad teaching allowed to come in so that we can keep what we view as the good bits. In 1 Corinthians 1v11-13 we see that in the early church this cult of personality easily formed, even if Paul, Apollos and Peter did not want it. What we are seeing here is believers looking for a route to hearing from God that takes a short cut and avoids waiting on the Lord as an individual. This was a major downfall of the Israelites in Exodus 20v19. here we see how the Israelites wanted Moses to be their communication between them and God, sadly this meant that the laws that Moses gave them became a set of rules from a man rather than revelation from God because the individual relationships was degraded. We read how that generation fell away from God, dying in the wilderness through their constant rebellion because they knew the laws but didn't know God in the way they should have. It is interesting to note that Joshua who took over from Moses became a leader because while everyone else was enquiring through Moses, he remained constantly in the tent of meeting, enquiring of God for himself (Exodus 33v7-11).

 

The other sad part of the dangers of personality is that we compromise the walls because we like someone, we get on with them and we see them as a good person or having a good heart. They have helped us out in the past so we owe a debt of gratitude; maybe they are related or have held a position of importance in our lives. At this point we will easily overlook the compromise in the message of Christ crucified in preference for what we perceive as the other important attributes in their lives that affect our interaction and favouritism towards them. At this point we have totally undermined the walls and have placed our views and feelings as the foundation of the walls rather than the message of Christ crucified. Without realising it our walls are built on rubble.

 

Let us be very clear in our understanding of false prophets and teachers, they will not appear as mean and nasty people. We are drawn in by our attraction for them and their teaching, as it says in 2 Timothy 4v3-4. It will be the individual believer who seeks after those saying the things they want to hear and doing the things they want to do. Sadly this is because it shows that our own lives are not built on the foundation of Christ crucified and this in itself may come as the biggest shock yet. For in our building of the walls we have looked at others as the source of false teaching, yet we do not like to consider ourselves as having gone astray; our pride will not allow it. Is the gospel we preach in words and deeds about Christ crucified and the Lordship of Christ in our lives, or do we preach the modern message of Jesus dying on the cross for me so that when we accept him he will be our servant for the rest of our days? Is the core of our Christian life the gospel message of an obedience that comes through repentance in thankfulness for the salvation we have received through Christ or have we lost our focus and drifted off to argue and discuss other matters (2 Timothy 2v23, Titus 3v9), not realising how far we have been blown off course.

 

At this point, our putting up of the walls and restricting the access of those who are not seen to be part of us can be seen as unloving and cruel. However, we need to remember that these walls, if received with the right attitude of heart, can be a real blessing to those who are going astray. Two boats on the ocean may seem to be only metres apart and not moving, and indeed their distance from each other may never change. However, it is only when they drift together past an Island that is fixed that they understand the distance they have travelled. In the same way the walls can help to bring people's focus back on to the true gospel message. Being forced to spend a night outside the walls (Nehemiah 13v19-22, 1 Corinthians 5v9-11) may be just what is needed to help those going astray to realise they have become foreigners to God's people. For real love includes discipline, not as a way of getting revenge, but as an act of love to guide the lost back onto the right path. The book of 1 Corinthians probably contains the recommendation for some of the most harsh treatment of one believer to another in the whole of the New Testament (1 Corinthians 5v1-5), so harsh that Paul himself found it hard to write at a personal level (2 Corinthians 7v8), but that harsh discipline, the wall that was put up not only caused those in the church to re evaluate their lives (2 Corinthians 7v9-12) but it also led to repentance from the one who had been leading them astray (2 Corinthians 2v5-7). What at first looks to be harsh was actually saving souls and leading the church back to the life of Christ crucified.

 

Walls based on Christ crucified not only protect us from the influence of false prophets and preachers and even ourselves, but they also protect us in our relationships with other worldly organisations. For without constantly checking the foundation of the relationship we can easily become what the Bible calls unequally yoked (2 Corinthians 6v14-18). Usually when this passage is quoted it is used in the context of marriage and wisely so, for again when looking at marriage, if the husband and wife have different foundations and goals they will not be able to walk together. For when two animals were yoked together it enabled the farmer to plough or pull larger loads using two animals going in the same direction. However, if those animals went their own way, one pulling against the other, the weaker one would be drawn after the stronger, but the stronger would still find itself slowed down by the resistance of the other animal, they would be walking a path of conflict and compromise. The farmer would have been better off just using one animal than spending all day trying to control two opposing animals (Deuteronomy 22v10). For the church and us as believers we need to be careful in becoming unequally yoked with the world and this is easily done when we forget the foundation of Christ crucified.

 

As a simple example of how easy it is to get trapped in this area, as a young church we used to rent a room at our local university. Like so many things the room rental came with a list of terms and conditions and it would have been quite easy to quickly race through them with no real thought to what they said. However, as we read through we found a section that related to not being able to refuse entry to any meeting based on someone's race, gender, sexuality, marital status etc. Now Jesus makes no distinctions in this area when calling people to come to him. He died for the unrighteous and as a church we are to share the gospel with all mankind, however before signing the rental agreement we needed to check if this had any restrictions on what we would be allowed to preach. For Jesus calls sinners to be saved, but that salvation means turning from our old ways to follow in the footsteps of Jesus and that means that things that may be acceptable in the world and even encouraged must be opposed in the church. Thankfully we could preach what we wanted, but it was easy to see how we could have so easily have had our walls compromised by entering into an agreement that unequally yoked us and pulled us in a direction that was not of God.

 

Many times Christians and churches fall into the trap of becoming yoked with unbelievers linking up with organisations that we see as sharing our goals so let's look at a simple but common example of how this starts to go astray.

 

Let's think of a situation where someone wants to reach out to the poor in their area, a good and worthy cause that we would view as Biblical. Our first step needs to be to seek the Lord on this, for our motives can easily be based on emotion or personal experience, when our motives need to be based on the gospel. Let us remember the harsh reality that a man who starves to death knowing Christ is better off than the man who lives longer with a full stomach but never knows Christ as his Lord and Saviour. So when we set out we need to know very clearly from the Lord what the goal of the work is, for it is very easy to see the physical feeding as being of most importance. At this point the walls are easily breached because as we start to feed the poor, we find more poor who need feeding. Suddenly we can't cope with the demand and before we know it we start to look to other groups, companies, organisations that can help us in our goal that is no longer based on Christ crucified but is based on providing provision. As we partner with these other organisations we become linked (yoked) with them and become associated with their goals and ideals that will very often be in conflict with the message of Christ crucified. Before we know it we start to allow unbelievers into the ministry and so we are now preaching a mixed message of our beliefs and lifestyles alongside our yoke workers and their lifestyles and beliefs. We may end up physically feeding more people, while totally compromising the gospel message. Even worse we need to understand that when we partner with these groups, when they go astray, we will be linked with them and so the name of Jesus is degraded. We need to be very careful how we link up not only with companies or other charities, but also with causes and political organisations for when we yoke ourselves with them we may find that there is a lot more to the partnership than we first thought. There is a saying "Never look a gift horse in the mouth", in other words if someone is giving you something for free just take it without any questions. We need to be praying, especially about the "free gifts". The Israelites in Joshua 9 finished up being deceived by the Gibeonites. They said all the right things and displayed all the right motives (Joshua 9v9-11) and we see that the Israelites let their guard down. They looked at the physical evidence, they read the contract and assumed they understood the treaty, but they never sought the Lord (Joshua 9v14). Over a million Israelites, priests, leaders, heads of families, all unequally yoked because they didn't seek the Lord. A simple example of how easy it is to invade a people when the walls are not in place.

 

Let us take this time to seek the Lord, to do an examination of the walls and see for ourselves the state we are in. If we will allow the Lord to guide us we may be in for some serious shocks, but if we are willing to clear out the rubble and build the walls once again on the correct foundations, we have an opportunity to become a distinct and separate people that are a true light in the darkness and who truly lift up the name of Jesus in both word and deed.

 

07/06/2020 Letter 11: Rebuilding the walls Part 1

Nehemiah 1v1-11

 

Last week we looked at the return of the Israelites from captivity and how they started at the altar of sacrifice and then around that altar built the temple of God .

 

It would be nice to think that that was the end of the story and everyone lived happily ever after in the presence of the Lord, but sadly that is far from the truth; for even as the temple was being built, the influence of the world was having an effect on those living in Jerusalem . The constant daily contact and friendships with the world around them led to a return to the old ways. Instead of being a people separate from the world, they had become one with the world again and had started to inter marry (Ezra 9v1-2). This even affected the leadership of the nation that in turn encouraged those being led to continue in the same way. The situation had become so bad that some of the children did not even speak the Hebrew language (Nehemiah 13v24), instead they spoke the languages of the corrupted nations that surrounded them.

 

This is a very important picture for us today because it shows the situation we as individual Christians and even the church as a whole has got itself into as we see here a picture of God's people intermingled with the world to the point that their children have no idea of God's ways and the way He speaks, instead they just follow the ways and the rules of the people around them. If asked they would still think of themselves as Israelites and talk of the return from exile, not realising that they had fallen into the trap that the world had set for them.

 

In ancient times exile was a lot more than a punishment for a people; exile was used as a way of breaking down a nation's cultural identity so that it would be absorbed and become part of the conquering nation. If the exiled people became part of the conquering nation, that nation would benefit from their strength in productivity but also as they became part of the conquering nation they would finish up fighting to defend that nation. We see that exiles often started with the conquering nation taking away the leaders of the conquered nation as we see in 2 Chronicles 36v5-13 with a couple of kings being removed and taken away and a puppet king put in their place, the idea being that they would teach the people to be subject or be removed from their place of leadership. At the same time we see that those sent into exile were taught the ways and languages of their new masters with the idea of them taking a role in their new nation and so showing by example the way to live and settle down (Daniel 1v3-5). At the same time even the remnant in Israel was being diluted among foreign nations as we see new people being moved in to replace those who had gone into exile (2 Kings 17v24).

 

With the mixing of the nations the individual identity soon fades and the distinctiveness of God's people is lost as it mixes with the ways of the world. Once cultural identity, our doctrine of beliefs, has been lost; the ways and methods of the world become normal and with intermarriage things become even more complicated because now any decision that is made affects family. We easily compromise because we do not want to cause conflict within the family and so the compromise increases and the distinctiveness of Gods people fades away to the point that we look no different to the world around us. To prevent our distinctiveness, our identity as Christians, from being invaded and compromised we need to set up a barrier, a form of defence to control what comes into our lives and the life of the church; we need a wall! Without that wall we are defenceless to the ways of the world and it is why Nehemiah saw Jerusalem as being in disgrace without those walls (Nehemiah 1v3).

 

Let us first think about what walls do and do not do, for it is very easy as believers, when we start to talk about walls, to try and misuse them, to misunderstand their purpose.

 

Walls are a defensive barrier, that might sound obvious, but their purpose is to control what goes in and out of the city for the protection of the city. They allow things to be controlled and checked as they go through the gates and mean that a lot more people can be defended with fewer defenders. Without a wall an attacker can rush in anywhere (Joshua 6v20). With a wall an attacker has to focus on a certain area and so that area can be defended; this is true in the spiritual world as well as in the physical.

 

Years ago while working in Poland many churches had problems due to teachers coming from different countries and teaching false doctrines ; this led to many churches splitting and many other problems. The man in charge of the group of churches I was working with put a simple solution in place, he built a wall! He created a list of approved visiting speakers and within months the situation sorted itself out. He had put up a barrier with a simple check point at the gate that stopped the enemy, false teaching, getting into the city, the church.

 

Another simple example is the way that many are shielding from Coronavirus. Their needs are delivered to their door so they have control over what comes into their lives. If everyone kept going in and out of the house it would mean constantly trying to decontaminate everything, but if there is a controlled gate, a door, then that is used to restrict what and who comes in and the only defence effort that needs to be put in place is focused around the door area, only what comes in from outside needs to be checked, everything behind the door is safe and can be trusted.

 

Spiritually these walls can be seen to be made up of our doctrine, our teaching from the word of God, but they are much deeper than that. For it is one thing to know the rules, but another thing to implement them from the heart; to gain a real heart understanding of what can undermine and pollute our lives and the church. The problem with rules on their own is that we learn to push and bend them so that we don't break the letter of the law, rather than understanding what is behind the law. We see in scripture many times that God says to His people that they need to understand the difference between the holy and the unholy or common (Leviticus 10v10, Leviticus 11v47, Ezekiel 44v23), this is an important part of our individual spiritual growth (Hebrews 5v14) that when taken to heart helps us to become a gate keeper for the church, someone who defends others from the enemies ways. Notice that they are to defend, not to attack! Too many times Christians have tried to use walls to attack others, walls are never used to attack, and they are purely defensive to prevent incoming attacks. Over the years Christians have had a habit of using their walls, the defences the Lord has given them to prevent His people from becoming corrupted, as a weapon of attack on those around. Israel was to keep watch over its own behaviour; it was not to try and force its ways on those outside the walls. That is why we see Nehemiah preventing foreigners from trading in the city on the Sabbath (Nehemiah 13v19-22) as a protection for the Israelites, because if the traders came in the Israelites would buy. However we do not read that Nehemiah then sent men to guard the gates of the enemy's cities to stop them from trading on the Sabbath; he was using the gates to defend the city and making sure that anyone who wanted to have interaction inside the city knew the rules they would have to follow; what they did outside the city was their own business. As Christians we need to be careful that we do not get drawn into judging the world, which is not our job (1 Corinthians 5v12-13). Our job is to clean our own city and put the walls in place.

 

So where do we start? As Nehemiah found out, building walls was not an easy task and it was not a quick job. Everyone had to get involved and most started right outside their own home with the walls slowly joining up to form a barrier around the whole city. For us it needs to be the same so let us start to think about our walls.

 

When we had the extension put on our house the building inspector turned up a number of times to check certain key points of the construction and the area he checked most was the foundations of the wall. He came to check the depth they had been dug to and the firmness of the soil that was going to be built on and then returned again to check the concrete that had been poured and the first couple of layers of bricks for if these foundational items had been incorrect or sub standard everything that was built on top would fail no matter how good it looked.

 

It is why churches often fall apart, for the builders have forgotten to make sure that the foundations are strongly built and when it comes to the church the foundation is Christ, the rock (Matthew 16v18). The next section of brickwork again starts from the cornerstone, the point that all the brickwork is tied into and measured from (Ephesians 2v20).

 

For the believer it is not just a belief in Jesus. Historians believe in Jesus but that does not make them Christians. It is not just believing the bible is true and that Jesus was a good person who did good things. It is not just a set of rules and regulations to be followed because God said so.

 

True Christianity is built on the foundation of Christ crucified. It is the recognition that in ourselves we have no redeeming features and are unworthy in every way shape and form before God (Romans 3v10, Romans 3v23) and we deserve to be punished eternally for our unrighteous rebellion against God Almighty (Romans 6v23). It is not based on our attitudes to others; it is our rebellion against the Holy and Living God, the Creator of Heaven and Earth (Nehemiah 1v5-7).

It is the recognition that in ourselves we have no hope of paying the penalty for our sins (Isaiah 64v6) and that our only hope for salvation lies through the death of Jesus on the cross (John 14v6) who died for us while we were still sinners (Romans 5v8, 1 Peter 3v18), it is not something we deserved but is a gift from a loving Heavenly Father (Romans 6v23, John 3v16). Understanding our sinfulness before God is a crucial foundational layer of the walls that need to be built, for when we understand our sinfulness and depravity before God, then we start to understand the depths of His love and mercy towards us.

 

Repentance is also another great base layer of the Christian faith, it invloves the turning from sin to follow in the footsteps of Christ. Not to earn our salvation but in thankfulness for the mercy God has shown us through Christ (Romans 12v1-2).

 

If we forget these foundational items or water them down to keep the world happy or improve relationships (unions) with other organisations or religions then we are weakening our defences and allowing the enemy access to the heart of the city. We ignore them at our peril for if we forget, remove or weaken these foundational items, the walls we build above them will be weak and of poor quality, but if we build on Christ and imitate his lifestyle, the walls will be strong and able to endure the battering of an enemy. When it comes to rebuilding the walls the task can seem huge and when we see the wreckage we can become overwhelmed by the amount of rubble (Nehemiah 4v10), the little things that need to be sorted. So let us build wisely starting with the biggest and most important stones and get those firmly in place for again the heaviest and biggest stones need to go at the bottom of the walls to provide the greatest strength and stability (1 Corinthians 3v10-15). Once those are in place we can move forward working our way through the rubble.

 

As a final thought for the week, let us go back to the subject of intermarriage and our relationships with the outside world, especially when it comes to close friends and family. In the days of Nehemiah they rebuilt the walls and put the gates in place and yet no sooner had Nehemiah gone back to his master we read that the enemies of Israel had been given rooms in the temple (Nehemiah 13v6-9), the holiest of places. Walls are great at keeping things out, but the easiest way past a wall is to get yourself invited in through the door. In the world of computers the easiest way to hack is not to spend hours trying to crack a code, instead it is far easier to impersonate someone who works for the company and ask for the password over the phone. Also let us remember that a door is never part open. It is open or it is closed. A closed and locked door requires a lot of force to get past. A door open even the smallest amount requires little force as the locks no longer function.

 

Let us be especially careful of compromising the walls and the gospel message to keep friends and family happy (Matthew 12v48-50), for when we compromise the gospel for them we do not bless them, we curse them by giving them a false sense of security and allowing them to think things are alright between them and God. We need to make sure that these foundation stones are laid correctly and that what we allow in corresponds with the true message of the cross.

 

 

31/5/2020 Letter 10: A return to the altar

Ezekiel 16v59-63

 

As we have skimmed through Ezekiel Chapter 16 over the last few weeks we have seen the charges the Lord laid against His people and sadly we have seen that the same things that Israel did all those years ago, the same heart attitudes, are seen in His people and in the church today. As we look back a few weeks, let us remember that in Letter 4 we looked at the fact that the church has effectively been in exile from the altar of sacrifice, unable to take communion, the symbol of Christ crucified and the new covenant we have received through His blood shed on the cross (1 Corinthians 11v25). No matter what conspiracy theories people may come up with, the fact is that the Lord is in command and He has exiled His people just as He did with Israel in the Old Testament. Even more important is for us to realise that this has never happened worldwide in the history of the church; never before have all Gods people been forced away at the same time. If that has not got our attention then it sadly goes to show just how hardened and prideful our hearts have become and how focused on the physical rather than the spiritual.

 

As we have looked through Ezekiel 16 we have seen the charges that the Lord brought against His people, their adultery with the world, the false Gods, the raising themselves up. The willingness to make great sacrifice to gain the perceived benefits of these false Gods, even if it meant the sacrifice of their children; and yet through all this, God, as a loving Heavenly Father, was not being cruel. He was trying to get His people to acknowledge how far they had gone astray. To actually have some shame about the sins they had committed (Ezekiel 16v63) and through that shame to be humbled and to understand Gods love and mercy towards them. I wonder when this is all over, will we have learnt our lesson? Will we acknowledge our sin and adultery for what it really is? Or will we still be playing the blame game and focusing on the sins of others, blaming the world around us for our exile? Let us just remind ourselves again, it is our sin that we are in exile for, not the sins of the world; God will judge the world in His own time (2 Peter 3v8-9). So this week we will again ignore the world and start to look at the return journey.

 

Let us start with one very sobering thought, not everyone returned from exile! As we look at Ezra Chapter 2 and Nehemiah Chapter 7 one of the revelations is that not everyone who went into exile returned. Many had made new homes in their foreign lands and wanted to continue with those lives and businesses, for to be sure, any return to the Promised Land would mean sacrificing the gains they had made in the world and sadly some had come to enjoy the worldly benefits of exile and so did not return. Let us remember millions went into exile, a remnant came back even though the invitation to return was open to all. When our minds are focussed on the things and the comforts of this world it is amazing how easily we settle in with the foreigners and their gods around us. We see this in the life of Lot, for when he separated from Abraham his eyes got drawn to the easy ways, to the plains, to the perceived benefits of good grazing for his flocks and trade with nearby cities (Genesis 13v10). He started off pitching his tent near Sodom (Genesis 13v12) and yet despite knowing their evil deeds (Genesis 13v13) we find that in no time at all he was living in Sodom (Genesis 19v3-4) and that his daughters had become engaged to these evil men (Genesis 19v14). So let us make up our minds to return to the spiritual Promised Land that God wants his people to dwell in even if it means living in the wilderness as Abraham did for it is in the wilderness that that the Lords provision becomes evident.

 

As we look at the return to the Promised Land and to Jerusalem in particular we have to remember that the people did not return to a city that was ready for them. The city would have been in ruins, houses, businesses burned and the temple and city walls destroyed. This was literally a starting again, almost a new birth of the nation and yet we see that, when they arrived in Jerusalem , the first thing they did was go to the site of the house of the Lord, now in ruins, and there they made their freewill offerings towards the rebuilding of Gods house (Ezra 2v68-69). Only then did they return to their own homes (Ezra 2v70); in other words, the focus of the return journey was on the House of the Lord rather than their own homes and their first priority was to sacrifice to the Lord, even when their physical homes lay ruined and abandoned.

 

This theme of sacrifice as a priority is again brought into focus in Ezra 3v1-6, we see that everyone turned up for the rebuilding of the altar so that sacrifices could once again be made in the way that God intended, and following these sacrifices we see a people who once more start to obey the various ordinances that God had spoken to them about, following the feasts as His word commanded them. This is a people who have learnt the lessons of Ezekiel 16v63 and who have returned, humbled before their God. Let us not forget that a man who has been humbled has had his pride removed and has understood his true position before authority, in this case God; no longer does he work towards his own plans, but in humility follows the direction of his master. As the church today, as we look at our exile, have we been humbled? Have we recognised the true state we are in? And as we look to the future what are our plans?

 

Romans 12v1 tells us to offer our bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God. This is the sacrifice the Lord requires from His people. This is the sign of humility in our lives that is true worship of God. Just as the Israelites returned first to the altar of sacrifice, so we in turn, in humility, need to walk in the ways of obedience, to live the life of Christ crucified (Galatians 2v20). A life that is led by walking in obedience, sacrificing, crucifying our own desires, walking in obedience to the ways of God, to follow in the footsteps of Jesus (Matthew 16v24-26). It is amazing how even as we read or write these things, the flesh immediately springs up and tries to rationalise this command, trying to water it down in the good old "Did God really Say" and "You won't surely die" (Genesis 3v1&4). Putting the flesh to death will require a bigger sacrifice than we imagine and needs to be a priority if we are going to learn the lessons of our exile.

 

For when it comes to rebuilding the church, the spiritual not the physical, we need to understand the lessons of Ezra. The altar of sacrifice was built first and then the temple was built around it through sacrifice. It was not a quick job and came with a lot of opposition, notably from those who wanted to worship God, but who were not part of His people (Ezra 4v1-2). From a logical point of view it would have been a much quicker job to join with these outsiders in rebuilding the temple, more people, more labour, and more resources. Yet this was a people who mixed the worship of God with the ways of the world and if they had been involved it would have meant that the very foundations of the temple would have stood on worship of foreign gods. As we start to rebuild like the people of Israel we need to make sure that we are not building with spiritual foreigners, no matter how nice their words and motives may seem.

 

We also need to understand that the decision to rebuild in the Lords way caused opposition to arise from the world around them (Ezra 4v4). If the world didn't get its way then it would try to stop the building work going ahead. It would have been so easy to compromise so that the job could be completed quicker, yet thankfully the people stuck to the ways of God. In the end it took many years to rebuild the temple the Lords way, but only rebuilding it the Lords way was it truly the Lords temple .

 

When the exile is over, as Gods people, we need to take a fresh look at the direction in which we have been going in. Are we going in the ways of the Lord or are we going in the ways of men? Are we building a temple dedicated to the Lord, for His glory? Or are we trying to build something that will attract men? The true church can never be attractive to the world when the altar of sacrifice is in its correct position and the message of Christ crucified is preached. The message of Christ crucified will never be attractive to the world, quite the opposite, it looks like a really stupid unattractive way (1 Corinthians 1v18-25). We however need to make sure that we do not water down that message in any way and that the living of holy and pleasing lives is seen as true worship of God (Romans 12v1). If we are willing to stand firm in faith on that message then we do not need to worry about church growth for Jesus himself said "I will build my church" (Matthew 16v18). We do not need to invest in advertising gimmicks, we need only to concern ourselves with learning to serve and obey (Matthew 28v20). For God is looking for a holy temple, a holy church, that reflects his glory and where Christ is at the centre (Ephesians 2v19-22). That holiness will not come from what we know, but from how we live and serve. It is the act of faith, of believing God and acting on His word even when it goes against the ways of this world.

 

So often we look short term, but God, Our Heavenly Father is working to His eternal timetable and He has told us what he is working towards. As we look forward to the end of our exile is the Holy City the direction that we want to head in?
Revelation 21v1-4

 

24/5/2020 Letter 9: Faith in a foreign god

Luke 18v1-8

Over the last few weeks we have been looking through Ezekiel Chapter 16 and the warnings and lessons that need to be heeded from this passage in our lives today.

 

As we read through the chapter we see a constant prostitution to other gods, the gods of this world, the peoples that surrounded Israel , and a desire to have the perceived blessing that those people had as a way of fulfilling the needs of the flesh within.

 

This week we will take a look at who we see as our provider; for again it is so easy to say that we trust in the Lord yet by our actions we show that it is the world that we are looking to. The parable of the persistent widow is a reminder as we continue in Ezekiel that when it comes to seeking justice, deliverance or any other needs, our trust must be in the Lord, for when Jesus makes the statement:

 

"When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?"
Luke 18v8

 

He's not just talking about a belief in God, but an active living faith. One of the lessons we need to learn from this parable is that the widow persisted in going to the judge over and over again. She didn't look elsewhere, didn't start getting a petition together or start arranging street protests. She knew very clearly who was responsible for sorting her case out and that was the one that she went to. She was single minded in her actions and by those actions she displayed clearly who she had put her faith in. Even when things did not seem to be proceeding at the speed she wanted, she did not change her focus, but continued to seek the judge alone. It is the true example of Psalm 40v1-2. The psalmist waited patiently on the Lord, where did he wait? He waited in the slimy pit; he waited for the Lord alone to lift him out. He didn't start to look at the time that was going by and decide to try a few other methods of getting out; he waited patiently for the Lord and for the Lord alone.

 

This is important for us, because at times we need to take a step back and see who or what we have put our faith in, for it is far easier to put our trust in the gods of this world than we may realise.

 

In Ezekiel 16v23-34, we see in verses 24 & 31 that adulterous Israel had made mounds for themselves and the shrines of their false gods. Now a mound may at first seem insignificant, but the purpose of the mound was to lift something up so that it could be seen from a distance and by more people. To build a mound was no easy task; in ancient times the only way to build a mound was by hand, it would take months, maybe years to complete. For those of us in Worcester, if we think of the earthworks required to build Whittington Tump or British Camp on the Malvern's, we realise the huge amount of effort that would be required; so when we read that a mound was built it means that serious effort was put into the endeavour at hand.

 

Now the first thing we see in Ezekiel 16v24 was that it says: "You built a mound for yourselves". Whatever was being put on the mound, whatever the purpose of that mound, we need to understand that self interest was the goal. Mounds, towers such as the tower of Babel (Genesis 11v1-9), have been built over the years to get peoples attention and to draw people in to look closer; it's done to lift us up and make us look important. If we look at the mainline railway stations in London we see how the different companies built huge ornate structures as a way of advertising their railway as being the best company to travel with. It was an expensive advertising board that boasted of what that company had to offer if people would use their services. We see it today with tempting introductory offers for phones, broadband and other utilities, each company lifting it's achievements up to draw us into a relationship with them. At the moment they are using the Coronavirus as a great advertisement by making themselves look generous towards key workers. They are not doing it out of the generosity of their hearts, they are doing it because we have something they want... our money and their money. Their goal is to gain what we have, to draw the unsuspecting individual into a relationship; that is the world of business, to sell yourself to your customers.

 

So when we read of these mounds we see Israel were exalting themselves and making their offerings clear to all those around to bring them into a relationship. Put simply, they were selling (prostituting) themselves to draw people into a relationship that would allow them to gain and get what they wanted. They made special offers (sacrifices) to gain what they wanted; we have seen them over the last couple of weeks in liberalism and materialism, sacrificing the ways of God to get the attention and wealth of the world. It all sounds a bit weird and theoretical so let us try and bring it down to the practical; we will start with ourselves as individuals first, and then look at the church.

 

"But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto myself."
John 12v32

 

How often do we try to draw attention to ourselves? Wanting people to notice our abilities, needs, sacrifices, good works, even our spirituality! We do this because we want to be noticed, to be someone, to fulfil the flesh need within so we build the mound (make the effort) to lift ourselves and be noticed. We sacrifice, saying and doing what they want to hear and see so that we are recognised and in response we draw people in to fulfil our flesh desires; to "Want to be", to "Want to have", to have the attention of others, to be noticed, listened to and respected, even loved. Looking for a fulfilment through the things of this world and before we know it, we are sacrificing, selling ourselves, prostituting, to gain the approval of men; at this point we may not realise it, but we are sacrificing to foreign gods.

 

We also need to realise that this doesn't just happen in our worldly relationships. It also appears in our church relationships too with our desires to be seen or feel needed by the church. That is a very different thing to serving the Lord, even though they may look the same. Serving the Lord makes the sacrifice to lift Him up, it is not about us gaining respect or standing in the eyes of men or even other brothers and sisters in the Lord. It's not about us being seen to be in successful ministry, it's about us being successful before the Lord, walking in simple obedience as a servant before Him even if no one else notices. As soon as we desire others to notice we start to lift ourselves up rather than the Lord, for when we want to be lifted up and noticed we need to be aware that it is pride that is at work, the great spiritual killer, for as we are warned in Exodus 20v26, when we lift ourselves up on steps the flesh is easily revealed, even when it looks like we are ministering for the Lord.

 

As an example, a few years ago a minister said to me that it must be nice to pastor a small church because you do not have to put so much effort into the messages because it's only a small congregation. I must admit I was left in shock at the statement for behind it lay another message; why waste time preparing if only a few are listening? In other words, I can only be bothered to put the effort in if I am going to receive the praises of men. We need to understand that our ministry is before the Lord and as we lift Him up men will be drawn in. When the desire is for us to be lifted up we may draw a crowd eager to hear what they want to hear (2 Timothy 4v3-4), yet not fulfil the Lords will, becoming loved and famous, even wealthy before men, yet bankrupt in the Lord.

 

Another example we see quite often is when someone starts to talk about their ministry, often desperate to hang on to a position. Their feeling of self worth, of the need to be someone is no longer bound up in the Lord but needs the approval of other believers. As servants of the Lord we have no ministry, just a calling, a position that the Lord has put us in to fulfil a work that He has for us, and when that time is over, as humble servants we just need to move on. That letting go is not always easy. After working in a small village in Poland for many years, visiting every few months and taking endless meetings to plant a church, there came a time when a fellowship suddenly came together. Just as the church grew the Lord spoke to me very clearly that it was time for me to stop visiting that place, they needed to grow without me, but the Lord was also protecting me, making sure that my ministry wasn't about me being someone of importance somewhere, rather it was about serving Him in any place or work He saw fit for there is no ego in servanthood.

 

As we seek these things of the world we also fail to see that we are falling into a trap. We think we are drawing people in to support our world, what we fail to realise is that as we trust the world to supply our needs, we become a prisoner to the world as it is now our supplier, our provider; for as we trust in the world our trust in the Lord is reduced until we don't know how to trust Him any more. At that point the world has trapped us, we don't realise that we have succumbed to its advertising and now our dependency is linked with the world for our needs and provisions and that means that when the world gets rocked, our world is rocked with it.

 

As believers we need to take a look at ourselves and who we are trusting in for our daily provision, whatever that need may be, physical, emotional, material. Who do we trust in to provide these things? Who do we have faith in to deliver? Do we trust in the Lord alone or do we feel the need to sell ourselves before the world?

 

When we are looking for income, do we "Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness" (Matthew 6v33), that the Lord may bless us or do we sacrifice these things to foreign gods who we believe can provide for our needs. Do we seek the Lord as to what He wants us to do trusting that if we follow His directions He is able to provide or do we tell the Lord the direction we are going in and tell him that we'll give him a percentage of the profits? Are we doing what we are doing because this is the direction the Lord has led us in or is this just a way of making money? These are interesting questions to ask as it shows who or what we have put our faith in for our daily provision. For if we have learnt to seek the Lord and follow His direction we learn by experience that He is able to provide food, water, clothing and accommodation in any wilderness, it is one of the early lessons Jesus taught his disciples (Luke 10v4). For if the Lord is our provider no matter what happens in this world we can remain calm and stable, however if our trust is in the world we will have to keep manipulating, advertising and compromising ourselves to continue to gain their provision for our future, we sacrifice and see our provision in a foreign god.

 

Let us take a step back for a moment and look again at the foundations of walking by faith at its most basic level, for to walk by faith means we follow the Lord wherever He leads us. For Him to do that we first have to learn to listen; in the beginning that tends to be seen in the conviction of sin and the step of faith in turning from sin to obedience (Hebrews 6v1). Once we learn to listen to the Holy Spirit as we are convicted of sin we also learn to listen and be led in the ways of righteousness (John 16v8). This is much more than to just stopping sinning; to stop sinning is only a half repentance. True repentance is when we stop doing what we should not be doing and instead do the things we should be doing, the things the Lord is leading us in. Too often we will stop doing something only to replace it with something else.

 

So let us look at a lesson from the Apostle Paul as a guide to who we are serving and trusting in.

 

Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God.
Romans 1v1

 

Jesus took on the nature of a servant (Philippians 2v6-8) and gave his life in daily obedience to the Fathers will. We are told in Philippians 2v5 that this should be our attitude and so when we read the beginning of Romans we see that Paul is following the example of Christ and that begins with the servant heart, a willingness to lay our lives down in the service of the Lord; not just in our spare time but all the time. This is shown by Paul's next statement, the "called to be". Notice it does not say that Paul chose to be an apostle; it says that he was called to be an apostle. So as a servant of the Lord Paul has laid down his life in service and has been called to the work of an apostle. So who is he working for? Who is his boss? It's the one he is serving, the Lord. If he is serving the Lord, then who is responsible for his food, clothing, accommodation and income?

 

Some would say that is the churches responsibility and so Paul would look to the church for his provision. The danger here is that fear can creep in when difficult issues need to be dealt with; should he compromise (sell himself) to keep the churches support?

 

However, if he sees the Lord as his provider, he can speak boldly, for he knows that the Lord is able to provide for his needs from His eternal resource, all Paul needs to do is walk in the ways of the Lord and seek first the Kingdom (Matthews 6v28-33). Now it is easy to look at Paul as someone in ministry and so someone who should be trusting in the Lord for his provision, but when we take the servant heart attitude we see that this applies to all of us. Applying for a job is no longer about looking for the best pay or conditions, but a seeking after the Lord as to the place that he wants us to serve and minster in. Our concern should not be on the wages, for our provision is from the Lord. When a servant went out to work in the field, if the crop was good or bad, if his master made a fortune or not, was none of his concern; for the fruits of his labour belonged to his master who he in turn trusted to provide for his needs. He didn't go out with the attitude that he would give his master the last ten percent of his labours after making sure he had the cupboards stocked with the fruits of his labour; instead all his work belonged to the master.

 

It is so easy to build that mound, to make ourselves attractive to the highest bidder, only to find ourselves bound to the ways and provisions of this world. As servants of Christ it is not for us to choose our duties, or even how much we earn; the true servant just asks the master what is his bidding. He does not need to lift himself up on a mound to get himself noticed, for God will lift up his humble servant in due time just as Christ was lifted up (Philippians 2v9).

 

When we learn to trust in the Lord for our provision we are no longer at the mercy of the world, we no longer have to fear losing our income for the Lord is our income. We no longer need to worry about our reputation before men, for our reputation before the Lord is all that matters and we do not need to worry about losing our ministry, for we minister to the Lord and if we are walking in obedience He will supply all our needs (Philippians 4v19).

 

As a final thought, we also need to be careful as the body of Christ that we do not sink into the same trap as the individual and compromise to gain the support of the world rather than the support of God. Who is the provider for our churches, our ministries, our missions?

 

I have always been a great believer that if the Lord has called me to do something, that He is more than able to supply the provisions needed. Sometimes that has led to huge steps of faith, leaving for missions without the means to get back, yet seeing God work miracles of provision in remote places, far from my ability to influence situations. We need to make sure we are doing the same as the body of Christ.

 

If the Lord is calling us as a church or ministry to do something, to build something, to start a ministry or mission; should we be lifting ourselves up, trying to win the affections of others to gain their material wealth to fund the Lord's work? Or should we be looking to the Lord to provide? Yes the project may be expensive, but if it is what the Lord has called us to, He is more than able to supply the need. Like the persistent widow we need to make sure that it is the Lord we are petitioning, not the world. For as we start to petition the world we declare that our God is not big enough or wealthy enough to provide for His own ministries and needs the worlds support. Over the last ten years the advertising, the constant requests for money from different ministries has become endless; where is the faith in the Lord's provision? It is so easy to look to the ways of this world, to look to Councils, lotteries, sponsorships and general collection plate bashing to fund the ministries, to join with other organisations only to find that we have become dependant on them and so we compromise to keep them happy.

 

In Ezekiel 16v27 we see that as Israel sold itself to the nations around them, the Lord reduced their territory. In other words, instead of them being rulers, they became ruled over. No longer did they live according to their laws, but instead became subject, slaves to the laws of those around them. Sadly we see the same with the church today, our authority, our word is no longer respected and other organisations and groups have taken over our role.

 

The way to freedom is not found in keeping the world happy, but in keeping the Lord happy. The Lord wants us to be free, to throw off the slavery to this world and find a freedom that is available in Christ alone. Just like the Israelites leaving Egypt it is easy to look back at what we will lose, but instead we need to look forward to the Promised Land that the Lord has set before us if only we are willing to make the journey of obedience that comes from faith (Romans 1v5). Let us never forget that the Lord is leading us on a journey to freedom and blessing (John 8v34-36).

.

 

17/05/2020 Letter 8: Adding and taking away

Last week we started to look at Ezekiel Chapter 16 and some of the charges God made against His people. Let us just be reminded again, "His people". We are not looking to judge the world for we cannot change the lives of others. The only life we can change is our own and through that change, God through His Holy Spirit is then able to minister unto others. As we saw in Letter 6: The Blame game, we have a tendency to want to deflect from our own issues by looking and pointing the attention towards others so as we continue to read through these things, let us keep in mind that it is about us and the part we play in the local church as well as the greater church that the Lord is speaking to us about.

 

We finished by touching on the subjects of Liberalism and Materialism and today we will continue on that theme. Each of them is a reaction of mans pride and the desires of his flesh to manipulate the word of God so that the flesh can get its desires. Although the two overlap in many ways, Liberalism tends to be more focused on the removing of what God said, so that we do not have to repent and turn from our sinful ways, while materialism adds to Gods word to allow us to seek what our flesh desires. Of course we have to remember that if you remove something you add something in its place and if you add something you remove the focus on to something else. Just like God Himself and all His works, His Word is an intricate balance and a true marvel. He is an Almighty God.

 

As we read last week in Ezekiel 16v15-19, Gods people started to take the worship and sacrifice that was supposed to be used for the worship of God and instead poured it out on their false gods, the idols, the desires of their hearts. On the liberal side we see this in areas such as marriage. Many Christians today think it is alright to desecrate the covenant of marriage; the life long union between a man and a woman. Now for many they will instantly start to point to the LGBT movement within the church; one of the things we have to note about this group is that it spends more time focusing on the Liberalisation of Gods word to justify their flesh desires that it does seeking to walk in obedience and crucifying the flesh. However, this group is a newish group and is the child of a different type of liberalisation that the church has allowed these days with almost no comment; that is the liberalisation of divorce within the church, please note this is about divorce after people have become saved, we cannot hold people accountable for failing the Lords instruction when they have not known the Lord.

 

As a young Christian even 35 years ago, divorce was frowned upon within the church. Now not only has it become accepted, but in a lot of the church it is not even an obstacle to leadership, despite the teaching of 1 Timothy 3v1-10. This is very important because marriage before God is a covenant agreement. When we accept that breaking a covenant is acceptable, it then means that it becomes easier to accept the breaking of our covenant before the Lord.

 

For marriage, in its true form, is to be taught in the church by word and deed. It is why in 1 Timothy 3v2-4, when looking for leaders, they must manage their family well; this is not just about them being disciplined and obedient to their parents, but about being disciplined and obedient to the ways of God. If as leaders we are willing to accept divorce and water down the need for that covenant to be respected within the church, then that is what we teach to the next generation and if we teach that the marriage covenant is not to be respected as scripture tells us (Hebrews 13v4), then that is what we will breed into the next generation. We will sacrifice our children's spirituality to foreign gods so that we can get what we want, they may live on physically, but spiritually we are leading them astray. Once we have set them a precedent of the liberalisation of the Word of God is it any wonder that couples living together and same sex relationships have started to increase and in many cases are encouraged within the church. We have become like the Corinthian church and have become proud of our acceptance of these issues (1 Corinthians 5v1-2). No longer do we testify to the world the ways of righteousness, but instead have followed in their footsteps, desired their freedom to sin, and fought for it to be accepted in the church until we have become so used to it that the situation becomes normal.

 

As Gods people we have to understand that when we water down the Word of God, when in our pride we rebel against His word and alter it to our own desires, then that is what we teach our children to do. It is one of the interesting parts of 2 Kings. In 2 Kings 14v1, Amaziah a good king whose mother was from Jerusalem (representing God's people), 2 Kings 15v1-3 Azariah (in some versions Uzziah) is a good king, his mother was from Jerusalem, 2 Kings 15v8-9 Zechariah is a bad king, his mother was from Samaria (those going away from God's word). These kings had been taught by the examples of their parents and this had a huge effect on the direction in which their lives took. A similar thought is seen in Genesis 5v1-3, we see God created in his likeness, but the children of Adam grew up in the likeness of Adam, following in his ways. For once we start on the path of rebellion, that is what we teach and sacrifice our children to, both our physical (family) and spiritual (church) children. This is part of the reason for Gods teachings to Moses in Exodus 34v6-7. The Lord warned Moses of the results of making agreements with the people around them as they would finish up sacrificing their children by leading them astray (Exodus 34v15-16). When we go astray, the results have a knock on effect from generation to generation and the only answer to that curse comes through repentance and a turning back to Gods ways.

 

Marriage is a good example, but sadly there are many other areas where the church has liberalised its views towards sin until it is no longer seen as sin, our hearts have become totally hardened and unable to be penetrated by the Word of God (Matthew 13v19).

 

Just as there are huge dangers from liberalism, the same is also true for our other false god; materialism. For in materialism we change the word of God to allow us to follow after the material desires of our hearts, money and goods, or as it used to be called "Mammon".

 

This false God is one that has been allowed to invade the church to the point that we do not even notice it any more. It has become so accepted that it is normal in our conversations. When we greet each other, when we enquire as to how life is going, our focus tends to be on the physical. We think of health, houses, jobs, cars, computers and the other things of this world. Rarely is our first thought the spiritual side of life and what the Lord is doing which is what scripture encourages us to do (Ephesians 5v19, Romans 1v11-12). So in essence our first thought when we meet someone is to ask how the world is blessing them!

 

How often do we read of Jesus or the apostles asking about the material well being of those they are ministering to? The nearest we get to this is in 3 John 1v2 when John prays that Gaius would enjoy health and blessing in the world even as his soul was being blessed. So even here, John's priority was the spiritual well being of Gaius and his joy was in his spiritual walk, rather than his bank balance (3 John 1v3-4).

 

Firstly let us be clear that especially in the Western World, there is no idol worshipped more than the god of materialism. This God is worshipped so deeply that it is considered as important as life itself. It is one of the headline battles at the moment, the unlocking of the economy versus the desire to save lives. At what point are we willing to sacrifice lives for economic gain? It has been interesting to see how different nations and cultures have varying views on this subject, but let us be under no illusion as to what the underlying battle is; mammon and how much we are willing to sacrifice for it.

 

This desire for more is one of the fastest routes to falling away from God. In Genesis 2v8-17 we read how God created the Garden of Eden and filled it full of good quality fruit trees (Genesis 2v9); trees of blessing, trees that would give them more than enough to fulfil their physical need (Genesis 1v29). They had no need for any more and yet Satan in Genesis 3v2-6 tempts Adam and Eve with the desire for more than the Lord had already given them.

 

If our desire is for more of the things of this world, then what we are saying is that we are not satisfied with what we have. We declare that we need the physical to be fulfilled in life, put simply; the Lord is not enough for us. Our eyes are fixed on the blessings of this world and it then becomes the god of this world that we chase after, as Jesus said; "You cannot serve both God and Money" (Matthew 6v24). The one we serve and make sacrifice to is the one we worship (Romans 12v1), be it God or Mammon. Do we want the things of this world or the things of God? When we are satisfied with what we have, we have contentment in our lives, we no longer have the need to strive for more and this is a great blessing (1 Timothy 6v6-10). The danger of the constant desire for more is that it becomes the focus of our lives, the driving force and the thing that occupies our thoughts. No longer are our eyes and thoughts fixed on Jesus (Hebrews 3v1, 12v2) or on the spiritual, but our eyes are fixed on the ways of this world, and whatever our eyes and thoughts are fixed on, that is the direction our lives will go. As the god of materialism has been dragged into the church, we start to alter the Word of God to justify our worldly desires, and eventually twist things to say that God Himself desires these things for us. Before we know it, we start seeing God as a means to material gain and become a people robbed of the truth of Gods word (1 Timothy 6v5).

 

However, like liberalism, the effects of this false path not only influence our lives, but also the paths of our children (spiritual and physical). For when our desire is for success in this world, it becomes the doctrine we teach to our children. We become more concerned about their education and job opportunities than we do about their spiritual well being. When we talk to others about our children, it is not about their spiritual lives, but their material well being and our children start to see themselves judged in our eyes by how well they have done in this world. Without realising it we are teaching them that the ways of materialism are more important than the Kingdom of God . How sad that we are willing to sacrifice our children eternally to encourage them in the pursuit of the desire for more in this world.

 

This has a knock on effect that is far greater than we can imagine. A simple example is when I think back to when Liz and I first went out onto the mission field. I was amazed at how many Christians warned me of the dangers of ruining my career and the fact that it would have long term effects on our future such as buying a home or even having a pension. Their concern for my material well being may at first look as if they cared for me, but that care and concern was based on the material rather than the spiritual gain that comes through obedience to the call of God. As a side note, when I have talked to heads of missions one of the things they struggle with today is getting anyone to commit long term, people are happy to go out short term using up their holidays, but mission is no longer seen as a spiritual career path.

 

Sadly we now have large parts of the church that see materialism as being the will of God, who see God Almighty as some sort of spiritual cash machine whose only concern is our material greed. How sad it is that we have perverted the ways of God and missed the fact that Jesus had nothing and yet was the most successful man to walk the face of the earth; and it is him we are called to follow after.

 

For we need to understand the grave consequences for ourselves, and the generations to come, when we go down the roads of liberalism and materialism and as we encourage the next generations, by word and deed, to go astray. We fulfil a couple of verses in Ezekiel 16 that at first would fill us with horror. We sacrifice our children to foreign gods (Ezekiel 16v20-21). For in our desire to get what we want in this world we are willing to sacrifice our own children spiritual well being, for our desire for personal gain means we are willing to sacrifice their eternal direction, a hard concept for us to comprehend.

 

So let us take a look at our lives, are we allowing liberalism and materialism into our lives and thus into the church? Are we truly seeking first the Kingdom of God or are we jealously seeking the material blessings the world tempts us with?

 

Just a final thought on these things, because as we truly examine our lives and see what we have added and taken away, we can view ourselves as failures before God, and there is no denying the truth in that. However, let us also look at the positives, for when God gave these words in Ezekiel to Israel He did it to bless them.

 

Firstly, as we see the magnitude of our sin and our failings before God, we also see the depth of the love God has for us that in spite of our adultery and prostitution to the Gods of this world He still desires us and desires to see us cleansed and made holy, It is a love and patience that is beyond our understanding.

 

The second positive is that when we see we have gone astray we have a starting point; we know where we are and where we have to get to. For if in our pride, we do not see ourselves as lost, we will never consider changing direction. However, as we see our failings and turn from our false gods to the true and living God we will once again know His presence and blessing.

 

If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.
2 Chronicles 7v14

 

10/05/2020 Letter 7: Do I have your attention now?

Colossians 1v15-20

Last week we looked at the "Blame Game", the tendency we have to blame others for our own failings. However at the same time we do the same thing when it comes to the misfortune of the world or those around us. Again it can't be their fault, it must be some outside power, so let's find someone or something we don't like and blame them. We see this today with the Coronavirus, politicians love to play the blame game. Flavour of the month is that China somehow created it and let it out of the lab. For some believers it's all the work of the Devil and his hordes that need to be rebuked and put back into their box. In both cases someone important has been missed out, God! In fact the only ones who seem to blame God are those who say "Why would God let something like this happen?" As if somehow, they think that God Almighty would never do or allow something like this, sadly a view that many Christians take.

 

So let's take a bit of a step back and put God back on the throne and recognise Him for who He is; The creator of heaven and earth! All things have been created by Him and for Him! Let us remember those words of Colossians 1v16, "All Things". We may have our conspiracy theories, but I can assure you that God Almighty has been awake the whole time. He is the creator, not man, not the Devil. When it comes to life it always stems from God right down to the smallest virus. This is what the Bible is trying to tell us in Genesis Chapters 1 & 2. God creates; it is Him that puts life into all parts of creation. From the birds in the air to the depth of the seas, from pole to pole, God has created and maintains His creation. The Apostle Peter did not go running into God to wake him from his sleep to let him know that a virus had broken out and was making its way around the world; God himself was on the throne controlling and knowing every step and effect that would take place. This is important for us to understand because without this understanding we will be deceived and start looking and blaming the wrong person or people. After all there is no point trying to bind the Devil for something he hasn't created and isn't controlling.

All we are doing is being deceived and allowing ourselves to raise him up to the level of God by first saying he is a creator and second saying he is the controller. In doing so we declare that he has more control than God himself and by saying he is a creator we raise him up to being equal with God, the very thing that he has desired from the start for in raising him up we lower God, for if Satan is in control, then God has been defeated by him as we declare that Gods will is subject to Satan's. The glory of ruling heaven and earth belongs to the Lord and He has no plans to share that glory with anyone else (Isaiah 42v8). God is in command and is ruling right down to the last detail of our lives and the smallest part of his creation including microscopic viruses (Matthew10v29-31).

 

This is a very important concept for us to understand and goes against a lot of the teaching of "God being a loving God so He would never do such a thing". God is a loving God, but his love is greater than our ideas of love. God's character is summed up in love, but that character and therefore that love is made up of all the attributes of God. His peace, grace, mercy, forgiveness, patience, perseverance, goodness, faithfulness and self control and the other bits we like are all part of that love, but so too are His justice, wrath, judgement, righteous anger and holiness. These are just some of the attributes of God, but without all of them we create for ourselves a false God. We create a God who we assume thinks and acts as we do, again from Genesis 3v5, we think we have become like God knowing how He should act towards us and the world around us; assuming that we know what He would and would not do and creating a false God in our own image.

 

This idea of making God as an image of what man wants is seen throughout the Bible. It is the essence of what God was trying to teach the Israelites in the commandments in Exodus 20v3-4; the warning was not to make a God in the image of anything else. For that God would be a false God and when we worship that God we worship an idol, an image of the real God. What is an image? It's a work of our imagination. It's not the real thing, but a picture created and manipulated by man to look how we want it to look. Notice this commandment was not given to the world first; it was given to Gods people, they had to live as a testimony before the world.

 

God took this sort of thing very seriously and warned His people of the consequences in Exodus 20v5-6. He does not say that He will allow others to take control and punish us, but makes it quite clear that He will be in control of the punishment, no matter what tool He chooses to use and that the tool He chooses is unlikely to be what we would expect. A classic example of this is the Apostle Paul in Acts 9v15. God describes Paul as "His chosen instrument"; the tool that He had decided to use for His purposes. Would Paul have been the first choice of the church? I doubt it. He was the one who was persecuting them and throwing them into jail (Acts 9v13). He was happy to see Stephen stoned to death (Acts 8v1). Yet this was the man that God chose to take His message of salvation to the Gentiles.

When it comes to God's discipline, we see that He uses an assortment of things to get our attention when we go astray. As we read in the book of judges He used invaders (Judges 3v7-8, Judges 3v12, Judges 4v1-2). Notice each time it is the Lord who is totally in command using the tool that He sees fit for the job. We see another set of tools that God uses in 2 Chronicles 7v13-14, drought, famine, locusts and plagues now including Coronavirus. God used these things at different times to get His peoples attention and draw them back on to the right path, for God's priority is saving of lives for eternity rather than the prolonging of man's mortality. The sacrifice of life for the salvation of others has always been at the centre of God's ways and is summed up in the death of Christ on the cross. It's a sacrifice that has to be voluntary, for if the sacrifice is not freely given it is no longer a freewill offering but a forced theft. This is important because one of the great complaints that God had against the Israelites was that they sacrificed their lives to other Gods. In other words they would lay down their lives and their goods in the pursuit of other Gods even though He was the one who had set them free. This is summed up in Ezekiel 16v1-63 when God lays before His people the full extent of their sin, it is a chapter that we read and then think to ourselves: "How could they do that?"

 

However, the heart of man does not change unless the Lord is allowed to do a work in it and that means that the same things that happened then happen now. So let's take a quick look through the chapter and see how many of the charges relate to the church today.

 

Ezekiel 16v1-14 is a great picture of how God took his people out of the world. They did not come from a special line or a deserving people; instead he took them as a sinful unwanted people and made them into his own. It goes on to explain how the Lord made a covenant with His people; this is important because in a covenant all that we have is there to support the other party in their time of need. People often reduce a covenant to a simple contract but it is far deeper. If I enter into a contract to pay someone a sum of money to do a job or to buy an item then that is the sum I am liable to pay. If suddenly the person I am in a contract with says that he has other needs, they are not something I have made an agreement to provide for. My agreement, my contract, is just to pay for the services or goods that have been agreed. In contrast a covenant is much deeper, it is an agreement to support each other with everything we have at our disposal which in the case of God Almighty is a lot. It is not limited to what I feel I can afford or helping out when I am in the mood, it is about everything I am and have is there to support the other party in their time of need. The greatest display of this is of course Jesus at the cross, giving everything he was and everything he had right down to his underwear. He fulfilled his side of the covenant by giving all of himself, physically, spiritually and emotionally. He even gave up his mother to fulfil his part of the covenant. So when God says He entered into a covenant with His people it is a very serious commitment towards them.

 

In Ezekiel 16v9-13 we see how He provided for all their needs. We can at this point so easily reduce this to just their physical food and clothes, but when we look at things spiritually we realise that He was feeding them and clothing them through his word. The same is true today with the church, his people. We see the same concept in Ephesians 5v25-27, the cleansing that comes through the word of God. Not as an intellectual knowledge of scripture, but as a life that is lived in obedience to that word. It is this act of pouring out His word, showing us the way that leads to repentance that removes the spots, blemishes and wrinkles from the church and at the end creates a radiant church; a church that shines out in the world as a reflection of the work that the Lord has done. All this beauty that we read about in Ephesians and Ezekiel came not from Israel or the church but was lavished upon them by God through the cleansing of His word. Just like the radiant church in Ephesians 5v25-27 that is then seen and respected by the world, so Israel also became famous because of the splendour of God that dwelt among them.

 

It is at this point we see the change, the start of the downfall, both of historical Israel and of the church today. We forget who we are, mere sinners saved by grace; a people who reflect the glory of God because we humbly serve Him and trust in Him for our needs; for it is Christ in us that gives the church power and authority, the working and leading of the Holy Spirit in our lives that shows the power of God. Instead pride starts to come in and we start to bask in our own glory enjoying the praise of men and becoming addicted to their praise. As a simple example of this, I was watching an interview with a musician who had made a fortune through his music and had no need to work or play ever again. When asked why he continued to tour around the world he explained that there was nothing like the experience of thousands of fans calling out his name in adoration. That man, without realising it, has become a prostitute to the desire for praise, he was willing to sacrifice his home life to fulfil that need within.

 

The danger for the church, as has been seen over the years, is that when it goes in the right direction it starts to draw praise and when our pride receives it we want more. It is the same with signs and wonders, God moves, the miraculous happens and people hear about it and raise us up and at that point we start to sell ourselves to that fame, that lifting up and will do anything to keep it coming, not realising that we are now worshipping another God. Instead of our reputation and standing before the Lord being our priority (Matthew 6v33), our concern becomes about how we will be seen and perceived by others; how we will stay in their favour. It is at this point, as our eyes drift from the Lord that we start to prostitute ourselves to the foreign Gods of this world. To maintain the relationship and keep everyone happy we start to walk along the broad road of compromise (Matthew 7v13-14). We start to offer our ways to the world. We start to dress like them (Ezekiel 16v16), losing our righteous robes as we compromise to keep everyone happy. The sacrifices that should have been made for the Lord are instead poured out to serve false Gods (Ezekiel 16v18).

 

A difficult part of this process is that it tends to take a period of time for the drift to take place. If you look through the book of Judges an event would happen, the people would call for deliverance and the Lord would send a judge. The primary job of the judge was not to slay the enemy, but to lead the people back into obedience to the Lord, leading by example. As that judge listened and followed the instructions of the Lord, He moved through that judge and the people experienced God's deliverance for themselves as once more they became free. Sadly as time passed they drifted back into their old ways and if we think we are any different today we deceive ourselves.

 

So how have we drifted as a church, and here we are thinking of the church nation wide and even world wide? Are we concerned more about what the Lord thinks or what the world thinks? Do we take our instruction and leading from man or from God and whose praise are we seeking?

 

One of the first things we need to watch out for is the desire to see the church grow numerically at any cost. That cost is more than financial, it is the cost of sacrificing the ways of the Lord; trying to make the church more appealing to the outside world. This tends to come under a couple of different traits; liberalism and materialism.

 

Liberalism is when we start to compromise on Gods standards and accept sin as being alright. When Jesus gave the great commission in Matthew 28v19-20 he told the disciples to teach the people to obey the ways of God and sin is not the way of God. In the age we live in there has come about an extreme teaching on grace that gives the idea that God is not bothered about our sin because He will give more grace. In John 8v11 when Jesus is dealing with the woman caught in adultery he does not condemn her, but at the same time he does not condone her sin or make an excuse for her to carry on in that lifestyle. His final words to her "leave your life of sin" shows the truth of the gospel message. We are saved by God's grace and mercy, but saved from sin, in other words our new life is a life of repentance that is constantly trying to look more like the life of Christ. With liberalism we try to get the numbers in by dropping the standards and at this point we may not realise it, but the church has now become more important than the Lord and we start to lower the holiness of God into the gutter. Instead of following the command to be holy (1 Peter 1v16) we prostitute ourselves to the world and become like them to keep them happy. Let us always remember that the job of the church is not to save the world but to serve the Lord. The work of building the church is the Lord's (Matthew 16v18). The true church only grows when Gods people walk in obedience.

 

The second trait, materialism, springs from the same root as liberalism. Again it's the idea of allowing people to continue to worship in their old ways and that by coming to God He will bless the worldly desires of their heart. In our prostitution we take the things that are for seeking the will of God and focus them on seeking the will and material gain of man. We see this in Ezekiel 16v19 with the fragrant incense being offered up. That incense represents the prayers of the saints (Revelation 8v4). Our prayer life that should be focused on seeking the will of the Lord instead becomes focused on seeking the will and desires of man. This has gone on for so long that it has become totally normal, instead of seeking the Lord's will and revelation in our lives (the focus of all of the Apostle Paul's prayers), our focus becomes people's physical well being and as it becomes more extreme produces the modern prosperity gospel. A gospel that takes the will and desire of God and replaces it with the will and desire of man and so once again we prostitute ourselves before a foreign God, absorbing the ways of the world.

 

Whenever there is true Godly revival in individuals or in groups of believers there are certain traits that are always seen. Prayer: The seeking after the will of God. Holiness that comes from repentance from sin and Obedience that comes by doing the will of the Lord.

 

Next week Lord willing we will continue to look at some of these ways in which we have fallen, for only when we realise that we have lost our direction do we start looking for the right direction.

 

02/05/2020 Letter 6: The Blame Game

Genesis 3v1-24

 

Over the last couple of weeks we have looked at the idea of the church being in penitentiary. A place of restriction and limitations put on us to bring us to our senses and get us moving back in the right direction; let us remember that's God's discipline is not about Him venting His anger on His children but about making them Christ like and guiding them into the true blessings that come through godly living (Hebrews 12v10). We have especially looked at the dangers of pride, because pride is the great spiritual killer, the main attribute of Satan himself that leads to rebellion against God, an attribute he loves to pass on to all his followers as opposed to Christ who leads us in humility that leads us through repentance to servanthood towards our Heavenly Father.

 

In Genesis 3v1-24 we read of the fall of man, we read of how man's pride led him to rebel against God and the consequences of that fall. It's important to look again at these things, especially in the light of our current situation, as it helps us to see why we react in the way that we do to situations and how we deal with our failings before God and man.

 

One of the great lies that we all like is the idea that it's not our fault, someone else is to blame. In the situation of Adam and Eve, we see as a result of sin a progression of blame. First Adam blames Eve for his sin (Genesis 3v12). When Eve was questioned about her actions, she blamed the serpent (Genesis 3v13) and as the old joke goes, "The serpent didn't have a leg to stand on!" It might sound strange, but Satan was the only one who didn't blame anyone else. He knew his heart was rebellious and made no excuses for it. Adam and Eve however went down a very different route; they went down the route of blame; each claiming to be the innocent party led astray by someone else and denying the truth of their own rebellion.

 

This blame attitude is important because it is one of the first fruits of spiritual death, sin, for the blame that we see here is actually deception and works in the same way the Devil does, for it is the fruit of walking in obedience to Satan's ways, it is the spiritual fulfilment of John 8v44; it is literally becoming and living in the ways of Satan. So let us take a closer look at what is going on.

 

In John 16v8-14, Jesus talks about the work of the Holy Spirit. The most basic element of the work of the Holy Spirit is to convict of sin and lead us in the way of righteousness. The two are complete opposites, sin leads to disobedience and rebellion against God, while Godly conviction by the Holy Spirit leads us to humble repentance that leads to a change of life direction. This is a basic foundation of the Christian life (Hebrews 6v1). It means that we have heard the Holy Spirit speaking into our lives and our response has been to humbly admit our sin and rebellion against God himself and so we turn to the ways of godliness (2 Corinthians 7v10). This is the basics of walking according to the Spirit. Forget talking in tongues and other spiritual gifts, the foundational basis of walking according to the Spirit is to listen and change direction as the Spirit leads.

 

The problem is that a battle rages within us. Our rebellious flesh fights for its very survival by trying to kill of the leading of the Holy Spirit. For if we live according to the Spirit then the flesh gets put to death, that flesh is our selfish desire, our pride. It is summed up by Jesus in Matthew 16v24 - 26 and is an ongoing battle that will be with us for the rest of our spiritual lives and is described very well by Paul in Romans 7v7-20 as he talks about his battle with sin.

 

Now the important lesson for us here is the attitude of Paul in his battle against sin. Who does he blame for his failings? No one! He's recognises his failings as his failings. He doesn't try blaming the church, lack of teaching or even the Devil. Instead he recognises that his failings are caused by the desires of the flesh that rage within him and so we see him living out the words of 1 John 1v5-9. As Paul walked in the light, as he had fellowship with the Father, the light shone in the dark places of his life and he accepted his failings bringing them before the Father with no excuse or blame. He walked in the light and the blood of Jesus purified him from his sin. It didn't mean he found it easy; he fought the same battle we all should be fighting, but because he fought, God's grace and mercy were being poured out on him as he humbly came before the Lord (James 4v6-7). Notice in James it talks about resisting the Devil, resisting the temptation that he puts before us.

 

Too often, instead of resisting the Devil, we actually follow in his footsteps. Instead of walking in the light of the truth of our sinfulness which leads to repentance, we walk in darkness (1 John 1v10). Instead of Godly repentance we deny the truth and walk in satanic deception. We claim that it's not our fault and that the issue lays elsewhere, we make an excuse for our rebellion. Our self righteousness that comes from our pride rejects conviction and instead starts to work on a deception to take the spotlight off us. Put basically, we lie! We lie to ourselves (1 Corinthians 6v9-10, James 1v22) telling ourselves that it's alright to continue as we are and it's often at this point we will look for another believer to justify our sin (2 Timothy 4v3). We will look for people to tell us what we want to hear and then of course we follow in the ways of Satan by deceiving others. We become preachers of evil, justifying our sin, deceiving others around us to follow and join in with our deception (2 Timothy 3v3v13). Very quickly we lead others into following in our ways, deceiving others and encouraging them to walk in the way of rebellion, the "Did God really say" (Genesis 3v1) soon breeds and spreads to bring about the full walk of the sinful nature as seen in Galatians 5v19-21. Rather than preaching Christ crucified we have become encouragers of sin and rebellion against God himself. It is no wonder scripture talks about anti Christs within the church (1 John 2v18-19, 2 John 1v7), they preach and encourage the ways of the flesh rather than Christ crucified lifestyle. Notice in 1 John 2v18 that it warns us of "many". It would be good to examine ourselves to make sure we are one of the "few" rather than the "many", for the "many" it is talking about are inside the church and as it tells us in Matthew 7v15-23, not only are they just saying what we want to hear, but as part of the "many" the Lords reaction to them will be "I never knew you"; For we never knew His ways.

 

For this is the last part of our deception, once we have deceived ourselves and deceived others we think that we will in turn be able to deceive God himself. Let us take a warning from Genesis 3. God was not fooled by the deception and the blame game of Adam and Eve and will not be deceived by us. The idea that we can deceive God shows just how much pride has taken root within us; we think that we can outwit God himself. If we think we are going to mock God in this way we truly deceive ourselves (Galatians 6v7-8).

 

Christians love to blame; if we cannot find a person, we will blame the Devil himself. Let us be very clear, Satan cannot cause you to sin. He does not take control of you; he does not put a gun to your head and threaten you. He just offers you the desires of your flesh and we take it, abandoning the leading of the Holy Spirit. If we want to defeat the deception of the enemy of our souls the solution is simple:

 

"Put on the full armour of God so that you can take your stand against the Devils schemes (deceptions)."
Ephesians 6v11

 

This means staying close to the Father, wrapping ourselves in Him that his armour then covers us as well. Too many want to put on the armour of God without God being present. As part of that armour we need to be constantly listening to the leading of the Spirit, allowing our eyes and ears to be opened to the revelation that He wants to bring us and walking in obedience.

 

"Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the Devil, and he will flee from you."
James 4v7

 

As we look at the temptations of Jesus in Matthew 4v1-11, we see that Jesus was tempted in exactly the same ways that we are, yet was without sin (Hebrews 4v15). He stuck close to the Father; he constantly crucified the flesh to walk according to the Spirit. He made no excuses for himself that would allow him to surrender his will to Satan, instead he continued in daily obedience to the directions of the Father, bringing glory to His name.

 

It is very easy to play the blame game, both individually and as the church, the body of Christ. It is attractive to us because it allows us to keep our pride, our desire not to be seen to have failed before others and God himself. For blame denies the fault within and passes it on to another. However the truth is that if we have gone the wrong way, it is down to the desires of our heart being dangled in front of us and us allowing our flesh to chase after those desires. For that we have no one to blame but ourselves (James 1v13-15) and that requires humility.

 

If we want the Holy Spirit to lead, guide and teach us, then we have to be willing to accept the truth and walk humbly according to the light. If every time the light shines on us our pride makes an excuse for walking in the darkness, then sadly we will never understand the things that the Holy Spirit is trying to teach and lead us in.

 

So what excuse can we offer? None! Our excuses are our pride rebelling against God so let us stop the blame game and allow the Holy Spirit to do a work of purification in our lives.

 

For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that by Christ Jesus.
John 3v23-24

 

26/04/2020 Letter 5: The Church in Penitentiary Part 2

Jeremiah 13v1-19

 

The book of Jeremiah can be a tough read; Jeremiah virtually alone, speaking the word of God, but being rejected by the people who claimed to be God's people. Despite his constant warnings of the coming exile, he spoke in vain to a people who had become so convinced that all was well, that it was almost impossible for them to hear what the Lord was saying. For the sin of pride is the root of just about every other sin, for pride already knows. Pride lifts us up in our own eyes and alters our perspective of how we see ourselves and others around us including God himself. Pride allows us to slip from the position of humble servants and gives us a self confidence that raises us up to being equal or above God himself.

 

Satan, who had himself rebelled against God because of his pride and conceit (1 Timothy 3v6), taught Adam and Eve to follow in his ways. He taught them to lift themselves up, to view being equal with God as a good thing, something to be desired. However, as we see ourselves equal with God it also means that we learn to challenge God's words with those great phrases "Did God really say?" (Genesis 3v1) and "You will not surely die" (Genesis 3v4). For when we are equals we are no longer under authority, instead our new viewpoint as an equal means the other persons word is devalued and becomes something that we will take into consideration rather than obey outright. We treat it as more of a guideline, a suggestion, rather than a commandment, for if someone is our equal how can they have authority to command us? This is the subtle danger of pride, it is a deadly spiritual cancer that starts to destroy and mutate our spiritual lives, taking root and then spreading to the next area.

 

As we see in this passage in Jeremiah, the linen belt, despite being something that should have been tied around the Lord's waist had become ruined because of pride that had led to a refusal to listen. As soon as we refuse to listen, spiritually we may not realise it, but we are as good as dead; for a servant cannot serve if he first does not listen to the word of instruction from his master. Without listening he works on an assumption that "he knows" what his master wants. In other words, his knowledge has become equal with God so he no longer needs to seek him. Once this becomes a habit, we very quickly reduce ourselves to the attitude that we are serving God because what we are doing is for Him, yet we have not asked if this is what He wants us to be doing. We need to remember that there are many servants in the house and the master assigns tasks to each servant. It is too easy for us to see something and assume that we are the ones for that job. In our pride and presumption, we assume instead of seek. Another presumption that goes with this is we assume in our pride that we are ready and prepared to take up the role we think needs to be filled. Again the danger is that we step out of the Lords plan for our lives, running ahead of the Lord. What we forget is that when we run ahead of the Lord, we have turned our backs to him, we have set ourselves above God.

 

As we look at the life of Jesus, the humble servant (Philippians 2v6-8), one of the key elements of his life was a constant seeking after the Father. His spiritual food was doing His will (John 4v34), he was not walking around doing whatever he wanted, and he was not working to his own agenda or the agenda of the people around him. He was walking according to the Fathers agenda, the servant heart walking in obedience. It is why at times we see Jesus do things that to a modern church would see crazy.

 

In Matthew 8v18, Jesus sees the crowds coming and gives orders to move away from them. We see this in other places such as Matthew 16v20 when Jesus says not to tell anyone who he was. These are just a couple of examples in the life of Jesus when he did the opposite of what we would think would be the way to go.
For us in a Matthew 8v18 situation, we would assume that a crowd is coming so let's start preaching to the crowds and have some more miracles. Yet without the servant heart this is not the work of God, but the manipulation of man. Matthew 7v21-23 is seen in action, works, but not based on the fruit of the Spirit, for the true fruit of the Spirit always starts with humility that leads to obedience. This is the core of the Christian walk, its called repentance. The Lord speaking, us listening and taking His word to heart that leads to a change of direction, a walk of obedient servitude.

 

Sadly as pride comes in, our hearts harden and this servant heart attitude leaves. Our hearts become like the path in the parable of the sower (Mark 4v1-20) and the word of God is no longer able to penetrate and take root. We may continue to do "good things", we may continue in ministry, but the servant heart has gone. It is the story of the church of Ephesus in Revelation 2v1-7. Here we read of a church that is doing the "right stuff", persevering, enduring, throwing out false teaching, but over the years their love had grown cold. They had a love for the church, for ministry, for the teachings of God. If they hadn't, they would have stopped doing these things. Yet this was a church that had lost contact with God himself. They had started to serve the things of God rather than God himself; without realising it their relationship with the Father had grown cold to the point that the Lord warns them that their lamp stand will be removed (Revelation 2v5). Their church (Revelation 1v20), would be removed and no longer shine the light of God on those around. The light in the darkness would go out and they would be as much in the dark as those around them.

 

It is not the only time God has talked about the lights going out. In Malachi1v10 God wishes that someone would shut the doors of the temple because the sacrifices being made there had become contemptible in the eyes of God (Malachi 1v6-9). In the New Testament we read the same thought in 1 Corinthians 11v17. Notice in both cases this is to do with treating the sacrifice with contempt. This is the word of God to His people, not to the world. The thought of God shutting the church seems absurd, but if we are not doing the will of God, if we have lost our humble sacrificial servant heart towards God, then what message are we preaching and whose church have we become. In Revelation 3v9 God calls them a "Synagogue of Satan"; an incredible description of part of the church. Yet if we are walking in disobedience to the Spirit of God, who are we walking in obedience to? If we reject Gods command and leading, then without realising it we are no longer followers of Christ crucified and instead have become followers of the "Did God really say".

 

As we think about the lamp stand being removed, the light going out, we need to think about what the Lord is saying. In the tabernacle the lamps needed to be kept burning in the darkness. Symbolically God's light was shining in the darkness, the testimony of God giving light to those around. A beacon of hope, a place to aim for to find the truth of God.

 

How did the lamp stand work? it needed a constant flow of oil to burn. Not just any oil, it was a pure oil (Exodus 27v20), clear and unpolluted so that it would flow without sticking. It was something that the Lord asked for before the lamp stand was built (Exodus 25v6 & 31). For the lamp stand without oil was nothing more than an ornament.

For us as Christians that pure oil comes through our constant drawing close to God and walking in obedience. The Holy Spirit does not flow when we walk in disobedience, sin; The Holy Spirit leads and guides us as we humble ourselves and walk in obedience. The idea of walking in the Spirit while walking in sin is a total contradiction of God's word. It's one of those "Did God really say", "You won't surely die". The only way the spirit moves when we are in disobedience is to convict us of sin, to lead us to repentance that takes us safely back on the right path. Sadly in our pride we reduce the walking in obedience that Gods word talks about to the idea that as we have not broken a legalistic commandment, we haven't killed or committed adultery, that all is well. Yet we forget that in our pride we have raised up another God, ourselves. We may think we have kept the later commandments, but have missed the first. "You shall have no other Gods before me." (Exodus 20v3), the trap our pride lets us fall into is that we raise ourselves up to the level of God.

 

Now as believers, with all the activity and business of life and church removed, we are now in that place of quiet and we are able to see our spiritual life without the business of the church. Now with all the extras removed we are able to take a closer look at our relationship with the Father.

 

Are we able to hear from God directly, or have we come to rely on external sources, preachers, teachers and books?

Do we look to others to be able to lead and direct us in the ways we should be going or again are we able to be led by the Holy Spirit?

 

Does our relationship with God fade when we are away from other believers?

 

Is my spiritual life built around the business of the church week or around the quiet time with the Lord?

 

Are we walking in the pride of what we know and once did, not realising that our relationship with Him has faded over the years.

 

We may think we are strong, we may think that our churches are strong, but the real strength of the church is not in its numbers or the noise it can make on a Sunday. The real strength of the church is in the individual relationships that we all have with the Father. For the strength of the church is not found in people. The strength of the church is only found in the Lord. Our pride at these times always lifts us up, yet it's in humility that the truth and the Lords grace is found.

 

If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.

2 Chronicles 7v14

 

19/04/2020 Letter 4: The Church in Penitentiary

Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death.
2 Corinthians 7v10

 

Another word for prison is "penitentiary", a word that comes from the Latin Paenitentia that means repentance. The idea was that individuals would spend time in a place to think about the crimes they had committed and come to a place of repentance.

 

As a youngster my Mother would use the same technique, after the hand of learning had made contact with the seat of understanding, I would be sent to my room to think about what I had just done. The idea was that I would come to a place of repentance, not a place of sorrow. Sorrow, is about being caught, it's not about a change of attitude. It's sorrow about the punishment. Repentance is about the harm I have caused to another, in our case the Lord. It is a sorrow that no longer wants to cause that hurt and pain and so leads to a change of attitude, a change of action, a change of direction from the ways of rebellion to the ways of obedience, even when that obedience comes at a cost to us and our own fleshly desires (John 15v9-14).

 

Penitentiary, the idea of sending someone to a place far away to think things over is very Biblical. God has used it in the past with the Israelites and can often use it in our lives although sadly we are often blind to it. So let us think about the current situation we find ourselves in from the viewpoint of the penitentiary.

 

Over the last few weeks I have heard many Christians talking about this being a judgment on the world, we have seen our economies ruined, our power and wealth shown to be of little value in the face of an enemy so small it can only be seen under a microscope. At times like this it is as if Christians are sitting in judgement, looking down and saying "We told you so". Much as there may be some truth in that, this week we are going to think about the Church in Penitentiary.

 

One of the things that Christians like to forget is that "Jesus was and is the Way" (John 14v6). His life, his daily walk was not just a path to the cross; it was an example of how we are to live. As Paul said: "Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ" (1 Corinthians 11v1). Jesus lifestyle and attitude was an example of the way that His church was to walk, it was to be the life attitude by which we live (Philippians 2v5-11). It is very easy as Christians, as the Church, to assume that all is well and that we are all going in the right direction. What we are not good at is taking a good look at ourselves, a good sober reality check (Romans 12v3). Jesus walked in humility, humble obedience before the Father, and he was the Son of God. Sadly humility and obedience easily get replaced by pride and worldly wisdom that can easily get twisted to look as if they are good things (Genesis 3v5). This leaves us thinking we are going in the right direction when actually we have got lost along the way and the consequences of this are very serious, eternally serious. In Matthew 7v21-23 the Lord is talking about those who are busy doing stuff in the church, people with successful ministries, recognised by those around them, yet walking in disobedience and following their own desires and ideas, instead of what God desires. They do not take the time to listen and wait on the Lord, but instead either telling God what needs to happen and how they want Him to bless their plans or assuming they already know what He wants without them even asking.

 

Thankfully we serve a patient God who wants the best for us, but that best requires repentance (2 Peter 3v8-10). So let us take a sober look at the current church situation and ask the Lord to humble our hearts and open our eyes as we remember the words of Peter: "Judgement begins with the family of God, the church" (1 Peter 4v17), what is the Lord doing with us?

 

In the Old Testament, when the Israelites disobeyed, the Lord warned them, and when they had turned a deaf ear to Him he would send an oppressor, famine or disease on His people to get their attention. However, just like us, instead of hearing what the Lord was saying and repenting, they would instead cry out for deliverance, not understanding that this situation was to get their attention. Sadly they didn't understand, their spiritually deaf ears could not hear what the Lord was saying and nothing changes (Revelation 2v7, 2v11, 2v17, 2v29, 3v6, 3v13, 3v22) God calls out to his church knowing that many will be deaf to His words. Jesus had the same problem as he preached to the crowd, so often they heard what they wanted to hear and saw what they wanted to see, missing the whole point of the teaching that lay before them (Matthew 11v15, 13v9, 13v15). Still the people kept on offering their sacrifices and turning up at the temple as if nothing had happened, blind and deaf to the spiritual peril that lay right in front of them.

 

Eventually when all else had failed God, as a loving disciplining Father, He sent His people into exile. He sent them away from His temple, away from the place of sacrifice. He spread them out among the nations making fellowship between Gods people harder. He sent them into a penitentiary, a place for them to come to repentance and understand how far they had drifted from the Lord.

 

As a church, as we look closely at the situation we find ourselves in today. We may not realise it, but we are in exile. We have been driven away from the place of sacrifice, but haven't noticed it. Instead we have made ourselves a covering of fig leaves (Genesis 3v7-11). We continue as if nothing is wrong, our services are online, we fellowship via WhatsApp and put a brave face on things while we ask the Lord to put things back to the way they used to be, not realising that we have been driven away from the Lord's Table, for no longer can we share together in the Lord's Supper. That physical reminder of Christ crucified is the time when we examine ourselves and check that we are running on the right course (1 Corinthians 11v23-32). We might not see the full significance of this but spiritually this is huge blow. Over the years the church has often gone through persecution in different times and places. Other struggles have come upon parts of the church that have prevented it from meeting together. However, never in history has there been a time when the church has been stopped on a worldwide scale as it has happened today. Of even more significance is the timing of this event as it locked us away during the Easter period, for Christians the most important time of the year, a time when communion is taken more than at any other time in the church calendar. If that doesn't get our attention and open our eyes and ears then we are in a far bigger mess than we realise.

 

When the early church was dealing with sin and lack of repentance, one of the instructions was to expel the immoral brother (1 Corinthians 5v9-11); to remove the unrepentant from the church to purify it. The important part to note is at the end of verse 11 it says "With such a man do not even eat". This is much more than just having someone round for a meal, this is about removing that person from communion. Not allowing them to participate in the Lords Supper. Symbolically it is saying that the expelled person is no longer walking in Christ and is taking the action of 1 Corinthians 11v29 for them.

 

Sadly this part of church life will not even be missed by many of those who claim to be God's people. Today the "worship" is far more important to us, communion, the remembrance of the sacrifice that was made and the challenge for us to follow in the footsteps of Christ crucified has been pushed to the side. Instead of self examination and repentance before the Lord, we want to go away feeling encouraged and built up in our self worth. The true worship of living sacrifice (Romans 12v1) has been replaced with a desire for self. "Seeking first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness" (Matthew 6v33) shows the Lordship of Christ in our lives. This has been replaced with a new gospel that is all about God serving our needs. Without realising it we now demand a seat at the table, we expect to be listened to and pampered by our new servant, God. This cannot be and so now we find ourselves in exile.

 

"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." (Jeremiah 29v11).

 

This verse is a one that is often quoted to those going through tough times; sadly it is often quoted out of context, for it is part of a passage that was written to the Israelites who the Lord had sent into exile, far from the temple and the place of sacrifice because of their disobedience and sin. The false prophets, deaf and blind to the truth, had promised them a quick return (Jeremiah 28), but the Lords word to his people was that this exile would last 70 years (Jeremiah 29v10), and the plans that God had for His people was not that he would just get them out of exile, but the blessing of Jeremiah 29v11 is shown in the following three verses (Jeremiah 29v12-14). His people would be brought back when they had learnt to truly call on Him with a right heart attitude; an attitude that put the Lord central in their lives, rather than an "add on" to their existing lives; an "all their heart" attitude, putting God in His rightful place, lifting Him up above the things of this world.

 

So let us carefully consider our ways and the ways of the church and remember that this is not all about the world; it is about us! Let us remember the lessons of Matthew 7v1-5 and ask the Lord to remove the plank in the eyes of His people that we may see clearly and realise the truth of the times. Pride looks down and blames others; humility takes a good inward look.

 

When God gave the great prophet Daniel revelation into the exile situation he found himself in, he did not look around and start blaming others. Instead he humbled himself before the Lord and recognised his sin and the sin of the Lords people (Daniel 9v1-11). It is an example that we would do well to follow.

 

It is easy to get things in the wrong order, to look at the size of the world, and then see the church being carried along by it and reducing God to someone looking on and having the odd influence on the situation. Let us get the order correct. God is central, and then He works and disciplines His people who in turn reach out to the world. When God moves, He starts working downwards. It's why we see in the Old Testament the importance of the King following after God, for when he went astray he led Israel in a wrong direction and in turn showed the nations around a wrong picture of godly living. God does not change, and sadly neither do men's hearts. The same issues that led the Israelites astray are the same issues we face today (1 Corinthians 10v13).

 

So let us take our eyes off the world, let us stop trying to deflect the issue onto what others have done and instead realise that we are now in exile and in this penitentiary the Lord is looking for his people to humble themselves and come before Him in repentance, then just like in the days of Jeremiah He will once again lift us up and bring us back to a place of communion (James 4v10).

 

Let us take some time over these coming days to ask the Lord for some clarity, we have plenty of time to seek Him. The question is "Will we seek Him?", or will we just look for someone else to do the seeking for us? Some of these things touch on subjects we don't like to think about, but if we don't consider these things, our time in exile will have been in vain.

 

"He who has an ear, let him hear".

 

12/04/2020 Letter 3: Stir Crazy

1 Peter 4v1-11

 

As I was growing up one of my favourite TV series was Porridge with Ronnie Barker set in the fictional Slade prison. Fletcher who was played by Ronnie Barker often used to refer to being in prison as being in "Stir". The word comes from a Romany background (Stardo), that was used when someone was held in one place or imprisoned. For a travelling people such as the Romany's it meant that they could not get on with their life.

 

The idea of going stir crazy comes from the results of being held in that confinement, not being able to do what we want to do. The frustration of being prevented from doing something or having something due to our confinement. In our current situation, from a worldly point of view we are being confined, restricted, to save lives. However, as Christians, our goal is not the saving of lives, but the saving of souls; the two are not the same and can often be in complete opposition to each other. Jesus died to self, was imprisoned and restricted by the Romans and the nails of the cross, and yet his death on that cross brought us life.

 

"Stir" shows us what we truly desire, we miss family and friends, we miss going to our favourite places, even our daily routine. We may miss work and even the fellowship of the church, but it does not mean we have to miss God. Maybe it is at this time that the Lord is showing us just how weak our relationship with Him is and how poor our desire is for Him. We can make excuses for ourselves that we cannot get to church, we are lacking in teaching, missing worship and communion. Yet these things are not our relationship with God and should not be the things that our relationship with God is based on. Quite the opposite, our true fellowship is the overflow of our individual relationships with the Father through Christ that mutually encourage each other (Romans 1v11-12).

 

In John 14v6 Jesus said:

 

"I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."

 

So often we read this verse and praise God for Jesus, for making a way, yet so often we don't realise that we are not walking the way, the way to the Father. We use the business of life as an excuse; we deceive ourselves, by telling the Lord how busy we are for Him, so busy that we don't have time to come to Him. One thing I have noticed is that our nation has been brought to a standstill by the Coronavirus, but it has not been brought to its knees. I wonder if the same is true of the church, not the Sunday service or the prayer meeting, but the individual believers who make up the body of Christ. Has this virus brought us to a stand still or has it brought us closer to the Lord, spiritually on our knees in submission.

 

For now the truth is revealed. No longer do we have the excuse of being busy, no longer can we use the fact we go to church as the basis for our spiritual lives. Now it has come down to being locked in a room with the Father. Does this make us happy or sad? When Liz and I first went into missions, someone made fun of me for getting married so young. My reply to him was "We are about to spend two years in a small cabin on a mission ship. I know who I am sharing my cabin with; who are you going to share yours with?"

 

We now find ourselves locked in our cells, but not in solitary confinement. The Lord is with us. Do we find ourselves alone with a stranger, or have we been locked up with someone we love? Think of a honeymoon, a time when a couple in love desire to spend time alone with no one else around them to disturb their getting to know each other. They isolate themselves from friends and family, work and even church yet don't notice it, because their focus is on each other. Are we in prison or on honeymoon? It really depends on our love for the person in the room.

 

For love to be true love, biblical Agape love, there needs to be sacrifice. Our love for God is not measured by warm fuzzy emotional feelings, but by the sacrifices we are willing to make to maintain that relationship. The more we are willing to sacrifice our self the greater our love; it is a literal laying down of our lives that shows true love towards our Heavenly Father (John15v13). As Christians we talk about giving our lives to the Lord but often say those words with very little depth. It's a nice thought rather than a reality.

 

In 1 Peter 4v1, Peter writes about suffering in the body as being following in the attitude of Christ. For when Jesus said "He was the Way" (John14v6), he was not just talking about the forgiveness of sins through his blood shed on the cross. He was talking about us walking in the same ways and attitudes as Christ did; being willing to die to the things of this world, to lose them, to sacrifice them, for the will of the Father; to endure the battle against sin for the joy of knowing the Father. To paraphrase the writer in Hebrews who says of Jesus; he was looking forward to the reunion with the Father with joy and so was able to endure the current pain of the cross (Hebrews 12v2). That is the example that we are to follow.

 

Jesus said:

 

The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life (John 12v25).

 

Are we willing to lose our lives and freedoms for the Lord? The writer to the Hebrews talks about their willingness to accept suffering and loss as a sign that they had been looking forward to eternal things (Hebrews 10v32-34). The battle against sin means battling, imprisoning ourselves from those things the flesh desires, not just the big headlines sins, the murder, stealing etc, but the really big sin, my selfishness, my rebellion and pride. The "me first" attitude that lacks any sacrifice.

 

Our confinement, our loss of the freedom to do what we want when we want is actually a great spiritual picture of the sacrificial Christian life, the Christ like life. Are we willing to put to death and refuse the flesh its desires and rebellion because we value our spiritual life? Our battle against the ways of this world and the desires of the flesh mean that we have to imprison and restrict the flesh that we may have a honeymoon with the Father. Is this period going to be a honeymoon with the one we love? Or are we locked up alone with a stranger? Those on honeymoon do not go stir crazy, instead they treasure their confinement, and remember the special dedicated time with the one they love for years to come.

 

05/04/2020 Letter 2: What is God doing in prison?

Last week we looked at the question of what we are doing in prison. This week we will look a similar question. What is God doing in prison? Not the thought of God being locked up or restricted by the situation, but what is the Lord doing in our lives while we are in prison.

 

Genesis 37v1-11 introduces us to the character of Joseph, who even at a young age was hearing from the Lord in dreams (Genesis 37v5). It's a great thing to hear from the Lord, but hearing from God is only the start of the journey. The problem for us is so often we think because we have heard we are far further along the path than we really are. As James says in James 1v22 "Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says."

 

The problem with Joseph is that he had been favoured and spoilt by his father (Genesis 37v3-4) and that spoiling ruined his character. He had developed a superiority complex and viewed himself as someone special, this meant that when he shared the things the Lord was showing him, rather than it being a blessing to his family, it was just seen as part of his superiority complex and certainly for his brothers meant that the word was rejected.

 

The other issue for Joseph was that, like so many of us, when he received the word of instruction he assumed that he was now ready to be used by the Lord. What the Lord was showing him would not come to pass for many years and before Joseph could be used, he would have to learn the attitude of Christ that we see in Philippians 2v5-11; for to be lifted up by the Lord requires us first to be lowered to the level of obedient servant, something that Joseph would never learn as the favoured son; so as a loving Father, God starts to discipline Joseph.

 

Discipline always tends to make us think of punishment, probably because when we have wanted people punished, it's been out of anger and them getting what they deserved. Thankfully God doesn't share the same thought process, as if we got what we deserved, "the wages of sin is death" (Rom 6v23). God, when He disciplines, He disciplines us for our benefit by disciplining us with the aim of transforming our character for our own good (Hebrews 12v7-11). His discipline has the goal of bringing about holiness, righteousness and peace so His discipline brings about blessing in our life. It brings about Christ likeness in us. So often we talk about wanting to follow in the footsteps of Christ, sadly what we usually mean is that we want to continue to live our own way while just adding in what we see as the spiritual blessings.

 

The problem with our Heavenly Father's discipline is that it needs to be endured (Hebrews 12v7) and submitted to (Hebrews 12v9), two things that our spoilt flesh rebels against. After all, our flesh follows after the ways of this world, the ways of Satan. His rebellion against submission was the cause of his fall as he started to view himself as an equal if not superior to God. We in the same way tend to rebel against any kind of discipline with the attitude that God should spoil us and remove this kind of thing from us so that in our eyes we will be blessed. As such the Lords progress in our lives is often painfully slow. Thankfully we have a patient God who endures with us, not wanting anyone to perish, but all of us to come to repentance (2 Peter 3v9). Not a saying sorry, but a living of our life in the attitude of Christ. Let us always remember repentance is not something you say, but something you do. If we look through the Bible, Old and New Testaments, when God asks His people to repent it is not a case of saying sorry, but a turning around of lives and attitudes to follow in the ways of God.

 

Due to our "flesh" problems, the Lord's discipline is not often even seen for what it is. I wonder how often we have finished up in an uncomfortable situation and instead of seeking the Father and asking what is going on, what is he trying to teach us, we have rebelled and called the church to pray that the situation would be taken from us. One of the great things about prison is that there is nowhere to escape. In my early days of missions serving on the mission ship Doulos, I found myself in some very difficult conditions, everything within me wanted to get away. Thankfully a great man of God explained to me that before the ship, when the Lord had wanted to do a work on me, He had used the smallest of hammers to chip away at the issues that needed to be dealt with. However, those blows were not met with thankfulness, instead I moved to a more comfortable place. Now, stuck on the ship, there was nowhere to run to. So as a loving Father He had put away the small hammer and got out a big one and was bashing away. It was painful, but it very rapidly brought about many of the changes in attitude and life that God had intended. The Lord was blessing me in my captivity, I just needed to see what he was doing and work with Him. I began to see that my issues were not caused by the situation; it was my heart reaction to the situation, my rebellion that was being highlighted so that it could be changed.

 

As we think back to Joseph, God was trying to do a work in him to prepare his heart attitude for the job he had in store for him. Before he could be lifted up to a very high position, his heart had to be humbled to the lowest of positions. For him to reign from above, he needed to have a servant heart. For without these things his ministry would have never reflected the character of God.

 

Looking at Josephs life, at first it can read like a list of disasters, yet even in disaster we see the hand of God. His brothers wanted to kill him, yet his life was spared (Genesis 37v19-22), in slavery he finished up in a good position in Potiphar's household (Genesis 39v2) and even in prison the Lord granted him favour (Genesis 39v21-23); yet despite this we see that Joseph was slow to learn.

 

In his past, his pride had been a big issue that had caused his brothers to hate him. You would think that slavery would humble him, yet even as a slave, as soon as there was a glimpse of success, his pride returned; This time telling Potiphar's wife that he was the greatest in the household making him above her (Gen 39v9), forgetting that in Godly marriage the two become one. Once again his pride caused him problems and once again the Lord had to work his hand of discipline and place Joseph in an even more difficult situation... Prison! Not because he had done anything wrong, but because of the attitude he had behind doing what was right, for it is out of the overflow of the heart that we speak and minister (Matthew 12v34). Sadly his heart attitude of pride had not been altered, just temporarily misplaced.

 

Even in prison, when the Lord is using him to minister to the cupbearer, his thoughts once again turn to freedom, he sees his ministry as a chance to get out; he starts to look on the things that have happened to him as a set of injustices, seeing no fault in himself (Genesis 40v14-15). We see at this point that his heart was still fighting against the discipline of God. Instead of going to God, he views the cupbearer as his way of getting freedom from his current situation, using his ministry gifts to try and get a more comfortable place in life. How hard it must have been when once again Joseph was left in captivity with no one coming to his aid (Genesis 40v23).

 

How often in our lives do we see the same problems arise over and over again and fight to be free from the prison we find ourselves in, convinced that freedom is what we need?

Instead we need to understand that when we reject the Lord's discipline, He is loving and patient. He doesn't give up but takes us through the same situation again, just in a different environment. Is it fair? Not by the world's standards, but then the death of Jesus on the cross, the ultimate acts of love and servanthood (John 15v13), was not fair by the worlds standards. Of course we don't complain about that because it was to our benefit. Our attitudes change very quickly when we see things as being unfair towards us.

 

Now as we sit in our homes under house arrest conditions, what is the Lord trying to teach us in our lives? Why are we discontent? After all we have food and clothing so we should be content (1 Timothy 6v8). Are we looking at ways to escape, planning and scheming our way out, frustrated by the delays? Or are we able to look at our frustrations and issues and see them for the heart attitudes they are? Fruits of the sinful nature (Galatians 5v19-26)! Are we able to take this time to examine ourselves and see what our walk with the Lord is truly like (1 Corinthians 11v28-32)?

 

If we will allow Him the time, and accept the Lords disciple with the grace it has been given, we will leave our prisons with the ability to lead others with a humble heart, just as Christ led us.

 

Joseph though his pride went from bad to worse, I'm not sure how long it was from him going into slavery to being raised up under Pharaoh, but we know that even after the cupbearer had left prison he spent another two years (Genesis 41v1) alone learning humility before God. It was only the through an act of God that Joseph was set free. His pride in his ministry and abilities had gone; instead he came before Pharaoh as a humble servant giving glory to God (Genesis 41v16, Genesis 41v28, Genesis 41v32). This humbled man was now the perfect person for God to lift up (Genesis 41v39-40).

 

So the question for us this week is what is God doing in prison? What is the Lord trying to show us in our lives? He's got us just where he wants us, so maybe it's time to look at the heart attitude behind our struggles and allow the Lord to humble us and teach us and lead us in the attitude of Christ (Philippians 2v5-11) .

 

29/03/2020 Letter 1: What am I doing in prison?

The simple answer is "Boris told me I can't go out!" The medical answer is "I'm self isolating to slow down the spread of the virus." However, those answers only give the reason for your confinement; the question is "What are you doing in prison?"

 

Again we can state the obvious, cooking, cleaning, catching up on all the odd jobs that have been overlooked due to lack of time or just trying to maintain family life. All good things in themselves, but what are we doing for the Lord in prison?

 

It is easy to say: "Nothing, I can't do anything because of the restrictions", I must confess this was one of my first reactions, it was then the Lord reminded me that a lot of Paul's letters are letters from prison, Colossians 4v18 & Philemon 1v1. The book of Revelation is a letter from John while restricted to Patmos for preaching the gospel (Revelation 1v9).

 

We often think of the early apostles as a group of men dedicated to the Lord who travelled far and wide to preach the gospel message, when in fact they travelled far and wide preaching the gospel until they got arrested and sent to prison! Sometimes for short periods, but at other times they got arrested and stayed arrested until the end of their lives. They did not see it as an end to their ministry; rather they saw it as part of their ministry journey as Paul explained to the church at Caesarea (Acts 21v10-14). This was a direction that the Lord was leading him in and rather than restricting his ministry as it would seem from the outside, Paul's ministry was enhanced from prison.

We know that Paul preached many times to many people, yet what do we know of those messages? We know that Paul could talk a congregation to sleep, and even to death (Acts 20v7-12), but we have very little record as to what was said. However, the letters that Paul wrote from prison not only spoke to the believers of the day, but are still speaking over 2000 years later. So we have to realise that just because we are restricted in movement doesn't give us an excuse to stop being servants of the Lord. Our location and circumstances may have changed, but the Lord has not put us into retirement yet no matter what our age (Philemon 1v9).

 

So the question we have to ask ourselves again is the same. What am I doing in prison? What am I doing for the Lord in prison?

 

In the book of Philemon we see that Paul ministered to those stuck in prison with him (Philemon 1v13), not just with words but with actions. In Acts 16v16-34 Paul and Silas are unfairly beaten, humiliated and flogged (Acts 16v22-23) they got put in a cell without a window and fastened in stocks (Acts 16v24). Did they complain about their poor treatment, the lack of fresh bread, toilet roll and hand sanitizer? No they praised the Lord (Acts 16v25)! They continued to minister in prison in the same way they had ministered outside prison and that ministry spoke not only to those who shared cells around them, but led to the salvation of the jailer himself. So how we live within confinement still speaks.

 

Paul's ministry in confinement finished up allowing him to minister right in Caesar's household (Philippians 4v22), it allowed him to minster to visitors (Acts 28v17-24) as he was moved from place to place, and through his letters he has ministered around the whole world for 2000 years, despite being stuck in prison.

 

We are fortunate that even on our hours exercise we can still minister at a 2 metre distance, a greeting, asking how people are doing, do they need any help? Let us remember they are in the same prison as us, but they are alone and without hope. Let us be the ones who are there to build up and show the joy of the Lord even in the most difficult of times? Our ministry in prison may turn out to be the most important ministry we have ever been involved in.

 

So once again the question is asked; what are we doing in prison?