Tuesday 30 December 2008

Your will be done, Heavenly Father!

Coming into the church is entering into a mystical union with Christ who calls his church his body. It is a spiritual experience where God calls individuals to know Him and draw near to Him. In Christ God became man and lived among us, he died on the cross, taking the punishment we deserve so that in his death we are made holy in Him, Christ Jesus our Saviour.

In becoming a baby, Christ endured our sin, living weak and vulnerable, a perfect man in a world under judgement. First angels, then man had rejected God turning their back on the holiness of God, choosing disobedience and faithlessness and doing evil. Jesus came into this world of darkness that he loved and he came as a baby, born of a virgin, Mary, He was conceived by God the Holy Spirit and he called God, Father being God himself.

God loves the world; God loves mankind because in man He sees himself and in creation he sees the work of His hands. Jesus endured temptation, cruelty, rejection and finally death so that death might be conquered. In Christ Jesus, we have the gift of eternal life, not because of anything in us, but because of the sacrifice of Christ who died on the cross and conquered punishment of death for those who believe.

And those who believe are gathered into the church, at one level, to suffer, serve and be rejected as He was, so that the world might know it is loved.

Cry out to God in suffering; rail against Him for evil and injustice; shout to the Lord because of sickness. What you feel is right! What you desire is true! In Christ Jesus there is peace; a dignity beyond understanding that is ours in Him. In Christ we know peace.

The Church is the first fruits of a coming kingdom and the kingdom breaks out in salvation, mended lives that make sense, purified by Jesus. It breaks out in healing of minds and bodies and, even in despair, we look forward to the day of Christ when all who are to be saved will meet with Christ at his second coming and receive the gift of eternal life in Him.

What if God brings healing now? What if God brings changed circumstances? We live in a kingdom present in his people, the church, a bride at a marriage feast in a relationship to be consummated in the second coming of Christ. The church is the body of Christ in the present world; the bride of Christ prepared and being perfected for a marriage yet to be consummated. Everything we experience now is for that point. This is our hope and we glorify God in the healing and in the changed circumstances. God is present now and we long and yearn for the time when we will be with Him eternally. We glorify God in the strength to endure and in the faith and secure knowledge that he makes all things right for those who believe and that we will not be tempted beyond our strength. He turns our weeping into blessing and He is our strong foundation.

Our time on Earth is short and every moment counts. We love life and live its gift to the full, sharing the grace of God freely, crying constantly, God's will be done; Your will be done Heavenly Father!

Monday 29 December 2008

Have we got the vision for what we are doing?

Have I got the vision that says, I really believe in this; do I hear God saying, Look I am sending you this gift to show what can be done in my name and to bring Me glory?
Serving the poor and needy, seeing the lost saved and being a family, caring for one another and those around us both near and far are God appointed tasks.
The church says, I see you in need - look in the name of Jesus we bring healing and peace. Those around witness the Spirit at work and so themselves are brought into the light.
Do we doubt this world is good and there should be joy, freedom, beauty and justice - that life is worth living. We share faith in Jesus with all humility but maybe doubt it is possible; goodness is something we do not see and do not experience and yet we dare to believe it is true, doing good works! Believing our actions matter! In the hope they will bring about joy, beauty, freedom and justice.
If we model our service to others so that Jesus is seen, we will gain in this conviction, but if we seek our own comfort we will only lose hope because so often our hoped for outcomes in this world are lost, whereas the Glory of God is an eternal treasure.
So let us do good hoping in God alone and trusting in Him and sit with the tension that He is good and yet the world is under His judgement and makes our service difficult.

Know the Living God

Towzer said that the church of his day was weak because it did not seek to know God in any depth. Our vision of God feeds our faith and our knowledge of him informs our wisdom. Often we worship a "god" formed in our own image and our prayers amount to self talk. We are not encountering the living God- the God of the Christian Bible.

What do we mean by the Living God? Jesus uses this phrase and it is powerful; God reveals himself as "I am who I am" to Moses and calls himself the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and in Jesus' mouth this name is our guarantee of eternal life as God is the God of the living and not the dead. When God revealed himself further to Moses he hid behind a rock incase he died. We are given insight here into who God is and who Jesus is.

We see in Jesus the perfection of God, who is alive, the Living God who brings us into the Holiest place so that we might know him.

It is to our eternal benefit that we seek the high calling to know God.

The Sabbath

God’s revelation to Moses on the mountain was,
Remember the Sabbath to keep it holy.
(Exodus 20:18).

This part of the covenant recalls creation;
Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.
(Genesis 2:1;3)

Obedience to Sabbath observation is enjoined as a law on the Israelites from the time of Moses, its strict observance marked out the people of Israel as a Holy People, separated for God’s blessing. Sabbath observation was the sign of the Mosaic covenant, just as circumcision was the sign of the covenant with Abraham and the rainbow a sign of the covenant with Noah. Interpretation and application of this law in the time of Jesus had become very serious and strict observation was a touchstone of orthodoxy.

This fourth commandment in the Mosaic Law sits strangely with the other ten, unless we read it in its context and we note that it is a sign of the covenant between God and Moses and to break it meant death and signified apostasy.

Exodus 31:12-17 (English Standard Version)
And the LORD said to Moses, "You are to speak to the people of Israel and say, 'Above all you shall keep my Sabbaths, for this is a sign between me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I, the LORD, sanctify you. You shall keep the Sabbath, because it is holy for you. Everyone who profanes it shall be put to death. Whoever does any work on it, that soul shall be cut off from among his people. Six days shall work be done, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest, holy to the LORD. Whoever does any work on the Sabbath day shall be put to death. Therefore the people of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, observing the Sabbath throughout their generations, as a covenant forever. It is a sign forever between me and the people of Israel that in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested and was refreshed.'"

How does this law stand in the light of the cross?

To read the full article visit
www.takeleycf.org.uk/sabbath.htm