Doubt hinders, faith in God opens doors

Hebreerbrevet 3.19/Hebrews 3.19 > After the exodus from Egypt, the Israelites who had witnessed probably one of the greatest miracles of the Old Testament were unable to walk into the fullness of what God had for them because of their lack of faith in who God was and what He could do. God proves Himself again and again to us, but when we allow ourselves to be paralysed by fear and doubt Him and His power like the Israelites (4 Moseboken 13/ Numbers 13) and Elijah (Första Kungaboken 19/ 1 Kings 19) we miss out on our 'promise land'; the abundant and exciting life God has planned for us.

God is more than able to do what He has promised you will He will do. Hold on to Him and see the miracle.

Psaltaren 31.5/ Psalm 31.5 " I entrust my spirit into your hand. Rescue me, LORD, for you are a faithful God "

Thanks and Praise

"Sing praise to the Lord, you saints of His, And give thanks at the remembrance of His holy name."

-Psalm 30.4

I posted a few weeks back about making praise a problem for our problem, and I just wanted to elaborate a bit on it.

Have you ever told someone something really important, only for them to forget it? I'm not talking 'don't forget I put the leftovers in the fridge', I'm talking 'don't forget to turn off the oven in five minutes'.

The thing is, forgetfulness is so natural. We're human, we have a lot of stuff going on, and we have a tendency to get caught up in what is happening in front of us and forget about whatever it was.

You can't deny it. You get caught up in the last few seconds of 'Deal or no Deal', or you play just one more level of 'Angry Birds', and forget about the food in the oven until the smoke alarm goes off.

I was talking to my parents a few days ago about why we are so encouraged in the bible to give thanks and praise God for what He's done, and I was struck by something. God does not require our thankfulness. He actually doesn't need anything. Which means us taking the time to be thankful, fundamentally makes no difference to Him.

So then I wondered, why encourage us to do it?

It was then that I remembered the human tendency to forget. We wake up every morning, and in the normal human way, immediately become consumed with whatever it is we are facing that day.

It could be an exam we have at school that day, and we wake up in a cold sweat, panicked about failing if (funnily enough) we forget an equation or quote. We forget that God goes with us and ahead of us, that we aren't taking the exam alone.

It could be that on our walk to work someone in a van drives through a puddle and covers us from head to toe in muddy water and we tell them to roll over and die, forgetting about the grace and forgiveness God extended to us in the sending of His son Jesus.

It could be that halfway through a really great day, we get terrible news that somebody close has died, and we begin to question God's existence, forgetting that He said that because we are in this world we will experience trouble and difficult life situations, but that we should take comfort in Him during them, as He has overcome.

I was at a Conference a few weeks ago, and a preach was given on the feeding of the five thousand and the storm the disciples were in directly after it. The preacher shared about the fact the disciples forgot about the miracle they had just seen, even though the evidence of it accompanied them in the very boat in the storm. They had evidence there with them, that nothing was too difficult or too big for God and yet in a storm, they were afraid. They'd already forgotten about God and His capabilities!

So often we are like the disciples. We witness God doing something awesome and then the moment we face any difficulty of any kind we forget about the same God that just performed a miracle!

It's crazy! But it's also human nature. We were born with the tendency to forget.

The challenge is to remember.

In Jonah 2.9, it says '...when my life was slipping away, I remembered God, and my prayer got through...' (The Message)

In Isaiah 46.11, the people of Israel are urged to remember their long and rich history, and the God who was with them then.

In Deuteronomy 7.19 and Exodus 13.3, the Israelites are urged yet again to remember what God did for them in Egypt and how He set them free.

After the salvation of the Jews in the time of Esther (Read Esther, it's not too long!), a festival is thrown in order to help the people remember, not just those that were there but also the generations to come, all that God did for them and how He saved them.

That's why God wanted us to have this book that tells us all about Him and the people that loved and served Him over the years, so that no-one would forget and so that all would know and remember, all that He has done.

When we thank God for what He's done, we remind ourselves of who He is and what He is capable of doing for us. When we praise Him, we become part of the positive testimonial of God's nature and personality as we share our experiences with others, helping them to remember too.

Make a conscious effort to remember what God has done. It helps you maintain perspective, encourages you and encourages others, and reminds you exactly who God is and what He can do.

"Hallelujah! Thank God! Pray to him by name! Tell everyone you meet what he has done! Sing him songs, belt out hymns, translate his wonders into music! Honor his holy name with Hallelujahs, you who seek God . Live a happy life! Keep your eyes open for God , watch for his works; be alert for signs of his presence. Remember the world of wonders he has made, his miracles, and the verdicts he's rendered— O seed of Abraham, his servant, O child of Jacob, his chosen." [The Message Version]

- Psalm 105.1-6

"But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed..." - Romans 3.21

When Jesus Christ came to earth, it was the culmination of years of planning and hard work. The Jewish people up until then had been governed by law (See Exodus 20). Law that told them not to take God's name in vain, not to covet, to rest on the Sabbath, to honour their parents and so on. The ultimate purpose of the law was to show the Jews what was right in the eyes of God, and how to live in a way pleasing to Him.

The problem with the law was that it made it impossible for the Jews to live in a way pleasing to God. No matter how carefully they watched themselves and tried to do no wrong. All it took was one sin...and they'd stepped out of God's will and into judgement.

To escape the judgement that resulted from sin, sin offerings were given to God to make atonement. God would look at the offering and not make them pay the penalty for the sin, but it still didn't really deal with the problem. The offerings didn't deal with the sin, they covered it. On the outside, it looked as if there had been a change, but the real root of the sin, originating in mankind's heart remained.


Paul talked about the strange condition of the human heart in Romans 7.15, saying 'that I will to do, that I do not practise; but what I hate, that I do.'


So there were two problems that needed to be resolved;

1. No matter how hard everyone tried to do the right thing, they couldn't.
2. Even though God forgave the sins, the root of the problem remained; the sinful nature of man's heart.

So God created Jesus; fully God and fully man.When God created Jesus, He created Him to be the final sin offering. This meant that after Him, no-one, ever, would have to offer a sin offering. Jesus came to earth, blameless and sinless; perfect.


You see Jesus role as the final sin offering was to personally take on all the sins ever committed and ever to be committed and call them His own (2 Corinthians 5.21). Taking them on, Jesus would have to pay the penalty for sin that was not his own. Romans 6.23 tells us what the penalty for sin is; it's death.


Death in the physical sense, (if you look at Genesis and the record of the fall, it tells us that as a result of the fall sin and thus death entered the world), but not only that, death to God, and separation from all that pertains from Him, all that is good, all that is love, all that is hope, all that is faith; Hell, in short.


So when Jesus cried out on the cross ' elohi elohi, lama shavakhtani?' (Mark 15.34 - HNIV) He was experiencing Hell.


On our behalf.


But it was not the end. Jesus had been a willing sacrifice, fully God and fully man. He had descended into the very depths of Hell to account for all our sins, committed and to be committed, and then He rose again to overcome death, and show that the power that was in Him was stronger than sin, and stronger than death.


He did it so that every time we sin, we are rescued from our rightful punishment; eternal separation from God. So when God looks at us, where he should see sin, darkness, and evil, He sees the face of His son, who took all our punishment on His own back so that we would no longer have to be enslaved by sin, always doing the wrong thing and constantly falling short of God's standard, but instead could be righteous, relying on a power greater than our own.


God sent Jesus so that we would be free to achieve our full potential.

This was problem one dealt with, but God was still not finished.

Romans 10.9 tells us that everyone who believes God loves them and as a result sent His son to die for them is saved. When Jesus was on earth He spent time talking to people, He spent time showing them His character; what was important to Him and good in His sight. He spent time with all kinds of people, tax collectors, women that were having affairs...nobody was too low for Him. You see in doing this, Jesus was tapping in to people's hearts.

By nature, God is relational. He loves us, He talks to us. When Jesus was on earth He wanted us to get to know Him, so that we would in turn tell others about Him. He wanted us to get to know Him so that the more we got to know Him, the more we wanted to be like Him. He wanted to instigate a change of heart, so that instead of our inclination being to do things our way, and therefore sin against Him, our most earnest desire would be to behave in a way that would please Him.


And of course, even if our desire was to please Him, He knew, as I mentioned earlier, how hard it was for us to do the right thing without help from someone outside of us and more powerful than us to do so. So when Jesus left earth for heaven, He left us the Spirit of God (sometimes called the Holy Spirit), the third member of the trinity, so that we would be able to call out to God and receive help in time of need (Hebrews 4.16) and be able to do God's will.

'For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God.' - Romans 8.14

Allow yourself to get to know Jesus, fall in love with Him and He will transform your life. It won't happen overnight, but you'll notice it. You'll no longer measure yourself by what you have done, can do, or what others tell you that you are, but instead will see yourself as God sees you; perfect and blameless in His sight. Your outlook on the world will change; you'll understand more clearly God's grace and what it means to be forgiven and forgive others. You'll be able to discern between what is good (of God) and evil (not of God), and you'll be able to love others as Christ has loved you.

God bless x

Perspective Shift

This past week I've been in a depression of sorts.

I wouldn't say that I've been depressed, but I have been allowing my thoughts to be completely and utterly consumed with all the things I think are currently wrong with my life, and as a result have been feeling really discouraged.

At first I tried to pretend that I wasn't sad about my various 'issues', but when that flopped, I gave up and just indulged in the feelings. Neither approach was in anyway profitable, and so I knew that one way or another when I went to church this morning God was going to give me a kick up the backside of sorts.

And of course He did.

We sang two songs that I was really touched by. The first; which was written by a worship leader at church, talks about waiting on the Lord in stillness, knowing He is God, and always faithful, and the second; an old hymn, contains the words,

"All I have needed, thy hand hath provided,

Great is thy faithfulness, Lord unto me."

The first song spoke to me specifically about patience. Sometimes God witholds certain things from us till a certain time because a)We aren't ready for them yet or b)They aren't good for us right now. When asking God for these things we have to remember that He is sovereign, and He knows what the best things for us are for right now.

The second song spoke to me along the same line, reminding me that God has given me all that I need for right now. He has given us our daily bread. If He thought we needed anymore right now He'd have given it to us now.

I'm reminded of the story of the Israelites in the wilderness. God gave them enough food for each day, and then supplied them with what they needed for the next day when they needed it; the next day.

Now the fact that I think I need something, and God is telling me to be patient doesn't mean that I have to pretend everything is okay, and it doesn't mean I have to moan about it. What it means is that I need to change my perspective and put it in line with God's perspective.

Earlier on in the year I listened to a talk called 'Defeating Discouragement' from the Hillsong UK website (second page, and scroll down). The passage focused on was in Exodus 17.8-15, and was the story of the Israelites defeat of the Amalekites. There were five points which I think apply here exactly;

1. Get up on the hilltop and see OVER your situation - Moses was on top of the hill getting God's perspective on things.
2. Be seated on a rock - Moses sat on a rock on the hill, and we should sit on the rock too [Psalm 78.35]. Rest in the knowledge that God is God; always good, all powerful, just, gracious, loving and your Heavenly father.
3. Be surrendered to God - Moses had his hands raised in a position of surrender to God, and we too should be in a position of surrender to Him. Hand everything over to God. There usually isn't much we can do about our situations anyway, and God is able to do far more than we can even think He can [Ephesians 3.20], so we might as well hand all our issues, grievances and sadness over to Him. He's got it covered.
4. Make sure you are supported by the church - Moses wasn't up on the hill alone, he had Aaron and Hur with him, supporting his arms and keeping them lifted up. Surround yourself with people who will encourage you and help you keep your chin up when the going gets tough.
5. Be steady until the end - Moses stayed faithful to his task till the very end. Run the good race and stay true to God. In Him we have overcome [John 16.33]