Walking in power

For the Kingdom of God is not just a lot of talk; it is living by God’s power.
1 Corinthians 4:20

Do i talk or live it?

Walking IN his power is quite distinct from speaking about it.

Speaking IN and through his Word is different from speaking about it.

Lord, help me use Your power to bring heaven to earth, life to death, order to chaos, truth to lies, health to sickness, wealth to poverty, forgiveness to bittterness, hope to dispair, reason to contradiction, love to hate and faith to disbelief.

Source of Hope

Hope - a foundational aspect to cotinuing to live. Without hope, a person dies.

Now i am not taking about the day to day or temporary aspects of what we might hope for. But rather the hope of the future of our overall existence.

It's worth noting that Greta Thunberg is so despondent about the future, she has resorted to yelling at world leaders, at adults three times her age and haved a lived experience beyond her own. She acts as if she is on the brink of hopelessness.

So it is here, that Paul reminds me where my hope is sourced from.

"I pray that God, the source of hope, will fill you completely with joy and peace because you trust in him. Then you will overflow with confident hope through the power of the Holy Spirit."

Romans 15:13

So here i have Paul informing me, that my hope is married to my faith : 'Being sure of what you hope for and certain of what you don't see (yet, or that which will come to pass)'. Hebrews 11.3

I do find that my peace lays in the foundation of God's hope. That is a spiritual truth and revelation that a person in the natural can't fathom.

Lord, thank you for being the source of hope. Thank you for being my hope that never fails, never stops, never lies, never ceases.

Thank you Lord that i can take things into my own hands and have Your hope that pulls it together for Your glory, which is for my benefit and those around me.

Your will be done, your kingdom come. Amen.

The Best Friday

Friday 10th April 2020

Good Friday

Is it by chance that there is 1.3 million people infected with a virus that has gone global?

Is it by chance that the virus is described and named a Crown, the very symbol of authority and rulership?

Is it by chance that the world is on the precipice of further collapse, fear and death?

Is it by chance that we are here, at Easter, a time for the world to remember death, death of our bodies and soul? 

Is it by chance, that Easter is a time where we remember the Crown of Thorns pressed into the headship of Heaven, for our sake? 

Is it by chance, that Easter is a time where we remember the Crown of Life? 

Is it by chance that we are here, at Easter, the time where the Israelites would remember the Passover? Where the angel of Death, passed over the households that had committed themselves to God with the blood of a sacrificed lamb? 

Is it by chance that we are here, at Easter, with the Good News of redemption, restoration, hope, forgiveness and New Life? 

Lord, I praise you for your wonderous majesty and timing. Your mystical sovereignty that brings all things together for Good - your Good, which is my good, my neighbours Good. 

Lord help me be a vessel of your peace, your love, your grace and hope to others.

Fixing myself - period.

If you or i were to walk into a bookshop, you'd be greeted with a table or two of "self help", life guidance books.

"12 Rules for Life"
"Be you"
"Living Proud"
My 'favourite' and most subtle:
"The art of not giving a #%ck"

During my tenture in India, many of them cling to their gurus and sages, to get guidance and catchy 1 liners that sound very deep and profound.

Do this, do that, adhere to this, adhere to that....and then you will fix yourself.... a bit like this post.

The very basis of looking for fixes to our lives, presupposes that something is broken, or not how it ought to be.

When 100,000's of people pay money and take time out to listen to a Canadian Psychologist to find possible answers to problems we all have in the passage of time, is a rather loud alarm bell about our own awareness that problems within oursleves (and others!) exist.

But we know from experience that not all answers are right.

Defining the problem first, before looking for answers is needed.

Here's where Romans 10 is quite profound :

"I know what enthusiasm they (Jews) have for God, but it is misdirected zeal. For they don’t understand God’s way of making people right with himself. Refusing to accept God’s way, they cling to their own way of getting right with God by trying to keep the law. For Christ has already accomplished the purpose for which the law was given. As a result, all who believe in him are made right with God."

Isn't is odd that for almost all of humanity, we recognise we need a fix, a solution, perhaps even call it, 'to obtain salvation', yet for the majority of us, we want to define our own method of salvation?

In fact, for many we don't want to get right with God, but fix other peripheral, though important things.

Like the garden of eden, we want to define our own moral law, we break it and then go back to define our own solutions, that don't work....

For many of us, we are very sincere in wanting to fix ourselves.
But sincerity misdirected, is still misdirected and misplaced.

Thank you God, not that i am good or superior in knowledge, but that You have provided a path to fundamentally fix me!

[White / Black / Aboriginal / Male / Female] Privilege

We're all rather privileged.

Well, that's what the Bible informs me as such.

God gave them (The Israelites) the privilege of worshiping him and receiving his wonderful promises.

Romans 9:4 NLT

It's a privlege to be given the capacity to worship the ultimate reality, the ultimate Being.

How do you define worship?
To venerate, to admire, to direct your thoughts and actions to that object or person as due respect and honour.

Archbishop William Temple describes it as: "Worship is the submission of all of our nature to God. It is the quickening of the conscience by his holiness; the nourishment of mind with his truth; the purifying of imagination by his beauty; the opening of the heart to his love; the surrender of will to his purpose—all this gathered up in adoration, the most selfless emotion of which our nature is capable."

You see, true worship, worship directed to that which it is owed or due, is a spiritual experience.

Worship, true worship, as opposed to a perversion of worship, is like perhaps skydiving or seeing the birth of your child. I can describe it, but nothing can replicate the experience.

Why would God have us do such a purportedly egotistical thing?

He doesn't. If you re read Temple's defintion, true worship is the purifying of yourself, becuase you are directing your mind, body, heart, soul, strength, eye, towards that which is Pure, is True, is Holy and Perfect - your Perfect Heavenly Father Creator.

It is here that i read :

"..what are mere mortals that you should think about them, human beings that you should care for them?
Yet you made them only a little lower than God and crowned them with glory and honor."

Psalms 8:4‭-‬5 NLT

Worship is baked into our very being, becuase it is an essential aspect to God.

What a privilege us white, middleage, cisgender men have...or any other person regardless of what physical or immaterial identities they may have or believe they have

Doing Right and Pleasing God

Many friends of mine who are atheistic, irreligious or agnostic or even somewhat religious in another belief system, do "good" deeds.

They actually from time to time, shine a light on my own shortfalls of my behaviour.

I can think of one friend right now, who constantly does "good deeds" for others. He sometimes refers to these as feeling "quite virtuous".

Almost in a way of "doing right by the universe", if you will.

I want to note, he's not trying to show off, or get some level of acclaim. He was brought up in a Christian Protestant family and culture of scarcity and conservatism.
He's an agnostic, with a heavy lean towards atheism.


Here's a thing, despite doing good deeds, if the motivation of the deed is misdirected, then in God's kingdom, a.k.a the world we exist in, the deed is rendered worthless....

"Those who are dominated by the sinful nature think about sinful things, but those who are controlled by the Holy Spirit think about things that please the Spirit. So letting your sinful nature control your mind leads to death. But letting the Spirit control your mind leads to life and peace. For the sinful nature is always hostile to God. It never did obey God’s laws, and it never will. That’s why those who are still under the control of their sinful nature can never please God."

Romans 8:5‭-‬8 NLT

In reading Hebrews 11.6 it says

"And it is impossible to please God without faith. Anyone who wants to come to him must believe that God exists and that he rewards those who sincerely seek him."

Hebrews 11:6 NLT

If i read 1 Corinthians 13, the Bible informs me that "If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing."

1 Corinthians 13:3 NLT

When we "do good" there is a motivation behind it. It can be for a myriad of reasons, many aren't to please God, in fact far from it.

Doing good, especially towards others can be motivated by a love for them.

But if i don't have the vertical right, then my horizontal motivations for doing good are 100% misplaced. I have not pleased God at all.

Think about like this : you're married. Your spouse does lots of good deeds for you. But she doesn't love you. In fact she doesn't even want to really be in any relationship with you.

She has sex with you, more than you ever want. She supports you in your aspirations, laughs at your jokes, speaks well of you publicly.

Has she pleased you? You could argue, in the flesh, yes. But in reality, her motivation to have done these things, is vacant.

Similarly with my friend. He, in the flesh, is many times a "better man than i". If we potentially stacked our "good deeds" up and compared over our lifetime, i wouldn't be surprised if his tower was considerably higher than mine.

But that's not how God's Kingdom works.

It works on a loving relationship, where love, being a motivational construct, a verb, combined with faith, is the basis on living in the ultimate reality - God's Kingdom.

I'm a jack#ss. And i've got to get my motivation centred on Him, otherwise my good deeds do nothing to "please God".

Before someone gets upset about the notion of "pleasing God". Just think about it - God is Love. God sent His Son to die for us. God is for us, not against us, God forgives amd redeems us. If i take my cue of what love is, then i am left with no choice but to want to please God, becuase he is the locus of Love.
By pleaseing God, by loving Him, i am automatically loving others, my enemies, my adversaries, my wife and family. I am loving them in the format of 1 Corinthians 13.

Secondly, for those that listen to Dennis Prager, an orthodox Jew and very religious and guy. He is motivated to "do good" becuase God is good. He often states that he doesn't care about your motives, just your behaviour.

His pursuit of God is genuine. But his pursuit to please God through Faith in Jesus is not there.

It's such a missed opoortunity to have his good deeds count for something in the currency of God's Kingdom - loving and pleasing God.