Today's reflections have been inspired from the last 3-4 weeks of messages about Christ Jesus and who He is and what we can receive because of Him - from a loving Father.
I think there is a troubling truth in Christianity today that many believers don’t know about or aren’t experiencing continual encounter with the real, manifest presence of God our Heavenly Father. The Bible contains story after story of life-changing, world-altering encounters with the reality of God’s presence. From Moses and the tent of meeting to the disciples at Pentecost, we continually read about God supernaturally encountering His people in real, transformative ways. Jesus died so that we might walk in communion with our Heavenly Father not only in heaven, but here on this earth - now! Biblical characters modeled what it was to experience God consistently in both the New and Old Testaments. God, in His desire to have restored relationship with you and me, has made the reality of His presence fully available to us. Through the death of Christ there is nothing separating you from Him. Open your heart and mind to the truth about God’s nearness and allow your faith to be stirred for all the ways your loving Heavenly Father would transform your life through consistent encounter with Him. 26 From one man He made every nation of humanity to live all over the earth, fixing the seasons of the year and the national boundaries within which they live, 27 so that they might look for God, somehow reach for Him, and find Him. Of course, He is never far from any one of us. 28 For we live, move, and exist because of Him, as some of your own poets have said: ‘…Since we are His children, too.” Acts 17:26-28 There is no doubt in looking at Scripture that God’s presence is real, good, and available to us. Rest in the truth of that for a moment. You can consistently enter into the tangible presence of your heavenly Father anywhere and anytime and in whatever you are facing, managing and dealing with. Have faith today that God created you to experience Him. Encountering His presence is made possible entirely by His grace, so it is available apart from any good or bad thing you do. But, know that God will never force His presence on you. He only fills up what is open and ready to receive. He sweetly calls you to meet with Him and waits for you to make space in your life to receive what He longs to give. There is no more life-giving pursuit you can embark on than the pursuit of God’s presence. Spending time resting in Him is meant to be the satisfaction that lays a foundation for you to live the life of abundance made available to you through Jesus who is the Resurrection and the Life, who is the Way the Truth and the Life and who is the only Door into God’s presence. Your role in encountering God is simply seeking Him. If you will make time to encounter Him, open your heart, and have faith in His word, then you will discover the wellspring of life, joy, love, and transformation that is the presence of our Heavenly Father all through your day as you choose to live life in His presence. What many of us tend to do is go in and out of the door depending on what we want to do or what we are needing or how we are feeling. Because we still tend to live a life pleasing ourselves first and foremost, and our time in God's presence become fleeting visits rather than "Dwelling in His presence all the days of our lives". Even when we pray it's like we crack open the door and throw a prayer in rather than realising, because of Christ we can be in God's presence without guilt or shame - but we have to step through the door - Christ. (Hebrew 10:19-22) In his book The Knowledge of the Holy, A.W. Tozer wrote, “With our loss of the sense of majesty has come the further loss of religious awe and consciousness of the divine Presence. We have lost our spirit of worship and our ability to withdraw inwardly to meet God in adoring silence.” Tozer points out that how we treat God presence will affect how God interacts with us in our everyday realities. Take a moment to contemplate what God has just spoken here and go to the link for the song Holy Spirit by Brian and Katie Torwalt https://youtu.be/4jZOu7oM7KQ May Tozer's statement not be true of you. May you discover or rediscover the majesty of your God. May you be a child of God who consistently spends time in the presence of the Father. May you be a believer who is empowered with the very presence of God Himself working in and through your life every moment of the day. May you grow in your pursuit of His presence this week. May you commit to earnestly seeking Him and allow this week to be transformational in the way you spend time with God, in God and through God. Much Aroha JD
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Greetings everyone - What a wonderful name it is, what a powerful name it is - the name of Jesus. "...and by believing in Him you will have life by the power of His name." John 20:31b
We are embarking on a 70day Journey to the Cross - 70 Days from Sunday just been to Easter Sunday - we will be looking at the seven things that Jesus says about Himself - who He is. Our prayer is that you intentionally go on this journey with us - but especially with Jesus. II missed the Muse last week so I'm making up for it in todays one LOL - I have felt to look at our passion for Christ Jesus. There is something for everyone in it so I pray for you that you'll take the time to read and reflect. Almost any Christian can tell you what the greatest commandment of all is to love God with all your heart, soul, and mind (Matt 22 36-40). We all know this is the greatest commandment. But are we really taking it seriously? It is so easy to think that we are loving Jesus when in reality we are loving something else. More than anything else, passion for the Son of God has to be guarded and cultivated or we will lose it. I find that almost every good thing in my life is all too ready to compete for my time and intimacy with the Son of God. Jesus prayed for us in John 17:26 saying “(Father) I have revealed you to them, and I will continue to do so. Then your love for me will be in them, and I will be in them.” (NLT) Jesus said that He has revealed the name of the Father to His disciples, that is, He showed them what the Father was like. He did this for one overriding purpose. Jesus wanted us His disciples to love Him like His heavenly Father loved Him. He wants the love that His Father has for Him to be in us as His disciples. How could I love Jesus like God the Father loves His very own Son? Of course no one can love anyone to the same degree or quality that God loves them. But on the other hand, neither can we be as holy as God, yet God says to us, "You shall be holy for I am holy." It is through the power of His Spirit in us that we can walk in holiness. By that same power, we can live our lives with a consuming passion for our Lord. The Father loves the Son more than anyone or anything else. He is devoted to the Son. His eyes never leave the Son. All that the Father does He does for the Son. Jesus prayed that we would be driven by that same single-eyed passion. Sadly some people minimise our need for passion for Jesus. They tell us that our feelings aren't really important as long as we walk in obedience. Obedience is wonderful, but the problem with this definition is that you can do the right thing without loving the Son of God very much at all. A son can obey his father for reward or for fear of punishment, and actually neither like nor love his father much at all. A husband can be a faithful and kind provider to his wife without having much love or passion for his wife. What wife would settle for a relationship like that? Why do we think God would be willing to settle for an obedience that is not accompanied by a consuming passion for His Son? After all, isn't the greatest commandment to love the Lord with all our heart, soul, mind and strength? All of who we are – including our feelings and emotions. The apostle Paul was so consumed by his affection for the Lord Jesus Christ that be came to the point in his life where living simply meant Christ to him - "For me, to live is Christ."(Philippians 1:21 NIV) This kind of complete devotion is meant not only for the apostles. How do you get the kind of passionate love for Jesus that He desires? There are three simple but indispensable things we must do: First, we can't love a person whom we don't know. Therefore, we must set aside time to get to know the Lord Jesus Christ. If we do not spend time meditating in His Word, talking with Him, and listening to Him, we will never progress very far in acquiring passion for Him. We must set aside a regular time for personal meditation in the scriptures and prayer. We must never allow this time to become mechanical or ritualistic. We must remember that it is possible to read the Bible like a Pharisee and never hear the voice of God (John 5:37). It is possible to let our prayer time degenerate into nothing more than taking a shopping list to God. In our regular times of personal meditation and prayer we must remind ourselves that the purpose is to meet with a real Person. This Person speaks, guides, encourages, reveals, convicts, rebukes, discloses himself, hides himself, gets angry, can be grieved, and can rejoice. In that meeting we are capable of making Him angry or making Him rejoice. These are the things that scripture teaches us about the God with whom we relate. We are taught from the beginning of our conversion about the importance of spending time with Him. The problem isn't that we don't know it, the problem is that we don't do it. The second thing that is absolutely essential is the removal of barriers between us and the Lord Jesus. Our sins create a barrier between us and Jesus so that we cannot come into His presence and grow in our love and knowledge of Him. These barriers are removed when we confess our sins and God forgives us. One of the most important teachings on forgiveness is found in I John 1:9: "If we confess our sins he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." We all know this, but all too often we don't really believe it. It is sinful to live under condemnation and guilt. Too many of us confess sins and never feel forgiven because we are really not trusting in the power of His blood to forgive us of those sins. We will never be holy enough, disciplined enough, or anything else enough to get into His presence apart from the blood of His Son. Our good works, reformed lives, and best intentions will never take away the guilt of sin. The only thing that the Father has given us to take away sin and guilt is the blood of His Son. The third thing that we must do to acquire passion for the Son of God is to consistently ask for it, to labour for it in prayer. This is where John17:26 come in... You can pray it like this - paraphrasing it for yourself: "Father, grant me an impartation of the Holy Spirit to love Jesus Christ your Son like You love Him." If you pray this in the morning when you get up; and during the day when your mind slips into neutral; and when you go to sleep at night things will happen – set your heart and mind on it. You can change your mind but only the Holy Spirit can truly change your heart. It is the task of the Holy Spirit to "shed abroad the love of God in our hearts" (Romans 5:5). Divine love can only be divinely imparted. Most of my Christian life I've been making the same mistake over and over and over. I keep putting my confidence in my discipline, in my good intentions, in my knowledge of the Bible, in order to produce love for God. I always end up in legalism and self-righteousness when I do this. As I shared on Sunday that recently the Lord has interrupted all of this. He has shown me that I have lived my life out of knowledge about Christ Jesus but not fully knowing Him and loving Him passionately. That divine revelation pierced my heart. I realised why passion-robbing legalism and self-righteousness were able to consistently get such strongholds in my life. I'm not saying that we don't need discipline, or knowledge of the Bible, or godly behavior - we do. Nor am I saying that we're to be passive and simply let God do it all. I'm talking about our attitude and our confidence. We must do the right things but never put our confidence in our ability to do those things. Our hearts are incredibly prone to deception (Jeremiah 17:9) and our feet are equally prone to wander off the path of righteousness (Romans 3:10 ff.). And we easily beat ourselves up and therefore give up (Proverbs 3:5 & 6). In light of this, how could we trust in our ability to follow Jesus? I've come to realise that passion for the Son of God can't be earned. It comes because He gives it as His greatest and most gracious gift. And after all, isn't that how the greatest things come to us, as gifts? James says, "You have not because you ask not." (James 4:2) The greatest gifts that God has to give us are ours for the asking. I encourage you, from this day forward, to spend more time in your life of prayer asking God to grant you passion for the Son of God than you do asking Him for anything else. Our confidence must always be in His willingness and ability to impart to us passion for His Son. If you begin to pray this prayer on a regular basis, passion for the Son of God will begin to permeate your heart. It may take you months, even years, before you notice a significant difference. In fact, you will probably never be able to point to the day or the hour when you began to be consumed with passion for the Son of God, but others will notice. They'll say you've changed; you seem different. They'll say there is a kindness, and a gentleness in you they hadn't noticed before. There's an infectious quality in your love for the Son of God that didn't seem to be there before, and they'll want to know what you've been doing. Don't be passive about acquiring passion for the Son of God. Make it the focus of your life. Put your eyes on the Son of God and leave them there (Hebrews 12:1), and you will find yourself becoming like Him. You'll find yourself falling in love with Him as you ask God day after day to consume you with passion for His glorious Son. And that passion, as it begins to occupy your heart, will conquer a thousand sins in your life. You will overcome in Christ all your fears and disappointments. You will begin to love what He loves and hate what He hates. That's all I've got to say ... except "Why would you settle for anything less?" If you have extra time, while you're reflecting on the muse - listen to this song called Behold (then sings my soul) https://youtu.be/z9UB5U7kSec?list=RDz9UB5U7kSec JD your fellow sojourner |
AuthorPastor JD Drower Archives
May 2017
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