Revival and Reformation P7 - With God ALL things are Possible!

We have finally come to the last instalment in our Revival and Reformation series; how apt that it is the seventh instalment! In the Scriptures, seven is a very significant number which is often used in connection with God’s Church. I apologise for having delayed this message due to unforeseen circumstances which resulted in me going off on a bit of a “writing detour.”

Our previous message in this series was about being transformed by God’s Spirit. I have often heard people make excuses for why they behave a certain way. One of the most common excuses is : “I am sorry, but that’s just who I am. I am made that way and I can’t change.” To those who believe this, I pose a question to you. Why believe in a God who can’t change you? Once again, we try to put limitations on God.

In the Gospel of Mark, we find recorded three times Jesus’ words regarding what God can do. To the father of the boy possessed by a demon that His disciples could not cast out, He said: “If thou can believe, ALL things are possible to him that believeth.”  When the disciples thought that salvation was unattainable after the rich man had walked away from Jesus, they said among themselves: “Who then can be saved?” “If it is so hard for the rich among us to be saved, is there any hope for us?”, they must have pondered. Jesus replied to them: “With men, it is impossible but not with God for with God, ALL things are possible.” Faced with His imminent death on the Cross Jesus ,in praying to the Father, said “Abba Father, all things are possible unto thee…” (Mk 9:23, Mk 10:27, Mk 14:36)

It is abundantly clear from the Scriptures that when  we have done all we can and are at our wits end, frustrated and faced with failure, ALL THINGS ARE POSSIBLE WITH GOD! Garbed in human frailty, you may not possess the strength to change yourself. The good news is that God is not asking you to change yourself! Don’t give up; you don’t have to accept second best for yourself or those around you who have to tolerate your character flaws. God can change you if you will just surrender to Him and ask Him to work in your life. Believe that He will complete the good work He has begun in your life, and WORK with His Spirit every day. The vicious cycle of shame and guilt, of hurting others and yourself doesn’t have to continue. You can end it by submitting to God’s authority today and He will grow His fruit in You. The world will see it and marvel at the power of God to transform lives. In this way, you can be a catalyst for revival in someone else’s life by testifying about how God changed you for the better.

You don’t have to give up in utter defeat. You are more than a conqueror in Christ. Let’s not blame God for the flaws in our character and our failure to deal with them appropriately. When God looked upon His Creation, He declared that it was “very good”. An unknown writer expressed it perfectly: “God does not make junk.”Like that demon possessed boy, God will help you face down the demons in your life if you engage actively with Him and work with Him in the process. 

 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day. (Gen 1:31)

Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.  For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Rom 8:37-39)

Revival and reformation P5: The Fruit of Reformation

In the last few weeks, we have learned about revival and what we must do to ensure that true revival is ignited in our hearts. Revival does not start one church at a time. It starts with every individual. The Bible describes being in a  state of revival as being like a tree planted by rivers of living water, bearing fruit in season and whose leaves do not wither. (Ps 1:3)

Without revival, there can be no reformation for reformation is the fruit of revival. Jesus described Himself as the vine and all who believe in Him as the branches. We cannot have true revival if we are not maintaining a continual connection with Jesus Christ, the True Vine. We cannot produce the fruit of reformation apart from Him. (John 15:1-9)

What is reformation? Gal 5:22 describes for us what the fruit of reformation looks like. It is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance and not desiring vainglory. In summary, it is the character of godliness, the character of Christ.

God’s mission in each of our lives is to restore the perfection of the image of Christ in each of us. This was the image that we were created to reflect in the beginning for we were created “in the image of God.” The process He follows in order to achieve this is “reformation” and the results of that process is the fruit of the Spirit which is the beauty of His character revealed in mortal flesh. (Gen 1:26-27)

Jesus said in Jn 4:14 that whoever drinks of the living water He gives shall never thirst for the water He provides will become a wellspring of living water springing forth unto eternal life. Jesus is restoring the “tree of life” in each of us who believe in Him and out of that tree will spring the fruit of reformation, which the world will taste and they will see that our God is good. (Ps 34:8)

The Bible describes the tree of life in Rev 22:2 as being “on either side of the river” and bearing “twelve manner of fruits and yielding fruit every month.” Does this not remind you of what God wants you to be right now? A tree planted by the living water bearing fruit all year round! The twelve different fruits reflect the completeness of the character of Christ, the image that He is recreating in us as we journey through life. The tree of life in Heaven is also a visual reminder, the culmination of a process that God has started in you today! Phil 1:6 reminds us that God is well able to finish the good work that He has started in each of us and bring it to a grand completion.

Nothing is impossible with God! Do you believe that God can transform your life? Jesus did not lie when He said that nothing is impossible with God. Nothing is too hard for him. All you have to do is take the next step and ask Him to transform you, to reform you. You are already a new creature in Christ. It is time to embark on the exciting daily adventure with God called “sanctification”. Let go and let God!

God has the best plan for your life!

It all started with a nation in obscurity, yet chosen by God. The nation of Israel did not start out as a nation deserving of God’s favour, yet He chose to use this nation to showcase what He could do if they surrendered to Him. (Deut 10:15)

As long as the nation of Israel obeyed God, they were triumphant in battle and had the privilege of being led by God Himself through the pillar of cloud in the day and fire by night. This nation had nothing to boast about. They never chose God; rather it was God who chose them. (Ex 13:21)

God wanted the nation of Israel to be different. They were called to be His own peculiar people, a special people close to His heart. In and through them, all the families of the earth were to be blessed. However, instead of embracing their heritage, they yearned to be like the pagan tribes around them and desired their own king. They rejected the rule of the Majesty of Heaven in favour of an earthly king, slave to like passions as themselves. They wanted a king who would ride triumphantly into battle with them, yet their battles had always been the Lord’s! (1 Sam 8:5-20)

In the same manner we being the church, as spiritual Israel, have been called to be kings and priests to our God and to reign with Him in His kingdom which will never end. However, we find ourselves as pilgrims in this far country of life, and instead of seeking the everlasting City of God, we are distracted by this world and it’s people. We long to be like them more than we long to be like our Saviour. He has created us to shine like lights in a perverse world to show all people His glory, but instead we prefer to blend into the crowds. We claim to value originality, but we evidence a pitiful lack thereof. Our dress, the way we walk and talk, and conduct business is the same as is commonly found in this world. It is not often that others see the difference! (Phil 2:15, Heb 11:13, 1 Pet 2:11)

Why is it that we prefer to crawl when God has designed us to soar with Him? We were not made to be creatures of habit, slaves to sin. We are not meant to sit in church for years and years with nothing to show for it. We were made in the image of God, to triumph over evil. Christ is daily restoring that image in us and we are called to seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and to overcome sin through the power of His indwelling Holy Spirit. The time has come to stop “playing church” and start living it out in our lives! We need the deliverance of Christ to manifest in our lives, so that the whole world can see the difference. (Gen 1:27, Col 3)

God has called us to perfection because He is perfect. He has called us to holiness because He is holy. As His people, we must reflect His character. It is a high ideal to strive for, but with Christ all things are possible! Although our righteousness pales in comparison to His, we are called to model our lives on His life and to walk just as He walked if we are to be His true disciples. Put aside selfish, carnal desires and let Christ unravel the puzzle that is your life today! (1 Jn 2:6, Acts 4:13) 

God has the best plan for your life; why don't you surrender to Him today? With God in your corner, there is nothing that life can throw at you that you and Him together can't handle.You can't afford NOT to know Him!

"All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out." -John 6:37.

Calling God a Liar?

I struggled with the title of my message this week. It seemed like such an unconventional title, one that was a jolt of lightning in my mind when it arrived in my thoughts as I pondered on what I should write about. Calling God a liar? How exactly does one accomplish that? Are we even guilty of that?

We worry about the visible sins in our lives, but what about the invisible sins, the ones no one knows about but us and God? Because no one knows about them, we often find ourselves procrastinating when it comes to dealing with them, and while we delay we condemn the same faults in others that we ourselves are guilty of.

1 John 1:10 states that if we say are without sin, we are deceiving ourselves and also calling God a liar. Cherished sins, though often hidden from the prying human eyes, do not escape the eyes of the One who searches the hearts of men and reads them like an open book (Prov 21:2).  When mixed with pride, these invisible sins are a dangerous concoction brewing in our hearts leading to denial (a state of spiritual blindness where we refuse to acknowledge our sins) which further leads to the trap of presumption which makes our hearts hard so that we cannot admit our need of a Saviour. This is a very dangerous condition which often leads to a festering wound of hypocrisy, which destroys the credibility of our witness for Christ.

There is also the other extreme, where people have committed such heinous sins that they think they don’t deserve to be forgiven or cannot be forgiven. The Bible provides many examples of people in history who experienced God’s great forgiveness regardless of the “size or seriousness of the sin” in men’s eyes. King David was forgiven for lying, adultery and murder when he confessed it to God and was able to say: “Blessed is he whose transgression is covered and whose sins are forgiven.”

Both extremes lead to the deadly sin of calling God a liar. We call God a liar when we think we have no need of His forgiveness because we refuse to admit our failures. We also call him a liar when we underestimate His redeeming love for us and His ability to save to the utmost all who call on Him. (Heb 7:25) Some of us find ourselves hemmed in by a pattern of destructive, dangerous sinful practices. It’s one thing accepting the Lord and being baptized. That only leads to a greater confrontation with sin than ever before, a spiritual battle we will wage all our lives, but praise God that with Him ALL things are possible! (Matt 19:25-26) Jesus wasn’t lying when He said this! Old habits die hard, but deliverance is ours if we claim it in faith, asking Him to transform our characters every day.

"If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us."-1 John 1:8-10

Scripture refs: 1 John 1:10, Prov 21:2, Heb 7:25, Matt 19:25-26

Judgment Day-Are you Ready?

Jesus is coming soon. We can see the signs around us every day. Not a week goes by without some news of a natural disaster somewhere in the world. Creation is groaning under the weight of sin and waiting for the final day of reckoning when evil will forever be banished and the earth and heavens will be filled with the glory of the Lord like the waters cover the sea. (Is 11:9, Hab 2:14, Rom 8:22)

However, in our anticipation for the coming of Jesus Christ, we must not forget to best utilize the time given to us now. When He comes on the clouds of glory, there will be no time for character development and the putting away of sin. The Bible says in Rev 22:11 that the unjust will remain unjust, the filthy will remain filthy and the righteous will remain righteous. It will be too late then to improve your character. The wicked will pray that the rocks may fall on them to hide them from the consuming presence of a holy King (Rev 6:16).

Just as the Jews of old were given a timeline to put away sin and to accept the promised Messiah (Dan 9:24) , so we are given a timeline today for character development so that we can be ready to receive Him in joy at His second coming.

God does not regard sin by degrees of severity although we, in our human nature, are guilty of condemning others for their sins which  we deem more serious than the sins in our own lives which are too easily rationalized away. To God, lying is just as abominable as murder. There will be liars outside the gates of city of God together with the murderers and anyone who breaks God’s commandments and refuses to repent and receive the salvation freely provided by Christ’s atoning sacrifice (Rev 22:15). Lying is an expensive business. It costs time and causes undue stress as one lie normally leads to another until a complicated web of deceit is spun which eventually usually ends up trapping the liar!

On a hill called Calvary, Jesus settled the score once and for all. The playing fields were leveled and we, as Christian disciples, are called to know the seriousness of sin and that it’s not the size of the sin that matters (Luke 7:41-47). If there was only one liar in the world, the commandments would still have been broken and his careless lie would still have cost Jesus His life.

This life on earth is our training ground for the eternal life we will one day inherit. If we cannot learn how to renounce evil now, what makes us think that we will be able to renounce evil later so as to be part of God’s Kingdom? Although renouncing of sin does not earn you eternal life*, it is a sign that you have responded to God’s forgiveness in love and thankfulness and that you are in a right standing with Him. 

Just as a student burns the midnight oil to pass an examination, so we must spend time with God to refine our characters for the greatest test of all-Judgement Day. IT CAN BE A DAY OF FEAR OR EXCITEMENT; DEATH OR LIFE. YOU CHOOSE!

PS:Although some people have said that today would herald the end of the world, the Bible does not give any specific dates for Christ's return. Read Mark 13:28-37. Jesus said that no man knows the hour, not even the angels or Himself but only the Father. However, we can see by the signs around us that His Coming is drawing nearer.

Scripture refs: Matt 25:1-13;Rev 22:11,15; Luke 7:36-50

* eternal life CANNOT be earned, but it is a free gift to ALL who accept Christ as personal Saviour.