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There surely can be no greater or more beneficial exercise than contemplating our God. The psalmists had some revelation of the significance of this exercise and how valuable they found it in dealing with the challenges of life. No part of the scripture contains more than the Psalms expressions of man’s weakness and failings and yet it is significant that no part of scripture contains more than Psalms descriptions of the greatness and majesty of Almighty God.
I was particularly blessed this week in reading Psalm 95.
This starts with a strong encouragement to sing and shout aloud for joy. For what reason? Because the Lord is the rock of our salvation. The Psalmist then goes into describing the God to whom, and about whom, he is singing and shouting for joy.
This God is God – what does that mean? His greatness is unsearchable, His ways past finding out. We need to learn to rest in the greatness and indescribability of God rather than trying at all times to bring Him down to our level of understanding.
This God is the Lord – the covenant God, the totally faithful and reliable God of grace and mercy.
This God is the Rock – our relationship with Him is firm and secure and cannot be shaken.
This God is the Creator – we can’t understand this because we don’t know the greatness of the creation. Nor can we grasp that His raw material was “nothing”.
This God, great and majestic, is our maker and He is justifiable proud of what He has made and He watches over it carefully.
This God, yes the great creator God, this God who is above all other gods is our Shepherd – He is the One who tends and cares for each of us. This is the One who gives His life for the sheep.
Describe it if you can! But this is why God gave the gift of tongues – so we could speak in mysteries which can only be uttered by the Spirit, in the Spirit and to the spirit.
“Come before Him with thanksgiving and extol Him” - GJJ
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A Shield!
God is love and loves each one of us with an everlasting and unchanging love. This love is expressed in many ways – by His grace and His mercy etc. But one of the expressions of God’s love that touches my heart most strongly is that of His faithfulness.
God is faithful. We often express this fact in the songs we employ in our praise and worship. And it is an aspect greatly appreciated by many Christians, other than myself.
When we think of God’s faithfulness, we think of His reliability, His total commitment to us, the certainty of His promises, and so on. However, I have seen something in the scripture this week that, for me, puts a different emphasis on God’s faithfulness.
In Psalm 91:2 it says “His faithfulness will be your shield and rampart”. I had never really thought of God’s faithfulness carrying with it this distinctly military flavour. However, it does make sense when you think about it.
We live in an environment where we are the target of many “flaming arrows” fired at us by an enemy called the devil. Our thoughts can come under attack, as well as our integrity. Our whole testimony can come under assault. At those times the faithfulness of God can become a shield and a castle wall to us.
To know that the faithful God will never leave us must be more effective than any brass shield. To know that nothing can separate us from His love has to be more powerful than the thickest rampart. And it is because of His faithfulness that His promise to never leave us is effective. And it is because of His faithfulness that we can be assured of His love for us at all times.
So when the “flaming darts” come, rest on and abide in God’s faithfulness. - GJJ
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Sin is an absolutely awful thing. It has distorted God’s beautiful creation and brought separation between God and man, the pinnacle of His creation. It was because of sin that God went to the cross and died for mankind. Yes, God went and died on the cross (see Acts 20:28). So awful was sin that it took the death of God in the person of His Son to deal with it.
One of the awful things that happened when sin came into the world was that a whole culture of blame developed. Man refused to accept responsibility for the sin. He blamed the woman and even God Himself. The woman blamed the serpent – satan. They were not willing to accept responsibility. But God made it clear that He held man responsible for His action. And even in the New Testament, we see that God lays the “ingress” of sin into the world at man’s door (Romans 5:12). This unwillingness to accept responsibility for sin and to want to blame someone or something else still continues today. For many they say, “it’s the devil to blame”. But there are also more subtle ways of passing on the blame – like "that’s the way I am, I’ve always been like that".
But God’s word continues to put the responsibility of sin on man!
Linked with this refusal to accept responsibility is a belittling of the awfulness of sin and an accepting of it. Someone once said that until we understand the awfulness of sin, we can never fully understand the love of God.
The church through the ages has been affected at times by philosophies which almost use God’s goodness as an excuse for accommodating sin. So we find in Romans 6 that Paul has to address an issue where the amazing grace of God was used almost as a reason to continue in sin. The argument came down to an attitude that the more we sin the more we can enjoy and benefit from the grace of God. Paul most firmly deals with this attitude.
We all must take responsibility for the sin in our life and behaviour. That first responsibility will be to repent – for many this repentance will deal practically with the issue. For some there may be the need for help or ministry of some kind. Let’s be sure that we accept the responsibility in the first instance that God sets before us. - GJJ
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We!
We lost! We won! We didn’t even take part!! Who are ‘we’? And when does ‘we’ apply?
I have often commented in these articles about the way we speak and the words we use. And I have been reminded again of this as I listened to a reporter on Radio 5 Live this past week. This reporter pointed out how closely people identify with the national football team, or even simply a football team. We won, we lost - and yet we didn’t take part. And most often we didn’t even see the match. This reporter pointed out how this level of identification is not even reserved for favourite bands. So if we go to a concert by our favourite band, say U2, we never say we played good or we played bad. Interesting!
Now what about the church? What is our level of identification with the church? I have noticed a disconcerting trend in recent times to refer to the church in a way that suggests separation from it. So referring to Airedale Church, of which they are a part, some people will use language like, “such & such happens in Airedale”, as though Airedale Church is something they are not with or part of. And yet the church, and yes this does include that portion known conveniently as Airedale Church, comprises people who have been all bought by the precious blood of Jesus and have been joined to Christ by the Holy Spirit. By the Holy Spirit we are members of one another. We are as much a part of each other as our leg is a part of our physical body. So why can’t we say ‘we’ when referring to the church with which we identify? Are we ashamed of each other? Does thinking that church should be expressed in another way, or is in some way falling short of what the Lord wants, change the essential truth that it is the Body of Christ, and that to the extent that we are part of Christ, so we are part of each other. If any entity deserves to be owned as a ‘we’ it is the church.
Or is it simply that football is a greater religion and its god a greater god than that of our professed Christian faith- GJJ
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Christ!
We thank God for the ministries of apostle and prophet, and for many of us it was a great joy to have Gareth and Sandra Duffty amongst us during the WorkTogether period. It was a real pleasure to get to know them better and to receive a deposit from their grace into our lives.
One of the things Gareth emphasised was the foundational role of the apostle and particularly his ministry in applying “the plumbline of Christ” into the church. One outcome of the ministry for us is to apply the “plumbline of Christ” to everything we do. In other words, what measure of Christ is there is what we are doing and what we are?
The measure to which Christ is in the church is according to the measure to which He is in each one of us. And it is good to constantly assess that.
So in what way should we apply the “plumbline of Christ” to our lives?
1. To our personal, private life. What is the measure of Christ in our life when no-one else is there? What occupies our thoughts and time when we are on our own? Believe it or not some Christians are taken up with pornography – and this usually when they are on their own.
2. To our community life, our interaction with our neighbours, shop assistants, the authorities. Do we retaliate when the neighbour has his or her music on loud at night. Do we delight in “giving a mouthful(!)” down the phone to various authorities or agencies?
3. To our working life and relationships. We may think we have a lousy boss but are we good employees? Are we practical, hard-working, reliable.
4. To our church relationships. Is there a desire to deepen and broaden our relationships? Or are we prone to be cliquish, or even exhibit various forms of prejudice. Incidentally, do you realise that an “innocent inaction” can be read as a “positive wrong action”?
In my opinion these above things are more important than whether we think Christ is in our corporate worship or not. At the end of the day, the whole is the sum of the parts! - GJJ
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Prophets
It is great this morning to have the prophets with us in our gathering. And these are not self-named prophets who travel all around dispensing “God’s wisdom” but accountable to no-one. These are gifts of the ascended Christ to the church, who work in close team relationship, and in relationship with apostles, such as Gareth Duffty. In doing so they carry an accountability for their ministry, not only to Christ but to each other and to the church at large. These are not ministers, who will deposit a word and then ride off into the sunset but will be accountable for the word they bring.
Prophets, along with apostles, are vital ministers to the Body of Christ, and to the extension of the Kingdom. But the office of apostle and prophet are probably abused more than any of the other ministries.
Here are some biblical thoughts concerning prophets.
- Prophets are part of the foundation of the church, and therefore in relationship they are integral with the church. (Eph 2:20)
- Prophets will, under the anointing of the Spirit, provoke us to works of service, and specifically those works that declare us to be a prophetic people in this world and age. (Eph 4:12)
- The ministries of the prophets will continue until the church attains to the full measure of the stature of Christ. (Eph 4:13)
- Prophets are not fortune tellers or predictors of the future but are those who speak for another. Specifically they will speak for God, to us as a whole and to individuals. (Ex 7:2 with 4:16)
- The ministry of prophets will bring about deliverance. (Hos 12:14)
- A right reception of prophets brings blessing. ((2 Chron 20:20, Mt 10:41)
- Prophets are watched over by God. (Ps 105:15)
- Prophets have the intimate confidence of God. (Amos 3:7)
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Words
The tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruit (Prov 18:21)
Last week we considered the use of idle words. How much we think about what we say. How we respond to what people say to us. How far we really show an interest in what someone says. Our words can betray us or they can endorse us.
The Book of Proverbs says much, so much, about the use of the tongue. And the above verse is quite an interesting one. This reminds me of the childhood rhyme “Sticks & stones may break my bones, but calling never hurt me”. But this rhyme is really not true. Yes, physical abuse is awful but there is something insidious about verbal abuse. The sticks & stones afflict the exterior but words afflict the interior. Similarly beauty lotions only affect the external whereas words can cause a beauty to develop on the inside.
There is the power of life and death in all our words. And it doesn’t take some major statement to be the source of life or death. In fact, some of the most powerful words for good or bad are usually quite short and, at times, almost transient in their nature.
But we can choose to be dispensers of life or death. The above proverb talks about eating the fruit of that that we love. We can love to be dispensers of life in the way that we speak and the words we use. And in delighting in dispensing words of life, we will receive life. Or we can choose to be dispensers of death and delight in ministering death in the way that we speak. And we will also receive the fruit of that habit.
I am sure that all of us have met those people who are constantly judgemental, or constantly negative. It is not a blessing to speak with them. Have you noticed how they drain you. It’s almost a relief when the conversation finishes. And then there is the person who never speaks faith. Again, it becomes almost an assault upon the soul of one whose trust is in God. We do have to be realistic but the fact is that a half empty glass is also a half full one.
We can all choose today to be dispensers of life or dispensers of death. Also, we can choose to fellowship with the sources of life or the sources of death. And the wonderful thing about being a dispenser if life is that we are all qualified to fit this role. - GJJ
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