When We Get to Heaven.....

It is very tempting during arguments and disagreements among Christians to think to yourself, well, when we all get to Heaven they will know how wrong they were and see how right I was! We may even add - "Then they'll be sorry!"

Have you ever taken a torch out into the sunshine and seen how its light all but vanishes? We are told to so let our light shine in the darkness of this world, but when we enter into Heaven and the glorious Light of Jesus our light will be as nothing - or as the scripture says - our righteousness will be as filthy rags.

Our arguments may have a lot of truth in them but no matter how much more right we are than our disputers we are still in darkness as regards complete truth. Jesus warns us against judging others lest we ourselves be judged and He says we are often so busy looking at others faults that we fail to see our own massive fault that hits every one else in the eye!

The main reason we hold onto grievances is because they make us feel superior; someone did something to us that was undeserved, it was unjust and we deserve better treatment. By holding on to these painful memories we have an example to prove that we have been hard done by and maybe we should have something better. We feel justified in giving ourselves some indulgence. Each grievance is like a treasure that we keep in a box and we take them out every now and then and examine them; indulge in a little self pity - a tear or two maybe. If we have new life in Jesus this is an act of desecration to His work in us. It is like smearing mud over ourselves; reopening wounds, keeping hurt alive.

At the moment we are living in a dirty muddy pond. That pond is slimy and its contents fill our mind as well as cover our clothes. When Jesus comes into our lives we realise that there is a better place and we start to emerge from the pond. Very often we fall back in and we are always conscious of the "pondlife" around us. We are affected and very often infected by it. When, one day, we leave this pond are we really likely to want to be thinking and going over our time spent there? Does the butterfly yearn to return to the muddy cabbage patch? When we get out of our sick bed do we long to be ill again? As spring emerges after a long cold, damp winter do we look back and wish its speedy return?

The world we know now has as much in common with the next as a summer landscape has with a winter one and is as different as day is from night.

Follow Me (Matthew 4, 18-22) (Isaiah 58)

FOLLOW ME !!

Let us consider what lies behind this command. It is given in the present tense. Jesus knew when He gave it that very soon His disciples would be left without His physical presence. His desire, however, was not for them to imitate Him but to follow where He leads. After the Crucifixion there is a continuation of discipleship under the tuition of the Master.

The One Who says Follow is the Leader; those who follow must obey with complete faith.

Where does He take us? “Follow Me and I will make you fishers of men” This is the heart of God; to bring people to His Table. His chosen people despised His invitation so He sends His servants out into the world to bring in the outcasts. He says “I will make you” This is the Potter speaking to the clay. It is not for us to strive to become; our works are worthless and our righteousness as dirty rags. Sit still! He says – the more we wriggle and skirm the harder life will be as we fail to learn from the lessons and find our mistakes and hard knocks repeated – until eventually we lie down and say – enough! I can’t take anymore! When there is no more struggling the Will of God can have His Perfect Way and we can begin to follow. Joyful submission is better than weary submission – but only for our sake, - the Father God loves the weary repentant as much as He does the faithful son.

When Jesus told us to Follow Him He was not addressing us from the mouldering pages of history. Immitation may be a sincere form of flattery but it is not what the Lord is asking of His followers. He speaks as a Person Who continues and remains; the One whose Name is I Am; His footstep does not fade with the passing of time. He may walk ahead as our Leader but He also walks beside us as our Companion and our ever present Help. He is also our Rereward. Jesus does not seek clones of Himself as He was represented on earth - He is so much greater than that! He desires us to give ourselves to Him so that He can live and work through us – using the gifts of personality and character that He endowed us with – and adding to that His own characteristics.


Isaiah 58 tells us about the vain endeavours of the self righteous; “ Wherefore have we fasted” say they, “and Thou seest not? Have we afflicted our soul and Thou takest no knowledge” The Lord responds: “ Behold, in the day of your fast ye find pleasure, and exact all your labours. Behold, ye fast for strife and debate, and to smite with the fist of wickedness: ye shall not fast as ye do this day, to make your voice to be heard on High.” The Lord is addressing these people who suppose that the Lord takes pleasure in self punishment. This kind of self abasement is not the same as the death of self. It is actually raising the self – saying; look at me, - how I am suffering – it is attention seeking and the Lord will never take notice of this kind of behaviour.

“Is it such a fast that I have chosen?” The Lord asks, “a day for a man to afflict his soul? To bow down his head as a bulrush, and to spread sackcloth and ashes. Wilt thou call this a fast, and an acceptable day to the Lord?”

The fast that the Lord has chosen, He says, is to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that we break every yoke. To give our bread to the hungry and bring the poor that are cast out into our own house. When we see the naked that we cover them and hide not ourselves from our own family.

Then, the Lord promises “our light shall break forth as the morning, and our health shall spring forth speedily: and our righteousness shall go before us; the Glory of the Lord shall be our rereward. We shall call and the Lord shall answer; we shall cry, and He will say Here I Am. If we take away the yoke (casting our burden on the Lord) stop pointing the finger, and speaking vanity and instead draw out our soul to the hungry and satisfy the afflicted soul; then, the Lord says, our light shall rise in obscurity and our darkness be as the noon day. The Lord will guide us continually, satisfy our soul in drought and make fat our bones. We shall be as a watered garden and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not.

OUR LORD SAYS FOLLOW ME

Our response is slow …We want to know …
The cost …
Our lives don’t come cheap, -It still makes the Lord weep
For the lost

So what do you want we cry … emulation
In exchange for Salvation?

Do we live with nowhere to lay our heads –
As you did Lord in your life here on earth
must we give up our soft beds
live dull lives without mirth?
Must we climb mountains to pray
And fast for 40 days?

Your desire is for each life
To glorify God in a unique way
To simply trust and obey
Put away our worry and strife
To obey is better than sacrifice

Green Grass

GREEN GRASS

The Bible is a spiritually discerned Book; that is to say that the interpretation and the revealing of its mysteries are given by the Holy Spirit of God Himself. This is because the Bible was written by God Himself using His Holy Spirit to transfer the Word to His scribes, the prophets and disciples of old.

I say this as a preface to an example of what happened to me recently while reading a familiar story in the gospel of Mark. (Mark 6, 32 -44).

In the story we read twice of how Jesus and the people who were with Him were in a desert place. However, when they came to be sat down we read that they sat on green grass. Those two words “green grass” leapt out at me as I read. How curious, the Bible is so often lacking in detail yet here we are told that the grass is green! So, I deduced, it must be important. Almost straightaway, I remembered the psalm of the Good Shepherd and how it describes how He makes us to lie down in green pastures. I noticed as I compared the two scriptures, more similitudes; Jesus told His disciples to make the people to sit down. He, as the Good Shepherd makes us to lie down. This implies resting. He makes us rest. Make is an interesting verb in this context; we are not persuaded or asked or invited; we are made. God made us, He made us in His own image and as His sheep He makes us to lie down; Jesus promises that if we follow Him He will make us fishers of men. So God has the active part in our life and we have the resting part. “Come unto Me” Jesus says “all ye that are heavy laden and I will give you rest.”

Most people reading this chapter would say how could a desert place have green grass? We are told twice that the place was a desert. So there is no doubt. What was the miracle that took place here in this desert place? Thousands of people had flocked to hear the words of Jesus; the words of eternal life; their hearts were as deserts ,dry and thirsty. Jesus said, He that is thirsty let Him come unto Me and drink; He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.

In this desert place the people sat on green grass and ate natural food which filled them with more to spare. Jesus turned the grass green and filled the stomachs of the people so that they should know that He is Lord of all; our Good Shepherd, leading us, making us to lie down and feeding us. We may only have a morsel but, if we surrender it to the Lord He will magnify and miraculously multiply it until it completely satisfies the need. If we find ourselves in a desert place let us come into the Presence of the Lord and sit at His feet to hear His Word – we will soon find ourselves in Green Pasture.

Exploring the hidden depths of Scripture

Not An Ordinary Book

The Holy Bible can be compared to the great seas and waters of the earth. They can both be said to bear you up and sustain you; they both hold untold riches and are unfathomable in their depths. They are both mysteriously sourced from on high and from the earth. The Books in the Bible can be compared to rivers which are all separate and unique yet they are all fed from the deep and from the heavens and flow in unity, coming together to form a whole. The showers that fall from the Heavens can be likened to the spoken Word of God that can bless the receiver.
When we go fishing in the Word of God we never know what we will bring to the surface - sometimes it requires a lot of patient waiting and meditating and then sometimes it’s something so great it will pull us off our feet and down to the very depths!

Jesus is the Word of God and it is by His Word that the heavens and earth were made. He spake and it was. The written Word when received into the heart will save, restore and heal - through the saving faith it brings in the Person of Jesus Christ Who is the Son of God. The Son of God is God incarnate (God in human form) because there was no other way, no other good enough to pay the price of sin - Jesus is the Way and the Door and it is only through Him that we can enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.
Every time we open the Holy Word of God, we open up a treasure trove - very often the things we read are challenging and uncomfortable but, if we read and study with the Holy Spirit as our Guide then we will be given understanding and strength to follow as a true disciple of Jesus Christ.
Who is the Holy Spirit?
The Holy Spirit is God and it is through Him that the disciples could maintain the relationship that they had started with Jesus. Through Jesus they learned about how God is our Father; before Jesus returned to be with His Father He promised to leave with His disciples His Holy Spirit who, once He comes to dwell within us, will never leave us nor forsake us. God’s Holy Spirit will cause us to do the things we would rather not do and prevent us from doing the things that we should not do but are very prone to do!

The Holy Spirit of God is the only One Who can give us understanding when we read His Word. In the second verse of the first chapter of the first book of the Bible, Genesis, we read that the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. Come back with me to this point of time; all was still, there was no life, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. Awesome! Now God moves by His Spirit; as He comes down upon the waters of the deep He must see His reflection on the face of the waters. In later chapters we read that God made man in His own image and now, at this time, He wants us to come to the waters of His Word to see our own reflection and how very far we have fallen away from that original image of God.

After that revelation we need to find Jesus - and we can find Him in His Word.