A change of pace

Now it is only two days to Christmas. What a marvellous time of year for many of us. Lyn and I are so looking forward to celebrating our love of Jesus and one another with our children, their spouses and our grandchildren. How amazing the Lord has been to us.

In February 2012 it will be 30 years since I believed in Jesus and the work of the cross. The Christmas of 1981 was totally different to the one we will celebrate in two days time – all because of Jesus. It’s amazing how all those carols that play in the background of shopping centres declare truth that is so easily missed or misunderstood.

Through January I will be taking a rest from writing my blog. I will be starting to write my next book in the second half of January and will focus my writing efforts there.

I wish you a wonderful Christmas and look forward to seeing you on these pages again on Feb 3, 2012.

Until next time may you be blessed with God’s favour and life.

Prevention is not the best cure

I assume that, like me, you have those days when your heart is heavy and aches for something to be different. This week I have found people who love Jesus and whom I love echoing John’s comment to Jesus:

‘Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in Your name, And we tried to prevent him because he was not following us.’

It is all too common that we try to prevent others being who they are in Christ because they don’t do what we do or see what we see. Prevention comes in many forms: criticism, judgement, advice, warning and to name a few. These expressions of prevention can always be justified by those exercising these tools but do they stand in the face of Jesus’ response to John?

But Jesus said,

“Do not hinder him, for there is no one who will perform a miracle in My name, and be able soon afterward to speak evil of Me.”

It is important to remember John was motivated because they ‘were not following us’. I assume ‘us’ is the disciples and their understanding of how Jesus had sent them out. Jesus declares that He is irresistible regardless of how people serve Him. That it is not our role to prevent people from serving or following Him in whatever way they choose. Jesus knows that our mixed motives and understanding are the domain of the Spirit to work out not ours to prevent through any means.

It seems to me prevention only leads to tension and division rather than love. The greatest and most powerful characteristic of the Kingdom of God is love. Anything that we reach for that undermines or threatens love being expressed and acted upon needs to be resisted by us. Mark 9: 42 – 48 speaks of disciples being self-governing. That is, free men who are self-aware and take personal responsibility to be like Jesus.

In matters of following Jesus, prevention is not the best cure. Love that trusts the work of the Spirit is how Jesus taught us to respond when he also said:

“…Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.” Mark 9: 50(b)

Until next time may you be blessed with God’s favour and life.

Standing On The Shoulders Of Others

The longer I am a disciple of Jesus the more I realise how much I owe to those who have gone before me.  I stand on the shoulders of Pentecostal preachers and ministers who opened up a way for me when they paid a price that  included rejection, suffering and ridicule.   I am also discovering that what seem to be new insights into living a supernatural lifestyle have previously been revealed to those before me.

Leo Harris, in the 1940′s, was preaching and releasing the supernatural power of God.  He was committed to invading the impossible.  Leo was known for:

–     Proclaiming the authority and reliability of God’s word and believing it was God’s responsibility to make it work;

–     Awakening the church to its responsibility;

–     Restoring to the church the power of the Holy Spirit;

–     Recovery by the church of the forgotten truths of the New Testament;

–     Sticking to the “hard” stuff – the things that cannot happen unless God is in them;

–     Holding forth the need for  a revelation that we are the children of God;

–     Presenting the absolute significance of thinking biblically; and,

–     Renaming our world from God’s perspective.

Here I stand in 2011, some seventy years later, learning and proclaiming the same truths with the same results of healings, miracles, salvations, signs & wonders and deliverance.  I’m not sure how we lost our way but…I offer the proposition that we did.  I wonder what it will take for more of God’s people today to live out of what the work of the cross has enabled in us for the benefit of others.

Until next time may you be blessed with God’s favour and life.

Being Son Conscious

God is not dealing with our sin but with our identity.

The bible teaches us that God is not counting our sins against us (2 Corinthians: 5:19), that He has forgiven us all out transgressions (Colossians 2:13), that Jesus was the sacrifice offered once and for all time for our sins (Hebrews 10:12) and that we at to be dead to sin and alive to God (Romans 6:11).

John 16:10 teaches us that the Holy Spirit is convicting us of our righteousness.  That is, that we are Sons of God (Romans 8: 10 – 17 ).  He is calling us up into our identity in Christ not calling us out to punish and/or judge our sin.  God is more interested in what we are missing by way of revelation of who we are in Christ than He is in calling out what is wrong with us.  Consequently, He is not dealing with our sin but with our identity.

To illustrate how this looks in reality…Some people say they have an anger problem – sin consciousness.  But what if they have a patience problem – identity on the basis of the fruit of the Spirit?  God is not focussed on how our past shaped our lack of Christ-like behaviour as much as He is focussed on what we have been given through faith in the finished work of the cross and walking in that.  When we focus on who we are becoming – our identity in Jesus, our destiny – we adopt a present/future way of living above a present/past mindset.

The Holy Spirit works with vision and possibilities.  For those who struggle with anger He wants to help them discover patience more than controlling anger.  Behaviour is always the echo of belief.  We are not called to manage sinful behaviour we are to position ourselves to be led by the Spirit to be renewed by the transforming of our minds.  Wrong believing leads to wrong behaviour.  Right believing leads to right behaviour.

When we believe right about who we are in Christ – our identity – everything can change.

Until next time may you be blessed with God’s favour and life.