The Christian Journey

On My Way

" I am not what I ought to be, I am not what I want to be. I am not what I hope to be. But thank God I`m not what I used to be" RT Kendall

This quotation struck me somewhat the other day. I first heard it a while back but, like so many things, the Lord saved it up for just the right moment when I might take it in and fully understand what the author was saying.

‘I am not what I ought to be’. I ought to be a bit more sanctified, but I’m not. I ought to be a bit more holy, but I’m not. I ought to love my neighbour more than myself, but I don’t. Having said that, however, I also don’t beat myself up about it too much either. Jesus didn’t have any illusions about us. He knew that we have to make a heart decision about everything in order to even begin to look more like Him. It’s called dying to self and living to God and it is probably the hardest thing we will ever have to do. That’s why He gave us Holy Spirit – to help us walk along the path of denial of self in order to keep on the narrow path that leads to eternal life.

‘I am not what I want to be.’ I want to be more like Jesus. I want to be a better spouse/child/parent/friend/witness to Jesus – but I can do none of these things without You, Lord. I want to be good but it just seems to be impossible for me most of the time. I want to be Your friend, Lord – how can I expect to do that Lord unless your Holy Spirit fills me and keeps me filled. I want to be whatever You want me to be Lord.

‘I am not what I hope to be.’ I hope to somehow be worthy of your love Lord. I know that’s not possible because You love me unconditionally so worthiness doesn’t come into it. I hope to be used by You Lord. God looks at your heart. If He sees a willingness there, then He will use even you – as you are, where you are – and He will enable you to do whatever He asks of you. I hope to be a prophet/missionary/ preacher/pastor one day. What is God calling you to? Do your hopes align with His plan and will for you? I hope so, otherwise you may be disappointed.

Thank God I`m not what I used to be. I used to be a sinner on death row and bound for hell, but now I’m a sinner saved by grace. Jesus paid the price for me and you at Calvary. He bore our sin and paid the cost of our sin. He atoned for everything we had done and everything we will ever do that deserves God’s punishment. Jesus did it all – once and for all time – on the cross at Calvary.

I am not what I ought to be, in which case this advice is for you. Whatever you are doing that is wrong in God’s eyes – stop it. Just stop it. Say you’re sorry, turn your life around, and move on.

I am not what I want to be, but don’t beat yourself up about it. Jesus will forgive you and the Holy Spirit will teach you a better way – God’s way for your life.

I am not what I hope to be, so set yourself some goals. Not impossible great big ones but small achievable goals. Ask the Lord to help you and He will do it !!! Watch in amazement as the Lord works a miracle in your life. Whatever you do, do NOT give in. Determine to do all things to His glory and He will help you.

Thank God I`m not what I used to be – And you’re getting better and better daily. Little by little, bit by bit, inch by inch you are getting nearer to the way Jesus wants you to be.

Personally, I’m not there yet, but I’m on my way.

Celebrate Christmas

It’s Getting Ridiculous

It’s getting ridiculous isn’t it? I don’t know about your home town, but mine is very quiet this Christmas. Not quiet in a “nobody-shopping” kind of way, because the shops are heaving down there. No, it’s quiet musically in that fewer and fewer shops seem prepared to play Christmassy music. Where are the sleigh bells ringing and Santa kissing Mummy? Where is the town Christmas tree, or the carol singers, or the Salvation Army band playing Christmas music – sacred or secular?

Where are the school nativity plays, the Christingle services or anything else Christmas in our schools? Where is the magical glow of anticipation on our grandchildren’s faces as we tell them the Christmas story? Political correctness, it seems, has virtually robbed us of the wonder of Christmas. Add to that, the very much minority pressure groups like civil liberties demanding the removal of ALL things Christian and you are left with the “holiday season”, or “Happy Holiday”. Not even “Xmas”, an appalling word anyway, is still allowed. The world over, it seems, Christ is being taken out of Christmas - apparently on pain of arrest, prosecution, fines, or even prison.

Well I, for one, will never allow that to happen in my house, nor even in my children’s houses. Christmas without Christ is meaningless. It is reduced to just another meaningless but welcome holiday. It has less meaning than Labour Day, New Year, Valentine’s Day. Actually if you take the Christ out of Christmas we really should ditch the holiday altogether. Of course, that won’t happen will it? Too much profit in it to dump it altogether. Besides, the unions would have a fit if we threatened to take a holiday away from them. Cynical?? No – just truth.

For the purists, of course, we celebrate Christmas on the wrong date anyway. It should be way back in September apparently. Besides which, historically, Christmas is really Christ’s Mass which was celebrated by the church at the time they then assumed His birth took place – and the date kinda stuck didn’t it?

And why does political correctness want to destroy Christmas? Because it may offend somebody – especially the Muslims and Hindus. Really? I reckon that removing Christmas would do a far better job of offence because all their shop owners, and there are plenty here in the UK, would suddenly be deprived of their annual bonus. Again, from experience, many Muslims and Hindus also celebrate Christmas as a time of giving and receiving – even if they don’t celebrate Christ’s centrality to Christmas.

All in all, I find it extremely offensive for anyone to suggest that Christmas be renamed “the Winter Holiday” or the “Holiday Season”. I find it offensive to call it a Holiday Tree and not a Christmas Tree. I find it offensive that schools, especially church run schools, cannot celebrate Christmas with a Nativity Play or carol singing. Yet do any of the people trying to ban Christmas take notice of our offence? Not a chance !

So, let us, as Christians, celebrate Christmas in the manner of David celebrating the return of the Ark of the Covenant. He danced before it praising God with all his might. Let us celebrate by singing carols, maybe dancing round the Christmas Tree, and exchanging gifts and doing even more in our communities to help those with a little less than us.

Christmas is the day we celebrate Christ’s birth. Let’s celebrate it properly remembering ‘the reason for the season’. Christmas is Christianity’s second most holy festival. After Easter, Christmas is the greatest time of joy for Christians. Let us state quite firmly to the world that we will NOT surrender Christmas, nor any other Christian festival. Let us put Christ back as being absolutely central to Christmas.

After all, Easter will be next on the killjoys list. Can you imagine if they suggested scrapping Ramadan for the same reasons?

Enough said??

Heart Matters

The Key

“All you need is the key”, said the Lord. “The key is what will open the heart of a man. The key is whatever will make a man weep before Me. The key,” He said, “Is My way of opening a man’s heart so that the world can also see it. I can always see a man’s heart, but the world very rarely sees a man’s heart – unless he chooses to reveal it publicly.” I pondered these words for a while as the Lord showed me what He meant.

What is the key to your heart, I wonder? Luke 6:45 says “The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For out of the overflow of his heart his mouth speaks.”

I am reminded of two stories that confirm this.

In Norway in January 2011, we saw two very different sides to the Norwegian character. One speaker stood up, and in true Pentecostal style, he hollered, “Praise the Lord.” Do that in many Western Pentecostal churches and you will get an enthusiastic response of “Hallelujah”, or “Praise God.” Not in Norway. You get zero response in Norway because the people are not used to displays of any kind of emotion – not even to God. The speaker tried again and again before giving up and getting on with his sermon. Later in that same meeting, we saw a map of Norway spread right across the hall and people were invited to pray for their home or preferred area. The reaction was a total contrast with people shedding so many tears that they completely wrecked the map. The key was to appeal to the people’s hearts and the response reflected where their hearts truly lay – in the lost peoples all over their country.

Last weekend, I heard a pastor speak about God’s provision and, in particular, he spoke on Psalm 23:5 “Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.” The speaker ended up weeping even as he preached and the audience wept with him as he spoke straight from his own heart.

Through this last incident, I realised the Lord was speaking very clearly to me. So much so that later that same day, when we had some baptisms, there were some moments when the Holy Spirit’s presence was so tangible that you could almost cut it. Like when the very elderly couple, both in their eighties, were baptised. Like when a couple of the testimonies really grabbed your heart strings. Yet the most poignant moment came when one young man stepped forward. He couldn’t even speak so someone helped him out a bit. The pastor stepped forward and just held his arms wide. The young fella hesitated then almost reluctantly stepped forward for his hug. The entire church, knowing something of the journey this young man had been on, stood and applauded and I, for one, ‘lost it completely’ as I wept tears of joy for his salvation. Many others were like it too. I realised afterwards that the Lord has been placing in me a love for the lost and outcasts of the world who need Jesus maybe even more than the rest of us.

That is my key – a love for the lost. It is a key that the Lord has planted deep within my heart. I had not realised it until last week, but I have been very emotional recently – but it is emotional for people; for their salvation. It comes over me during praise and worship, during prayer, and especially during hatch, match, and despatch events. (That’s baby dedications and adult baptisms, weddings, and funerals to the rest of us.)

Our pastors key is simply love for all of God’s people – saved and unsaved alike. I would like to think that this God-given love maybe one of the keys to revival for our town, our area, our country and wherever else the Spirit wants it to go beyond our shores.

MUSIC

Inspiring Music

What is it that makes music inspire us? Quite honestly I don’t know the answer. All I know is that one version of a piece of music or a song sets the hair on my neck standing on end while another version leaves me cold. All I know is that one version can make me weep while another has a zero effect on me.

Me and music go back a long way. As a family, we used to sing harmony together. My Dad was a fine bass singer – even offered an audition at the Royal Opera House in London. My sister and me formed the rest. Mum would have played piano if we’d had one and my brother, although a jazz aficionado, just hummed along. We made pretty good music too. Sis once sang with one of the top 60’s UK pop groups as backing while I had to be satisfied with being part of a harmony quartet singing old favourites at church and old folks concerts. My real problem was that, hearing wise, I had perfect pitch – probably still have. To me, Sinatra couldn’t sing a note hardly while Ella was the tops. Sinatra’s phrasing was near perfect but he was off key as much as he was on key. They and their contemporaries music was my childhood and some, as now, turned me on while others simply left me cold.

I have decided that it’s the anointing that matters – NOT the music. Especially classical and religious music from Blue Grass to cathedral choirs (and the Cathedrals too). I believe there can be an anointing on all music. The Bible says to worship Him with music, singing, and dancing and I don’t think that is limited to “religious” music. Great virtuoso performances in Christian P&W, or classical music, or even jazz have all made the hair on my neck stand up and it is an anointing on that performance. After all, the Bible also says to “do everything we do as unto the Lord” and perhaps, when musicians in any genre play outstandingly, and even if they don’t realise it, they are playing ‘as unto the Lord’.

Dancing before the Lord is another area of praise and worship expressions of faith and love for the Lord. When the ark was returned to the temple, King David danced ‘furiously’ before the Lord as the ark advanced on its journey into the temple. 2 Sam 6:14-16. Whatever Michal thought of his dancing, the Lord obviously approved of David’s dance offering. He must have done so because, whenever the Lord considered any offence against the Ark of the Covenant, someone paid dearly – like Uzzah in 2 Sam 6:6

Instruments in the Bible are many and varied. They are mentioned all over the place – harp, lyre, trumpet, drum, tambourine and so on. We are exhorted to praise God with all of these and with clapping, dancing, and our voices also. So both playing instruments, and singing and dancing, are quite biblical and quite holy things for us to do.

I believe that, as God gave us ‘all things’, so he gave us music, and singing, and dancing for us to offer praise and worship to Him. I believe He gave us these things to inspire us and to draw us nearer to Himself. I can hardly wait to listen to the music in heaven – can you? I have been privileged to hear angels singing and that has really whetted my appetite for the full revelation of heavenly music.

Roll over Beethoven – the heavenly choirs are coming. Hallelujah.

Communicating with God

Communication

I have spoken a lot in recent blog posts about listening to God. Yet ‘to communicate’ is an interactive verb. In other words – it’s a two way thing. So communication with God is supposed to be a two-way conversation. Yet, for so many of us, it’s a one way dialogue – frequently a diatribe. Far too often we take our ‘shopping list’ to God and if it’s not a shopping list it’s a list of advisory points!

How arrogant we can become – standing before the Lord God Almighty, advising Him on topics we know little about and of which we understand even less. Sometimes we stand there and treat Him like a kind of Santa Claus – “Lord, you know my heart, all I want is . . . . . . . “ He sure does know your heart, and you sure ain’t getting your ‘I want’ list!

Isaiah 40:12-14 puts it thus, “ Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, or with the breadth of his hand marked off the heavens? Who has held the dust of the earth in a basket, or weighed the mountains on the scales and the hills in a balance? Who has understood the mind of the LORD, or instructed him as his counselor? Whom did the LORD consult to enlighten him, and who taught him the right way? Who was it that taught him knowledge or showed him the path of understanding?”

Then in Job 38:1-11 God speaks to Job saying, “Then the LORD answered Job out of the storm. He said: “Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge? Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me.

“Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it? On what were its footings set, or who laid its cornerstone— while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy?

“Who shut up the sea behind doors when it burst forth from the womb, when I made the clouds its garment and wrapped it in thick darkness, when I fixed limits for it and set its doors and bars in place, when I said, ‘This far you may come and no farther; here is where your proud waves halt’? “

Sometimes, it seems, we tend to forget just who God really is. Sometimes we forget that He has promised to supply our needs but not our wants. He knows what we need but He may not be very interested in what we want.

This is why it is so important for communication with God to be an exchange rather than a one-way request list of mixed needs and wants. This is why God wants so much to just talk to us – if only we’d be still, know that He is God, and listen.