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Christianityworks Official Podcast
Hosted by Berni Dymet · EN
There is such incredible power in God’s Word! Power to change. Power to make an impact in this world. That’s what Christianityworks is all about – in depth teaching straight out of God’s Word. Join Berni Dymet as he opens God's Word to discover what God has to say into your life, today.
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Last Roll of the Dice // Taking God at His Word, Part 4
Oct 2600:23:42Tap to summarizeAt some point, we all end up at the end of our rope. Sometimes it’s our own fault. Sometimes it’s not. At those times – we feel that we need to do something – it’s like the last roll of the dice … Jesus Christ Superstar It is just fantastic to be with you again today and today we are going through the last message in a four week series called, "Taking God at His Word". God makes a whole bunch of promises in His Word about who we are in Christ. Jesus, when you think about it, is the "feel good" factor, but every time I get up and I say, “We need to feel good about who we are in Christ,” someone will come up to me afterwards and say, “No, no, no, we shouldn’t talk that way. We’re sinners; we shouldn’t be full of ourselves. No, you shouldn’t talk that way.” And my answer is, “Come on! Jesus came to give us abundant life – life to the full. He said, “When I set you free, you’ll be free indeed.” And again, later, Paul, the Apostle, writes, “For freedom, we have been set free.” The whole point of Jesus dying on the cross to pay for our weaknesses and our failures – yeah our sin – and Him rising again, the whole point of that – the death and resurrection – is that we should have a new life – a fresh start when we put our faith in Him. That doesn’t mean that there’s a magic wand and nothing bad will ever happen to us and that we won’t face adversity – no, it doesn’t mean that. But it means that we can face everything that the world throws at us; that life throws at us and feel good about who we are in Jesus Christ. Since the day that Jesus came into my life, into my heart I have been able to feel good about myself. Not because of who I am; not because of what I’ve done but because who Jesus is and what He’s done for me. We need to ditch the self-image – and we all have a self-image of who we are - sometimes that is an arrogant, pompous self-image, as mine was and sometimes it is such a low self-image. You know, people who suffer with low self-esteem have a low self-image. We need to take that and say that’s the old man; that person is dead. I have a new image of who I am. I am made in the image of God and I am going to have a faith image. It is time, people, to take God at His Word. The first three programs in this series – firstly three weeks ago, we started off with a program called, ‘Come as you are’ and we saw how God says that we have Jesus, the High Priest, who knows exactly what it’s like to walk in our shoes, because He has and because of that, because of Jesus, we can and should come boldly before the throne of grace. It’s like God’s having a barbecue; God’s having a party and it’s "come as you are". It’s not – let’s change ourselves before we come to God – no, come as you are and let Him change us. Big step - take God at His Word! And then two weeks ago we looked at Ezekiel chapter 37, in a message called, "Can these bones live". We saw how God called Ezekiel to prophesy over Israel and to raise them up from being a valley full of dead bones, to being alive and full of God’s life and full of God’s breath and when we come to Him feeling dead; like a valley full of dry bones, that’s exactly what He wants to do for us. It’s time to take God at His Word! And last week we looked at overcoming adversity God’s way. We saw how Israel had strayed yet again from God and in the Book of Malachi, God pointed out their sin and their failure and He gave them a way back, specifically for them, something that they could cope with and so they took God at His Word. Today we are going to look at another form of adversity. That adversity was a consequence of Israel’s own rebellion against God and that happens – we do that sometimes, but this week I’d like to look at the sort of adversity that happens that’s not our fault – when you get retrenched or someone you love dies or a relationship breaks down or sickness strikes us or we just feel this heaviness – the list can be as long as your arm. What happens to us on the inside is that we feel small and alone and insignificant and Jesus is Jesus, yes He’s Jesus, but He’s the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. He’s high and He’s mighty and He created the whole universe. Does He have the time or the inclination or the will to help me when I’m in the middle of that? Yeah, I know, we know it in our heads, but in our hearts, right at those times? It can be so difficult to realise that God wants to help us. So we are going to look at someone that Jesus helped; it was the woman who had been bleeding for twelve years. He helped her when she was a nobody and when He was everybody - He was Jesus Christ, Superstar. Let’s have a read; if you have a Bible, grab it and let’s go to Mark chapter 5, beginning at verse 21. This is how it goes. When Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side, a great crowd gathered around Him and He was by the sea. Then one of the leaders of the synagogue, named Jairus, came and when Jairus saw Jesus, he fell at His feet and begged Him repeatedly, “My little daughter is at the point of death. Come, come and lay your hands on her so that she may be made well and live.” And so Jesus went with Jairus. A large crowd followed them and pressed in on Jesus. Now there was a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years. She had endured much under many physicians and had spent all that she had and she was no better, but rather she grew worse. She heard about Jesus and came up behind Him in the crowd and touched His cloak, because she said to herself, “If I can just touch His clothes I’ll be made well.” Immediately, her hemorrhaging stopped and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. Immediately aware that power had gone out of Him, Jesus turned around in the crowd and said, “Who touched my clothes?” His disciples said to Him, “You can see the whole crowd is pressing in on you, how can you say, “Who touched me?” But Jesus looked all around to see who’d done it. The woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling and fell down before Jesus and told Him the whole truth, and He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well, go in peace and be healed.” While He was still speaking, some people came from the leader’s house, from Jairus’s place to say “Your daughter is dead, don’t trouble the teacher any further,” but overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the leader of the synagogue, “Don’t fear, only believe.” The crux of this story is that Jesus is walking along and the leader of a synagogue, Jairus, comes to Him because his daughter is dying and yet, what is going to Jairus’s house which is a pressing need - the guy’s daughter is dying – this woman stops Jesus on the way and He has time to spend with her. Look at the key players; there is a power play going on here in this story. The crowd, the disciples, Jairus, Jesus, the woman, Jairus’s friends and of course, Jairus’s daughter and we see that this huge crowd was following Jesus and Jesus had been doing miracle after miracle and so He was attracting a really huge crowd. I remember when I was a young boy and the Beatles came to town, and the crowds were all around. This, this is Jesus Christ Superstar, and yet He has time to stop for this woman. Who’s Got the Power We’re looking today on the program at this story of the bleeding woman; this woman who’d be struggling and she’d been to doctors and she’d lost all her money – had been struggling for twelve years and Jesus comes to town; Jesus Christ Superstar, followed by this huge crowd. Jairus, the synagogue leader, gets to Him first and a power play happens. Let’s just look at the woman and Jairus – just compare them. Here were two people that both came to Jesus with a need - Jairus, his daughter was dying. Well, that’s a big need; there was an urgency around that. And this woman - this woman had been struggling for twelve years in sickness. Let’s just do a bit of a comparison. In this first century, patriarchal society; on the one hand Jairus was a man, she was a woman and women in those days were often treated just as a possession. See it was a patriarchal society. He was the leader of a synagogue – he was a religious leader – he was somebody in this town. This woman, she had no position – he was respected, she was despised. He had an identity; we know his name – Jairus. Tell me, what was the woman’s name? We don’t read her name in the story; she had no identity, she was a nobody – we never get to find out what her name was. He was close to God; he was a leader in the synagogue, but she, she was an outcast. You say to me, “Berni, how do you know that she was an outcast; she was just a woman that was sick? No, no, no. She had been bleeding for twelve years and under to Mosaic Law, this woman was unclean and so she was an outcast. Just flip your Bible, if you have one, back to Leviticus, right at the beginning, in the law; in the Torah. This is the Jewish, Hebrew Law that was laid down under God’s hand. The law under which Israel lived and in chapter 15 of Leviticus, verse 25, it says this: If a woman has a discharge of blood for many days, not at the time of her impurity or if she has a discharge beyond the time of her impurity, all the days of her discharge she shall continue in uncleanness. As in the days of her impurity, she shall be unclean. Every bed, on which she lies during all the days of her discharge, shall be treated as the bed of her impurity and everything on which she sits, shall be unclean as in the uncleanness of her impurity. Who ever touches these things shall be unclean and shall wash his clothes and bathe in water as be unclean until the ...
Transcribe →Overcoming Adversity - God's Way // Taking God at His Word, Part 3
Oct 1900:23:47Tap to summarizeSometimes, we head off in our own direction - and then we discover, at some point, that we’ve strayed so far away from God's plans for our lives. We’ve all done it. You have, I have. And yet the amazing thing is that God always, always provides us with a way back home. Always. Israel’s Dilemma Over these last few weeks on Christianityworks, we’ve been looking at what it means to take God at His Word. Sometimes it can seem that God’s promises are just too good to be true. An abundant life full of blessing and we think, “Oh, yea – right!” But it also seems that some people who meet Jesus end up living out this abundant life of blessing, and well, others don’t. Why is that? I believe that one of the key factors of living a victorious life through our relationship with Jesus Christ is taking God at His Word. Because when we see all the troubles of life; when we see the struggles of life, sometimes it’s just too good to be true. Today we are going to look at overcoming adversity, by taking God at His Word and it’s a special kind of adversity – it’s an adversity that we bring on ourselves, because sometimes we go through tough times as a direct consequence of our own actions and choices and behaviours. Bad choices, wrong motives, wrong thoughts, wrong behaviour have consequences. If I spend too much money on my credit card there are going to be financial consequences. If my wife Jacqui and I don’t spend time together, there are going to be consequences in our relationship. We have to live out those consequences and a number of times through the Bible we see this principal “as we sow, so shall we reap”. It’s a spiritual, emotional and physical principal that free choice has consequences and we have this good and loving Father who lets us bear the consequences of our sin. The sin of gluttony – if we eat too much, we put on weight, we get lethargic, we get disease. What we eat and how we eat has a direct impact on our lives. There’s a cause and effect relationship – as we sow so shall we reap. And sometimes our own choices and decisions bring us to a place of adversity. Now, please, it’s not always like that. If you read the story of the blind man – the man who was blind from birth, in John’s Gospel, chapter 9. Here was this man who was blind from birth and the disciples said to Jesus, “Well, who sinned - this man, his parents? What sin caused this man to be blind?” And Jesus said, “It’s no one’s fault; there’s no sin. This guy is blind so that I could heal him.” And as I look back on my life, it’s certainly true. Sometimes I have done things that have brought consequences on my life, and have brought times of adversity. Sometimes it wasn’t my fault at all but today we are going to look at that specific form of adversity that comes when we are living out the consequences of our own sin. And when we are in that place; when we are in that place of adversity, how do we get out of it, how do we deal with that? What is God’s way? What is God’s wisdom for us? We are going to go to the last book of the Old Testament – the Book of Malachi, chapter 3 and we will be looking at specifically verses 6 through 12, so if you have a Bible, go and grab it, open it up – it’s the last book before Matthew’s Gospel. It’s a short book – only a few pages long, and we are going to see the relevance of how God provides us with the road back. Now in this particular passage, (you may have heard this passage a lot of times in your church) we are going to read just right now, verses 8 through 12. And it says this: Will anyone rob God, yet you are robbing me? But you say, “How are we robbing you? And God answers: “In your tithes and offerings. You’re accursed with a curse for you are robbing me; the whole nation on you. Bring the full tithe into the storehouse so that there may be food in my house and thus put me to the test,” says the Lord of Hosts. “See if I won’t open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you an overflowing blessing. I’ll rebuke the locusts for you so that it will not destroy the produce of you’re soil and your vine in the field shall not be barren,” says the Lord of Hosts. “Then all the nations will count you happy for you will be a land of delight.” says the Lord of Hosts. Now in a lot of churches you hear that particular verse quoted and it says something like this, “If you tithe your income; that is if you give a tenth of your income to church, then God will open the windows of heaven and bless you. Now there is truth in that because there is a spiritual principle that "as we sow, so shall we reap", and if we sow abundantly into God’s Kingdom then God will bless us abundantly. The problem is that we can take this verse on its own out of context, and all of a sudden God becomes like a slot machine. You know, we put a coin in and we pull the handle and the money flows out the bottom, and that’s not what God intended because this passage comes in a particular context; it comes in the context where Israel was supposed to be getting blessed. You know, they started off with the promise of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and Jacob had twelve boys and the whole of that family ended up in Egypt and they grew into a large nation and God took them out of slavery through the Red Sea, through the exodus of forty years in the desert into the Promised Land – the land that He had promised to Abraham. They went through a time where Judges ruled the land and then kings and then Israel split into two nations and because they were unfaithful. In 586 BC, the Babylonian empire overran Jerusalem, destroyed them, took them into captivity for seventy years and then God brought them back after the seventy years. Now the exiles were turned back and you’d think they’d have it all sorted out by then, but they continued on with their failure to obey God. There’s several wonderful pictures in the Books of Haggai and Zachariah, that once they come back from their Babylonian captivity that God will bless them - you know, God will pour out His blessing on this land, material prosperity. If you look at Zachariah chapter 8 verses 1 to 8, there’s this sense of the captives streaming back into this land of abundance. Yet, the completion of the temple – they rebuilt that – it hasn’t ushered in all this blessing. They had an expectation of blessing but instead of blessing, there’s Persian domination; there are hostile foreigners, there are plagues, there are droughts, there are locusts – it’s that like our Christian walk? God promises this enormous blessing and sometimes we turn around and say, “But, hang on a minute, this isn’t a blessing at all – this is hell – all these bad things are happening to me. God, why are these bad things happening? What’s going wrong? We are going to have a look at exactly what God tells Israel, next. God’s Perspective Well, there was Israel; they were back in the Promised Land again. They’d had prophesy after prophesy of blessing and all of a sudden they discover – they turn around and say, “Life is actually awful. Life is not going well at all.” Have a look what Malachi writes in chapter 3 verses 13 to 15: You have spoken harsh words against me, says the Lord, yet you say, “How have we spoken against you? You’ve said it is vain to serve God, what do we profit by keeping His command or by going about as mourners before the Lord of Hosts? Now we count the arrogant happy; evil doers only prosper but when they put God to the test, they escape. In other words, things were not going as well for Israel as they expected from the prophesies that they had been given. Now Malachi is the last of the Minor Prophets, the last book of the Hebrew Canon – the Old Testament and it’s a monologue from God. It’s God’s perspective; God points them to the problem and He gives them the solution. And here’s the problem – let’s just move quickly through the Book of Malachi and have a look what God says. In chapter 1 verse 2, He says this: “I’ve loved you,” says the Lord, “but you say, “How have you loved us?” “Is not Esau Jacob’s brother,” says the Lord, “Yet I have loved Jacob but I have hated Esau. I have made his hill country desolation and his heritage a desert for jackals.” God says ‘I have preferred you;’ when He says ‘I have loved Jacob,’ He is saying ‘I have loved you.’ God says, “I love you, yet you show contempt for God’s love.” And then you look further down, in verse 6, and He says: Look, a son honours his father, and servants their master. If I then am a Father, where is the honour due to me and if I am your master, where is the respect due to me? , says the Lord of Hosts, to you. O priest who despise my name. You say, “How have we despised you name?” By offering polluted food on your alter and you say, “How have we polluted it?" By thinking that the Lord’s Table may be despised. When you offer blind animals in sacrifice, isn’t that wrong? Oh, that someone among you would shut the temple doors so that you would not kindle the fire on my alter in vain. They weren’t putting God first – they weren’t giving God their best. The whole sacrificial system was set up so that animals would be sacrificed – a blood sacrifice – to atone for sin. Now we don’t go through that any more because Jesus is our blood sacrifice; Jesus died for us. We are forgiven through that sacrifice but that wasn’t the case back then and God had commanded them to give their best – their first fruits, their best animals, their best food in sacrifice. And these people were giving God their second best or their third best and worse than that, the priests were bored. Look at verse 13: <p style="padding-left...
Transcribe →Can These Bones Live? // Taking God at His Word, Part 2
Oct 1200:23:38Tap to summarizeSometimes, to be honest, life can feel really dry. You look out across the landscape of your life and all you can see is dry bones. You know there’s more out there, but right now you just can’t see how it’ll ever feel “alive” again. Valley of Dry Bones Have you ever noticed that some people seem to go on with God in a really powerful and exciting way and other people who say, "well I’m a Christian"; I don’t know, they tend to be, if I can use the term "puced", as you know, some people just don’t seem to be living out the joy and the power and the victory that a Christian life should represent. I wonder why that is? Well ... Jesus called us to go and make disciples; He called us to be disciples, not just believers. I think there is a distinction; a difference. A disciple, well, there’s something resolute, there’s something firm in their direction, they have a sense of where God is taking them and they’re radical believers with their lives, in who Jesus is and what Jesus says. So they "hear" the Word of God but they also "do" the Word of God. Someone who’s a believer and yet not a disciple, well, that person can believe; that person can live the story of Christ intermittently, but there is a sense of floating, there’s a sense of they’re not really deeply committed to be followers of Jesus Christ. There’s a wishy-washiness about just being a believer and not a disciple; being just a believer is like hearing but not doing and as I said, the Lord calls us to be His disciples. The Lord calls us to go on in strength and power and victory, to live an abundant and exciting and amazing life. I really get excited when I think about what God has called us to. Now I’m not saying that somehow, a disciple has it all together, but they’re on the path, they are committed to the journey with the Lord, wherever He wants to take them. A believer has a sort of an intellectual ascent to the Word of God but they are so often controlled by feelings and circumstances and we know that feelings are fickle; we know that circumstances blow an ill-wind today and a good wind tomorrow. We can’t predict circumstances – we can’t rely entirely on our feelings. Jesus is about making disciples and not believers. That is why we are going through a series of teaching at the moment that I’ve called, “Taking God at His Word,” because it seems to me that someone who is committed to Christ, committed to walking the walk with Jesus, is someone who takes God at His Word. God has some amazing promises in His Word, the Bible. Last week we looked at the promise that He will take us just as we are. He will take us with all our weaknesses and frailties and even despite that we can come boldly before His throne of grace. If you have a Bible, let’s go quickly back there because it’s an awesome Scripture; in Hebrews chapter 4, verses 15 and 16, where it says this. We don’t have a High Priest who’s unable to sympathise with our weaknesses, but we have one, who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet was without sin. Let us therefore, approach the throne of grace with boldness so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. In other words, because Jesus knows what it is like; because He has walked in our shoes on this earth as a man, because of that He can sympathise with our circumstances and because of that, we should come boldly before the throne of grace. In other words God’s having a party and it‘s come as you are. We don’t have to get all dressed up; we don’t have to get our lives sorted out to come before God. That’s what happens when we have a relationship with Him, through Jesus Christ. Today we are going to get on with the next message, which is called, “Can these bones live?” Have you ever looked across at your life and thought, “My life is so dry, it shouldn’t be like this, but as I survey the landscape of my life, it’s like a valley of dry bones? It’s like – can it ever get any better, can I ever have a real sense of vibrant abundant life that I know my relationship with Jesus should bring me?” We all get to that point at sometime. We all get to that stage where we think – my life is just so dry. How’s that going to change? Well, it’s time to take God at His Word. If you have a Bible, grab it and flip it open to Ezekiel chapter 37. Ezekiel is one of the books of the Old Testament and it comes just after Isaiah, Jeremiah and then the Book of Ezekiel. We are going to chapter 37 and we pick up the story of Israel here, when they have been in exile in Babylon for almost seventy years. This is about the third part of the Book of Ezekiel. The first couple of parts are oracles of judgement against Judah and all the other nations surrounding them but this passage that we’re about to look at, at the beginning of Ezekiel chapter 37, is really early on in the third part and the third part of the book is the book of hope. It’s about the restoration of Israel because as I said, at this point, Israel has been in exile in Babylon for almost seventy years. God made them a promise; God promised them when He brought them up out of Egypt – remember they spent almost four centuries in slavery in Egypt, after Joseph, the son of Jacob, the son of Isaac, the son of Abraham. Joseph was a Jew who became Prime Minister of Egypt and so all the tribes of Israel thrived in Egypt and became so populous they were enslaved by Pharaoh and there they lived until they cried out and God heard their cry and sent Moses to bring them out of Egypt. But they lived four hundred years in Egypt and then went through the exodus of forty years through the desert and finally past into the Promised Land – the land of milk and honey, but they didn’t stick with what God called them to do – they didn’t obey God and God’s promise was, “I’ll bless you in your land if you obey me but if you don’t, you’ll lose your land.” And sure enough, Babylon rose up against them and in 586/587BC, the Babylonian empire over-ran Jerusalem; burnt it, destroyed it, killed a lot of people and took the rest of them into slavery in exile in Babylon. And so these people were thinking, “Woe, what about God’s promises? The temple’s been destroyed – that’s where God lives. Now we’re exiled and Jerusalem is raised to the ground, what about God’s promises?” So there’s a sense of hopelessness and despair after generations. Living again, in exile in another country, in Babylon and this is what God says into that situation. It’s got powerful implications for us today, but let’s just see what happens. Ezekiel was taken by God – have a listen. Chapter 37 beginning verses 1 and 2. Ezekiel says this: The hand of the Lord came upon me and He brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of a valley – it was full of bones. He led me all around them; there were very many lying in the valley and they were very dry. And here’s this valley full of dry, dead bones. Ezekiel was a priest and he knew the importance of burial. I mean these bones weren’t buried and the reason it happen is they had a treaty with God and they disobeyed God and so the armies of Israel were killed and bodies were left to wild animals and it was God’s punishment. You can read about it – we won’t go there now but in Deuteronomy chapter 28, verses 25 and 26, it explicitly predicts that if Israel doesn’t obey God this will happen – their armies will be destroyed. We find out later in this passage, in verse 11, that these are the bones of the House of Israel. But what about your house? What about your dry bones? What about the relationships and the sin and the wallowing and the drifting that we sometimes experience in our Christian walk? Sometimes we don’t even know why it is. The thing that God does here is He shows Ezekiel the dry bones, He walks him around. He says, “Get a grip on reality.” Well maybe He’s talking to us today – “Get a grip on reality! What are the dry bones in our lives; the things that are coming to ruin our walk and our relationship with God and the wonderful life that God has planned for us; the dead stuff? What are the dry bones? We are going to look at what God does with the dry bones next. Life in His Word Ok, so we’re living life and we feel that it’s like this valley of dry bones that Ezekiel is talking about here. Well, what does God do with those dry bones? Let’s pick it up in verse 3 of chapter 37. God says to Ezekiel: "Mortal, can these bones live?” I answered, “Lord God, you know.” Then He said to me, “Prophesy to these bones and say to them, “Oh, dry bones, hear the Word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God to these bones, “I will cause breath to enter you and you shall live, I will lay sinews on you and will cause flesh to come upon you and cover you with skin and put breath in you and you shall live and you shall know that I am the Lord you God.” So this is the first recorded tennis match in the Bible. God serves up and says to Ezekiel, “Can these bones live,” and Ezekiel returns the ball across the net and says, “Well, God, it’s really up to you.” I mean, they’re dead, they’re dry, it’s devastated, it’s hopeless, they’re crunching around together,” God and Ezekiel in this death valley and the truth is that it looks impossible to Ezekiel, but he daren’t say that. Well, let’s come back to our valley of dry bones; the broken relationships, the persistent sin, the dryness, the drudgery and God asks you or God asks me, “Can these bones live?” How do we answer that? I think we return that to God and say, “Lord, Lord you know.” Israel was in a hopeless situation, the world power of the day, Babylon, had them in slavery, they were spiritually and emotionally and morally and nationally bankrupt. They di...
Transcribe →It's Come As You Are // Taking God at His Word, Part 1
Oct 500:23:40Tap to summarizeHave you ever thought to yourself – “Well, things are a bit of a mess. I’ve made a hash of this or that and before I go to God with this, I’d better sort it out”? Well, we all do that sometimes. But it turns out that God’s having a party – and it’s come as you are. The Faces we Wear God promises that when we place our faith in Jesus Christ, that He will give us an abundant life, abundant blessing; an eternal life, a life that we can’t even begin to imagine. Do you ever look at that sometimes and think, “It’s just too good to be true?” Yet some people seem to live with an amazing confidence in the blessing of God and others don’t, and the difference, I think, is that sometimes we don’t take God at His Word. That’s why this week we are starting a brand new, four part series, called exactly that, “Taking God at His Word.” We can see our circumstances, we can see the physical things around us but with our eyes we can’t see the spiritual dimension; we can’t see the ‘God’ dimension and quite often, we look at our physical circumstances and say, “Well, God couldn’t possibly take my life and my circumstances and my failures and bless me in the middle of that.” But God means to do exactly that; His Word is full of promises that He wants to bless us – He wants to bless you, He wants to bless me. So today we are going to begin by looking at some of those promises, in particular the promises He makes about the relationship between Him and us. Relationships are a funny and complex thing. How well we know one another influences how much of ourselves we expose to one another. Someone that we don’t know very well, someone that we have a shallow relationship with, we’re not going to talk to them about the deepest, most meaningful things in our lives. And someone that we do know really well and don’t like, who hurts us, well, we are going to be guarded with them. Hopefully a relationship between a husband and wife is really open and frank but even there, there can be barriers. We all have different masks or faces for different occasions. I know I do - a professional face that I put on and a personal the face. The face that we put on in a passing relationship verses one that we wear in a permanent relationship. And even though I tend to be a very open and forthright and direct person, still, we all do it, don’t we? We have different faces for different people, different faces for different situations. We guard who we are depending on the person we are having the relationship with. Those different faces that we wear are, in effect, different levels of permission and openness for different situations or people and it’s a deeply ingrained pattern of behaviour. So, what face do you and I wear when we come before God? Is it a face that says, “Well, God, I’m just not good enough for you, so I’d better protect myself from your glory and your goodness”? Is it a face that says “God’s promises, they sound too good, well maybe they’re for that person, or that person, but they’re not for me”? Is it a face that says, “I’d better sort these things out in my life before I go to God”? What face do you and I wear when we come before God? It’s an important question - how do I approach God? Because how can we enter into God’s blessing if we don’t even know how to enter into God’s presence? We are going to go to a passage in the Book of Hebrews. If you have a Bible, grab it and open it up at Hebrews, Chapter 4. It’s a strange little book – it’s less of a letter to a specific group and more of a general tract. "To the Hebrews" was probably added later on. We don’t know who wrote it, although, judging from its style, it wasn’t any of the other authors of the New Testament. And the basic thrust of the Book of Hebrews is to contrast the old covenant, the old promise, under the Jewish Mosaic law, with the new covenant, the new promise of God of grace and forgiveness through faith in Jesus Christ. And it shows how much this new promise is so much better than the old promise. Our passage does that. Let’s have a look at it – we’re going to read it. Hebrews, Chapter 4, verses 14 to 16. It says this: Since then we have a great High Priest who passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast to our confession because we don’t have a High Priest who’s unable to sympathise with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet was without sin. Let us therefore, approach the throne of grace with boldness so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. It centers on the fact that Jesus being our High Priest understands our situation because He has walked in our shoes. This passage comes in the context of God’s rest. God plans to bless us by giving us rest, by giving us peace, by giving us joy, by setting us free from all the things in the world that would tear away at us – emotionally and spiritually. And He says, “Look, Jesus is your High Priest and it’s your High priest that brings you rest.” Look at verse 10. For those who enter God’s rest, also cease from their labours as God did from His. The point is, that one of God’s promises is to give us rest and this picture of the High Priest goes right back to the Old Testament, Leviticus Chapter 16. If you have a Bible, flick back and have a look at Leviticus Chapter 16, the first five verses, which we won’t read right now, talk about the way in which sins were forgiven on the day of atonement and the priest went into the Holy of Holies of the temple and gave blood sacrifices over the alter. But look specifically at verse 17. No one shall be in the tent of the meeting from the time that the High Priest enters to make atonement in the sanctuary until he comes out and has made atonement for himself and for his house and for the assembly of Israel. No one else can be in the tabernacle when atonement was being made for Israel. Then over the page to verses 29 and 30. You shall deny yourselves on that day, you shall do no work; neither the citizen nor the alien who resides among you. From this day atonement shall be made for you, to cleanse you from your sins. It is a Sabbath day of complete rest to you. So God’s plan in making atonement for our sins, in opening the door to a relationship with Him, is complete rest for us. Jesus was the High Priest, Jesus was the mercy seat, Jesus was the lamb whose blood was sprinkled in the sanctuary. That’s the old covenant. That was then, now we are going to have look at the new covenant – the covenant, the promise, the plan that God has for us which is so much better than that. God’s Party We are looking at God’s promises. Sometimes we struggle to take God at His Word and God has a promise of relationship and rest and peace for us. We’re specifically looking at what He says in Hebrews Chapter 4 verses 14 to 16 which talks about Jesus being our High Priest. Under the new covenant, Jesus is the one, the great High Priest who not only went into the sanctuary to make atonement for our sins so that we can be forgiven, to pay for our sins. But He also passed into the heavens, and He also walked on this earth and He relates to us and understands that, He’s able, look at verse 15, He’s able to sympathise with our weaknesses. Not just our sin, but the realities of life here on earth. Jesus, you may get upset with me for saying this, but listen, Jesus went to the toilet, He became tired and frustrated, He felt crowded in, He knew the pressures of a busy schedule, He knew the deep pain of sacrifice – our High Priest, the one who was there when we weren’t, so that our sins could be forgiven. Our High Priest isn’t some ecclesiastical elitist, He’s a pauper, He’s one of us, someone who walked in our shoes, He knows our frame, He remembers that we are dust. Not just because He’s God, but because He walked as one of us. “Let us therefore,” says Hebrews, “approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive the mercy and find the grace to help in time of need.” Therefore, why? Because Jesus wasn’t just the High Priest, Jesus was a pauper; Jesus was an ordinary person just like you and me, with all the pressures, all the temptations, all the hassles of life. Isn’t that exciting, isn’t that wonderful? A few years ago I had occasion to visit the Head of State of Australia. In Australia he is called the Governor General, his name was Sir William Dean, at the time and this place, Government House, where he lives, is steeped in history. We drove up the driveway - the driveway that kings and queens and presidents and prime ministers have come and gone on, and the place was full of the trappings of power. You know, I played to that – I had a crisply ironed shirt on and I drove up the driveway in a dark coloured car that I had and there was a big bird plop on the front and I thought, “I wished I’d washed my car, I hope I look acceptable, am I good enough?” – but when I met the man, Sir William Dean, the Governor General of this country, what I discovered was this kind, gentle man who was one of us. He was disarming in his humility and his kindness. He wasn’t affected by his position or his status. He showed me around the art collection in Government House and his office and his wife’s office and he set me at ease – we had a cup of tea, he was just a wonderful human being. You expect someone in a position of power like that, to put themselves above us, in a sense. But he didn’t do that at all, and in a sense, that’s what Jesus is like. In a sense, He is God; He is the Son of God, yet He became one of us. He walked on this earth, He sacrificed His life for us and that’s why we can approach the t...
Transcribe →Weeding While We Wait // Reaping God's Harvest in My Life, Part 4
Sep 2800:24:03Tap to summarizeSowing and reaping. There is such a long gap, often between those too, have you noticed how long it takes to reap that harvest? And sometimes, frankly, we get sick of the wait. It’s a bit like a farmer becoming impatient and walking off the land, the week before his crop springs out of the ground. Seed Time and Harvest Over the last few weeks on Christianityworks we’ve been looking at "Reaping God’s Harvest in my life" and in your life. How, when, why should we sow seeds? How do we get God’s harvest? What does God’s harvest look like anyway? God’s harvest is awesome – God’s harvest is righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. That’s what Paul writes in Romans chapter 14 and verse 17. He says,“Look, it’s not about food or drink. It’s not about all the physical things and sure, God is in our physical needs; God wants to supply and provide and He does do that, but at the end of the day, the Kingdom of God isn’t about food or drink but it‘s about righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. And I don’t know a single person on this planet who doesn’t want that sort of a harvest; of goodness and peace and joy in their lives. And sometimes we go through life and it’s a big drought. We feel dry, we feel like we’re in a wilderness, – not always, but more often than not – it’s because in some area of our lives we have rebelled against God. And God’s a good Dad, it’s like being a parent to a teenager, you know, when you’re bringing up kids and you want to see them grow up and have a wonderful life, but when they rebel, some times you have to withdraw some of the blessings, some of the privileges from their lives to bring them to a point where they learn. God’s like that too. God loves to rain His blessing down in our lives but when we rebel; when we turn against Him, when we turn our back on Him – maybe not in our whole life, maybe just in one little bit of our lives – God says: “Well, you know, it’s time for some pruning; it’s time for some teaching.” And so, sometimes, when we are going through a drought in our lives, when it’s all dry and that blessing isn’t flowing the way it should be, we need to ask ourselves: “What’s this drought about?” Maybe I have a problem with a relationship, maybe I’m not giving God my top priorities, maybe there’s some area of my life. And when we figure that out, we say, “God is speaking to me in this drought”. That’s the first step. That’s admitting that we have a need and then the Holy Spirit – the Holy Spirit ends up calling us to plant a seed somewhere. You know, when we have a need; when we are struggling with something, we want to feed that need. We want to say, “Ok God, if you want me to plant some seeds somewhere; if I have financial problems, maybe I have to hoard all my money to deal with my financial problems and God says, “No, I actually don’t want you to feed your need right now. I want you to sow some seed in another field.” And it’s a really weird thing because often you say to God, “Hang on a minute, God, my problem is over here yet you want me to sow a seed in the ground over there? What are you doing? What’s going on? It doesn’t make sense – the two don’t even add up!” So that’s what we have been looking at over the last few weeks and if you haven’t been with us the whole time, I really would encourage you - this is one of those teaching series that will just make a huge difference to your life as we learn what it’s about – to sow and to reap – because it’s a Spiritual principle that occurs right through the Scriptures, from the Old Testament to the New Testament. Sowing and reaping and why God sometimes calls us to sow in a different field because it’s counter-intuitive; it’s a step of faith. I remember when I first met my wife, Jacqui, gee, it’s twelve years ago now and she just came to our church one Sunday morning and I was preaching. I wasn’t feeling very well and I was only going to be preaching that morning and she was only going to be in church that morning because she was visiting from a different city and she had really wanted to go down to some markets that were near the church. She had a few hundred dollars in her pocket and she really wanted to go and spend this money down at the markets but somehow her mum dragged her, kicking and screaming, to church that morning and I was in the middle of preaching a message and I looked out and I didn’t know who this woman was and I just felt God saying to me, “That woman is going to be your wife.” And it turns out God was saying that to her about me while she was sitting there. But in the middle of the service, when the offering came around, she felt God calling her to take all the money that she had in her pocket, a few hundred dollars – which is a lot of money to her – and put it into the offering. God was calling her to sow a seed and she obeyed Him and I believe that if she hadn’t done that - if she hadn’t honoured God’s call just to do that; to be obedient to Him – I just don’t believe that she and I would be husband and wife and we would not have the wonderful marriage that we do. Sometimes God calls us to do things that are counter-intuitive, that don’t make sense, and so we decide against our better judgment sometimes to plant that seed and we put the seed in the ground and we wait and we wait and we wait and we wait and in this Mc-world where we live in with the hamburgers and instant access by mobile phones and the internet – we expect everything instantly. We think, “Ok God, I’ve planted the seed, I want it now! Ok, I’ll wait another five minutes – tick, tick, tick, tick. Ok, ten minutes – tick, tick, tick – that’s it, I’ve had enough, I’m out of here, it’s taking too long!” We’re like that, aren’t we? We are pretty impatient. You know, the seed that Jacqui sowed that day that we met, it took months before we became a couple and ultimately, got married. I mean, it didn’t happen instantly. When you think about it, you plant a seed into the ground and that seed doesn’t instantly sprout and give a harvest that same day – it takes time. Yet we do that and we say, “It’s too long, I’m out of here. I know this stupid idea of planting seeds in different fields was never going to work, aw!” And we storm off – but hidden away under the ground, that seed is doing something amazing – it’s germinating; life is sprouting out of it. The Bible talks about ‘seed time and harvest’ and yet we miss the time bit. You plant a seed and there’s time before the harvest. We get impatient and we get bored and we walk off in disgust and we leave the land just as the little green shoot is about to break through the soil. I remember the first time I went to Disney Land, in Orange County in Los Angeles. The Americans do queues much better than we Australians because there are more of them and they’re used to standing in queues longer than we are. We Australians get quite impatient with queues and what I noticed, some of the best rides at Disney Land – at the time, Star Wars ride was there – it was like an hour or an hour and a half wait. And they were really clever with the queues; firstly, they went around bends and corners so you couldn’t see how many people were in the queue or how long you had to wait. But the second thing they did was they put entertainment along the queue, so you were entertained the whole time, so you didn’t really realise you were waiting quite as long as you were waiting. Well, God is like that too. God has got a sense of humour and God knows that we get impatient and God knows that when we plant a seed and nothing happens for a while and we are waiting for the harvest, He doesn’t want us to get bored and He has some things for us to do. What are they? Weed and Feed Well, sowing and reaping is one of the Spiritual principles that God has throughout His Word, right from beginning to end and when you think about it – when a farmer sows seed into the ground, the farmer just doesn’t sit there for the next few months and do nothing, there’s a bit of work that has to go on. A bit like a garden – there’s nothing like a beautiful garden but its hard work too – just doesn’t happen. Planting, in a sense, is the easy bit but we need to feed and weed and water sometimes. It’s amazing how weeds grow about five times faster than any of the plants that we paid a fortune for! You know the thistles and the rubbish in the garden; they can take over the garden, just in a few weeks. I remember mum and dad when I was a kid, had a compost heap out in the back of the yard and we had pumpkins and watermelon and they’d throw the rubbish onto the compost heap, but invariably, the pumpkin seed and the watermelon seed would end up not dying and would germinate in the garden and all of a sudden this wonderful garden they had would be taken over by a pumpkin and watermelon. Jesus talked a bit about weeds -–He talked about weeds in the context of a church and said in a church there are good plants and there are weeds and He talked about weeds and thorns in terms of faith. He said: Look, the thorns can rise up and choke our faith. So as much as seed time and harvest, reaping and sowing are godly principles, so is weed and feed. You sow a seed and you believe for a harvest, the enemy is sure to come along and put some weeds in that to try and choke it all up. Have you ever experienced that? You go out on a limb, you believe God, you follow Him, you plant the seed – it’s a risk, it’s a sacrifice, you think, "it’s going to go well" – and all of a sudden you do that – you take that step of faith – and all of a sudden it all turns to custard; it all gets hard. So we need to become vigilant, alert gardeners. God wants us to be involved in the process. Maybe we’ve been walking through a time of drought in our lives; we’ve...
Transcribe →As We Sow, So Shall We Reap // Reaping God's Harvest in My Life, Part 3
Sep 2100:23:49Tap to summarizeWhen you think about it, sowing seed and then reaping a harvest is all about multiplication. You sow one seed, you reap a hundred. But the extent, the quantum of the multiplication factor, has an awful lot to do with the way that we sow the seed in the first place. Lord of the Harvest Over the last few weeks we have been working our way through a series called, “Reaping God’s Harvest in My Life”. A couple of weeks ago we looked at how Isaac sowed seed in the middle of a drought and reaped a harvest. And again last week we looked at figuring out exactly what the drought is about because sometimes we go through seasons of drought; seasons where we’re not experiencing God’s blessing the way we should be and we think, “God what’s going on? Why am I going through this? And sometimes Dad is trying to get our attention. Sometimes God knows there’s something wrong in our lives; we’ve rebelled in this area, maybe with our finances or maybe we’re living in un-forgiveness or maybe we are living in some sort of rebellion. Maybe we are not spending the time with God that we need to be and God thinks, “I love my child so much, it’s time to get his attention; it’s time to get her attention,” and so we start going through this drought thing and … “God, what’s going on?" And we need to figure out what that drought is about. Those seasons of drought are very important times because there’s power in sowing seeds of faith during the drought. The power comes from the faith that we place in God and His desire to bless us. So if you’ve missed those couple of programs, you can actually purchase this series on CD, because it’s one of those teaching series that I believe all need to experience so that we know what it is to live with the Lord of the harvest; so we know what it is to reap God’s harvest in my life. This week we are going to take a closer look at two things. The first one is – what exactly is God’s harvest? I mean, how do we know when we are in harvest time? What does God’s harvest look like? Good question! And the second one is the importance of not only sowing seeds of faith but looking at how we sow those seeds. I’m really excited about being together today because when we speak about God’s harvest, we’re talking about His grace and His power and I hope you’re excited too, so stick with me over the next twenty minutes or so. Jesus called God "The Lord of the Harvest" and the notion of sowing and reaping, is one of those consistent principles that we find right through the Scriptures; Old Testament and New Testament – it’s a pretty straightforward proposition. You buy some seed, you put it in the ground, you wait for the rain and the sun and it grows into a plant that gives you more seeds. You don’t sow, you don’t reap the harvest! The question is: is it worth sowing in the first place? I mean, why should we bother? Going out and buying seed – it costs money. Sowing seed in the ground is hard work. You know, it’s not always convenient to sow seeds. When God says to us: “Go and forgive that person,” it’s not always convenient. We don’t always want to do it. Invariably, when God says: “Sow seed", it involves some form of sacrifice. It involves something that we really don’t want to do. And so it’s not unreasonable to say, “Well, do I really want to sow seed? Maybe this drought thing isn’t so bad. Maybe I can just survive it on my own. Cor … sowing seed, taking a risk, spending money, spending emotional energy and then God has this crazy idea, instead of feeding my need, He wants me to plant His seed somewhere else. Oh, I don’t know.” So when we are making a decision as to whether we should plant this seed; whether we should experience seed time and harvest, we have to weigh these things up. On the one hand we look at the cost of the seed, the effort of sowing, the risk of loss and on the other hand, we look at the value of the harvest. We balance those two things and we think: is it worth it? So what does God’s harvest look like? Is God’s harvest about money and a big house and a nice car? We all have physical needs – there’s not doubt – and you may be listening; you may be someone who has really acute, physical needs. This program goes all over the world. This program is listened to by wealthy people and people who don’t have enough food to eat. God is in those physical things. God wants to meet our needs but we all know that when the physical provision – the food, the shelter, the security, the money – when it gets to a certain level, to meet our need, after that all the other luxuries, all the other things are lovely and nice and they’re wonderful icing on the cake, but they’re not the things that ultimately satisfy us. They’re not the things that fill us up. So what does God’s harvest look like? Well, Paul, the Apostle, in Romans chapter 14, verse 17, he wrote this; he said, “The Kingdom of God is not about food or drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.” Now remember, Jesus taught that we should ask God for our daily bread. God is into our physical needs, but what Paul is saying here is: Beyond all of that, come on, let’s get it straight – the Kingdom of God, the reign of God in our lives, is not ultimately about physical things. It’s not ultimately about food or drink, even though God’s heart is to provide for us and God does provide for us. The main game,” says Paul “is righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.” Righteousness is that sense of completion and goodness that we have when we know, we know, we know that what Jesus did for us on the cross has made us whole, has given us forgiveness, has given us a clean slate and when we live out that goodness and that righteousness as God’s Word calls us, we experience a peace and a joy in the Holy Spirit that words can’t, can’t describe. I mean, peace – who doesn‘t want that? Who doesn’t want the deep, powerful, wonderful peace; the peace of knowing no matter what happens in life, I’m going to be ok? Who doesn’t want that? Who doesn’t want joy; the free gift that God puts in our hearts, through the Holy Spirit? Now that’s a harvest! Righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. If we were all reaping that sort of harvest in every part of our lives, the rest wouldn’t matter, would it? Let me ask you: righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit – is your harvest abundant in those areas? Are you full, overflowing type of harvest or do you want to come up higher in the harvest? Do you want more righteousness; do you want more peace; do you want more joy; do you want to experience God’s goodness more and more? I know that I want that! In a sense, I can’t have more righteousness than I already have because it’s all done for me on the cross. I’m free – I’ve got eternal life but, we want to live that out too, don’t we? We want to see our lives change to be like that; to experience the peace. So, food and drink; the physical stuff is fine but that’s not really the main game. Its righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit – that’s life. How do we get that? How do we experience that? Give and It Will be Given Well, we are talking today about reaping God’s harvest and we saw before, that the main game in the Kingdom of God is not food and drink; it’s not physical things, even though God wants to provide for us, its righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. Oh, fabulous; now that is a harvest worth having! The question is, exactly how do we sow in order to reap that sort of a harvest – of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit? It’s a good question and it’s a question that Jesus answered directly. If you have a Bible, open it at Luke chapter 6, verses 37 and 38. Let’s have a read. This is what Jesus said. He said: Do not judge and you will not be judged. Do not condemn and you will not be condemned. Forgive and you will be forgiven. Give and it will be given to you, a good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap, for the measure with which you give, will be the measure with which you get back. Now, often you hear the second verse; the bit about "the good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap", you hear that in terms of God’s financial blessing. I’ve often heard it used that way. Now, do I believe God blesses a giver? Absolutely, yes I do! And we’ll look at that later in this program. But that’s not what Jesus is talking about here. He’s talking about three things – He says, “Do not judge and you will not be judged, don’t condemn and you won’t be condemned, forgive and you will be forgiven. Give like this and it will be given to you, a good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over will be put into your lap. With whatever measure you give that’s the measure with which you will receive." Judgment, condemnation and forgiveness - if we give these in the right way then we’ll get back in the same way. Isn’t it interesting? He’s talking about some really interesting concepts here – judgement, well that’s criticism and bitterness. That’s when I judge you and I demand recompense because you have wronged me. I judge you because you’ve got some weakness and I think, “You just have to fix this, you owe me buddy.” You know, I need my pound of flesh from you – that’s judgement and when I judge you it hurts and when you judge me, it hurts. Question: do you like being around judgmental people? Are they your first choice to be close friends? Well, obviously not, but we all love to judge and what we do is we focus on people’s failings and ignore all their good points. That’s what judgement is and Jesus said: “Do not judge and you will not be judged.” How is it, that we stop judging? Well, the only way I figured out is to let ...
Transcribe →Figuring Out What My Drought is About // Reaping God's Harvest in My Life, Part 2
Sep 1400:23:38Tap to summarizeEverybody wants to reap a harvest in life. You do, I do. But sometimes, our lives feel a whole bunch more like a drought than a harvest. So exactly what is my drought about? What exactly is your drought about? Why is God letting this, this drought happen, to you and to me? Another Drought This week on Christianityworks we are continuing with the series called, “Reaping God’s Harvest in My Life.” We all want to reap a harvest but sometimes, well, sometimes life is a bit more about drought than it is about harvest. Why is that? What’s going on when we are going through a drought? Maybe you’re going through a drought; a dry time; a difficult time, a time where things aren’t just going the way you’d like them to go and when that’s happening, it’s dry and there’s no rain and in a lot of countries there are famines when there are droughts. And when there’s a drought on, what everybody is hanging out for is what? Well, of course we’re all waiting for rain when there’s a drought because we know to have a harvest we need rain. It’s a very simple cycle – you buy some seed, you plant it, you wait for the rain, the rain comes and then the seed grows into a harvest and then we send out the workers into the field and we gather a harvest. No rain, no harvest! That’s right isn’t it? Well, let’s see. Let’s have a look. Last week we looked at Isaac’s experience when - if you have a Bible, you can go back and look at it in Genesis chapter 26 – he went and did some silly things but then he went and sowed some seed in the middle of drought and we’re told that his harvest, he reaped one hundredfold. So he planted one seed and for every one seed he planted, he reaped one hundred seeds. Today we are going to look at another drought. If you have a Bible, grab it. We are going to go to First Kings chapter 16. This is a time when Elijah, the Tishbite, got involved in a drought because one of the Kings of Israel was doing some silly things. If you have a look in First Kings chapter 16 verse 29, it says this: In the thirty eighth year of King Asa, of Judah, Ahab the son of Omri began to reign over Israel. Ahab, son of Omri, reigned over Israel in Samaria twenty two years. Ahab, son of Omri did evil in the sight of the Lord, more than all who went before him. Now remember, in the history of Israel, by this time they were in the Promised Land, but the twelve tribes of Israel had split. The ten tribes to the north were referred to as Israel and the two tribes to the south, Judah and Benjamin, were referred to as Judah. That’s why we have two Kings that the writer is here talking about. We’re talking about Ahab who reigned over Israel, that’s the ten tribes to the north and this guy was a bad dude. He was just not one of the good Kings; he did some terribly bad things and so God decided to deal with him by sending a drought. And this is where we see Elijah come, in the beginning of chapter 17 of First Kings and this is what happens. Now Elijah, the Tishbite, of Tishbe, in Gilead, said to Ahab, “As the Lord the God of Israel lives, before whom I stand, there shall be neither dew nor rain these years, except by my word. The Word of the Lord came to him saying: “Go from here and turn eastward and hide yourself in the Wadi of Cherith which is east of the Jordon. So Ahab did bad things; he married Jezebel, he worshipped another god called Baal and so God’s response was to send God’s man, Elijah, a prophet, to say to the King: “Listen, I am going to send a drought, not only on you but on your whole country.” Now what’s going on here? God is a God of grace but He is also a God of great wisdom. God’s blessing rains down on us when we are living in His will, when we are living obedient to Him, when we’re living in a relationship with Him. He is like any dad, Dad wants to bless His kids but when we rebel, as the King did here, as Ahab clearly rebelled by worshipping other gods. What does God do? Does God throw a tantrum? I mean, is that what God is doing here? No, no! God is being like any father and saying, “Well, if you are going to rebel against me, my heart is to bring you back.” There are consequences to your rebelling, so when we rebel, as Ahab did, against God, God turns the blessing off sometimes. The blessings stop raining down from heaven. If you’re a parent who’s brought up a teenager, you know that you want to bless them. Don’t you? I do! I have a wonderful daughter and I love to bless her but when they rebel; when they turn against us, when they do things that we say "you shouldn’t do" because we know that there’ll be consequences, well, sometimes we have to withdraw some of the blessings. Why? To be mean? No! To help them to grow; to help them to lift up, to help them to learn that there are consequences to rebellion. And it’s the same deal with God, the original Father, sometimes, sometimes our drought is about that very thing. What about your drought? What is your drought about? What droughts have you got in your life at the moment – in relationships or maybe they’re in a financial area of your life or maybe in an emotional area of your life? Stop and think for a minute and say, “Where are the areas in my life that I would say – well, I’m not really reaping a harvest there? That part of my life is going through a drought.” Ok then, is there anything that you are doing or not doing in those areas that might have caused God to be a good Dad and stop raining down His blessings on that part of your life? Is God trying to get your attention? We are not doing a guilt trip here. We’re not saying, “Well, you know, if I don’t do everything a hundred percent perfectly, God’s going to come a whack me over the head with a big stick.” No! God’s Dad! Jesus referred to Him as ‘Abba‘, Dad. God is a loving Father so we are not doing a guilt trip number. Ok? This is a realistic assessment of our lives and I want to ask you, “Is God speaking to you today and saying, “There is something that you need to turn away from?” Maybe you’ve got some financial issues and I would ask you, “What does your giving life look like? How much are you giving to God‘s work? How much are you giving to the poor because so often, when we stop giving our very best; giving the top of what we earn to God’s work, all of a sudden our finances turn to a mess because God’s plan is to use God’s people to fund God’s work and when we stop giving to God‘s work, then God says, “Well, you know, your life’s out of balance,” and all of a sudden we seem to be having a financial drought. Sometimes we’re having relationship problems or maybe a problem in a marriage and maybe God’s saying, “Well, what’s your relationship with me looking like? How come we’re not spending any time together at the moment? What drought are you walking through right now? And let me ask you: exactly what is your drought about? I think it’s a good question. Not every drought; not every difficult patch; not every wilderness experience that we have in our lives, is because we have made some mistakes. Sometimes it just happens. Sometimes other people do things and things are just happening and it’s the way life is, but I gotta tell you, sometimes we are doing things that rebel against God like Ahab and God allows drought to come into our lives. The question is what can we do about it? We are going to look now at how Elijah went to be with a neurotic, suicidal widow and we will see exactly what God did. The Suicidal Widow We are talking this week about reaping God‘s harvest in my life, in your life and sometimes we go through a period of drought in our lives and it’s Dad’s way of getting our attention. God’s way of saying, “Look, there’s something in your life that’s not quite right.” That’s why we need to ask, when we are going through a time of drought, “What is my drought about?” But in a drought, we can spend our whole time hanging out for the drought to break and the drought breaks when? When the rain comes! We have seeds, we plant the seeds and we know we will need rain before the harvest will come. We can be so busy moaning and groaning about the fact that there’s no rain, that there’s a drought but we miss the whole point of the journey that God has got us on. Elijah was God’s man, he didn’t do anything wrong. He was God’s man in the middle of this drought and he had to get some food and He did provide for him when he went down to that Wadi at Cherith which was east of the Jordon. God said, “You will drink from the Wadi and I’ll command the ravens to feed you,” and that’s exactly what happened, but eventually the water ran out, even in the Wadi and God said, “Well, you know, Elijah’s my man, I am going to provide for him,” and he also had a plan to provide for a woman, a widow. Let’s have a quick read of what exactly happened. This is coming from First Kings chapter 17, beginning at verse 8: The Word of the Lord came to Elijah and God said to him: “God now to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon and live there for I have commanded a widow there to feed you.” He’s thinking, “Yes, yes! God has given the food to this widow and she’s going to feed me and it’s going to be fantastic.” So he goes down there. He sets out to Zarephath and when he came to the gate of the town, a widow was there, gathering sticks and he called her and said: “Bring me a little water in the vessel so that I might drink.” As she was gong to bring it, he called to her and said: “And bring me a morsel of bread in your hand,” but she said: “As the Lord, your God lives, I have nothing baked only a handful of meal in a jar and a little oil in a jug. I’m now gathering a couple of sticks so that I can go home and prepare it for myself ...
Transcribe →Sowing Seed During Drought // Reaping God's Harvest in My Life, Part 1
Sep 700:23:57Tap to summarizeLet’s face it – we all want to get the most out of life. We want to reap a harvest. And in fact, that’s exactly what God wants for our lives, too. He promises us an abundant harvest. And yet so often, life feels more like a drought than anything else. In those times, we’re left asking ourselves … So, where’s my harvest? Generational Sin Well, welcome to Christianityworks again this week and we are starting a new series called, "Reaping God’s Harvest in My Life". What is it that you want out of your life? Health, happiness, family, a job, career, a reasonable level of comfort, joy and peace, we want our kids to grow up and be happy, we want to have a happy fulfilling marriage, we want to have friends, we want to have balance, we want to have a good life, don’t we? We have different variations, we have different permutations; the things that you are going to enjoy in your life, well, maybe I won’t enjoy in mine and vice versa, because we are different people, we come from different backgrounds, in different circumstances and different outcomes will satisfy us. But there are the basics aren’t there; the things that I spoke about before that we all want in our life? We want a life of significance, we want a life where we’re part of a family, we’re part of a group, we’ve got friends, we’ve got joy and peace. Those things are important to us and we expect to put in the effort and to reap the reward. We expect to reap some sort of harvest from all the hard work. What sort of harvest, is a different question, sometimes we get our expectations and our desires and our needs out of whack. You know, I spent a lot of my time before I became a Christian, chasing money and success and career. All of those things are good things, but when we get them out of balance, when they become the main thing; when they dominate above all the other good things in life, well, then we can end up looking for the wrong things, striving for the wrong things, hurting other people to get there and we reap a harvest, that frankly, is the harvest of our own selfishness. On the other hand, if we do good, if we get up every day and say, “Well, you know something, God, I know I’m not perfect, I know I am going to make some mistakes but my heart, Lord, my heart is to follow you today. My heart is just to do good things for other people and for myself.” Well, we get up and do that every day and we are going to reap, by and large, a good harvest. Well, over these next four weeks, today and the following three weeks, we are going to take a balanced look at "reaping God’s harvest in our lives". The problem is that most people can’t really describe what that harvest looks like; exactly what do we want? Let’s just take a look at our own lives today. The bits where we don’t have a harvest, you know, normally look across our lives and there are some areas where we are getting a great harvest – the results are good, they’re satisfying, they’re fulfilling – but so often there are one or two areas in our lives and we look at them and we go, “Wow! You know, I’m not getting a harvest here, in fact, I’m nowhere near to getting a harvest and I’ve made such a mess of my life. I’m never going to reap God’s harvest in that area. Why would God ever even bother with me? No, God’s harvest isn’t for me. No! Harvest? No. it’s a drought, it‘s parched, it’s hopeless, it’s devastating. The dam is empty, the crops are dead.” We can have such deeply entrenched patterns of behaviour that they rob us of the harvest. Sometimes we take on the weaknesses of our parents. We might have generational sin. A man, whose father was a gambler, may well end up being a gambler. A person, whose parent was alcoholic, could end up being an alcoholic. We take on the good traits and the bad traits of our parents and sometimes we look at our circumstances and we look at our failures and we think, “Aw, it can never work.” We are going to look today at the story of Isaac in Genesis chapter 26. If you’ve got a Bible, grab it, open it. It’s right at the front of the Bible; the 26th chapter of the first book of the Bible and it’s a story about Isaac, the son of Abraham and what he did in the middle of such a drought, this is what it says: Now there was a famine in the land, besides the former famine that had occurred in the days of Abraham. And Isaac went to Gerar, to King Abimelech of the Philistines. And God appeared to Isaac and said, “Look, don’t go on down to Egypt; settle in this land that I’ll show you. Stay here as an alien and I’ll be with you and I’ll bless you because to you and your descendants I’ll give these lands and I’ll fulfill the promise that I made to your father, Abraham. I’ll make your offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven and I’ll give your offspring all these lands and all the nations of the earth will gain blessing for themselves through your offspring, because Abraham obeyed my voice and kept my charge and my commandments, my statutes and my laws. So Isaac settled in Gerar and when the men of the place asked him about his wife, he said, “She’s my sister,” because he was afraid to say, “She’s my wife,” thinking, “Well, she is so good looking, the man of the place might kill me because of Rebecca, because she is so good looking.” When Isaac had been there for a long time, King Abimelech of the Philistines looked out of his window and saw Isaac cuddling his wife Rebecca and Abimelech called Isaac in and said, “She’s your wife, isn’t she; why did you say that she is my sister?” and Isaac said to him, “Well, you know, I thought I might get killed because of her,” and Abimelech said, “What have you done to us? One of the people might easily have slept with you’re wife and you would have put guilt on us all.” So Abimelech warned all the people, saying, “Who ever touches this man or his wife will be put to death.” Well, Isaac sowed some seed in the land and that same year, he reaped a hundred fold. So here’s Isaac, he’s in a land that’s not his own; he wants to run off to Egypt because Egypt seems to be much more prosperous and God comes to him and says, “No, stay here, I’ve got a promise on your life and this is your land, stay here as an alien”. So Isaac makes the decision to stay. It can’t have been an easy decision; there was a drought, there was a famine and he stays in this land. But then he makes a huge blunder. He puts his wife out there and what a dangerous thing to do, this is something that his father, Abraham, did twice to his Mum. Unbelievable! Imagine, putting your wife out there, saying, “She’s my sister.” Someone else could have taken her and slept with her. We man are supposed to protect our wives and he blows it, completely; he just repeats the generational sin of his father. He is in a land that’s got a drought that’s not his own, life is an absolute mess and then it says, “Isaac sowed seed in that land.” That’s amazing! We are going to look at what happened when Isaac sowed the seed. Sow the Seed We all want the most out of life, don’t we? And sometimes the odds are stacked against us. Like that story we were looking at – the story of Isaac. Here was Isaac in a land that wasn’t his own and his dad had made some serious mistakes and Isaac was just reliving those; that same pattern of generational sin that so often happens in our lives. We seem as though we can’t control it, so dad has made a mess of his life, in a sense, and the drought is causing a famine. There’s no harvest, there’s no … How can there possibly be a blessing for Isaac, yet God promised him a blessing? God appeared to him and said: Look, don’t go down to Egypt, stay here; stay here as an alien and I’ll be with you and I’ll bless you because to you and your descendants, I will give these lands and I’ll fill it and you’ll be blessed. When you look at that, you know you see God making a promise to bless you on the one hand and then you look at your own circumstances; the circumstances of where we live, our own failures and we think: there’s no harvest, there can never be a harvest. Isaac was in the middle of a drought and a famine. He deceived the King, he hung his wife out to dry, he made a big mistake. I don’t know what he was thinking, but he did something radical, in the middle of that mess. It says in Genesis 26, verse 12: Isaac sowed seed in that land and in that same year he reaped a hundred fold. Now farmers don’t sow seeds when there’s a drought. You know, when there’s a drought, they look and they wait for rains and they wait for rains, because if you just put seed in dry land and there’s a drought, not only won’t you get a crop but you’ve wasted all the money that you’ve spent on the seed. So we think about that – it was a radical thing. I don’t know how much the seed cost but in a famine, in a drought, you can bet your life it would have been really expensive. So here’s this reckless thing, where he just takes the seed which cost him a lot of money and he puts it in the ground. The business risk, well, if you or I were doing it, would we have done it? Probably not; and the drought is so depressing. I mean, I have never been part of a farming community, but I know from what I’ve read and spoken to people who have lived in farming communities – when there’s a drought going on, it’s really depressing on the whole community and here it wasn’t just a drought, it was a famine. People were starving and Isaac was planning to go somewhere else; to run away – to Egypt. It’s not unreasonable he wanted to run away from the drought, but God said, “No, I’ve got a plan for you here, stay in the famine, stay in the drought,” and sometimes God cal...
Transcribe →A Whole New Way of Family // Building a Godly Family, Part 4
Aug 3100:23:31Tap to summarizeWe parents try to do all the things we can to help our children to grow up. We advise. We admonish. We even end up preaching at them sometimes. But it’s not what we say, it’s what we do, how we live – what they see our life to be, that has the greatest impact in shaping them as they grow up. A Godly Example Well, this is the last message in a series that I have called, “Building a Godly Family” and what I’ve decided to do; I talked to a friend of mine in the U.S., his name is Mark. He has nine children of his own and I thought I’d ask him for his top three or four tips. Now if you want to find out what they are, stick with me today on the programme because we are going to explore what a father of nine had to say. Now I don’t know how things are in your neck of the woods but one of the really hot topics around where I live is binge drinking amongst teenagers. I mean, blind Freddy can see that alcohol abuse is so incredibly destructive. I was listening to a doctor at the head of the Emergency Ward in our local hospital and he was saying that something like eighty percent of the young people under thirty, who get admitted to the Emergency Ward of the hospital on a weekend, are there because of alcohol related issues. Now that’s amazing – violence, injury, illness – it’s pretty scary and it kind of begs the question: "How does that happen?" I mean how does a kid go from being this beautiful little baby to a drunken teenager in the gutter? And to combat this teenage binge drinking they have been running an ad on television – a bunch of Australian men in the back yard drinking beer and one of the dads send his young son to the fridge to get him another bottle of beer. And the punch line is about making the point that our children are taking in our habits. They’re watching us, they are taking it all in, they pick up things by what rubs off from us. Do you know something? That kind of makes sense. Where there is drinking, child abuse, all those things are so negative, so destructive and yet this powerful imprinting thing happens to children in a family. And parents ... we as parents, we’re right up there; we are the authority figures and when a child is growing up the only reality that it has is the family that it’s living in. That’s all that child knows; you grow up in the family and that’s it. You don’t know any different whether it’s anger, violence, alcohol abuse, whatever it is, if that’s a powerful part of your reality growing up, it’s going to leave an imprint. Now, our DNA determines who we naturally are but our personalities; our characters, our view of ourselves and others, our morals, our values, our patterns of behaviour – all of those things are hugely ... hugely shaped by our environment. God’s plan is for a loving family, not just a nuclear family, the way we are used to in the West, I guess but the wider family. If you have a Bible, I want you to grab it, open it up with me. We are going to the New Testament, the Book of Titus chapter 2, beginning at verse 2. This is what it says: Tell the older men to be temperate, serious, prudent, and sound in faith, in love and endurance. Likewise, tell the older women to be reverent in behaviour, not to be slanderers or slaves to drink; they are to teach what is good, so that they may encourage the younger women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be self controlled, chaste, good managers of the household, kind, being submissive to their husbands so that the word of God may not be discredited. Likewise, urge the younger men to be self controlled. Show yourself in all respects a model of good works, and in your teaching show integrity, gravity and sound speech that cannot be censured; then any opponent will be put to shame, having nothing evil to say. You see what’s happening here? Paul is writing to Titus and he’s saying, "Look, Titus, look, here’s how it is: older men should set an example; older women should set an example so that the younger men and the younger women will learn from the older ones, so that needs to be handed down from the older men and women to the younger men and women and then, from the younger men and women, to their children." See, so much of our behaviour comes from the behaviour we learn from older people, both as children and as adults. That’s why mentorship is so important. You may have heard me talk about a man, Graham, my business partner for twenty years. Now Graham is about seventeen or eighteen years my senior and he taught me so many things – I watched his behaviour. He was good and descent and effective in so many ways and I learned from him. I became all that I am by watching him and learning from him, like ... like a life’s apprentice. We have been talking these last few weeks about building a godly family and today I want to get really down to earth with some practical things. I believe ... I truly believe that the most powerful thing that you and I can do to build a godly family is to be a godly person and to live a godly life. Let me say that again; this is important. The most powerful thing that you and I can do to build a godly family is to be a godly person and to live a godly life. Are you an older man or woman? Some societies respect their elders, other like mine, well; we’re not quite as good at this as we should be. Anything old is out of date; it’s beyond its use-by date; it’s old fashioned. We take older people and we stick them in nursing homes. I don’t generalise, but as a society, mine doesn’t value older people as much as some other societies do. But you older people can be such a godly influence in your family. You’ve been around, you know something. You should have godly wisdom that comes from a life-long faith in and walk with Jesus Christ. You are not involved any more, by and large, in the daily cut and thrust and pressures of bringing up children. What a godly influence you can be on your grandchildren! You can be gentle, yet powerful. The glow, the radiance of God that shines through your eyes and your mouth can be such an influence. And you parents! What a godly influence you can be on one another and on your children, husband and wife, by your behaviour and your countenance and your attitude and deeds and encouragement, how you can support one another. Maybe one of you is behaving badly – under pressure, you’re tired – the other one draws alongside and in love, steers things down the right path. And then the kids, instead of seeing their mother and father arguing and pulling in different directions, they see them trusting in God and supporting one another. What sort of lifelong imprint do we think that is going to leave on our children? Each of us have bad habits – sin, anger, selfishness, low self-esteem, pride, dishonesty, whatever it is, those things can be handed down – in fact, they will be handed down to our children. But when we choose to deal with them; when we sacrifice them to God; when we let Him into that space, to change us, the fruit will be to our children and to their children and to a thousand generations. When the simple daily habits of our lives are godly, Christ honouring, humble, this is a powerful blessing on our children. This is the most powerful thing that we can do to build a godly family, to be godly. Now I mentioned earlier on, Mark, my friend in the U.S., he kind of lives in Lincoln, Nebraska. I asked him to tell me what was one of the most important things that he knew about building godly family? Listen to what he says: Everyone, after he has been fully trained, will be like his teacher. (Luke chapter 6, verse 40) While not usually thought of as a verse on parenting, the implications are clear. “We cannot hope to produce that in our children which we ourselves, do not possess”, writes Mark. “Our children, after all of our teaching, creative or not, intentional or not, verbal or not, will be like us. So, watch your own heart for it is the wellspring of life and don’t forget that the first things that must be dealt with, should be dealt with first, including keeping our marriage the priority in our family.” Um, them’s wise words, don’t you think? Faith Comes by Hearing This "building a godly" family thing, you know what I think? I think it is about realising that we all, each one of us, in our families, need to see things through a fresh set of eyes. Every time I look up at the stars and the moon, I’m gob-smacked. The whole Milky Way thing, it’s almost like a cloud, like countless specks of stardust strewn across the sky, and then like clockwork every morning, this amazing ball of fire and light and warmth comes over the horizon – the sun, it never fails. Now I’m wondering, if you or I had never been taught anything about the earth and the solar system and the sun and the moon and the universe, if we knew nothing about any of that, what would we make of it? If we stood here on planet Earth and watched this whole heavenly light show go on, day by day, what would we make of it without the knowledge scientists have given us? Well, actually, we don’t have to look too far. There were so many theories down through the ages: the earth is flat, the earth’s at the centre – everything else revolves around it, the stars are little holes in the firmament – the skin that is stretched up where the sky is somewhere. See, what happens is we look at this incredible cosmic light show that rolls past every day from our miniscule perspective, not realising how small and how narrow our view is and we get a distorted picture. We think the earth is the centre of the universe; we think that we’re the biggest most important thing in this ...
Transcribe →Turning Talk Into Action // Building a Godly Family, Part 3
Aug 2400:23:43Tap to summarizeYou know something – that old saying that blood is thicker than water, it’s true. There’s a special bond between members of a family. Our family really does matter. And that – that’s why it’s time to start looking at what it means to build a godly family. Family Matters It’s great! Here we are again, another week continuing our series called, "Building a Godly Family". And the reason we are doing that is because families really matter. We all imagine that out there somewhere there is a typical family – a mum, a dad, two point four well-adjusted children and that perfect family is living out a perfect life. In fact, not just one of them, lots of them, thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of them – all these perfect families. I mean, look at them! They all look so perfect but not me, not my family: blended or dysfunctional, arguments or strife; people who haven’t talked to each other for years; parents who drive their children nuts: children who just don’t get it, they go off and do their own thing and leave their parents shaking their heads. You get what I’m saying, right? It feels like sometimes it’s just our family that’s in a mess and everyone else’s has got it together. You know why? It’s those happy ads on TV: selling the four wheel drives with happy, smiling kids in the back seat; selling the breakfast cereal, the ad where the sun is shining in the kitchen window and mum’s pouring orange juice while the kids are sitting there smiling and eating healthy cereal. I mean, come on! Life’s not like that! It’s just not you, it’s just not me. We all have issues in our family – ninety nine point nine percent of the people do and those who don’t are kidding themselves. It varies of course. I mean, not everyone’s kids are doing drugs; not every husband is beating his wife but there is no such thing as the perfect family out there ... there just isn’t. So let’s stop carrying around this burden that we’ve plonked on our heads that somehow my family doesn’t measure up to what everyone else’s family is doing. It’s not about measuring up. In my book it’s about what can I do from this day forward to build a godly family? What seeds can I sow? What plants can I water so that the fruit of a godly family will grow for all to enjoy? That’s what it’s about because our families matter. Let me ask you this: how much does your family matter to you? Just stop and sit back and think about that for a moment – chew it over. How much does my family mean to me? I don’t know what your family looks like but it doesn’t matter who we are, where we’re at, how we were brought up, somehow we are all part of a family. My hunch is that it’s God’s plan for it to be that way – it’s more than a hunch. I mean, God is three persons in one – Father, Son and Holy Spirit living in perfect community. I’m not sure that I have ever even thought of it this way, but there we have it, the first family, God Himself. The first verse in the Bible says, “In the beginning, God ...” “In the beginning, Elohim ...” literally "God's" plural. And the very first person He creates, Adam, well, have a listen to what God says about Adam. It is not good that a man should be alone. I will make a helper as his partner. (Genesis chapter 2, verse 18) And right throughout the Old Testament, what you see is that God’s blessing for His people, the Israelites, is all about having two things – their own land and lots of children. We know that family is meant to be a blessing. It’s a God thing, I mean, right from the beginning, God isn’t just one person; He’s three. Family really matters! And I know that for some people, just hearing that is going to hurt ... hurt an awful lot. Almost half of all marriages in the wealthy West end in divorce. I have friends who have lost loved ones in the ravages of war. Every day twenty five/thirty thousand children die of poverty and starvation and disease and Aids and ... so thinking about family, depending on your particular circumstances, well, you know it can hurt but the reason it hurts so much; the reason divorce is such a scourge and losing someone we love tears our insides out, the reason is this: because family truly matters. We want our family to stay intact; we want our kids to grow up strong and healthy and have a listen to what the Psalmist writes in Psalm 37, beginning at verse 35. If you have a Bible, grab it, open it up here, Psalm 37, verse 25: I have been young and now I am old, yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken nor their children begging bread. They are ever giving liberally and lending and their children become a blessing. See, that’s God’s perfect plan for our families – for us to live a good life; a righteous life and for us to be a blessing to our children and for them, then to go on and become a blessing to others. It’s a story ... well it’s a story that’s written in our DNA. It’s a story that plays itself out in our hopes and our dreams but it’s a plot that we so easily loose in the busyness of a consumer oriented, entertainment oriented, credit card oriented world in which we live. Let me ask you again – out of everything in your life, everything you have, every hope, every dream, every possession, every desire – out of everything, how much does your family matter? My hunch is for most of us, the answer is a lot. Family matters an awful lot, doesn’t it? And if it does, if it really does, then surely ... surely we need to invest in this thing. We need to not just talk about having a godly family but get on a build a godly family. These relationships; these people who matter more to us than any other thing on this earth – that’s what we are going to be talking about this week on the programme – making that investment - getting beyond talking, getting beyond thinking, getting beyond dreaming and actually getting on and building a godly family because there is so much blessing in that – so much. Setting the Course Now so many families are in a mess – tension, strife – but all it takes is one member of that family to turn back to God; to honour God and God can and will make some awesome and mighty changes. It might take time; it might take longer than you or I would prefer, but God is a God of grace; His heart is to bless our families to a thousand generations. All He is looking for is some godly men, women and children to take a stand and say, "Enough of this. It is time for me to build a godly family." First Corinthians chapter 4, verse 20 in the Message translation says this: God’s way is not a matter of mere talk, it’s an empowered life. You know what I’ve noticed? We can talk a lot about stuff but most times nothing changes unless we actually do something and yet because we come home tired and we need a rest and we just ignore things; we just let things run – the badly behaved children, for example. There is a great proverb, it’s in Proverbs chapter 29, verse 17. It says: Discipline your children and they will give you rest; they will give delight to your heart. Now you’ve seen it down the local supermarket, so have I – the mother with the child. The child is just grinding her down; bad behaviour; throwing tantrums and mum, she’s just tired ... she’s too tired to do anything. She lets this kid run riot, it causes her grief, causing everyone else around the place grief too, I might add. Why does that happen? I’ll tell you why: probably because dad is too tired to discipline the child when he comes home at night so this kid walks all over his mother; she’s exhausted and the kid’s only seven! Wait until this little terror becomes a teenager, I mean, just wait! There is fruit in building a godly family; tremendous fruit! And what Proverbs said is: “When you discipline your children they will give you rest; they will give delight to your heart.” Peace and a delighted heart – see, what you sow, you actually reap. The problem is that sowing ... well, it’s such hard work sometimes and reaping seems to be such a long way off, doesn’t it? Well, let me tell you something, we have been talking about building a godly family but it ain’t going to happen unless we step out in faith and start making it happen. Yes, it’s about God blessing our efforts but if He’s got nothing to bless, then He’s got nothing to bless. We behave ourselves in to a bad place. Bad habits in families happen because we just fail to do things and we do things that are wrong that we shouldn’t be doing. It’s what we say, what we do, what we fail to do. We behave ourselves into that bad place and yes, we should pray, but God expects us to start behaving ourselves out of that place. He’s going to bless that but we have to do our part, so Christians, do you want a godly family? A family where each family member is living out a dynamic relationship with Jesus Christ; where each one is living that out in their lives? Husband and wife have this warm and intimate relationship, children are by and large honouring their parents, each family member respects, honours, understands the other. There’s real blessing; God’s blessing that flows into our families and out through our families when we build a godly family, but we’re going to have to decide that’s what we want, plan it and start living it. We are going to have to decide that some changes have to be made. This easy, comfortable, lazy existence has to change. Discipline is painful; kids don’t like it much; it takes hard work and strength and perseverance but it pays dividends. So let me ask you, how much do you want to have a godly family? And if the answer is: "Absolutely, yes! I do!" then some decisions have to be made. If your family is one wit...
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