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FOF 136: THE LORD’S PRAYER 8: AND FORGIVE US OUR DEBTS

Last week we looked at the line of the Lord’s Prayer where we ask God for our daily bread, in other words, our essential needs. One of our most essential needs is to be forgiven. In a world where people believe morality is relative, many struggle to believe that there are things we have thought about, said and done that need to be pardoned. We are very good at justifying our own actions, seeing ourselves as the hero of our story or the victim of other people. It is hard for us to admit when we are at fault. It is only when we look at God who is completely without fault that our own immorality comes into focus. We shall look in the Bible at why this is a debt that needs to be paid in order for us to have a clean slate.

I have so far avoided using the word sin as it can be a word we use frequently in church circles and forget what it means. When you pray the Lord’s Prayer you will likely use the version that says ‘forgive us our sins’. This is taken from the version of the Lord’s Prayer found in Luke. In this context the word debt and the word sin mean the same thing. We are used to thinking of a debt as money owed, well the use of the word debt in this instance gets across that something is owed morally. We have wronged someone and something is required to make amends. This concept is explored in Numbers, the Israelites were commanded to make restitution if they had wronged a fellow Israelite in any way (Numbers 5:6-7) The idea of paying for damages still exists today. If we hurt someone we love, it is natural for us to want to make it up to them. God calls for a higher standard, he calls for us to seek restoration with anybody we hurt.

When we wrong someone we might believe that the only one who is impacted by that is the person we have wronged yet God says it is an act of unfaithfulness to him. This is because the Israelites agreed to be bearers of his name, they are his representatives on earth. We looked at this on the week on hallowing his name. We can bring his name into disrepute if we behave in a way that is contrary to his commands. Yet it is humanly impossible for us to meet the requirements of God’s commands. They can be summed up as loving God with our whole being and loving everyone we come into contact with in the same way we love ourselves (Matthew 22:35-40) The command creates the way to order the priorities of our life, God is number one. He is our first and greatest love, secondly we love all the people he has created and thirdly we love ourselves because he took time and care in crafting us as a person in his image.

Sadly we have inverted that order and most of us will put ourselves in the top spot, we will make our own needs the top priority. Some more charitable people might make others their top priority but the point is any time we don’t honour God as the most important in our lives we become unfaithful to him. Unfaithfulness to God is sin, Cain was confronted with it when he grew resentful of his brother. God warned him to be faithful to him by doing the right thing, in this case managing his anger and continuing to live in relationship with God. God warned that the jealousy was going to overwhelm him, he used the image of sin crouching at his door and waiting to leap through the door and overpower him like an animal. He tells Cain that he can rule over his sin but sadly we see from the rest of the account that Cain gives in to his impulses and murders his brother (Genesis 4:7)

We are born into a world where opposition to God is normal. We are encouraged to embrace our desires and not to have mastery over them. In such a climate it is no wonder that so many of us find ourselves at odds with God’s good standards. If we choose to live by our own moral compass or by society’s morals then we are choosing to sin because we haven’t chosen to live by God’s standards. Jesus tells us when we sin we end up in slavery, we get trapped trying and failing to meet our needs. The good news is he is the one who frees us from this slavery, his very name means the Lord saves (Matthew 1:22) Each one of us is in need of this rescue because we have all sinned, we all fall far short of God’s perfect goodness; even the most loving and kindest people among us can never live perfect lives (Romans 3:23)

It’s uncomfortable to say but we all have accumulated a lifetime of sin in those private thoughts that have stoked our desires and impacted the actions and choices we make. I hold my hands up and say that I am guilty of many sins and I would never be able to make amends with God or be able to change my ways and live a perfect life. Early in Israel’s history God introduced the idea of sacrifices as a way to atone for wrongdoing (Leviticus 4:20). The debt of a whole life in opposition to God can only be paid by offering a life to God. God could have demanded our lives from us yet he is a loving God so he gives us a choice. We can either try to make things right on our own or we can let him make it right for us. It’s impossible to make amends alone thankfully in order to save us Jesus offers his life as the sacrifice to make restitution for all our sins (1 John 2:2)

Jesus lived a perfect human life, when he was tempted he never gave in to his desires but he ruled over them by being firmly rooted in his identity as the beloved son of God (Matthew 4:1-11). Though he was the one man who was completely innocent he was charged as a criminal and sentenced to death. Jesus, the man, died but in addition to being fully man Jesus was also fully God and God by his nature is eternal. This is how the Father by the power of the Holy Spirit could raise Christ from the dead in a new body (Galatians 1:1, Romans 8:11) This new body cannot die, he is fully God and fully man united in an eternal body (Romans 6:9) If we pledge our allegiance to him then the death of these mortal sinful bodies will mean that we can rise to life in immortal bodies free from sin too (1 Corinthians 15:42)

God found a way to be merciful towards us and to pay off a lifetime of debt towards him. This does not mean that we have free rein to live as we please knowing that he’ll forgive us. By opting in to be forgiven we are turning from a life ruled by our desires and pledging to be faithful to God (Romans 6:1-4) We are seeking to root out every thought and attitude that lives in opposition to God so that we can be true to him. The Psalms reflect on how it can be hard for us to be aware of our hidden faults (Psalm 19:12) God makes us the promise that if we admit that each day we think, say and do things that are wrong he will always forgive us. More than that by his Spirit that lives within us he will partner with us in orientating the whole of our lives towards honouring him (1 John 1:9). He will continue purifying us until the day we pass on from this world and are reborn in a purified body.

#christian #christianity #blog #christ #jesus #church #the bible #faith #bible #fortress of fortitude #lords prayer #prayer #Forgive #forgiveness

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FOF 135: THE LORD’S PRAYER 7: GIVE US TODAY OUR DAILY BREAD

This week marks a shift in the Lord’s Prayer, by praying the first five lines we seek to align ourselves with the heavenly father and welcome more of his heavenly influence in and through our lives. In the second half of the prayer we ask for things that relate directly to us as humans and our interpersonal relationships. We start off by asking for daily bread. A surface reading of this line might leave us thinking that Jesus is encouraging us to pray for food each day. As with all lines of the Lord’s Prayer I think there is much more to it if we scratch beneath the surface, so let's take a deeper look.

If we go through the Bible in order looking for references to daily bread the first place we are likely to land is in Exodus 16 where God provides food for his people in the wilderness. He gives them a daily provision of manna, a bread from heaven, that sustains them in a barren place with few natural resources to feed this numerous nomadic people. We see from this that God does care about providing us with food and he can step in to ensure that this need is met. In Deuteronomy 8 Moses explains to the people that this experience of severe hunger made the people realise their dependence upon God. All the food we eat was created by God, he also maintains the conditions by which it grows and inspires us with ways to prepare it. By sending food from heaven directly God showed his people that their very existence was entirely dependent upon him.

Yet people can easily forget their reliance upon God, thanks to supermarkets it is easy for us to forget all the work and effort that goes into producing our food. We can eat without being thankful for all the food we’ve been given and we can ignore the God who allows us to live by his word. What is worse is that we know without that connection to the Holy God who makes us Holy we are merely surviving we miss out on truly living. As Moses says we don’t just live on bread, we truly come alive when we accept God’s word spoken to us: that he will rescue us from death and point us towards eternal life. It all comes down to our priorities. We can focus on this material world, gaining enough money to have the finest foods to eat and all the luxuries we desire; knowing in the back of our mind that it won’t last or as Job says we can treasure God’s words more than our daily bread. We can value the presence of God with us that brings us alive more than everything else (Job 23:12).

It is okay to seek enough food to live on and also to enjoy our lives. We know that God doesn’t want us to live in poverty as he has a heart for the poor, he calls us to provide for their needs. Many of us are in a position to give out of the riches we have been given. If we live in affluent countries It can be easy to get swept up in the culture of always seeking more; more money and more possessions. Yet in Proverbs the writer shares the wisdom of seeking neither poverty nor riches but only daily bread, what we truly need for each day (Proverbs 30:8). Our needs are simple, yes we need food, water and shelter but we also need relationships, people we can share the joys and sorrows of life with and the primary relationship we need is with our heavenly father through his Son and by his Holy Spirit.

In fact if we seek God first, he promises to meet all of our other needs. Jesus came to live as a human and he knows firsthand all that our bodies need. As God he created all things and as man he was perfectly reliant upon his Father to provide all things that were needed. This is a picture of the Kingdom where all of our needs will be fully satisfied, we can look forward to the coming unification of heaven and earth and we can begin to taste it now. We can taste it by eating the true bread from heaven, Jesus. He came down from heaven to offer his eternal life for us so that he could take the possibility of death away (John 6:51). We remember this through communion, eating the bread which represents his body and drinking the wine that represents his blood (Luke 22:19-20). This reminds us to keep being unified with him as he connects us to the source of eternal life. When we pray for our daily bread we are asking for more of a connection with Jesus because we trust that he knows all that we require is found in him.

#christian #christianity #blog #christ #jesus #church #the bible #faith #bible #fortress of fortitude #lords prayer #prayer

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FOF 134: THE LORD’S PRAYER 6: ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN

We pray for God’s will to be done on Earth as it is in Heaven. This week’s line links directly with last week’s line of the prayer but I thought it was worth devoting a whole week to looking at the separation between Earth and Heaven. We are used to thinking of Earth and Heaven as two distinct spaces, of course we know what Earth is like because we live here! Yet Heaven remains a mystery to us. We might have an image of a place in the clouds with angels with wings and harps but that is not a biblical image of heaven. We’re going to take a look at what the Bible says about Heaven and how it is God’s mission to bring heaven and earth together.

Heaven is where God dwells and it is made holy by his presence there (Deuteronomy 26:15) It is a separate dimension where God is in complete control, it is occupied by many other spiritual beings but God rules over them all (Psalm 103:19-21) Though heaven is separate from earth we see many times in the Bible where God causes heaven and earth to overlap. It starts with his presence amongst humans in the garden of Eden (Genesis 3:8), Jacob sleeps near a gateway to heaven (Genesis 28:17) and Later on the temple is a place that God has made holy so that people can come into his presence (2 Chronicles 7:1-2). Throughout the old testament heaven would only break through in little hotspots. Yet he left his people with a promise that one day he would live among us again in a new heaven and earth which are united (Ezekiel 37:27, Isaiah 65:17)

This is where Jesus enters the scene, all of the fullness of God lives in him. He is the one sent from heaven to bring the two realms together (Colossians 1:19-20). He is able to do this because he represents both places, he is fully God and fully human. The mortal and the immortal united in one person so that the physical body is renewed and made an immortal, pure and holy body ready to dwell in God’s presence. We have the promise of eternity in God’s presence, as Jesus will make us like him. We can receive citizenship in this newly united Kingdom. The price of admission is repentance, all we need to do is turn to God and he will help us to align our whole lives to his will (Matthew 3:2). That way we will be fit to be in his presence, all because of the work his Spirit does to prepare us for heaven.

The Bible does contain imagery of what the new heavens and earth will be like but the biggest takeaway is that God’s presence will be among us (Revelation 21-22). Earth will finally fully overlap with heaven and be joined with it eternally. God’s presence is completely holy and full of life, so everything that is connected to death will pass away. We know that there will be no more sadness, sickness or pain. Heaven is the space where God rules and when he brings his rule fully to earth he will banish away all the things that don’t match his nature. Through the Lord’s Prayer and the action of the Holy Spirit we don’t have to wait for heaven to come to earth. We can invite heaven now and begin to see people being made holy and whole.

#christian #christianity #blog #christ #jesus #church #the bible #faith #bible #fortress of fortitude #Prayer #lords prayer

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FOF 133: THE LORD’S PRAYER 5: YOUR WILL BE DONE

Here is what we have explored in the Lord’s Prayer this far. We know we are praying to our father in heaven who chooses us to be associated with his Holy name, he also selects us to be a part of his Kingdom; to live life according to his rule. This relates to the line that we will be exploring this week ‘your will be done’. The first question is won’t God’s will always be done? He is the one all powerful God after all, doesn’t he have the power to make the whole universe obey his commands? God could have created a world which automatically obeyed his will but that would go against his nature. He designed a world where people have the choice to obey him or to reject him. He will not force anyone to comply with his rule even though everything that is good was created by him. Everyone tries to live their best possible life but we don’t know how to do that unless we partner with the all-knowing God who himself is the source of all we desire.

This tension is set up at the beginning of the Bible. God knows that we will only find true satisfaction in partnership with him but he gives us the choice to trust him or to try to find satisfaction apart from him. We all choose to try and flourish apart from God but it can't be done, the sad fact is that some will go on fruitlessly trying to make life work without God, even though it hurts them and others. Eventually that path away from God, the source of life, leads to death. Yet God doesn’t want to see his beloved creation doom itself to destruction. His will for us is that we would turn to him and find life free from death (Ezekiel 18:32). It was his will to create us in the first place and it is his will now to save us from death.

The history of the world has been God working out his will to save us whilst allowing us a choice in the matter. He is Holy, pure, good and abounding with life, he wants us to be like him to be able to obey him and to operate in the world as he would if he were born in our specific circumstances and with our unique characters and skills (Deuteronomy 28:9) Many people think that this is why God laid out the commands, to show us how to live a holy life and to be like him. The fact is that the 613 commands given in the first five books of the Bible do not cover every circumstance of life, so we cannot use them as a guide for how to live. Also as we have seen in previous reflections we cannot meet God’s standard of holiness, we will never achieve absolute purity in our thoughts, words and deeds.

Is it unreasonable then for God to want us to be holy and pure when he knows we are incapable of doing so? No because he made a promise that he would pour his Holy Spirit into us who will motivate us to obey him (Ezekiel 36:26-27) We won’t have to be trapped living according to our will or other people’s plans for our lives, he will reboot our minds so that we can think about things differently and desire to be holy like him. (Romans 12:2) Even with the Holy Spirit within us we will still veer off course repeatedly, we will keep trying to live life according to our own desires. This is why the work of Jesus is so necessary, he is the one who makes it possible for God’s will to be done on earth.

Jesus came to earth to set the template for the new humanity who could live life in perfect obedience to God. He was obedient to the Father’s will every second of his life, this is displayed in how he fulfilled his mission, the same mission that God has had since the beginning, to rescue us from death and to give us unending life. (John 6:38-40) It was Jesus’ will to choose to be born on earth, the father chose to let him go, Jesus chose to suffer and to die. His death was achieved by people acting in evil ways towards him, they hurt and killed the only man who was truly innocent. Through this we see how God can accomplish his good will even through the evil acts of humans (Acts 4:27-28) If we look to Jesus then our sins die with him on the cross. It is then the will of God to raise us up to life again, we have a taste of this new life now and we’ll see the fullness of it after we pass from this world.

When we pray for God’s will to be done we are praying for people to be rescued from the consequences of sin. We are praying that more people will turn to him, turning away from living life according to their own rules and instead submit to God’s rule. We know that his will for this world is the only way for the world to live up to all the potential he baked in when he created it. When we pray for his will to be done we are asking for him to send his Spirit so that we will be filled with more desire to please him and to live in submission to him. He will supply us with everything we need to obey his will, all we need to do is to ask and to receive from him (Hebrews 13:21) God chose to create us and now it is his will to recreate us. If we allow him we can embrace the life he has to offer, the unending life in obedience to him, the only one who is truly good.

#christian #christianity #blog #christ #jesus #church #the bible #faith #bible #fortress of fortitude #lords prayer #prayer

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FOF 132: THE LORD’S PRAYER 4: YOUR KINGDOM COME

Let’s recap what we’ve explored so far in the Lord’s Prayer. We know that we are speaking to the Father who lives in heaven, he adopted us to be a part of his family. He is the one who took the initiative to introduce himself to us throughout the course of history and especially made himself known through his son, Jesus. We know Jesus is one with the Father and with the Holy Spirit, they are one God. The one true God is the only one who can be described as holy because he alone is perfect in his goodness and abounding in life. This leads us to pray the next line, ‘your kingdom come’. When we understand that God’s goodness is inconceivable and that his love knows no limits then we gladly call for him to take charge of the world.

Yet doesn’t the earth belong to God already? (Psalm 24:1) Why then do we need to pray for God to take charge? We looked in the first week at how God had shaped us in his image, he designed us to be like him. This means he also wants us to rule like he does. He has given us the resources of this wonderful world to use for the benefit of one another. He has given us a choice to rule alongside him and make the world the best it can be, or we can pledge our allegiance to someone or something else. So while the earth and everyone in it do belong to God because he made us, just like you could say a painting belongs to the painter who painted it, the people of the world have chosen to reject God as their King. We all have the inclination within us to use the world, its resources and its people for our own benefit. In other words we want to rule our own little kingdom separate from God.

God saw us make this choice to reject him but he did not reject us, he spoke the law to his people which showed them how they could love him and love their fellow humans. He promised that if they could fully obey the law and remain faithful to him then they would become a Kingdom of Priests, a Holy Nation (Exodus 19:5-6) As well as being his image and imitating the way he rules they would also become Holy like him, pure, good and full of life. They would be his Priests acting as a bridge between heaven and earth, mediators between the two, so that all the other peoples of the earth can become holy through them. Sadly Israel failed to hold up their side of the agreement, they consistently rejected God so they were not able to receive the gift of his holiness. This then meant that they couldn’t point others to him either.

Thankfully Israel’s rejection of God’s covenant promises did not affect God’s rule on earth. Even when the majority of humanity were living in rebellion against their maker there has always been a faithful minority composed of people from Israel and from other nations. They kept extolling all of the virtues of God their King. That he alone has the strength to keep the whole universe in order and because he is eternal he will rule over this Kingdom eternally. This King’s splendour and glory result in praise from those who know him (Psalm 145:10-13) There are always people who want to choose God as their king, they try to be faithful but because they are human they are unable to meet the Holy standards of God’s law.

When Jesus appeared on the scene claiming to be the long promised messiah, the one who would be King of God’s Kingdom on earth. People thought that he might abolish the old law and establish a new one but instead he said that all of the law had to be accomplished (Matthew 5:18-19) He called for his followers to be even more righteous than those who prided themselves on compliance to the law. In his sermons he outlines that obedience to the laws of his Kingdom rely on an inward obedience not just an outward observance. Jesus sets up a standard that it isn’t humanly possible for us to reach. If we can’t obey the law of the Kingdom then how can we be a part of it?

This is the reason that the Kingdom of heaven has remained separate from the Kingdom of earth. In heaven God’s rule is firmly established and all of the spiritual beings there submit to his rule, on earth many people are still actively hostile to the kingship of God. God wants us to become the bridge between the two worlds but we cannot be the faithful priests he calls for. Daniel has a vision of God sat upon his throne with a vacant seat next to him, he waits for a human who is worthy enough to rule beside him. Someone titled the son of man approaches, a human being who is worshipped by people of all nations. The fact that he is worshipped points to the fact this is more than a man, he is both fully God and fully man as such he unites heaven and earth in his very nature. Jesus is able to love God and love humans perfectly. The Father sees that he alone is worthy to rule beside him and confers on him the same authority and sovereignty that he has (Daniel 7:13-14)

The good news is that Jesus’ sacrifice frees us from that desire to turn away from him. We die to that old way of living and we begin to be remade in Jesus’ image. He is the image of the new humanity, humanity perfectly united with God the Father. This Kingdom is not like earthly kingdoms, most of the kingdoms of the earth seize territory by force. The Kingdom of God grows by more people switching their allegiance of their heart to the King above all Kings. It’s hard to see because it takes people a lifetime to become fully devoted citizens of this Kingdom. Yet there are signs of the Kingdom of heaven breaking in when we start to see people living according to heavenly principles having true humility, grieving the brokenness of this world, craving true goodness, forgiving any slight against them, increasing in purity and forging peace where there is division (Matthew 5:3-10). The way of the Kingdom of God is revolutionary. Through the Lord’s prayer we invite this quiet revolution to happen in our hearts and the hearts of people around the world. As we leave behind our old way of living we become the new humanity, the Kingdom of priests drawing the world to God.

#christian #christianity #blog #christ #jesus #church #the bible #faith #bible #fortress of fortitude #lords prayer #prayer

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FOF 131: THE LORD’S PRAYER 3: HALLOWED BE YOUR NAME

This week we look at the second line of the Lord’s Prayer; Hallowed be your name. Last week we thought about the opening line and how it establishes who we are talking to and our relationship with him. This week’s line further delves into our relationship with the one true God of the universe. When I was younger I understood this line to be saying “your name is holy” but hallow is a verb, it could mean to make holy and we know that we’re unable to do that. The primary definition of hallow is to honour as holy and as we shall see I think this matches a biblical understanding. God is holy, he expects to be recognised as such because to deny it would be a lie and to fail to honour him as holy would be to miss out on the only dependable source of life and goodness. Let’s explore what it means to recognise the holiness of God’s name.

When we look back in Genesis we don’t see an incident of God introducing himself and saying what name he would like to be called by. Yet many people even from the earliest humans call on the name of the Lord. This implies that they know what the name of the Lord is. The word is יְהוָֽה in the hebrew which we would pronounce Yahweh. You might have heard that name being used in some modern worship songs and not known the meaning behind it. It’s not until Exodus 3 that we get the explanation behind this name. God introduces himself to Moses by saying “‘I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: “I am has sent me to you.’” (Exodus 3:14b) The name of God points to his eternal existence. He has no beginning and no end, he always has been and he always will be. God’s personal name was considered so holy that scribes through the centuries substituted it with the word adonai which means Lord. We see from this act of reverence the extreme honour that God’s chosen people have held his name in.

When we think about honouring the name of the Lord we might instantly jump to one of the ten commandments which refers to this directly. “‘You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.” (Exodus 20:7) The NIV uses the word misuse but you might have also heard the word translated as ‘take’. For years I was under the impression that this meant we should not swear using the Lord’s name. This is a part of it but I think the richness of this verse has been lost in translation. The Hebrew word is tissa and it can mean lift, carry or take. We might also think of a word like bear to get across the meaning of this idea. On that mountain God is claiming the Israelites as his people, he was even linking himself with them by being known as the God of Israel. God chooses them to bear his name, just like we might write our name on something we own, God is claiming ownership of the people of Israel. The NIV has conflated the Hebrew words tissa to carry and lassaw which means evil into one word ‘misuse’. In doing so I think you miss the nuance of this idea. God wants us to bear his name but if he wants us to do so by honouring him and avoiding evil.

I think there is further evidence for this reading of the command in how God’s name is used throughout scripture. We are told that the temple will be a house for his name and that he will place it there forever (1 Kings 21:7) or it is called by his name (1 Kings 8:29). The people are called by his name too in 2 Chronicles 7:14. God claims ownership of the people and the very land they live on. In Revelation 3:12 where Jesus is speaking to the churches he cements this idea by promising to write his name upon us. Just as when we look at an item with a label bearing someone’s name, people will look at us and they may not be able to see a physical label but they will recognise that we belong to God by the way we live. We could tell people that we are Christians and children of God, thereby verbally linking ourselves to him, but if we then go about living lives that dishonour what God represents then he may not want to be associated with us anymore.

This brings us to thinking about God’s holy nature. He wants us to bear his name, as we saw in the first week of our series he is our Father. I work in a primary school and I’m always struck by how children look like their parents but also reflect the way their parents have raised them, this is both nature and nurture I feel. Genetically your personality might be a combination of both parents but also the values of your home environment have a big impact on how you behave in society. This should hold true with us and God, he has transformed us by sending the Holy Spirit to live within us. The Holy Spirit is someone we receive, he is the one who changes our fundamental nature when we invite him in. He is the one who inclines us towards honouring God yet we have a choice on whether we are then further instilled with God's values. If we choose to spend time with our heavenly father and amongst our brothers and sisters who are also filled with his Holy Spirit, then we will become more holy.

There does appear to be a sliding scale of holiness. We see this in the design of the temple, the very centre of which is the Most holy place, the surrounding area is a holy place then there was an inner court and an outer court. Only the High priest was able to enter the most holy place or the holy of holies, and he could only do it once a year after a lot of purification rituals. We know that these rituals did not make him holy as holiness is not something we can earn through our actions, it is something we can ask to receive more of. The temple system has now been superseded by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. In 1 Corinthians 6:19 Paul writes that we are now the temples housing God’s holy presence. It is up to us to decide how holy our hearts and minds are. Yet if we can’t increase in holiness through our actions how do we become more holy and thus better represent God’s holiness to the world?

First off before we look at how we become holy we might need a reminder of what holiness is, it describes the unique nature of God. He is the only one in the universe who is purely good and because he is eternal he eternally establishes what is good and what is evil. He is perfect in his goodness, he never puts a foot wrong. Everything we know to be good, ideals like love, justice, grace, faithfulness and more are all supremely exhibited in him. When we realise just how good God is we realise what a tall order it is for us to emulate him. Peter helps us in how we go about it in his first letter(1 Peter 1:12-16). He tells us that holiness starts off with the way we think. This calls for us to be aware of what values and ideals we currently hold, are our own concepts of the world more important to us than God’s? If we discover that we have been holding on to misconceptions then Peter reminds us that there is grace, God will forgive us and will help us to think differently. We have to be willing to obey him though, even if it is a sacrifice or goes against popular ideals. In a world of consumers it is hard to not live a self-focused existence. Yet we can have our minds renewed and think and behave in a more holy manner.

As with each line of the Lord’s prayer there is a lot packed into this one. We know that God’s name is Holy, he is worthy of honour because he is the only one who is unceasingly good and defines what it means to be good. He honours us by calling us by his name and allowing us to represent him to a world that doesn’t know him. In Jesus’ time on earth he identified himself as one with the Father by using God’s holy name to introduce himself to people. The religious leaders were scandalised because they thought he was profaning the name of God by attaching himself to it but Jesus was correctly identifying himself as God’s son, a human man conceived by the Holy Spirit and overflowing with the Holy Spirit’s presence. Jesus prayed for us that as we go about bearing his name we would be protected by its power. He then prayed that we would be brought into the same level of unity that he and the Father share, he is so close to the Father that the only way to describe them is as being one; distinct but completely unified. The Lord’s prayer reminds us who our Father is and how we can show that we are his children. We pray that we will hallow his name by becoming more holy; we the walking, talking temples of God that house his presence. We pray that we will be drawn into greater unity with the triune God and greater unity with his holy people.

#christian #christianity #blog #christ #jesus #church #the bible #faith #bible #fortress of fortitude #the Lord’s Prayer #Prayer #holy #Holiness #hallow #God’s name #the name of the Lord

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FoF 116: Exile 36: Revelation 21-22

We now conclude the Exile series by jumping into the New Testament, the very last book of the Bible and the last two chapters of that book. John has been sharing the insights he has received from his vision. Jesus, the messiah that all of the prophets have been pointing to, gives him images of what the future holds. In these climatic chapters John sees the death of the earth but it is not the final doom that people fear, it is merely the opening for a new type of earth. An earth where the fullness of God can dwell with his chosen people. A new earth where there will be no more reason for sorrow because we will not suffer hurts or losses, an earth where death has become extinct and life is free to grow unhindered. Christ is seated on the throne as king of the united kingdoms of earth and heaven, he decrees that all things will become new and as every aspect of creation now submits to his rule, it obeys.

God created the universe, carefully designing every aspect with the potential for goodness. He has now enabled it to reach its full potential, he was there at the beginning of the project and here at its end but because all of the potential of the earth has been released the new heaven and earth will have no end because they will never face decay or destruction. We have a choice, we can either be part of this bright new kingdom or we can stay in the dark and journey towards oblivion.

John is taken by the angel to get a proper view of the new Jerusalem. Jerusalem through the ages has attempted being a holy city but God will one day found a truly holy city, all of it is suffused with the unique life and purity of God. This is because he is able to be fully present there, a resident of this town. There isn’t a temple building because he is present throughout the whole city. His glory lights it up so that lamps are unnecessary and neither are any forms of security because the city is full of holiness so nothing that would cause danger can dwell there. All the residents have been embraced by and have embraced holiness themselves.

Life grows in such abundance on this new earth that it rushes like a mighty river, the course of the river leads to abundant plant life, never again will nature be cursed to wilt, decay or be unproductive. All the citizens of heaven and earth will joyfully work the land, it will no longer be arduous because of Jesus’s presence, the Lord of the sabbath rest will make our efforts effortless. We will enjoy this new creation with him, basking in the warmth and light of his love. Jesus promises this will happen soon.

We have seen through the course of our exile study that no place on earth will ever truly be home, this is because we are currently in exile from the one we designed to live with. Christ knew we would not be able to make this world truly homely or find our way back to him, so he came to make all of the preparations himself. When he died on the cross everything that spoils this world died with him, we still see the effects of sin, sorrow and suffering but their days are numbered, they shall soon pass away along with this earth. The more I dwell on it, the more I want to live in this new reality. Jesus fulfills all his promises so this reality will soon become the only reality. While we wait for it we don’t have to accept this world as it is, we can begin to help the light of this glorious new world to break through into the shadows of this dying one. When people see us living like we are already at home in the new creation they will want to put aside their lives as exiles and join us.

#christian #christianity #blog #christ #jesus #church #the bible #faith #bible #fortress of fortitude #lent #exile #gospel

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FOF 115: EXILE 35: ARRIVAL, NEHEMIAH 13

The Jews had returned from exile and the walls of Jerusalem had been rebuilt. What should have been a new start for the nation, ended up being a return to their old practices. Nehemiah had joined them to help them rebuild but even after the building work was finished he took on the much trickier work of pushing them to obey God’s law. We see how zealous Nehemiah is for the law in the forceful manner he deals with law breakers, Tobiah was an Ammonite who was trying to sabotage the rebuilding project, he’d decided to store some of his belongings in the new temple and Nehemiah threw them out in his fury.

Nehemiah purifies the temple after the offending items have been removed. He then chastises the officials for not supplying the needs of the priests. He puts a team in place to make sure they get their supplies. He stops merchants from selling their wares on the sabbath by shutting the gates and posting guards. He then rounds on the men who had married foreign wives, he treats them the most harshly of all, he verbally and physically abuses them. He says that they are sinning like King Solomon who was led astray by his many wives. He wants God to be merciful towards him because of all these efforts to purify the Jewish nation but the book ends with his plea for favour from God and no sign that the Jews have taken onboard his correction or changed their ways at all.

I think we can admire Nehemiah’s commitment to holiness even if his methods of attaining it are flawed. We know that holiness is something we can’t achieve, we saw from yesterday’s passage in Zephaniah that it is received, it is God’s gift to us. It is true that we are called to correct and admonish one another but it must always be from a place of love. I work in a school and I have continually found that children are much more likely to listen to you if you have first built up a relationship with them, you can be firm but never harsh. If we are too harsh when we correct each other we are likely to either ignore or rebel against the guidance. Here the Jews seem to be paying Nehemiah little heed and we get a sense of foreboding, they may have returned to Jerusalem but the issues that led them to exile are still present. Their location has changed but their hearts are still far from God.

We have seen all the way through this study the absolute necessity of Jesus’ ministry. By our nature we rebel against God. One of the greatest miracles Christ can achieve is to completely realign our desires towards God rather than away from him. Jesus did not achieve this by coming to earth and forcing our obedience, the history of the earth has shown that you can’t force someone to change who they are at a fundamental level. You may be able to control someone’s behaviour through fear but their hearts and minds will remain unmoved. Real change only comes when we love something with all of our affection, it is then that we find all of our opinions and thoughts beginning to point towards it like a magnet. If this is true of our human relationships, like great friendships and marriages, how much truer is it of the relationship with our creator, Father God. Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross means that our old system of living is dead and we have been rebooted with a new life, a new way of living. With this new life we can be filled with God’s Spirit who allows us to know God personally, as we get to know God building our relationship with him, our devotion to him grows, our whole being points towards him and we truly arrive home from exile.

#christian #christianity #blog #christ #jesus #church #the bible #faith #bible #fortress of fortitude #messiah #lent #exile

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FOF 113: EXILE 33: DRIVEN AWAY, LAMENTATIONS 3

The writer laments because he has experienced affliction that he attributes to the Lord. He has been driven away from God’s presence into exile, from the light of his presence towards darkness that gets darker the further he moves away from him. He lists many of the ways he has suffered, he is elderly, injured, besieged, bitter, trapped, ignored, mangled, pierced, mocked, broken, trampled, deprived, forgotten, afflicted and depressed. He is suffering so intensely that we might expect him to drown in despair. Yet after describing his sufferings, he pivots to focus on the positives. Even after all of this hardship, he is still alive. Though he credits God as the cause of his pain, he also acknowledges that he is the source of every blessing.

God has an unending supply of compassion, this quality does not change, nothing about God’s character ever changes. When we call him we can expect that because of his deep love for us he will be motivated to save us. He is all we need, even if we feel we had no one else in the world who cared about us and we had God, we would have all we need. We might find ourselves without friends or family. Human relationships are vulnerable to so many different variables but God is always dependable. We can wait on him to act expectantly, we can wait knowing that he will take action on our behalf.

That kind of trust invested in God always yields a return of goodness. We don’t even have to do anything more than that to benefit from God’s giving nature, we simply need to wait without making a fuss and he will come to rescue us from even the direst of situations. If we start following him while we are young then we will establish a relationship that will empower us to weather the storms that always come. We see the writer pouring his lament into words on paper, laying all of his struggles out before God but after venting he encourages us to sit in silence in God’s presence. Some hopes and dreams may have turned to dust but there is the immovable hope of his Kingdom that cannot be destroyed or taken away.

When someone hurts us we can be tempted to strike back, to get our vengeance but if we refuse to retaliate and behave with grace and dignity then God honours that and the attacker ends up looking foolish. No suffering is eternal for those who trust in God. Though the things we place our security in fail, we can know that God will never fail us. We often question why he allows such suffering to even take place if he is sovereign. We know that one answer to that question is because we often face the consequences of moving away from his light into the dark world, in the darkness, away from his presence, we begin moving towards our own ruin. It is deeply tragic and heart wrenching to watch as people choose the path away from God, the path that leads to destruction. Yet another fact about God is that no matter how far away someone has moved into darkness his light can still reach them.

God can redeem even the most hopeless cases. He sent his son, the Light of the world, into the darkness to light it up. Christ wasn’t content to go person to person lighting up lives. He came as a human man, though he is God’s Son he chose to limit himself to one place at a time. He chose to sacrifice himself upon a cross, to experience the deepest darkness, the weight of every evil on earth; complete separation from God. He suffered that darkness so that we could live in the light. He broke the power of that darkness over our lives, there was a barrier between us and God so that we couldn’t have a relationship with him but now that barrier has been destroyed and light has poured through. The Holy Spirit lives in us, we are full of God’s light. A light that shines through all of our sufferings and a light that can shine the way for other exiles to journey to God.

#christian #christianity #blog #christ #jesus #church #the bible #faith #bible #fortress of fortitude #lent #exile

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FOF 112: EXILE 32: THE UNBREAKABLE COVENANT, JEREMIAH 33

We flashback to Jerusalem, before it fell. Jeremiah the prophet is confined in prison and he prophesies that the city will indeed be destroyed but that will not be the end of the story. God will heal the people, not just from their physical injuries but every other kind of healing, most vitally their spiritual sense. Then they will be able to bask in the peace his presence brings and access the abundance of resources at his disposal. He will forgive their rebellion, they will have a clean slate. The nations of the earth will see this and be astonished at their comeback. They thought that the country had been deserted, that the animals had inherited the promised land and not God’s people.

Yet God confirms that his covenant promise still stands strong, he will repopulate Israel with people and restore their prosperous agriculture. In that time a descendant of King David will appear on the scene. He will live his life as a human perfectly maintaining his relationship with God the Father, he will live justly; everything he does will be morally perfect. He is the one who is chosen to rescue God’s people from the consequences of sin. He is the perfect man for the job because he will be both King and priest. God’s promise to do this is unbreakable. People will doubt it because they look at the mess Israel and Judah have gotten into. Yet this promise is not dependent on our action but on God’s and he is the creator and sustainer of the universe. He set the laws that govern the whole of existence into motion, just as no one can tamper with those fundamental laws of nature, no one will get in the way of him keeping his promise.

We have seen that God has indeed kept his promise. Christ came and he has done all that is necessary to save us from the power of our own sin-directed natures. We see countless stories of dramatic turnarounds from people who were in the depths of despair, or trapped in addiction or actively hurting people. When God sends his Holy Spirit to live within us, he begins to completely restore us, to make us a work of art; his masterpiece. He makes us the best possible version of ourselves. No one is disqualified from accepting this promise, there doesn’t need to be any exiles anymore. We will only go into exile if we choose it because by Jesus’ life and death on the cross, God is opening up the doors of heaven and restoring the earth to the way it should be. He is orchestrating the great homecoming where he calls all of his exiled children to return.

#christian #christianity #blog #christ #jesus #church #the bible #faith #bible #fortress of fortitude #lent #exile

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FOF 111: EXILE 31: SOUGHT AFTER, ISAIAH 62

Isaiah will keep prophesying because he knows it is benefitting the scattered people of Jerusalem, we have seen through our Exile study that the people of Israel are all guilty of repeatedly breaking God’s law but Isaiah prays for them to be vindicated, to be completely cleared of any blame for their actions. The nations have watched and also been directly responsible for Israel’s exile and now they will watch as God pardons them and even gives them a new name. The Israelites are known as the people of the God of Israel, up to this point the Lord has tied himself to this one ethnic group. The nations saw how God rejected the people he loved so dearly. In the past he had chosen to identify himself with them by giving himself the title of the God of Israel, their personal deity but they may have thought their exile meant he had cut ties with them. The new name he gives them gives the complete opposite message.

He calls them Hephzibah and Beulah, his delight and married. In other words Israel is the marriage partner that he takes deep delight in. They may have been unfaithful to their vow to him but he has been constant in his affection, not content to wait for Israel to return he follows them into exile, to be with them there and to promise that one day there will be a great homecoming. Isaiah calls on anyone who has a relationship with the living God to call on him ceaselessly, until he makes Jerusalem the focus point of praise on the Earth. It will become a centre of praise because the Lord will dwell there among his people. When heaven and Earth are at last joined together, more unified than the closest of marriages. The renewed world God is preparing will be one without hardship but instead there will be a great abundance of all natural resources.

Isaiah urges us to get ready because the saviour who will usher in the start of this new age is coming and as we read this we know he did indeed come to Earth. Christ came as Isaiah predicted with something that will more than make amends for the suffering we experience. It is the very presence of the Lord himself by his Spirit. The Spirit who is Holy and makes those he dwells in Holy. Jesus paid a high price to pay for our release from death but he paid it willingly because he, along with the Father and the Spirit, have sought us out ever since time began. He searches for us because he loves us with a more perfect love than the best bride or groom. Human marriage is a pale reflection of the union at the heart of the trinity, the love that binds Father, Son and Spirit together as one, even though they are three distinct persons. The trinity embraces us not just as children but as a bride, one whom God beautifies not outwardly but inwardly by the work of his Spirit.

#christian #christianity #blog #christ #jesus #church #the bible #faith #bible #fortress of fortitude #lent #exile #gospel

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FOF 110: EXILE 30: DELIVERANCE, ESTHER 4

Esther found herself Queen of Persia, like Daniel she had gained a position of great influence even in Exile. Yet as Mordecai says in this chapter her royal status would not protect her from the threat that faced the Jews. Haman had concocted a plot to exterminate the Jewish people. This plot sprung first from his jealousy of Mordecai but developed into a resentment of his entire ethnic group. His justification to commit this act of genocide is that the Jews choose to keep themselves separate they don’t fully adopt the customs of the people they live amongst. It is clear that the Jews are being targeted for their obedience to the law of God, many of the laws require them to live in a manner that distinguishes them from other people.

Mordecai and all the Jews lament bitterly when this plan is actioned by the King, unless something is done then nations in the Persian Empire will be allowed to slaughter the Jewish people by law. I don’t know if Mordecai even thought of getting in touch with Esther or if it was even possible for him to do so but by wailing so loudly and publicly he gets her attention. Esther is informed that he is wearing sackcloth and ashes. She uses the wealth she has acquired as Queen to try and clothe him but he refuses the gift. She sends another messenger to find out why he has rejected her offer. Mordecai sends back his answer which is how Esther discovers Haman’s plot.

Along with the information of the plot, Mordecai begs Esther to entreat the king to have mercy on the Jews. Esther responds that going to the King uninvited would be a risk, if the King doesn’t want to see her he could choose to have her executed. She has not been summoned for a month so she is probably doubting that the King is still interested in her. Mordecai’s reply is that if she stays silent then deliverance will come from somewhere else. God is never directly referred to in this book of the Bible but here is one of the many places that he is indirectly acknowledged. Mordecai trusts God’s character as one who always responds to a cry for deliverance. Yet he also sees that Esther could well have been placed in the royal house for this very purpose of saving her people. Esther says through the messenger that Mordecai should hold a fast and she and her attendants will abstain from food and drink too. She calls for the fast to be three days long, after which she will go to the King, she is prepared to die for the possibility that she can help rescue her people.

I wonder what our response to the suffering of other people is. When suffering doesn’t directly impact us it is so easy to ignore it and get on with our comfortable lives. I find Esther’s decision to be willing to put herself in danger to save her people challenging. Yet we can see that she did not jump at this opportunity to be a hero straight away. She found the bravery to act through the discipline of fasting. This is the act of abstaining from something, often food or drink, with a view to using the time gained for more prayer and meditation. Esther and Mordecai were willing first to have true compassion for the people, they allowed themselves to explore their emotional response to the news of their imminent demise. They did not give into despair though because they used their sorrow to motivate them to pray and that prayer motivated their action. Jesus was also driven by compassion, he was in heaven with the father, safe from danger, but he came to suffer and to sacrifice himself so he could pull off the ultimate rescue. By following his example we too can give on behalf of others so that they too can experience the safety that we find in our relationship with God.

#christian #christianity #blog #christ #jesus #church #the bible #faith #bible #fortress of fortitude #lent #exile

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FOF 109: EXILE 29: DANIEL 1

When the Babylonians pillaged Jerusalem they stole away the most valuable treasures in the temple of God and stored them in a house for their god. In a similar fashion they also stole away the men they judged to have the highest value and they placed them in the King’s service. They only saw men of royal or noble birth as worthy enough to serve their King; in addition to this they also needed to be young, in peak physical condition, gifted at a variety of learning styles, knowledgeable, insightful and trained for royal service. Their natural gifting and the preparation they had already received was to be supplemented with further instruction.

Four men from Judah found themselves in this royal training programme, their names were Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah. These Jewish men fit the strict criteria but the only issue was that they had been raised in a completely different culture and were loyal to the traditions of their people. The Babylonians had created a system that reprogrammed the ones they deemed the best and brightest to become fiercely loyal to their empire. The process started with giving them a Babylonian name, imagine the effect it would have on you if you were surrounded in an alien culture, most of the people around you speaking a foreign language and insisting on calling you a new name. It would be hard to retain the sense of identity you had built up that is connected to your cultural roots. As Jews, Daniel and his friends would either have to adapt their Jewish identity or abandon it altogether.

Even though he was a young man of low status in this new environment Daniel was not prepared to abandon his Jewish roots. He could have fully rebelled, refusing to answer to his new name or learn the new customs. That course of action would likely result in his death. Instead he takes a diplomatic approach. He agrees to submit to the training on one condition: He would not eat the royal food or drink their wine. At first glance this seems like an odd issue to take a stand about but Daniel said that such food and drink would defile him because it was likely sacrificed to idols. Thankfully God had made the officials favourably disposed towards Daniel, this is probably because in all other areas he was obedient to them. The only reason the official has to deny his request is because he thinks Daniel’s proposed alternative diet of vegetables and water will leave him looking malnourished. Daniel suggests that the official test him for 10 days to see the impact the diet will have on his health.

Daniel and his friends all agree to eat only vegetables and drink only water for a 10 day period. When the allotted time is over they are in better health and appear better nourished than those who ate the royal food. They also further impressed the officials by excelling in their education and having a level of understanding of dreams and visions that could not be gained by excessive study. Their success I think can be traced to their faithfulness to God, they honoured him by refusing to eat food that had been dedicated to a false god and he in turn honoured them by elevating their status in Babylon. God had successfully placed four men who were loyal to him right at the heart of the most powerful empire on earth at that time.

We live in an increasingly secular society and we all have to choose what issues we will not compromise on. In order to live in this society we have to engage with it. To build the Kingdom of God we have to go out to invite new people to become citizens of it. The challenge is to be distinct from the culture but to also be able to relate to people who are stuck in it. Daniel and his friends are good examples of how to go about this, they willingly sought the best for the people around them. Even though these people were their oppressors they chose to treat them as fellow humans which in the end inspired their oppressors to treat them and others more humanely. Yet in seeking the best for their captors they didn’t blindly submit to all of their commands, they were already acting in obedience to the primary command from their Lord, they were loving him and then loving others as they loved themselves. Of course, Christ himself is the best example of how to do this. He too encountered an oppressive empire but he chose not to seek their destruction but to rescue them from them and all humanity from our own self destruction. He never compromised in his worshipful devotion to God the Father and he calls his followers to act in the same way. When we are faithful to God we deepen our relationship with him and experience all the benefits that knowing him deeply brings.

#christian #christianity #blog #christ #jesus #church #the bible #faith #bible #fortress of fortitude #lent #exile

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FOF 108: EXILE 28: A FOREIGN LAND, PSALM 137

Today we reflect on one of the most famous Psalms and certainly the best known one about the exile. The writer of this lament is in captivity in Babylon but his mind dwells upon the promised land and the memories of Zion cause him anguish as he mourns for what the Israelites have lost. The Babylonian captors don’t want to see or hear their misery, they want to hear joyful Jewish songs. They have stolen the people from their homeland and now they want them to entertain on demand, they likely want to hear the Jewish songs because they are a novelty. The songs are more than just a novelty to the Jews, they are songs written for the Lord. They are being asked to perform worship songs for the people who have subjected them to slavery and exile.

The Jews cannot be forced to cheer up, they do not want to forget their homeland and fully acclimate to Babylonian culture. To them no other happiness will compare to the sheer joy they found in Jerusalem in the presence of God. Any attempts to make the most of their current existence are hampered by the trauma they experienced during the downfall of Jerusalem. He remembers how the people of Edom showed no compassion for their plight but instead urged the Babylonians to completely decimate the city. He calls the Lord to remember their words, to hold them to account for their attitude. He saves his harshest words for Babylon, he knows that eventually the Babylonian empire is doomed to be utterly wiped away, he sees this as retributive justice for what they’ve done to the Jews. It sounds harsh to us to pronounce a blessing over the people who would kill the children of the Babylonians but they likely experienced the exact same treatment from the Babylonians when they invaded Jerusalem. We can understand the desire even if we don’t approve.

We all experience traumatic events in our lives often centred around some form of loss. We may be in a similar position to the Jews and have people calling for us to cheer up but trauma requires a healing process that can take time. Instinctively we often avoid thinking about painful memories but it is necessary for us to process them in order to be healed. The Psalmist chose to remember Zion even though it caused him to weep but he also chose to hang on to his resentment against the Babylonian empire. Here Christ is our example of how to behave, he called us to love our enemies and he modelled how to do that in how he treated all of the people who called for his crucifixion and how he even forgave all the ones who nailed him to the cross. Loving our enemies does not mean tolerating or condoning the harm that they cause us, it is instead the best way we have to break the cycle of hurt. If the Psalmist did get his wish and Jews were able to kill the Babylonian children, then they would want revenge and would be looking to wipe out their children. Christ calls us to love our enemies so that a relationship can be built up and they can become as dear as family. This is how God treated us when we were exiled from him and acting like his enemy, he adopted us and became our Father.

#christian #christianity #blog #christ #jesus #church #the bible #faith #bible #fortress of fortitude #lent #exile

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FOF 107: EXILE 27: SAVED, PSALM 106

The Psalm begins by praising God because he is good and has a love for us that never ends. He is so good and has done so many incredible things that we would never be able to fully list them. In addition to all his past awe-inspiring deeds, his chosen people can put their hope in the fact he will rescue them in the future. They can continue to trust this even though God’s followers throughout history have all fallen far short of his standards for goodness, and have even committed outright evil acts because of God’s mercy this does not disqualify them from receiving God’s goodness.

The Psalmist looks at the history of the Israelites as an example of how God remains faithful to unreliable people. The Israelites were in bondage in Egypt and the Lord rescued them through spectacular wonders but after their release they were ungrateful for all he had done for them. They rebelled against him but he did not abandon them. He stayed true even when they complained in the wilderness, they were focused more on what they lacked than the many things they had received like their freedom and the hope of a bright future. They would not believe these promises, they were consumed by their present reality. God could not partner with that generation so he left them in the wilderness and said that sadly their descendants would follow the same pattern, and one day he would have to abandon them to wander in the wilderness away from the promised land and scattered among the nations.

They bound themselves to lifeless idols and bit by bit had their life and vitality drain out of them until they were spiritually dead. They chose to adopt the practices of the nations around them instead of submitting to the law that God gave them. They sacrificed their own children. They became so corrupt that God could not bear to have them in his presence. Apart from him they were vulnerable to their enemies and crushed beneath the weight of their guilt and shame as a result of their immoral actions. Yet God could never fully abandon his people, as stated at the beginning his love goes on forever and he made a promise to the nation. The Psalmist appeals to God on the basis of his covenant with them, he asks him to come to their rescue and gather them from the nations.

This psalm goes into great detail about why the Israelites ended up being exiled. In the past I have been critical of them for turning their backs on God so many times but as I have grown older I've seen the same pattern in my life. It is human nature, God comes through for us in miraculous ways, completely turning our lives around then we can end up going back to patterns of behaviour that dishonour him. This happens because like the Israelites we get caught in the moment and forget all of the good things that happened in the past, we also end up conforming to culture rather than allowing God’s spirit to conform us to the pattern of God’s Kingdom. It is important for us to remember the tremendous gift of new life that Jesus gave us through his death and resurrection. We remember that with gratitude and also look with hope to the future joining of heaven and earth. Jesus brought the Kingdom of heaven to earth and we can do the same. Rather than getting beaten down by the world we can spread the new world and new life. We can point the way for others to also receive the gift of new life and a place in the new world order.

#christian #christianity #blog #christ #jesus #church #the bible #faith #bible #fortress of fortitude #lent #exile

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FOF 106: EXILE 26: THROWN ASIDE, PSALM 102

The Psalmist begins the Psalm by asking God to hear him, he states the request in three different ways. This underlines how desperate he is for God’s attention. The reason for his desperation becomes clear as he describes the situation he finds himself in. He feels as though his days are passing by and he is not achieving anything. He is in a severe state of distress that is causing him physical pain and leaving him with little appetite for food. He is distressed because he was once in the presence of God but has now been cast aside. Out of the light and warmth of his presence the days feel dark.

He appeals to God to show favour towards his chosen people because he did in fact choose them and showed the world that they were dear to him. He is so confident that God cherishes his people that even the exile will not deter him from his trust in God. He is convinced that God will respond to his prayer and the prayers of the other exiles for mercy by rebuilding the promised land and resettling them there. Their descendants will see that this is how God works, he hears the cries of those in dire need, the poor, the prisoner and the condemned. Those society has given up on, God will never abandon. When the nations of the world see how God is able to restore the people in even the most desperate situations, they will all gather together to praise him.

So even though the Psalmist is suffering and feeling that his lifespan has been shortened he knows that God is eternal and though this world will pass away, he will establish all of his people in a new everlasting world. I wonder how you react to suffering, I wonder if you are like me and seek things like comfort eating or numbing out with a screen to deal with pain. It is admirable that the Psalmist brings all of his struggles before God, he lays them all out and is very honest about them. Yet he doesn’t wallow in his misery; lament is a very important practice. It is important to properly grieve loss and process our pain but it is also important to balance this by putting this suffering in perspective. Christ was able to willingly endure the most intense suffering ever experienced because he knew that it would result in the unification of heaven and earth. It would open up the space for us to dwell eternally in the presence of God. God welcomes us to share our hurts with him as he longs to heal and to comfort them as we express them to him, to bring a peace that passes understanding. We’re also able to rejoice even when we suffer knowing that the eternity we will spend with God will eclipse the struggles we face in this life.

#christian #christianity #blog #christ #jesus #church #the bible #faith #bible #fortress of fortitude #lent #exile

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FOF 105: EXILE 25: THE SERVANT, PSALM 89

This Psalmist begins by extolling some of God’s good qualities. He talks of God’s great love and a faithfulness that lasts throughout time. God is faithful to the promise he made to David, his servant, that there will be a King from his line who will reign eternally. God is in supreme power over all natural and spiritual forces. In this position he is able to elevate anyone to the highest position of authority that he desires. He rules over the heavens and the earth, our realm and the spiritual realm because he created them all, which means they belong to him and if he created them he has ultimate power over them.

We can relax knowing that he is in control because he always acts in a way that is just and right. Those who give God all his due get to share in his glory and receive his strengthening. One such person was David, who served God so well that he was promised that the messiah would come from his line. The messiah will crush death, the ultimate enemy of all humanity. He will be raised above every authority on earth and he will call God his father. God will rescue him from death so that he can triumph over it and he will inherit the entire universe from his father. As he conquers death he will never die, so he will eternally reign over this Kingdom.

Now we know that there was a period where there were no Kings from David’s line ruling on the throne of Israel but the promise still stands. God’s promises will always be fulfilled, he has the power to make them happen and the faithfulness to stick to what he says. Yet the Israelties were confused because though God is the perfect, supremely powerful ruler of the universe, what would he reject the people he had chosen? The issue was not in his ability to keep hold of us. It appeared to them that he had broken his promise to be faithful. That without God all that remained was death, yet the Psalmist still holds out hope for God’s faithfulness to his chosen ones.

We have reflected that God rejected the Israelities because they rejected him first. His loyal love was still there and his promise remained. We have seen how it has all been fulfilled in Jesus, he became the eternal King in the line of David, he submitted to death so that he could gain power over it. His Father then made him ruler over everything because he is his son, he has the right to inherit the Kingdom and because he has gained the victory over death he was raised to life in a new imperishable body that he will give to all who follow him. He gives us a taste of this new life in him, where we become like Jesus and remain loyal to our heavenly Father. Death was the final enemy, so Christ is exalted above everything. That means he has the power to keep every one of his promises, he chooses us and nothing can take us away from him, we will remain his and will remain part of his Kingdom and part of his family. We share in the glory that gets stronger and brighter for all eternity.

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