John 14:6 Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me’,

Wouldn’t it be great if there was one easy guide on how to love.  It would be easy wouldn’t it? Just follow the rules and everything will go swimmingly.  Ingrained in our self sin-focused lives is our automatic go to for resolving any problem; to follow a set of rules.

We even think that is the solution that God gives us, after all aren’t the 10 commandments a set of rules to make ourselves right before God, aren’t they the model that we are meant to follow, aren’t the 10 commandments a standard and a measure of our obedience?

The 10 commandments were never given for these purposes.

God gave the 10 commandments to bring us to an awareness that we cannot measure up to God’s standard because God is holy and we are not.  It is that simple, we can never walk into God’s presence because of his holiness and his purity.  The moment sin steps anywhere near to God it is completely consumed and destroyed.  It is God’s grace that creates that separation from man and humanity, it is his mercy not to destroy but to rescue.

It would be like standing next to the sun and not expecting to be destroyed by the intensity of the heat.

The 10 commandments declares to everyone of us that we have no right to be god of our own lives or expect others to look on us as god of theirs.  It also declares that we are weak and cannot do what God requires us to do without his intervention.  It is impossible to meet the standard of God because only God himself can meet that standard, the 10 commandments demonstrates our need of God.  As humanity we are in dire need to be dependant on God, we exist because he declared it; we breathe because he sustains us.

Amazingly in our sin God never abandoned us to our own self defeating consequences instead he came down to earth from heaven to show us the way.  He came down to us in the person of Jesus, his one and only Son, to show us the way to the Father.

The 10 commandments are a picture of a person, a perfect person, a person who could and would meet all of God’s standards, that one person is Jesus himself because he is both fully God and fully Human.  Jesus himself is the standard and meets the standard.  But he didn’t stop there, Jesus is also our teacher who comes into our lives, through the power of the Holy Spirit, as we put our faith and trust in Him.  He shows us how to do the impossible; to love God with all our hearts, soul, mind and strength and to love others as ourselves.  Jesus shows us the way.

How do we do this?  We don’t Jesus does this through us.

John 15:4-5 Remain in me as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine.  Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.  I am the vine and you are the branches.  If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing’.

We only know love because God first loved us, love begins with God, the source of true love comes from and is sustain by God himself.  The how to guide of true everlasting love is found in a person, the Saviour of the world, the Lord Jesus.

‘Love your neighbour as yourself’ Mark 12:31 niv

The tragedy of living in a broken self-focused world is that the collision course of our lives brings hardships and terrors to the lives of others.

For those of us in the world who have been hurt by others, the hurt goes deep into the recesses of our unreachable soul, it’s as if we fence off this part of our hearts with a sign saying ‘Keep out’.

The amazing truth of God’s redemption of a fallen people is that Christ’s death and resurrection makes a way, not just for those who sin, but for those who have been sinned against.  Throughout scripture we see Christ’s compassion towards those who have been wronged, towards those whose hearts have been broken by a world on a destination to eternal death. A world who unknowingly are aligned to the father of lies, the devil who has no goodness in him at all.

Just as a heart that sins is exposed by what it serves so does a heart that has been broken, mistreated or assaulted.  We become a people who are afraid of others, we become a people who refuse to accept or see any love in other people.  We begin to believe that all people are untrustworthy.  This is a lie from the devil.  The devil’s plan is to undermine all that God is and plans to do, so that people in a broken world of sin and rejection stay in the darkness of that sin and rejection of God.

God’s ultimate plan and purpose, as we thought about in our last blog, is to draw us into a relationship not just with Him but with one another, so if the devil cannot undermine our faith in God instead he undermines our trust in others.

Once again there is a solution but as with sin in our hearts that requires confession and in turn receive forgiveness from God; His solution for an embittered heart is also a super difficult one to accept or do.

The Lord’s prayer declares ‘forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sinned against us’.  This is the solution to a broken heart that has the keep out sign of bitterness.  Unfortunately, our understanding of forgiveness restricts our willingness to do it.

The dictionary description of forgiveness is defined as an individual, voluntary internal process of letting go of feelings and thoughts of resentment, bitterness, anger, and the need for vengeance and retribution toward someone who we believe has wronged us, including ourselves.

This isn’t the forgiveness that God offers us.  Forgiveness isn’t a letting off, it isn’t a belittling of the sin and seeing it as unimportant, in fact God’s forgiveness towards us required the death sacrifice of his own Son.

The same is true of the forgiveness offered to those who have wronged us, it isn’t a letting off, it is a demand and expectation of justice.  The trouble is we think we are the ones who are to offer the justice because we are the one who has been wronged.  The truth of the matter is; it is God who has been wronged by the one who has sinned, even if we are the subject of the sin it is an offence to God to have one of his chosen children to be harmed by another.  God declares vengeance is His Deut 32:35. It is God who will judge, who will avenge all sin, who acknowledges and provides payment for the brokenness not only in the world but in our hearts.

Forgiveness of another isn’t always a measure to restoring our relationship with the one who has wronged us but it is a desire to restore our relationship with God.  We are declaring to God we trust him to deal with our hurt justly and we have confidence that God will ensure the sin is paid for.  This action takes faith in God to enable us to go through with it. We never forgive because the other person deserves forgiveness just as God doesn’t forgive us our sin because we deserve it.  Grace is to receive undeserved favour and that is what Christ has done for us all on the cross.

And the amazing freedom that comes in the moment when we are willing to take away the ‘Keep Out’ sign and ask God to have our whole hearts, we will then begin to live a life that isn’t afraid of others; a life free from worldly cynicism; a life that doesn’t expect the worst; a life that sees the reality of others in the light that we are all sinners and we have all fallen short of God’s glory.

As our hearts are healed by a loving trustworthy Father who gives us all his goodness and withholds nothing from us, even though we deserve to be eternally separated from Him we then, begin to see the power of his word to transform our lives into the likeness of Christ.

If you are finding life too hard to handle turn your hearts over to the Lord Jesus and ask him to shine the light of his word in the darkest places of your heart through the power of the Holy Spirit. However, we all need to remember we are not alone because amazingly God has provided Brothers and Sisters in Christ to be an encouragement and a help in times of trouble.

Instead of isolating ourselves from one another we are to move towards one another offering the love and eternal hope that comes from knowing Christ and being known by Him.

Luke 10:27 He answered ‘Love the Lord your God with all you heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind and, ‘Love your neighbour as yourself’.

Love is an interesting concept isn’t it? In our world we speak of love as something romantic, something that makes us feel fuzzy and warm inside.  Love is expressed in ways of needing others and by meeting that need through our relationships. It is something we all crave but it something near impossible for us to do.

Well actually it is super easy for us to do, it is what we do every day of our lives; the essence of our being is to love. Unfortunately for humanity this is directed in the wrong places.

Many of us struggle with low self-esteem; we feel inferior to others and others seem to relish in their power over us.  Our solution to this is to try and love ourselves.  The media and our world view both encourages and advocates this principle ‘Find your me time’ ‘If others don’t love you it’s because you don’t love yourself enough’ ‘Once you love and accept yourself others will love you too’ ‘those who don’t love you, well it’s their loss’.

However, our bible verse and much of the bible says love isn’t the problem; it is the misdirection of love that is the problem.  What we actually need is a moment of reorientation; we need God to intervene into this misunderstood moment in our lives.

As always God turns our broken, mixed up world upside down; the truth is God is turning our world the right way up, the way we were meant to be, the way he originally planned for humanity to love.

The reason we love, the reason why love is on the agenda is because God is love, we are the product of God’s love, we are created in his image therefore in us is love.

The problem is we first and foremost love ourselves.  We expect it, we demand it, we fight for it, we hate it when we don’t get it and we hate others for not giving it to us.

The solution to our love problem is to love God first.  Mmm that’s hard for our hardened broken hearts to hear, its hard for our self-focused hearts to even want to consider.  But God doesn’t stop there, we are not only to love God first but we are to love him with every ounce of our being.  Oh no we cry out, is that really possible?  Well you are right to worry because it is impossible for us to love as we are meant to love.

So why would God expect us to love him so fully if it is impossible for us to do that?

Our ability to love God comes from the fact that first and foremost God loved us first.  One of the most famous verses in the bible tells us ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life’ John 3:16.

The direction of our love begins with our love for God because the direction of his love began with his Son the Lord Jesus and because of his son God’s love is extended to us.  You see held within these words are the power of God’s love.  God expressed his love for humanity in his sacrificial giving of His Son to live as humanity and to take humanity’s rightful place on the cross of judgement because humanity behaved as if they were God, as if they”re the sole focus of love.

In our demand to be loved we are saying we are God, we should be the focus of everyone else’s love, we expect others to serve and worship us.

In our desire to love ourselves; to find our me time, we are declaring that God must fit into our view of who He is rather than us fit into His view of who we are.  The only solution is to accept God’s Son who declares God is Sovereign over our lives and He alone is worthy to be worshipped and glorified.

Eph 1:3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.

By invitation only

One key thing as human beings, we truly don’t understand is that we are not entitled to know God or be known by God.

Now I can hear your objections ranging from ‘I’ve lived such a good life I will go straight to heaven where all the good people go’ or even ‘I’m not a murderer or a sex offender so I’ll be ok’.

In our humanness we imagine that we are the most important person/people in the world, and we cannot imagine not being number 1 in God’s kingdom or maybe second place! Once again I hear the objections ‘ ‘You can’t be speaking about me I give loads of money to charity’ to ‘You can’t be talking about me I always sacrifice myself for the benefit of others’…..           

Next time someone annoys you think about why you’re upset.  In that moment ask God to show you what your heart attitude is. Maybe it’s ‘I don’t ask for much it’s the least God can do for me’ or ‘how dare they treat me like this after everything I’ve done for them’.

Despite our darkened scarred hearts that cause us to see the world and eternity through skewed thinking, Father God loves all those he has created and has provided a blessed rescue plan for each of us.

All we have to do is accept his invitation, his invitation to belong to his family, to be adopted into the kingdom of God where Jesus is not only the King but also our brother, the kingdom where God isn’t just the Creator but our Father God.

In other words, despite deserving the punishment of death God gives us the position of child with all the inheritance entitled only to Jesus.  The cross is where God’s grace and mercy meet.

The only question left is are you ready to accept the invitation?

Letting go and letting God

Unfortunately for us, also at the heart of every human, is the inherent desire to control our own circumstances and our own surroundings.  We are our own world, so it is our natural impulse to trust what we see and only accept what we experience.  However, the worst part of having a heart that puts us at the centre of the universe is that we can not have two masters, God will never compete for ownership because he is the only Creator.

In the letter to the Ephesians, the apostle Paul makes it clear that God loves us so much that his provision was planned before the beginning of time.  For many this seems to be an incredible stumbling block rather than the provision of salvation God intended it to be.

To receive and accept this invitation all we have to do is let go of controlling our own lives and accept God’s foreknowledge of us and his future impact on our everyday lives.  How do we do that?  Stop trusting in ourselves and our own abilities and through the acceptance of what Christ has done for us, trust in God.

Something to celebrate

It hard for us to consider there is more to life than what we see with our own two eyes. There seems to be an inherent lack of trust in our hearts not just towards God but towards one another.  For some of us this can stem from difficult relationships or experiences. In the corrupt, sinful heart of each of us is a heart that is cynical; unwilling to change, unwilling to learn, unwilling to admit error, unwilling to consider life beyond us.

In the book of Ephesians chapter 1 the apostle Paul is introducing the newly founded church to the concept of who God is and what he has done for them.  Seems a bit strange why would he need to tell a church, who already believes in Jesus what Jesus has done for them, surely once they are born again that is enough, that is all that is needed to live the life Jesus promised.

Well Paul knows people really well because he knows himself really well.

Paul knows that as people we are vulnerable to keep looking to what we can see and trust what we experience which results in forgetting God’s promises and fulfilments because we forget to look up, we forget to continue to trust.

Paul wants the church to remember who they are and fully understand what God has done for them as this will form and continue to form the basis for their faith and trust in Jesus.

As we have seen today and over the last few weeks, to put our faith and trust in Jesus and walk the life of following Jesus takes a miracle.  That miracle will take hold in our lives when we have hearts that recognise our need of being rescued from the clutches of sin and have hearts that sing out in praise to God for being rescued.

Just then a man came up to Jesus and asked, “Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?” Matthew 19:16 niv

Last time we considered that to be born again, the process of leaving behind the old life of sin and a heart that chooses to follow Jesus, begins with a miracle and Jesus tells us that to receive this miracle we need to believe.

Belief is a strange concept because it has many facets to it depending on who we are and how we were raised.  The dictionary states that belief is trust, faith and confidence but it also states that faith is complete trust and confidence and a strongly held belief.

So these two words are intertwined in our society but often with little thought of how this works out in our everyday life.

As we considered last time we were created to worship and love God but in our rebellion, we worship and love ourselves.

Eternal life

To be born again is to receive and accept the promise of eternal life that Jesus has provided for us on the cross.  This is the mark of a changed heart and heart that desires now to worship and love God, this is the outworking of belief.

However, is eternal life something you have considered as something you want?  For many of us we are content to live in the here and now.  Our society is currently built on living life by getting out of it as much as we can while we can.  We try our best not to consider what is to come at the end of these days as it is too depressing or we try to prove that this is it and there’s nothing beyond our few years on this planet.

In the New Testament there was a young man who approached Jesus asking him what he needed to do to get eternal life, at face value this man was asking the right question it seemed that he wanted to genuinely know how to receive eternal life.  Once again, Jesus focuses in on the heart attitude of the person asking the question.  Jesus replies ‘Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only One who is good. If you want to enter life, keep the commandments.” Matt 19:17 niv

Jesus knows that this young man’s issue isn’t anything to do with gaining eternal life as the young man’s heart attitude is one of someone who thinks he has already done enough to warrant access to eternal life.  He thinks he has earned his way to heaven already!  And as a young man it is pure arrogance to assume that at that stage of your life you believe that you have done enough and have nothing left to learn.

 The two issues here were the young man thought:

1. You could earn your way to heaven
2. He had already done enough to merit access to eternal life

Life lessons

Often this story of the rich young man in scripture focuses in on the ‘rich’ aspect of the story.  After all Jesus brings up the subject in verse 23 “Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Truly I tell you, it is hard for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. ²⁴ Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”

Once again Jesus gets to the heart of the problem. Jesus doesn’t have a downer on rich people, he’s not saying that if your rich then you will never receive eternal life Jesus is saying that whatever you love the most, will hold your love and gain your worship.

Jesus goes onto explain to the disciples that to believe in Jesus is to give up everything else that holds your love and worship.  What a big ask, how is it possible in these corrupt, sinful hearts to even begin to be willing to give up everything that we have held dear and worthy.  Just as the young man resolved he became sad and went away.  The young man was unwilling to love Jesus more than he loved his wealth, his standing in society, his everything.

Treasures in heaven

In our lives we have a glimpse of the goodness of God, of all that he has provided for his created people however Jesus came and showed us that the true treasures are found in heaven; are found beyond the small glimpse we have now.

There is nothing worth having now that stops us from gaining the treasures that are to come.

And the greatest treasure for each of us is the treasure that our souls are crying out for…..

……..God himself.

Every time we pursue a dream to be better and greater than someone else – our souls are crying out for God’s greatness.

Every time we demand something to quench the compulsions to eat, drink and be merry – our souls are crying out for God’s provision, or comfort or peace.

Everything in us and everything we need is purely met in the character and personhood of God; Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

This is belief.  This is faith.  This is what being born again looks like. And in the words of Jesus

“With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” Matt 19: 26 niv.

Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.” John 3:3 niv

In our last musings we were considering being children of God, that because Jesus offered his life on our behalf we could come into relationship with God and it is our sin (our refusal to trust God) that separates us from that relationship.

Here we see the dilemma that humanity has.  Our souls were created to worship and love God, our hearts desire is to worship and love self and our bodies follow our hearts desire but our souls are crying out for God.

No wonder we live mixed up, confusing lives at times.

So how do we go from living outside of God’s original plan to living within God’s original plan?

The only way

There was a guy in the New Testament who realised there was a dilemma between how he was living and the life Jesus was describing.  This wasn’t any old guy he was a member of the Jewish ruling council, so a pretty high up chap.  He was also a Pharisee, a rule maker and a rule keeper for the Jewish people, he was someone who knew the law of God and how to keep it.

However, there was something that unsettled this man’s confidence in his standing in the community.  He took his responsibilities seriously and wanted to do the right thing by the people he was leading and there was something in the words of Jesus that caused him to not be able to sleep.

In the gospel of John Chapter 3 we find this guy Nicodemus approaching Jesus at night, whether that was because he didn’t want the other leaders or congregation to know what he was doing or whether he just couldn’t sleep because deep down he knew there was something he needed to understand but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.

Wham! Jesus spoke the truth he needed in the very first sentence he spoke to Nicodemus ‘no-one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again’.  As always Jesus gets to the heart of the problem, this was the unknown dilemma that Nicodemus was grappling with.

As Jesus shares the truth of this statement with Nicodemus we as readers are drawn to one of the most quoted words of the bible v16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

What is your response to this statement?  Do you accept it, do you reject it or do you understand it?

Interestingly at this point we are not told of Nicodemus’ response what we do know from his interaction with Jesus, that through all his years of learning and teaching of God’s word that there was something missing at the core of his understanding, there was something crucial that he needed to learn and it began with his heart.

Do you believe in miracles?

Whether we know anything about the word of God or whether we have spent a lifetime studying it there is something we too need to get to grips with.

V12 “I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things?”

We don’t know everything we need to know!  There is something missing in our understanding because it involves heaven and as Jesus goes onto say there is only one among us who has come from heaven and that is Jesus himself.

So, what does it take to be born again?

A work of heaven, the work of God……a miracle.

Maybe you ask how do I gain this miracle, how is this possible for me to be born again?  Jesus really wants Nicodemus and us to understand what part we play in this process as he mentions the same word 7 times through this passage…….

Believe!

Luke 15:7 ‘I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent’.

Over the past few months, we have come from Genesis through to Revelation seeing the promise of the offspring to come and the fulfilment of paradise that he brings. Along the way we have explored who God is and who we are in relation to the promised offspring.

The more we consider Christ the more we see that our identity is tied up in who He is and what he came to accomplish.

Whoever we are, we are all somehow transfixed on our identity. From an early age we explore ‘what am I going to be when I grow up’ it seems to be one of the first questions that an adult asks us and for many of us our frustrations revolve around the fact we have no idea.

Amazingly the loss we feel inside regarding our identity is found throughout scripture. For me this is one of the convincing realities of scripture, if God made us then He alone will know who he made us to be and the purpose he had in mind when making us.

Doesn’t this bring assurance to your heart, that if God created us then he must have had a purpose. We are more than we appear. In our culture today we go from extremes either our logic defines all we see around us and the greater thinker we are the more power we think we have to decide how others should live however on the other extreme we have relegated humanity to lowest of the low willingly degrading one another.

In our verse today Jesus had been challenged by the teachers and authorities of the law to take sides between those who are worthy and those who are not. These teachers of the law thought they had the right to define who belonged and who didn’t. In Jesus wisdom he would use a story to challenge wrong thinking by challenging the heart of the person asking the question.

Jesus challenges that same thinking today, who defines who we are and our purpose for being here? Is it ourselves, can we really pick and choose who we want to be? What gives us that right? If we came into existence through accidental fusion of chemicals then what does it matter? However, if we came into existence, as the bible says, through the will and power of God then surely, He is the one who defines who we are and what we are here for.

I don’t know about you but I find today’s verse so reassuring on many levels. ‘‘I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents’. Why would Jesus say this, why is there rejoicing in heaven when we realise that we have gone away from the original purposes we were created for?

Jesus is telling us that God himself is rejoicing because his child has returned to Him. This is the core identity of us all, that originally we were created to be the children of God, to belong to Him, to be guided by Him, to enjoy Him, to be loved by Him, the benefits of having God as our Heavenly Father exceeds anything we can ever imagine. The longing we all have whether a lack of satisfaction, a yearning for something more, the grass is greener on the other side feeling all stems from the loss of our Heavenly Father.

Our souls know there is something missing, someone missing just as a child who has been adopted has a yearning to meet their birth parent, our souls have a yearning to come back to the one who made us, to become the child we were created to be.

What are we repenting of? The desire to live life the way we want without thought for the one who gave us the gift of life.

And what do we get in return? A Father who knows us better than we know ourselves, a Father who gives us identity, a Father who provides without question, a Father who gave his Heavenly Son so that his earthly children can come back to Him.

Then and only then do our souls find the peace they have been looking for and our whole being lives a life filled with satisfaction, fulfilment, and purpose.

‘Then I saw ‘a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. 2 I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Look! God’s dwelling-place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. 4 “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.’

5 He who was seated on the throne said, ‘I am making everything new!’ Then he said, ‘Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.’

6 He said to me: ‘It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To the thirsty I will give water without cost from the spring of the water of life. 7 Those who are victorious will inherit all this, and I will be their God and they will be my children. 8 But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practise magic arts, the idolaters and all liars – they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulphur. This is the second death.’  Revelation 21:1-8 niv.

So where is this place? What is so great about this future place after all don’t we have everything we need here?

Paradise

We all live in a world that screams to us of brokenness, something isn’t quite right.  We see this in the suffering of the vulnerable, we see this in the destruction of human life, we see this in the destruction of God’s creation.  We demand God fixes it without any thought to our role in it.  We attack one another because we see things differently; we insist that as humanity it is down to us to fix it but we can’t even get everyone to agree what the problem is.

We definitely know that here and now isn’t paradise, deep down we know we were made for more than this.  Inside many of us, at one time or another, we experience an emotion of lacking, an insisting there must be more to life than this.  This is often the root of addictions – looking for something beyond ourselves an unachievable satisfaction. A unquenchable appetite for more.

When Jesus was on the cross there was a thief next to him who recognised Jesus as the King of all and in that moment, Jesus promised he would be with him in paradise.  That promise holds true for everyone willing to do what the thief did?  Recognise his own sin and turn to the one who can deal with it.

There is much the bible has to say about Heaven, the place beyond the here and now, the place where eternity with God will be guaranteed.  The place where only goodness and love will be shared.  No more tears, no more pain, no more evil.  Everything we cry out for in our demand for justice.

So what is stopping us from making that step? Of turning to Christ the Saviour of our souls.

For some of us we have views about God and the world we live in but we aren’t prepared to investigate who God is for ourselves. Maybe we’re afraid of the unknown or maybe we’re afraid that God will demand too much of us.

Whoever we are and where ever we are on the journey of life, for now we need to read God’s word and ask God to show us who He says he is not who other people say he is. When we do that we learn to put our trust in Jesus as we come to understand why he had to die on our behalf and why his resurrection brings us the promise of new birth. Then we will see that we need Jesus because his is both the perfect human and our Creator God. Because he is both humanity and beyond humanity as Creator, then he alone can bring us into the promised land.

When we are convinced of God’s truth about himself and we commit our lives to living in light of who Jesus is rather than the darkness of our sin and the sin we see in the world we live, we will begin to see the world as God sees it, we will begin to see others how God sees them.  In the words of the blind beggar in John 9:25 and the wonderful words of Amazing Grace ‘for I was blind but now I see’.

We will then know what we have been rescued from and we will begin to grow in a desire and a willingness to know more of what the future holds. And we will want others to know the hope that we have as Christ lives within us, through the presence of the Holy Spirit who guides and directs our lives and together we will learn how to become ready for paradise… 

……the place God has planned for us to live with Him, forever.

Full Justice

As society we constantly demand justice, we don’t want anyone to get away with anything which we particularly deem unforgiveable.  There is something within us that cries out against the injustices we see in the world.  But, there seems to be a divide between our expectation of others and God’s expectation of us.  Somehow, we don’t want justice aimed towards ourselves only towards the real evil in the world.

The reason many of us find this area difficult to consider is that we haven’t accepted certain aspects of God’s character.  For God is both Judge and Redeemer at all times.  His character doesn’t change depending on the circumstances or people involved.  He is fully Judge and fully Redeemer.

In our humanity we find this an unlikely possibility.  From a young age we learn a lot about opposites from hot/cold to black/white.  Why are we so obsessed about opposites?  Is it just a learning tool or does it go much deeper? There is a possibility that it could impact on our world view and how we relate to one another.  It certainly does impact on our view of God and our willingness to relate to Him.

God works in absolutes because He is also Truth.  All truth begins with Him and comes from Him. This is why he can be all things at all times, he doesn’t switch off one aspect of his character to enable another aspect to be effective. That is how and why God is both Judge and Redeemer, He makes the charges against sin and provides the payment for his humanity.

Through the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus we see the judgement of the Judge and the payment of the Redeemer. God is ‘Just’ that justice is part of who he is and he cannot and will not be separated from his character of justice, just as he can’t and will not be separated from his character of goodness and love.

It is because of God’s love for mankind that he insists that justice will be declared against all evil in mankind’s hearts and the world around us, so that evil and its consequences can be destroyed.

Father God does not want us to be held captive by sin because it always leads us further and further into darkness and further and further away from Him. God’s very best for his creation is Himself.

Even though Jesus died on the cross and destroyed sin we do not today see God’s complete judgement merited out. Why?  Because he’s waiting.

Not yet

Why would a God of love ‘wait’ can’t he see the need of the poor and needy, doesn’t he want to stop all suffering for all the innocent people in the world?  Does he not see what evil people are doing?

Of course he does, of course he cares and of course he loves the people he has created.

God is waiting for all the people who are going to put their faith and trust in him.  He is waiting for the one who refuses to come into the kingdom because they are worried that they are not acceptable to him, He is waiting for the one who is anxious that they have made too many mistakes to be able to be loved by him, he is waiting for the one to realise that the world doesn’t have anything to offer beyond who he is, he is waiting for the sceptics who say science and faith don’t go together…..He is waiting for you.

Now

God’s kingdom is nothing like we expect, God’s kingdom is completely different to everything we know and have grown up to know. We make demands for the now when in fact God, through Jesus is changing us for the not yet.

Amazingly when we do see that God is for us and that he loves us so much that he provided his Son as the sacrifice for our sins, then we are fully accepted into his kingdom now.  There is nothing else that we can bring or do that makes us more acceptable to God the Father apart from putting our trust in His Son.

However, we do not get all the benefits of that kingdom yet.  We gain much including the gift of the Holy Spirit (which I will expand on later blogs) but there is so much more to come.

I often think that this side of heaven is like a pregnancy, a place of change, a place of growth and a place of learning.  Just as a baby in the womb learns of its surroundings and of its own identity there is something beyond it.  It can hear something humming in the background, something that sounds like a voice, but the baby isn’t quite sure.  There is a connection with something other than itself.

This is a little like those of us who haven’t heard about Jesus.  We get a sense there is something beyond ourselves but we’re not quite sure what it is.  Or those of us who refuse to believe that there is more beyond humanity, even though the world screams to us of a creation of design.

For those of us who have come to put their trust in the Lord Jesus as their Saviour and Friend our greatest desire is that all those who don’t know Jesus will get to know Him and learn to live in the now by living in the not yet.