I look back into those days when i thought differently as a man ignorant of the truth and what i wanted to become going forward in my life. I never wanted to be a preacher or anything to do with something of that sort. I was on my way into doing something that i so valued and thought would add to my identity.
When i ask myself this question about why i am here doing what i am doing ie sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ, there is no other better reason i can come up with except for what lies at the core of my experience when i heard the true Gospel and was introduced to the True God.
The excitement that was of the Good news about God's love and Grace was redefining me as a person , how i thought about myself and my reference to life was changing. It was deep down in my thought life that i was beginning to see everything from another perspective having lost mine own. It was not being applied to parts of my life but to me as a person entirely. This Gospel was spreading through my thoughts rapidly and was redefining the way i saw everything, to the point that i could not be excited with anything else but this.
The Gospel was taking over. I needed no man to push me, approve me any more. Before i knew i was out sharing this message with a passion like it was my own. I was amazed at how we could all have missed it, knowing how good God is. I saw myself understanding everything through a filter of Grace and love. I saw how our beliefs were established in something that was completely different than the true understanding that i had received. I began to wonder how man could live out of any other understanding than that of God's. I had realized that the whole world was on one side agreeing with their opinions and i was on this other side with another opinion on everything. In short it was crazy.
Later as i went on to grow in this understanding i saw myself taking a beating in prayer meetings and church gatherings. I was getting hurt more that i was being edified. The misrepresentation of who God was was being preached in the name of God and it was beginning to get rough with me. I had to go through a mental battle of pushing myself to sit through the services because it was supposed to be so. It was not long before i was out of this whole circuit of similar minded gatherings in which i saw no point in being part of.
On the other side my weekdays were getting more exciting with the gospel. I was being comforted by God. The message of the cross became my eyes. Now i was eager without intending to to share this with the folks i knew. I would somehow begin a talk and bring it right to the point of the Gospel and then i wouldn't know time going by. I still had so much to say. It was not a choice i was making to share this excitement that could not be contained. It over came me and i followed. I had began to tap into the same source the apostles were drawing from. Christ, and his work had started to make more sense to me. I was addicted. I was termed as a preacher everywhere i went more than i had realized it. Grace had made me a preacher in peoples eyes. It wasnt a choice i had made, never worked on it.
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Parable of the lost son
There is more i see in the parable than just about the lost son. Traditionally Christianity has focused heavily on the 'being lost in sin' part of the picture and so nothing else seems more important. Reading the parable through the spirit of Christ was to me so different from every other interpretation. Usually the parable is read with the 'parable of the lost son' title in mind and this could be a blinding factor to a lot of what we can see in the story.
The context of why Jesus spoke the parable is mentioned and i like the message translation which says, Luk 15:1,2 By this time a lot of men and women of doubtful reputation were hanging around Jesus, listening intently. The Pharisees and religion scholars were not pleased, not at all pleased. They growled, "He takes in sinners and eats meals with them, treating them like old friends."
WRONG JUDGMENT from the religious folks triggered this comment. It was self justification and carnal judgment they were indulging in and saw and perceived this gathering of people of doubtful reputation with Jesus Christ. Oh, THERE WAS SUPPOSED TO BE A VEIL that in their minds was appropriate when it comes to treating immoral folks. Here JESUS WAS DIRECT IN CONTACT with the socially outcast and i can imagine what impact this would have on a self oriented believer. Then Jesus perceiving this goes on sharing a series of stories, one of which is the parable we are discussing today.
This story was about a man, who had two sons. We know the younger one and his famous act of demanding his share in the inheritance, going out into a distant land and blowing it all up on wayward living. It talks about how he comes to his senses when acute poverty strikes him with a realization of the better state of life the servants in his house back home live. He considers coming back and pleading his way into being accepted as a servant at least. Now the story goes on to explain how he came back and TO HIS SURPRISE the father received him freely with loving arms waiting to embrace him and a heart which was celebrating his return with a feast. Then there is an interesting twist in the story as we see the focus falling on the first son who wasn't too impressed with the celebration. It rubbed him the wrong way and this is where i wondered as to why he wasn't celebrating the return of his brother like His father was.
This is what he says, "Luk 15:29 The son said, 'Look how many years I've stayed here serving you, never giving you one moment of grief, but have you ever thrown a party for me and my friends?"
This was something i never saw in my religious christian days since i was taught only on how the younger son mended his ways to return to the father. But now thank God through the spirit of Christ we see what exactly was happening. Though the younger son returned he never repented and the same goes with the elder son who was big on boasting in his right ways which he thought was key to relating to the father. It is surprising how both the sons although different in their ways never knew the father and His love for them. They had no clue about the deep love with which the father related with them both. The two sons were no different when it came to understanding the fathers love. They had missed it altogether.
The context of why Jesus spoke the parable is mentioned and i like the message translation which says, Luk 15:1,2 By this time a lot of men and women of doubtful reputation were hanging around Jesus, listening intently. The Pharisees and religion scholars were not pleased, not at all pleased. They growled, "He takes in sinners and eats meals with them, treating them like old friends."
WRONG JUDGMENT from the religious folks triggered this comment. It was self justification and carnal judgment they were indulging in and saw and perceived this gathering of people of doubtful reputation with Jesus Christ. Oh, THERE WAS SUPPOSED TO BE A VEIL that in their minds was appropriate when it comes to treating immoral folks. Here JESUS WAS DIRECT IN CONTACT with the socially outcast and i can imagine what impact this would have on a self oriented believer. Then Jesus perceiving this goes on sharing a series of stories, one of which is the parable we are discussing today.
This story was about a man, who had two sons. We know the younger one and his famous act of demanding his share in the inheritance, going out into a distant land and blowing it all up on wayward living. It talks about how he comes to his senses when acute poverty strikes him with a realization of the better state of life the servants in his house back home live. He considers coming back and pleading his way into being accepted as a servant at least. Now the story goes on to explain how he came back and TO HIS SURPRISE the father received him freely with loving arms waiting to embrace him and a heart which was celebrating his return with a feast. Then there is an interesting twist in the story as we see the focus falling on the first son who wasn't too impressed with the celebration. It rubbed him the wrong way and this is where i wondered as to why he wasn't celebrating the return of his brother like His father was.
This is what he says, "Luk 15:29 The son said, 'Look how many years I've stayed here serving you, never giving you one moment of grief, but have you ever thrown a party for me and my friends?"
This was something i never saw in my religious christian days since i was taught only on how the younger son mended his ways to return to the father. But now thank God through the spirit of Christ we see what exactly was happening. Though the younger son returned he never repented and the same goes with the elder son who was big on boasting in his right ways which he thought was key to relating to the father. It is surprising how both the sons although different in their ways never knew the father and His love for them. They had no clue about the deep love with which the father related with them both. The two sons were no different when it came to understanding the fathers love. They had missed it altogether.
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
God is not your surveillance camera
I looked up the meaning of the word Surveillance on the internet and it said, ' is the monitoring of the behavior, activities, or other changing information, usually of people.
The popular belief when it comes to God is so similar to the definition of surveillance. Imagine how we have reduced God to a person who is busy monitoring our activities or behaviour. Such is the belief that an average christian's conscience is filled with thanks to the misunderstood preacher, preaching a misrepresentation of God. I am sure it is not intentional but surely does the damage to ones belief that can take years to rectify.
God's true personality is contrary to this belief. This is error that causes us to respond to him in fear and engages us in the carnal mindset(works mentality) trapping us in it through pushing us to see and relate to God in it. Thank God i am personally free from this which gripped my heart and constantly reminded me about myself and the burdening task of cleansing myself that comes free with it.
It took for me to realize and awaken to the message of God's Grace which is what the new testament is all about. The true perspective of God the Father which was declared by the son, who was the only one who knew who the father accurately, started to set me free from the clutches of this 'God is a surveillance camera' who's battery never dies kind of belief.
So, does God record our acts to finally play them before the millions when we die and go to him?
No way. That is not the real God. God's intentions for mankind is clear in the coming of Christ. John3:16,17 states "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. "For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.
His motive for coming down as a man in Jesus Christ was not condemnation but salvation. Hallelujah, what a radical thought. He wasn't kicking at the fallen world but treating its condition with His Love manifest in Christ.
We know that Christ being the lamb of God took away the SIN OF THE WORLD with his death on the cross. God had laid on Him the iniquity of the whole world that we might be justified freely in His son's work of redemption. Thank God this the true belief about God and this helps take away the blindness that misrepresentation of God had put over our hearts hindering us from seeing truth.
Our reference point to relationship with God is Christ and not our lives which we live. The greater truth about my life is what is see happened on the cross in Jesus dying for me and raising from the dead in newness and i identify with it as me in His death and me in His resurrection. Therefore i am filled with gladness knowing the newness in which God raised me up with Christ. It renews my approach to who God is. Now i am free from that trap and the futility of seeking justification by my best efforts of staying clean. Hallelujah!
The popular belief when it comes to God is so similar to the definition of surveillance. Imagine how we have reduced God to a person who is busy monitoring our activities or behaviour. Such is the belief that an average christian's conscience is filled with thanks to the misunderstood preacher, preaching a misrepresentation of God. I am sure it is not intentional but surely does the damage to ones belief that can take years to rectify.
God's true personality is contrary to this belief. This is error that causes us to respond to him in fear and engages us in the carnal mindset(works mentality) trapping us in it through pushing us to see and relate to God in it. Thank God i am personally free from this which gripped my heart and constantly reminded me about myself and the burdening task of cleansing myself that comes free with it.
It took for me to realize and awaken to the message of God's Grace which is what the new testament is all about. The true perspective of God the Father which was declared by the son, who was the only one who knew who the father accurately, started to set me free from the clutches of this 'God is a surveillance camera' who's battery never dies kind of belief.
So, does God record our acts to finally play them before the millions when we die and go to him?
No way. That is not the real God. God's intentions for mankind is clear in the coming of Christ. John3:16,17 states "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. "For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.
His motive for coming down as a man in Jesus Christ was not condemnation but salvation. Hallelujah, what a radical thought. He wasn't kicking at the fallen world but treating its condition with His Love manifest in Christ.
We know that Christ being the lamb of God took away the SIN OF THE WORLD with his death on the cross. God had laid on Him the iniquity of the whole world that we might be justified freely in His son's work of redemption. Thank God this the true belief about God and this helps take away the blindness that misrepresentation of God had put over our hearts hindering us from seeing truth.
Our reference point to relationship with God is Christ and not our lives which we live. The greater truth about my life is what is see happened on the cross in Jesus dying for me and raising from the dead in newness and i identify with it as me in His death and me in His resurrection. Therefore i am filled with gladness knowing the newness in which God raised me up with Christ. It renews my approach to who God is. Now i am free from that trap and the futility of seeking justification by my best efforts of staying clean. Hallelujah!
The term 'Sinner' understood.
So, who is a sinner? A debate that almost everyone has a say on. Differing opinions on who a sinner often influences our understanding of what Christ was here to do and could end up derailing us from the freedom that Christ died for.
It takes us to genesis to properly construct our views on this one because we must recognise that we aren't sinners by ourselves which means our acts of ungodliness did not get us into the trap of being identified as a sinner. No matter how much one can confess about his or her personal life and how evil one's acts have been it simply does not carry enough weight to change the identity of the individual. Our identity is independent of what we do, it is inherited.
Inheritance the word spells 'you get it for free' by being connected to the family chain. The book of genesis reveals how Man was created, a thought conceived in the mind of God and recorded in genesis (Gen 1:26 Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth)
Adam the first man was created as a reflection of God's personality and that was our identity. All of us were to inherit what God had made in Adam the first man. What ever Adam was we were. Now we come to a study of what happened to us in Adam because he was the father of mankind and what happened to him would impact all of us without our contribution. In a sense we would have no say in it at all. It was all dependent on Adam alone.
In a capsule this is what happened to us in adam, separation from God through the law living in us which is also called as the fall of adam.
The fall of adam is recorded in(Gen 3:7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings.
Gen 3:8 And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden).
Condemnation, fear and guilt filled the conscience of man soon after the fall happened. It was not God who left us like many believe. It did not put away God from being with us but had ruined our minds from where we live and perceive everything. Man's disobedience was not a choice but through deception he ended up disobeying- Now this is important truth right here. It really matters what you are feeding on because what you feed on is what influences you not what you do. You can end up being on the side of God being under the knowledge jesus brought or in SIN living by your own opinion of who you are and who God is.
God had to work His work of redeeming us and he did that by taking on a form of a human in Christ Jesus and here we see another like Adam just as powerful as he was in changing all that had been corrupted in the first Adam. The second and the last Adam, Jesus Christ, died and brought an end to the first creation and rose again from the dead as a new man and God put us all in Him and through this finished work we awaken to the truth of our freedom from an old identity we were trapped in.
Therefore, having been freed from our old self in Christ's work we through the hearing of the Goodnews and accepting Jesus and His work find in us the new man formed in the new identity of Christlikeness. This is how we identify ourself, in the work of Christ as believers of the work of Jesus we know we have been made new and are the righteousness of God in Christ. This persuasion is of God and the knowledge he brought to separate us from the wrong corrupt knowledge of the law that ruled us. Having now constructed our arguments from Christ's perspective we now come to understanding who a sinner is and how he is defined.
A sinner can be explained as a man living ignorant of the emancipation(freedom from slavery) that is proclaimed from the Highest authority, The office of God. God in Christ liberated mankind from the trap of a false influenced self. (adamic corrupted in the mind, man).
It takes us to genesis to properly construct our views on this one because we must recognise that we aren't sinners by ourselves which means our acts of ungodliness did not get us into the trap of being identified as a sinner. No matter how much one can confess about his or her personal life and how evil one's acts have been it simply does not carry enough weight to change the identity of the individual. Our identity is independent of what we do, it is inherited.
Inheritance the word spells 'you get it for free' by being connected to the family chain. The book of genesis reveals how Man was created, a thought conceived in the mind of God and recorded in genesis (Gen 1:26 Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth)
Adam the first man was created as a reflection of God's personality and that was our identity. All of us were to inherit what God had made in Adam the first man. What ever Adam was we were. Now we come to a study of what happened to us in Adam because he was the father of mankind and what happened to him would impact all of us without our contribution. In a sense we would have no say in it at all. It was all dependent on Adam alone.
In a capsule this is what happened to us in adam, separation from God through the law living in us which is also called as the fall of adam.
The fall of adam is recorded in(Gen 3:7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings.
Gen 3:8 And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden).
Condemnation, fear and guilt filled the conscience of man soon after the fall happened. It was not God who left us like many believe. It did not put away God from being with us but had ruined our minds from where we live and perceive everything. Man's disobedience was not a choice but through deception he ended up disobeying- Now this is important truth right here. It really matters what you are feeding on because what you feed on is what influences you not what you do. You can end up being on the side of God being under the knowledge jesus brought or in SIN living by your own opinion of who you are and who God is.
God had to work His work of redeeming us and he did that by taking on a form of a human in Christ Jesus and here we see another like Adam just as powerful as he was in changing all that had been corrupted in the first Adam. The second and the last Adam, Jesus Christ, died and brought an end to the first creation and rose again from the dead as a new man and God put us all in Him and through this finished work we awaken to the truth of our freedom from an old identity we were trapped in.
Therefore, having been freed from our old self in Christ's work we through the hearing of the Goodnews and accepting Jesus and His work find in us the new man formed in the new identity of Christlikeness. This is how we identify ourself, in the work of Christ as believers of the work of Jesus we know we have been made new and are the righteousness of God in Christ. This persuasion is of God and the knowledge he brought to separate us from the wrong corrupt knowledge of the law that ruled us. Having now constructed our arguments from Christ's perspective we now come to understanding who a sinner is and how he is defined.
A sinner can be explained as a man living ignorant of the emancipation(freedom from slavery) that is proclaimed from the Highest authority, The office of God. God in Christ liberated mankind from the trap of a false influenced self. (adamic corrupted in the mind, man).
Thursday, March 25, 2010
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