Lincoln

Worship that Yields

By / The Pastor's Pen / 3 minutes of reading

Worship is an essential part of the Christian life as it orders our beliefs and priorities with Christ at the top. Worship lifts our thoughts and heart affections above the things and relationships of this world and attaches them to God. Without God-centred worship, we quickly regress to man-centred  religion with self in the middle. Therefore, worship that focuses on God is critical to a healthy and resilient walk of faith.

At the heart of authentic worship is a yielded attitude that confesses failings and inadequacies while proclaiming the majestic character of Christ. As Paul explained to the believers in Phillipi, believers in Christ worship by the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh (Philippians 3:3). A self-elevated heart attitude disqualifies worship as it fails to recognise the supremacy of Christ, compromising Jesus’ Lordship with self-importance. Confidence in our fleshly desires, abilities, and achievements can only distract us from confidence in Christ.

Holy Spirit enabled worship always glories in Christ at the expense of self. Spirit motivated worship is permeated by awareness of God’s mercy which inspires real world sacrifices. This was Paul’s understanding when he instructed the Roman believers to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship (Romans 12:1). No part of our lives, no relationship, and no desires or expectations are excluded from the prioritising effects of worship motivated by God’s mercy.

Recognising that every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights… (James 1:17), believers redirect the accomplishments of this life to worship of the giver. God’s worthiness for whole-hearted worship rises above the difficulties caused by the pains of life. Amid life’s complexities and the difficulties of leading a rebellious nation, Moses’ song of worship reflected his heart’s attachment to the LORD. For I will proclaim the name of the LORD; ascribe greatness to our God! “The Rock, his work is perfect, for all his ways are justice. A God of faithfulness and without iniquity, just and upright is He (Deuteronomy 32:3-4). Moses was looking far above the imperfections of the nation God had called him to lead, and he saw the multifaceted glory of Yahweh.

Like Paul, our worship begins by surrendering to the truth of God’s Word, which is God’s revelation of Himself. From God’s Word our beliefs and affections grow and develop, equipping us with the truths needed to offer accurate and God honouring praise. I worship the God of our fathers, believing everything laid down by the Law and written in the Prophets, having a hope in God… (Acts 24:14-15).

Scripture refines our beliefs and fuels worthy worship which blesses both God and the church. This is the Holy Spirit’s intension, because God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth (John 4:24). Religious loyalty to set patterns or expectations, fail to express a changed heart and life. Our changed affections rise in praise because if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come (2 Corinthians 5:17). And the new person in Christ longs to worship Him, to speak well of Him, and to sing His praises.

A yielded worshiper seeks the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. They set their minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth (Colossians 3:1-2). For there, in the presence of God, we find salvation, cleansing, security, Godly perfection, and hope of eternal life.

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Surviving Surprises

By / The Pastor's Pen / 3 minutes of reading

Surprises can shock us with joy or grief depending on the circumstances. Unexpected happenings can have either a fun or devastating effect on us, and we have to manage both. Thankfully, for the Christian, God provides the resources needed to not only survive the difficult surprises, but to overcome the shock of them. While impact from good surprises usually pass quickly, sometimes the unwanted ones don’t. In such times we need the LORD to overlay His grace upon our lives in such a way that we realise His protection.

Reading God’s Word with prayer has the ability to calm us, to center our thinking, and to show us different ways of viewing our circumstances from God’s perspective. Scripture exposes us to the heart of God and shows His constant presence in our lives. While prayer, both private and with fellow believers, is a critical expression of our faith response to God. It speaks out what the heart is feeling, and what the mind is thinking. Prayer permits us to explain to the Lord our feelings of conflict, our confusion, our pain, and our need of God. May your unfailing love be my comfort, according to your promise to your servant. Let your compassion come to me that I may live… (Psalm 119:76-77).

God’s Word, read prayerfully, allows for self-examination without abuse from outside. It enables our hearts to be fueled with God’s beauty in the midst of our pain. Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law (Psalm 119:18). Scripture shines light into our darkness which helps align our hearts with God. Give me understanding, that I may keep your law and observe it with my whole heart (Psalm 119:34). God’s Word enables us to understand the necessity for obedience  and selflessness through times of difficulty. Incline my heart to your testimonies, and not to selfish gain! (Psalm 119:36).

Taking in God’s word prayerfully, enables us to recognise that God is able to turn away the reproach (shame) that I dread, for your rules are good (Psalm 119:39). While the enemy strives to attack our hearts with shame, regret, and fear, God speaks certainty and acceptance to us even when we are struggling with failures. My comfort in my suffering is this: Your promise preserves my life. The arrogant mock me unmercifully, but I do not turn from your law. I remember, LORD, our ancient laws, and I find comfort in them (Psalm 119:50-52).

Worship during difficulties is not blind to the painful realities of life. Rather, worship looks above our distress and focuses on the unchanging and holy character of the Lord and His Word. Your decrees are the theme of my song wherever I lodge (Psalm 119:54). Especially when recovering from unpleasant surprises, our souls need to be assured through praising God, through trusting thanks for all things, and through following Him when others are saying and doing the opposite.

Worship heightens our motivation for obedience and inspires Christlike living. Worship shifts our affections towards God while moving our attention to pain away from self. Especially when experiencing unpleasant surprises, we need to consciously infuse joy from worship into our pain. This allows sorrow to be mellowed with the softness of assurance.

Oh come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the LORD, our Maker! For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts… (Psalm 95:6-8).

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God is the cause and we are His effect

By / The Pastor's Pen / 3 minutes of reading

Something in the human heart seems to always ask “Why?” Embedded within our DNA is this compelling desire to understand the reason for things being the way they are. For the most part, this compulsion serves us well and leads humanity to the most amazing and beneficial discoveries. But the opposite is true also. Understanding why the unpleasant things exist can show an ugly or undesirable reason for the reality we experience, which again, is beneficial for us to know.

This is also true in relation to God, just on a much larger scale. For the Christian, God is the ultimate cause of all things (Isaiah 45:7), yet He not only allows His creation to interact with each other, but also with Himself as Creator, LORD, and Saviour. Yes, it’s true that Yahweh knows all things, even the secrets of the heart (Psalm 44:21), whereas we know very little, least of all our own hearts (Jeremiah 17:9). Which highlights the grace of God in wanting us to know Him.

Jeremiah explained God’s promises to Israel before returning them from Babylonian exile to their homeland of Israel. God told His people that you will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you, declares the Lord… (Jeremiah 29:13-14). God wants to be found, and He wants us to experience the blessing of knowing Him as the cause of our seeking Him. God desires to be known, and believers now desire to know Him (Psalm 37:4). Our right desires are the effect of God’s gracious desires for us.

We may not understand all the intricate mechanisms the Lord employs to bring this about, but we do know the outcome. We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ (Romans 5:1). God the Father caused His Son Jesus to bring us peace with Him through the cross, which is the effect we experience, for which we are very thankful. James 1:17 adds, every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights… And there is no gift greater than the Lord Jesus Christ.

Paul stretched the gospel application of this truth out for the Corinthian church in this way. Because of Him (God) you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 1:30-31). We Christians can boast of God, who alone caused Jesus Christ to become all the needed things on our behalf that we could not be ourselves. Therefore, wisdom, righteousness,  sanctification, and redemption, are the results we have been gifted with through faith in Jesus Christ. It’s no wonder Paul later wrote to the Ephesian church, it’s by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God (Ephesians 2:8). The extent and complexity of all that God has gifted us with is enormous. The more we think about this, the more we conclude that God is worthy of our boasting, our praise, and our gratitude.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to His great mercy, He has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time (1 Peter 1:3-5).

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Rising above disappointment – Part 3

By / The Pastor's Pen / 3 minutes of reading

Disappointments come in all shapes and sizes, and they don’t care about the age of their recipients. They can be subtle or aggressive. They can gradually build up over years or dump themselves upon you with no warning. No matter what the delivery method or size, disappointments often scar our hearts.

Rising above life’s disappointments involves acknowledging God and worshipping Him throughout the struggles. Victory over disappointment uses pain to fuel hope in God, hope in heaven, and hope in Jesus’ return to snatch His bride away. The greater our pain, the stronger our yearning for Christ (John 14:1-3).

This mortal life of faith is a unique opportunity to glorify God in ways we will never have in heaven. Our arrival in heaven means we shall never have another opportunity to be sanctified, or to stand faithful for Christ while in a hostile environment. All opportunities to speak well of Christ while in the battles of life will end. Heaven will not present us with an enemy to overcome, it will never permit  struggles for us to conquer, and it will never allow opposition for us to stand firm against. The threats and fears that come from an evil enemy, from pain and weakness, simply will never be experienced in heaven. Never again will we be able to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with sinners lost in the darkness of this world. Heaven will never allow the opportunity, or choice, to show loving grace on Jesus’ behalf in the antagonistic world that we presently live.

While many point the finger of criticism at God for the injustices of this sinful world, and mock Him  during our struggles, we do well to remember the privilege and  promise for suffering Christians. After you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you (1 Peter 5:10). Worship, certainty of hope, and obedience are the killers of disappointment as we trust in the God who promises to personally bring relief. All we need to do is patiently wait for Him.

Remember, as you rub shoulders with those suffering disappointments, gracious words are like a honeycomb, sweetness to the soul and health to the body (Proverbs 16:24). Christian, in all life’s  circumstances, point the weary person to the Lord Jesus Christ. While disappointment attempts to convince you that faith is useless and hope in Jesus is dead, God’s testimony is the opposite. Listen to Paul’s exhortation to the Thessalonian believers, which ends with a promise. 1 Thessalonians 5:23-24, Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it.

We have a compassionate God who promises to bring our sanctification, that is, the process of personal development in holiness, to perfect completion. Our entire being shall be presented blameless at Christ’s return. God categorically promises that he will surely do it.  But you may ask, Why? The answer is because He who calls you is faithful. Faith looks to, and depends upon God to do all that He has promised. Faith expects God to sanctify, either now or later, all our failings, our deceptive hearts, our weaknesses, our broken bodies, our destructive thoughts, our damaged relationships, our failed expectations, and our disappointments.

In Christ, we can rise above our disappointments with a victory that carries us today, and promises us a living and perfect eternity with Christ.

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Rising above disappointment – Part 2

By / The Pastor's Pen / 3 minutes of reading

From early childhood to old age, disappointments are an inescapable part of life. We usually  process the little ones just fine, but the big ones which involve tragedy, permanent loss, irreparable damage, and lasting pain, they can be the disappointments which grind our lives to a stop. When pain is relentless, when human support changes nothing for the better, and people mock our faith in a God who would allow, or even orchestrate suffering in our lives, how can we experience God in that? Make no mistake Christian, your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour (1 Peter 5:8), and he’s happy to devour you or I through personal disappointments. He rejoices in our pains and celebrates every opportunity to feed suffering into our hearts.

As we saw with Moses, the start line for rising above disappointment is to acknowledge God’s loving faithfulness as LORD. This confession is not a magic formula that instantly changes everything for the better. No, but it is a good place to start a healthy discussion with ourselves about the relationship between God and our circumstances. Our circumstances do not change God’s character.

So, from this start line, we need to stack up God’s building blocks of truth so that His truths become the material for a lasting and ruling faith. As we speak to ourselves the incremental confessions of faith, truth upon truth, they increasingly become our enduring thinking in both the good and bad times of life.

Here’s just a few building blocks of truth that the enemy wants us to forget:

  • We have access to, and acceptance with God, through faith in Jesus Christ (Rom 5:2).
  • He is LORD overall, and He listens to our prayers, even when we think He’s not (Psa 66:19-20).
  • He is our only Saviour from the eternal punishment of our sin (Rom 3:23-24).
  • Through Christ, God views the redeemed as perfect for all time (Heb 10:14).
  • We have a Saviour who experienced temptation and suffering just as we do, yet He was without sin. He is approachable and merciful in our struggles (Heb 4:15-16).
  • Both the Holy Spirit and Jesus Christ are interceding on our behalf with God the Father (Rom 8:26-27, 34).
  • God continues to provide the essentials of our daily lives (Mat 6:31-33).
  • The Holy Spirit is never going to break His guarantee of security over our lives (2Co 1:22).
  • It is God’s intention to complete His work in our lives, right through to Christ’s return (Php 1:6).
  • According to his (God’s) great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time (1 Peter 1:3-5).
  • After you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you (1 Peter 5:10).

God does all this during our time on earth. But there will be a final day when He will liberate us from our very last earthly pain to our eternal rest of heaven. There, we will never experience pain or disappointment again. Therefore, blessed is the one who perseveres under trial because, having stood the test, that person will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love him (James 1:12).

To be continued…

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