God of Pleasure

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

It continues to be an irony of this age; although there is so much suffering and deprivation around the world, the world remains hedonistic. Being self-indulgent and pleasure seeking is the god of so many, for which they are willing to sacrifice so much. Those who pursue pleasure without restraint tend to see God as boring and lifeless, one who robs mankind of fun. Yet, nothing could be further from the truth. Mankind is only capable of pleasure because he was created in the image of God who, likewise, experiences pleasure (Gen 1:27).

God’s point of difference is that He does not sacrifice holiness to experience pleasure. Participation in sin is never Yahweh’s path to enjoyment. Psalm 5:4 declares, You are not a God who delights in wickedness; evil does not sojourn with You. Holiness is the cornerstone of everything God is and does. Holiness is the foundation on which His pleasure stands. Moses testified of the LORD, …who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders? (Exodus 15:11).

The greatest thoughts any Christian can have, are how to glorify God and bring Him pleasure. This was the very purpose of our spiritual rebirth into Christ. In fact, God went to extraordinary lengths in predestining us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will (Ephesians 1:5). Believers are the direct result of God’s will and God’s pleasure. What a wonderful and reassuring thought. While the devil mutters his lies of self-importance and discontentment with life, Yahweh proclaims that you are the materialisation of His pleasure. So, the Almighty moved heaven and earth to accomplish your salvation, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit (Titus 3:5). Nothing was left to chance or to our fleshly wills.

John 1:12-13 states that all who did receive him (Jesus), who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. This spectacular truth should lift us above the mondain, above the superficial, and above the frivolous and depressing thoughts of this world. Understandably then, the LORD takes pleasure in his people; He adorns the humble with salvation (Psalm 149:4).

Living in the sweetness of knowing that Jesus Christ has enlivened your capacity to glorify God and bring Him pleasure should direct our hearts to living which exemplifies Christlike character. David prayed, I know, my God, that you test the heart and have pleasure in uprightness… (1 Chronicles 29:17). Like David, our righteous living in Christlike character is a source of pleasure to God.

God’s Word is not shy in explaining that believers get pleasure when they give God pleasure. So, we make it our aim to please him (2 Corinthians 5:9). Therefore, we are to walk as children of light, for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true, and try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord (Ephesians 5:8-10).

Here we should pause, bringing together two great truths for His glory and our blessing.
1) As a Christian, you exist because God acted to make you an expression of His glory and pleasure.
2) As a Christian, you live as an expression of, and for the purpose of, radiating God’s glory for God’s pleasure.
In these two truths we find our joy, our pleasure, and our contentment, which is in Christ. Here, there is fulfilment in life, and a satisfaction that lifts us above the difficult events and the perplexing pains of life.

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Fear to awe to joy

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

Humanly speaking, understanding how fear of God can produce joy is bewildering. Yet, in Christ, that is precisely the result of our relationship with the Saviour. In a prophetic Psalm, David looks forward to Christ who would bridge the chasm between fear of God and joy in His Son. Serve the LORD with fear and celebrate his rule with trembling. Kiss his son, or he will be angry and your way will lead to your destruction, for his wrath can flare up in a moment. Blessed are all who take refuge in him (Psalm 2:11-12 NIV).

These two verses reveal the two sides of fearing God which operate together to produce our awe of Him. And it is our awe of Him that produces our joy, satisfaction, and hope.

Our fear of the Lord begins to grow as we see that the LORD is the true God; he is the living God and the everlasting King. At his wrath the earth quakes, and the nations cannot endure his indignation (Jeremiah 10:10). God is a righteous judge, a God who displays his wrath every day (Psalm 7:11). As we learn more of God’s holiness, we discover that our sin arouses His wrath. We, like Israel, do wicked things, provoking the LORD to anger (2 Kings 17:11). Compared to Yahweh’s ultimate holiness, mankind is found to be severely lacking. In mankind’s natural condition there is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands (God); there is no one who seeks God. All have turned away from God (Romans 3:10-12). Our sin is offensive; therefore, God declares the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23). When God awakens us to this reality, we are rightfully terrified of Him because His justice demands hell, and we are powerless to do anything to rectify our situation.

From a negative stance, fear of the Lord begins to rise in our hearts as we acknowledge God’s greatness, His holiness, His wrath, His justice, and His absolute authority over us. This fear becomes the seed of awe. There is a dual awakening taking place within us; God’s majestic greatness and our sinfully helpless minuteness. This is the heart of what David meant when he said, serve the LORD with fear and celebrate his rule with trembling.

But that still leaves us short of awe that produces joy towards God. Again, David prophetically speaks to this. His strange saying, kiss his son, points us to God’s Messiah Son, Jesus Christ. Only Jesus can quench God’s indignation against our sin (1 John 4:10). Only Jesus can turn us from God’s destruction through granting us faith and repentance (Ephesians 2:8-9; 2 Timothy 2:25). This is because only Jesus Christ has suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit (1 Peter 3:18). Only Jesus bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed (1 Peter 2:24). In Christ we are healed of the worst disease of all, the sickness of sin. And here is our joy of appreciation. We take refuge in Jesus Christ where there is forgiveness (Colossians 1:14), and we are so glad that God has made a hiding place for us in His Son.

Awe of God grows out of a healthy fear of taking Him for granted or misrepresenting Him. Awe is maximized when we realise the blessing of God’s grace, because it is so undeserved, yet given so freely in Jesus Christ.

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Trustworthy God – Part 3

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

King David was a man acquainted with both the dazzling highs and the darkest lows of life. While some of the painful times resulted from his foolish and sinful behaviour, others were simply the result of life’s complexities forced upon him by providential chance and others.

When hurts repeat often, the heart sometimes recoils into distrust of others, and even of God. Add to this condition the heart’s natural compulsion towards self-deception, it easily finds itself unable to trust God. This is fed also by fears, uncertainty, and the ever-present murmurings of others. The result is, belief begins leaning towards disbelief, trust reverts to distrust, and spiritual paralysis sets in. If we find ourselves in this condition, realise that we don’t need assistance, we need a Saviour.

The nation Israel often sank into this empty spiritual condition where all hope of being reconciled to God seemed lost due to their hard-heartedness. Jeremiah lived in such a time of Israel’s history, yet God spoke through him the comforting words of hope and trust that Israel needed. The Lord’s words tell of His provision for a nation lost in the despair of their faithless lack of trust in Yahweh. I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you. Again I will build you, and you shall be built… (Jeremiah 31:3-4).

Spiritual restoration is based upon God’s faithfulness, with His determination providing every resource necessary for wayward people to exercise faith. Earlier Jeremiah told Israel, blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD, whose trust is the LORD (Jeremiah 17:7). This uncommon statement shows that for people inwardly lost, they can reach out to the God who will inwardly become the trust they so desperately need. This is a unique work of God’s Spirit in the human heart, providing what we cannot generate ourselves, trust.

Similarly, David reminds us in Psalm 40:4, blessed is the man who makes the LORD his trust. Just as the Lord provides faith for the faithless (Eph 2:8-9) and repentance for the unrepentant (2Ti 2:25), so He graciously provides trust for the untrusting. This extraordinary work of God is that He becomes within us the actual heart mechanism which reaches out to God in trust. Therefore, when we trust in God, it’s not for a desired outcome, instead it’s that we are satisfied in simply trusting HIM. The result being that we accept His will in whatever format He chooses to express it in our lives. It could be said, that in this way, from within the believer, God is trusting God and we are simply the vessels through which His trust is manifested. This is where the downcast believer discovers the blessing that both Jeremiah and David spoke of, recognising that we can ask God to be the trust we so desperately lack.

Trust is therefore not measured by its size but by our willingness for God to generate deeper trust in Him. The presence of even the most microscope wish for any capacity to trust in God is evidence of the Almighty being active in our lives. Trust is believing with confidence in the certainty of another.

Armed with the truth of God’s Word we know that through Christ His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire (2 Peter 1:3-4).

 

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Trustworthy God – Part 2

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

Trust is believing with confidence in the certainty of another. As our relationship with God stands or falls on trust, a clear understanding of trust that can be actioned is critical. Solomon wrote possibly the Bible’s best memorized text on trust in Proverbs 3:5-7. Trust in Yahweh with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. Be not wise in your own eyes; fear the LORD, and turn away from evil.

The precision of Solomon’s exhortation leaves no room for misunderstanding. The focus and destination of our trust is to be Yahweh, the LORD, creator of every human (Jer 1:5). Every person, without exception, is commanded to place their trust in the one true God. There can be no divided loyalties with our trust, it all belongs to the LORD. Which reminds us that trust is volitional, it doesn’t happen by accident or when our feelings are accommodating. Trust in God is the action of our will energised by faith.

The LORD doesn’t seek our trust in competition with others. No, there can be no others sharing our heart’s deepest desire or dependency, they belong to the LORD only. This is why Solomon explains that as we direct trust to the LORD we should take care not to compromise it by depending on our own understanding. This can be a challenge, as we humans often try to assist God, thinking we possess knowledge or wisdom that He doesn’t.

The scope of our trust in God is to be life wide. In every sphere of life, both internal heart matters and external activities, God is to be acknowledged. It’s so easy to get caught in the busyness of life and neglect to observe God’s presence. Likewise, it’s easy to think that the Lord would not be interested in certain aspects of our lives and our fleshly reasoning becomes our dominant thoughts. The fact is, God is interested in every detail of our lives. He is present in every moment of our lives. And He remains patiently loving throughout the entirety of our lives.

The standard of our trust is to be holiness, which is often unconsciously forgotten. It’s easy to get carried along by the flow of work, family, and church life. Somehow along the way we become influenced by worldly compromise and the evils of the world don’t seem to bother us as they once did. If left unchecked, that influence pervades more of our hearts until our personal values lean towards the world’s values. Whereas trust in the LORD grows from a reverent fear of God that recognises sin and turns away from it. This is a discipline of trust which strengthens over time as it is exercised more and more.

The blessings of trust in the LORD should captivate our attention as we realise His affections and the eternal security that exist in Christ. Trust is not a one-time thing. No, it’s an ongoing conscious walk of confident faith with the Almighty. As we watch and pray, we see the LORD invisibly directing us and actively maneuvering within our lives. Through trust, unforeseen and unpleasant events of life can take on a fresh perspective as we witness God’s providential care and provision through those times. 

David was right when he instructed, commit your way to the LORD; trust in him, and he will act (Psalm 37:5). The fact is, God always acts. And those who trust will recognise His active engagement with their lives and give Him the thanks and praise for it.

To be continued…

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Trustworthy God – Part 1

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

Trust is a beautiful quality in any relationship, yet it tends to be fragile even though it can be so strengthening. Trust is spoken of often in the Bible, from human relationships to God’s trustworthiness and mankind’s need to trust Him. As with earthly friendships, trust is foundational to the health of our spiritual relationship with the Lord.

While it’s all very well to tell someone to trust others, or trust God, actioning trust can prove to be difficult, especially when trust has been violated or disappointed in the past. If left unresolved, trust damaging hurts can rob God and us of this treasure. The complexity of the human heart means we may fail to trust God while at the same time being untrustworthy ourselves. This is the devastating nature of sin; it shrewdly assaults the heart from within and without, until it doesn’t know what to think of life. Paralyzed often by fear and pain, the damaged heart simply does nothing, and in so doing, further victimizes itself. Knowing that the heart needs to trust to survive, the world instructs us to trust in anything other than God. Money, possessions, good health, politics, conspiracy, popularity, job security, pleasures, experiences, and philosophy, are all promoted as being worthy of your ultimate trust, even though every one of these will fail you.

And it’s far too easy for God’s children to unwittingly get caught in the deception of trusting these earthly things. Therefore, evaluating our trust in the Lord, or the lack of it, is worthy of our attention. Jeremiah 17:5 sounds a loud caution; cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength, whose heart turns away from the LORD.

Trust is believing with confidence in the certainty of another. Trust, therefore, looks to the trusted person as a refuge, a safe and dependable place of sanctuary. From its very definition, ultimate trust that survives past the grave cannot be found in anything this world offers due to the pervasive infiltration of sin at all levels. And if a person realises this without a healthy response, paranoia can escalate to a fearful level with devastating consequences. Therefore, trusting the Lord, who is governor overall, is extremely important. The believer trusts God to oversee and maintain all facets of earthly, spiritual, and eternal life. As a result, the Lord promises to keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on YOU, because he trusts in YOU. Trust in the LORD forever, for the LORD GOD is an everlasting rock (Isaiah 26:3-4). Unlike the constantly changing world, which sooner or later fails to deliver on it’s promises, God does not change, and He never fails to fulfill His promises.

For the Christian, trust is central to all areas of belief and living. Trust is the epicenter of faith and therefore needs to grow and mature for the believer to experience it’s many blessings. For the child of God, trust is not about things or systems. It’s not about getting our way. And it’s not about fighting the things we disagree with. Trust acknowledges the futility of complaining about or resisting the things God has ordained. Authentic trust in God abandons personal heart rebellion, which is always against creator God, whether directly or indirectly.

With that said, we shall explore over the coming weeks a little of the nature of trusting God as exhorted by Solomon in Proverbs 3:5-7. Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. Be not wise in your own eyes; fear the LORD, and turn away from evil.

To be continued…

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