Archive for October, 2010

I Am The Light Of The World

Tuesday, October 26th, 2010

If your on any journey, through any terrain, in making it to the end safely and successfully, light is really, really important.

Lighthouses are critical for revealing the presence of danger While voyaging on their journey.

Did you know that you also are on a journey?

PAUL IN HIS WRITINGS OFTEN LIKENED THE CHRISTIAN LIFE TO RUNNING A RACE.

A. At the end of his life he wrote to Timothy, “I have fought a good fight. I have finished my course, I have kept the faith.” (2 Timothy 4:7)

B. To the elders of Ephesus, “But none of these things move me, neither do I count my life dear unto myself, so that I might finish my course with joy.” (Acts 20:24)

C. The Letter to the Hebrew Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us. (Hebrews 12:1)

You have a race marked out for you. We are all running. Your journey has begun. Some of us have been running longer than others. But we are all moving somewhere.

But are you running in the right direction? Or have you drifted off your course? Are you headed for danger or even catastrophe? How can you know?

You see, to discover the course and to stay the path you need to be running in the light.

  • When we are not running in the light, we are likely to lose our way.
  • When we don’t have the light we can assume we are heading in the right direction, that all is well.

It is the light that allows us to adjust our stride and our direction. To see where we are and where we need to go.
In John 8 Jesus says, I am The light of the world…

As with I am the bread of life, he says it in response to a situation. It comes out of a context. Just before he says this He has been dealing with the woman caught in adultery.

Here is a woman who had lost her way. She found herself in a situation far from where, I’m sure, she set out to arrive. I don’t think this was her plan for her life, but circumstances, events, previous relationships, hardships, heartbreaks. It doesn’t say, but she was lost and in the midst of her darkness, and in the midst of her pain, came the light of the world. Jesus Christ. Not to condemn, but to save.

Jesus uses this situation to announce, I am the light of the world, whoever comes to me will never walk in darkness.

You don’t have to commit adultery to have lost your way or drifted off course. Even as believers we can drift from the path that Jesus has set out for us. I don’t think any of us run a perfect race.

If only it was like a running track, with lines and perfectly smooth. Sometimes is, But other times more like a cross country, man v wild, survival spectacle. Easy to lose your course, your sense of direction, when you don’t know where your going, or if your not sure your heading in the right direction..

So how do we stay orientated toward the finish line?
Ps 119:105 Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.

Jesus is the Word and is his word is the light of life. Have you ever been in a black out? Ever been caught in the dark in a place you are not familiar with?

In life sometimes we do end up in places that maybe we never planned to be. Headed somewhere and yet now its dark and it’s unfamiliar and we are trying to find the way out.

Maybe in marriage, maybe in our career, maybe our dream or plans.

If you look at the life of King David, you see that at times he found himself in a number of places like that.
>Minding the sheep
>Cave of addullum
>Ziklag
>Absolom
I’m sure it was during these times that David discovered which he later wrote in Psalm 119:105 Your word is a lamp unto my feet and a light to my path

When you don’t know what to do, when you don’t know where to go. You can go to God in his word and find a lamp. A lamp unto your feet and a light to your path.

Posted in I AM Series | 153 Comments »

I AM The Bread Of Life

Tuesday, October 19th, 2010

Seven times in gospel of John, Jesus uses the term “I am” to give us insight into his nature and purpose. Who he is and why he came.

John 6:25-33

Jesus is encouraging these people to live their lives with an eternal perspective. With a God filter on. He is saying there is bread, and then there is bread.

1. Live your life with a God inspired purpose
God’s purpose for you is to work and to produce.  Working is a divine calling. The question is not should we working? The question is, what are we working for and what are we producing?

What’s your purpose, your motivation, what drives you? Do you see what you do as a holy calling?

Even as a Christian we can live our lives at a base level. Where even our relationship with God revolves around meeting and securing our temporal needs and desires. Our focus is on , getting the house or unit, building our business, a new car, our next overseas holiday, the new kitchen, the new bathroom, the new 3d TV, the promotion, the new job.
John 6:26 I tell you, you have been searching for Me, not because you saw the miracles and signs but because you were fed with the loaves and were filled and satisfied.

Jesus never said that having possessions was wrong or that temporal things weren’t important. He had just fed the multitude with an amazing miracle. Were they going to starve to death if he didn’t feed them? No.
Jesus has no problem working miracles to provide for us.

It’s when they are the reason we are following him. Seeking him. When they are the focus of our life and we are living for them. That is what he says is a waste of a life.

John 6:27 (Amplified) Stop toiling and doing and producing for the food that perishes and decomposes [in the using], but strive and work and produce rather for the [lasting] food which endures [continually] unto life eternal; the Son of Man will give (furnish) you that.
Jesus says to focus on the things that matter. That make a difference. That are lasting. That bring real satisfaction. Even into eternity.

As a church we have a calling, a purpose, a job to do, given by God. When you tithe. when you give. When you invest your time. when you serve. When you lead. You are working and producing things that matter for eternity.

We can put our whole focus on our career. Our home. Our next holiday. None of these things will bring you lasting satisfaction. They are like food. You can stuff yourself today and think I could never eat another thing.
But come lunch time or dinner the next day, your hungry again.

2. Look for God’s Approval
Mat 3:27 Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. On him God the Father has placed his seal of approval.”
So often we think our motives for doing things are pure, but we are all driven by our need for approval. To get someone’s nod in our direction.
Even Jesus was given approval by the Father. At baptism Matt 3 and at transfiguration Matt 17 God spoke about his Son.
I encourage you to look for God’s approval. For what pleases the father.

3. Recognise the source of your blessing
Matt 3:32 “I tell you the truth, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but it was my Father”

How often do we look at the faucet as the source of our water supply, rather then the dam. We look at our boss, our super, our home, the company we work for and say they are giving us security, or prosperity, or peace.

But it is God who gives us the ability to produce wealth Deut 8:18
But does not want our increases in blessing to mean simply an increase in our standard of living, but an increase in our standard of giving.

When Jesus says I am the bread of life, he is saying I am the substance of real life. I am the source and I am the critical element.

Posted in I AM Series | 61 Comments »

God The Truth

Wednesday, October 6th, 2010

True worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. John 4:23

When we come to Jesus, we submit our will and understanding to God, revealed in his word. The God revealed as the truth. What he says is the truth, because he is truth.
1. This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God (John 17:3)
2.  Jesus said to him, I am the way, and the truth, and the life . . . (John 14:6 NASB).
3. But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth  (John 16:13 NASB).
4.  . . . Your word is truth (John 17:17 NASB).

These four verses along with a myriad other biblical passages that express precisely the same meaning, led the Westminster Divines to conclude in the Westminster Confession of Faith that God “is truth itself (WCF 1:4).

When we reject God and reject God’s truth about God, as creator and us and the world as creation, and subject to God, we lose our way and the results are devastating.

Rom 1:25 They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator.

We are either living in and embracing the truth or we are living in and embracing a lie.

And this is where the Christian faith runs headlong into our postmodern culture which says truth is relative not objective. That we find our own truth from within.

But this runs counter to what Jesus said. I am the truth
All truth emanates from God, revealed in his son Jesus and the Holy Written Word.
If it does not emanate from God it is not true. And if it is not true it is a lie. It is not another truth.
And Jesus said in John 8:44 that all lies emanate from one source, Satan, the Father of lies.
There is a source of all truth and there is a source of all lies.

The foundation of the lie has never changed since it was first floated in the Garden of Eden. Although its shape and expression has changed.  It basically says:
You don’t need God, you are God, you can become God, You are the source of your life’s identity and meaning, take control of your own life and destiny, you have the power within, you can transform yourself. Sound familiar?
Substance of Satan’s lies to Eve in Genesis 3

But what about this?
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we’re liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

From Marianne Williiamson’s Book A return to love and is not what the Bible calls truth.
Also the main voice behind a book called A course in Miracles and appears on Oprah.

  • The world is only in the mind of its maker. Do not believe it is outside of yourself. (p. 207)
  • To know yourself is the salvation of the world. (p. 237)
  • God is but love, and therefore so am I. (p. 324)
  • There is nothing outside you. (p. 358)
  • Man’s only sin is not remembering his own sinless divine nature. The only devil is our illusion that we separate from and not a part of God. The lack you need to correct is the sense of separation from God.

Oprah’s other favourite Eckhart Tolle: In 2008, an article in the New York Times referred to him as “the most popular spiritual author in the nation”
Sold 8 million copies total of 2 books

  • “Being spiritual has nothing to do with what you believe and everything to do with your state of consciousness.”
  • “Death is a stripping away of all that is not you. The secret of life is to “die before you die” — and find that there is no death.”
  • “You do not become good by trying to be good, but by finding the goodness that is already within you, and allowing that goodness to emerge.
  • “Always say “yes” to the present moment. What could be more futile, more insane, than to create inner resistance to what already is? what could be more insane than to oppose life itself, which is now and always now? Surrender to what is. Say “yes” to life — and see how life suddenly starts working for you rather than against you.”
  • “Through the present moment, you have access to the power of life itself, that which has traditionally been called “God.” As soon as you turn away from it, God ceases to be a reality in your life, and all you are left with is the mental concept of God, which some people believe in and others deny. Even belief in God is only a poor substitute for the living reality of God manifesting every moment of your life.”

The answer,he says, is not to look outward to God for identity, meaning, insight, and salvation. Rather, the answer is to look inward to self for identity, meaning, insight, and personal liberation.

Worship for the christian, is discovering the God of the Bible for who he is and worshipping him through that revelation and understanding. Worshipping him in the truth.

We don’t pick and choose what we want to believe. What we feel is true or not true. The truth is That there is one true God and your not him.

  • The Bible teaches us that God is God, He is the truth and that everything he says is true.
  • That God and creation are seperate. He is creator and made creation and creation is subject to him.

This truth is what Peter Jones, Author of Capturing the Pagan Mind: calls two-ism.
Two-ism is the biblical doctrine that the Creator and creation are separate and that creation is subject to the Creator.
Visually, you can think of this in terms of two circles with one being God the creator and the other containing all of his creation.

The lie is what Peter Jones calls one-ism.
One-ism is the belief that there is no distinction between creator and creation, or a denial that there is a Creator. The popular word for this notion is monism or paganism.(Latin paganus of the earth).

So everything is in the circle.
Romans 1:23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.

Practically, one-ism is the eradication of boundaries and differences. Everything is one.
According to spiritual one-ism, the universe is a living organism with a spiritual force present within everything. Thus, everything is interconnected by the life force or the world soul. And it is a lie.

We see it in movies.

  • Star wars Obi won- The Force is what gives a Jedi his power. It’s an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together.
  • The Lion King Mufasa’s ghost says to Simba You have forgotten who you are and so have forgotten me. Look inside yourself, Simba. You are more than what you have become. You must take your place in the Circle of Life.
  • Avatar- Eywa is like mother earth and the whole of the planet is one living entity.

As a worldview, one-ism is antithetical to Christian two-ism because it seeks to place everything in the one circle.

1) There is no distinction between God the creator and creation. This results is pantheism,
that the Cosmos is an all-encompassing unity and the sacredness of Nature. This is the basis for most eastern and oriental beliefs. Was also the main belief in pre- Christian Greece and Rome. They had no belief in a creator God. When Pauls goes to Athens in Acts 17 (v16, 22-28)
2) There is no distinction between God and mankind. This results in a spirituality that does not look humbly out to God for salvation, but rather arrogantly looks in to self for enlightenment.
3) There is no distinction between good and evil. This results in the claim that all we have are perspectives, opinions, and culturally embedded “values”; there are no timeless moral truths that apply to all peoples, times, and places because all that is left is situational ethics.
When there are no distinctions between good and evil who says what is right and wrong.
We despise paedophilia. But in ancient Greece sex with kids was acceptable. it was a normal part of life. Only if you were of the upper class.
Alexander the great, and his father philip, both groomed young boys for their sexual pleasure. It was the culture.
4) There is no distinction between mankind and animals. This results in radical animal rights activism, people referring to their pet as their “baby,” and, in some cities, a disdain for children but a love for animals expressed as doggie spas, doggie day cares, and legislation to allow animals to eat in restaurants with their owners. People leaving their money to their dog or cat. Not called pet owners any more but pet carers.
The rise of radical vegetarianism where it’s wrong to kill any living thing for food, because they have just as much right to life as you do.
5) There is no distinction between mankind and creation. This is also true of humanism. Oliver Wendall Holmes, Professor of Law at the Harvard Law School, Supreme Court of the United States from 1902 to 1932.. said, “I see no reason for attributing to man a significance different in kind from that which belongs to a baboon or a grain of sand”.
This results in radical environmentalism where a tree has as much a right to exist as a person. This moves beyond stewarding creation, to deifying creation.
6) There is no distinction between men and women; gender is reduced to asexual androgyny. This results in anything goes and all is good. lesbianism, transgenderism, homosexuality, cross-dressing, and the like, which Romans 1 says is the logical conclusion of removing God from his rightful place.
Rom 1:28-31 Since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless.
7) There is no distinction between religions. The result is a vague pagan spirituality that believes the answers to all the world’s problems are religious and spiritual in nature and can only be overcome by all religions worshiping together as one.

Subsequently, a Christian who makes distinctions (such as between God and man, Jesus and Satan, angels and demons, heaven and hell, man and animals, holiness and sin, the Bible and other texts, male and female, heterosexuality and homosexuality, truth and error, good and evil) is considered a fundamental threat to the utopian world of peace, love, and oneness.

78 times in the gospels Jesus said, I tell you the truth.
Jesus said I am the way, the truth and the life.

Westminster Confession Of Faith
There is but one only, living, and true God, who is infinite in being and perfection, a most pure spirit,  invisible,  without body, parts, or passions; immutable, immense,  eternal, incomprehensible, almighty, most wise, most holy, most free, most absolute; working all things according to the counsel of His own immutable and most righteous will, for His own glory; most loving, gracious, merciful, long-suffering, abundant in goodness and truth,

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