Exchange

P 2245 Some versus ALL.

/ DVH

Genesis 4:3&4 “In the course of time Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil as an offering to the Lord. And Abel also brought an offering—fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock.” In this verse we can see the danger of having a partial commitment mentality. Cain brought some of his offering, but Abel brought the Lord the very best bit, the fat portions from a firstborn. Abel sacrificed a living thing. These two men show us that our relationship with Almighty God is not meant to be a part-time thing based on dead works.

The key to successfully walking with the Holy Spirit is a voluntary total surrender. And the thing that stands in our way, stood in Cain’s way – pride and rebellion. Mankind has struggled with those particular sins since the garden. We decided that we knew what was better for us, instead of what God wanted us to do. We’ve become filled up with our own self-importance.

In today’s society it is essential, despite all the protests and flag waving about everybody’s rights, that you and I live out our daily lives recognising and respecting the price that was paid for us. Our lives need to be lived laid down for Jesus, in loving gratitude for what He did for us. Christ was the firstborn of many obedient, loving sons and daughters. His cross was an exchange, even though it was a free gift. Our old life was exchanged for His new life. He took our sin, and now we freely take up His calling, empowered by His Spirit. “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, Who is in you, Whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honour God with your body.” 1 Corinthians 6:19-20. 

There are a number of theories about why God accepted Abel’s sacrifice, and not Cain’s … but the real point is this – if Cain had responded to the Lord’s clarity about his behaviour differently … Abel would not have died. Jealousy and rebellion shoved Cain into a downhill slide, but I think that pride pushed him to react that way in the first place. He thought he knew better. Cain thought he could give Almighty God any old thing, after all it represented all his hard work (!) So he thought that God should accept it. But it is God’s right to chose what is acceptable or not!

Cain was the first-born son, so the younger son Abel knew his place in the pecking-order. But the eldest son was like many of us today, we can easily have an elder brother mentality. That stuff leads to jealousy when the pastor accepts someone else’s spiritual gift, and ignores ours, or someone gets healed, and we don’t. Or somebody becomes an elder, and we are still washing dishes in the kitchen. This is an entitled works-based mentality. It rationalises spiritual truths with logic. It sounds like this: “I did my best! I’ve kept on being a Christian even when it meant I had to make hard decisions. Why is my effort not recognised? Why is God not blessing me – He said He would. Why isn’t He doing it?” Offence takes the place of submission, and steers us away from living under God’s authority, into self-preservation.

And all that started in the garden, and has continued throughout man’s history. Mankind thinks it has a right to define itself and … well … really (!)… our God just ought to be grateful that we make the effort to follow Him at all … in days like these! 😳 But the bible shows us that our God will not be satisfied with some – He wants all! Just like He cautioned Cain to be careful, we need to be careful too. Giving the Lord what we’ve decided is right and good – is where Cain fell over in the first place! We cannot define what He gives us, He does. He’s God, the Creator of all things. We are not. And no matter how smart we think we are, our wisdom is not only finite – but vastly limited. Particularly by our own arrogance. 

Our God is not a despot. He doesn’t ask for all because He’s greedy or controlling. I believe He asks for all, because it is the safest place for us to live. With all of our lives laid down we are sheltered inside His love. Other people cannot steal from us if we do not own anything in the first place. This means we hold earthly things loosely. The Lord wants to do what He has promised to do, save, protect, guide us through hard things, and keep us safe from the enemy’s ploys and plots. But when we stand about in the enemy’s playground, giving in to satan’s logic and attitudes, it becomes extremely easy to grow resentful. Cain did.

Abel respected God’s wishes, and his offering was honoured – He offered an animal’s life to His Creator. Cain had an expectation that what he thought would be OK would be OK – and he got good and mad when God wanted to correct him. Our attitude to correction will reveal our heart to us – if we will let it. Some is not in God’s vocabulary – ALL is the only language God speaks … because HE GAVE US HIS ALL!👋🏻

P 2242 I belong to Jesus – satan you have no place in me anymore.

/ DVH

A lot of the time, we can be tricked into thinking we are failures at living this faith life. It is a huge mistake to underestimate the fact that we have an enemy, and he’s outrageously sneaky! he will hand you some awful thoughts and then blame you for thinking them. Treat satan’s lies like a tennis match – bat the lies back over the net to his side! Our biggest and best defence against his offence is to know what the bible says.

Jesus knew how to play this kind of tennis! Take a look at Luke 4:1-13 and watch Christ win. His enemy spoke and, if you look carefully, you will see that Jesus did not bat back the same ball that was served to Him. He picked up a scriptural bomb instead! Sometimes our best weapon is not our flesh! Even though He’s starving and tempted about food, the Lord speaks out the reality of God’s sovereignty. We need to do ourselves the favour of realising that a general knowledge of what it says in the book is not enough. We need to know this book the same way we know what colour our eyes are. These words are our weapons …and those weapons pull down strongholds, in our lives and the lives of others.

The next temptation is that the Lord Jesus is tempted to get everything He was sent to do, by taking a short-cut. My advice? Avoid short-cuts! Jesus refuses to enter into that conversation – He bats another bomb back about God’s sovereignty. It is as if He can see through the enemy’s temptation and He understands what is really being said. We all need that kind of wisdom – we need to know what we are really being tempted about! You know: every promise in His book is mine but some verses are more weighty than others. Ask the Lord for an ACE to bat back at the devil.

The last time, Christ is tempted to see if God really will protect Him, and He goes back, yet again – to Father God’s sovereignty. He refuses to be baited into a discussion with the devil about the superficial things in this life. And the Lord Jesus makes it perfectly clear that He knows why He is here … His times are in God’s hands. When we are tempted like this, we need to let go of what we think should happen and hand stuff over to the Lord. satan could not find one place inside Jesus that elicited a response. The Lord protected the ground His Father had given Him to stand on. And basically told the enemy: ‘I’m here for the Eternal Mighty God, not for My own personal wishes, comfort or notoriety.’

This is the secret to living in the righteousness of Christ. We must know the ground we are standing on. We are now here for HIM – our ambitions, no matter how Godly they seem to be, our agendas, even our needs are all secondary to our calling! Because of what Christ did we are now standing on higher ground with a higher purpose – we must live this new life according to those purposes.

Christ gave us His place in this world as an exchange – His life for ours. Now we voluntarily give up our lives for His … to the death! At this moment we are seated in heavenly places with Christ Jesus because of what He did for us. It was an exchange – His precious life for ours. We aren’t seated with Him to make this life here on earth comfy cosy – we are seated there, in a place of authority over the enemy and his lies, to get free ourselves, and to set others free.

satan could not tempt Christ away from His purpose on earth and we must not let the devil distract us away from our purpose either. We are not just here to have kids, a job, a house and raise a family … this is our time to stand on the Lord’s side! We are here to fight for the people who are not aware that they don’t have to play in that snake’s putrid, filthy arena anymore. Christ died to give us all another way – another place to stand. Beside Him. The disciples stood beside Jesus, and now we do that too – using our faith. It isn’t something we say or sing – it’s the WAY we live. 

“Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.” 1 Peter 5:8.“For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” Ephesians 6:12. “So that we would not be outwitted by satan; for we are not ignorant of his designs.” 2 Corinthians 2:11. “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” James 4:7.

The battles we face every single day are not just about peace, or a happy life – they are about winning a war that started in heaven. Every single time we say NO! to satan, we enter that arena with Christ as our example and guide. He’s standing with us. We do not have to fight alone, we live in the knowledge that as His ambassadors, God will fight with us and for us. We need to stop playing this game the devil’s way… and start living Christ’s new way, day by day, by day. If we fall down we get up again – because we know, like Jesus did, OUR SIDE WON and we have a job to do. 👋🏻

P 2153 The Lord says tough stuff.

/ DVH

John 20:24-27 “…Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves Me must follow Me; and where I am, My servant also will be. My Father will honour the one who serves Me. “Now my soul is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save Me from this hour’? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour.”

Jesus said a whole lot of tough stuff that needs our immediate attention. After all. so many people alive today do not know Him – and they know nothing of His Salvation plan for mankind. And WE, you and I, are the ones who need to tell them. Here’s a couple more similar verses: “Then Jesus said to His disciples, “Whoever wants to be My disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow Me.” Matthew 16:24. That cross can be our circumstances, or even a difficult person. Good time to stop and think… Mo-ving on again… “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on them.” John 3:36. 

You probably never heard anyone preach on those scriptures lately. They definitely wouldn’t be anyone’s first choice for verses to comfort us! At first glance they don’t seem very people friendly. But our faith is not a soft faith – it is an all inclusive, who-so-ever-will, may-come faith, which also means everybody is meant to  participate. Jesus Christ set the high standard we all must follow and He showed us by His example, that we must die, take up our cross, and follow Him. Hmmm… today’s blog is not much of a cheery one!

The Lord never ever spoke frivolously about death, He took that matter seriously. But, He also saw death as a doorway through to something bigger. I’m not sure we comprehend that completely until we have to face it for ourselves, or someone we love dearly, dies. This means we don’t talk about the backbone of our faith much … except perhaps at funerals. In all the years I have been a Christian I don’t think I have heard all that many sermons about this kind of exceptionally serious subject. We mainly talk about sin, repentance,  ministries, God’s love, benefits, and spiritual gifts. The stuff we GET, not the stuff we GIVE UP.

I personally think sin actually starts here, with what Jesus said about the way we live our lives. We are either all IN, or we are all OUT, but we must be learning, daily, to count the cost. In truth there are no part-time Christians in the bible, and there is no room for paddling in the shallows. I believe we have divided Christianity into two separate categories in the Western world – being born again, and … hopefully, one day, ev-en-tu-ally ….getting around to … dying daily. But … maybe not too quickly!

Basically, I think Christians see this dying daily stuff as an optional extra. And it isn’t. Jesus didn’t see this subject that way … read the book! Paul had quite a bit to say about it as well. It seems to me that sometimes we try to get away with as much as we ‘legally’ can, and then eventually we have to repent to ‘fix things’. Plus we make excuses about not having any power to change … so we can’t help it. Like the cross Jesus died on was devoid of power! Having said all that, there are a select few people that I know personally, who really do actively try to follow the Lord’s teachings. And boy do they have a hard time of it!  Most of their problems come from the paddlers at the edge of the pool, throwing rocks at them.

Let’s pretend for a minute. Let’s pretend that we ALL live to die daily, simply because the Lord told us to do it.  Let’s imagine that we have to practice these skills in order to understand what Grace and faith really are. I think that if all of us live the way Jesus did, following His instructions, satan is going to be a whole lot busier than he is when we treat these scriptures as optional extras. We belong to the majority. Jesus and me are a majority. So why don’t we live like we are the majority? Um … we like our own way too much? 

Like I said, this blog is not cheery or comforting unless you have dealt with, or are dealing with your old life minute by minute, day by day. If that is the case then right about now, you are nodding your head at what you are reading! The problem we have created, is that we tell people they must be born again … and we omit to tell them that this new free life Christ died to give us, actually has a cost. The cost is our old life for His new life. Now, I could list all the benefits of this new life in Christ here today, but Christianity seems to be pretty good at finding the benefits all by itself. It’s the cost we get stuck on.

There is only one way to heaven. The blood of Jesus. Now, we exchange our old life for His and live for Him. Ya might want to think on that while you are earning your daily bread … which actually comes from Him! That’s tough stuff. 👋🏻