God the Homemaker

Posted on by Adrian Clark

“The heavens proclaim the glory of God. The skies display his craftsmanship. Day after day they continue to speak; night after night they make him known. They speak without a sound or word; their voice is never heard. Yet their message has gone throughout the earth, and their words to all the world. God has made a home in the heavens for the sun.”
Psalm 19:1-4 NLT

David wrote that God “has made a home in the heavens for the sun”. Of course, we remember the creation story in Genesis 1:14-18, “Then God said, “Let lights appear in the sky to separate the day from the night. Let them be signs to mark the seasons, days, and years. Let these lights in the sky shine down on the earth.” And that is what happened. God made two great lights—the larger one to govern the day, and the smaller one to govern the night. He also made the stars. God set these lights in the sky to light the earth, to govern the day and night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good”. So the largest light, the sun, was there to govern the day and to “separate the light from the darkness”. In David’s words, the sun was important enough to be positioned in the heavens, as a permanent feature, giving light and warmth to God’s creation. 

The word “home’ brings to our minds all kinds of thoughts. There is something comforting to return to a familiar place, kick off our shoes, hang up our jackets, and put our cosy slippers on our feet, in a place where we live and the place we call “home”. Here we can relax and recharge our physical and emotional batteries, in a place of relative security away from the hustle and bustle of life on Planet Earth. We pilgrims also are aware of our future “home” when we will cross the Great Divide into God’s place. Jesus said to His disciples (and by implication to us modern day disciples as well), “Don’t let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, and trust also in me. There is more than enough room in my Father’s home. If this were not so, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? When everything is ready, I will come and get you, so that you will always be with me where I am” (John 14:1-3). We find that God has a home where we will join him and claim it to be our home as well. But what sort of place will our new home be? We don’t really know with any certainty, but we are sure that it will be far better than what we have at present.

Interestingly, God’s home will not always be in Heaven, contrary to popular opinion. In Revelation 21:3 we read, “I heard a loud shout from the throne, saying, “Look, God’s home is now among his people! He will live with them, and they will be his people. God himself will be with them”. Where will His new home be? On the new earth and located in the New Jerusalem. And there will be no home for the sun anymore, because John ” … saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the old heaven and the old earth had disappeared. And the sea was also gone” (Revelation 21:1). Why will the sun not be there? Because “ … there will be no night there—no need for lamps or sun—for the Lord God will shine on them. And they will reign forever and ever” (Revelation 22:5).

We pilgrims are truly a favoured people, because God Himself will provide all the security and comfort that we have come to expect from our earthly homes. We may not have a favourite pair of slippers but there will be something far better waiting for us. And we read, “He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these things are gone forever” (Revelation 21:4). All the things of this world that we long to escape from won’t be a problem in our new home, whether in Heaven or on the New Earth, because they won’t exist. 

God is a homemaker. He created a home for us on this earth, perfect in every way, but along came the devil and corrupted it through sin and evil. But God made a promise in Genesis 1:27, “So God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them“. God would not have created something He thought was imperfect. We have been created in His image, and as God is perfect, we too have perfection in Him within our grasp.

Dear Father God. We praise and worship our eternal Creator today, grateful for all You have done for us. Amen.

The Heavens Proclaim

Posted on by Adrian Clark

“The heavens proclaim the glory of God. The skies display his craftsmanship. Day after day they continue to speak; night after night they make him known. They speak without a sound or word; their voice is never heard. Yet their message has gone throughout the earth, and their words to all the world. God has made a home in the heavens for the sun.”
Psalm 19:1-4 NLT

We can just imagine David, lying in a pasture while he was looking after his father’s sheep, and looking up into the night sky, seeing an amazing canopy of small bright dots. Without light pollution, the heavens at night are breath-taking in their beauty. To add to the scene, David would have uttered a “wow” when he saw the sunsets and the sunrises, resplendent in their pinks, yellows, and reds and changing by the minute as the sun traversed the horizon. David, a thinking and deeply spiritual man, attributed the causes to God, because who else could have performed such an amazing light show? David would have been educated in accordance with the Jewish curriculum, and a God-knowledge would have been prominently contained within. But here out in the open David went from book knowledge to heart knowledge, causing him to write “The Heavens proclaim the glory of God”. Earlier we looked at Psalm 8, another Davidic Psalm, which starts, “O Lord, our Lord, your majestic name fills the earth! Your glory is higher than the heavens”. God’s majesty through His name is present here on earth and in consequence His glorious majesty is so great that it extends far beyond what even the most powerful telescope can determine, needing a Name above all names to do Him justice. 

The problem that atheists, those who deny that God doesn’t exist, have is that they have no “wow” in their lives. No sense of wonderment that there is a Creator God who created the universe and all that is within it, and in the process He provided a beautiful display of His presence. I’m writing this morning looking out at a grey world, rain splashing in the puddles, and missed what would have been an amazing sunrise bursting through my office window. Sin is a bit like that because it puts a fog of rain clouds in the way, blocking out the glory of the dawn, and by implication, God’s glorious presence. David would have soaked in the wonder of the skies in his long lonely hours musing and meditating on the Person behind what he was seeing, and he never got tired of what he saw. He wrote, “Day after day they continue to speak; night after night they make him known”, declaring that God is eternal and has crafted a universe that never fails to display something new.

There is a story of two prisoners in a cell looking through the bars. One only saw mud, but the other saw stars. To so many, they go through their lives drudging and struggling through the “mud” of life, getting bogged down in what are mostly trivial circumstances, but which nevertheless drains them of any hope for the future. Other people seem to float above their life problems and always seem to have their heads optimistically positioned in higher places, up there with the stars. 

In Jesus we have a hope that is just as wonderful as the glory of God displayed in His creation. Paul wrote, “I pray that God, the source of hope, will fill you completely with joy and peace because you trust in him. Then you will overflow with confident hope through the power of the Holy Spirit” (Romans 15:13). What do we pilgrims hope for? I would suggest that through our faith in Jesus, we will one day see the glory of God on a scale that is totally beyond what our human limitations can allow. As the writer to the Hebrews said, “Faith shows the reality of what we hope for; it is the evidence of things we cannot see” (Hebrews 11:1). The glory of God displayed in the Heavens is a hint of what is to come, put there by a merciful and gracious God to support our faith. The disciple Philip one day said to Jesus, “ … Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied” (John 14:8). The following verse reads, “Jesus replied, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and yet you still don’t know who I am? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father! So why are you asking me to show him to you?” Through our faith and belief in Jesus we too have seen the Father, and just to make sure we don’t forget, He announces His glorious presence through His creation, not just once but every day.

Do we pilgrims look up on a dark but clear night and observe with thankful hearts yet another Heavenly display of God’s glory? Of course we do, because we know the Creator who put on the show to proclaim His glory.

Father God. Your wonderful creation is beyond understanding, but we appreciate and enjoy Your glory every day. Amen.

Climbing the Walls

Posted on by Adrian Clark

“You rescue the humble, but you humiliate the proud. You light a lamp for me. The Lord, my God, lights up my darkness. In your strength I can crush an army; with my God I can scale any wall.”
Psalm 18:27-29 NLT

Psalm 18:29 was written in military language, with a picture of armies of well armed soldiers, and the protective wall located around a city. David declares that through God’s strength he can succeed in any military conflict, but I wonder what was in his mind when he thought about a seemingly impregnable wall before him. In God, he wrote, no wall is a safe place for his adversaries within. However, and David was very much aware of this, his own strength was insufficient to succeed in battle. 

We pilgrims will, most likely, not be involved in physical battles. We may not be conscripted or recruited into a battalion or other band of soldiers, armed and ready for conflict. But we will be fighting other kinds of battles, with health challenges, work difficulties, relational problems, money worries and so on. There will be some reading this today who are wondering where the strength to face the day can be found. They woke up this morning, and a feeling of dread flooded over them. A dark foreboding is perhaps rising up within and even a panic attack is making a start as there seems to be no way out from the wall of worries and anxieties just in front of them. Trapped and afraid, such people feel they have no way to turn and can think of no solution to their dire situation. 

Well, there is good news for us pilgrims, because, like David, we know that, although our strength is insufficient, we have God’s resources at our disposal. And because of that, through our faith in Jesus, we have all the means we need to “scale any wall”. Jesus said, “Yes, I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). Jesus continues two verses later, “But if you remain in me and my words remain in you, you may ask for anything you want, and it will be granted!” Really? Paul “got it”, as we read in Ephesians 3:16, 20, “I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources he will empower you with inner strength through his Spirit. … Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think“. 

But before we rush out and do something rash, we need to take a deep breath and prayerfully step back. The first step is that we must be aligned in accordance with God’s will. The battles we fight in this sad and bad world will always be before us, because that is what human life is all about. Sin and wickedness have destroyed God’s order, His perfect plans, and we are here deeply integrated with worldly life. But we have the power through God to survive the problems and challenges because he will resource us in two ways. Firstly, through our faith in Him we will be equipped to be an overcomer, able to face the problems. Secondly, God will often provide us with a solution to our problem, perhaps revealing a way out or remedy that we hadn’t considered, or even changing the circumstances or people involved, so that we are shown favour.  But we mustn’t get ahead of God and assume that He is with us when we make decisions or take actions that ultimately might put us outside His will. 

There is a story of a lady in Wales who lived in a village at the foot of a slag heap, leftover from coal mining activities. This heap of rubbish was a constant annoyance to her, and one day she read the verses in Mark 11:22-24, “Then Jesus said to the disciples, “Have faith in God. I tell you the truth, you can say to this mountain, ‘May you be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ and it will happen. But you must really believe it will happen and have no doubt in your heart. I tell you, you can pray for anything, and if you believe that you’ve received it, it will be yours”. So one night the lady prayed that God would remove the slag heap and she then went to bed. In the morning she drew her curtains but the slag heap was still there. Her response was “I knew that prayer wouldn’t work”. This is not to say that God would not have removed that slag heap, but that perhaps God wanted to use the mountain of coal waste to help her faith and her fellow villagers, equally afflicted.

The Lord said to Joshua, and he is still saying it to us today, “This is my command—be strong and courageous! Do not be afraid or discouraged. For the Lord your God is with you wherever you go” (Joshua 1:9). In God we are invincible and through God’s resources, properly engaged, we can achieve anything. But as Paul knew from his fleshly thorn, the outcomes to our prayers may not be totally what we think. Paul asked God on three occasions to remove whatever was troubling him, and “Each time [God] said, “My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.” So now I [Paul] am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ can work through me” (2 Corinthians 12:9). So there we have it. If God wants us to climb the wall before us, and slay the giants within, He will resource us for the task. But we need to discern through faith that this is what God wants us to do; otherwise the enemies the other side of the wall, or even the wall itself, might fight back and overwhelm us.

Dear Father God. In You we have the strength to scale any wall. Please grant us the faith we need. Amen.

Earthquakes and Fire

Posted on by Adrian Clark

“Then the earth quaked and trembled. The foundations of the mountains shook; they quaked because of his anger. Smoke poured from his nostrils; fierce flames leaped from his mouth. Glowing coals blazed forth from him.”
Psalm 18:7-8 NLT

After acknowledging that God heard David’s cries and prayers for help, David let his imagination dwell on the different ways that God could deal with the problem of his enemies. Earthquakes and fire appear in David’s poetry, themes again appearing in Isaiah, “But suddenly, your ruthless enemies will be crushed like the finest of dust. Your many attackers will be driven away like chaff before the wind. Suddenly, in an instant, I, the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, will act for you with thunder and earthquake and great noise, with whirlwind and storm and consuming fire” (Isaiah 29:5-6). Earthquakes and fire are just two of God’s remedies for dealing with a sinful and wicked earth, and we’re so grateful that He is holding back His judgement. He didn’t in the case of Sodom and Gomorrah, as we read in Genesis 19:24-25, “Then the Lord rained down fire and burning sulphur from the sky on Sodom and Gomorrah. He utterly destroyed them, along with the other cities and villages of the plain, wiping out all the people and every bit of vegetation”. In case anyone thinks that the Genesis account was just mythical, evidence has been found of an ancient city destroyed by intense heat. Dating methods have placed it in the right historical period. 

Elijah too came up against earthquakes and fire, as we read in 1 Kings 19:11-12, “Go out and stand before me on the mountain,” the Lord told him. And as Elijah stood there, the Lord passed by, and a mighty windstorm hit the mountain. It was such a terrible blast that the rocks were torn loose, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake there was a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire there was the sound of a gentle whisper“. An amazing demonstration of God’s power re-confirmed Elijah’s mission. 

So what do we pilgrims think of earthquakes and fire? We know the words of Jesus in Matthew 24:7, “Nation will go to war against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in many parts of the world”, and we look around and see this happening. We might even suspect that David’s words were a prophetic message foretelling God’s judgement, but Jesus continued in the next verse, “But all this is only the first of the birth pains, with more to come“. Earthquakes were very much part of the apocalyptic vision recorded in Revelation. We read in Revelation 16:17-18, “Then the seventh angel poured out his bowl into the air. And a mighty shout came from the throne in the Temple, saying, “It is finished!” Then the thunder crashed and rolled, and lightning flashed. And a great earthquake struck—the worst since people were placed on the earth“. There was fire involved as well in the last days. Revelation 16:8, “Then the fourth angel poured out his bowl on the sun, causing it to scorch everyone with its fire“. 

Earthquakes and fire are considered part of God’s judgement on the evil and wicked people who have populated Planet Earth. Up until now, we read that, “The Lord is slow to anger and filled with unfailing love, forgiving every kind of sin and rebellion. But he does not excuse the guilty. … ” (Numbers 14:18a). ‭‭We are so thankful that God’s anger and judgement has been delayed because otherwise we would not be around today. As we read through Revelation we can see a series of world events that take place before the Time of the End in Revelation 20, but in Hebrews 9:27 we read, “ … each person is destined to die once and after that comes judgment“. In these days on Planet Earth we live in a season of God’s grace. The Revelation 16 times of earthquakes and fire have yet to come. David did indeed prophesy about what was to come, and we pilgrims are in a place of God’s favour and grace, which we strive to share with others.

Dear Father God. To many people their lives will not end well as they stand before You on Judgement Day. But thank You that You have entrusted us with Your message of hope. Please help us to spread the word that “Jesus saves”. Amen.

Wonderful Ways

Posted on by Adrian Clark

“I am praying to you because I know you will answer, O God. Bend down and listen as I pray. Show me your unfailing love in wonderful ways. By your mighty power you rescue those who seek refuge from their enemies.”
Psalm 17:6-7 NLT

Where was David when he was praying these verses? My imagination takes me this morning to a holy place where a lonely figure is standing in an attitude of prayer, his hands raised with a face turned upwards towards Heaven. Perhaps the figure was fearful of the threats of the warring nations around him. Perhaps he was even surrounded by his enemies who were intent on capture or death. But regardless, he was standing in the presence of the Lord God of Israel, the Creator of Heaven and earth. He was the same Lord who had parted the Red Sea and brought His people through on dry land, destroying the Egyptian army in the process. The same Lord who had miraculously fed an entire nation with something called manna for forty years. And more recently, the same Lord who had directed a pebble into the unprotected forehead of a Philistine giant, a pebble slung from a weapon carried by the lonely figure standing there in an attitude of prayer and worship. 

David would have been aware of the writings of Moses, and of God’s love for His people. Deuteronomy 10:15, “Yet the Lord chose your ancestors as the objects of his love. And he chose you, their descendants, above all other nations, as is evident today”. David knew that his Lord loved him. All those days and nights spent in the wilderness looking after his father’s sheep had assured him of God’s love. He had no doubts, and answered prayers had bolstered his knowledge of God’s love to the point that he looked to God, expecting Him to do wonderful things for him, things desperately needed because of the predicament he was in. After all, he thought, who would have expected God to do such wonderful deeds for a group of Israelite slaves many years before? 

David did not have God constrained in a box of his own making, boundaries applied through his human thinking. He had an expectation that God had some “wonderful ways” ready and waiting to be applied to David’s predicament. What was his expectation of God? A miracle on the battlefield? Another Goliath moment? Another parting of a sea of adversity as he stood on the banks of danger before it? David wasn’t specific – he just looked to God in faith, his hands raised in prayer and worship. His upturned face shining in the light of his Lord.

But here we are, pilgrims in another world. We may not be surrounded by physical threats. We may not be in a place of danger, “seek[ing] refuge from [our] enemies”. Paul wrote in Ephesians 6:12, “For we are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places”. God has provided for us a rich armoury of spiritual weapons, more than capable of protecting us from such enemies. We know, like David, that God loves us with a perfect and eternal love, that will never end. And He has equipped us for all that we are likely to encounter in our journey to glory. But there is a little verse that intrigues and challenges us, a verse that David knew something about many years before it was written. Paul wrote in Ephesians 3:20 (AMP), “Now to Him who is able to [carry out His purpose and] do superabundantly more than all that we dare ask or think [infinitely beyond our greatest prayers, hopes, or dreams], according to His power that is at work within us“. We pilgrims have God’s power within us through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Power just waiting to be released as God directs, and unconstrained by our human thinking. The power that parted the Red Sea. The power that fed a nation for a generation.  The power that David prayed about in his prayer for God to “show … His wonderful ways”. 

We pilgrims are a people of power through God’s Spirit within us. We sing about it in our worship services. But do we really believe it? So let us pray like David did today, for God to show us His “wonderful ways” in response to all that is happening in our lives and around us. These are times that really need a manifestation of God’s power, power to save the world in which we live.

Dear God. We sing about You “building a people of power” but we confess our lack of faith and belief in these words. Please help us, we pray, as we go about doing Your work today. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Prayerful Assurance

Posted on by Adrian Clark

“I am praying to you because I know you will answer, O God. Bend down and listen as I pray. Show me your unfailing love in wonderful ways. By your mighty power you rescue those who seek refuge from their enemies.”
Psalm 17:6-7 NLT

David expressed his assurance about his prayer life. Put simply, he prayed because he knew God would answer him. There is something about prayer that people misunderstand. We have our liturgical prayer books such as the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. Or we can soon find books of prayers overflowing with feel-good poetry. And of course we have the Psalms, a wonderful God-inspired resource written many years ago. A dignitary might write down a prayer when asked to open an assembly, and we have the time of prayers at a school assembly. But prayer has become to many a stilted and flowery statement rather than what it should be – part of conversation with God. In a human setting, two people will engage in a conversation and will talk to each other in a way that communicates their thoughts and feelings, opinions and fears. Human communication is very much a two-way process of talking and listening, as issues are discussed and even problems resolved. But somehow we struggle to communicate with God. It could be that we can’t see Him. Or because He may not respond in a way that we need Him to, so that the conversation can continue. And so we have devised a process called prayer, a one-sided verbalisation of our needs and wants that we launch into the air like paper aeroplanes in the hope that one of them will fly all the way to God’s throne and He will pick it up and answer. Some people get quite good at praying, with long monologues full of “thee’s” and “thou’s”, spontaneously spoken out in a church meeting, and afterwards they feel quite good about themselves, considering the job done. A cynical view? Perhaps, but even Jesus’ disciples struggled with prayer – it’s not a new thing that only modern believers suffer from.

Conversation with God is what prayer is really all about, and, like any other conversation, it is two-sided. David was assured of that, because he knew confidently that God answered his prayers. But what do we pilgrims expect when we pray? Are we equally as confident that God will answer our prayers?

Part of a conversation between two people is a getting-to-know-you process. The way another person responds to a question, or reacts to a statement, exposes their inner person and contributes to a relational process that either grows well, even into friendship, or it brings the conversation to a speedy end with incompatible differences. We can’t ask God direct questions about Himself, but all the information we need is contained within His Word, the Bible. And the more we read it, the more we will find out about our wonderful God.

Jesus taught about prayer in His Sermon on the Mount. We read in Matthew 6:5-6, “When you pray, don’t be like the hypocrites who love to pray publicly on street corners and in the synagogues where everyone can see them. I tell you the truth, that is all the reward they will ever get. But when you pray, go away by yourself, shut the door behind you, and pray to your Father in private. Then your Father, who sees everything, will reward you”. Jesus continued, “When you pray, don’t babble on and on as the Gentiles do. They think their prayers are answered merely by repeating their words again and again. Don’t be like them, for your Father knows exactly what you need even before you ask him!” And then we have what we call the Lord’s Prayer, a template for praying the God way. Matthew 6: 9-13, “Pray like this: Our Father in heaven, may your name be kept holy. May your Kingdom come soon. May your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven. Give us today the food we need, and forgive us our sins, as we have forgiven those who sin against us. And don’t let us yield to temptation, but rescue us from the evil one“. How many times have we recited that prayer in a church service, words that we know from memory, but what do they really mean in practice? Jesus didn’t say that His prayer was all that there was. He said “Pray like this …”. There’s worship here, gratitude, expression of needs, an appeal for God to touch earth once again, a confession of sins, and protection from evil. Not a complete list of tick boxes, but an outline to which we add our own flavour, seasoned by our relationship with God.

With regard to his prayer life, David was a simple soul. He spoke out his fears and his needs. He reminded God of His obligations. He ranted and raved at God when under duress, emotional outbursts that we wouldn’t dare repeat in case we upset God. But David knew His Lord, and could confidently say that his prayers were answered. How about us pilgrims? Are we just was confident or merely going through the motions? But one thing we do know is that at the start of the day we need to get close to God. It may not always be convenient. Some days we won’t even feel like it, preferring to have extra time in bed. But the more we spend time with God in prayer, the more we will find that he respond to our stuttering verbalisations, giving us the assurance we need in times of need. The assurance we receive from God is indeed blessed.

Dear Father God. Once again we come to You in worship and with thankful hearts. We know that You are there for us, each and every moment, leading, guiding and assuring us on every step of our pilgrimage to Heaven. Amen.

A Wonderful Inheritance

Posted on by Adrian Clark

“Lord, you alone are my inheritance, my cup of blessing. You guard all that is mine. The land you have given me is a pleasant land. What a wonderful inheritance!”
Psalm 16:5-6 NLT

A mixture of allegorical events this morning? What was David thinking about? The Israelites were indeed given a pleasant land by God, and David, as king, would have inherited its domain from the previous king, Saul. There was a time when David could even relax a bit, secure that God was looking out for him – 2 Samuel 7:1, “When King David was settled in his palace and the Lord had given him rest from all the surrounding enemies”. And we can just imagine David getting up in the morning and looking out over the land around him, feeling blessed by God’s provision. It was indeed a “wonderful inheritance” and one promised to Moses during his blazing bush encounter with God. God said to Moses, “So I have come down to rescue them from the power of the Egyptians and lead them out of Egypt into their own fertile and spacious land. It is a land flowing with milk and honey—the land where the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites now live” (Exodus 3:8). 

But David also looked to God as his spiritual inheritance. In a sense He was, and is, everyone’s inheritance – well, for believers that is. We have come to know God because of an “inheritance” granted us through His Word, the Bible, and word of mouth by faithful servants who have shared the Gospel with us. David came to know God more directly, through spending long hours with his harp and flute watching his father’s sheep. And praise welled up inside David, as he declared that God was his “cup of blessing”. 

Do we pilgrims agree with David, and similarly declare that God has indeed blessed us, and, more, is our “pleasant land”? Do we enjoy our relationship with God? Or is it something we do by rote, going through religious motions on a Sunday, our minds dwelling on the roast dinner cooking in the oven at home? I’m sure that anyone reading this today knows that they are blessed by God and they too find within them a well of praise and worship, even a hint of excitement perhaps, as they drink the cup full of God’s blessings. To a worldly person, they have no idea of the blessings that could be waiting for them if they only opened the door into a relationship with God. The demands placed upon someone today, the busyness, the emotional draining, the struggle to fund their lives – all of this conspires to blind a person’s eyes to the reality that in a corner of their lives is a gateway into a new life. A life with God. An inheritance that is theirs for the asking. The invitation to this new life can often be seen in the wayside pulpits located outside churches, or even on the side of buses. Imagine receiving a letter one day, asking you to collect your inheritance from a lawyer somewhere, but not even bothering to turn up to find out what it is. Such is the response from people today, and in the process they are missing out on the same “cup of blessing” that David enjoyed, a cup that never runs dry.

And of course we remember that the “wonderful inheritance” we enjoy is not just for this life on earth. There will be a day when we find that much of what we glimpsed and yearned for will burst into an amazing panorama of God and all that He is, in a place we call Heaven. We have an “inheritance” that is without end and without limit.

Paul wrote, “Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think” (Ephesians 3:20). We believers have the potential to do mighty things for God with the resources that He has made available to us in the “pleasant land” located just a prayer away. We might not feel we have much power, as the demands of life drain us. We might not even believe that this verse is meant for us, preferring to think that it is only there for the real saints. But Paul wrote something profound and life changing about the “inheritance” we have available to us. Let us pause and reach out to God today, even daring to believe that His “cup of blessing” is limitless and will never run dry.

Dear Father God. You are the Source of all that is good in the land where You have placed us. Thank You for the many blessings poured out upon us. Amen.

The Righteous Lord

Posted on by Adrian Clark

“But the Lord is in his holy Temple; the Lord still rules from heaven. He watches everyone closely, examining every person on earth. The Lord examines both the righteous and the wicked. He hates those who love violence. He will rain down blazing coals and burning sulphur on the wicked, punishing them with scorching winds. For the righteous Lord loves justice. The virtuous will see his face.”
Psalm 11:4-7 NLT

We hear much today about the love of God. And after all, this might be the reason why we believers first came to know the Lord. A loving and compassionate God, who sent His Son Jesus to die in our place as a punishment for our sins. What love! But some unbelieving people, with whom we share the Gospel, argue that if God is so loving then why does He allow so many bad things to happen. Such people read John 3:16 and think to themselves that surely a loving God would put a stop to the wars and strife that blights the world He loves. They read verses such as Matthew 13:42 and think surely a loving God would never send anyone to a place called hell, where unbelieving people will spend eternity in torment. And to explain away the scenes of judgement from Genesis, such as the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, or the devastation of the Flood, such people declare that this was the Old Testament and everything changed after Jesus came. But here in Psalm 11 we read David’s words about a God who punishes people. Just Old Testament? Not if we believe Hebrews 13:8, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.”

It is unfortunate that so often the presentation of the Gospel from the pulpit lacks the balance about God’s character. Preachers today are perhaps too afraid to upset anyone in case they take the huff and go to another church where God is presented in a way that fits with their own God-is-love ideology. Such “old school” preachers and teachers are often just indulged and ignored, even if they exist today. Quite what modern congregations would make of John Knox is an interesting thought but I know someone who was radically saved in the 1970’s through the ministry of a man, a retired miner, who presented hell in the Gospel context, and it had a lasting impression.

But as well as being a God of love, He is a God of righteousness and justice. David knew that, and he wrote, “[God] hates those who love violence” and “For the righteous Lord loves justice”. David visualised a scene where the wicked found themselves being rained upon by “blazing coals and burning sulphur”. Such a scene would be a nasty shock to those who never thought God would do such a thing. But David ends this Psalm with the thought that the “virtuous [upright] will see His face”. Jesus taught in Matthew 5 about righteousness. We read, “But I warn you—unless your righteousness is better than the righteousness of the teachers of religious law and the Pharisees, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven!” (Matthew 5:20). There is only one way in which such righteousness can be achieved and that is through Jesus. By believing in Him and repenting of our sins, we will find that He has given us His perfect righteousness, and that is the only way anyone will ever be able to spend eternity in God’s presence. 

Loving Heavenly Father. We know that You are the beginning and the end and desire that everyone will be saved. We experience Your love and compassion in times of trouble and yet we understand that You hate sin and will judge everyone one day to balance the scales of justice. With that sober thought, we confess our sins before You today, grateful for Your grace and mercy, and forgiveness. Amen.

God Is Hiding

Posted on by Adrian Clark

“O Lord, why do you stand so far away? Why do you hide when I am in trouble? The wicked arrogantly hunt down the poor. Let them be caught in the evil they plan for others. For they brag about their evil desires; they praise the greedy and curse the Lord.”
Psalm 10:1-3 NLT

The Psalmist wasn’t afraid to make his complaint to God. He had no fear of a lightning bolt from Heaven because of his audacity in questioning God’s motives. But he merely expressed what we all do sometimes – where is God when the going gets tough? As we know ourselves, it is easy to praise God when the blessings flow towards us, but not so easy when we are in trouble. 

The Psalmist was reflecting on his own troubles, but he followed his questions with, once again, his observations of wicked people. How do they get away with their evil ways? Asaph, another Psalmist, expressed similar sentiments in Psalm 73. In fact, he writes that the prosperity of the wicked almost caused him to lose his faith. Psalm 73:3-5, “For I envied the proud when I saw them prosper despite their wickedness. They seem to live such painless lives; their bodies are so healthy and strong. They don’t have troubles like other people; they’re not plagued with problems like everyone else.” He continued in verse 16, “So I tried to understand why the wicked prosper. But what a difficult task it is!”‭‭ In Matthew 5:45b we read a little snippet from Jesus, that perhaps provides a reason. “ …  For he gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good, and he sends rain on the just and the unjust alike“. It is a ludicrous thought that God would perhaps stop the sun shining on all those people who ignore Him, coming under the Psalmist’s “wicked” definition. Imagine a largely dark world punctuated by pools of sunlight as Godly people went about their business. God’s blessings of life apply to everyone, wicked or not, but the difficult thought for the Psalmists was that the wicked seem to have more than their fair share.

But back to the times of trouble. We read about what happened to Paul and Silas in Philippi. Through the name of Jesus, they had removed the power of divination from a slave girl, upsetting her masters. A riot ensued and Paul and Silas ended up severely beaten, and imprisoned with their feet in the stocks. They were in trouble, without a doubt. And then we come to Acts 16:25, “Around midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening“.  We would have thought that they would have been crying out to God, wailing their complaints and asking why He hadn’t been there for them when they were in so much trouble. They had been abused and incarcerated in a stinking jail, their backs sore, their movement severely restricted. And yet they were praising God. How could they do that? God wasn’t there for them when they needed Him, some might think. The wicked people in Philippi had imposed their vengeance. But no external act of wicked people was ever going to stop Paul and Silas praising God.

James wrote in his epistle, “Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles of any kind come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow” (James 1:2-3). The sad thing is that becoming a Christian doesn’t mean that we won’t have to experience troubles anymore. In fact, Jesus said, ” …Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). So when the Psalmist questioned God’s motives in times of trouble and questioned why the wicked people got away with their wickedness, and when we do the same, we instead should turn to the Lord, expressing our thanks and praise. God isn’t hiding from us. He is always there when we need Him. But in those dark days when the Heavens seem like brass and our prayers don’t seem to get to God, we need to press in, worshipping and praising. We so often want to hide from God when troubles beset us. So on a Sunday morning we stay at home when we should be at church. We don’t pick up our Bibles and read His words of comfort. We stop praying. God hasn’t gone away but we have. God knows all about the wicked people who seem to prosper. He will deal with them one day if they persist in their sin. But in the mean time He provides an opportunity for them to repent and turn to Him. One day the scales of justice will be balanced but in this life we have a mission and that includes pressing through our troubles and keeping short accounts with God. Oh, and by the way, we tell the wicked about Jesus, and His saving grace.

Dear God. You had a plan for the salvation of mankind. And we deeply thank You for Jesus, Your precious Son, for forgiving us our sins. Amen.

Our Forever God

Posted on by Adrian Clark

“But the Lord reigns forever, executing judgment from his throne. He will judge the world with justice and rule the nations with fairness.”
Psalm 9:7-8 NLT

A small child’s question “Who made God?” is understandable from a natural perspective, as young minds grapple with difficult issues in life. Everything around us has been made at some time or another. Our natural world emerged in the Genesis account of creation, our material world of houses and cars and so on contains objects created by human beings. But then comes along the scientific distortions based on the largely unsubstantiated views and “research” by scientists like Darwin and others, bring confusion and contradictions, and media journalists propagate reports of a world formed a very long time ago when some geological discovery is made. But I lack the faith to believe in a world that is populated through a chance meeting of molecules many billions of years ago, or was formed by an apparent celestial explosion even further back into history. And none of these scientists have ever explained where all the matter that formed the universe came from in the first place. So a young mind, perhaps through a Sunday School lesson or teacher’s comment, and unable to make sense of the enormous amounts of data available, intuitively believes that there must be a Creator, and asks where God came from.

It may be a difficult concept to believe, but our God, the Lord, “reigns forever”. God has always been present. Jesus said in Revelation 22:13, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End“. So the answer to the small child’s question “Who made God?” is “No-one – He has always been there”. And there is something special about that knowledge, that our Creator God, the One who loves us and has graciously saved us, has always been there. And there is more – Ephesians 1:4, “Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes”. Such knowledge elevates us into Heavenly places that are unseen with our physical eyes but home to our spirits.

David also declared that God has always been there and His righteousness prevails through His judgement and fairness. And there is coming a time when He will rule the nations. We can only pray that this will happen soon, as the world around us seems to descend further and further into depths of evil and depravity. But instead of getting depressed we look up to the One who made it all. The One who created our world and populated it with human beings made in His image. The One who holds all things together – Colossians 1:17, “He existed before anything else, and he holds all creation together”. By looking up we get God’s perspective and receive the assurance that He is holding back the full potential of the forces of evil.

Paul continues in Colossians 1:19-20, “For God in all his fullness was pleased to live in Christ, and through him God reconciled everything to himself. He made peace with everything in heaven and on earth by means of Christ’s blood on the cross”. Perhaps a better question should be “How could the One who has always been there send His Son as a human being, to save us from our sins?” The answer to such a question we will never fully understand until we meet the One who made it all possible. But we are so grateful for Jesus. Perhaps John 3:16 doesn’t really fully communicate the heart of God and His love for you and me. We will never get our minds around what it must have cost Him. God wants to be involved intimately in the affairs of His creation, and in response we feel our hearts lift within us, a warm glow flushing away the thoughts of a sad and bad world. We want to shout out our praises to the One who has done it all. Jesus!

Dear God. You have always been present, because that is what eternity means. Thank You that Your love and grace is eternal and present with us today and every day. Amen.