Life the Jesus Way

Posted on by korgrocker

“Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise Him, my Saviour and my God. My soul is downcast within me; therefore I will remember you..” Psalms‬ ‭42:5-6‬a ‭NIVUK‬‬

Have you ever been “downcast”? In a place where your view of life is monochrome in a technicolour world? Where the negative and difficult issues of life are weighing heavily in your thoughts? Where even depression is affecting your mental health? The Psalmist who wrote these verses was himself not in a good place, with a downcast and disturbed soul. But he knew from his own experience of God that he needed to grab hold of three words – “remember”, “hope” and “praise”. The Psalmist had a personal relationship with God and through the experience of years of walking closely with Him he knew that by the application of these three words he would regain his mental stability and restore colour to his black and white world. Notice it is ok to be “downcast”. Life is like that. We can find ourselves in such a place frequently in life. I know a dear lady who even when recently given bad medical news, was able to remember, hope in and praise her wonderful Friend, altering her perspective for the future. She had found the key to living a life where circumstances were not going to affect her soul, no matter how bad the issues were.

There will be those who will say that I don’t know how bad their situation is. They will blame their upbringing, their mental health, their families and so on. They will say that not even God can lift them out of their circumstances. But there are Christians in North Korea, imprisoned, beaten, and tortured, but who can remain active in their faith, remembering, hoping in and praising their Saviour and their God. There is a lovely Christian man, Nick Vujicic, whose strap line has been, “I’ve no arms and legs – what’s your problem?” We all live in our own life bubbles, experiencing our own issues, facing into our own worlds, dealing with our own downcast souls. And God has provided all the resources we need through Jesus, who said, “I have come that [you] may have life, and have it to the full.” ‭‭John‬ ‭10:10‬b ‭NIVUK‬‬. I saw a bumper sticker today, “One Life, Live It”. Let’s live the life God has given us the Jesus way, full of God-memories, full of God-hope, and full of God-praise.

God’s DNA

Posted on by korgrocker

“I take joy in doing Your will, my God, for Your instructions are written on my heart.” Psalms‬ ‭40:8‬ ‭NLT‬‬

How is it that people seem to intuitively know when they do wrong? Even when there are no obvious rules, laws or regulations for them to break. The key could be in the verse we read today from Psalm 40. In the Genesis creation story we are told that man was made in God’s image (Genesis 1:26). Our God is a righteous God, the Creator of a universe that is founded on what is right, a moral universe within which mankind fits like a hand in a glove. That is, if the glove he chooses to fit his hand into is the one God designed. Unfortunately, in today’s Western society there are many people who make a living by manufacturing different gloves for people who have violated the basics of God’s moral design. Gloves for unfortunate and misguided people who are debilitated by their feelings of guilt and who, instead of going to their Creator, instead find a false god in the form of a psychiatrist or counsellor with the hope that they can help them appease their guilty conscience in a way that avoids bringing God into the remedy.

Am I generalising too much? Am I being too harsh about the psychiatric profession? Possibly, or even probably. But what I do know is that God’s moral DNA is inbuilt. It forms a part of us. It leads and guides us through and by our consciences in the way God has designed for us. David, the Psalmist, realised its importance when he wrote about God’s genetic instructions being written into our hearts, into our psyche. And, as the verse today says, by following His instructions, we will experience a joy not possible to achieve by godless methods.

The remedy for a guilty conscience is through repentance and turning to God. And when we are close to God with a conscience washed clean through Jesus’ blood, we will be hand in glove with the Creator who designed us. Experiencing His joy, love and peace. Set free to do His will.

God’s Master Plan

Posted on by korgrocker

“O Lord my God, you have performed many wonders for us. Your plans for us are too numerous to list. You have no equal. If I tried to recite all Your wonderful deeds, I would never come to the end of them.” Psalms‬ ‭40:5‬ ‭NLT‬‬

Any attempt to unpick and drill down into this verse can only end up in becoming lost in the depths of our Creator God, full of grateful praise and worship. The bottom line is that God’s wonders, plans and deeds are uncountable because there are so many of them. For example, just take the environment in which we live. The number of conditions that combine to enable life as we know it on this planet are uncountable. And it was God’s plan to create a world where His plans could be developed. And look at the complexities of human life – how could two cells coming together in a mother’s womb ever develop into a human being capable of so much? It beggars belief that so many people believe the lie that our world and all its contents happened by chance. As the verse above points out, our Creator God has performed many wonders and deeds in implementing His plans.

But there is a wonder, a plan, a deed, that is far above anything else God has done for the human race. We find in the Genesis account that God created men and women in His image. And He wanted to have a relationship with them based on love and friendship. But things went horribly wrong with man’s response to God, as we can find in the early accounts of the Israelite nation. God wasn’t going to give up on His creation, though, and He devised a master plan to reconcile mankind back to Him. His love for us was so intense that he wasn’t going to let us continue in living a life less than how He designed it to be. A life without the ultimate richness of being a friend of God. We can read about God’s master plan through the words of Jesus in John 3. This is the Message version. “This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. God didn’t go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again.” That was God’s plan. To put the world back into the place He had designed it to be. He wasn’t going to give up on His creation and He never will. Through Jesus, God’s Master Plan, everyone person living on this planet can find out about God’s wonders, plans and deeds. If they want to. The choice is theirs. The choice is yours.

Mud and Clay

Posted on by korgrocker

“I waited patiently for the Lord to help me, and he turned to me and heard my cry. He lifted me out of the pit of despair, out of the mud and the mire. He set my feet on solid ground and steadied me as I walked along. He has given me a new song to sing, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see what he has done and be amazed. They will put their trust in the Lord.” Psalms‬ ‭40:1-3‬ ‭NLT‬‬

Imagine the scene. You have wandered over some fields and come to a bank, down which you accidentally slip. You find yourself stuck in a bog, mud up to your knees and you are starting to sink further. Your cries for help are unheeded because of the remoteness of the place and very quickly the enormity of your predicament floods over you leaving an acute feeling of fear and despair. So you cry out to God for help, waiting with patience for Him to answer, full of assurance that He will do just that. And then, out of nowhere, a rope falls in front of you. You grab it and find a stranger at the other end who manages to pull you out, back up the bank, to a place of firm ground. God hears your cries and prayers for help and sends someone to rescue you.

Imagine the scene. After several days of heavy rain, the local river has burst its banks and your house is being flooded. The ground floor is now under water but you have managed to get onto the roof. You look anxiously around at the water-filled devastation, watching trees, rubbish, even cars, float past. Despair and fear increase. There is no-one to help. But God hears your prayers and sends a rescue helicopter, that quickly lifts you to a place of safety where you can wait for the flood waters to recede.

Imagine the scene. You realise that you are heading for a lost eternity because of your many sins. You are filled with fear and despair. Your situation appears to be hopeless because you realise you can’t save yourself. You cry out to God for help. But God has a plan. He loves you so much that He sends His Son, Jesus, to rescue you. But it’s a costly exercise – to rescue you Jesus has to become a sacrifice for your sins. There is no other way. And through His death on a cross, Jesus takes upon Himself all your sins, leaving you without guilt and shame, in right standing before God and able to say with confidence that your future with God in Heaven is secure. You have found a place of security. Solid ground on which to stand. Paul wrote in his Roman epistle, “When we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners.” (‭‭Romans‬ ‭5:6‬ ‭NLT‬‬)

Three scenarios. Two of physical danger, one of spiritual danger. But all three a potential “pit of despair”. But after rescue what do you feel? Elation? Relief? Most probably an overwhelming feeling of gratitude to God for His rescue. A song you have never sung before comes from deep within you, as you sing grateful praises to God. A song that tells of God’s amazing works. A song that brings others into a trusting relationship with God too.

Far-fetched scenarios that don’t apply in real life today? God may, or may not, rescue us from all occasions of physical danger. It wouldn’t be danger if He always did. But we can have an assurance that God will always rescue a repentant sinner from spending eternity in that place Jesus called hell. How do I know? The Son of God, Jesus, told me. “For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through him.” ‭‭John‬ ‭3:16-17‬ ‭NLT‬‬.

All We Need

Posted on by korgrocker

“How precious is Your unfailing love, O God! All humanity finds shelter in the shadow of Your wings. You feed them from the abundance of Your own house, letting them drink from Your river of delights. For You are the fountain of life, the light by which we see.” Psalms‬ ‭36:7-9‬ ‭NLT‬‬

Psalm 36 is so full of information relevant to life. In these three verses, the Psalmist responds in worship to God by listing His provisions – love, shelter, food and drink, light, and even life itself. The basics of human need. And the removal of any one of these will, at best, stunt, and at worse, destroy, our human life.

In the society in which we live we take so much for granted. This becomes clearer in a time of a national disaster, such as a war, or, more topically, the current pandemic. In times like these people become rather insecure as events outside their, or their country’s, control take hold. And people who don’t know God cast around for answers, for help, not knowing what to do or what the future holds.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus made this statement, “that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” (Matthew 5:45). Jesus was talking about something we call “Common Grace”. God loves all mankind, even those people who are against Him, or who deny that He exists, not just His own people. He provides the good gifts listed in Psalm 36 to everyone regardless of whether or not they know, or even want to know, Him.

But as God’s people we know that all that we need for life comes from our wonderful Heavenly Father. And we must never take Him or His gifts for granted. We have a message of hope that we can share with those around us with thankful hearts. And dispense the “peace of God that passes all understanding” (Philippians 4:7) to a world in crisis.

Righteousness

Posted on by korgrocker

“The eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and His ears are attentive to their cry;
The righteous cry out, and the Lord hears them; He delivers them from all their troubles.
The righteous person may have many troubles, but the Lord delivers him from them all; He protects all his bones, not one of them will be broken.”
Psalms‬ ‭34:15, 17, 19-20‬ ‭NIVUK‬‬

Who or what is a righteous person? Does such a person exist? And why does he or she have troubles? These are questions that aren’t easy to answer, especially in a short blog post. From a Christian perspective, people are made righteous through their faith in Jesus. We believe that Jesus was, and is, the Son of God, both human and divine, and that He came to this earth with one mission – to manifest God’s love for mankind by saving them from the consequences of their repented sins, by His sacrificial death on a Roman cross at a place called Calvary. Jesus took onto Himself our sins and in return gave us His righteousness. The faith that we hold, through a continuing trusting relationship with God, in our righteous state, brings us to a place where we can cry out to God and He will answer us. The verses before us today don’t say that we won’t have troubles. But it does say that God will deliver us from them. Sometimes, this deliverance happens quickly. But at other times it will only come after we die. But the faith and trust that we have in God will sustain us through all our troubles.

In the news this morning is yet another story of a person with Motor Neurone disease who wants to end his life through assisted suicide. A person without hope for the future. A person without a belief in God. A person who thinks that only blackness awaits him after death. But a person who will find that there is a worse place to be than this life here on earth. God has compassion and love for all mankind and it must break His heart to see such a person in such a hopeless state, rejecting the very One who will deliver him from his troubles. As Christians we must pass on God’s love to everyone we meet, not just those in such dire needs, in the hope that they too will embrace our wonderful Saviour and find that His righteousness is available to everyone

God’s Shining Face

Posted on by korgrocker

“Make Your face shine upon Your servant; Save me in Your lovingkindness. Psalms‬ ‭31:16‬ ‭AMP‬‬

God’s shining face. What a lovely picture. A face full of illumination, transparent, translucent and attractive. A face looking at me with love, kindness and grace. A God-face on a faceless God. An expression of a God who cares for me and is interested in everything about me.

God’s shining face. Sadly in our mundane, human-bound world, God’s shining face is eclipsed by the worries and cares of life. But it’s still there, as permanent as the sun by day and the moon by night. Always ready and willing to shine on you, and me. Look carefully into the face of our Creator and see the light of his countenance, shining through. As the old song says:
Turn your eyes upon Jesus,
Look full in His wonderful face.
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim,
In the light of His glory and grace.

God’s shining face. Thank You, God, for shining on me today.

The Land of the Living

Posted on by korgrocker

“Yet I am confident I will see the Lord’s goodness while I am here in the land of the living. Wait patiently for the Lord. Be brave and courageous. Yes, wait patiently for the Lord.” Psalms‬ ‭27:13-14‬ ‭NLT‬‬

In spite of all his trials and attacks from people who were out to get him, David, the psalmist, continued to have confidence in the Lord, his God. You see, he had made the connection between life here on planet earth, and his life secured and assured for him with God Himself. And more, David had confidence in his expectation that the Lord’s goodness would extend from the Heavenly realm into his earthly bubble. All he had to do was wait patiently, something that he apparently needed courage to do.

Once again I am in a place of intersection between the the land of the living and the land of the dead. My aunt, the sole remaining member of my mother’s generation, passed over “the great divide” a few days ago. Her spirit has now taken up residence somewhere else, where her options for eternity are limited. Her spirit is dependent now on the Lord’s mercy and decisions she made “in the land of the living”. Her options for experiencing the “Lord’s goodness” in this life have ceased. She had heard the Gospel many times during her long life, but did she know Jesus?

So what lessons can I learn from these final two verses in Psalm 27? For me, I see the necessity of keeping close to God, being in His presence, making right choices, being confident that He loves me and wants to bless me “with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms” (Ephesians 1:3). My pilgrimage through “the land of the living” involves looking out expectantly for the “Lord’s goodness” to me with patience and courage. Fending off all the enemy’s attacks in the knowledge that I don’t have to listen to his lifeless message from the land of the dead. Father God I am so grateful for Your presence in “the land of the living”, enabling You to be accessible to all.

Sanctuary

Posted on by korgrocker

“I love Your sanctuary, Lord, the place where Your glorious presence dwells.” Psalms‬ ‭26:8‬ ‭NLT‬‬

There’s an old film I saw in my childhood where Quasimodo cried out, “Sanctuary, Sanctuary” in a scene from the film depiction of Victor Hugo’s book. The hunchback was claiming his right to being in a safe place, free from abuse. Or so I remember. A sanctuary is a place or state where we feel secure, and to the Psalmist, David, his sanctuary was the place where God lived. And having been brought up in an era when churches were revered, I still get a sense of peace and tranquility in a church building with stained glass windows and an altar. Perhaps I was brought up to think that God lived there.

But where does God really live? Where is His glorious presence? We are informed in 1 Corinthians 6:19 that our bodies are the temples of the Holy Spirit. So God lives within us. And one of Jesus’ titles was “Immanuel” which means “God with us”. And so it is. Through Jesus, God came to live on this earth, offering us the opportunity to live with Him for ever, in His “sanctuary”, eternal life. And it is in and through Jesus that we will see and experience the “glorious presence” of God. Make sure you don’t miss it, Folks.

Integrity

Posted on by korgrocker

“May integrity and honesty protect me, for I put my hope in You.”
“Declare me innocent, O Lord, for I have acted with integrity; I have trusted in the Lord without wavering.” Psalms‬ ‭25:21, ‭26:1‬ ‭NLT‬‬

Two verses from adjacent Psalms. Both mentioning the word “integrity”. And both in the context of the Psalmist David’s relationship with God. The God we worship is a God of integrity, a God who is totally honest, who never lies, and He put within us the same seed of integrity. This is why if we lie, we immediately have a problem with our conscience, causing feelings of guilt which can lead ultimately to mental health issues if unaddressed. Whether human beings like it or not, within them is God’s DNA. It’s how He created us. And to this problem of a lack of honesty and integrity, the word “sin” has been ascribed. But God, in His mercy, could see the problem of sin and guilt and He sent His Son, Jesus, to be the propitiation for our sins. Through Jesus we have the remedy for sin, and the means to return back to God’s presence, to a place of integrity and honesty. Yes, there may be earthly consequences to our sins, but nevertheless, God will forgive.

It was very important to our Psalmist that God recognised his integrity, because through that he knew that God would protect him. Through that relationship, that closeness to God, he knew that he was in the best place, the place God had designed for him. And so it is with us. By reaching out to God this morning, confessing our sins before Him and allowing Him to forgive us, we too can be in that “sweet spot”, that place of relationship with God.