31. Go forth

‘This is the Day’ Meditations No.31: Go forth

Psa 84:7 “They go from strength to strength, till each appears before God in Zion.”

So here we are on the last day of reflecting on this call, “This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.” We’ve seen various aspects of that call, we noted something of the Lord, and we’ve seen ways that our wrong thinking can stop us taking hold of today and letting it be a day of God’s blessing, we’ve seen the Lord and His purposes declared over us, and in the last few studies we’ve seen His call to stand up and be ready for action as He directs us.

Now Psa 84, from which our starter verse comes, is about those on a pilgrimage through the Land on the way to Zion, and as they go, they bring transformation (v.5-7). This is an amazing picture of a destiny or goal that is God’s very presence, but the journey is one of life change and world transformation. What a picture of the Christian life. So, we see ‘today’ as simply another step towards (i) eventually heaven, but also a step that can involve (ii) me being changed and (iii) the world around me being changed. These are three great concepts. May we embrace them and rejoice in them as we take this day.

Now just in case you really didn’t let those things settle in you and change your outlook (because that’s what they should do) let’s just check out the key issues.

First of all, we have a destiny and that, I would suggest, can be seen in two parts. Part 1 is the life yet ahead of us on this earth, and Part 2 is our goal in heaven with God for ever. In my life it is like being on a spiritual-practical climb in life that reminds me of climbing over moors when I was much younger. We scaled a height only to find there was even higher land in front of us to be climbed, and it kept on happening until we reached the final peak. I think that, sadly, this is not a perception that I see in most Christians in the Church today. We’ve settled on a plateau. So perhaps the first thing as we near the end, is to kneel before the Lord and pray, “Lord, I desire to be available to you to enter into whatever you might want to put before me, to scale whatever heights you have for me. Please show me what that is.” Now the second thing I find that stands out in what I wrote earlier is that as we ‘pilgrimage’ (travel through life) Psa 84 reminds me that we are called to bring life transformation as we go. As we take hold of this day, can we then pray, “Lord please use me to bring life to others, please give me wisdom to bring change to this world, please strengthen me in my resolve to be able to overcome the negatives the old life and the enemy would seek to resurrect, and help me walk forth in this day bringing your light in me to the darkness we find around us. Amen? Amen!   

30. Sent, empowered

‘This is the Day’ Meditations No.30: Sent, empowered

Judg 6:14 “The Lord turned to him and said, ‘Go in the strength you have and save Israel out of Midian’s hand. Am I not sending you?’

I believe we are treading on holy ground in the things we are covering in this final block of this series. In the previous two studies we have seen two men being told by God to get onto their feet in order to start a new move forward. For Ezekiel, the command was in order to be able to pay attention to the marching orders God was giving him to take His word to this rebellious people. For Joshua, the command was in order to go and sort out a sin in their midst that had been the cause of their defeat at Ai. Both were calls to take action. Our starter verse, spoken to Gideon, is the same sort of thing, this time with echoes of God’s call to Moses where He had concluded the call with, “So now, go. I am sending you.”  The Lord now says the same thing to Gideon, and of course it finds its echoes today in the Great Commission to us, “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations.” (Mt 28:19)

The truth is that focusing on this being the ‘day of the Lord’ may start passive but soon brings to light a world around us that God wants to act into and, just like with Gideon and Moses, He starts with us, as inadequate as we may feel. The order is (i) realise the Lord’s presence, (ii) receive His power and His directions, and (iii) then go and get the job done! There is a world waiting for His attention. What part will we play in that?

Now I think that last question is an important one to ask, but perhaps not for the reason you think. It is not merely a call to the church generally but notice the word I used – part. In that great chapter on ‘the body’, 1 Cor 12, the apostle Paul, nearing the end of it, after having spoken about all the different parts of a human body, turns us back to the Church and says, “Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.” (v.27) When writing to the Romans he points in the same direction: “We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us,” (Rom 12:6) and I link this to his words to the Ephesians, “we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” (Eph 2:10) God has planned what He wants us as a body to be doing today, as Jesus said, “whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing,” (Jn 14:12) BUT you can only play your part as God equips or gifts you. We are to be sensitive to what He puts on our particular heart and then receive the particular power to do what He has said. God said to Gideon, “Go in the strength you have” which various versions indicate is the strength God has given him. So when God says to you and me, “Go”, it’s a call to action BUT only with the strength, grace, power HE gives.

29. Time for action, not regret

‘This is the Day’ Meditations No.29: Time for action, not regret

Josh 7:10 “The Lord said to Joshua, ‘Stand up! What are you doing down on your face?”

Yesterday we saw Ezekiel being empowered and told to get up in order to receive his marching orders. In his case, his being on the ground was the result of having witnessed that incredible vision seen in chapter 1 of Ezekiel. Stand up is a posture of activity. When we are sitting down it is a position of ease and inactivity. If we are down on the ground, it may be a position of defeat or a position of submission to God. Sometimes it may be a specific action on our part, but sometimes it is simply the result of what has happened to us or what we have seen, as in Ezekiel’s case.

But now we come to a similar sounding situation where Joshua is down on the ground, but he is there for a very different reason. Israel have blown it when seeking to take Ai and have suffered an unexpected defeat. As they are on a divine mission to take the Land, Joshua knows that something has gone drastically wrong. “Then Joshua tore his clothes and fell face down to the ground before the ark of the Lord, remaining there till evening. The elders of Israel did the same, and sprinkled dust on their heads.” (Josh 7:6) This is Joshua in total anguish before the Lord at the ark.

Joshua does a good job of repentance but now God is saying, “Great but put the situation right!” There are always to be three stages of dealing with sin. First – recognise it. Second – repent of it. Third – restore the situation; as far as you are able, put it right. We may deeply regret our failure, but God doesn’t want us to stay there; He wants us to get up and do and put right anything that is wrong.

Ever since the Fall, it’s always been about putting the situation right. If there are things wrong in our lives this is the day to do something about it! Repentance is always the first stop (1 Jn 1:9) but sometimes there are relationships to be restored (Mt 5:23,24), sometimes there is even restitution that needs attending to. Saying sorry to God may not be sufficient, there may be people to be approached, situations to be remedied. As I look back over years of church life, I sense that one of the greatest tragedies that holds the church back today, has been the failure to put right wrong situations, broken relationships and heal divisions. Maybe, and I have observed this in my own life, it is because sometimes it takes years for us to come to a place of security in God’s love that will enable us to face that truth that, yes, I was part of the cause of the upset, the relationship breakdown. Nevertheless, the truth still stands, there is much in the modern church being hindered because of the failure to properly resolve the past.  

28. Time to get under way

‘This is the Day’ Meditations No.28: Time to get under way

Ezek 2:1 “‘Son of man, stand up on your feet and I will speak to you.’”

We focused yesterday on God’s sovereignty and wisdom that means He knows what He wants to do and when to further His plans and purposes in redeeming the world – for that is what this is all about. What is incredible about this plan for redemption is that God looks at fallen mankind but instead of totally writing us off, steps down and calls individuals to be part of it. With Moses, at the burning bush, when He has revealed Himself (Ex 3:6) and explained how He had been watching what had been happening to Israel (v.7), He explained that He had come to deliver Israel out of their slavery (v.8,9) and then – here comes the bombshell – “So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.’” (v.10) Wow! I bet Moses didn’t see that coming, yet the history of Judges we referred to yesterday, shows the picture of God using a man or woman in each case to deliver Israel; this is the pattern – God uses us!!!!

So in our starter verse, Ezekiel had just had a major vision and it had sapped all his strength but now the Lord was addressing him personally. Here it comes, the same thing we’ve just been saying. This is God who wants to bring change to this world but He wants to do it through people.

So He says to Ezekiel after Ezekiel has seen this incredible vision in chapter 1, it’s time to get up for I have things to say to you and I need your full attention – that is what is being implied here. Come on Ezekiel, get up off the ground, we have business to do together, I need to share with you what I want of you, and what is coming. It’s not going to be an easy task for this people of his are rebellious, obstinate and stubborn (Ezek 2:3,4) but God is giving him both His power (v.2) and His word to convey (v.9,10).

We may have even mind-blowing spiritual experiences but at the end of it, what was or is God saying through it or in it?  We take for granted the fact that God is a communicator but that is at the heart of relationship and if ‘today’ is to have meaning in respect of our relationship with God, it has got to include communication which, from our end, means listening AND hearing. Although we may be hesitant with talk about being sent, we need to remember three things: first, God sends us at the right time, when the ground has been prepared; second, He will communicate clearly His intentions and what He is sending us to do; third, He will impart His power and His authority (Mt 10:1, Lk 10:19) to equip and enable us. Perhaps we should add, fourth, He will come with us (Ex 3:12, Heb 13:5). Are we open – today – to hear His call, hear His instructions, with hearts open wide and abandoned, as one modern song says?

27. Whose Plans?

‘This is the Day’ Meditations No.27: Whose Plans?

Isa 46:10“My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please.”

So in this final phase we have turned away from considering how we can fail to take the day, to see how we can go about taking it in our awareness of the Lord and of His directing us. We started this phase yesterday by considering that in order to take this day, our starting place has to be to wait on the Lord and realise both His presence and His greatness in the way He will be working in the world around us, even though we may not perceive it. Now we extend that.

A part of our waiting on God as we ‘take the day of the Lord’ is to recognise and bow before His sovereignty – and wonder. Wonder? Yes, that even though He could have made us robots that had to obey His will, part of making us human beings was to give us free will. So thank and praise Him this day that He IS Lord but He has given you lordship over your life, to take it and use it for self or submit it to Him for His blessing, in order for Him to being about greater things in and through you than you have known before. That is the potential of ‘today’.

Look again now at our starter verse: “My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please.”  It is a declaration of the sovereign Lord, the God who can do what He wishes – and that includes standing still and doing nothing as He waits. In the book of Revelation, as Jesus opens the seventh seal on the scroll he has been given (5:5, 8:1) we are told, “there was silence in heaven for about half an hour.”  It is as if nothing happens, heaven is waiting, heaven is absorbing the awfulness of what is taking place.

In the book of Judges we are shown again and again, when Israel turn away from God, years pass while God doesn’t act but just waits until Israel come to their senses, cry out and repent. It was then that He acts by the power of His Spirit to raise up another deliverer. The Lord waited and waited and waited until His people changed their hearts, and sometimes He does that with us. Consider that truth that we often express as “we are works in progress” and by that we mean we are not yet perfect this side of heaven. Thus, while the process of change in us continues throughout our life, the Lord waits again and again until He can speak or act into our lives that have been ploughed by events and the passing of time so that our hearts have been opened to receive Him. This does not detract in any way from His sovereignty, it just reveals His grace as He is very gentle with us, for His purposes will stand, they do remain unchanged and, with His wisdom that is unlimited, He knows exactly when to speak, when to act, to further those purposes which include not only the whole world, but us as individuals as well. Start the day with this ‘big-picture’ revelation and worship. 

26. A Crucial Starting Point

‘This is the Day’ Meditations No.26: A crucial starting point

Psa 46:10 “Be still, and know that I am God.”

So we’re going to turn away from considering the ways we can fail to take this day, ways that are all about our attitudes or wrong ways of perceiving God, the world around us, or ourselves, ways that simply disarm us and weaken us and cause us to be less than the Lord wants for us. Now we’re going to focus on recognizing the positive aspects of this call to realise that this is the day that the Lord has made so we can rejoice and be glad in it.” In the remaining studies of this month, we’re going to take positive steps to entering into ‘this day’ in a way that will bring life transformation to us and just maybe the world around us, so here we go.

Activity will appear along the way shortly, but before we get there we have to check our priorities as a believer. Many years ago, and I have shared it elsewhere in another series, the Lord gave me a strong word of commissioning but said within it, that instead of immediately chasing off the moment I received a word from Him, I was to abide very close to Him and pause and consider and digest His words before I even ventured to act. There was a lot more but that conveyed the heart of a call to ‘be still and know that He was God’. If I am honest it has been a lifetime struggle because when you hear a word directly from the Lord it is most exciting and you want to respond to it immediately, but in turning away to perform it, it can be just that, ‘turning away’ from the Lord and turning to our human resources and my failures in life have been when I have done just that, and it’s a painful business!

So, a simple starting place for ‘taking this day’ is first of all to recognise and acknowledge the presence of the Lord with us. Whatever preparatory works we do in adjusting our thinking and outlook etc., this is by far the most important – to KNOW Him, and to KNOW He is with us, here, now, this moment, as Lord, to be worshipped. It sounds simple but my lifetime conclusion is that, in the face of that predisposition that still lurks there in the background to be self-centred and godless, it is in reality incredibly difficult to achieve and maintain. Whatever we have on our mind that the day holds, bring it to Him, submit the day to Him, acknowledge that He is Lord and will be there in the midst of all you do this day – even though it is quite likely you may not be aware of Him much of the time – He IS there and He IS working. We will fall short in all of this, sometimes misunderstanding, sometimes not sensing His presence and sometime, like Peter, wanting to go off fishing when He doesn’t turn up, but the good news is that the Lord is teaching us and changing us and that means we keep on coming back to it and trying (with His grace hopefully) to get it right.  

25. Needed Change (3)

‘This is the Day’ Meditations No.25: Needed Change (3)

Acts 22:3 “I was just as zealous for God as any of you are today.”

There are along the way of life, and especially the Christian life, a number of paradoxes to be faced. Now if you’re not sure about that, a paradox is defined as “a seemingly absurd or self-contradictory statement or proposition that when investigated or explained may prove to be well founded or true.”  A classic of Jesus’ teaching was, “Whoever has will be given more; whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them.’” (Mk 4:25) or the general principle, “Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.” (Mt 10:39) or “whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant,” (Mt 20:26)

Now I raise this subject because we have been considering various ways that we can get it wrong in our thinking and sometimes it is simply because we cannot understand the spiritual reality of the new life we have now encountered, courtesy of God’s love! We’ve seen James and John getting it wrong, even though they might have had good intentions and then we saw Peter getting it wrong, again even though I am sure he had good intentions. We see ‘good intentions’ in the Nativity story when Joseph desires to be righteous and so determines to quietly ‘divorce’ or separate from his ‘fiancé’ and it takes a dream from heaven to get him in line with the plan of God. Which brings us on to our third example of someone who couldn’t handle the apparent contradiction or confusion over the will of God – Saul, or Paul as he became.

Our starter verse shows us Paul reflecting back on what he had been like but goes on to testify that Jesus had met him and changed him. His zeal had been misplaced. He thought he was doing the will of God in persecuting the Christians and had failed to realise what God was doing NOW.

We can appear highly zealous, workers for God, seriously spiritual, BUT unless we are running with the revealed will of God for TODAY we are in danger of missing out on ‘today’. Billy Graham used to talk about an American Football player he watched one day, getting the ball and running all out the length of the field for a touchdown – except in the excitement of the moment, he was running in the wrong direction! Totally zealous but going in the wrong direction! This calls us to be still and to listen for God’s directions for today lest we too find ourselves running in the wrong direction. I suspect that many of us never think down this path and we just take every day as it comes with little thought, just seeking to be ‘good Christians’ but the truth is that Saul (Paul) thought he was all out for God but hadn’t caught up with what God was doing. 

24. Needed Change (2)

‘This is the Day’ Meditations No.24: Needed Change (2)

Jn 13:8 “‘No,’ said Peter, ‘you shall never wash my feet.’”

So, if you missed yesterday’s study, pop back there to see the recap we provided to see that now we are looking at three New Testament examples of those whose thinking was not in line with Jesus’ thinking and outlook. We started with James and John and are now going on to consider Peter.

Dear old Peter should bring great comfort to all of us who recognise how we blunder around the place with misunderstanding and ignorance, full of good intentions but still missing the point so often and getting it wrong. We’ve been considering how God is in the business of changing us for the better, but in the process, He wants our cooperation and willingness to acknowledge our need of Him (Jn 15:5b) working in us to straighten us out. We are to aim for perfection (Mt 5:48) but in terms of practical daily lives we won’t get it this side of heaven – EXCEPT when we take the leading of His Spirit. He doesn’t think less of you when you acknowledge your failure or need; in fact, He loves you more!
Let’s try and be very honest about this. This matter of missing the point and needing to come in line with Jesus’ thinking is a major (if not THE most important) part of the Christian life.

Why? Well when we turned to Christ, we turned our back on our old way of life and our old way of thinking (that that apostle John summarizes as being led by physical desires, covetousness, needy-greed, and pride, as the ‘world’ operates – 1 Jn 2:16) and found ourselves entering a completely new way of living, the way of Christ that is God orientated, others directed and a transforming of self to take on board all of the characteristics of Christ (2 Cor 3:18).It was like changing worlds, changing cultures and as such we realized (perhaps slowly) that we had much to learn.

But it’s now only a question of changing our ethical, moral, and behavioral thinking, there’s much more to it. The truth is that part of that learning, and realization was that being a Christian means interacting with an invisible God and an invisible world. This means that we have to learn a new way of communicating that is invisible and not discernible to the ordinary ear. It is not hearing audible sounds. We may take these things for granted but they can be very real stumbling blocks for the new believer. Learning to sense the presence of God and ‘hear’ the voice requires patience and perseverance. But it’s Jesus’ values that Peter is wrestling with here. Back in Study 12 we saw Peter struggling with Jesus impending death, but today’s verse reminds us that actually their whole walk of following Jesus was FULL of opportunities to have their minds retuned to God’s ways. And us!

23. Needed Change (1)

‘This is the Day’ Meditations No.23: Needed Change (1)

Lk 9:54 “When the disciples James and John saw this, they asked, ‘Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them?”

We need a recap to maintain perspective. So far:

1-6 Considering Psa 118:24 – This is the day of the Lord

7-9 God’s purpose, presence & intent

10-16 Six ways of getting it wrong

17-20 Thinking about ‘if God be for us’

21-22 A quick aside – who we are

23-25 The possibility of missing the point – 3 NT examples

We’re going to look at these three examples because although we earlier looked at six ways of getting it wrong, if we are really to catch the heart of this month’s series, we must take in this reality; it’s so easy to potter on day by day with a wrong outlook or wrong understanding and when we do that we create the likelihood of missing the possibility of ‘today’.

So God is working TODAY to bring change, we’ve seen. What sort of change? Well we’re going to start these three examples with that of James and John who saw something that they felt conflicted with God’s will and so wanted to use God’s power to deal with it. Unfortunately they misunderstood both His will and how He uses His power.

Thus part of the change God will want to bring in us today is to get us to rest in His will even when we don’t understand it, and if we think things need changing, He wants us to learn TODAY to consult Him about it and seek His wisdom (Jas 1:5) and be at peace until He shows us what part He wants us to play in it. Now there are two issues we need to consider along the way here.

The first issue is that thing we’ve referred to previously, that salvation and the new birth started at our conversion but continues God’s work that will go on in us for the rest of the days we have on this planet. Thus we will never be completed works until we get to heaven, i.e. we are works in progress, Now the corollary of this is that we will, unfortunately, ALWAYS be slightly missing the point until we get to heaven, but that is not to stop us seeking to correct those things the Holy Spirit bring to our attention.

The second issue to consider is to recognize there is a balance, or a tension if you like, between striving to achieve the purposes of God as revealed, and being at rest in them. The best we can seek to do is a) be aware of them and, b) be sensitive to the prompting and leading of the Spirit.   If like James and John we find those rejecting our Master, let’s simply refer them to him and seek his wisdom and grace to know how to respond to them. Amen? Amen! Today!

22. Utterly Different

‘This is the Day’ Meditations No.22: Utterly Different

Eph 2:1-5 “As for you, you were…But …God…made us…” 

Yesterday we observed Paul’s teaching about each of us being a new creation. The person who has never had a conversion experience, never been ‘born again’ (Jn 3) can never fully grasp what all this is about, for they are quite likely identifying themselves as ‘a Christian’ either because they have come from a Christian family, or because they go to church or they consider themselves a ‘good’ person. For them, the life-transforming experience that Jesus called being ‘born again’ is diluted into simply a way of thinking, and not having a power transformation. Now I think I’m having to say this because I am aware that in so many of these studies I have been taking about how the way we view ourselves – which is vitally important in order to ‘take the day’ – but I have been assuming that each reader is able to consider this language of perceiving who they are, in the light of having had that life-changing experience I have twice just referred to as being ‘born again’.

Perhaps I am remiss in not having brought this before, and so our verses referred to in the ‘starter verse’ are one of the sharpest or most clear set of verses describing the ‘before’ and ‘after’ of our salvation. I have merely abstracted a few words from that paragraph (that you should read if you are not familiar with it) in order to emphasize the point that difference between the before and after ‘me’ is because “God made us” these utterly new people.

So Paul pointed out to the Ephesian Christians that, although they had once been in a bad place before God, when they turned to Christ, God made them something completely different. As he said at the end of the paragraph ending in verse 10, “we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus.” And that doesn’t mean we just think differently, it means we are different – forgiven, cleansed, adopted, empowered – utterly different from what we were before.

So as you take hold of ‘this day’ rejoice that you are different from the unsaved, unbelieving world, that you are a child of God, a work in progress. This day is different, this day is ‘the day of the Lord’ because He is here among us continuing His creative work of changing us for the better. I don’t think I emphasized enough yesterday, the fact that the ‘new creation’ started at our conversion but carries on throughout our lives, we are works in progress and that work will continue on until we join God in heaven. Open your heart (and your prayers) to Him and yet again give Him permission to keep working in and through you. Yes THIS is a day when God desires to continue His activity in His world – AND in us. If you have never surrendered to Him before, it’s not too late.