His Kingdom and Your Desires

Hunger after His Kingdom (2)

Christianity has nothing to say to the person who is completely happy with the way things are.

-          John Eldredge, The Journey of Desire

If you open up a red letter Bible (those with Christ’s words printed in red) to the New Testament, you will soon come to the first large chunk of text in red: Matthew chapter 5 to chapter 7. You won’t miss it. This is a record of Jesus’ sermon which is known as the Sermon on the Mount. Straightaway you are given a good idea as to who Jesus has always wanted to speak to and what He has got to say. There is no ambiguity here.

Blessed are the poor… those who mourn…the meek…those who hunger and thirst for righteousness … and the list goes on (Mat 5:3-10). These were the kind of people Jesus was addressing then and the kind of people that even today He wants to speak to. One condition stands out among these people: all of them hunger and thirst for something and all of them want their needs met and their desires fulfilled.  They have Jesus’ primary attention, as you can see how He started His sermon focusing on them. In fact, before we come to Matthew chapter 5, we read in Matthew 4 that right at the start of His ministry Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all kinds of sickness and all kinds of disease among the people (Mat 4:23).  And right after the Sermon, we find in chapter 8 Jesus again healed all who were sick who came to Him (Mat 8:16). What was Jesus doing? He was fulfilling the needs and desires of everyone He met. What He preached correlates to what He did. From the passage leading up to the Sermon and from the passage after the Sermon we can establish the context of the Sermon, and like I say there can be no ambiguity who Jesus wanted to speak to. He always gives His attention to those who hunger and thirst.

So how can we qualify to have God’s attention? Simply come before Him with our needs and desires. In fact God can smell them miles away and He will come running towards us.

The next question is what He will say to those who hunger and thirst. Did Jesus tell these people to be content with their lot? Did He accuse them to be too desirous to be good? Some would have us believe that Jesus would talk like that; the problem is that we can’t see this in the Bible. For each and every need and desire that He identified in His audience, Jesus promised a solution and a breakthrough: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven…they shall be comforted…they shall inherit the earth…they shall be filled…and so on. Jesus wants our desires fulfilled. 

Now we come to the most exciting part. Jesus said our desires shall be fulfilled, but did He tell us how they would come to us? Yes, you bet He did! It is by way of His Kingdom. Read Mat 5:3-10 carefully. You will notice that the specific solution stated for the first and last problem is the kingdom of heaven. It is like it envelops all the rest in between. This is the manner of preaching Jesus’ audience was used to. What Jesus means is this: all the solutions for the individual need raised are included in His Kingdom.  Once we have the Kingdom, we have the solutions, we have all we desire – they are all found in there. That’s why Jesus went about preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom, and He commanded His disciples to go preach the Gospel of the Kingdom, and commissioned us to preach the Gospel of the Kingdom.

It is simple and beautiful. If you are not convinced, you need look no further than this verse:

But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. (Mat 6:33, NKJV)

Scripture Link: BibleGateway.com

God Wants Your Needs Met, Your Desires Fulfilled

Hunger after His Kingdom (1)

Everyone has dreams and desires; this is perfectly normal. After all, you are alive! Only dead people have no desires. Look at the vast number of books out there purporting to teach us how to achieve our dreams and fulfill our desires – the “How to…” books coming under the category of “Self-Improvement” or ‘Self-Help” - and you will agree that I am just stating a fact. They sell well because people want to have a crack at fulfilling their dreams. Don’t be deceived, the goal is never just to improve. Ultimately it is to have what we want, what we desire and what we need.

These self-help books could be useful; I have read my share of Dale Carnegie and Anthony Robbins. But they are what they are: SELF-help. You need to rely on your own strength and you need to slog it out.  What if I tell you there is a better say?

“Are you saying that we don’t have to work hard for what we want?” You may ask.

Hold on, I am not proposing some get-rich-quick scheme to you. When I say there’s a better way, I mean you don’t have to do it all on your own. You have God with you, and He wants your needs met and your desires fulfilled. “This is indeed good news,” some will say. More than that, when you know that the almighty God is on your side, you know that you are sure to succeed. You cannot fail, because God cannot fail.

A long time ago a man named Jabez found himself in a very unfavorable condition. His mother even gave him a name which literally means “he will cause pain”. You can read all about him in 1 Chron 4:9-10. In his desperation he cried out to God, telling Him his desires. He had no qualm in asking what he wanted from God, holding nothing back. One by one, his desire was that God bless him, enlarge his territory, put His hand on him, keep evil away and let there be no pain. What was the result? The Bible put it very simply: God granted him what he requested. If God did it for Jabez, surely he will do the same for you.

There is one thing that I need to point out: we shouldn’t make too much a distinction between needs and desires. I don’t think there is a clear-cut line. To Jabez, which one was his need and which one his desire? Some people put it this way: God will give you all that you need, but He is not bound to give you all that you desire. At first look, it seems reasonable. But actually this kind of thinking belies a view of God that is far from the truth. To one who thinks like that, God is either not too generous or else His resources are limited. But we know that neither is true from the witness of the Bible. Jabez is a good example of God’s generosity and willingness to bless. Jesus also told us that if our earthly father knows how to give us good things, so much more our Father God. It is hard to imagine our Father God withholding any good thing from us.  Also, the apostle Paul said that whatever we can think of asking God, He is able to do far more. There is no limit to God’s resources.  

Believe that God wants your needs met and your desires fulfilled, and you are positioning yourself to be greatly blessed.

Scripture Link: BibleGateway.com

God Restores Our Loss

Have you ever experienced God’s supernatural power in restoring loss? I bet you have. But if you have not, know this: God is in the business of restoration. It matters not whether it’s your money, business, relationship, marriage, health or any other things.

Jesus said, "The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly." (John 10:10, NKJV)

The “thief” in this verse refers to the devil. His job description is to steal, and to kill and to destroy. If there is a devil loose out there you can expect to suffer some loss some time, especially if you have never taken God to be your refuge. Well, it’s not always the devil’s fault; I think about 99% of the time only. Somewhere else in the Bible we are told that the job description of Jesus is to destroy the works of the devil (1 John 3:8). So to put things in perspective, to have life … to have it more abundantly would have to include restoration of all things lost.

A few days ago I got to listen to Bill Johnson’s sermon that he delivered on Easter (Apr 24, 2011). I tell you, it was a sumptuous treat to the spirit. He gave many true-life testimonies as is his habit when preaching, but this time the testimonies on restoration are simply mind-boggling! I don’t know what word to use to describe them, let me relate just two of them to you as accurately as I can.

Bobby Conner, a fellow minister close to Bill’s ministry, once lost a pocket knife given to him by another fellow minister. The knife carried a lot of sentimental value to Bobby because it’s given to him by a good friend. One day some time after the loss, he suddenly thought about it and he didn’t know why but just blurted out, “Hey, I want my knife back!”  Instantly something fell out of the air above his bed and dropped on the bed in the centre of the room – it was his very knife! This incident happened a few years back and Bill had also shared it amongst many other testimonies about supernatural restoration by God in his famous 2008 Easter sermon.

A few weeks ago one of their students (Bill’s Bethel Church) lost his lap-top. It was stolen. The computer was of course valuable, but what he felt most frustrating was that the file of his college dissertation was stored in its hard drive. He didn’t get back his computer so he bought a new one. He had heard Bill share about the “I want my knife back” testimony. As he opened up the new computer, he said, “I want my dissertation back.” Guess what? He found his old file in the new computer! This is an astounding miracle! How would this be possible except it be God’s doing?

Take heart my friend, especially if you have lost something precious. This is my favorite verse regarding restoration:

And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten, the cankerworm, and the caterpiller, and the palmerworm, my great army which I sent among you.

And ye shall eat in plenty, and be satisfied, and praise the name of the LORD your God, that hath dealt wondrously with you: and my people shall never be ashamed. (Joel 2 :25-26, KJV)

(To view part of Bill Johnson’s Easter 2008 sermon, Click Here)

(To listen to Bill Johnson’s Easter 2011 sermon, Click Here or Click Here)

God's Hand in the Wind - Gladys' Testimony

Gladys and the intruder

(Gladys' testimony - a 7-minute audio clip. Click Play to listen)

You could hardly find anyone as excitable as Gladys, but almost always on a positive note - happy and joyful.  All the more so when she’s telling you what the Lord has done for her. It is as if her petite frame could not contain all the joy and excitement, so she must let it out. I don’t know why she always has good testimonies to tell, almost make me jealous! And this is a very good one.

We rarely have strong wind in this part of the country (Ipoh, Malaysia), but it was an exception on April 20, 2011. A colleague of mine told me that while he was driving through the heavy rain suddenly a tree branch, broken and carried by the powerful wind, hit his windscreen and most shocked the life out of him. He couldn’t see far enough to drive safely so he parked his car at the side of the road until the visibility in the rain was good enough to continue. The next day I personally counted some ten spots around town where either a tree or a road sign or a billboard was broken or collapsed, and this only on the routes that I took. 

Well, back to Gladys. She reached home at about 3pm after ministering to a friend for about four hours telling her about divine healing. Happy and convinced that she had been used by the Lord to broker His Kingdom into the circumstances of a sister; she went up to her room, opened a song book and began to worship in songs. The wind was howling outside but she couldn’t care less. She felt so much in another world basking in the presence of the Lord that the present reality around her didn’t seem so real. Then, a thud, “like the sound of a pencil snapped” according to her words, slightly jolted her. It came from outside the house, so she went to the window to have a look. From her position she could see one large stretch of a tree trunk lying on the road at the side of her house. So it was not a pencil that snapped, but a tree! To be exact, a fifty-feet tall casuarina tree.

When she came to the scene, any illusion was instantly dispelled and she was given a good dose of the reality. It was more than one broken stretch of tree trunk lying on the road, as she initially made out from the limited view upstairs. One large piece some eight feet long fell into her garden after hitting the side fencing wall (Gladys’ house is a corner lot at the end of a block of linked-houses), overlying and damaging her bunga kantan plant and with its tip dipping inside the apron drain. It missed her brand new car parked under the porch by less than three feet! And most fortunately it just missed the side-terrace roof, the eave of which lies in a vertical line above the apron drain. This was all Gladys saw by the time she checked-in to the scene. If she had not fully woke up to reality by then she had the help of astonished and terrified neigbours joining her for investigation. A handful of them rushed to the scene after hearing a big bang thinking something real bad had happened. To them it certainly didn’t sound like “a pencil snapped”! They were thinking there must have been considerable damage done to the house given the impact evidenced by the big bang, but seeing relatively minor damage they sought an account from the house owner. All they could get out of Gladys was “Halleluiah! My God is so good! My Jesus is so good!”

Tree trunk overlying bunga kantan plant with its tip inside the drain

You could see the tree concerned in the photo below. It stood across the road from Gladys’ house. Its top portion was snapped off by the mighty gusts of wind and the stretch must have broken on landing. Altogether three lengths of trunk were found, two lying on the road and one in Gladys’ house, making up some twenty feet in total length. That means the tree must have been some fifty feet tall originally, given the substantial length left standing. Given the height from which it fell, coupled with increased velocity due to the strong wind, the trunk could have seriously damaged the roof if it hit it. I said “fortunately” it didn’t, but actually I believe it couldn’t because the Lord’s hand was on Gladys and her property. She wasted no time praising and boasting about God’s protection and His power in front of her neighbours who were non-believers. It was a wonderful testimony.    

Gladys told me afterwards that to her the amazing thing is that throughout the incident she was not alarmed at all. It was as if she was in another world where there is no storm, only Shalom peace. I think it’s like this:  through worship she had pulled the reality of the Kingdom of God into the physical world around her. It was awesome! 

When she related the incident to me on the phone, I immediately thought of a favorite verse:

     

You, O Lord, are my refuge!

You have made the Most High your home.

No harm will come to you.

No sickness will come near your house. (Ps 91: 9-10, GWD)

Outrageous, huh? Believe it and you will have it.

Free to Live

 Easter Sunrise Service (6)

My wife loves the series of movies “Aliens”. Although I don’t particularly like them, because of my wife I have seen each one on DVD a number of times. There was one particular scene that was really unforgettable. It was at the end of the movie (I can’t remember which episode) and the heroine Lieutenant Ripley threw herself from a high point into a lake of fire, carrying with her a young Alien about to be “born" breaking out of her body. Her body had somehow become a host that the Aliens deposited and breed their seeds and at this juncture an infant Alien was about to come out of her. She plunged into the golden sea facing up with her hands clutching the head of the ugly creature, preventing it from breaking out of her body. She died, and the Alien died with her and in her. It was a captivating scene.

When Jesus died, we (our old man) died with Him and in Him. Most believers are familiar with the fact that when Jesus died, He bore all our sins. What they are seldom made aware of is the fact that He was bearing us too, our old man, when He died. Much like the infant Alien in Lieutenant Ripley, we were in Jesus when He died. Scriptures are very clear about this point:

… knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin …(Rom 6:6, NKJV)

Think of it this way: when Adam sinned, we sinned because we were in him; so when Jesus died we died because we were in Him! Don’t let time and space put a limitation on our understanding and, most importantly, our believing. I know it’s not easy to imagine or understand this, but it’s vital that we grasp this truth in the spirit because the implication is far-reaching: we are no more slaves of sin!

Our old man was a pitiful creature, a slave of sin. Sin was his master, so he had to live and work for sin; there’s no way out. He was joined to sin and acts and lives sin’s nature. To sin was natural to him. The results of sin – all forms of darkness and death – were also evident on him. Now, imagine that this old man is dead, can he continue to be a slave of sin? Of course not, a dead man cannot serve anybody! To sin is no more our nature.

But that’s not all. Jesus not only died, on the third day He arose from the dead. If we died with Him, we also rose up with Him (Rom 6:4-5)! When Jesus was raised up, He left behind all the sins and the horde of darkness as a result of sin: the curses, oppression, fear, strife, poverty, sickness and all things that kept man in bondage. They were put on Him just as sin was put on Him, but now they couldn’t touch Him. If Jesus is free from them then we too are free from them. From this point on we could leave behind all the baggage of the old man that has bogged us down and truly live. No wonder Paul says that we are a new creation (2 Cor 5:17).

In this sense, Easter is not only a day to commemorate the resurrection of Jesus Christ, but also a day to remember we receive new life, and we can live in the power of His resurrection. It’s truly a time to rejoice.

Happy Easter!

Photo Credit: renjith krishnan on FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Eat My Flesh and Drink My Blood

Easter Sunrise Service (5)

It’s Good Friday.  So how and why did Jesus die?

No one could have laid hand on Jesus if He wanted to avoid it. Satan, the rightful Prince of the World, couldn’t do anything when he met Jesus in the wilderness. His townsfolk at Nazareth tried to push Him over the cliff but He escaped unharmed. When sought by those who came to arrest Him in Gethsemane, He simply said “I am” in surrendering Himself and all those men drew back and fell to the ground. He really could have avoided arrest if He wanted to. But He marched on to the cross.

Jesus was very popular with the common people, although much hated by the religious leaders because He never let up on their hypocrisy. The Jews wanted somebody to deliver them from the oppression of foreign power and they thought they have found their man in Jesus, the miracle worker. They sought to make Him a king of this world. However, Jesus repeatedly rejected their quest and insisted on going His own way. Many fell away.

Then Jesus said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. (John 6:53-54, NKJV)

The above was likely to be the last straw. They must have thought that this Jesus has lost it altogether: what was He talking about eating His flesh and drinking His blood? He didn’t want to be a king, but He wanted to give them His flesh to eat and blood to drink? At the Last Supper, knowing He would soon be arrested, He raised the issue again:

... “Take, eat; this is My body which is broken for you; do this in remembrance of Me.”...“This cup is the new covenant in My blood. This do, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.” (1 Cor 11:24-25, NKJV)

Notice that there were always two elements: His body and His blood. The blood is for the forgiveness of our sins (Matt 26:28); the body was for the healing of our bodies (1 Peter 2:24). It’s that simple. The magnitude of Jesus’ work on the cross is so great no words can fully describe and explain, but the tangible benefits to us are found in the simplicity of the Last Supper. It basically has all our needs covered.  This is what He died to give us.

Good Friday is not a time to try to feel how Jesus felt in His suffering. It is a time to cash in on what He has paid for us. That is the best way to honour Him, don’t let His sacrifice be in vain.

So today eat His flesh and drink His blood.

Scripture link: BibleGateway.com