WHAT DID YOU DO??!! (Princess Atta quote - "A Bugs Life")

Ever seen the movie "A Bugs Life" ?  - I love it; great story; seen it heaps of times - and well with five Grandblessings that would have to be inevitable.  It  would have to be No 1 on their hit parade.

Good story; great punchline; good vs. evil sort of thing and the underdog comes out on top WHOA!!

Princess Atta made those memorable lines "What did you do??" when Flick accidentally destroyed the offering stone filled with goodies that the poor old ants had worked so hard to fill for the marauding grasshoppers.

AND... having the five Grandblessings the question "What did you do?" as you can guess comes up pretty frequently at our house.

Well the question I would ask of you today isn't "What did you do?"  but rather "What WOULD you do?"

Think seriously now  - What would you do for say $5 million Dollars?

Before you answer that question can I refer you to an article by one of my fellow contributors to http://inspirationalchristiansfortoday.com/ and read what Neil Anderson wrote entitled "The Process of Forgiveness" on 29th October 2013.

Now... what would you do for $5M.? - maybe spend a year in solitary confinement, amputate an arm or a leg, circumnavigate Australia barefoot or even lower yourself into a pit on venomous snakes??

How would you decide whether something was worth $5M or not?

Pretty hairy question eh?

Thing is "What is the most extraordinary thing you would do to obey God?"

Would you set aside blocks of your time out of your busy week to help someone? Would you risk your reputation at work by talking openly about Jesus and His amazing extraordinary saving grace?

Would you admit and seek help for an addiction or secret obsession whatever that addiction/obsession is?

Wonder how far any of us are REALLY willing to go?

Now that sort of brings me back to my colleague Neil Anderson and his article "The process of forgiveness"

His article hit home to me especially when he spelled out so plainly how to forgive someone who has hurt you in the past.

Neil finishes his article like this:-

"When appropriate, accept your part of the blame for the offences you suffered. 

Confess your failure to God and to others (1 John1:9) and realise that if someone 

has something against you, you must go to that person (Matthew 5:23-26)"

Well... there it was - my life in black and white before me - laid out so plainly. A family member who had been so offended in me that he hadn't spoken to me in over 13 years. All over a perceived offence committed by me to him.

Over the years I have tried to apologise, accepted that maybe I WAS to blame after all even if I couldn't really work out what the actual problem was! Apologies not accepted.

The time had come for one last try on my part. So armed with my Matthew 5 verse and a BIG prayer to my Father God,  I phoned. You guessed it!! - No joy only a lot of poison and HUGE pent-up feelings of hurt and anger.

I was bewildered at first; God plainly had spoken to me to do this Hadn't He?

Thinking about it after the event I realised that Forgiveness is not the same as TRUST.

Forgiveness means to set aside your own confusion, bewilderment and any signs of vengeance, but it does not necessarily mean to give the other person the freedom to keep on repeatedly hurting you.

As a Christian we need to show God's love to others. We are called to forgive, but not to be foolish.

To allow someone to repeatedly do the same wrong over and over and over again is foolish. If they are never willing to forgive you, then I'm afraid there is not much we can do after we have exhausted all lines of communication.

We just really have to hand it over to God - Continually and earnestly pray for that person, asking God to fill us with His love and ensure that our motives are pure and honourable.

May I end this article with another quote from Neil Anderson:-

"It's okay to forgive anther's past sins and, at the same time, take a stand against future sins. Forgiving is not a co-dependent activity."

Father, Precious Lord, I pray that you will forgive my sins and where I have hurt please forgive. Help any for us who are struggling with being forgiven or forgiving others to be strong in you. Strengthen our resolve to try our best to 'put it right' as commanded by you in Matthew 5. Amen.

Wolves in the dark

Ever thought about wolves??

Ravenous, mean, cunning, cagey, crafty and insidious just about sums 'em up. They are all about one thing and one thing only to destroy, kill and eat.

But the wolf that comes in the darkness as the sun is going down is the worst! After a day of infuriating hunger, it is more fiercer and ravenous than in the morning. The wolf is ready to pounce and kill.

It can creep up slowly and alone, stalking, stealthily catching the scent of the innocent and unwary or it can come in packs, howling hideously, striking the foe with a force unparallelled, surrounding and tearing the victim/s with a torturous ferocity.

When I was thinking about wolves especially wolves in the dark and their cunning, my mind wandered to how like the wolf is our doubts and fears.

After a big day at work, or minding kids, or worries about finances, or concerns for ill family members etc, after our minds have been bombarded and distracted with all sorts of 'things' along comes our wolves with their fangs ready to attack.

Maybe our wolves in the dark come calling after a huge loss in our business dealings or crashing superannuation or maybe even sarcasm and derision about our faith.

"Where is your God now'? Our thoughts and minds tell us - 'Why wasn't He there when I needed Him"?

How ravenous and voracious are our dark wolves - filling our minds and hearts with apprehension, confusion and dilemmas.

How greedy are these dark shapes all around us when we let them in? they gobble up any suggestion of well-being and rest. They can completely annihilate our confidence; smash reliance on our Lord and utterly destroy any thread of our resoluteness to our God.

Wolves love to gash and mutilate the unwary sheep supposedly safe and warm in the fold. They love to attack at night when the sheep are sleepy and non-watchful.

We are so much like those sheep - so vulnerable to attacks by the wolves in the dark. When we are distracted and have taken our eyes off the Shepherd. when we have wandered away from Jesus and away from the main flock.

Our doubts and unbelief can overwhelm us if we listen to the lies of Satan - the fangs of the wolves are so ready to tear us down if we don't stay as close to God as we can.

The dark wolves of doubt and fear won't come anywhere near us during the 'faith-filled' days when we have our hearts and minds centred on our Captain.

It is only in the dark days when we are weakened by circumstances that the wolves of doubt and despair come rushing to wipe us out, encircling us with uncertainty, rejection and indecision.

Doubt and despair can paralyse and debilitate even the strongest of Christians. Pressures come at us constantly; sometimes it feels like we have been hit by a Mac Truck; they bowl us down with relentless regularity.

It is in these very same times we MUST turn to our God; the God who wants so badly to have a REAL relationship with us; to love us; to comfort us and to help us to regain our focus on Him.

Amazingly as it sounds God sees us a "treasure" and if He sees us that way then that is precisely what we are - let God's truth help us to re-focus on the treasure that is within us and not look at the dark wolves of despair and doubt circling around us with drooling fangs.

When we take our minds off Him and start to concentrate on our frail little lives then despair and desperation will be the natural result.

But when we see ourselves as God's "Treasure" we can be reborn and revived in Him. Not only that but our "treasure" can 'slop' out all around us for others to see.

What an amazing transformation we would see; and it would certainly exterminate any wandering dark wolves that may come a-calling one dark night.

Cosmic Killjoy??

God has taken lots of bad raps throughout history. He has been labelled and ridiculed as being unfair, bizarre, foolish, preposterous and ludicrous.

He has been assumed to be conceited, egotistical, imperious, lofty and even narcissistic.

Yet, I reckon one the most unfair assumptions of our Almighty Father is that He is some sort of "comic killjoy' sitting up on his towering throne high above the heavens - throwing lightening bolts at us when we dare step out of line!

Daring us to make mistakes, laugh or even giggle. Just waiting for us to make a snicker and then pouncing on us with condemnation and damnation.

Heaps of people think that God is anti-fun and they think the Bible is just one big rule book - where we have to be super religious, pious ecclesiastical and sanctimonious. That is just so far from the truth.

God is far removed from what we may envision as the grimacing judge of the universe banging His holy gavel, pointing out our faults and stifling any sense of joy in our lives. So sad and so unbiblical.

On the contrary God is far from a cold, disagreeable grouch, instead He is the very one who restores us to Himself and gives us pure joy - a joy unknown to most of us.

Jesus came and people flocked to see Him - children came to Him voluntarily - That alone tells us what sort of man He was - If He was a grouch would children come to Him - hardly!

John 10:10 tells us that Jesus said that He came to give us life and life to the fullest - not a life of drudgery, rule keeping and religiosity.

Of course it certainly doesn't mean that we will have a life free from trials, strife and struggles, BUT what it does mean that deep down we have a sense of peace and yes! even joy knowing that He is with us - every inch of the way - guiding us as we follow Him.

We sometimes get the idea that being 'joyful' in a Christian sense only relates to meditating, serving in church and reading the Bible, which does and can of course give us joy, but joy is not exclusively found in these and these alone for us.

God created us us to experience recreation. He delights in us experiencing fellowship with others, using our gifts He gave us to enjoy sports and creativity etc.

Our main aim here on earth is to glorify God but also to enjoy and appreciate His marvelous creation.

On saying that, we must take great care not to make an idol of pleasure. We can so easily fall for the trap of making idols of all sorts of things in our lives and certain pleasures can become addictive.

The very sad truth is that we live in a world where pleasure itself has become a god to worship it has become perverted and so what God intended us to enjoy has become our master.

There are many 'pleasures' that the world deems as 'legal' and yet God sees them is sin. Drunkenness, adultery, pornography in fact anything that takes us away from Him and onto our 'idol', whatever that may be, God will not condone nor tolerate.

These 'pleasures' are wrong and will certainly not produce long-term joy. They are seasonal and will not bring lasting happiness or joy.

So rather than killing fun or becoming the 'fun Police', God is actually protecting us by giving us boundaries much the same way as we give our own children boundaries that will ultimately only benefit them.

Our lives in Christ have such a deep deep meaning. Jesus paid such a HUGE price for our salvation that we must be careful to give Him utmost respect and reverence. We were created to delight in God and to enjoy His creation BUT we must not consider life to be joyride either.

We can have fun, joy and happiness; appreciating all the great and good things he has given us to enjoy, BUT our focus has to remain on Him the Creator of the gift not just the gift itself.

So, is God a killjoy? Short answer - NO! He is the creator of joy; The Holy Spirit that He gives us at salvation produces joy in our lives and contentment in our souls whatever we are going through at the time.

Psalm 16:11 says "You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore."

The world promises a temporary joy at best and often with long-term consequences; God on the other hand offers full time and long-lasting joy no matter what life dishes out to us.

Enjoy His marvelous creation. Maybe we can call or get together with a friend who is going through a rough time and encourage them to find joy in Christ - a long-lasting and fulfilling real joy.

The Evil Twin

Just read a book by Daniel A Brown entitled "Embracing Grace" - if you can get hold of it I thoroughly recommend it.

He deals a lot about on-going guilt in our lives. Even though we may know we are forgiven and have been washed clean by the blood of Christ; we sometimes still carry around with us this foreboding horror and spectre of past sins hanging over our heads like an axe ready to fall.

He walks us through why and how the past is forgiven and forgotten and how it is actually a sin to keep beating ourselves up about sins that are gone forever.

He strongly believes that God is a God who desperately wants to have a relationship with us and it's not His desire to punish us, now or ever.

The Pharisees and Sadducees in Jesus' time were all about condemnation, judgement, guilt and blurting out religious wrongdoings. Jesus on the other hand teaches about the great and loving grace of God.

In the ending of the book is a chapter Brown calls "The Evil Twin" and it really struck a chord with me  especially when he says and I quote "I feel like I have an evil twin inside of me - one that looks like me but is actually another me inside of me"

He grabbed my attention straight away because that is exactly how I feel heaps of time and it's obviously how the Apostle Paul felt when he said in Romans 7: 19-25 "I don't do the good things I want to do. I keep on doing the evil things I don't want to do"

So where do we go from here and what do we do with verses like 1 John 3:9 "Those who are born again because of what God has done will not keep on sinning. God's very nature remains in them. They can't go on sinning. They have been born again because of what God has done."

Reading those verses and others like them only go on telling us that we are GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY!!! because we go on sinning deliberately or unintentionally.

So, that is the very reason why I along with Daniel A Brown, the Apostle Paul and I dare say millions of other Christians feel like they are co-joined with an evil twin; a split personality; a look-alike, sound-alike person who does these amazingly horrible and devastating things and gives us the "I can never be saved" attitude.

As earnest believers aren't we ashamed of our weakness to resist temptations? Ashamed of those times when anger, jealousy, pride and lust  barge seemingly uninvited into our lives and tend to take over!!

We feel like (or at least I do) Spiritual imposters, thinking and doing what we know is wrong. How can we be such hypocrites??

Daniel A Brown points out that the reason why we feel we have such an evil twin is because biblically speaking, we do. How else could we account for doing the very things we don't wish to do?

When we are born again - we become a New Creature in Christ - 2 Corinthians 5:17
"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come; the old has gone, the new is here!"

The "born-again you" cannot sin - THAT is the incredible; life-changing promise that hit me like a mac truck. THAT PART OF ME CANNOT SIN! WHOA!!!

As a believer in Christ, a new-me was born.  That day when I gave my all to Jesus, I was re-created in righteousness, holiness and truth.

The old me, which unfortunately I will have to cart around with me until Jesus takes me home, is dead and cannot affect my eternity with God.

Old me which the Bible refers to as 'Flesh - me" still raises it's head and tries to control me but to no real advantage.

Old "flesh-me" remains full of unrighteousness and death and will always be a sinner.

1 John 2 tells us that if we do sin and we will!! we have an Advocate. WOW!! that is just so important it makes me tremble.
"My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. BUT if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father; Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only ours but also for the sins of the whole world."

The Holy Spirit of God sent to us when we accept Jesus as Lord will certainly remind and convict us of sin in our lives - we need to come immediately to Christ to ask and receive forgiveness.

When I accepted Christ as my Saviour I became a new creation; a new being in Christ and my new being cannot sin because it is "No longer I who lives BUT Christ who lives in me" Galatians 2:19-21.

The life I live now in the flesh or in my humanity, I live by faith in Jesus who gave His life for me.

The old has gone; the new has come!! WHOA!!!