Finding the Lost

Have you ever lost something really valuable, much needed or expensive to replace?  When you can’t find something and you get that sinking feeling in your stomach and your heart beats into panic mode?  Recently, I lost my car keys and experienced that very real, dreaded feeling. What made it worse is that there was a public holiday the day before, where I hadn’t gone out, so my limited memory gabbled to remember my steps from the last time I had seen them.  I was so sure I had put them in my jacket pocket, but after turning all my jackets upside down, emptying my handbag, shopping bags and checking every drawer, nook or cranny, I was at a complete loss. I even panicked that I might have left them inside the car or the boot, but the spare key convinced me otherwise.  Yes, I had a spare key, but it does not have the remote for the immobiliser which is a much-needed device living in South Africa!

After a whole day of searching frantically and turning up empty handed, I was reminded about a time when my husband had lost his wedding ring a week before our 10^th anniversary.  I had anxiously viewed this is a foreboding sign for our marriage and left no stone unturned in helping him to find it. It wasn’t until someone from Church reminded me that the Holy Spirit can help us find things when we ask Him, that I decided to pray. I believe God prompted me to look in our daughter’s toy box, for this was a place I never would have thought to look.  Lo and behold, it was there!  It must have come off when he was packing away her toys, the neat freak that he is…

So, with this remembered, reliable tool, I turned the situation over to God, asking Him to reveal where my car keys were. Later that afternoon, I had the notion to look in the drawer where we keep our dog’s leash and voila – there it was!!  That rush of relief sweeping through your body is the best feeling in the world! With a grateful heart and heartfelt thanks to God, I now know I will never forget to pray first, the next time I lose something.

Finding the lost made me think also of our mission as Christians in finding those who need God’s salvation.  Imagine if we all searched for people like we do for lost material things, how many souls we would find for Christ?  The truth is that there is a harvest field out there that is ready to be picked, if we will just take the time to go out there and really search to find them. 

Communion and Baptism in the Cross of Easter

God has laid on my heart the symbolism of Communion and Baptism in reference to Easter’s message of Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection, which I wanted to share with you.

We know from scripture that the wine taken at communion symbolises Jesus’s blood, which was shed for us all at the Cross of Calvary.  Wine, in essence, is the blood of many grapes.  The power that unites those grapes was extracted in the wine press of the Cross.

We also know that the bread is a symbol of His flesh, which was broken and beaten, which is why we break the bread. When you think of how bread is made, it is just many grains of flour that are brought together by water.  With us representing the body of Christ, we too are brought together by the waters of baptism, and baked in the fire of the Holy Spirit. 

When we take Communion, we remember what Jesus did for us on the Cross and identify with the pain and suffering He experienced, by taking the bread of life, His body, that saved us from our sin, and drinking the redemption wine, His blood, that was poured out that washed us clean. Therefore, Easter is the perfect time to take Communion, to remember what Jesus did on the Cross. 

Looking back at Jesus’s crucifixion, I often wondered why Jesus refused the first wine but accepted the second. I was interested to learn that the first wine had been mixed with myrrh or gall, a narcotic that is often given to those being crucified to help numb the pain. Yet, Jesus chose to fully experience the pain, as we painfully witnessed through the accuracy in the Passion movie. 

It was only when Jesus said He was thirsty, that He accepted the soured wine or vinegar, which was a common drink in those days to alleviate thirst.  In a way, by quenching His thirst, Jesus was actually prolonging the pain. He drank the wine of His Father’s wrath down to its very last dregs, and He did so for us—that we might enjoy the new wine of His Father’s love, and live redeemed forever in the glorious presence of the one who took no shortcuts in saving us.

After the recent baptism of a dear friend’s daughter, I was reminded of the spiritual significance of this event in that you are exchanging your old worn and weak wineskin for a new stretchable and strong one so that we can fully receive the pouring of the new spiritual wine of Christ. You are laying down the old you and taking on a newness in the spirit. In a sense, what Baptism symbolises is the crucifying of your flesh and the resurrection of the new you, full of the Holy Spirit’s power and effectiveness to keep you walking in that newness, and daily reminding yourself that your flesh and the old you are dead.  Baptism is a declaration to Satan and the world that you are now committed to being all in with Christ.

As I remember back to my own Baptism; I was so excited to be given the opportunity to have it done in the Jordon River. Yet, a few weeks before the departure of our trip to the Holy Land I felt God telling me not to wait and to have it done sooner at the Baptist Church I was attending at the time, which I did. I strongly believe that being Baptised before going, prepared me spiritually for the powerful encounter I had with God, and had I not obeyed Him, I would have had a more glorious setting of a baptism, but without the lasting and powerful effect. 

If you have never been Baptised with the full immersion of water, may I urge you to take this next step of faith in your walk with God? If it was important enough for Jesus to do and because He tells us to, this is an act of obedience where we get to publicly declare the decision made in our hearts to follow Jesus.  From my experience, it is where you receive the victory in truly becoming an overcoming Christian to live with the fullness and the power of the Holy Spirit, and there is no better time to be baptised than at Easter.

Seeking Comfort from God instead of Food

I don’t know about you, but the lockdown during this Corona virus pandemic has thrown many people like myself further into emotional or comfort eating.  I recently looked at why we are not running to God for our comfort and what is making us turn to food instead. Let’s begin by looking at the definition of comfort -

• noun - a state of physical ease and freedom from pain or constraint. 
• verb - the easing or alleviation of a person's feelings of grief or distress; to give solace or to soothe.

The verb comfort comes from the Latin word comfortare, which means to “strengthen greatly.” As a noun, comfort is anything that provides satisfaction or a relaxed and easy feeling.

We escape to food for many reasons, but sometimes it can become our hiding place, where we eat our feelings or emotions that we’d prefer not to deal with, or find hard to express.  Unfortunately, as delicious as some food can be, it can never fully satisfy us or fill that void we are insatiably trying to fill.   

If your diet is full of sugar, carbs, salt or additives, these are addictive, in which case you need to ask yourself if it is time to fast these or do a detox so you can break their stronghold.  Anything you are craving, is for a reason.

God gave us His Holy Spirit, who should be our built-in Comforter, but when we choose to turn to food instead, it blocks out His power and defeats us from gaining victory in this area. 

Some of the things we can try to stop us turning to food is the following:-

1. Ask God for help – not for the willpower to stop but to give you a true hate of this sin of gluttony
2. Fast from thinking about yourself and focus on God and others – doing this will stop our thoughts turning to food
3. Turn to your Holy Spirit and read your Bible, until you feel satisfied and comforted
4. Recognize your triggers and addictions – I need a…
5. Be accountable to one another in your successes and failures.  When you share your triumphs and struggles you will no longer be hiding the problem, and by exposing it, you can find healing.
6. Be mindful when you eat, and savor each bite slowly, focusing and celebrating God as the provider of it.
7. Stop eating on autopilot and start listening to your body when it says it is full 
8. Eat for fuel and nourishment and not for entertainment or pleasure.

Food fixations or desires is a sign that food has become your master and that you are a slave to food.  Yes, even food can become an idol, especially when we are worshiping it instead of God!

When we are going through a tough time, we need to assess our thoughts and problems and name our emotions.  When we speak them out aloud, we will find we won’t be tempted to run to food for comfort.  Instead, eat a ‘daily bread’ verse and ask God to fill you with the kind of comfort that you are needing.

We need to have a good relationship with food and stop obsessing about it. Even healthy eating to the extreme is bad for you. When we seek to find our satisfaction in God and not in food, we will realize that only God can give us the kind of comfort that sustains us and brings us joy.

Food is not our enemy.  It is a good and delicious gift from God, that was designed to be eaten and enjoyed in fellowship with others, to give us the energy and nourishment our bodies need.  It is not God’s design for us to be bingeing on our own, with junk food or snacks that adds no value.

Satan is our enemy who has used food to distort our relationship with God and uses food to hijack our intimacy with our Comforter. The lies that the devil uses are: -

• I need to finish what’s on the plate
• I deserve this if you’ve had a bad day (reward yourself with a treat)
• A little bit more won’t matter
• I’ll do better tomorrow – my diet starts on Monday

A small bite of something delicious can become an act of worship – you don’t need to eat the whole cake or the whole packet of crisps.

We need to start craving God and developing an appetite and a hunger to consume His Word as our Daily Bread.  When we hide God’s Word in our heart, (memorize it) He will use it as a sword of truth when we need it.

Here are some bible verses to help use as weapons when we are fighting this battle: -

Psalms 34:8 – Taste what is good. Change your delight focus from the food to the source of the food. 

Psalm 23:4 – staff & rod comforts us – for protection and rescue 

Isaiah 55:2 – nothing can satisfy us except God 

Isaiah 66:13 – God comfort’s us like a mother 

Psalm 119:50/76 – God’s love and promises comfort us 

Proverbs 13:25 - a righteous man eats until his heart (soul) is content or eats enough to satisfy his appetite.  

Matthew 5:4 – the mourning will be comforted 

1 Corinthians 6:19-20 - your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit - therefore honour God with it 

1 Corinthians 10:13 – you will not be tempted beyond what you can bear. Endure it, until it passes 

1 Corinthians 10:31 - eat or drink for the glory of God 

2 Corinthians 1:3-4 – the purpose of comfort is for it to be a cycle – God comforts and encourages you, so you can comfort and encourage others. (Give a dose of hope) 

2 Thessalonians 2:16-17 – God gives us eternal comfort and good hope through grace, comforts our hearts and establish them in every good work and word.

My prayer is if you too are struggling in this area, that this information will be of benefit to you in helping you to seek and receive your comfort from God, instead of from food.

As I continue daily, to resist the temptation to turn to food and by acknowledging my emotions and what kind of comfort I am needing, I am finding it easier to turn to God instead, and I hope you will too. Each opportunity is a choice we must make to either turn to food for our comfort, or to God, our true and only real source of Comfort.

Feeding our Faith with Prayer

The difference between to pray and a prayer is that pray is a means of addressing God, but prayer is the two-way conversation that we have with Him.  In other words, to pray is a verb, but prayer is a noun, a sacred thing.

As Christians, we are called to pray and there are many reasons to do so, but sadly, we only seem to do it earnestly when in need.  Prayer should be our first response, not our emergency back-up when nothing else seems to work.

We should pray before the event, over the event and through the event, and not just after the event.  Although God knows our needs before we even have to ask them, He desires our interaction of being alone with Him. He wants us to commune with Him, to converse with Him, to vent with Him and to seek His presence earnestly and early.

There is something special and powerful when we make the choice and sacrifice to start our day early, alone and in a quiet place, to get into the presence of God in prayer. There is much rest, replenishment and wisdom to be found in this secret place, which sets up our attitude for the day correctly, to face whatever lays ahead.  

When we study Jesus’s example of prayer, we can clearly see the awesome benefits and miraculous results of time spent with His Father.  Unlike ourselves, it should not be a rushed quick request chat, but a lengthy, sometimes overnight time of seeking and listening.

Our prayers are a time of memorial and for remembrance – to remember the person and His faithfulness and to remind God of His promises towards us. It’s like a court case where we get to go before the Righteous Judge with our advocate Jesus and our counselor the Holy Spirit, and plead our case for His ruling, to make our requests and supplications known.

Many of us when faced with adversary, either isolate or talk to anyone who will listen, when instead our prayer time should be when we turn to God for His advice and opinion on the situation, and then wait to hear it, either for Him to speak to our hearts, or through His Word.  When we spend time in prayer, I like to imagine God lays His hands on us to bless us with the touch of His anointing, for there is nothing more powerful than having felt His touch after spending time in His presence.

When we develop a posture of prayer, either with our hands together, eyes closed, or on our knees or with our hands up in praise, it is like a tap that opens up to pour out the filling of the Holy Spirit into our lives, our minds and our hearts.

When we prayer regularly, constantly, consistently and persistently, it fuels our faith and grows our belief, so that every doubt, worry, fear or temptation is destroyed.  It is the power that gives us our Spiritual strength to face our stormy situations with a nevertheless, overcoming faith.

If you are facing a situation with no answers or a scary future, I challenge you today to get serious about prayer and see how God can transform the situation; if not the problem itself, then definitely ourselves to deal with it.  Our breakthrough will come when we stop asking God to remove the problem and start asking Him to help us to get through it.

Just like our muscles need exercise, and how we say Grace before we eat to bless the food to our bodies, we need to exercise our faith with prayer so that God can bless our day.

In conclusion, I leave you with this simple acrostic for prayer –

P = Praise God for who He is and for His faithfulness
R = Repent of your attitude, sin or lack of faith and unbelief, and ask for His forgiveness
A = Ask God for His help, for answers, for whatever you are needing
Y = Yield and submit to whatever is God’s will for your life and for your situation
E = Empty your mind of all your worries, concerns, doubts or what makes you confused
R = Rest in God’s presence and be replenished and restored

 

 

 

The Anointing Oil of Joy

For as long as I can remember, I have been seeking the meaning behind one of my favourite Bible verses found in Nehemiah 8:10, that says the Joy of the Lord is my strength.  What is the Lord’s joy and how can I make it my strength to help me endure the tough times in life?

I first wrote about my discovery of Joy back in 2017, which you can read here, if you are also on a journey to find more joy in your life.

Recently, during a rough period, I felt God kept bringing me to verses about olive oil, which I discovered is often referred to in the Bible as the oil of gladness, and is used to anoint people with the presence of God’s Spirit, and what we are called to keep our oil full in our lamps to light our way.

Remember the story of Noah when the dove came back to declare dry ground, well I don’t believe it was by accident that it brought back an olive branch. The dove and the olive branch served to tell Noah a time of peace and deliverance had come. When you consider that the word Gethsemane means “olive press”, you realise the significance of what happened there to God's Son, Jesus, the Prince of Peace. 

After reading all the scriptures in various translations through the Biblegateway App of anointing, oil and joy, I began to see that there is a connection between experiencing joy in the anointing presence of God’s Holy Spirit.

Joy is not an emotion, but a place in our spirit that we choose to enter into, and a fruit of His Holy Spirit that is grown in us.

In Hebrews 12:2, we see how joy was something that Jesus set before Him, so that He could endure the agony of the cross. His joy was in the knowing the outcome and the end result of what He was going through, and knowing it was in God’s will.

The secular definition of joy falls short of the original meaning of rejoice, or be glad.

Joy is found in our gladness and gratefulness of our salvation and in the knowing of the deliverance and reward we can look forward to in the outcome of our trials. Joy is in the receiving of God’s promises. Joy is a focus before it will ever become a feeling. Joy is a fruit we grow when we choose to abide in God’s Holy Spirit, and it is our biggest treasure that the devil seeks to steal from us every day. 

To keep hold of our joy, we need to be waking up every morning with the song in our heart, declaring “This is the day, this is the day, we will rejoice and be glad in it…”

To self-study further about joy and how it relates to the anointing olive oil of the Tree of Life, here are some further verses to take a look at, in various translation versions, to help unpack their hidden meanings:

• Ecclesiastes 9:8
• Isaiah 61:3
• Zechariah 4
• Hebrews 1:9
• Psalm 45:7
• 1 Chronicles 16:27
• Acts 10:38
• Acts 13:52
• Matthew 25:23
• John 15:11
• Romans 15:13

Pentecost - Power of God's Presence

Whilst the Jewish people around the world have celebrated the receiving of the gift and commands of the Torah, Christians have celebrated the outpouring of God’s Holy Spirit at the Upper room. Both events were witnessed by believers as a magnificent, powerful and full sensory experience, one that left them with praise of the presence of God. Both of these supernatural events were manifested by fire and God’s dazzling light. See this clip to imagine this Acts 2 miraculous event – https://youtu.be/U241fqTaAz0

Some may argue that the Holy Spirit was already present before the event of Acts 2, and that it was just God calling back His lost sheep to reinstate or renew His covenant that was broken after Sinai, but whatever purpose it was, we cannot deny that it was the birth of the Christian Church, as we know it today. It was from this springboard that believers were empowered to be effective witnesses in declaring and spreading the Gospel message of Christ, with confidence and boldness.

Another parallel event from the Old Testament is found in 2 Chronicles 7:1-3 where the Glory of God’s presence filled the Tabernacle, which was a man-made Temple. In contrast, the Upper room event of Acts 2 is God’s way of telling us that we, the Body of Christ, the Church, is God’s new Temple, His living stones, where His presence can now dwell. He is no longer confined to just a building, but can now live in our hearts.

The Holy Spirit is not some strange or weird entity. It is a person and part of God’s trinity who deserves just as much honor and worship as God and Jesus. It is God’s presence in us that allows us to have a personal relationship with Him and gives us the strength and will to walk daily in His Spirit, instead of by our flesh.

Throughout the Bible, the Holy Spirit is shown as God’s power in action. He is depicted as a dove when Jesus was baptised, which makes sense that a dove is the symbol of peace, because He too is the giver of peace.  He is the destructive breath and the moving wind of God Himself. He was given to believers with the specific purpose for the redemption and salvation of God’s people.

God’s Holy Spirit empowers us to be tools of God in action at specific times, purposes and situations in our lives. It is God’s presence of His Holy Spirit in our lives that empowers us to be effective agents and witnesses of Christ. It is His power that enables us to overcome our addictions, to resist temptations to sin,to forgive the unforgivable and to love the unlovable.

Experiencing God’s presence today is a foretaste of eternity and what we can look forward to when we get to Heaven. I realise that our faith should not be based on emotions but on what we believe, but if you have never fully experienced the joy, comfort and peace of God’s presence of His Spirit, then you are missing out on the abundant life God had in store for you. We cannot expect to live a Kingdom kind of life without the partnership of the Holy Spirit.

I have been blessed with countless, amazing and intimate experiences with God’s Holy Spirit, and urge you to seek Him if you cannot say the same…

Reference: Sermon ‘God is back in His Temple’ by Daniel van Schalkwyk of Shofar Century City (https://youtu.be/cD6V9AaqSng)

Joy!

Every year around Christmas time, God blesses me with a new, special revelation! Last year it was the symbolism of the lights on our Christmas tree. The year before that was how our words and the people in our lives are gifts both to others and to ourselves. Well, this year I was relishing in the word JOY and what it really means, especially over the Christmas season.

My Pastor says that joy is a gift from God that can only truly be experienced when you know Him. Those that don't know God, are only capable of experiencing moments of happiness. 

So I've been reflecting on the difference between happiness and joy. The dictionary regards them the same, but the Bible verses I've read, seem to regard joy as a much deeper, inner kind of happiness, not based on our situation or experience.  Being happy is merely a surface emotion, but feeling joy is like a bubble that fizzes from the inner soul, our heart. 

 

In studying the various facets of joy, I've discovered the words en-JOY, JOY-ous and re-JOY-ce, which now holds a deeper meaning to me.

We can always choose to be happy, but joy is a fruit of the spirit that God blesses us with when we choose to follow Christ. The verse that says 'The Joy of the Lord is my strength', means that God's joy can sustain us during life's occasional bouts of despair and depression.  Our joy also needs to be based on our gift of salvation, for therein lies the very key for its activation in our lives. 

So as I will be seeking joy in my own life this year, I wish you too a joy-filled 2017! May all your memorable happy moments of pure bliss, burn a fire in your heart that warms you from the inside.  And as you experience those moments, be sure to spread your joy to others, like butter on warm toast...