You Reign - Mercy Me

"You Reign"

Even before there was a drop in the ocean even before there was a star in the sky even before
the world was put in motion You were on Your throne You were on Your throne.

[chorus]
You reign glory in the highest You reign let creation testify by Your name every knee will bow
and every tongue proclaim that Jesus reigns.

Even before Your hand made the heavens even before the breath of all mankind even before we
had to be forgiven You were on Your throne You were on Your throne. [back to chorus]

Yesterday, today and forever Your are God who was, and is and is to come. [back to chorus]

Love and service.

1 Corinthians 13

The Greatest Gift

¹ Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. ² And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. ³ And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.
⁴ Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; ⁵does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; ⁶ does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; ⁷ bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
⁸ Love never fails. But whether there are prophecies, they will fail; whether there are tongues, they will cease; whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away. ⁹ For we know in part and we prophesy in part. ¹⁰ But when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part will be done away.
¹¹ When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. ¹² For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.
¹³ And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

I have recently been going through with my church a gifting course. God gives us various different gifts to be used in the church and I was interested to know what mine are. This week really struck home with me when we talked about 1 corinthians 13. Its such a famous set of verses and is heard at a lot of weddings but I never really realised what it was saying. It's actually so simple that i do not believe that i have missed it in all the times I have read this before. Paul is talking here in previous chapters about spiritual gifts and the unity of the church. Then he goes on to talk about the greatest gift.

It never really struck me before how much importance God places in love being the central point of us using our gifts. In fact if love is not present then what we are doing is worthless. look at verses 1-3 below

¹ Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. ² And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. ³ And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.

It profits me nothing in verse 3 and that is despite having gifts that many in the church would consider to be the good one's. Let us be honest with each other that when we look at the gifts we put them in an order that there are some that are better than others. Speaking in tongues, prophesies, preaching and teaching are some of what we would call the top gifts. They are the big ones that we believe will make us look good in front of our fellow believers and lets face it who does not like the respect and praise they would bring. But without love they profit us nothing. Further than that who is it we are wanting to impress. When we serve are we trying to impress the crowd? Not only should we be exercising our gifts in love but we should only care about what God thinks of us.

Quote of the day. War with sin.

"When you make peace with God you make war with sin.

The evidence of being justified is that you make war on sin. When you become a Christian you don’t become perfect, when you become a Christian it doesn’t mean you win every battle in the war, but if there is no war . . . your not saved. If you are totally at peace with sin, at home with sin, relaxing in the arms of the pleasures of sin and there’s no war in your soul against it, there’s no reason you should think your saved."

John Piper.

I'm forgiven because You were forsaken

I’m forgiven because You were forsaken
I’m accepted, You were condemned
I’m alive and well, Your Spirit lives within me
Because You died and rose again

I’m forgiven because You were forsaken
I’m accepted, You were condemned
I’m alive and well, Your Spirit lives within me
Because You died and rose again

Amazing love, how can it be
That You, my King, should die for me?
Amazing love, I know it’s true
It’s my joy to honor You
In all I do, I honor You

I’m forgiven because You were forsaken
I’m accepted, You were condemned
I’m alive and well, Your Spirit lives within me
Because You died and rose again

Amazing love, how can it be
That You, my King, should die for me?
Amazing love, I know it’s true
It’s my joy to honor You
In all I do, I honor You
In all I do, I honor You

You are my King
You are my King
Jesus, You are my King
You are my King

Amazing love, how can it be
That You, my King, should die for me?
Amazing love, I know it’s true
It’s my joy to honor You

Amazing love, how can it be
That You, my King, should die for me?
Amazing love, I know it’s true
It’s my joy to honor You
In all I do, to honor You

In all I do, to honor You,
In all I do, Let me honor You.

QUOTE OF THE DAY.

"You have been told that God is a loving, gracious, merciful, kind, compassionate, wonderful, and good sky fairy who runs a day care in the sky and has a bucket of suckers for everyone because we’re all good people. That is a lie… God looks down and says ‘I hate you, you are my enemy, and I will crush you,’ and we say that is deserved, right and just, and then God says ‘Because of Jesus I will love you and forgive you.’ This is a miracle.”

Attributed to Mark Driscoll.

You know its really easy to believe in a God of Love who is merciful and good and kind. All of those things are true enough. But the main thing we need to know is that God has something that he just cannot do. God cannot tolerate sin. That's right God cannot and will not tolerate our sin and let us be quite honest here we are sinners who fall massively short of God's standards. The truth is we all, when judged by God (and we all will be) we will all fall massively short. The judgment that will be passed is death. There is nothing we ourselves can do about it. But this is what is amazing. God does something about it and the cost is immense. He sends his one and only son to die in our place.

The upshot of this is that Jesus gets my mess and disgrace and I get his righteousness, he gets my sin and shame and I stand before the father who can now look on me and have relationship with me because I am now without sin. Why oh why Lord do you care and love ME so much, that truly is amazing.

Psalm 1. A bit of Hellfire and Brimstone preaching.

The Way of the Righteous and the Wicked

Psalm 1

1 Blessed is the man
who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,
nor stands in the way of sinners,
nor sits in the seat of scoffers;
2 but his delight is in the law of the Lord,
and on his law he meditates day and night.

3 He is like a tree
planted by streams of water
that yields its fruit in its season,
and its leaf does not wither.
In all that he does, he prospers.
4 The wicked are not so,
but are like chaff that the wind drives away.

5 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,
nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous;
6 for the Lord knows the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked will perish.

I don’t know if you do this but I often look at the world round me and despair. I despair at the attitude the world seems to have to life. We have a bunch of people who claim God does not exist. They claim that we are stupid to believe in God and mock us openly. Religion is the enemy as far as they are concerned and they laugh at the very idea of God. Then we have people that we know who believe they are Christian because their parents are. Or because they live in a Christian country. Worse we have Christians who breeze through life with the idea of God as a heavenly insurance policy not something we have to bother with day to day but as long as it is there to save us at the end of the day.

We seem to have developed this idea that God lets our bad behaviour away with a nod and a wink. We seem to have an idea because we have read the stories in the Bible that judgement is instantaneous that if God has not struck us down then we have not done anything wrong and God is happy with our behaviour. The Bible is clear that this is not so. Psalm 1 is one place where we find the truth is anything but what we think. There are two categories here the righteous and the wicked. That how God will categorise us when we are judged. “Judgement!” You say “we did not know about judgement” well verse five mentions judgement. Let’s look at the two categories.

The Righteous

2 but his delight is in the law of the Lord,
and on his law he meditates day and night.

The righteous man here is not just waiting around for the end of time like he has become a Christian and that’s it, just wait till i die and then off to heaven because i have nothing to do ,it is all about Jesus. Do we delight in the Bible and finding out more about God? What are we doing to make our relationship with God grow? The righteous man is working hard to become closer to God he has not stopped. He is not just waiting for death to take him. But far from being a job to do he delights in reading Gods law he meditates on it daily. Are we coasting along just waiting for the day or are desperate to learn more about God? Do we live in his word and delight in getting to know him? Please let me be clear on what i am saying. Yes salvation is a FREE GIFT of God bought at the price of Jesus dying for our sins but let us also be clear that is not the end otherwise we may as well die now and go to be with God. We should want to get to know God more and be reading his word and meditating daily on it. This is not to get salvation, that is a free gift, but we should be sufficiently grateful for our salvation that surely we should want to find out more about our saviour.

The wicked by contrast.

4 The wicked are not so,
but are like chaff that the wind drives away.

5 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,
nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous;

Verse 5 is truly terrifying think about what it means to not stand in the judgement. Let’s make it really simple. The righteous because of Christ and the relationship we have with him will have Heaven and an eternity with God The wicked will be guilty. They have no saviour and though we think that God has let us pass by with a nod and a wink the truth we will find out is that that is not so. A guilty verdict means Hell and an eternity without God. It is incredibly important for us to work out which camp we are currently in. If you are in the wicked group then know that the road you are taking leads to death.

A Persistent Widow.

I think the reason I started to blog is just to have a good rant about stuff and put down my thoughts on just general life. Now sense has returned to the country I can stop ranting about stuff and actually do something important like actually reading my bible and working out God's plan for me. So I am going to post my thoughts on some of the things I have been reading recently.

Luke 18:1-8 (English Standard Version)

Luke 18

The Parable of the Persistent Widow

¹And he told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart.²He said, "In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor respected man. ³And there was a widow in that city who kept coming to him and saying, 'Give me justice against my adversary.' ⁴For a while he refused, but afterward he said to himself, 'Though I neither fear God nor respect man, ⁵yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will give her justice, so that she will not beat me down by her continual coming.'" ⁶And the Lord said, "Hear what the unrighteous judge says. ⁷And will not God give justice to his elect, who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long over them? ⁸I tell you, he will give justice to them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?"

There are three characters in the story to look at.

First of all the widow. Here is a woman with no influence, no power the lowest of the low. In Jesus time the lowest in society was the widow. Today it would probably be immigrants, single mothers etc. She has no influence on the judge at all. She cannot help him politically or bribe the judge she does the only thing she can do.

Second the Judge.

"In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor respected man. Verse 2.

You will not get justice from this man just because your cause is just. By not fearing God i think we can take it he has no respect for the law. So why does he give her justice (does he even care that it is justice)^?

'Though I neither fear God nor respect man, ⁵yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will give her justice, so that she will not beat me down by her continual coming” verses 4-5

She keeps bothering him for justice. Because she keeps on complaining over and over again he eventually gets sick of her so gives her the justice she seeks not out of good motives but because he wants her to stop bugging him.

Thirdly to confirm is that God is not like the unjust judge.

How often do we pray for things in passing a quick mention and nothing more?

⁷And will not God give justice to his elect, who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long over them? ⁸I tell you, he will give justice to them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?"

Why is it that God does not just answer straight away? V8 is the clue.

It is not that God does not, cannot or will not answer. It’s for us so we have faith.

Verse 1 prefaces the whole thing really

¹And he told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart.

Keep on praying. Keep on asking and asking on your knees for the things you believe in

It’s not about what you want but if it is just and right and Godly then continues to pray and petition the Lord for it.

This challenges me that I definitely do not pray enough. I offer the occasional prayer and just leave it at that. I should be praying more often than I do and keep being persistent in prayer.

Politicians make me so CROSS!!!!! ( But lets face it I really am no better.)

Have been watching the television for most of the day and getting more and more depressed with the whole thing to be honest. Here we are in some of the most frightening economic times I and many have ever known. You would think that this would be the one time when all of our politicians would be able to put aside there craven party political nonsense and actually act as they put it "in the national interest". Instead it all seems to be about who can have the power. It does not seem to matter to anyone what happened in the election last week, as long as we can make the mathematics go the way we need to then we can gain power for ourselves.

I will lay it on the line and tell you where I am coming from when I write . I would probably identify myself as more conservative than anything else although I can see the falsehood in all parties point of view. I do genuinely not like the Labour party who I blame for the current economics we face. I have heard the argument many times about it being a Global crisis but I do not buy it for a second. I know it can be argued that it all started elsewhere but it does not change how our finances looked before it started. I do not understand how you can have more money coming into the treasury than has ever come in and yet still be borrowing billions.

Now after an election where nobody has won we now have undignified horse trading as parties jockey for position. The liberal Democrats are making demands all over the place despite finishing third. The Conservatives are bending over backwards and giving too much just so they can be in power. Labour are still trying to be involved with Gordon Brown resigning( well kind of) and trying to make the mathematics work. The problem with this idea is the concessions to the Welsh and the Scottish will probably mean that England will have to suffer most of the cuts which you cannot imagine going down very well south of the border. The best bit for me in these frightening and terrifying economic times is that the major issue in all talks apparently is reform of the electoral system. That's right not the economy or education or anything the country actually cares about but lets try and put together a system that actually favours my party. Just a quick thought for all of you who want proportional representation , what you are saying is that you want this squalid deal making every 4-5 years. No party will poll 50% so therefore coalition is the only way to get enough votes so again the minority party wins power because the big party needs propping up.

But getting away from the party political point scoring is that nobody in this sorry mess is actually looking out for anything but their own shallow self interest. We all voted for people who care only about getting power and not about us at all. The economy can collapse as long as i get my way and my interest satisfied..

I have often thought that i would love to write a novel. The one idea I had for a book was to write one called The Honest Politician. It was going to be about the one politician that was honest and was a shining beacon amongst the rest, that his integrity was known to all and he had respect form all sides of the house, with no political scandal in his past. He could be relied on to answer honestly to every question and responded with dignity and honour in any and every situation. I know what you are thinking. That's more science fiction than Avatar.

I just wish we could trust our elected representatives to actually be looking out for our best interests and not their own.

But the problem is that I am absolutely no better than anyone else. I was asked the question not so long ago what is the most unselfish thing you do? The truth is the question bothered me a lot because i realise that not much that i do is actually unselfish. Lets face it we all have an angle that we are working. We want people to like us, to do us favours, to think well of us. I could only think that the most unselfish I am is with my kids. Especially when they are only weeks old. Lets face it they cannot do anything for me. But I love them and look after them and I don't need anything in return from them for my endeavors. I have no right to look at others and attack them for being selfish because I am selfish. I cannot attack others for being self serving because I am too.

As much as I get cross with others for lies and self interest I see in my own life the sins that I commit and to be honest I am a sinner who deserves nothing from God.

Oh yes did I forget to mention that I am a christian? Well yes I am I believe that God so loved the world that he sent Jesus to die for us so that we would not die because of our sins but have an eternal life. That Jesus death took me from being a sinner and put me right before God. My sin was washed away and now i can stand before God clean , my sin forgiven.

But I am also aware that despite being forgiven I still act selfishly and put my own interests first and I am so grateful that I worship a God who continually forgives me. The great thing is as well is that I can pray to God to help everyone from Gordon Brown to Nick Clegg to my next door neighbour, my mother and father who still don't believe. I believe I should stop sniping about the situation and instead pray. So here goes :

Dear Heavenly Father

Your name is holy and I thank you that you sent your son that he would die for us,

Lord we pray at this time for our Government and for the negotiations that are taking place,

give everyone clear mind's and show them the best way forward. Help them to put the country first Lord

we pray. Lord I also pray that you would help me to put you first, my wife second, my children third friends forth and myself last. Help me to each day become more like Jesus and each day to be less selfish and more giving.

In Jesus name

Amen

ps I know this was a bit of a rant it started angry and then as it went on it became a burden to me to pray. Its only a short prayer but one I hope and pray God will answer.