Tag Archives: Love

January 24, 2021 · 6:28 pm

OFFENCE – THE MOSES WAY

48 That same day the Lord said to Moses,49 “Go to Moab, to the mountains east of the river, and climb Mount Nebo, which is across from Jericho. Look out across the land of Canaan, the land I am giving to the people of Israel as their own special possession.50 Then you will die there on the mountain. You will join your ancestors, just as Aaron, your brother, died on Mount Hor and joined his ancestors. 51 For both of you betrayed me with the Israelites at the waters of Meribah at Kadesh in the wilderness of Zin. You failed to demonstrate my holiness to the people of Israel there. 52 So you will see the land from a distance, but you may not enter the land I am giving to the people of Israel.” Deuteronomy 32: 48-52

This was the moment that Moses got his death sentence. I can only imagine the emotions that flooded his mind when the message sank in. After everything he had done, he was not going to step into Canaan. This was the land he longed for, worked for and looked forward to. 

The reason was simple! The people of Israel drove him to act in a way that displeased God. Up to this point, he had led them selflessly, interceded for them when God got angry with them and wanted to wipe out all of them. He had gone from an Egyptian royalty to a Midian exile because of them and this was what he got in return.

The people he did everything for cost him one thing he really looked forward to, but he never held it against them as we can see from the spectacular opening of Deuteronomy 33.

This is the blessing that Moses, the man of God, gave to the people of Israel before his death:

He did not just stop at not holding it against them, he went further to actually bless them before he died. This is definitely counterculture, this is not likely to be our first reaction but Moses was not alone in this. Stephen did something similar when he was being stoned to death.

As they stoned him, Stephen prayed, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.”  He fell to his knees, shouting, “Lord, don’t charge them with this sin!” And with that, he died. Acts 7: 59 – 60.

Now, it’s our turn and we are on the stage, acting life’s drama. Offence and hurt will come and people will make us feel like giving it back to them. People will get under our skin and hurt us where it hurts most. People will lie against us, manipulate and slander us. Sometimes, they will cause irreparable damage to our reputation and self esteem. The classes of offence that will come our way are limitless. These great men that have gone before us have given us a difficult template to follow but Jesus’s death and resurrection have made following the template easier. No matter the degree of offence, the counsel remains the same.

Don’t let evil conquer you but conquer evil by doing good. Romans 12:21

The words of Romans 12: 14 – 21 are indeed very instructive on this subject. Please take some time to read them. God’s grace is sufficient for us.

8 Comments

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , , , ,

January 5, 2014 · 12:07 pm

FEAR FACTOR

I hated reading books when I was much younger, especially when it was a fictional novel. My dad on his own part did what every good father would do: encourage my siblings and I to read as much as possible. I had no way of stopping the constant flow of books streaming down from my dad to us, but I had to develop a coping mechanism. I would just flip through most of the pages, pausing occasionally to read a few lines. Luckily, he never asked us to summarize the stories. I could not afford to pay the price of not ‘reading’ those books, so I just had to do something. Deep beneath whatever I did was the fear of my dad.

That hatred has progressively dissipated and I’ve been changed. I was reading a book recently: Prayers of a God Chaser by Tommy Tenney. I saw a paragraph that I could relate the above story to.

“It seems to me that most, if not all of the great sacrifices and ‘surrenders of the soul’ in history were founded upon and motivated by love rather than fear. Is there any doubt that Jesus’ surrender of His will in the garden was birthed in His love for the father and for us?”

                                                                        Image

Beyond my childhood escapades that were motivated by fear, the excerpt above describes the exact opposite of what is mostly obtainable in our time. Fear of the cankerworm drives us to tithe and give. Fear of the ‘diseases of the Egyptians’ makes us get involved in serving in the household of God. Out of fear, we sacrifice our time and resources in doing ‘things’, hoping that one day; it will be enough to swing the hand of God in our favour. Fear even colours our prayers – sometimes we fear the enemies more that we fear and believe God. Fear just makes us forget who we are in God as well as the promises we have in God.

At the very root of this fear-driven motivation is the absence of personal Bible study. If I can get myself to study, I will really understand that: “… God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them” and that “ No one’s ever seen or heard anything like this, Never so much as imagined anything quite like it—
What God has arranged for those who love him.” Moreover, I will constantly have it at the back of my mind that God is not moved by the things I do, because He looks beyond the actions to the motives behind those actions. If it were not so, Jesus would not have told the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican. The Pharisee was a perfect ‘doer’, yet the Publican received justification at the place of prayer.

It is all about LOVE and it’s simply that simple. I guess this is a good time to do that self-check to determine what our motives are for all the things that we seem to be doing for God. It’s possible that the miracle workers that Jesus spoke about in Matt 7:22 – 23 did not do this check at the right time. Result is not a proof of God’s presence. Love and the fruits of love…

“Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ 23 Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’” Matt 7:22-23 (NIV)

2 Comments

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , , , , , , ,

June 23, 2013 · 5:15 pm

One Thing Remains!

One of the funny experiences I will never forget is praying for a power generator that belonged to our school fellowship. The generator just had a way of failing at the wrong time. We spent a fortune trying to put it in a good shape and it always passed the test run. However, whenever it was hooked up to the public address system; it would always grind to a halt. The generator could be described as a metaphor for disappointment. It wasn’t the generator’s fault though, I guess we were kind of expecting too much from a spent force.

You may be able to relate this to that ‘old faithful’ family car that spent half of its last days at the mechanic workshop. The car served your family so well and so long that it could almost be described as a family member. However, in its last days it became erratic and unpredictable and also became famous, for giving up on the way home.

This is one major difference between our Almighty Father and mere mortals. He is the same yesterday and He will remain the same till the end of time. He does not get weary with time and He never gets to that point where He just can’t take it anymore. His efficiency does not reduce with age. I heard a song by Jesus Culture recently and the chorus just reinforced this knowledge of God.  The title of the song is One Thing Remains and the chorus is:

Your love never fails
It never gives up
It never runs out on me

Obviously, it refers to the qualities of the kind of love our father has towards us. There is nothing we can do to make God give up on us and we can never overdraw our love and mercy account with Him. His love is endless and endures forever. His mercies are new every morning. His love knows no bounds. Can you really fathom that? Wow!

Image

Sometimes we get tricked to believe that we have amassed so much wrong that God cannot forgive us. When that thought comes to rest on your mind, remember the father of the ‘prodigal son’. God is always waiting for you to come home. It is not in Him to forget His own. Remember his promise in Isaiah 49: 15 – 16

“Can a woman forget her nursing child and have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, but I will not forget you.  “Behold, I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands; Your walls are continually before Me. (NASB)

This is however not a licence to just take a trip to the other side. It is an open door for us to draw close to our Almighty, ever-loving Father and just grow in his presence. Beholding His glory and becoming more and more like Him. Oh how I love Jesus…

Leave a comment

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , , ,

February 17, 2013 · 1:24 pm

The Art of Forgiveness

Fresh from multiple splashes of unprecedented miracles, they had seen the side of God that no one else ever saw. They had experienced the mighty acts of God and they even saw a glimpse of the glory of God. There was nothing that they needed that God had not brought their way as they journeyed from Egypt to the Promised Land. You naturally expect them to be grateful to this great God. What did God get in return? COMPLAINTS!

Image

Ah! If I were God…In fact, thank God that I’m not God. I may have become so angry with the people and then with a wave of hand destroy them, sparing only people like Moses and his assistants. Not even Aaron would have survived my wrath as I would have remembered when he made a golden calf for the people. However, God in His unfailing love always forgave them and kept on working with them. The amazing thing is that most times, God forgave them because of the intercession of Moses and not even because of their repentance. How merciful and loving our God is.

As long as we are still on this side of eternity, offence will always come in different forms and from different people, including people that you have shown love to. It will also come from people that you have made sacrifices for. The natural thing to do is to hold it against them, but we have the grace to live like Christ did. He forgave the very people that crucified Him. As His disciples, He expects us to walk in His footsteps. In that way, we will also be forgiven when we err, as we often do.

Image

Stephen also demonstrated this great spirit of forgiveness, when he prayed for the people that were stoning him, asking God not to hold them responsible for his death. Paul, the great apostle was in that company that stoned him to death. Who knows what would have happened to the souls that got saved through Paul’s ministry, if Stephen called down the judgement of God on that day.

Image

As we continue in our Christian walk, becoming more and more like Christ, we can seek the help of the Holy Spirit in this area. Forgiveness can become natural to us. It may take some time, but if we continue working at it and engaging the help of the Holy Spirit, we’ll surely get there in Jesus’ name.

1 Comment

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , ,

December 9, 2012 · 6:27 pm

Unconditional Love

I was at a wedding ceremony recently, with a lot of excellently dressed people in attendance. The groom was known for excellence in most of the things that he did. This obviously had a great impact in the calibre of guests at the ceremony; flamboyance was not in short supply. Most of the people looked as if they just walked out of fashion magazines.

Image

Out of the blues, came this little girl that could have passed for a street beggar because of the way she was dressed in the midst of the surrounding flamboyance. She had a tattered handkerchief on her head to serve as a scarf. She saw someone she recognised and had to wade through the crowd to greet him. One of the women in the crowd literarily shoved her away, preventing her from passing in front of her, apparently because she was not ‘clean enough’. In contrast, when she eventually got to the person she wanted to greet through another route, she received a warm hug for her troubles.

It’s so easy to judge the woman and say how terrible her act was, but would you really have reacted differently if you were in her shoes? That brings me to the subject of unconditional love. That is love that does not require you to meet any conditions before receiving it; Love that does not depend on how good someone looks or how good a person is dressed; Love that is NEVER biased. That’s the kind of love that made Christ die on the cross for us. Even while we were swimming in sin; His love for us was never in doubt.

Can you imagine how filthy we appear before God each time we slip into sin? Yet, He’s always there looking to welcome us into His waiting arms, like the father of the prodigal son. He never treats us the way we deserve because of His unconditional love towards us. I believe this is the kind of love God expects us to give out.

You may never be faced with the kind of scenario that I described above, but your resolve to love unconditionally will always be tested. It’s all in your hands to decide which way to swing your love pendulum. If it were impossible, Jesus would not have commanded it in Matthew 22:39 “…Love others as well as you love yourself.” I know you love yourself unconditionally. So…

1 Comment

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as , ,