understanding the depth of His love

Last night as I was praying for my nation and my friend’s dad to be healed from cancer, another person that I have been praying for for many years came into my mind. I have prayed for this person daily and pretty much throughout the entire days for a long time, but last night I felt like I had hit a brick wall and had no further faith to pray… or maybe it could’ve been to lack of desire to pray and pray and pray into what seems like a black hole that just absorbs and takes with no end. (Sometimes even we don’t know our true honesty.)

So as my resolve had seemingly dissolved for praying for this person, I thought about how strange that I can pray for other issues that are way beyond one person’s heart and need so much more faith, and how easy it is to pray and contend for matters that are far from us, and yet the things and people that are close seem just far too impossible for God to have any impact.

As I thought this crazy and untrue thought, I realised, not only how hypocritical I am which is bad enough, but also how little I am aware of the depth of Christ’s death and the power of His resurrection. How can I have faith that God can move mountains but not a man’s heart? I had to realign my heart to the Truth that God sent His Son to die and pay a horrendous cost for each and every one- man, woman and child- that has ever lived, is living, and will ever live. If I am beginning to doubt that one man is too difficult then I am possibly saying that I don’t believe that God loves someone enough..??

May we give God access to challenge us and disrupt our farce-like faith and hypocritical living.

He is able.

He is willing. And has done everything needed to reconcile man to Himself.

And He still pursues each and every one.

(The above part of this is not to condemn myself for lack of faith; for we are told that there is now no condemnation in Christ Jesus. However, we do need to be able to assess honestly our position or be open to God who assesses it for us! Jesus Himself said to His disciples that they lacked faith- when one of them had stepped out to walk on water!! This isn’t His condemnation as this is not who He is. So, maybe He wants us to break out of our limited understanding of what we believe we have the capacity for..?)

“am I good to you?”

This was a question that my man used to ask me. My response would be that only he knew if he was good to me, because only he knows of his faithfulness, his
heart and mind towards me. I can be aware of how he is when he’s with me, but have no idea if he is respecting me when we’re not together. I have no idea if
he is honouring and backing me up to others, or if others even know anything about me..

How often can we be like this in our relationships- all about the façade and nothing about the unseen building of commitment and respect? It is such a farce.

Let us not be like this in our Christian walk with God- looking good when our actions are ‘in front of’ Him and/or others and yet having pure selfishness and a
self-serving heart and lifestyle.

Let us remember that God cannot be mocked (even if we can be) and that He sees the deepest part of our hearts and minds and knows us completely. He
knows exactly if we “are good to Him”…

flintstones church

Last week I was praying with a friend and I got this picture of the Flintstones “driving” in their car. Their car was fuelled by their own feet running underneath and I really felt the sadness that this is the church of God in many ways. We are running on our own energy, resource, talent.. and happy with it- in total bliss that we are moving towards where we are wanting to go.

Yet, I felt deep sadness that this is not how God desires His people to move. We are to move by the power and the wind of His Spirit- to go in the direction that He has for us, and have all our confidence and dependence in Him being our Lead and our Source.

May God forgive our self-reliance and moving in our own strength, when He is clearly asking us to live by His spirit and submit wholly to Him.

perversion of submission

We seem to have such a perverted mindset about submission- that it takes away our freedom and we become like slaves and not able to think for ourselves. But the truth is, if submission is to Love then we will be the most alive ever, and the most protected ever as we are accountable to someone who is then accountable for us. But if the submission is to man (human) who has no love, then it is truly an abuse and oppression as this is then about control and power.

We have to understand that when we are told to submit to God then this is the ultimate care that we can come under. This is not an abusive or powerless place, but a safe and protected place.

As man(kind), we have such a thirst for control that submission becomes a horrendous abuse of power in relationships- rather than being safe, it is unsafe.

We must get to know the God of the Bible so that we can see that He hates religion and the hypocrisy and abuse of people. We need to see that when He talks about submission it is from a very different place- which is Love and not control. There is no control in Love. The very fact that we have free will is because God Himself does not want to have us “controlled” into living for Him, “loving Him”, or anything else that is a farce. He is pure and requires our purity of choice- unmanipulated, uncontrolled, unforced.