John 16:32 - Trying to Hide?

Where to start really. I’ve been struggling of late with my own conscience and with my own walk because of 2 main factors really. Sin and also the most important factor – myself. I’ve been worrying so much about what God thinks of me I’ve been scared to do anything for him in case for some strange reason I do it wrong or I offend him by what I think or say. Because of that I’ve been doing to opposite, pretty much nothing in God’s name and I could feel myself drifting away from Him which is really horrible.

It wasn’t until very recently that I realised that I’d not properly prayed or properly read his word and found all manner of excuses not to do this blog because I felt wrong doing it. But here I am, how did I get to this point from there you may ask, well that brings me to the scripture of which I wish to turn to today.

John 16:32 "But a time is coming, and has come, when you will be scattered, each to his own home. You will leave me all alone. Yet I am not alone, for my Father is with me.

Firstly I know this isn’t Matthew, but this really meant something to me over the last few weeks really. It both scares me and feels me with Joy. Firstly, the reason it scares me witless is the last sentence about never being alone and always having God watching me. I do things and say things and also think things that I would feel ashamed if anyone else knew what they were and it’s the same fore EVERY person, anyone who says otherwise either is in denial, or very lost.

As Christians we know that God is there through all that we do and he knows all. That includes what we say, what we do and the most scary part is what we think. Personally, there are times when I think ‘ah, who’d know’ Its just me here… but then remembering that God is there always makes me so afraid and I will try and hide from God. Remember in Genesis after Adam and Eve sinned, they tried to hide from their God.

Think about it, how ridiculous that we could think of anywhere that God doesn’t see us! And for this reason also, I am filled with Joy and peace that I have a God that doesn’t sleep and watches over me wherever and whenever I am. Its scary to think that God knows us properly, he knows us better than we know ourselves and yet, through all that, he loves us and forgives us. How amazing is that? We are the wretched humans that sin every day, yet God sent Jesus to save us.

I don’t know about you, but that means more to me that anything. And for that reason, I prayed last night, for forgiveness for peace and for him to guide me. I felt the strength to be able to come here and share this with you as a encouragement to all of you that we are being watched yes, but we are also being watched in love and forgiveness.

Thank you so much for all your patience over the past few weeks. Thank you for your prayers, I guess I just needed to pray also.

In Christ.

Mikey.

In contrast... Great Joy and Praise!

I know that a lot of you prayed for me last week and I think you so much for your prayers, they were needed and nessasry and because of those prayers I have been strengthened beyond all measure.


Yesterday Nell and I recieved a letter from the inland revenue with a cheque for quite a considerable amount of money and I just want to shout from the roof tops my praise and thanks for God's provision.

I am going to get back on track with Matthew, hopefully tomorrow but today, I'm going to just smile and thank God for everything that he has done for me. Praise be to the almighty.

In christ alone.

Mikey.

Real Prayer Needed...

As i'm sure you regulars would have noted already, i've not blogged for about a week now. Its not because I've been to busy and it isn't because I can't be bothered, I am going through a spiritual and physical battle at the moment. I have felt like I'm reading the bible but the words aren't sticking, that when I pray, it feels like I'm mumbling about anything just to be heard at the moment. In short, i'm really struggling.

I would value your prayers at the moment, I would value you taking the time to lift me to the Lord and ask him to refresh me. Its the 15th March today, and I feel like I don't know what has happened between the beginning of the year and now. Its all been a whirlwind and I feel that I am too stuck in the routine of life. I've had 1 day's holiday this year, and I feel jaded, confused and a little bit alone.

I've read the whole of my blog over and over, and i've read countless passages of scripture and I feel like nothing is staying in my brain and it is all just words. I need some refreshment both in my spiritual life and also, in my physical life, but I can't see where that is going to come from.

I am working twice as hard as I should at work, and feeling trapped because the harder I work, the less likely I am to take time off because I don't want to loose track of my work.

Just pray that God gives me the strength to pick myself up, and that I am given the opportunity to be refreshed.

Thank you all so much for your love and support. It means so much to me.

Mikey.

Matthew 2 part 1 - Feeling Threatened?

It’s a proven fact that people are scared of what they do not know. I’ve already said here that I’m scared of storms because I have absolutely no control over what happens to me in these situations. But as Christians, people can persecute us because they are scared about what they do not know about. They have a perception of Christians that we all wear sandals, have beards and carry around a bit print bible around with us telling everyone they are sinners.

When Jesus was born, there were people who knew the scriptures and there were people who knew that a messiah for the Jews was going to present itself at some point, but there were people who had heard of Jesus and what had been said about him even when he had just been born and were afraid of the implications. One of which, and most famously was Herod.

Matthew 2: When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him. 4When he had called together all the people's chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Christ was to be born. 5"In Bethlehem in Judea," they replied, "for this is what the prophet has written:
6" 'But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,
are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;
for out of you will come a ruler
who will be the shepherd of my people Israel.

Herod was obviously a smart bloke, he knew about the old testament teaching (although they were the teachings, and not called the old testament at the time) and he knew that someone was going to come one day to free the Jews, and more importantly the whole world, but the one thing that he was most scared about was loosing his crown as Jesus was going to be the “King of the Jews” and for a King that was the worst thing that could happen because he would have to leave his lavish lifestyle.

There are people around today that are scared of the same thing, but not in exactly the same way, they are scared of loosing their lifestyles because they know that it goes against God. As I’m sure a lot of you already know, its easier to follow the devil who promises so much but never delivers, then it is to follow God who promises very little but very important promises and delivers every time.

I know myself that one of the biggest things that was holding me back from coming back to God was that I was happy, superficially but I was happy. I had many things, I used to enjoy the world and all that it had to offer, and I was scared of loosing those things to follow some guy who lived 2000 years ago. The things which I have gained from following Christ has been better than what the world has to offer a million times over.

As Christians we get tempted and we get swayed into thinking that Jesus some how threatens our happiness because his teachings are against what the world offers, but we need to remember how much we have gained from having a life with God and having a walking relationship with Jesus, and how can we justify throwing all that away to go back to what the world offers? We can’t.

God really doesn’t want us to be governed by masses of rules and streams of regulations, we can be so much happier knowing that we are working for the true and living God, and that our ultimate gain is that not of superficial happiness but of eternal forgiveness and a everlasting life with God. How amazing is that? We shouldn’t feel threatened by God because as a father, he wants the best for us and the things that the world offers are not always the best for us at that time. We need to trust in God’s provision as well as his plan.

I pray that we do not feel that we are missing out because we don’t have enough of the world’s offerings, but we feel that we are being filled up with Jesus and his offerings, which are immeasurable and everlasting.

In Christ I stand.

Mikey.

Matthew 1 (Part B) - Hearing God

I don't know what you think about God talking to you, I don't know if you struggle to hear him or you are just so busy you don't take time to listen to him. But much in the same way, there are characters in the bible that have had the full spectrum of God talking to them.

There are times that God will speak to people in an audible voice and there will be times when God speaks in the smallest whisper, there are times when God has spoken with actions and with direction, and there are times when God has used prophets to speak to his people. I could go on and on about the ways in which God speaks to us, but I’m going to concentrate on God speaking to us, almost unexpectedly.

Matthew 1:20 But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, "Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 21She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins."

Just before the angel appeared to Joseph, he had been considering divorcing Mary, and also he was probably feeling pretty down and low about things at the moment. I can imagine he was very untrusting of Mary at this time as well, I mean think about it, if your wife was to say to you “I’m pregnant, but I’m still a virgin” you’d be thinking… ‘yeah right, whatever love…’ and its pretty certain that Joseph was thinking these things.

I would think that Joseph was in quite an angry state and probably didn’t want to pray to God asking for his guidance or asking him for his peace about the situation, so for God to speak to him was both important and very necessary.

The dream itself is not to dissimilar to dreams that many people in the bible have had, an appearance of a heavenly spirit, or being in front of them speaking to them very implicitly about a situation that they are going through. In this instance it is an unnamed angel who spoke to him, and spoke some pretty strange and scary words.

Imagine waking up from that dream! You’d think that you were crazy, an angel said that the child that was within your wife’s stomach, was going to save people from their sins. I don’t know about you, but I’d be freaking out by this point, but Joseph did exactly what the angel said.

The point I’m trying to make is this, God still speaks to us when we’re angry and don’t want to listen, and also when we are in despair and we forget that we can cry out to God and he will hear our prayer.

Take confidence from Joseph that despite going through bad times and times where the only way out seems to be to give up, God still works through those particular scenarios and makes a way for something so much better, and he still talks to us comforting us through these times.

I pray that if you are going through times of decision or times of trouble that you will ask God for his help and that you quiet your heart to listen to his will.

More later!

Mikey.

Matthew 1 (Part A) - I didn't pray for this, but I am thankful.

Well I’m back after a short break, I feel refreshed and ready to do God’s will and ready to talk more about his amazing gift through Jesus Christ. So many things have challenged me over the past week, its difficult to know what part of the scripture to start from. I had said that I would start a study in Job, and I still intend to do so, but I think from a young(ish) Christian that I am, its good to go through the life that made my forgiveness and freedom possible. I am therefore going to go through the book of Matthew and look at Jesus’ life.

To do this I need to make one or two things perfectly clear. The build up to Jesus’ life is one of many millennia of prophecy that can be viewed throughout the Old Testament, I do not have the time or the space to write about that just yet but I will dip into the Old Testament from time to time to drive home certain points.

I am going to post excerpts from the passages that I will look at but I would urge you to read the whole chapter either on your own at some point to see what I am referring to.

The start of Matthew 1, gives a genealogy of Jesus Christ, and its amazing to look at, it gives an account of Jesus’ family tree from Abraham all the way through to Jesus himself. I don’t know about you but I don’t know if I could go back even 3 or 4 generations. It serves the point that Jesus was the “Lion of the clan of Judah” who featured in the story of Joseph (made famous by Andrew Lloyd Webber).

The conception of Jesus was something of a miracle itself. I know that you are all very familiar with the story, but sometimes its good to look at these things with fresh eyes to enable us to actually take what happened not on face value, or for granted, but for what it was, an amazing miracle.

Matthew 1 v 18 This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit.

God gave Jesus to Mary and she was a virgin. In human terms this is a physical impossibility. But that’s my point; God is the God of impossibility. We should take strength from the conception of Jesus because if God can enable a virgin to conceive and doing the absolute impossible, why should we worry when we are faced with impossible tasks? We have a living God at the head of our lives, and this God can do all things.

Its interesting to see that Mary hadn’t asked for this happen, she didn’t pray for a child and she certainly didn’t pray for God to perform a miracle in her life, yet God blessed her with the most awesome of tasks, to bring God’s son into the world! Again, we should take enormous encouragement from that, because through God’s plan, things can change and things can come our way that we didn’t ask for or expect but they are such a blessing to us! We should trust in God’s unfailing plan.

Things looked to get a little bit difficult because of the culture of that time, Joseph had in mind to divorce Mary and their agreement to marry. I can imagine Joseph seeing this act as the worst thing to happen to him at the time. But as we know, this was a very amazing blessing, and again, we should view our own situations in the same way, things that seem to be bad, and things that look like our lives are crumbling God uses to bring amazing blessing to us.

So already, we can see that God can bless when we don’t expect it, and also when we feel our lives are falling apart.

I pray that you will fully trust God’s plan and trust in his unfailing love and protection for us through all situations. There is no need to fear, there is no need to be stressed about situations as we have the creator of the world working in our lives and helping us.

I hope this will help you with your own walk; tomorrow I am going to look at the peculiar circumstances of Jesus’ birth. In preparation of which, I would suggest you read the whole of Matthew 1.

I am free in Christ alone.

Mikey.

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT: Mikey is taking a short break.

Hey everyone,

Firstly, Thank you so much for all your support so far, its been running for a month and i'm greatfull for all the support that you've given me both in my christian work and also in prayer.

I'm taking a very short break untill Monday 5th March from doing the Blogs as i'm feeling very tired at the moment both physically and spiritually and need to take time with God as to what I'm going to do next.

I'm planning on doing a series on Job when I start again.

Thanks again for helping me.

Mikey.

Yesterday...

All my troubles seemed so far away... sounds like a song to me!

I just thought I'd post to apologies for the lack of post yesterday, had been extremely busy with work and didn't find the time to write anything.

I'll do a blog that is doubly as good today.

Thank you for your continuing support.

Mikey.