2 Samuel 11:2-4 - Tempting, but NO!

As I have already mentioned in previous entry’s, we are all in a battle. We are in a battle between ourselves and with Satan. Its like fighting a war on 2 fronts and having the same number of troops to fight with! One of the biggest weapons Satan uses is Temptation. I think about the following section of the bible when I think about temptation –

2 Samuel 11:2-4.

One evening David got up from his bed and walked around on the roof of the palace. From the roof he saw a woman bathing. The woman was very beautiful, 3 and David sent someone to find out about her. The man said, "Isn't this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah the Hittite?" 4 Then David sent messengers to get her. She came to him, and he slept with her.

Here we see (arguably) the greatest king to sit on the Jewish thrown being dropped right in it by his own lustful and impure thoughts. When we actually take a step back and look at the situation, we actually realise how bad it was for David to give into this.

We are all faced with temptation and all of us give into that temptation, if we didn’t we wouldn’t sin and we wouldn’t have to ask for God’s forgiveness. I for one struggle with a certain temptation (between me and God before you ask) and with his help and with his mercy and love I am overcoming Satan and being blessed by God for my strength.

When you are a Christian you are put squarely in the firing line of Satan, its easy for him to tempt people to do things when they do not know from right and wrong and give in so easily, his most fun prey is Christians. If he can get a Christian to fall, he is laughing his head off when they are wracked with guilt and sorrow. But this is also his stumbling block as the Christian prays for forgiveness and receives it, something that Satan will never experience!

When we know we are being tempted, a simple prayer asking for God to help and support you through the situation tends to help (helps me at least) and suddenly you catch sight of what you were about to do and you think “what am I doing?!?!”

We are all tempted, and we give into temptation, however through God’s love, grace and protection we can tackle these temptations head on and overcome them.

After all, we still know David as the greatest King and he was a wretched and as sinful as the next person. Imagine what God can do with you!

Walk by Faith, not by Sight.

Mikey.

Isiah 61 v 10 - White as Snow

As I was walking through the snow to work this morning, the whole world looked white and pure. It made me think about all the bad things in the world and how the snow can cover the darkness and clothe it in light. Being the Christian that I am, I thought of the following verse;

Isaiah 61:10.

10 I delight greatly in the LORD;

my soul rejoices in my God.

For he has clothed me with garments of salvation.

and arrayed me in a robe of righteousness,

as a bridegroom adorns his head like a priest,

and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.

It got me thinking about the dark and the bad parts of my life and where I had sinned and thought about how Jesus’ blood and washed them away to make me pure.

I love the snow, I love the way it makes the world look and the way in which is has power to strip away the worlds darkness and cover it with blinding light. God does the same thing with us. When we stand before him in the last days, we will be as snow to him if we are Christians, we will be as a blinding light as Jesus has covered us with righteousness.

If it hasn’t snowed where you are, I hope you can visualise the world covered in God’s light and God’s glory and see yourself as pure before him. We all sin, that’s a given for Christians and Non-Christians alike, however God clothes us in his white robes and makes us pure again if we ask for his forgiveness.

Take care getting home if it has snowed where you are and I trust you will be able to look at the snow and be encouraged with God’s love and graciousness.

Walk by Faith, not by sight.

Mikey.

Luke 15 v 10 - Rejoice!

Jesus told many parables when he was on earth, I for one would have loved to be there when he spoke them. Problem is, a lot of people around didn’t understand what he was going on about, its only from the view we have of the whole bible do these things make sense fully. One of my favorites is the parable of the Prodigal Son.

I take my text from –

Luke 15:10 In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents."

Jesus talks about a man who wanted more from his life and wanted everything his way. I know I have been in the same position and had the same thoughts, as I’m sure a lot of you have too. The man goes out, has his party’s and has his way with the women of the time and spent all of his money. He ends up cleaning out the Pigs, the same as doing the lowest Job you could do here and eating the pods.

He was at rock bottom but remembered his father’s home and goes back to an old man who threw his arms around his son and welcomed him back. There are many metaphors and many sermons you can do from this one story but I am going to appeal to those who are none Christians, and encouragement to those who are.

God cares about us. I touched upon this on the first sermon I wrote, but it’s a point worth driving home over and over again. God cares for us. Its hard for a human mind to comprehend that. There are currently 6 billion (odd) in the world and its been calculated that about 66 billion people who have ever lived. And yet, out of all those people, out of all those souls, he cares about yours.

The text talks about rejoicing in heaven at just 1 soul being saved. It should make us feel special to think that heaven would have a party if you were saved and you will be garenteed a seat at the biggest party ever when you die!

As Christians, we shouldn’t loose sight of this when the world throws all it can at us. We should remember that God is looking out for us. We will stray from time to time, we all do but as the Father welcomed home his son, God welcomes us back with open arms if we repent of our sins.

Jesus died for everyone, he took upon his shoulders the wrath of God for our sin and if we ask for forgiveness we will be washed clean of that sin and can present ourselves blameless before God.

Christians, rejoice that God has washed you clean, celebrate your freedom! To those who haven’t found God yet, ask him to wash you clean, give your life to him and he will pour out blessing upon blessing.

God is truly awesome.

Mikey.

1 Peter 5: 6-8 - Help in Suffering

I was going to do a little bit about joy in Christ today, but a mate (who shall not be named) had told me of a few troubles which he is having and how he is struggling. So instead I’ve decided to do a very short bit about suffering and what God says about suffering and how not to loose faith, nor loose your way.

I take my text from the following;

1 Peter 5:6-8.

Humble yourselves, therefore, under God's mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you. Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.

God never said this lark would be easy. Not once does it say in the bible that a Christian walk is one that is all roses. The bible says that once we are Christians, we’re thrown into a battle. A battle between ourselves and temptation and a battle between God and Satan.

I’ve had many problems and I’ve major setbacks in my life and my Christian walk, those who know me closely know the intimate details however for those who do not know me so well, its not right for me to detail what and when things happened, just rest assured it hurt more than any other pain that I had encountered. We’ve all been at a spiritual low, and we’ve all felt emotionally and physically exhausted.

At these times we feel the furthest away from God we can do, I always imagine this like being at the bottom of a well, knowing God can hear our shouts but not being able to do anything about it. The truth of the matter is that God is with us in that well, and helping us to climb out.

In the passage, Peter is saying that we are to “Cast all your anxiety (cares, worries, problems) on him because he cares for you (us)”. Its an easy thing to type and its an easy thing to say because when you are at that low point, it seems to easy and too simple to cast your cares upon him, but if we remember that God is infinite and God hears all and he is ultimately, all powerful, we should feel comfortable in asking for God’s help.

Take heart and do not fret, God is watching over us and he cares for us, if we truly believe that, suddenly mountains are molehills, and wolves are like sheep.

Walk by Faith, not by sight.

Mikey.

Matthew 9:21 “Have Faith”

I can remember once someone saying to me “Faith is something you’ve either got, or you don’t”. I think this is completely off the mark. If somebody didn’t have faith, they wouldn’t be able to do anything. We all put “faith” in something everyday. When you get in your car, do you not put faith in the brakes that they will stop you? When you support a football team, do you not have faith that they will win? Of course you do.

The passage I take my text from is as follows;

Matthew 9:21.

She said to her, "If I only touch his cloak, I will be healed." Jesus turned and saw her. "Take heart, daughter," he said, "your faith has healed you." And the woman was healed from that moment.

I heard a sermon on this yesterday myself however it was only 1 of the points in the sermon, but I thought I’d bring my own interpretation on here, as it was helpful to me.

Part 1 – Faith through Seeing.

Part of today’s philosophy is “seeing is believing” and if you can touch it, it’s not real. For Christians this is a difficult concept to overcome as we’re so used to being able to see the things of the world, and you are able to touch things.

But I ask you; do you believe in the wind? “Ah yes but we can see the winds effects Mike”, yes you can, but if you look in the right places you can also see the effects of God in the world. God does things in people’s lives every day, just look around you. Think about your life and when you’ve been at your lowest points, when you have felt the most alone, if you’re reading this I bet there was a turning point and you realized that God is there, and even though you cannot see him, you can see his effects in your own life.

Seeing is believing? Well you can see God’s effects so what’s the next excuse?

Part 2 – Faith through Touching.

As I’ve already mentioned, people of the world expect to be able to touch something. How many people will actually believe that something is hard or soft just based on your say so? How many children will accept that something is hot or cold just by you telling them.

We have a natural inbuilt system that allows it to feel and touch and taste things so that our brains can store this information.

John 20:25-28 so the other disciples told him (Thomas), "We have seen the Lord!"But he said to them, "Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it."

You see, even a disciple who had been with Jesus right until the end would not believe until he touched his wounds. We shouldn’t loose heart if we find ourselves wanting to feel God and Touch God to make sure he’s real.

But I challenge you, if we could see God, and we could feel God, there would be no need for our faith and everyone would believe, as perfect as that sounds God’s love and forgiveness for us putting faith in him would become redundant and meaningless. It would just be something else that we take for granted in the world.

Part 3 – Faith through God.

If we refer back to passage of which I started with at the beginning of this blog, this woman, who is dying from internal hemorrhaging believes through faith that just 1 touch will heal her wounds, and even goes as far as to say that she believes that 1 touch of the end of his cloak would heal her.

How many of us can actually, truly say that we would believe the same things, bearing in mind this man was Jesus, and he was still alive and you wouldn’t have known a fraction about his purpose or his will at this point. This woman would have just heard rumors and little bits of information about Jesus, she wouldn’t have been able to travel very far as she was very ill and she would have had to rely on gossip.

But her faith is unshakeable, her love is unbounded and her belief that this man can heal her because he is the Messiah was unchangeable. I can imagine her waking up on the morning that Jesus was due to walk through the village, and I can imagine her making a plan in her head that she would just need to touch the fibers of his cloak whilst his back was turned and she would be healed.

We should be encouraged and we should be challenged by this woman. We should be encouraged that we are not in her position. Dying and having but 1 chance to be saved, we have had many chances and we are living in the knowledge of Jesus that these people couldn’t have even dreamed about!

Our challenge however should be that despite knowing so much about Christ, and despite hearing his words and being able to hear his word whenever we choose that we don’t loose our unquestionable faith that God will heal our sins, that he is there and that Jesus took away your sins on the cross.

Walk by Faith and not by Sight.

Mikey.

1 Timothy 6:12 - Footaball Battles

For those of you who know me well, you know that I love my football. Its something that I will watch if any team are playing, well I draw the line at Birmingham City but always take satisfaction in watching them loose.

I also love to play football, I’ve had many injuries during my playing “career” and I am at the moment trying to type this with a broken thumb… not easy! I was struggling to think of something to write about today and had toyed with the idea of being quite heavy and talking about Jesus’ wounds when he was crucified, not the best reading for a Friday however.

Instead I take my text from:

1 Timothy 6:12 - Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses.

Part 1 – Preparation.

When I do battle on the football field, or when I prance around to be more precise, there are a number of preparations that I have to take. I need to make sure I’m protected, so I wear my shin pads and put on my boots to protect my legs and my feet. I then need to put my colours on so that I can be distinguished from the other team and finally I need to have a good team talk from the manager to get me fired up for the game.

When we are preparing to do battle in the spiritual sense within the world, we need to do a lot of the same things.

We need to make sure we are protected; the bible speaks about protection as a suit of armour. Ephesians 6 talks of this armour being made up of 6 parts. The belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the preparation of the gospel, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation and finally the sword of the spirit. I am not going to go into these at this time, you can effectively do 6 sermons on each part, and my thumb hurts as it is!

Once we’ve got our armour on, we then need to make sure we are distinguished from the other teams. I spoke yesterday about this and how we need to acknowledge Jesus by our words and our actions, this is how we show we are different to other people. Subsequently, this is like putting on a football jersey on the football field.

Once we are protected and once we look different we need to have a good team talk from our manager. We have this every time we look at the scripture or when we go to church and in some ways, I hope you get a good daily team talk from me! But the important thing to remember is that God has given us instructions for the game and for the battle, if we ignore them, we will end up being beaten.

Once we’re ready, we can go out onto the field.

Part 2 – The Battle.

God has taught us through the bible that we’re in a battle. Ultimately between good and evil but this is manifested by us and God verses Satan.

When I go and play football, it would be stupid for me to go out there without any preparation or protection, but it would be even more stupid for me to go out there if I’ve never played football or even like the game. I would be made to look like a fool and ultimately I would loose confidence in my playing and give up, or even worse get injured and never play again.

The same can be said for our Christian walk. If we had no support or protection from Satan, we would be in a very dangerous place indeed. During the battle of day-to-day life we need to make sure we still cling on to the teaching and preparation we have been given to make sure that the little skirmishes from minute to minute we face can be overcome.

I don’t know about you, but I would hazard a guess that we don’t always win these battles. I would imagine there are times when we give up the fight and just stand still just letting the war be won. We need to make sure that we carry on fighting, that we look to God for strength to overcome the temptations we battle with everyday.

Corinthians 15:57 - But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Exactly!

Part 3 – Celebration of Victory

Being a fan of Aston Villa, I’ve not had that much in the way of tasting victory, in my lifetime we’ve only won the league cup a few times… nothing to write home about really. Because of this I’ve learned to celebrate in small victories. Winning the games we weren’t expecting to win, and whenever we beat Birmingham City are always party time!

As a Christian, I’m sure there have been times when we’ve won a few major battles but not all the time and in some cases, we might not have won a major battle for a long time. Because of this, we should also celebrate in the smaller victories that we have. The times that we’ve been able to shun temptation, the times we’ve been able to make it through the weak with our faith intact and sit in church praising God and the times when we pray to God asking for his strength,

We should take heart in the minor victories and grow in strength and confidence for the major victories that we need to win. Being a Christian is a war, its not a battle, it’s a season not a match and as such we should always be looking at the hear and now so that we can stay on course to our ultimate aim, winning the war or winning the league.

God says that he can and will give us the strength to over come all things.

Ephesians 6:20 Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us.

God can and will do all things. As I said at the beginning of the week he made the world and therefore can do anything. That’s the best Goalkeeper, striker, defender and playmaker we can have on our team or any team.

Have a good weekend, I may update this again tomorrow but if not, God willing, I’ll be back on Monday.

Walk by Faith, not by sight.

Mikey

Matthew 26:75 - Who Me?

For people in the current climate of this world, it’s not “Cool” to be a Christian, its not the “in” religion as Buddhism and being part of the Scientology movement is. I was bought up within a Christian home and from when I was born; I was within the church environment. In hindsight, I can see this a blessing that God was there in my life from my childhood.

The hardest part about this, as it is for many younger Christians at school, is standing up for your faith in an oppressive world that denies Christ. Moreover, it is also difficult for older Christians in their work situation and discrimination can happen from the highest director down to the tea boy.

The reason for this is clear. People are scared about what they do not know, and a defence mechanism to this is to make themselves look better than you.

I take my text today from Matthew.

Matthew 26 v 75 - Immediately a rooster crowed. Then Peter remembered the word Jesus had spoken: "Before the rooster crows, you will disown me three times." And he went outside and wept bitterly.

Peter was one of 12 disciples. I’m sure if you had asked him before Jesus was taken away to be killed, he would tell you that he was one of the best. He would be the first to answer questions that Jesus would ask and would try and look for ways to impress him. At the last supper Peter was adamant that he would deny Christ, but as we know from this passage, he did just that.

Part 1 – Confidence within a group.

When I was growing up in the church, I went to Sunday school and went to many thousands of church services. I knew all the answers and eventually I knew what to say in different situations. I was top of my class and could recite from the bible at will. Big Wow. I didn’t have God in my life really; I just knew the bible but did nothing about it. Its like a doctor who knows all the conditions yet never practices it.

At this time, I was confident about my faith within the church environment, superficially of course but confident none the less. I would tell people within the church all these stories about how strong I was but never actually put it in place outside of the walls.

Peter in some ways was the same. He had Jesus Christ as a teacher, he was in the inner circle of Christ’s followers and he also knew the answers. As we look back at the last supper, we can see that peter says the following:

“But Peter declared, "Even if I have to die with you, I will never disown you." And all the other disciples said the same.”

That is some sentiment really; he is pledging to Jesus that he would rather die than disown his master. I would have done the same thing within the church but faced with any other situation I was completely the opposite.

Part 2 – Confidence in confrontation.

As I grew older and got a little bit more curious about the world I started to hang around with a few mates who really weren’t Christian and certainly wouldn’t go to church with me! There is one situation that sticks in my mind where I denied Jesus because I wanted to be cool.

My friend came around for tea, (I shan’t name the guy) and after messing about on the computer and generally having a right laugh, we were called down for tea. We all sat down, my mum and dad, my mate, my brother and me and the food was bought out. My mate picked up his knife and fork and started to eat. My dad said “mike’s friend, we will say grace before we eat thanking God for our food”.

Bang, this was a potential for any street cred I had to fly out the window. (Not that I had much anyway but you get the idea). Dad said grace and all through the prayer I could see my mate’s lip curling with a smirk. Nothing was said in the evening and he went home.

The next day however was a completely different story, I came into school and everyone was laughing at me, “your dad’s a priest”, “going to say grace before you eat that chewing gum” and so on and so forth. Great.

This was when my shame grew for even knowing Jesus and I started to join in the mocking of my parents, of my God and of all the standards I had been bought up to believe. I feel so ashamed of myself thinking back. I started to deny going to church and began my double life of Christian at the weekends and Rebel during the week.

Peter was also faced with criticism, and he denied Christ even when he was still alive and even though he was in the same room!

“He began to call down curses on himself, and he swore to them, "I don't know this man you're talking about."

That sentence sounds strangely familiar…

Part 3 – Forgiveness for Denial

I’m sure we’ve all been in exactly this situation. We’ve been faced with question of “Do you believe in God” or “what do you think will happen after we die”. And I’m sure a lot of us have taken the non-Christian route and glossed over it for fear of ridicule.

Peter knew he had done wrong as I knew I had done wrong at school. The difference is, I didn’t want any forgiveness because I thought that going to church every Sunday will make up for it. How wrong was I?

John 21:17

17The third time he said to him, "Simon son of John, do you love me?"

Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, "Do you love me?" He said, "Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you."

My point is this. When we are outside of the church and outside of the group of people we associate with that, how do we act? Do we deny Christ with our actions? Are we hypocritical with our words? I think it’s extremely important to remember that God will never deny us, if we don’t deny him.

The biggest cause of atheism in the world is Christians, who acknowledge Jesus with their lips but deny him with their lifestyle – a quote from, I cannot remember where. But its true, we should remember that God has never promised that being a Christian is easy, in fact quite the opposite, but God rewards those who are faithful.

God loves us, we should love God with the same enthusiasm and we should never deny who we are. Easy to say I know but just because we deny God, doesn’t mean he’s not there watching us!

Walk by Faith, Not by Sight

Mikey