SHOULDA – WOULDA – COULDA

In the final part of this series i want to look at those people who feel life is passing them by. They began their Christian life with joy, a passion for Jesus and a desire to proclaim the gospel of grace to a dying world.

Along the way however, they have raised a family, had problems, difficulties, ill health, or have retired from their employment; one or more of these things have left them exhausted, burnt out and hopeless.

They find themselves stuck in their relationship with God and have lost their passion, joy and zeal. They still have a heart for God but don’t know how to revive what they once had.

Let’s look at some key points of guidance:

Standing Before God : We must never ever forget that God does not judge us for our mistakes, sins or failures! He judged our sin on Calvary 2000 yrs ago, and now we are ‘In Christ’, He judges us as righteous (given right standing) which is justified or in simple speak, ‘just as if i have never sinned.’

So if we have been living under a cloud of guilt and condemnation, we need to come out from underneath it and embrace God’s forgiveness, acceptance and peace.

Rom 8:29-30 For God knew His people in advance, and having chosen them, He called them to come to Him. And having called them, He gave them right standing with Himself. And having given them right standing, He gave them his glory.

Feed On Christ : After Jesus had fed the 5000 on natural bread, He turned around and said to the people following Him,

 ”I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger.” (Jn 6:35  NKJV)

How do we come to Jesus and feed on Him who is the bread of life? We feed on Him by meditating on His Word. Jesus is the Word of God (Rev 19:13).

Many people have missed feeding on Christ because they read His word like any other book and seek to acquire head knowledge. ‘No, A thousand times No.’

The word of God is not a fast food read. I suggest taking 2 0r 3 verses and reading them very slowly, going back and reading them very slowly again, going back and reading them very slowly again. You will find a word or phrase will jump out at you and speak to you.

Stop any further reading. Take this phrase and turn it over again and again in your mind as if you are chewing and chewing your food (yes, like a cow chews cud). The Holy Spirit will open this word to you and give you understanding into it.

Ask God to bring these thoughts to your remembrance throughout the day and continue to chew on them. This is meditating and feeding on the word of God, and this new understanding will feed and strengthen your spirit and renew your mind which will in turn transform your life.

Changed From The Inside Out : Do not try to change yourself from the outside in. This is called, ‘Behaviour Modification.’ This will not change our heart and will lead to a religious and legalistic lifestyle resulting in defeat, failure and hopelessness. Many stronger than you and I have gone down this route and have had to retrace their steps back to a place of grace which changed them from the inside out.

The key thought in the word for ‘grace’ taken from Strong’s Greek Dictionary says:

GRACE : The divine influence upon the heart, and it’s reflection in the life.

The revelation that comes to us from feeding on the word of God is what will change our heart and give us righteousness, peace and joy.

Phil 2:12-13 Therefore, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure. (NKJV)

Meditation Point: He works in – I work out!

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APOLOGIES: Due to personal issues my Blog has been offline for a number of weeks. Also, problems with WordPress means I’m not able to show any media at this time. Thankfully i am now able to resume normal service but without the media.

SHOULDA – WOULDA – COULDA

We’ll continue this series by looking at past sins, mistakes and failures.

Many Christians still struggle with incidents of the past. They know God has forgiven their sin but  guilt, condemnation, shame and hopelessness still plague their lives.

This is because we lack a full understanding of the work of forgiveness.

Hos 4:6 My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. (NKJV)

Forgiveness is a two stage process: Stage 1  Jesus has forgiven our sin.  Stage 2  Jesus has taken away our sin.

It is this second stage, the taking away of our sins, that many are ignorant of. Thankfully this whole process is shadowed forth for us on ‘The Day of Atonement.’ (Lev 16)

On this day, the whole congregation of Israel stood at the entrance to the Tabernacle of Moses. Two goats were presented to the High Priest. One was called the goat for sin, the other, the goat of escape. Let’s look at these in detail.

The Goat For Sin: Aaron (High Priest) would take this goat and lay his hands on it’s head. He would then confess over the goat the sins of the nation for the previous year. The goat now became a substitute in place of Israel and a symbolic transference of sin passed from  Israel onto the goat.

Aaron then offered the goat up as a sin offering on the altar of sacrifice. He took the blood of the goat into the Most Holy Place where the ark of the covenant stood. The presence of God’s glory would descend to rest on the mercy seat on top of the ark. He then sprinkled the blood with his finger 7 times upon the mercy seat.

When God saw the blood, it was the evidence to Him that the punishment for sin had been carried out on the goat instead of the people of Israel. This enabled God to release His mercy and forgiveness for sin upon the people.

On the cross of Calvary, Jesus fulfilled this shadow when He was offered up as the goat for sin. The Father transferred the sin of the world onto Jesus who became our substitute. When He died and shed His blood, it was the evidence to God that the punishment for the sin of mankind past, present and future had been carried out. This enabled God to release His mercy and forgiveness upon all mankind.

This is the forgiveness we experience when we invite Christ into our life,

The Goat of Escape: Aaron would take this goat and again lay his hands on it’s head and confess over it the sins of the nation. But instead of sacrificing the goat, he would take it to the front gate of the tabernacle and release it to escape into the wilderness, never to return.

This symbolised that the sins of the people had not only been forgiven (goat for sin), they had also been ‘taken away.’ The people now knew they were free from sin.

On the cross of Calvary, Jesus not only took the punishment for our sin (goat for sin), He also became the goat of escape. That is, He took our sins away. How did He do this? When He died, He went down into the grave. God then resurrected Him from death. As He rose in resurrection life to become the firstborn from the dead, He left behind Him in the grave, all the sin of mankind. Haleljah! Praise the Lord!

This signifies that God is saying to us that our sin is not only forgiven but has also been taken away never to be brought back to remembrance, never to be brought back to condemn,  make us feel guilty or ashamed. Completely removed!

Thus, when satan seeks to accuse us of past sins, mistakes and failures, we can stand against him and remind him that all sin has been forgiven and taken away. There is nothing left for him to accuse. He’s been made redundant.

Meditation Point: Father, please open my eyes to see this wonderful revelation, that in Christ, my sins are not only forgiven but removed completely.

Heb 8:12 For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more.”  (NKJV)

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We want to continue our series by looking at, ‘Lost Dreams’ and how God can restore them.

The dreams that speak to our future cannot be lost because they are given by God, but they become buried beneath the rubble of our hearts. The great news is that God wants to restore our dreams and remove the rubble of the past so we can move forward.

Joel 2:25 So I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten. (NKJV)

The locusts are a picture of demonic spirits who have come to steal, destroy and kill.

Our focus now is to make sure that the problems, difficulties and pressures of life don’t cause us to stumble when God brings our dream around a second time.

When Jesus came as the Messiah to Israel, He said to the Pharisees that He was, ” THE STONE WHICH THE BUILDERS REJECTED. (Mt 21:42 – NASU)

Peter the apostle later called Jesus, “A stone of stumbling And a rock of offense.”  (1 Pet 2:8 – NKJV)

What he meant was that when Jesus came, the majority of the Jewish people were offended when Jesus called Himself the Messiah. Hence their offence meant that instead of Jesus becoming the stepping stone to salvation, He became a stumbling stone of unbelief and lost opportunity.

Therefore, when difficulties, problems and pressures come our way, we are to see them as stepping stones, not stumbling stones. How do we do that? We do it by giving those things to God and putting our trust in Jesus to resolve them. As we do this we will find our dream become a reality again and see ourselves moving towards it’s fulfillment.

Joseph had a dream that he would rule and reign over his family. You know the story. For the next 13 yrs he was thrown into a pit, sold into slavery, served in Potiphar’s house, was falsely accused of rape and incarcerated in Pharaoh’s deepest dungeon.

But throughout his ordeal he held onto his relationship with God and trusted his life to Him. As a result all those setbacks became stepping stones that catapulted Joseph to becoming the Prime Minister of the kingdom of Egypt and fulfilling his dream.

Meditation Point: Prayer – Lord Jesus, when difficulties come my way, help me to trust those things to you and see you resolve them so they become stepping stones to the fulfilling of my dream. Thank you Lord.

 

 

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Shoulda-Woulda-Coulda is an American slang expression of regret, missed opportunities and failure.

I shoulda taken the job that was offered to me but I turned it down, and now I regret it. I woulda gone to university to study medicine, instead I allowed my parents to pressure me into joining the family company and I now feel I failed to do what’s right. I coulda been married at 25 and had a family  but I turned him/her down because I wanted to be footloose and fancy free. I now see I missed the opportunity.

All of us can add our own stories to this list. In fact many Christians are still holding onto their regrets, failures and mistakes of the past. They still carry the wounds, hurts and shame of  past things.

Paul the apostle teaches us what we need to do with the past:

Phil 3:13-14  I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us. (NLT)

Paul had many things from his past life that could have kept him from moving forward. He persecuted the early Church. He broke up families, had Christians killed, thrown into prison and tortured; but Paul learned how to live free in his relationship with Christ.

God has called all of us to greatness. It’s His purpose to rid our past lives of things that hold us back.

In this series of Blogs we will be looking at how God wants to restore all things that have been lost, stolen or forfeited.

Meditation Point: Through the power of the cross, the blood of Jesus has cleansed our past lives of all that would hold us back.

 

 

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We will finish this series on Grace Forgiveness by looking at how we  express anger!

Eph 4:26,27  Be angry, and do not sin : do not let the sun go down on your wrath,  nor give place to the devil. (NKJV)

Anger is an emotion given by God. It is a good emotion. It is a needed emotion. Unfortunately we’ve made anger out to be a negative response in our lives. Something we shouldn’t do.

But what did Paul the apostle say. He said, “Be angry”. Express your anger but do it without allowing it to become sin.

So how do we express anger without it becoming destructive and sinful. How can our anger become a healthy expression of our life.

WE CHOOSE TO BE ANGRY

We must first own our anger. That is, realize that when we get angry it’s because we’ve chosen to be angry! Others cannot make us angry no matter how they may mistreat us. We choose to be angry.

Therefore when we’ve been hurt by someone and need to resolve the situation. We can do it in two ways:

1) Destructive Anger We say to the other person, “You did such an such a thing to me and you made me angry.” Or we allow our anger to spill out with words of abuse, name calling and blame.

All these ways attack the person’s character without addressing their behaviour. Hence our anger has driven a wedge between our relationship.

This is sinful anger.

2) Constructive Anger We say to the other person, “I’m angry that you did such an such a thing against me. What you did was wrong.”

What have we done. We have addressed the person’s behaviour without attacking their character. When we express anger in this way, we can be as forceful as we wish because we are not projecting our anger onto the other person.

Because we have owned our anger, we need not feel guilty or condemned because we have expressed it in a righteous way.

Meditation Point: “Lord, when i have to address a situation, help me to remember to own my anger and address the issue not attack the person’s character. Thank you Lord that I can, ‘Be Angry’ and sin not.”

 

 

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I want to continue to look at the practicalities of setting boundaries……..

PROTECTION!

We set a boundary in place to protect ourselves from being abused. Abuse takes many forms, verbal, non-verbal, physical, sexual, mental etc. We must remind ourselves that we have the right to send boundaries and not feel guilty or condemned when we do.

Unless we forearm ourselves with this knowledge, we will back down and capitulate when the threats and accusations flow. People will accuse us of being mean spirited, selfish, hurtful and even abusive. They will issue threats, mouth retaliation, send us to Coventry (go silent on us) and it all has one aim – to push the boundary and see if we will capitulate.

If we can picture the other person as an unruly child that needs boundaries to discipline and train them, it will strengthen our resolve to stand firm against any pressure. In fact, that is what the other person is behaving as – an unruly child.

Wherever our parents failed (don’t blame them) to set boundaries we will carry such behaviour over into adulthood and other people are forced to finish the job they started.

Be Wise! - Surround yourself with people you can contact either before or after you’ve set a boundary. These people will empower us, guide us and encourage us. Don’t go it alone – even the Lone Ranger had Tonto to help him.

Prov 27:12 A sensible man watches for problems ahead and prepares to meet them. The simpleton never looks and suffers the consequences. (TLB)

So remember: BE STRONG AND DETERMINED!

DON’T BE A VICTIM

When we become aware that someone is transgressing our personal boundaries, if we allow them to continue such behaviour, it is our fault not there’s. Hence if we complain, moan or have a pity party, we have now become a victim of our circumstances.

For the person who doesn’t want to face up to setting boundaries, it becomes an ideal excuse to blame shift: “it’s their fault, they are always taking advantage of me” or “I told him not to speak to me in that way but he won’t stop.”

We are using our excuse to blame shift as a red herring to take the spotlight away from us and make somebody else the scapegoat for our own irresponsibility.

What we need is a friend who will gently confront us and tell us to stop being a victim and jolt us back to reality. We have to set the boundary, no else can do it for us, so put your trust in Jesus and face up to your responsibility!

Ps 27:1  The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? the Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?  (KJV)

Meditation Point: I no longer need be a victim. With Jesus by my side I can face up to and confront my weaknesses and set proper boundaries to protect myself from harm.

 

 

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