Trust in the Lord with all your heart
Our lives are full of challenges, questions and mysteries. Many times we see certain effects but we cannot see the cause that has brought forth those effects. As we may remain unaware of the deeper realities, we treat the effects rather than the cause. As people feel empty and hollow, they try to fill their lives with meaning with material things like money and possessions. We may go a step further and enter into relationships, hoping that those relationships will deal with the vacuum of our lives. What we do not understand is the fact, that all those seemingly good things do not really deal with the actual need of our lives. We are made by God and for God. He is the purpose of our living. Only He can fill our vacuum and give us meaning and make our lives worth the living. As long as He is absent, we will never find true fulfillment in our lives. No matter what possessions you may have, these will not satisfy your soul. We all need to have a heart to heart relationship with God. He will bring definition into our lives. (Proverbs 3:5-6)

Do not lean to your own understanding
While we live in a world full of knowledge and can ‘google’ anything we may want to know in seconds, we do not really find understanding to the most central questions of our lives in ‘knowledge’. Our understanding of issues is woefully inadequate. The ‘WHY’ questions of our lives too often remain unanswered. When a product malfunctions, we may do all our investigations and still not find the answer. Going back to the manufacturer by consulting the operations manual or speaking to the manufacturers directly will give you the answers you may not find elsewhere. This is true with you and me as well. If we fail to understand the purpose of our lives, the answer can only be found from your maker. He can explain to us the purpose of our lives and why we are the way we are. Only God knows your purpose and He can save you from misapplying your life to wrong causes.

In all your ways acknowledge Him
It may be easy to be happy and cheerful in good times. When everything runs according to our hopes and dreams, we may even give God thanks for the good things that we experience. But when we go through tough times, when we are frustrated and see failure after failure in our lives we begin to doubt ourselves and even our God. We have difficulties to accept, that even tough situations may have value for us and hence we consult all kind of ‘counselors or healers’ that promise us a quick fix solution. We do not realize that such experiences have great value for our lives if we go through them with the knowledge that our creator is ultimately in charge of our life. The Bible tells us in Romans 8:28 that ALL things will work out for good for those who love the Lord. Provided that we have put our life into the hands of God and walk with the understanding, that no matter what we will go through, He will always work out things for our good.

He will make your paths straight
God has a good plan for your life. It is His desire to prosper you and not to harm you. He wants to give you hope and a great future (Jeremiah 29.11). Notice that God wants to give you hope in every situation, which should make you conclude, that you are not yet at your destiny. What we seem to forget too often is the fact, that we are woefully falling short of the original design and purpose of God. We have scars of sin and we are wounded by our failure to live our life right with God. When I have a wound that is filled with dirt, a band aid is not be sufficient. The wound needs to be cleaned and every contamination needs to be removed in order for healing to take place. But this process is very painful. Yet there is no way that this process of cleansing can be avoided for healing to take place. We do not understand the processes required for our lives to become whole and complete. But if we acknowledge Him in our lives and if we trust Him and accept that He loves us and cares for us, than we will be able to go through pain knowing that He will work out all things well.

Jesus went through suffering and even through death without seeking for a shortcut or a quick fix. He understood His purpose. He gave His live so that we too can live with Him a life of purpose and destiny. Do you understand your purpose? Are you willing to endure pain and hardship without fully understanding what purpose it may serve? Trust Him even in your darkest hours, that He will make your paths straight, that He will remove the objects in your life that will hinder your healing. Do not look for a quick fix, but let the Almighty God do his precision work in you so that you can fulfill your destiny. Trust Him, He will make your paths straight!

God is Father and Originator of all things

God refers to himself a Father as He has brought all things into existence. He is the originator of everything visible and invisible. But apart from that, He also cares and protects mankind who He created in His own image and likeness. He created us to be part of His own family and in order to partake of His divine qualities and attributes. No other creature is on the same level as we human beings. However, as Jesus illustrated in the story of the Father, who had two sons (Luke 15:11-32). His sons are both lost. In order to save lost mankind, God sent His beloved Son Jesus Christ, to rescue us from our sin. This became possible because Jesus stood on our behalf in the judgement over sin and carried our penalty on the cross.

Fathers are to be God’s representatives

Fathers are called to represent God in the earth. The qualities that we seen in God ought to be espoused by every Father. In order to understand and fulfill their roles, they are called to study the nature of God through His Word in the Bible, in which He revealed Himself to mankind. Fathers have been gifted with leadership abilities for their families and for society.  Where Fathers take up this calling and live out their God given abilities families will be strong and societies are flourishing. Fathers are to operate from their heart with love and compassion just as God himself. But they are also mandated to keep order in their homes so that society is going to function as intended by God.

When fathers fail to fulfill God’s mandate

Unfortunately, there are many fathers who do neither understand God nor do they fulfill their mandate towards their wives and children. When fathers fail, lawlessness will set in. Children and parents are going to be divided and righteousness and justice will be absent. The deplorable conditions in much of our world today show the failure of fathers to rise up to their calling. It is a fact that fathers are absent from their families, if not literally but still largely unavailable to their children. There is a huge gap that has developed between fathers and children. They are often unable to show love and fail to affirm their children.

Restoring fathers to God’s original intend

For this reason God has made available a special ministry. It is the ministry of the Prophet Elijah, who is to turn the hearts of the Fathers to their children and the heart of the children to their fathers (Malachi 4:5-6). This ministry was carried out by John the Baptist, who called people to repentance from their sin and so prepared the way for Jesus to come. The ministry of Elijah is with us today as well, calling us to turn from our sinful ways and make room for the Lord. Where the gap between fathers and sons is not bridged, as curse will prevail as the Bible tells us.

The blessings of a functioning fatherhood

The desire of God is to see fathers and children to be reconciled. For this end God challenges fathers to get restored to their original calling to be role models for their children (Deuteronomy 6:6-9; Genesis 18:19). A family can only exist where a father is functioning according to the creators specifications. Where a father is absent or does not fulfill his role, family is a heap of rubble unable to function as designed. God is the originator of the family as well as of the spiritual family. Church is meant to be exactly that, not an institution, but a gathering of a household around a spiritual father. Where the blueprint of family will be restored, there will be peace, righteousness and joy in the Holy Spirit along with all spiritual blessings stored up for us in the heavenly realm.

There are many misconceptions of what Church should be. In todays world Church has become ME centred. Depending on who we are, we look at the Church through the lenses of our contemporary culture. Instead of probing the scriptures we conclude that the Church is a tool for people to get what they want.
For many, when they hear the word Church they have one of these images in mind.

– Supermarket – where you get all your goodies, whenever you need them
– Bless me club – where you expect God to fulfil all your wishes & dreams
– Entertainment – where all your emotional needs for entertainment are met
– Platform for superstars – where the so called “men of god” do their stint
– Title mill – where the craving of ambitious people is satisfied – The Bible knows job descriptions, not titles
– Crowd excitement – where we follow the masses blindly to get high
– Insurance policy – in case you get in trouble, you can remember the Church
– Rescue service – to bail you out when sunk or at least you can get some alms
– Majestic Building – for many Church is just a building where you go to when you feel like it

However, all these are totally false assumptions. Church is neither of the above.

Church in Scripture

The new Testament describes the Church as the ekklesia, which means, those who are called out, out of darkness into the light of God (1 Peter 2:9). The example that comes to mind are the people of Israel, who were in slavery. When they called out to God, he sent them a deliverer who brought them out of the land of their slavery in order to get them to a land that was to flow of milk and honey. This tells us the spiritual truth, that God sent Jesus, his Son, to get us out the slavery of sin and into the family of God.

Church is God’s family. We get into this family by a spiritual birth (John 3.3 / 1 Peter 1:23) and are identified as children of God (John 1:12-13). In this family we are meant to grow from infancy to maturity, just as it happens with children in any family. The natural family is an illustration of the spiritual family, that God himself is building. This is why Jesus said: I will build my Church. Every local Church is a household of God under the care of a Father or Elder, who represents the heavenly Father and who is given the grace to lead his household.

Church is not a building! Church is made up of those who belong to God’s family. In this family we are to be build up for service. While the family takes care for our needs we must grow into people who serve. This is the role of the Elder and the fellow leaders as well as those gifted by God to prepare us for works of Service (Ephesians 4:11-13). The men who are called to prepare us are servants of God that carry a special grace from God to get us into the shape of Christ, our example and model. He is the firstborn Son of God and in Him we are called to unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God until we measure up to the full stature of the fullness of Christ. This will bring us into stability and we will cease to be tossed by anything coming along.

What is Church for you? Get a reality check, please!

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And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.  (Matthew 16:18 – NIV)

Jesus left no doubt on who is the builder of the Church. He is! On the other hand, Jesus is building a community of believers and the same believers are very much included in the building process. For this reason, we all need to have understanding of how the Lord is building His Church and what our role is in this process.

The word of God is teaching us so much about the building of the Christ Community, which is unlike any other community in this world. Those who have been entrusted with the noble task to be builders of this community must make sure, that they make everything according to the blueprint of God.

The Christ Community built according to God’s plan is the antidote to the poison of xenophobia, hostility, violence, bloodshed and so many other vices that trouble our communities these days. The occurrence of all those vices is testimony, that the Christ Community has to a great measure not been build after God’s blueprint. It may have gone stuck before reaching its full level of maturity and hence, such vices have and open door to mushroom in our societies. Instead of a vibrant multicultural and loving Christ Community we have seen the emergence of ever more Churches, that do not really radiate the love of God. As a matter of fact, some Churches are even funning the flame of division rather than healing the breaches that exist all around us.

Moses was shown the original, divine Tabernacle on the mountain where God had invited him to see and experience. After Moses was able to see everything, he was instructed by God to build the whole structure exactly according to the image of the Tabernacle that he had been shown (Exodus 25:40).

This is the challenge of the workers in God’s Kingdom as well. The Bible reveals a powerful blueprint of the Christ Community. Now it is our job to study His biblical blueprint very careful and then implement what we learn in those studies. This is the challenge of our day, rather than a game of competition among the servants of God of who is the greatest. The concerns for money and prosperity have taken away the ability to focus on the real challenge of all men and women called by God to build that new community that is Christ centred and able to make a difference in our divided world.

Paul urged his listeners not to be ignorant. In a time of great uncertainty, it is even more important to have a solid foundation which will not shake. The word of God is unshakeable and we are well advised to do our homework, as we will be answerable to our Lord for the work we do.

For this purpose I will highlight some of the teachings about the Building of the Christ Community in my next few blogs. May we have the willingness to learn and implement what God has challenged us to build.

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Check out my bulletin page where you can find the weekly bulletins of our Sunday Services with scriptures and Sermon Outline.

What is being build in a person is much more important than what is build around a person.
The first is eternal, the second is just temporary. There may be nothing wrong with nice material things that we aspire to have in our lives, but we must be aware, that we do not take this things with us. Jesus said: What will it profit a man if he wins the whole world, but loses his soul in the process (Matthews 16:26).
We all need to focus on building godly values into our lives based on the righteousness and justice of God, because these are the pillars and foundation of God’s throne and leadership (Psalm 89:14).

What is prosperity?
Much our world today is so obsessed with prosperity which is only understood as what we own. The apostle John expanded that picture as he prays for God’s people to prosper in all things and being in heath, just as our soul prospers (3 John 2). Our soul prospers if we walk in truth and love in faithfulness (3 John 3-6). Those values are being build on our inside of our soul and are eternal just as our soul is eternal.

Building true prosperity
Paul urges us to grow the fruit of the Spirit in our lives. These are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against all these there is no law (Galatians 5:22-23). Do you prosper in these divine attributes? Are they being build and growing in you? How much time and effort do you spend that these powerful and eternal values are becoming the nature of our personality? Having those divine values in your life is true prosperity.

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Together and yet apart

We live in a world that moves together closer and closer. Transportation facilities can take us around the world in a matter of hours. The media brings to our livingroom or indeed to our smartphone, what is happening around the world. Distant worlds have connected in amazing ways. Yet at the same time we see ever greater rifts emerging between people, tribes and nations. The high rate of movement brings people together that look at each other with suspicion, dislike and even with all out hatred.

Discover the beauty in others

It is sad that people do not take the time to listen to each other. If we could learn about the fears, the hopes and the dreams of those who look different from us, we would find out that they are really not so much different than we are. Building communion would make us discover, that others have staff, that would actually enrich our own lives and we in turn could find out how we could enrich their lives in turn. There is an undiscovered beauty in every human being that will only benefit us if we get closer and build togetherness and community.

Destroying the walls of hostility

Instead we are building walls of hostility and talk up divisions as we keep away from people because they are not like us. But they could really be a blessing to us if we were to overcome those barriers between us. We must remember that Christ came into this world to bridge the gap between man and God. Sin had made it impossible for man to come to his heavenly Father who gave him life. Our division from God brought divisions between people. The first generation of people turned against God which led their children to turn against each other and ended in the tragic death of the first human by the hands of his own brother (Genesis 4:8). These divisions are visible in our world every day. The media brings us news of stories that break our hearts. In the name of religion, ethnicity or creed we see mankind suffering under the burden of hostility and division.

Peacemakers

Within this scenario we must be reminded that Christ broke the wall of hostility between those who were following the law and those who had no law (Ephesians 2:14-18). Jesus became our peace and only He will be able to transform our lives to become peacemakers. Are you living in peace with your God? Then you must reach out to your neighbour, enemy and friend to let His peace prevail in all your relationships.

Those who are heading into eternal fellowship with God must learn to be peacemakers already here and now. How else will you live with those that you find in the presence of God?

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God (Matthew 5:9).

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