Life

You are life
Symphony of grace
Song of praise
Constant love
Sweet affection, pure desire
Hope beyond measure

Catch All The Foxes

“Catch all the foxes, those little foxes, before they ruin the vineyard of love, for the grapevines are blossoming.” Song Of songs 2:15

What we believe in our hearts has the power to give us life or kill us.

One of the most deadly poisoning whispers that can take root in our hearts is “things will never change! ”

This lie traps our heart into the captivity of our circumstances. It imprisons us into the oppression of the moment. It kills hope, slays faith and delays all our expectations. We start to accept our captivity and distress as the normal.

It is believing this lie when we begin to doubt the goodness of God.

For the promise of God is that he will make all things new and that his glory will be made manifest in us.

It is here in the garden of our heart that we must keep out the lie. We must catch it before it destroys the harvest. We must release ourselves from its condemnation. For it is in the heart that condemnation runs riot and destroys the harvest.

And how do we catch the little foxes of condemnation?

We believe the truth of all we are now in Christ. We believe the truth of our right standing in Christ. We acknowledge the finished work of Christ alive in us. And we release our hearts by acknowledging all good things we have received in Christ.

For the promise is that God never leaves us or forsakes us and that if our heart drifts he still stays faithful to his promises to us.

The truth is that God delights and desires us and that he loves us with an everlasting love.

Are You Listening?

“Let me see your face; let my hear your voice. For your voice is pleasant, and your face is lovely. ” Song of songs 2:14

The desire God has placed within us is wild in its longing to pursue the one who is unknown.

It is a desire that only finds it’s fulfillment with communion with him.

It is a desire that rages inside that causes us to search towards the mystery.

He speaks and we hear his voice.

He reaches out to us and invites us into his embrace.

This embrace is found in his unconditional reconciliation through the death and resurrection of his son. A reconciliation universal, eternal and complete. Offered in sacrifice and given in love. But this reconciliation has to be received and has to be accepted.

For God who has done all things to bring you into a new abundant life wants you. He has provided everything and has demolished everything that stood in the way of giving you his all. All you have to do is receive the favour of God and live in its beauty.

Today God is whispering to you, to come and receive. Are you listening?

Goodness, Desire and Delight

"My dove is hiding behind the rocks, behind an outcrop on the cliff. ” Song of songs 2:14

Our heart has the power to draw us to God or take us captive. It has the power to bring us into freedom or make us hide away in shame.

God with all his goodness, desire and delight draws us but our hearts choose our lovers.

The vastness of God’s love for us is found in Jesus. His life was a living sacrifice of God’s open display of his glory. For Jesus was the physical declaration of God’s goodness, mercy and compassion to a people seduced by religious fanaticism and lost in self righteous indulgences.

For it is in these indulgences that control is pursued at the price of freedom.

We hide from the one true God but God finds us.

Jesus found us and declared to us that he was bringing us into a new day of God’s favour. That he was here to set free the captive, to heal the brokenhearted, to turn our hearts back God.

Jesus leaves us free to love and wooes us with his passionate love and overflowing desire.

Jesus is not hiding from you and you never have to hide from him. Come out from behind your rock of your own security and embrace the grace of God.

The Winter is Past

“Look the winter is past and the rains are over and gone. The flowers are springing up, the season of singing birds has come and the cooing of turtle doves fill the air.” Song Of songs 2: 11-12.

Winter heralds the birth of spring.

Winter declares that there is a new day. A new day of resurrection, of new life, of a new name.

For without winter there cannot be spring.

And here is the truth of life that new life comes from death. It was out of darkness that light was created. It was out of nothing that the cosmos was created. It was out of the sparkling dust that we were created and it was out of the death of Christ that we were created as new creations.

The cross is the declaration of God that the old has passed and the new has arrived.

The promise of God is that from Christ’s death every promise he made has now been given to us. And we receive all the blessings of God because we have died with Christ and have been raised with him to live his abundant life.

It is now Christ life living and inspiring us to enter into a life that is sourced, strengthen and assured with the power of the Resurrection.

God's Freedom Is Free

“The fig trees are forming young fruit, and the fragrant grapevines are blossoming.” Song Of songs 2:13

If we want isolation, despair and the right to be on our own god, God graciously grants us our wish.

God’s freedom is so free it allows us to live in the freedom we choose. His love is so relentless and so all encompassing that if we want nothing to do with hope, grace, peace and light he gives us the freedom to live in our own reality.

Regardless of our decisions and actions God’s goodness and grace reaches out to us and invites us to come and eat and know that He is good.

The ripe fruit of grace invites us to taste and know for ourselves that God is a faithful provider.

For grace is God’s exceeding, abundant life above all we could ask or think alive and working within us.

His season inside our hearts is the new ripe day of his abundance.

Yes God gives us the freedom that love demands. We can have whatever destiny we desire. We can have whatever future we want.

But Christ invites us to come and eat the ripe fruit of grace and let the love of God blossom in our hearts. For In Christ all things work together for your good, as he works and lives inside you.

Come Away With Me.

“My lover said to me, “Rise up my darling! Come away with me, my fair one.” Song Of songs 2:10

We are invited to come away with God.

We are invited to come and experience his love.

We are invited into the embrace of God, into the loving arms of grace.

God has created an embrace of endless joy. It is an embrace that tells us he is the one true God of the cosmos. It is about embrace of passionate participation, that cries out for us to engage.

For God’s invitation is to come and experience abundant life. To know joy and overflow with peace. To never be alone again.

For loneliness is lost in the invitation to come and be loved forever.

For God loves you with an everlasting love. He welcomes you.

You are his fair one the focus of his devotion. You are the one he wants to come away with. You are the one he is calling out of everything that would captivate your heart.

The search in your heart, the longing for love, the restlesnes inside, the questions that perplex your mind are all whispers that God is calling you to come away with him.

Christ Looks For Us.

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"My lover is like a swift gazelle or a young stag. Look there he is behind the wall, looking trough the window, peering into the room.” Song of songs 2:9

The lie that we are given by the world and the lie Satan has feed us is that God does not want us. That we find value and acceptance for our lives by abiding in the security of our own divinity. That to be like God we must be our own God.

So we settle in the land of fear, shame, lust, anger and guilt and worship our own God’s of immediate gratification, self reliance and individual enlightenment.

And Christ looks at us from behind the walls that we have built and reaches out to us as we struggle with emotions that cripple our heart. Consumed with grief, abandonment, disappointment, loneliness, misconnection and detachment.

It is in the puzzle of our helplessness that God reached out to us. For God did not wait until we got it right. He did not wait until one of his chosen kept his law perfectly. He did not wait until we turned to him. He came when we were held in the captivity we had created. He came when we were trapped in the prison we had made. He came when we had said no to him, but He had said yes to us!

In our stubborn resistance we had turned to answers in our own hand crafted God’s.

Christ came to declare to us that his death is now our resurrection. His old life is now our new life. His sinless life is now our New Creation life. Our old life died with him on the cross, our new life was raised with him and he has delivered us from all the consequences of sin.

The Glory Made Flesh

“Ah, I hear my lover coming! He is leaping over the mountains bounding over the hills. ” Song of songs 2:8

Jesus was born to deliver those in captivity from their oppression.

His coming was a declaration that God’s love always triumphs over judgement.

He desperately tried to demonstrate the love of God to a chosen people locked into to a business contract with God. He tried to make them see outside of the contract so they could free themselves from its binding clauses and obligations .

He went in to their business center and chucked out the debt enforcers, he broke their working agreement and healed people on the agreed day of no work, he refused their sick pay provision and healed every one who was held by its defaulted clauses and he sat with those who were marginalised, rejected and abused by its impossible perfect conditions.

In what seemed to be random acts of compassion, he acted out of a heart of mercy to declare that the essence of God is love, freedom for the oppressed and release for those held captive.

But it was on a lonely mountain top in the presence of a few of his close companions that Jesus revealed his true nature and in this act he declared the majesty and brilliance of a New Covenant.

For the transfiguration on the mount was much more than just a one off event it was a revealing to mankind of the glory of God alive in human flesh, it was a revealing of the New Birth of a totally New Creation, the physical demonstration of heaven kissing earth. Everlasting love alive in flesh .

For every New Creation is connected to the power of heaven and is made right with God. Each has been set free and delivered from the reign of sickness and death.

And today this is the declaration of God. That through the death of Jesus we are now reconciled to God and that God is not counting our sins against us. We are forgiven and the choice we are given is to receive it and trust it or ignore it and reject it.

Love Appeared At The Appointed Time

“Promise me , O women of Jerusalem, by the gazelles and wild deer, not to awaken love until the time is right. ” Song of Songs 2:7

Love appeared at the appointed time. Love was given to us in flesh, for Jesus came to satisfy our hearts.

He came to satisfy your hunger, satisfy your thirst and satisfy the longing for connection within your heart.

One of the most heart breaking moments in the Bible is when Jesus broke down and wept over Jerusalem. It is so powerful that it can only be summed up in two words “Jesus wept”. The heart break of God as his chosen people rejected his mercy and settled for obedience in the place of grace. The eternal invitation to come and thirst no more rejected for a business contract with God.

With all of us the trap of our hearts is to get God to bless us by our actions instead of trusting his devotion.

Christ is the promise of Eden now planted into our hearts. The grace of God his unmerited favour given to us as a free gift to satisfy our hearts desire.

Jesus wept over Jerusalem but he rejoices over us his new creation with singing. His death and resurrection opened a new and living way into all the wonders and treasures of heaven.

So if there is longing in your heart, today eat from the fruit from the tree of life and that fruit is the grace of God which will nourish, nurture and protect you so you hunger and thirst no more.

For in Christ you enter into the day of God’s favour over your life. Love, joy, peace, freedom from oppression, deliverance from captivity in your mind, health to your body, release to your emotions and wholeness to your soul are your inheritance, given without reservation and placed into your hand.

Immersed Into Christ

Life is full.

We are attacked on every side, by every distraction, amusement, piece of gossip; a media soaked world can throw at us.

We are constantly spinning plates precariously on sticks as we try to keep up with all our commitments.

Somewhere in this land of busyness we begin to lose our sense of wonder, we become increasingly aware of trying to plug the gaps that take prominence in our lives

It is in these moments of awareness that the opportunity arises to embrace the Promise Land of Christ. To move away from the chaotic, amusement driven atmosphere that encroaches on our minds and to let our thoughts and imagination be immersed in the love God has for us.

We have received inside of us the fullness of Christ. The physical Promise Land of Canaan has now become the living New Creation life empowered by the Holy Spirit.   Our valleys are filled with his light, we now bask in the heat of his sun, our lives become fruitful with the knowledge of his presence and we flourish in the abundant provision of his grace.

We can move away from the barrenness and slavery of life and begin to experience the delight of life in the fertile, lavish, overflowing fruitfulness of Christ.

Our wholehearted, full-life response to his grace begins when we learn to lie down in his green pastures of love and realise that the satisfaction of our heart’s desire is found in the divine pleasures of God.  For within these pleasures we discover a Father who is patient, kind, understanding, who bears all things, believes in us always, hopes the best for us, plans only good things for us, has only our best interests at his heart, is always thinking of us, always giving to us, never rejects us, cherishes us, values us and see us in the value of his son.

Embrace

“Remember what I told you: I am going away, but I will come back to you again. If you really loved me, you would be happy that I am going to the Father, who is greater than I am.”  John 14:28

If you can embrace the truth of your union with Christ, you will begin to see life from a completely new perspective.  It is challenging, but the reward is a total liberation into the grace of God.

One of the traps that the world tries, with great success, is to make us believe that we are separated from the power of almighty God and if we are separated then we are alone and powerless.  We start to believe in a distant God who only shows up and acts in our lives when we cry out, pray and need him.

Our perception of God is often dependent on how we feel and experience his presence.

You as a believer in Christ are entwined and united into the glorious God who has created the universe. Every spiritual gift, blessing and ability has been made available to you and the infinite power of God dwells inside you. You have been made a New Creation in Christ, you are living in a place where there are no limitations, time does not exist, a place of no worries, no fears, a place where you are no longer a singular identity, because you are connected with God and Christ in his fullness lives inside of you.

Your true essence is that God, who is greater than you, now lives inside you and you in Christ have become a child of God. Acknowledge and embrace God’s greatness, feast on God’s greatness, let His greatness permeate and immerse your identity and let his power flow out of your life.

Christ Died For You

“The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd gives His life for the sheep. ” – John 10: 10-11

God created you to be loved so that you could enjoy the delights of heaven and experience the wonder of the divine beauty in your life and that radiant bliss would shine like a bright candle in a dark dungeon void of light.

God is captivated with you, so in love with you, that before you did one thing, you breathed one breath, you thought one thought, that he sent Christ to die for you.

Christ died for you before you could do one thing to earn his love.

Christ died for you before you could clean yourself up.

Christ died for you before you had faith enough to believe it.

Christ died for you before you could say sorry, vow to change, surrender, promise to do better, make him Lord of your life, feel bad about your sin, or even ask for his help.

Christ died for you before you were even born.

Christ died for you in a demonstration that you are loved.

Christ died for you and said to all eternity, “You don’t have to be good to be loved.”

Christ has forgiven all your past, present and future sins.

Christ has redeemed you from the curse.

Christ moved to help you, save you, cleanse you, free you, redeem you, ransom you, sanctify you all before you even existed and before you were born.

God created you to be loved and poured his love upon you by immersing you into Christ.

Nothing is Impossible

“Nothing is impossible with God” – Luke 1:37

In Christ we have entered into the eternal realm. A grace covenant that was sealed before anything existed, in the silent expanse of nothingness Jesus was slain; he initiated redemption and connected us to him eternally.

His love has now been shed into our hearts, his light has invaded our hearts and his life is now our life. For in Christ we live and have our existence and the faith of Christ is now the faith that motivates our actions.

In the Old Covenant faith is me trying to please God, but in the New Covenant faith is something that God gives to me and something that Jesus has on my behalf. Today, Jesus has faith in me.

The impossible is now accessible to me because the most powerful influence over my life is Jesus who believes in me. He is the author and the finisher of my faith and his faith resides in me.

Before the cross, the flow of faith was man to God. Now after the cross the flow of faith is God to me. He gave himself for me, I am crucified with him and the life I now live, I live by the faith of the Son of God.

The power of the Kingdom of God is rooted in God’s faith in me. Christ invested everything at the cross for me so that now he accepts and values me in his finished work.

Nothing is impossible with God and his faith is now the power within my heart.

Creation Shouts

“For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.” Romans 8:22

Since the beginning of time, God has consistently demonstrated his heart through his interaction with his creation.

Everything in creation shouts out that he is rich in love, he is abundant in goodness, he is good to all, he has compassion on all he has made, he is faithful to all his promises, he is trustworthy in all he does, he upholds all who fall, lifts up all those who are bowed down, he satisfies the desire of every living thing, and that he is righteous in all his ways and he is near to all who call on him.

Life starts to finally make sense when the revelation of the true nature of God is shared. His two-way communion with his creation has been the desire and overflow of his heart. The deep bond from the very first heart beat with man was an intimate relationship that connected creation into God’s existence.

God is always consistently and faithfully good, gracious and full of love. In a world full of cynicism, disappointment, clouded truth and manipulation, his desire is to bless, give and to be the source of all we do. It is when these attributes of God drop deep with our mind, our souls, our beings, I believe our outlook and life has an expectation and a flourishing certainty of the unconditional grace of God.

The important thing is that God shows his nature by doing good things for us and blessing us. He does this to us without distinctions, or anything required from us. No effort, no works, no levels of goodness, no qualification to obtain God’s blessings.

Grace is freely given, he loves us unconditionally, and His heart is to shower us with the fullness of heaven.

The Starting Point

“We also rejoice and exulting glory in God in his love and perfection through our Lord Jesus Christ through whom we have now received and enjoy our reconciliation” – Romans 5:11

I am constantly perplexed by how hard it is for my heart to embrace what my mind affirms. The more I read, the more I listen, the more I see , everything that filters into my head, I find it easier to acknowledge and agree with ideas and thoughts but most of this usually is fodder for my mind.

The essence of who God is, if you like his glory and nature and all he has brought me into by his grace, has been birthed deep inside my innermost being. My heart is a garden of new creation soil, where the seed of Jesus Christ has been planted and watered by the Holy Spirit. Through his glory and goodness he has given me all his precious and great promises. His words to me are a treasure map that contains his plans and dreams for my life, and I know that every word he has provided he will always be faithful to, it is always true and that he is committed to it.

For it is one thing to agree with the finished work of Christ but it is something altogether different to experience its power and reality in the everyday crisis of life.

So how does this finished work of Christ become reality in my life?

The starting point for me was the realisation that I have become a partaker of the divine nature. That all my sins, past, present and future sins were forgiven at the cross, before I was born.  That every promise of God had its fulfilment in Christ. That the ground of my heart was the fulfilled sacrifice of Christ and that everything pertaining to Christ had been planted into me.  The Holy Spirit alive in me had cultivated a Garden of Delight within my heart and he was quietly, actively, effortlessly bringing my heart into blossom and ripening his fruit.

I now have a divine nature, and I no longer had a sinful nature. I had been made righteous and good, I have God’s desires inside me, I experience God’s delight within me, I have a fountain of life bubbling up through me.  I had been set free from the slavery of the world, I had been delivered form the corruption, decay and death that I inherited through my natural birth and I was eternal clean, holy and blessed through my spiritual birth.

I have been brought into the fullness of Christ and his abundant grace has set me free to live in intimate communion with the lover of my heart.

The Steadfast Love of the Lord

“The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end, they are new every morning, great is your faithfulness.” Lamentations 3:22-23

You and I as believers in Christ can live in the abundant treasure of God’s grace. With our eyes wide open, our hearts soften and our minds awaken we can see and experience the cosmic glory of all Christ accomplished at the cross and we can discover the fullness of all God promised in the New Covenant

God had with a loud and clear voice shouted out his promises to all who would listen throughout the Old Testament. In fact his promises are so transparent that they are easy to miss. Even in the midst of extreme suffering, oppression and captivity, God’s grace shines from eternity and declares that he loves us, he is loyal to us, he is faithful to us and committed to us.

The Jewish prophet, Jeremiah declares from exile, “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end, they are new every morning, great is your faithfulness.”

Jeremiah touched, cherished and embraced the grace of God. He tasted the love of God that never ceases, that goes on and on, and no matter what situation we are in, never fails us, is never outside us and is constantly being poured upon us.

There is never a day of completion to God’s grace. God is working in and through us and with every breath and every heart-beat the grace of God is fresh anointing oil. We can’t out live it, we cannot out run it, we cannot out do it, it is fresh, new and always there for us.

There is no place that grace cannot find us, there are no depths that it cannot reach us, and there is no escape from its all encompassing goodness, never-ending provision.

The best of God is now working for us; we who live after the cross have all the promises alive in us through the cross. We receive all the benefits for which others only hoped.

Christ is ours, God is ours, his nature, his grace, his love, his faith, all his fullness abides and remains in us, by his goodness we are in him and he remains in us.

A Radical Change As Happened.

“For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.” – Ephesians 2:10

All of us, at some level, have a deep emotional need to be loved and to give love, and all of us, at different levels, have a desire to be accepted. But somehow the conflicts, suspicions, hurts of life invade our desires and our view on each other’s kindness, goodness and motives slowly becomes tainted.  Out of these dust and ashes of suspicion it becomes increasingly difficult to focus on something done for our good.

Mercy is a prism of God’s grace. For God so abundant in love is so rich in mercy, so overwhelmed with his kindness towards us, reached out to a world lost in sin and self righteousness and poured himself upon us and in love withheld the punishment that our rebellion deserved.

We had fallen into the pig sty of life, we had chosen to eat in the slop and degradation of our self effort and intelligence, and we had taken all the provision and beauty of heaven and squandered it on our own self pleasure. Cold, alienated, lost and alone in His mercy God reached out to us to embrace us, to cherish us and with his lavish goodness gave us a place of honour at his banqueting table, an inheritance provided for his own and a seat at his right hand in glory.

Christ paid in full for all our self-effort and self-justification. At the cross he eternally dealt with the sin that stains our hearts, once and forever all sin – past, present and future sins were forgiven in one ultimate, atoning act of sacrifice. The price was paid in full, so that it would never have to be repeated again.

We are free to walk in the righteousness of Christ because his righteousness has become our righteousness.  We are free to walk in the holiness of God because his holiness has become our holiness; we are free to walk in the faith of Christ because his faith has become our faith.

A radical change has taken place in you, Christ took your place and died as you, you are a new creation in Christ, you are seated in authority beside God, and you are showered with God’s kindness because you have entered into an eternal love relationship with God in Christ. And He overflows out of your life into good, loving, kind, generous acts that God initiates from the well of your heart.

His Light Inside You

"Light is shed upon the righteous, and joy on the upright in heart” – Psalm 97:11

God has chosen to reveal his true identity in us.  He has done everything good and kind and generous for us to have fellowship with him.

His light inside you is the purity of his essence, therefore pure love, pure goodness, pure truth, has invaded your heart and his pure light expels all darkness. His light enlightens you and shows you your own beauty and your own purity, because you are a new creation, made in his image.

He has captured and captivated our hearts, with a thrilling fascination. The magnitude of his grace is discovered as the light of the incalculable greatness of Christ invades the boundaries of our understanding.

Just as the natural creation displays the glory of the father, so the new creation reveals the glory of the son. His life is seen in every one of his children and like mirrors, we now reflect his divine life.

The grace of God flows through our hearts in rivers of eternal life, cascading over us from grace to glory, without a break.

Let joy overflow from your heart as you delight in his power within you.

Embrace The Truth

“Remember what I told you: I am going away, but I will come back to you again. If you really loved me, you would be happy that I am going to the Father, who is greater than I am.” John 14:28

If you can embrace the truth of your union with Christ, you will begin to see life from a completely new perspective. It is challenging, but the reward is a total liberation into the grace of God.

One of the traps that the world tries, with great success, is to make us believe that we are separated from the power of almighty God and if we are separated then we are alone and powerless. We start to believe in a distant God who only shows up and acts in our lives when we cry out, pray and need him.

Our perception of God is often dependent on how we feel and experience his presence.

You as a believer in Christ are entwined and united into the glorious God who has created the universe. Every spiritual gift, blessing and ability has been made available to you and the infinite power of God dwells inside you. You have been made a New Creation in Christ, you are living in a place where there are no limitations, time does not exist, a place of no worries, no fears, and a place where you are no longer a singular identity, because you are connected with God and Christ in his fullness lives inside of you.

Your true essence is that God, who is greater than you, now lives inside you and you in Christ have become a child of God. Acknowledge and embrace God’s greatness, feast on God’s greatness, let His greatness permeate and immerse your identity and let his power flow out of your life.

God Has Provided Eveything

“You prepare a feast for me in the presence of my enemies.” Psalm 23:5

One of the hidden truth’s of the Bible is that the enemy knows that God has provided everything.

Every blessing of God, every treasure of God, every pleasure of God freely given to us has been lavished upon us in the presence of our enemy.  The enemy is fully aware of the measure of all God’s love and grace.

The enemy will try everything in his power, use all his influence, lie, deceive and manipulate to stop you from enjoying and living in the provision God has made for you.

Just take a glance at the Garden of Eden, where is the midst of infinite pleasure and provision, the enemy deceived Adam & Eve into believing that God would be pleased with them by doing something that would make them accepted when they were already accepted.  His message has not changed, he sneaks around trying to make us do things to please God, when we’re already the delight of God’s heart.

The enemies subtle whisper is that God is holding out on us, that we have to plead with God to get the full measure of his glory has been so embedded into our minds that we have become suspicious of believing that God has poured out into our hearts the completeness of heaven.

The truth of the finished work of Christ is magnificent and wonderful that the nature and acts of God are now imparted into our hearts for the King of heaven to manifest himself through us in all we are and all we do.  His grace revealed in his love is the full provision of the victory of the cross, bringing forgiveness, health, wholeness, joy, peace and reconciliation.

The enemy knows the truth and wants to deceive you into settling for less when you already have it all.

Today, put on the finished work of Christ, live in his glory revealed in Christ and deposited into your heart.  Be rooted and grounded in the unconditional love of God and let the power of Christ shine out of your life. Take hold and be all God has called you to be, for that is the best way you resist the devil as you take hold and rest in the infinite grace of his love.

Nehemiah - A Shadow of Christ

Nehemiah said, “Go and enjoy choice food and sweet drinks, and send some to those who have nothing prepared. This day is holy to our Lord. Do not grieve, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.” – Nehemiah 8:10

One of the most glorious and wondrous pictures of Christ in the Old Covenant can be found in the person of Nehemiah.  Here is the Cup bearer and food taster to the king, our living communion of bread and wine. Here is the redemptive plan of the Father as Nehemiah is the response to the King’s heart and the desolate captivity of the people.  Here is the servant laying down his life from the glory of the palace to work in the dust and broken ruins of hopelessness and here is the restoration and completeness to restore, hope, security and dependence upon God’s unlimited goodness.

For Christ has rebuilt the wall of separation that has invaded each of our minds. We like the stones of the walls of Jerusalem are now living stones cemented into Christ our eternal wall of salvation.

And what is the command of God to us now that Christ has finished his work and the cross has accomplished our new life in him. It is to enjoy the choice food and sweet drink because God has made you holy.

The finished work of Christ is a day of celebration, a day of entering into the party of Christ and a day where the joy of the Lord is now the strength within your heart.

Christ in you is the hope of glory, the living communion, the restoration of all that sin had destroyed and the abounding joy of the father.

God's Faith In Me

“This is my comfort in my affliction, That Your word has revived me and given me life.” – Psalm 119:50

The power of the Kingdom of God is rooted in God’s faith in me.

I have received the mind of Christ; I have been planted in the good soil of New Creation life.

In Christ I lack nothing; I have the abundant, overflowing streams of eternal life living inside my heart.

The vastness of His provision that resides within me is beyond all I could ask or think. For his values, power, have been deposited into the chamber of my heart.

Now every scripture that I take into my heart, memorize, mediate on combats the influence and lies of the world. God speaks through his word to remind me of his faithfulness and love that he has imparted into my life.

Every verse is an anchor of hope, and every promise is strength to my heart and life to my body.

The essence of all Christ is is contained in his promises to me.

Grab that promise, take that verse let it be planted in your heart and be rooted in the good soil and grow into an oak of righteousness in your life.

Jesus + Nothing = Everything

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” – Genesis 1:1

One of the expression that I often hear quoted and I have quoted myself on numerous occasions is “Jesus + Nothing = Everything.”

This expression does capture the realisation that without Christ everything has no meaning and that if we add anything to Christ we start to live by our own efforts.

Often the focus of our attention is on the everything. All the promises of God, all the blessings of heaven, all the inheritance of grace and whilst this is exciting, powerful, relevant and essential to our understanding of our relationship with the father, the other dynamic is that of nothingness.

When we talk of nothingness what does it look like? What is the essence of adding nothing to Christ?

The very first verse in the Bible is a catalyst of this expression and within it ten words are the very foundations of all Christ accomplished for us at the cross.

The universe was created out of nothing. Before God spoke the word, nothing existed, there wasn’t a single atom, a single speck of dust, the tiniest particle, nothing existed before God created it.

Our hearts are easily absorbed with something and that something invades our lives with things and ideas that try to give us what only God can give.

And here is the bottom line, how much do we let something invade and permeate into the finished work of Christ?

God is the creator, Christ is the author and finisher of our faith and the Holy Spirit is our guide into all truth.

We are already reconciled to heaven; the divine has reached down, kissed and embraced the lost child.

His finished work is complete; you are now complete in him, live in the fullness of his completed work.

God With Us

“If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you.” – John 15:7

There is a lie of Satan that has echoed from the very first lie, that God does not want us.

That God who designed us, created us, put his breath into us and poured his delight on us has somehow withdrawn himself from us.

But the truth is that God has always been close to us. In fact we can’t get away from the One who fills the whole universe and sustains our life and breath by his spirit.

Before anything existed, before anything was created God provided a solution for us, he provided the perfect sacrifice to bring us into his family, he planned and purposed our adoption.

God revealed himself to us in Christ. He entered time and become man, ’God with us.’

For our value to God is beyond measure, our worth is greater than the expanse of the cosmos.  And through Christ we have been reconciled and adopted into the eternal family.

Christ is the answer to God’s prayer.  Christ is the answer to our heart’s cry. Every prayer Christ prayed was answered, and we now remain in him because he remains in us. There is no separation between God and man, but we can separate ourselves from Him and his love for us by our belief’s and feelings that dwell in our hearts. We choose to receive all God has freely given us or reject his love and live apart from his grace.

His love and life, his glory and power now reside in the heart of every believer. His life in us gives us the power to grasp and possess all he won for us at the cross. We have received his holiness and his perfection, God has given himself to us.

Innocence

"I am the spring crocus blooming on the Sharon Plain, the lily of the valley" - Song of songs 2:1

You were reborn into a time of innocence.

You were reborn into the goodness of God into a New Creation devoid of evil. For where there is the light of God darkness has to be extinguished. Light and darkness do not share the same space.

It is the revelation that you now in Christ, you are Holy and righteous in your Spirit and the former darkness that invaded your thinking, your desires and your actions has been eradicated by your new birth into the fulness of God.

Our past, our sin tainted nature died with Christ.

And just as the spring crocus takes root and flourishes in the rich phase of a new season, we receive the purity  and innocence of new life.

For within us even before we believed and were made new there was calling that believed in a place of joy, an existence of bliss. That we we created to be part of an eternal dance of love.

Today you have in Christ been reconciled back into the arms of your Father and the love your heart cried out has been placed into your new innocent heart.

A Resurrected Life

"How lovely are your cheeks, your earrings set them on fire, how lovely is your neck, enhanced by a string of jewels. " Song of songs 1:10

This morning I took a stroll through the local Church cemetery on the way to catching a bus for work. The sun was shining, the birds were singing, the Church clock slowly moved as every second passed and restlessly time moved on as I passed by ancient grave after ancient grave. Some of the residents of the cemetery had laid there for hundreds of years. Since they took their plot Kings and Queens had come and gone, America had been discovered, World Wars had been fought, Man had been to the Moon and back and 'I' phones had been invented. But each of these residents were totally and utterly unaware of any of this because they died years before it happened.

Paul in his letter to the Galatians tried to convey the truth of new believers new life in Christ by declaring that we were crucified with Christ and have been raised to new life in Christ.

But why did he do this? Why did he emphasise the fact that In Christ we are now a new creation?

We are born into a world that focuses our attention, our thoughts, a world that captivates us with what we wear, what we drink and with what we eat. A world which turns our hearts to worship the things we want, the things we can possess and the things that give us value.

In this deluge of self satisfaction our hearts can be swayed to seek after all manner of other God's and we can feel the weight of condemnation and guilt building up inside as it seems that we have strayed from the wonder and beauty of the new life birthed in us.

But this is just a wrong perspective of our new life. Instead of looking at the influence of the world on our hearts we need to live from the truth of our new life.

So how do we do this?

By realising the we have died to our old nature. That although things and influences are happening all around us we are in fact a totally different species, we are part of heaven, we have the glory of God within us

The more we let the truth of our new creation infiltrate, permeate and consume our thoughts and emotions the more the influences of the world diminish.

It is here in the realm of the heart that as we let go of false desires and false God’s that we release ourselves from all condemnation.  In fact we are already released all we do is bring our soul back in line with our New Creation Spirit.

Dead people have no problems with the influences that would try to capture their hearts and drag them back into a life of fear, worry and doubt.

Resurrected people live from their new nature free from the old man, it's influences and it's desires. Their desires are now centered from the Glory that resides and transforms them effortlessly.

Today know that you are dead to sin, dead to your old man and you are alive and victorious in the power of the Resurrection within you.

The Glory of God

"You are as exciting, my darling, as a mare among Pharaoh's chariot horses. " Song of songs 1:9

The glory of God cannot be extinguished.

Before the foundations of the world the plan and purpose of God was to radiate his glory through his creation. The pinnacle of his creation was you and the pinnacle of Christ was his death and resurrection that reconciled you into the New Covenant.

In Christ you are now a new creation.

Your heart was created to live in the glory of God.

Solomon captures in this verse the trap of the world that entices us. The constant temptation to identify with Pharaoh and let the influence of others gain control over our mind and slowly extinguish the glory of our creation.

John saw how this influence affected the heart of the believer. In 1 John he finishes his letter by encouraging us to put away all idols, that would rise up and draw us away from the freedom and living union we have in Christ. It is not that Christ leaves us, it is not that Christ draws away or hides or is silent. It is that we start to fill our hearts with other things and these things become our idols.

You are fearfully and wonderfully made and the glory of God is the deliverance that has set your heart free to enjoy the delight of heaven, don't let your experience of God be diluted and diminished by filling your heart with idols.

For whoever the Son sets free is eternally free.

God’s Goodness

"If you don't know, O most beautiful woman, follow the trail of my flock, and graze your young goats by the shepherds tent. " Song of songs 1:8

The world has tried to disguise goodness.

It is a subtle trick that uses our senses to evualate our perception of goodness. It turns love into manipulation and righteousness into acts.

It first raised it's head in a perfect garden, when perfect love and perfect harmony was punctered by a serpent who disguised goodness as an attribute to gain favour.

The world fools us by appreances, it makes us look at motives, concentrate on externals and makes us choose between good and evil by providing it's own criteria.

Paul in his letter to the Ephesians attempted to refocus our understanding of goodness when he wrote  "That you may really come to know practically through experience for yourselves the love of Christ , which far surpasses mere knowledge without experience, that you may be filled through your whole being unto  all the fullness of God; may have the richest measure of the divine presence and become a body wholly filled and flooded with God himself." Ephesians 3:19

For goodness is found in the depths of experiencing the love of God. And out of this experience all acts of love flow in response to the glory that resides inside.

To be flooded with God is to graze your life at the Shepherds tent. To find your value and worth in presence of your shepherd, to take everything that you were created to be and see your beauty in everything the shepherds says about you.

For in Christ goodness has been planted into your heart, let it flourish and let his value of you be the perspective of your life.

Go to his tent, listen to his words and let his love dwell in you richly.

God is After Us

"For why should I wander like a prostitute among your friends and your flock." Song of songs 1:7

What God is after is us.

We are the delight of his heart. He wants to enjoy and celebrate with us the wonder of his love.  To share with him in the beauty of his creation.

But it is this very idea that God wants to enjoy us that seems so difficult to grasp. Our minds are so rooted in the theology of the world that it we live a sort of Christian Karma, a spiritual blessing game of monopoly that as long as we land on the right squares it is all okay but as soon as we make the wrong move we are made to pay for it or at worse we might even be sent to jail.

Let's take a look at the book of Jonah where we are introduced  to a wonderful bunch of free spirited sailors. These seafaring traders were going about there daily lives when a Hebrew traveller asked them for a place on their ship to Spain. Not wanting to turn down a quick profit they are only too happy to take this extra load, after all this is easy money.

Somewhere on their journey, they start to experience the greatest storm that they had ever known. And it soon becomes a matter of survival, a desperate struggle to keep their ship afloat and save their lives.

The questions that enters their minds is where did this storm come from and where is God?

They cry out to their God’s to save them, but to no avail their God’s are silent, their God's are not rescuing them!

Deep within their ship lies the Hebrew fast asleep while they desperately trying to stay alive. Perhaps it is all to do with him? Before he came everything was all right! The only course of action is wake him up and get him to talk to his God.

Awakening Jonah awakened their hearts to the grace of God. Awakening Jonah awakened their hearts to the mercy of God. For the grace of God was always there, available and reaching out to them deep within the heart of the ship.

It is his grace extended to us even when we don't realise it and when we don't perceive it. Often we are more like the Sailors as we reach out to God as a last resort, we try everything in our own effort and finally we awaken ourselves to the reality of the sleeping Christ we have alive within the depths of our heart.

In Christ you no longer have to wander for He has found you.

You no longer are left searching in the darkness.

When the storms of life arise remember that in Christ you are one with him and his life is united to your life, his heart has become your heart.

So awaken your heart, your senses and experience the freedom of Christ alive deep within your heart.