Standing firm

"Is following Jesus the most important thing in your life right now?"

"Do we want more of God in our lives?"

"What are we willing to give away in order to receive his blessing?"

"How generous are we willing to be in order to grow beyond our current status?"

"When all that goes on around us seems to be heading for certain destruction and heartache, are we ready as the church to be generous in spirit to scoop up the broken pieces and minister God’s grace?"

One of my day to day roles as a teacher is not to give you all the answers. I can try to teach you facts or give you some advice which might lead to actions on your part… Or I could try to appeal to your emotions so that you could respond with empathy towards what is going on in the world… Or I could show you how as Christians, we are supposed to respond in the world, and let you be the solution… I think I know which part God might prefer – faith is active and as John Wimber is famed as saying, faith is spelt RISK.

Taking a risk with God is the scariest and yet the most fulfilling thing we can do with our lives because that is where the rubber hits the road. Putting your faith into action reveals the courage you have in your convictions.

You may decide to agree or disagree with what I am speaking on today but what God is interested in, is the thinking process that goes on in your mind and the transformation that goes on in your heart through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. These encounters with God help to define who we are in Christ. It helps to shape us and mould us through the grace of God being poured into our lives.  

Be on guard, Stand firm in the faith. Be courageous. Be strong and do everything with love. (1 Corinthians 16:13)

Every Christian gets weary and the feelings we once had of God can fade with time. Feelings cone and go so it is important that behind the emotion of what we choose to belief, we have truth. Can we know truth?

The enemy of God tries every trick he knows to make us doubt the truth of our conversion to Christianity; there may be someone here today who has never put their complete trust in God because they are unsure – there are some nagging doubts... our uncertainty breeds the question in the corner of our mind, ‘Am I truly saved?’

If we really want to know God; to be able to draw close to him, we need to stop hiding behind the excuses that we think exclude us from serving God and his people.

We need to stop repeating those actions from our past that prevent us from believing that we are unworthy to offer God anything. Believe it when I say that Jesus hung on the cross for all of our sin, all of your sin, and all of my sin... and I mean all of it, even the stuff that is hidden in the deepest corners of our subconscious.

Jesus is the light that shines in the darkness; ‘God is light; in him there is no darkness.’ (1 John 1:5). When Jesus makes a home in our heart, he is going to reveal things about us that we thought were hidden, yet through his love and grace we can prayerfully cast these things onto our Lord who loves us unconditionally and saves us completely.  Yet we still waver… we still stumble about in the darkness because we are not willing to give ourselves fully to him. 

Jesus is the only truth we need to know, in order for us to stand firm in our faith: Jesus loves us more than we will ever know. Do you believe that Jesus loves you enough to sacrifice himself? It wasn’t the nails that held him there on the cross-it was his love.

The world we live in has many distractions for our faith life, with many pit falls that we should be on our guard against. Jesus countered these attacks from his enemies by using God’s word that we read today in the bible.

Jesus stood firm through using God’s promises as an antidote to the circumstance he was in. If Jesus had to do this, how much time should we spend reading the Bible? There is always something better to do?

“Dear children, keep away from anything that might take God’s place in your hearts.”(1 John 5:21)

There are many modern examples of worldly pleasures that hinders Christians and non-Christians in their search for God? Pornography is one we could pick on for example. I was looking on Facebook for a link to some information that I wanted to use in this talk today and was distracted by an image posted by a family man, of a link to view sexualised tattoos.

I suppose you could look at the tattoo and say great artwork. However, if you struggle with pornography or have been tempted by it, this type of temptation, which crops up all over the internet can catch you out unawares and before you know, you have clicked the link.

A good defence against this is to keep in mind that Jesus’ body was pierced on the cross so that we can be rid of it… we have to do our part by avoiding using technology that could allow us to view pornography.

Pornography gets into our head and pollutes our thinking, it ruin’s relationships and it destroys the soul.

Jesus said that if you were to even look at another man or woman, you have committed adultery with them in your heart. (Matthew 5:28) Jesus is making a reference to the 10 commandments – you should not covet your neighbour’s wife.

If we deal with the problem of why we are looking at a person in such a way in the first place, then we would have nothing to act upon. It is amazing to observe the anticipation in the press for the new ‘50 shades of Grey’ movie? Is it really a fantasy?

This is dangerous ground for the Christian to stand on as it undermines God’s purpose and will for how we should go about forming loving relationships.  Now there will always be someone else saying ‘it is harmless, a bit of fun’ –but is it?

Others might suggest that ‘Your fears are your own sense of guilt, not mine. Just because you can’t handle it doesn’t mean it’s wrong’. Can turning another human being into an object, devoid of personality or feeling be truly what God wants?

When we stumble over these kinds of issues in our lives, whether it be gambling, our body image, alcohol or substance abuse, lying and cheating, the guilt or shame we sense as a result, starts to make us believe that we are not good enough to serve God. This is what the enemy of God, the devil, will feed on.

These negative emotions, feed the internal battle going on in your heart and your mind, enslaving you, yet God’s truth is designed to set you free… the enemy doesn’t want you to be free. It’s the enemy that is whispering lies about you… this is why Jesus hung on the cross.

The Gospel story isn’t about enslaving people, it’s about releasing people into a wholeness of character that is completed in you through being immersed in the Holy Spirit. There isn’t anything that we can do except to seek God’s grace. When we truly stop desiring fulfilment from the things  that the world would want to ensnare us with, then we will be truly free… we cannot do this on our own. We need to be transformed by the renewing of our mind and our heart.

‘God sent him to buy freedom for us who were slaves to the law, so that he could adopt us as his very own children (Galatians 4:5)’

As a Christian, we are always in danger of attack from natural and supernatural forces at work in the world – some we can see, some we can’t. This spiritual battle began in the Garden of Eden when the devil asks the question – ‘Did God really say?’ (Genesis 3:1).

The enemy of God taught humanity to question God’s authority over us, in favour of developing our own sense of reasoning. It wasn’t enough for us to take God’s word for it, we have to find out for ourselves.

It wasn’t that the apple had magic powers… it was the loss of innocence. By ignoring our conscious reading in pursuit of the unknown, we forfeit our right to be with God. 

‘The woman was convinced. She saw that the tree was beautiful and its fruit looked delicious, and she wanted the wisdom it would give her…’(Genesis 3:6)

These same forces are at work today. They try to rob us of our happiness and our enjoyment of life. We can be enslaved by money, status, career, our level of education, addictions of every kind; but more importantly, when we are encouraged to seek comfort in any of these worldly traps, the devil has a way in to our lives… he tries to establish a foothold.

We might struggle with money for example, for most of us it is with the perception that we don’t have enough money, rather than having too much! However, if you have upgraded your phone recently or dare I say, been on holiday, you are indeed rich. If your family income is £30,000 or over, you are in the top 4% of earners in the world… the media would have us believe that someone who claims their full quota of benefits available to them, can claim £26,000 per year (capped) – which is perceived to be unfair. If this is true, then it is a healthy wage. With God, it’s not how much money we have got, but what we choose to do with it that counts.

I would say that you know when you are really poor; when you have barely enough money to cover food and rent… there is nothing else left in your purse and you have to decide what takes priority. God is with you in this situation too, no matter how hard it is- the church as well as the government has its role to play in working this through in your life.

I was brought up on benefits from the age of 12, when my parents separated and later divorced. It was a time when housing benefit payments could be used towards the interest on a mortgage, rather than all going to a landlord. So we managed to stay in the family home at least. We didn’t do family holidays, we didn’t wear branded clothing, nor did we regularly eat-out… We all take these things for granted these days...

Where we poor back then? Probably yes – but our aspirations were lower too. I’m not making a judgement about what we think we have or don’t have. I’m using the emotion of what I am saying to move you to think clearly about what we actually have…

"Our approach to money or the lack of it, can cause us to stumble if the status that goes with it becomes something we aspire to."

I was asked by a friend who is a ‘couch surfer’, for some money the other day. He stank of alcohol but as he wouldn’t be paid till Tuesday, and he still needed some smokes… could he borrow some money as £10 a day wasn’t enough for a single man to live on. He shouldn’t expect to have to live this way when he was English... you can fill in the gaps with how the rest of the conversation went.

My point is this. When questioning the choices he had made to spend what little money he had on alcohol and cigarettes, he considered these items to be more essential to him than gaining a permanent home, hence his couch surfing. To counter my questions, he asked me what I would do if I was homeless like him? I’d buy a tent, a sleeping bag and perhaps a camping gas so at least I could make myself a cup of tea.

It’s our sense of perspective that determines our actions… if all hope is lost, what we fill our lives with – defines our reality. ‘Things’ can only offer short term fixes to the issue that is really bothering us. We start turning our circumstances into excuses as to why we cannot offer more of ourselves to God and to the life of the church and they become masks that we wear or barriers that we build, to protect ourselves from our pain and our regrets.

God can free you; Jesus is here to save… Are we going to continue to let the enemy of God continue to whisper in our ear’s that we are not worthy. You have to offer all of this up to God – 

"Father, I don’t want this pain, this loneliness, this despair; the heartache and the bitterness; the secret thoughts that lurk at the back of my mind which somehow seem to lock me into a downward spiral. I am desperate for your presence in my life and I confess my sin. Now come Lord Jesus I pray. Fill my heart with your love; come and seal the covenant you have made with me by your shed blood on the cross; come and cleanse me through the power of the Holy Spirit; and release me into a new life with you."

We should be mindful of the truth of the Gospel and guard ourselves against false teaching, false thinking – do not let what the world offers, cause us to drift away from what we once believed to be true. As soon as we sense that our faith is wavering or that our faith has limited importance in how we choose to live, then we are in danger of losing the essence of what defines us as Christians.

If we dilute the truth of the Gospel, it will have no meaning and become even more unpalatable to us because we will be again in conflict between what God wants of us and what we want for ourselves. Our pain from the guilt we feel, slowly suffocates to the point where we either renounce our faith completely, or follow the path that leads to bitterness.

Our faith in Jesus leads us into a generous outpouring of his love, both into our lives and through our charitable and hospitable actions. Instead of fulfilling our selfish ambition, we search for opportunity to share our faith life above all other things which we think we need in life. Our faith should determine the natural course of life – no longer living for self, but living for the one who has rescued us.

We have so often got this the wrong way round… we bolt the God stuff onto our lives like an appendix to a book, rather than our faith life being the main narrative. This helps us to stand our ground against the hand of the enemy who seeks to destroy that which God wants to build up in us.

Jesus is the author of life and defines what is true, what is good and what is beautiful. You are beautiful. Don’t let anyone or anything distract you from the love of God. “I am come that you might have life, and have it more abundantly (John 10:10). Fulfilment can only come when we submit to Gods will for our lives and know truly in our hearts, that only in Jesus, can we understand our purpose in this world and the one to come.