No More Strength to Deliver the Vision?

“Do I bring to the moment of birth and not give delivery?” says the LORD.
“Do I close up the womb when I bring to delivery?” says your God.  – Isaiah 66:9 (NIV)

What do you do when you feel like giving up? What do you do when you have given your all to a thing that seemed to be heading somewhere and suddenly it not only breaks down, but does so beyond possible repair? What do you do when you get to the time when the vision you have carried in your womb should be birthed and you find you have no more strength to push it out? This was the case of King Hezekiah:

‘“This is what Hezekiah says: This day is a day of distress and rebuke and disgrace, as when children come to the point of birth and there is no strength to deliver them’ 2 Kings 19: 3 (NIV)

Hezekiah had taken over as king, after years of a moral downward slide in the kingdom of Judah that gradually impoverished the country and enslaved the people to their neighbours. I can imagine Hezekiah observing all this as he grew up, and a vision forming in the womb of his soul to see the kingdom restored to its past glory.

At the age of twenty-five Hezekiah became king and got his chance to pursue his vision – this thing God had put in his heart. He was a good student of the Scriptures and of history, and so had rightly diagnosed the trouble with Judah to be her backsliding. So Hezekiah set himself to restore the true worship of Jehovah in Judah. His simple and wise formula must have been something like this: – ‘Our tragedy is not the many things we have lost, but that we have lost our God. Let us return to the Lord. Let us find him again for he is all we need’.  It takes wisdom to simplify life to its basic essentials, especially in the midst of a multitude of woes, when men are inclined to manufacture many ‘self-help’ rescue plans.

But Hezekiah sought the Lord with all that he had;

‘Hezekiah trusted in the LORD, the God of Israel. There was no one like him among all the kings of Judah, either before him or after him. He held fast to the LORD and did not cease to follow him; he kept the commands the LORD had given Moses’ 2 Kings 18: 5-6 (NIV).

And he found God. God shows up when men seek him with all their heart like this man did.

‘And the LORD was with him; he was successful in whatever he undertook. He rebelled against the king of Assyria and did not serve him. From watchtower to fortified city, he defeated the Philistines, as far as Gaza and its territory’ – 2 Kings 18: 7-8 (NIV)

When you focus on seeking God with all your heart, you will find him, and he will enlarge you. God began to grant this man a foretaste of the manifestation of the vision that had been in his womb all those years. I can imagine that at this stage Hezekiah was walking around and thinking; ‘Any time now – maybe next year or the next, this kingdom will truly arise in glory like the days of old.’

But suddenly trouble arose. The powerful king of Assyria threatened to stamp out the little change that was budding in Judah. And it was not a vain boast for this man had just swallowed up stronger Israel and carted them off into captivity.

It was not that Hezekiah was not expecting troubles as he pursued his vision (he had already faced a few), but this was much more than he had imagined. This was just too much.

Hence my question this week beloved, ‘What do you do when you are faced with much more trouble than you can imagine? What do you do when your vision is threatened with death before delivery? What do you do when hope runs out?’ Do what Hezekiah did. Hezekiah turned to God. In his weariness and helplessness, he threw himself on God again, and though the trouble did not disappear immediately, God finally intervened for him. God helped him bring that baby to birth. It did not die. If God is the originator of that vision in your bosom then he will also be the midwife to make sure it is brought to birth. Hear God’s questions to you:

“Do I bring to the moment of birth
and not give delivery?” says the LORD.
“Do I close up the womb
when I bring to delivery?” says your God.  – Isaiah 66:9

And the answer is: No!. God will finish what he has started in you.

There may be some of you who are on the verge of a divorce, or considering resigning from ministry or planning to close up your business, because the trouble has grown far bigger than you had envisaged. Please don’t give up. Instead surrender to God again. Let him take over, and let him show you what to do.

The Vow of A Nazirite

“May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world” ~ Galatians 6:14 (NIV)

Some people do not want an on-fire Christianity, they want a tamed one.  We live in a world where the word ‘tolerance’ has become a mantra and everyone is trying to blend in with everyone else. Jesus said ‘you are in the world but not part of this world’. Yet too many Christians are trying hard to blend in. But that type of Christianity never does anybody any good. In the bid to be respectable and acceptable to everyone it ends up helping no one. It is empty and cannot serve God or man. This hurting and lost world comes with hope to such men-pleasing faith and returns without healing. We are called to love men and be agents of God’s healing in this lost and sick world. But it is only as we learn to be separate from the system of this world and undefiled by it, that we can fulfil this calling. O how desperate the need of the harassed masses in our world today for sons and daughters of the kingdom who can bring God’s power down to save!

In Numbers 6 we read of the vow of a Nazirite – a vow of separation from the world, to the Lord. A Nazirite was never to take wine. He was not to allow anything to intoxicate his heart and blunt his love for God. A Nazirite heart has room for only one love and obsession – God. And every believer is called to be a Nazirite with a vow of separation to Christ.

Samson had a Nazirite vow upon his life, but he flirted with the world. Intoxicated by the wine of fleshy lust for the opposite sex he became unfaithful to his Master and consequently crippled in his ability to win his world for God. Samson was betrayed, disgraced and mocked by the very woman for whose love he had sacrificed his vow. When we ignore our Nazirite vow we attract shame.

The Apostle Paul was an example of one who was true to his Nazirite vow. It was his undivided devotion to the Lord Jesus that made the Governor Festus cry out “You are out of your mind, Paul!” (Acts 26:24 NIV). It was Paul’s love for his Master that made him seem mad to men and it also made men mad at him. We are mistaken if we think everybody is going to be happy with us if we are focused on pleasing Jesus. Our call is to love all men, not to please all men.

True love for man is born out of love for the Father. And you cannot walk in this love and be satisfied with the ‘normal’ Christianity that loves to play it safe and tries to blend in with the world. You cannot walk in this love and still love the world. Those two types of love are mutually exclusive.

‘Stop loving this evil world and all that it offers you, for when you love the world, you show that you do not have the love of the Father in you.  For the world offers only the lust for physical pleasure, the lust for everything we see, and pride in our possessions. These are not from the Father. They are from this evil world. And this world is fading away, along with everything it craves. But if you do the will of God, you will live forever’ (1 John 2:15-17 NLT)

Every believer is called to be a Nazirite with a vow of separation to Christ.  A Nazirite will not accept the wine the world offers:

–   the lust for physical pleasure (living to satisfy our fleshy desires and appetites),
–   the lust for everything we see (the desire to accumulate),
–   the pride in our possessions (the distorted mentality that we are what we have).

Our Lord Jesus did not try to blend in with his time. It was passionate love that made him ignore the approval of men and the lure of ‘respectability’. It was passionate love for the Father and for lost men that took him to the cross.

The call to follow Christ is not just a call to live, it is also a call to die. It is not just a call to love, it is also a call to hate. We are called to hate the perverse seductive ways of men. We are called to hate the world and all its glittering offers.

I encourage you to embrace your Nazirite call today by offering yourself without reserve to God and receiving a fresh baptism of God’s love that will result in holiness and a willingness to give your all to reach the lost around you and those in the regions beyond.

Do you stumble in a Safe country?

Jeremiah 12:5 “If you have raced with men on foot and they have worn you out, how can you compete with horses? If you stumble in safe country, how will you manage in the thickets by the Jordan?”

The first part of this popular verse has always pre-occupied me in the past, but recently the phrase ‘stumble in safe country’ caused me to reflect a bit.

Part of the way God provides for our growth in Christ is to place us in a ‘safe country’. These are often the places where he teaches us new things in a controlled environment. God’s classroom for building his servants is not always in the Bible School, but out there in life as you ‘race with men on foot’. God would never thrust us out to ‘compete with horses’ until he has prepared us in ‘the safe country’ by ‘racing with men on foot’.

The problem is, that many of us do not recognise our ‘safe country’ as an opportunity to grow, but rather we relax because we put our trust in our land of safety as if it would always be there. (NKJV  puts that section of the verse this way; ‘in the land of peace, in which you trusted’). It is possible to be at peace in our ‘safe country’, but often the safe country is a challenging place, and some do not grow because they react against the restrictions, inconveniences or limitations that their ‘safe country’ brings upon them.

In the case of Jeremiah, he was not happy with the circumstances that faced him. He was complaining at the start of this chapter (12) on how unfair things were around him. The Lord’s reply to him was in essence something like this: “Can’t you see you are in a safe country, if you are not able to stand the pressures here, how are you going to be prepared to face the greater challenges ahead?” The safe country is not always a comfortable place, but it is a safe place in which to grow.

The best natural parallel of this spiritual principle is the way God places children in homes under their parents. It provides them with a safe place to grow and prepare for the tough demands of adulthood when they must ‘compete against horses’. But we find many teenagers who, instead of making the most of the ‘safe country’ of their homes for growth and preparation for the future, are only focussed on getting away from the restrictions of their parents! In the same way God has brought many of us into a safe country, but we are not making the most of it to grow, but are rather focussed on getting away from it, because of the challenges it poses.

How do we recognise when we are in a safe country? Let me suggest a few things you may use to identify your ‘safe country’:

• When God places people around you who accept you as part of their community;
• When God gives you people who can see the person you are called to be, and who feel a responsibility to bear you up in prayer;
• When God gives you people who feel a responsibility to speak into your life;
• When you are in a place where you are allowed to make mistakes, but, at the same time, be challenged to change by the people and circumstances around you.

There are too many who stumble in their safe country. Ours is a generation of prodigals who would do anything to flee the transparency and accountability that close relationships bring. So we are often unwilling to know and be known as we really are, by those around us. There are also those of us who are so concerned about not making mistakes that we are not using our safe country to grow by stepping out in faith to stretch ourselves for God.

I was talking with a friend who serves as a pastor under a senior pastor but who senses a future call one day to start a church. I spoke of the need to make the most of the ‘safe country’ God has given him to grow, by serving beyond the call of duty.

I want to encourage you to seek God’s help to identify your safe country and to seize the opportunity to grow, by choosing to submit yourself to your community through openness and honesty; and by daring to venture after the things God has put in your heart to do, under the cover of your community.

November 2011 Prayer Bulletin

“This poor man cried, and the LORD heard him, and saved him out of all his troubles” – Psalm 34:6

Dear Praying Friends,

Please download the CAPRO SA Prayer Bulletin for November here.

We truly appreciate the few minutes you put into lifting these prayer items up.

God is doing great things through your prayers. For example in the past two months one of out study groups in a Muslim village in Malawi has gone from just one convert to 19! In the past month so many lives continue to be impacted through our discipleship work on the campuses and in churches and new labourers are being raised for the missions field.

It is because of your prayers.

David aptly describes prayer in that popular verse – ‘This poor man cried, and the LORD heard him, and saved him out of all his troubles.~Psalm 34:6

Prayer is man crying out of his helplessness to the LORD – the Almighty One and experiencing the salvation of God. Prayer releases God’s  POWER and I speak reverently. That is why we thank you for giving the few minutes daily to cry out to God on our behalf with this bulletin. You may be physically far from us but you are by your prayers releasing God’s power on our work among the nations.

As we begin November let us pray on with expectancy because God will do great things.

Our God answers prayers! Thank you for your partnership with us!

Chim
for the CAPRO SA Team