Power Belongs to God

“God hath spoken once; twice have I heard this; that power belongeth unto God. Also unto thee, O Lord, belongeth mercy: for thou renderest to every man according to his work.” (Ps.62: 11,12 KJV)

My wife reminded me a while ago of the story of David fleeing from his son Absalom, and how at that distressing moment of his life a man called Shimei from the clan of Saul came out and began raining curses on him. She pointed out David’s reaction to Shimei’s provocation when David’s men spoke of killing Shimei. David said, “If he is cursing because the LORD said to him, ‘Curse David,’ who can ask, ‘Why do you do this?’… Leave him alone; let him curse, for the LORD has told him to. It may be that the LORD will see my distress and repay me with good for the cursing I am receiving today.” (2 Samuel 16:10 -12 – NIV)

David was  in effect saying that Shimei could not be cursing him if God had not allowed it. So he was not going to strive with Shimei or any other man, because he was not in their hands. David was confident that nothing could happen to him that God did not allow, and that if God had allowed it then he was not at the mercy of any situation or man, he was in the hands of God. Think about that.

In John 19:10 Pilate said to our Lord Jesus; “Don’t you realise I have power either to free you or to crucify you?” (NIV). And this is what our challenges seem to be saying to us, “Don’t you realise I have power to crucify you? I am in control and I have power to do whatever I like to you.” I don’t know what your challenge is as you read this, but often it seems like the forces at work around us and in us (and at times because of our mistakes) have the power to crucify us. But Jesus was not afraid because he knew who has the ultimate power. His reply to Pilate was similar to David’s, “You would have no power over me except that it is given to you from above”.

I want to encourage you that it doesn’t matter what the challenge is that you face – it has no power over you. Your life is in God’s hands and he is in control no matter what happens. He has the last say over our lives. And like the verse above says (Psalm 62:12), not only does all power belong to him, unto him also belongs mercy. Or, like the Good News Translation of that verse:

“More than once I have heard God say that power belongs to him and that his love is constant. You yourself, O Lord, reward everyone according to their deeds” (Ps. 62:11,12 GNB)

He will not fail. He will deliver. For with God it is always “Yea and amen” to all he has promised us. It doesn’t matter how strong other powers might be, God is stronger, and God is merciful!

February 2012 Prayer Bulletin

Dear Praying Friends, Find attached the CAPRO SA Prayer Bulletin for February. read more

Arise and Cry Out In The Night!

“Arise, cry out in the night, as the watches of the night begin; pour out your heart like water in the presence of the Lord.” Lam. 2: 19 (NIV)

This word came to a people who were going through what I call ‘the night of life’. As far as they were concerned, things could not be worse than what they were facing. Theirs were times that would make even strong hearts faint, yet the message begins with a call to ‘Arise…!’ This is because the easiest thing to do when we face the contrary winds of life is to sink down. We can sink down into discouragement, self-pity, anxiety, and fear.  All of these are sins and enemies of our soul, and until we realise this, we will continue to indulge in them. As long as we do, these enemies of our soul will continue to sap all the strength we need to fight in ‘the night of life’.

The thing to do in the face of ‘the night of life’ is to ARISE and cry out to God. To pray. All of life is war and we must fight for our very souls and for our families, neighbourhoods, and nations.

I remember what a brother had up on his wall in our university days – “Life is fragile, handle with prayer”. I was really impressed by the profoundness of this saying. Think about it. How frail, uncertain and fleeting everything is. Life is fragile, handle with prayer. David Wilkerson related what his father had said to him, “Son, God always makes a way for a praying man or woman”. Life is war and prayer is our weapon.

We must arise and fight ‘as the watches of the night begin’. It is most tempting to give in to sleep because we are overwhelmed with sorrows or just lazy. This was the difference between Jesus and his disciples. The bible says ‘And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly… (But) when he rose from prayer and went back to the disciples, he found them asleep, exhausted from sorrow’ (Luke 22:44-45 – NIV). Jesus prayed because of the anguish of his heart but the disciples went to sleep, because they had allowed their sorrows to exhaust them. But those who love sleep never win the battle. Beloved, get up and pray. Face your situation with diligent unrelenting prayer that will not spare your body. True prayer will always cost us something. Pray especially when you don’t feel like praying. Determine to keep praying until something happens.

“… Pour out your heart like water in the presence of the Lord”.

Be specific. Come to God determined to pour out your heart like water. Go into minute detail with God about what you are facing. I have found it helpful to take pen and paper and make a list of specific things I want to bring before the Lord. Then I go ahead and talk to him about each of them as if he didn’t know anything about them.

Things will never change if we do not pray and continue to pray. No matter how terrible and confused things have become, prayer will change things. We must give ourselves to prayer. It is not right to give up on our lives, our homes, and our businesses, or on  our ministries, neighbourhoods, nations and the lost world. We must arise and cry out in this night that is all around us. Let us stand in the gap and drive back the night.

Brethren, let us pray.

Father, awaken my heart. Help me not to faint in the face of battle. Help me to remember that greater is he that is in me than he that is in the world. Teach me to fight life’s battles on my knees, in Jesus’ Name.  Amen.

Arise and Shine

“Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD rises upon you. See, darkness covers the earth and thick darkness is over the peoples read more

December 2011 Prayer Bulletin

Dear Praying Friends, Find attached the CAPRO SA Prayer Bulletin for December. read more

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

The Burden of Men’s Expectation (Part 3)

Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. – Romans 8:1-2 NIV

There is guilt that comes from the burden of man’s expectations. We all grow up learning to live up to men’s expectations because we come from homes and communities where we have been brought up to do things in a certain way.  Most parents want the best for their beloved children and seek to bring them up in the way they know. Many of the ideals and expectations good parents have for their children mirror God’s expectations, but there are many others that are given more value than God would give them. Man’s expectations of us are not always God’s expectations, and there is peace when we know the difference.

The Pharisees were experts in placing requirements on men that produced guilt. The Lord Jesus spoke of this in Matthew 23:4 (NIV):

‘They (the Pharisees) tie up heavy loads and put them on men’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them’

Just like the Pharisees, men can tie up heavy loads of rules and regulations and put them on our shoulders.  Some of our guilt may come from religious rules of men or organisations. Some of us are like the elder brother of the prodigal son who, though he never left the house, was so entangled with self-imposed rules that he never experienced the liberty of being a son of the Father. He was never free to experience what the Father meant by ‘everything I have is yours’ (Luke 16:31b).

Some of our weight of guilt may come from societal or cultural expectations. They too tie heavy loads on men’s shoulders. Many of us are concerned that we are not man or woman enough; or that we do not measure up in one area or another; or that our families are not ‘normal’ enough. (By the way what is ‘normal’?). A sister was saying recently how guilty she feels from always falling short of what she has grown up to believe is expected of her. This lady was speaking of her inability to live up to ‘the proper English (British) way’. It is important that we differentiate between man’s expectations and God’s expectations. Sometimes, even unconsciously, we allow the TV, the internet and other social interactions to shape for us what is ‘normal’ and expected of us. Too many of us then live under some burden of guilt because of not being ‘normal’. Many of these expectations try to make us look good on the outside, but God is seeking to make us like Christ.

We may be surprised to find out how many of our expectations and goals are influenced by what our culture and society expect of us. Even when they are not bad, these  expectations of men can be given more weight than God gives them. And sometimes they may even be opposed to what God wants of us.

‘Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day. These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ’ (Colossians 2: 16-17 NIV)

Paul is here calling the Colossians away from living their lives to measure up to the judgement of others. He calls them to live for Christ. A child of God is called to live to please Christ, not to try to live up to the expectations of society. We must not be afraid of ‘not measuring up’ according to man’s scale, when we are keeping in step with Christ. God is calling us away from the bondage of living for man’s opinion. It is a trap!

‘Fear of man will prove to be a snare, but whoever trusts in the LORD is kept safe’ Proverbs 29:25 (NIV).

‘The fear of human opinion disables; trusting in God protects you from that.’ Proverbs 29:25 (The Message)

Beloved, let us walk away from the snare of living for men’s opinions. There is protection and safety in trusting  in God’s way and walking in it.. There is freedom from guilt in living for God. He loves us and calls us to walk in the light he has shown us.  He calls us to repent and receive the cleansing of the blood of Christ that freely purifies us from all sin and guilt:

‘But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin’ (1 John 1:7 NIV)

This is freedom indeed!