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The Definition of Perfect is You!

| View Comments | Wednesday, April 28, 2010
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The definition of perfect is you, yes you! You as in the one reading this blog right now! What? You don't believe me? You think I'm lying? I never lie...

Hebrews 10:14 "...because by one sacrifice He has made PERFECT forever those who are being made holy."

Ok, maybe I do tell the occasional lie - but the Word of God doesn't! Let the passage above sit with you a little while and think about the enormity of it, it's ridiculously overboard!

What Hebrews 10:14 is saying is that you are PERFECT! God sees you perfect and that's it! Everything you are, who you are and what you are is PERFECT in His eyes! Not because of anything other than one thing and that one thing Hebrews says was the "one perfect sacrifice" which is...JESUS!

When we accept Jesus into our lives we become PERFECT in the eyes of God as we become covered by the blood of Jesus and become new creations having received new life - everything we were, what we were, who we were etc is gone and the new has come ( 2 Corinthians 5:17 )!

It's one thing to know this but another to believe it and actually live in the new creation we have become! To live in it fully first starts with seeing ourselves as God sees us - PERFECT! Not as man sees, perceives or classifies us! As Christians we live according to the standards, promises and declarations of God and not according to man made orders that only bring bondage and defeat - simply because we were not designed or created to conform to them and will therefore never be able to! Being made perfect, how can we conform to a set of substandard and imperfect 'norms'?

Secondly Hebrews says we are still being made holy - this is called sanctification and will continue until we enter heaven! Perfection and sanctification are two different things. Sanctification is still occurring in our lives because we are not faultless, we do stuff up, we do give in to the flesh etc etc... but in all this God still says we are PERFECT! Our perfection is not because we are completely sanctified, nor is it dependent on how sanctified we are - our perfection in the eyes of God is because we have accepted the one sacrifice - Jesus and nothing else!

And so having accepted Jesus into your life you are PERFECT, you have received a perfection that is from and God alone, no man can change that or take it away! So live in that - it opens the doors into everything else but most importantly it opens the doors to the Father that self and man generated unworthiness closes!

bradlows...

Ten pin Bowling

| View Comments | Saturday, April 24, 2010
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There's nothing quite like when you run up to that alley, throw that ball down it and watch as all the pins go fying...

STRIKE!

That is a super cool feeling.

Now imagine you are that bowling ball, shooting towards the pins.

Hold your horses, you might say, bowling balls can't throw themselves!

Well friends, I have some great news for you! We don't just have anybody throwing us down that alley. We have the Son of God. We have Jesus!
Can I get a whoop whoop?!

Jesus will always get a strike. Why? Coz He's perfect. Duh.

Now I don't know about you, but I have never seen a bowling ball sprout legs and waltz down the alley by itself. If you have, get off the drugs, it's bad for you.

Bowling balls need the bowler, and the bowler needs bowling balls.

See that? That's what I like to call a relationship.

God can use you in the most radical and amazing ways! Ways that are thought to be impossible.
But how can He use you to strike when you refuse to let Him throw you, when you refuse to trust Him with your life?

Answer: He can't.

Do you want to be a 'gutterball' at the end of the day, a waste a perfect opportunity to get a strike?

Or do you want to be the ball that's always striking, causing raucous chaos for the Kingdom of God?

Friends, when you give your life to Jesus, you actually are GIVING YOUR LIFE. Not just parts that seem convenient. Parts of a bowling ball are useless. That isn't going to affect the pins at all. You WILL fail if you try to do it alone, walking your own path.
But if you put yourself in His hands, and allow Him to set you on the path He wants you to take down that alley way, we will start to see greater miracles than in the Bible!

Woah, sounds unbelievable right?

WRONG!

That old cliche springs to mind.
"Let go, and let God."

It's time to stop being gutterballs, and time to start being strikes!

(Thanks Andi!)

The mosaic of God's purposes

| View Comments | Tuesday, April 20, 2010
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How long will you stand on the sidelines and spectate as though you did not belong in this display of God's splendor?

The mosaic of God's purposes is the most colourful, vibrant, emotive, beautiful and diverse of all the artworks of this planet. It is the reflection of His glory, His splendor, His character, His person. It tells us when He cries and when He laughs, it tells us when He's watching and waiting and it tells us when He's reaching in and restoring.

What does it look like?
Objects of God's wrath being transformed into the objects of His mercy.
Babies who were destined to die on park benches and in rubbish bins, alone and abandoned, now being put into homes with parents who never bore them but chose them. Hungry families being fed.The sick being healed.The oppressed being freed. Those who have much giving to those who have nothing. These are some of the many pieces that make up this precious mosaic.

The mosaic is you and me. Everyone of us has a spot in this mosaic. We're a perfect fit, God has purposed that you would fill a specific gap in the mosaic.

But unfortunately, many feel like they don't fit, they are detached. They feel like a loose piece, fallen from their place. Disqualified to participate, a spectator.

How do we become the loose piece in the mosaic? How do we become the unsightly gap in this work of art?

Do we have a part to play?
Jeremiah 17: 4 - through your own fault, you will lose the inheritance I gave you.

This is what God says to the Israelites, a nation who had turned their back on the Creator and worshipped created things.

They took 40 years to enter into their inheritance when it should've taken them less than two weeks, because they followed other gods. Just the same, we will walk around and around in the desert and not enter into our inheritance if we continue to follow those things that are more important to us than God's will.
Our inheritance is to be a part of the mosaic of God's purposes, to find our place in the activity of His kingdom. You will never find that place if you follow created things. Follow the Creator and you will find yourself deeply embedded in His purposes.

Many feel unworthy

Jeremiah 18:3-4
So i went down to the potter's house and I saw him working at the wheel. But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him.

Many feel marred in the hands of God. You feel like waste, like he's going to throw you in the bin because he can't use you. But, the beauty about God is that He never wastes, He never disposes of that which is in His hands. If it's in His hands, He'll use it.
When we place ourselves in the hands of God and allow Him to shape us as seems best to Him, He shapes us into someone He can use as a display of His splendor.

Repentance is when we lay ourselves at His mercy, and choose to submit to His will and His ways rather than follow our own. It's interesting that it says "shaping it as seemed best to him". So often we want to dictate to God what kind of pot we want to be and what we want to be used for. It's time to allow Him to be God.

Every one of us, at some time, were in rebellion to God. All of us were excluded from His purposes, not one of us had any place in His mosaic.

Jeremiah 18:12 - we all replied, "It's no use. We will continue with our own plans, each of us will follow the stubbornness of his evil heart"

And therefore this is what God said to us,

Jeremiah 18: 17 - I will show them my back and not my face on the day of their disaster.

That's the justice of God, that's exactly what we all deserve.

But,

on the day of HIS disaster, as Jesus hung on the cross, his blood dripping down the length of his body, the agony of his deep wounds sapping his strength, he lifted his head towards His Father. He needed to look into his Father's face one last time to receive that last ounce of strength he'd need to see this through.
And as he strained his head upwards what did he see?

He saw his Father's back turned to him.

And he cried, "My God, My God why have you forsaken me?"

Me, the one who lived a sinless life of perfect righteousness, why me?!

And i believe the Father's response would've been,
"I turned my back on you, my son, so that I never have to turn my back them"
and as he said "them" He pointed to you and me.

The good news is that everyone of us were disqualified but now because of Jesus,

Colossians 1:12 - giving thanks to the Father who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light.

It's only because of Jesus that any of us have a part in this inheritance of being in God's amazing mosaic, and it's because of Jesus that there's a gap waiting for you to fill it.

What is our response?

Romans 12:1 - therefore I urge you brothers, in view of God's mercy, offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God, this is your spiritual act of worship.

Throw yourself into the hands of the potter and say
"shape me as seems best to you and do with me as you wish"

It's the mercy of God that releases us into his purposes.

Embrace His mercy today.

"Dirty" Theology

| View Comments | Wednesday, April 7, 2010
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Dirty Theology

Here in cape Town I’ve had the unfortunate opportunity to witness a few red-faced “zealots” standing on there soap boxes at various public junctions preaching to all and sundry. “Repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand!” one cried while another screamed “You are all doomed to hell!”. The first question that popped into my head was “Why do they always seem to have American accents and secondly, “Is anybody actually listening?”. As I stood open mouthed and watched for a while, I realized that everybody around this area began to either walk a lot faster, looked in the complete opposite direction or tried miserably to cover the embarrassment on their faces. As I have carried on my way past these men, my thoughts continued down the track that these guys have plucked up the courage, put themselves out there and then probably returned to their churches to share testimony of how they “shared the Gospel”! But there is no joy in my heart as I see this done. I believe they are doing a lot more harm than good!

I’ve recently come across the term of “dirty theology”. At first I thought it was a christian response to some heretical teachings but as I looked a little closer, I realized that it was something that I kinda liked. “Dirty theology” quite simply is just a colloquial term used to describe what we need to be living out a little more. The Jesus I read about in the bible never stood up and beat people with theological arguments!(except when it was in response to the pharisees). All I ever see him doing is touching the leper that no one else would. Jesus was most often with the despised, the rejected and the down-trodden. His weekly diary was filled with visits to the hated tax collector’s house, a drink with a woman from the other side of the tracks and feeding crowds of hungry people.

For me, we have for too long preached our “clean theology” AT people!

In Luke 5 we see Jesus preaching when he notices two boats on the shore. He gets in one of them, pushes out a little distance and then continues to preach to the people on the shoreline. Next, he tells Simon (the guy who owned the boat) to cast his net on the other side. Simon responds by saying that he has been fishing all night and caught nothing, but because Jesus says so,he will do it. What follows is a miraculous hauling in of incredible numbers of fish that the nets start to break. Seeing this, Simon throws himself at Jesus' feet and cries "I am a sinful man!". This is the famous juncture that Jesus says "From now on you will become fisher's of men".
Dirty theology in action.
Jesus preaches from WITHIN their culture (in their boats) and not AT their culture. Simon realises his sinful state not because Jesus highlights it to him but because Jesus shows him his goodness! I am fast realising that the Gospel makes much of Jesus and of the fact that he is good!Our realisation of sin is not because their is a hell, but because there is a God that is good! After all, it is the kindness of God that leads us to repentance!


Just a few thoughts...


Now I'm going to get myself "dirty"...


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