According To Your Promise

Basing our lives on the promises of God – which are ‘Yes’ and ‘Amen in Christ Jesus (2 Cor 1:20) – is the only way we can really live according to God’s ways. Tonight we looked at five promises of God found in Psalm 119:

God’s Unfailing Love & Salvation

‘May Your unfailing love come to me, Lord, Your salvation, according to Your promise.’ (Ps 119:41)

God’s unfailing love brings salvation to us and enables us to stand firm. ‘Salvation’ means to be rescued from the consequences of sin and disobedience and to be led into a relationship of unfailing love, where God is our heavenly Father who loves to give us good gifts. (James 1:17)

God’s Grace

‘I have sought your face with all my heart; be gracious to me according to Your promise.’ (Ps 119:58)

God’s grace, His unearned favour, is the foundation of His dealings with us (see Eph 2:8-9). We cannot manage on our own; our righteousness is as filthy rags. (Is 64:6) We need grace and mercy; we need God to treat us not as our sins deserve. (Ps 103:10)

God’s Sustaining Power

‘Sustain me, my God, according to Your promise, and I will live; do not let my hopes be dashed.’ (Ps 119:116)

To be sustained means to receive the help, support and strength we need to live; this verse connects it also to hope. Hope is probably the thing that we need most on a daily basis. If we have no hope, no expectation that God will do anything, then we will soon become depressed and despondent. Without hope and the expectation that God is involved in our daily lives, there really is no point to life. But the Bible paints a very different picture of life with God. The Message version talks of there not being ‘enough containers to hold everything God generously pours into our lives through the Holy Spirit!’ (Rom 5:5, The Message) This is a picture of hope, a roomful of containers into which God pours His blessings and gifts, rather like those six massive jars filled with water which Jesus turned into wine at the wedding at Cana. (John 2:6-10)

God’s Preservation

‘Preserve my life according to Your promise.’ (Ps 119:154)

David is in awe of God’s majesty and wonders ‘what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?’ (Ps 8:4) The Bible teaches, right from the start of creation, that humanity is special, made in God’s image, made to be in relationship with God. Because of this, whatever our needs, whatever troubles we face in life, we can ask God to defend our cause and redeem us and preserve our lives.

God’s Deliverance

‘May my supplication come before You; deliver me according to Your promise.’ (Ps 119:170)

Deliverance is very similar to preservation. The psalmist asks for God to deliver him, to rescue him, to help him according to His promise. Like all the other prayers, it presupposes that God hears and answers prayer because He cares about us.

How can we expect God to behave towards us, based on His word?

We can expect God to save us, to show love towards us and to be gracious to us.

We can expect God to sustain us, preserve our lives and deliver us from evil.

Our hope in these things is not based on our goodness or our merit. We put our hope in God and pray that every promise He has made to us in Christ Jesus will be fulfilled, according to His faithfulness. Amen.

 

Filters

Filters in photography are sheets of glass or resin which are attached to the lens of the camera. They can be very useful for capturing scenery in extremely difficult lighting conditions; they can enhance colours and reduce reflections, and they can simply protect lenses. Filters are widely used in photography and cinematography. Some photographers only use filters in rare situations, while others rely on filters for their everyday work. Nowadays, lens filters are often used to modify the light before it enters the lens. You may see on some landscape photographs the boast that ‘no filters were used’, meaning that the photograph captures the scene exactly as it was! As I understand it, filters alter what we see. They change what we see; they manipulate what we see.

We live in a filtered world, whether we are aware of this or not. We are born sinful; our perspective, our eyesight, is skewed from Day 1. Sin has spoiled God’s original creation, and we live in a world that is somehow both indifferent to and hostile to God. The natural state of the world is alienated from God. Paul describes the ‘natural state’ in Ephesians 2: ‘You let the world, which doesn’t know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience. We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat.’ (Eph 2:1-3, The Message) The world filters what we see, shapes our thoughts and attitudes so that we find it hard at times to believe God over and above what we have absorbed subconsciously from birth. The world’s message that we are all-important, that the world revolves around us, that this life is all there is and that we can live to please ourselves is directly at odds with what the Bible teaches. The Bible tells us that we were created in God’s image, that life is about God’s pleasure and will, not ours (Eph 1:5) and that it’s Christ who must have the supremacy, not us. (Col 1:18) The Bible tells us that God’s plan for our lives is for us ‘to be conformed to the image of his Son’ (Rom 8:29), and that trials are God’s way of refining our faith and making us fit for heaven. (1 Pet 1:6-7) It’s only as we remove the world’s filter from our eyes, from our worldview,  and allow God’s promises to be the only filter we use that we can live according to God’s ways. Eph 1:11 in the Message version says, ‘It’s in Christ that we find out who we are and what we are living for.’ If we do not have Christ as our filter, if we do not allow the Bible to shape and transform our thinking, then our lives will not be lived according to God’s ways. Paul told the Romans, ‘Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.’ (Rom 12:2) For us to know God’s will and live blessed lives, we must be transformed by the renewing of our minds, which happens as we are exposed to God’s word and allow it to have the final say in how we live. We have to consciously let God’s truth seep into our lives and change who we are. It’s a little bit like the marinade which softens the meat so that our meal is tastier and more tender as we eat it. God’s truth, revealed in the Bible, soaks into us and transforms us from the inside out so that we are no longer conformed to the pattern of this world but are conformed to the image of God’s Son, Jesus Christ. When we live according to the promises of God, we are living in the way God intended for us; we are living as children of God who are led by His Spirit.

 

Loving God

Dave spoke this morning from Deuteronomy 6:4-9, one of the first explicit commandments to love God with all our heart, soul and strength. As we approach Valentine’s Day with its relentless emphasis on love (especially romantic love), it is worth remembering that God’s love for us and our love for Him are at the heart of a right understanding of love.
These verses from the Old Testament remind us that loving God is not simply something taught by Jesus. God is one, but there is a sense of relationship even within the Godhead which reminds us that love always involves others. A love of God sets all other loves in place; our love for God is the ultimate aim of humanity.
God demonstrates His love for us in giving us His Son; the natural response to such extravagant love is love in return. Often, we are distracted by lesser loves, but if we allow God’s word to dwell within us, then we will keep a right perspective on love and will be enabled to love as God loves.

The Acid Test

Sometimes as a teacher there are complicated things to cover which stretch a pupil’s ability to understand. But often, it’s grasping the basics which proves more arduous. The things that we should grasp quickly and build on can seem elusive to us.

Yesterday in the snow, local schools shut early, and I had the pleasure of doing some easy science experiments with my grandchildren, one being the simple test using pH paper to determine if a liquid is an acid or an alkali. We poured liquids onto these magic strips of paper in a petri dish and watched the paper change colour, checking the colours on a chart to conclude that lemon juice is an acid and milk is an alkali.

Now understanding why and how this happens may be more complicated, but the instantaneous change was easy enough for even my four-year-old granddaughter to grasp.

It made me think about what we call the ‘litmus test’ or ‘acid test’ in other areas, meaning a simple way of determining something. I was reminded of Jesus’s words, ‘by this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.’ (John 13:34)

Love is the simplest way of testing the reality of our faith. It’s so simple even a child can do it. Yet it’s something that adults often fail to grasp. We add on lots of complicated things and can then forget the basics.

So today, the challenge before every disciple of Jesus is to love others as the outworking of our love for God. It’s simple but profound. Love God. Love people. Even your enemies.

If You Want to Be Happy, Be Kind!

It was our ‘Little Big Church’ service tonight, with Garry speaking about the Beatitude ‘Blessed are the merciful, for they shall be shown mercy.’ (Matt 5:7) Still working on our bee theme, he re-told the story of the Unmerciful Servant (Matt 18:21-35), but this time, the character was a bee who had not saved enough pollen to last the winter…and who received mercy from the Queen Bee of another hive only to withhold mercy from another bee who needed help! The memorable message from tonight’s service was ‘if you want to be happy, be kind!’
Kindness, mercy, forgiveness and compassion are all key aspects of growing with God. We receive these things from God and therefore must reflect His character to others.

The Promises of God and our ‘Amen’!

The second half of Psalm 119:76 focuses on God’s promises to us (‘May Your unfailing love be my comfort, according to Your promise to Your servant.’) God’s promises to us form the foundation of our lives, for they are based on His character, and He who promised is faithful. (Heb 10:23) Throughout Scripture, we see how God promises things to people: a son and heir to Abraham and Sarah, even though Sarah was barren, a glorious future to Joseph beyond his wildest dreams, rescue from the land of slavery, for example. The fulfilment of these promises may well take time, but the outcome is secure because of God’s faithfulness.
Paul tells us‘‘No matter how many promises God has made, they are “Yes” in Christ. And so through him the “Amen” is spoken by us to the glory of God.’ (2 Cor 1:20) What do we do while we wait for God to fulfil His promises? Waiting can be difficult, but Peter reminds us that God is not slow in keeping His promises (2 Pet 3:9), even if it may feel like that to us! We need to speak aloud the ‘Amen’, speaking God’s word above the doubts and fears that crowd into our minds as we wait. As we wait, we trust in God’s unfailing love; we are comforted by His unfailing love. We hold on to that love and rest secure in it. God’s timing will always be perfect and we will see the fulfilment of His promises in due season if we do not waver through unbelief.