I am not ashamed of the Gospel

¹⁴ I am obligated both to Greeks and non-Greeks, both to the wise and the foolish. ¹⁵ That is why I am so eager to preach the gospel also to you who are in Rome.

¹⁶ For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile. ¹⁷ For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed—a righteousness that is by faith from first to last,^[e] just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.”^[f]

I am not ashamed of the Gospel… 

I am really being challenged at the moment. I have so many friendship circles that I have moved into that do not have God and do not want to know him. I have some friends who have God in their life but I fear that they may Judge me for some of my friendships too.

The one thing that is really challenging is that I have a select few people in my life who I would trust with my life. There are a few people who ‘get me’. There are few people that know that God is important in my life still and that the changes in my life do not want to make me give him up. It’s not coincidence that during a low time, God even opened up a new opening for me.

My problem in life at the moment is that I have a lot of friends around me who don’t understand God because they’ve been rejected by so many Christians. Being an Irish Dancer I’ve always came into the LGBT community and met a lot of Gay people and one thing that a lot of people in this community have is rejection from Christians who mix up rebuking with judgement. I

do agree this needs to stop and people need to be loved but it makes it hard to openly talk about the Gospel when people have so much anger or rejection.

This scripture at the moment has given me the baby steps that I need in order to embrace him again..

I’m not ready to be full vocal and shout it out from the roof tops but then again, isn’t each of our journeys different. I’m now at a point in my life where I’m starting to drop it into conversations again but where it’s needed.

I don’t want to be one of those people who force the word down someones throats. That’s intimidating and not a fruit of the spirit. I’m just going to be approachable and right now I’m going to pray for God to open the doors for the conversations so that I can share my pride.

As I’m writing this I’m feeling God talk to me about the fruits of the holy spirit which means that he doesn’t want to talk to me about this right now. I’m going to pause this and come back to it.

I pray that God continues to challenge me and give me possibilities to share his word. I also pray that God directs me to the fruits of the holy spirit. I remembered that I have fruit of kindness and I shouldn’t lose that.

God’s Good News

So recently I have been chatting to a good friend about faith. I’ve found more so recently that I’ve been telling him how much God loves him. It’s interesting because in my own time of need I don’t remember this myself. That being said, this friend said that he thought about writing down how he felt.

I then remembered that I used to blog and it brought be back to my Christian blog. I kinda got thinking that I remember how happy I was at this point and I had a lot of success in my life around the point of starting the blog.

Last week at school I was watching a charity movie and a quote from Roman’s appeared on the board. It was interesting because the quote was : –

Romans 12: 2 – 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.

Why is that interesting? Well because at this point in my life, I’m doing things and chasing things of this world. I’m focused very much on pleasing friends again and attending their social events instead of looking after myself. This was a challenge from God for sure. As a result of this scripture I have decided to do a bible study on Romans. I’m hoping that I can focus on a verse a week. I want to take it all in.

1 Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God— ² the gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures ³ regarding his Son, who as to his earthly life^[a] was a descendant of David, ⁴ and who through the Spirit of holiness was appointed the Son of God in power^[b] by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord. ⁵ Through him we received grace and apostleship to call all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from^[c]faith for his name’s sake. ⁶ And you also are among those Gentiles who are called to belong to Jesus Christ. ⁷ To all in Rome who are loved by God and called to be his holy people: Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.

Romans 1

I decided to start at Romans 1 and the one thing that stood out is the privilege he has given us. We have the privilege to talk about things. Some translations say we have ‘grace’ and other’s say ‘privilege’.

I’m at a place where I feel like I can’t talk about God with some people because they have burdens that cause them to be angry at him. What I need to remember is that I’m lucky! I can talk about the great things that he does in my life.

It’s easy to talk about the negative things that happen in life but the one thing that remains is his steadfast love.

What is the main thing that I am getting from this scripture, To all in Rome who are loved by God and called to be his holy people: Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. 

My Challenge

At this point in my life I’m surround a lot from people who do not yet know God or do not want to be. They have hurt in their life. Where their is pain I need to remember that I am called to be compassionate and I’m called to be a light.

Notice that the scripture says to all in Rome. It doesn’t say ‘just those people who believe’. As I read more of this I’m sure I will get more context but at the moment, this is challenging to remember to be open about my faith.

It’s not good to only share with people who are Christian but I need to remember that God calls everyone. He loves everyone, no matter how much they call us names.  I’m going to set myself a challenge myself to be more obvious about my faith and to share more.

I want to leave you with a prayer, whatever you’re struggling with and whatever anxiety you have in your life right now. I want to just lift it up to God and ask him to give you a hug from me. I hope that you have peace in your life and I pray that God puts people in your path that you can talk to about any walk of your life. God Bless

 

 

What’s on your dashboard

So it’s an end of a season for me. This weekend I went to David’s Tent with my wife. It’s a Christian worship festival. You camp in a field for 72 hours just worshiping. It has been life changing for me and some of this I may share with you eventually, but I’m learning that it’s ok not to tell.

While at this festival I had been reading a book about the art of keeping everlasting Joy. I had the book with me and decided to give it a read while they were changing the worship artist. I came across a section of the book which said, the secret to staying joyful is that you need to analyse what is on your dashboard. Weird right?

Well it says, think about a car. If you see a red light on the dashboard you find what is causing it and you fix it. If you don’t do this, eventually you ignore until you break down. This is much like life.

So what about our emotions? Well one thing that people say about life is ‘Why do people leave us?’, ‘Why do people say nasty things’ and ‘Why is there pain’. Some of the emotions we feel on a day to day basis are: –

• Anger
• Rejection
• Envy
• Jealousy
• Disappointment

The great thing, is that we can use these for GOOD! I want to give you an example here. I have been angry or hurt by people around me recently due to their actions and words. My light on my dashboard was showing that I was a selfish person.

After spending some time with God he revealed to me that the problem wasn’t the people around me but it was me. I wanted them to change their ways or in some secret way, I wanted people to think better of me.

This highlighted that my fulfilment wasn’t coming from God but from people. Although I wasn’t becoming a people pleaser anymore, the source of my anger towards these people was what I wanted people to be like.

I wanted people to change to my ways which is selfish. Having being convicted of this I now realise that whenever I’m angry I need to look at where the source of it is coming from.

Some people may experience jealousy. You’re unhappy that someone has got that bigger house or car. If you analyse this emotion, again your fulfilment is not coming from Jesus, it’s coming from material things. There are generally 4 categories we should look at.

There are 4 things in life that are generally the cause of these things.

• Possessions
• Position
• Places
• People

Life should be filled by Jesus alone. The problem comes from whenever we replace Jesus with any of these things. I’ve now learnt that Jesus is my life source. He fills my cup, but the people around me that are compassionate or loving. The people who become my friends, they’re an overflow and I should be thankful to God for him placing these in my life.

I just want to encourage you to spend more time with God and to analyse where your pain comes from. It may highlight something that will bring you even closer to God rather than hiding from the root of the problem.

The book which I picked up from a Junk store was called ‘Joy that lasts’ and is by Gary Smalley. ISBN : – 0-310-46291-6 – If you would like to borrow it from me when I am finished, you’re very welcome.

 

 

Reconcile

^{Matthew 5 – 21} “You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘You shall not murder,^[a]and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ ²² But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister^[b][c] will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca,’^[d] is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.

²³ “Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, ²⁴ leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to them; then come and offer your gift.

²⁵ “Settle matters quickly with your adversary who is taking you to court. Do it while you are still together on the way, or your adversary may hand you over to the judge, and the judge may hand you over to the officer, and you may be thrown into prison. ²⁶ Truly I tell you, you will not get out until you have paid the last penny.

 

So I think from reading this, although this scripture is talking about murder, there is a lot more we can take from this. Yes, we shouldn’t murder each other but it talks about how these feelings can easily go places and it talks about how we can avoid getting to this dark place just by loving each other.

The first thing that stands out about this verse to me is that it’s clearly saying that sin is sin. There is no difference in the sin you commit it’s all separating you from God. It’s pretty intense how you can compare something such as being angry with someone who commits murder.

Well let me explain what I believe is being said here, in these first verses you can see how Jesus is making it clear that each of these things are things that are seeds and lead to the latter. Notice when he says that people who call one another fools are in danger of the fire. He’s giving warnings about where you can end up, he’s saying your in danger of moving towards worse things. I’m a school teacher and trust me, I’ve seen teenagers over the years hold onto anger and it filters into all aspects of their lives and can lead to self destruction, it’s heartbreaking.

So at this point, you’re probably thinking ‘we get it’, we shouldn’t be angry at each other.

Well Jesus wants you to know how important your love is. Our relationship with God is important and he wants us to worship him and go to him in all of our times. Jesus says if you’re offering something at the altar, go and reconcile first. Jesus is saying that God would rather you repair a friendship with a brother or sister than to bring him an offering of worship. I believe that many people who have yet to discover the love of Jesus do not see this. They can easily spot when another Christian falls out with a brother or a sister and what people really need to see is the love that we have for each other. We should repair those relationships before we come to Him.

The next thing that speaks to me is that it talks about settling matters with your adversary quickly. I think this is an important lesson to take. There are two reasons for this. My first reason is obviously that Jesus is coming soon and it will be when we least expect it. Do we really want feelings of hate towards a brother or sister? Do we have any hidden thoughts that are putting a wedge in that relationship? Deal with them quickly. We want to be able to approach Jesus with a clean heart on his arrival.

This brings me to my second reason for dealing with things quickly. When things are dealt with, it gives the enemy time to plant seeds of doubt, lies and hurtful thoughts. If you’re able to speak to that person right away, then you’ve got a much better chance of healing that relationship.

I don’t really need to get personal with this blog but I just want to make it clear, we need to love each other and just be there for one another. We need to reconcile relationships quickly and need to humble ourselves before we can come to God.

Clear our hearts of hurt and rejection and rebuild those relationships so that we can approach God with our worship and open arms.

My decision to leave Facebook

 

For the last month I decided to delete my Facebook, Whatsapp and Instagram account. When I first signed up to Facebook years ago, it was like the new ‘Pokemon’ and like everyone else I ‘didn’t want to miss out’. Unfortunately for me over time I noticed that Facebook had become a big part of my life.

I share everything I eat, everything I do and then don’t actually experience that moment. I would spend more time on my phone or more time on my laptop sharing the best parts of my day.

When I first got Facebook I also refused to install messenger because of the big invasion of privacy. Your chats, calls and pictures are all monitored by Facebook and they can use the information to sell you things. One friend convinced me to get messenger and I caved for that. I was dealing with rejection at the time and thought ‘I’ve got a group of people who like me here, don’t mess it up’. I installed another app which I didn’t need.

I had another friend who was really into Whatsapp, so I decided I would get Whatsapp. It is a really good way of ‘having group chats’. Unfortunately for me it was also another thing for me to spend my time with and I made little time for much else.

Once I had installed all of these apps and all of these messenger services I noticed how anxious I had become as a person. Having so many different options to message people or having so many people ‘read’ messages but not reply would make me start becoming paranoid or anxious over whether I said something to offend someone. This wasn’t a good place to be in. I believe that we’re ‘too available’ to everyone around us and don’t actually take the time to be in solitude to just reflect.

Last month I made the decision to leave Facebook and all of these messenger services including iMessage. I will be honest with you, it’s the happiest I’ve been in years. My inner circle of friends understood that it was what I needed to ‘reset’ who I was, my wife supports me and text’s me and these people have seen a noticeable difference in how I am. I’ve managed to cut out one thing that can impact my mood or my happiness is such an easy way!

I had one of the parents from my dance school just last week approach me and say, “Ray, it’s good to have you back”. It’s been nice when people have asked me if they can add me on Facebook and it’s been cool to be different and say, “I don’t have Facebook”.

You know what I do now, I actually talk to people in person…. Weird concept right? If I have photographs I’ve taken from events or if I have something important to share with people, I make sure to tell them in person. It means that people who mean something to you can share the celebration. I’ve also noticed that I have more time to spend in prayer and more time to reach out to others and just listen without the distraction of ‘who liked my last post’.

I’ll be honest, the only reason I came back to Facebook the other day was because I forgot to send a poster for an event to a friend. I had to post it online to advertise an event. These are the things that ‘tie’ us to Facebook, the fact that other’s use Facebook so much. If a mass number of people decided to come away from it for a week you’d see a huge difference in relationships. There would be none of this ‘did you see what they wrote on their wall’. Even people who aren’t posting their every single action in life, I bet that they find that there is at least 10 minutes of their day where they either wake up to see what everyone else is up to or they go to sleep doing this.

I had a group of friends also say to me the other day, ‘if that’s what you need for now I support you’ well actually I’m thinking this is going to be a permanent thing. I know how happy I am I know the boundaries I’ve put in place and I know that social media isn’t helpful to my own mental health.

I want to put it this way. If a doctor gives you medication you need to take for the rest of your life, do you stop taking it when you get better? No! You know if you stop taking it then problems can flare up, this is what Facebook is like to me.

I’m done experimenting to see whether I ‘should’ come back for a period and I’m just going to stay away from it.

I love you all but goodbye Facebook.

Salt and Light

In today’s verse I continue to look at the sermon on the mount. In my last reading I started to look at how blessed we are and the beatitudes. Today’s blog will look at the scripture about salt and light.

Matthew 4: 13-16

¹³ “You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.

¹⁴ “You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. ¹⁵ Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. ¹⁶ In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.

Now before we can discuss what the scripture means, it’s important that we understand how valuable salt was back then. Salt was expensive, it was used for cleaning wounds and it was used to maintain meat for longer periods of time.

In this scripture Jesus starts off by saying how valuable we are. Isn’t this nice! We are the salt of the earth. This is something to remember whenever we heard doubt. We’re children of good and we are valuable to him, don’t believe any rejections or fear which comes into your head.

Moving on from this, Jesus has an important message for us, if salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again. It’s no long good for anything. I think we need to take this as a warning and the reason for this is verses that follow.

Jesus goes on to say that we’re the light of the world. He talks about how light shouldn’t be hidden and how true is this! It gives light to everything. He says in the same way; our light should shine for others. How often have we been tempted to ‘play down’ our faith to others? I’ll be honest, this used to be me. I would worry about sharing my faith with others and would hold back. I’m very blessed that God put someone in my life who was showing me examples of how they had shown their faith to others. This encouraged me and I’m now really excited about any opportunity. Just this week I was hugging staff at my school and telling them about Christianity being all about the love. It was fun!

We must remember that we are the light of the world and like Jesus is saying, it’s shining it’s light on everything. If we make lots of mistakes, they are on show. Although we’re forgiven, the light is seen by others and if we lose our saltiness we will not be helping people come close to the light. We can show our faith by deeds. How much love and compassion have you shown lately? Have you gone through your phone and looked up that person you haven’t seen in years and just sent them a message to let them know how much they’re loved?

It’s a challenging concept but have you knowingly said to someone, ‘I’ll pray for you’ when you know that God has gifted you with knowledge and the deed to help that person? So many times we can say that we’ll pray for each other but believe or not, God gives us gifts to intercede in each other’s lives and help each other. Prayer is the answer but a lot of the times these prayers are answerable through our own actions and God is begging for you to listen to the spirit these cases.

I would like to challenge you with this blog post. In your faith, is there something that you’re doing on show that the spirit is speaking to you about? Is there something that you need to repent off so that people can see the true imitation of Jesus in your life? If so, repent of that and give it to Jesus. I would like to challenge you to find one person in need and start showing your faith through deeds. Let Jesus shine through your actions.

I pray that this blog speaks to you and helps you in your walk with God and thank you for reading.

God Bless

Ray

The Beatitudes

As I sit writing this blog post I’m sitting here thinking “How blessed am I?” The answer to this question is “very”. I’ve had such a joyful week, God’s been able to use me to cheer people up and I feel like I’ve actually been able to listen to other people around me. How? Because he’s reminded me of how blessed I am and I’ll be honest it’s made me want to bless others in the way he looks after me.

On the way to school this week when listening to Matthew I’ve been able to challenge myself in different areas but this one spoke to me in such a way that it reminded me of my childhood. Growing up, I’ll be honest I didn’t want to play football just because all of the other boys played football. I didn’t want to mess around in lessons because other boys did. I was what you would call an ‘odd ball’. I wouldn’t follow the crowd, this got me a lot ‘stick’ from other kids. I didn’t really fit in because I wouldn’t hit back other children if they ‘persecuted’ me by hitting me or name calling.

I was stubborn and stood my ground and didn’t join in with behaviour like this growing up. How has he blessed me? He’s given me an amazing wife, a career which has won me awards but he’s also placed a number of people in my life who have really encouraged my faith. Amen! Praise God!

The reason I’m talking about this is because God reminded me of all of this when I listened to his word. As I sat there going through each of these verses it challenged me in different ways. Verse 3 is one that confused me to begin with.

Matthew 5-3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

I was thinking to myself, ‘Why would God would want us to be poor in spirit?’. I had to study this further but then finally came to realise that He is talking about our spiritual bankruptcy. Blessed are those who realise that they have nothing worthy to give God. You recognise that you have nothing in comparison to God, you give up everything else before coming to God. When we give up everything for him, God blesses us in different ways. Not only does he grant us access to heaven but you have that open relationship with him. The curtain is torn in two. There’s a party in heaven and your blessed with an invitation.

Now I don’t want to down play the meaning of the other verses because they’re all very important but I do want to explain how God spoke to me through this.

The second verse which stood out for me was that we’re blessed when we’re persecuted because of righteousness. This is the one that God reminded me of while I was driving. I almost wanted to pull over the car as one of those ‘eureka’ moments. I have read this and preached on this scripture a number of times but was never really reminded of ‘life’.

^{Matthew 5 – 11} “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.

God spoke to me and it was like he was audibly saying ‘Yes, you had a hard time at school and you’ve had a lot of rejection because you didn’t conform, but look what I’ve done for you’. God has basically said to me, because you persevered and because you put up with the rejection for changing your ways or for not joining in on certain behaviour I’ve blessed you.

I will say that I must encourage you to read your Bible whenever you can. I’ve had a number of attacks this week but you know something it’s probably been one of my most peaceful weeks this year and it’s because I’m making time for God.

Verse 11 talks about people falsely saying all kinds of evil against you. I’m not going into much detail but I have experienced it this week. The day after reading/listening to this scripture I received a hurtful message from someone. God prepared me! God really did bless me because I had peace when it happened.

I would like to finish this blog with doing exactly what is said in verse 12. Rejoice and be glad. Let us pray and thank God in every situation because we know that it brings blessings in different areas of our lives. Let us pray for those who are feeling hurt through the persecution they’re experiencing but help them see the blessings which will be rewarded to them in heaven. I thank God for the lessons he has been teaching me and thank him for his never changing love.

In Jesus name

Amen!

 

Jesus calls his first disciples

 

So this morning on the way to work I started studying Matthew 4 v18 – 22. Please don’t worry, I’m not reading and driving! I’ve been trying to be more deliberate in spending time with God, particularly on the way to work. I’ve started listening to verses and trying to see what God is saying to me through the word.

¹⁸ As Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon called Peter and his brother Andrew. They were casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. ¹⁹ “Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will send you out to fish for people.” ²⁰ At once they left their nets and followed him.

²¹ Going on from there, he saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John. They were in a boat with their father Zebedee, preparing their nets. Jesus called them, ²² and immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him.

In these verses we see Jesus approaching fishermen. They were casting their net’s into the lake and you could argue that they were in the middle of doing something. During this time Jesus calls them and says ‘come follow me’. Jesus explains to them that they will fish for people. Straight away they left their nets and joined Jesus.

In the verses afterwards again we see that Jesus approaches James and John. Jesus calls to these people and again, they stop what they were doing and they left their boat and their father to follow him.

There are two challenges that are shown from this scripture. The first is to do with our busy lives and ‘fitting’ Jesus in.  In both of these examples, no matter what these people were doing, they stopped and went for Jesus. In our day to day lives, how often to we stop what we’re doing and listen to the holy spirit? How often have you stopped what you’re doing to worship Jesus?

Now the thing that’s important here is that there are many ways in which we can show worship to Jesus. We can worship Jesus through our actions. When you think of the mercy that has been shown to us, how much more merciful can we be to those around us? Have you seen someone who is a broken man or woman and stopped what you were doing to go and help them out? As a teacher I’ve been in the middle of marking before and have put myself under so much pressure with it. I must get this done before I go home! Recently I’ve had to stop on a number of occasions because I could feel the spirit just saying, something isn’t right with this person. I want you to think about it in the long run, the more love we show to people the more they’re likely to ask what we have. These acts of kindness for the right reasons is like our ‘net’ of love. It brings people closer to Jesus. For this reason, we need to be more deliberate in stopping what we’re doing and just listening.

The second challenge in this verse is that it highlights how important Jesus is in comparison to our earthly father. As if it isn’t already important that we stop what we’re doing to follow Jesus, it’s repeated again in a similar situation but then Matthew drives it right home by showing that these fishermen even left their father to follow Jesus.

How tight do we hold onto our earthly family? Would we be willing to leave them for Jesus?

These are all questions to challenge us and to meditate on. In my own life I’m finding that God has challenged me about holding onto relationships too closely. He’s shown me that I should be chasing him first and He’s helped me come away from social media to do this. I have a balance in place which puts him first and I’m so much more peaceful for it.

I pray that as children of God we all learn to drop everything and go running after Jesus. I pray that we have the strength to prioritise Jesus and his love he has for us. I pray that we’re able to put boundaries in place which help us stay focussed on Him.

Jesus is tested – In the wilderness

On my recent study of Matthew one thing that stood out to me was the way in which Jesus was tested in the wilderness. On a day to day basis we are tested but it’s important that we get a number of things from this chapter.

The first thing we can get from reading this is that Jesus was allowed into the wilderness to be tested. There are times in our life where God will intercede and will stop us from being tested but in this situation it’s quite interesting to see that Jesus was led by the spirit to the wilderness. It’s important that we see that God ‘allowed’ this.

In many tough times we can sit back and ask ourselves, why does God allow this to happen. It is also important to remember that God has some tests of our own to go through. Recently I’ve been allowed to be tested and I’ll be honest, I’ve failed a couple of these tests but I’m thankful that I have Jesus there to redeem me. I’m also thankful that I’ve been able to take something from each test even if I’m not fully over it.

Now for some of the important things we fail to look at. I’ve read this scripture a number of times but I hadn’t really looked at the way Jesus was tested. Why is this important? Well, if you look at the things that Jesus was asked to do you’ll see why. Now the first thing that Jesus was asked to do was to turn stone to bread. You could argue that there wasn’t really much wrong with doing this but the point behind it was that the ‘tempter’ was trying to get Jesus to question his relationship with God.

Matthew 4 v 4 The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.”

Again, the tempter doesn’t give up. The second time around, he again repeats, ‘If you are the Son of God….’ I think it’s important to look at these verses of Chapter 4 because, God wants us to know that we’re loved and that we’re his children. I believe that the way in which Jesus is tempted holds to key to what we need to hold onto. Satan wants us to believe that we’re not children of God. His temptation will come in the form to make use doubt this. He will use our relationship with God as a weapon against us.

Coming to this scripture has really stirred me and it’s made me see how in all of our temptation the one thing that the enemy wants us to do is to make us feel unloved, rejected or to doubt our relationship with God. It also demonstrates how persistent the enemy can be. I can think back to times where I’ve been condemning myself after feeling like the fight was over and then ‘bam’ I was hit again. The enemy would use his attacks to make me feel bad for letting him in. He’s so manipulative but we must remember that God’s love is stronger than all of this. Satan may come at us time and time again, but if we’re willing to listen so does Gods love.

Even when I’ve been at my lowest points, I can testify that God’s love will break through all of it. Last week, I decided to cut off my fellowship because of ‘lie’ which made me feel horrible. I decided to take a step back, but God took a step forward. I didn’t listen to him on the first couple of messages but God didn’t give up on me. He put people, scripture, students and other signs in my way to bring me back.

In summary, there are two important things that we can take from this scripture. The first, we’re going to be tempted and don’t be surprised if it’s questions about our relationship with our Father. He doesn’t want us to believe that we’re a child of God. He didn’t want Jesus to believe this and this is why he was tested in this way. When this happens, write down what you are thinking in your journal. During the moment, if you read anything along the lines of ‘I want to be alone’, ‘I feel rejected’ or ‘I need a break’. Remember you do not need a break from God’s love. Fight the lie!

The second, God will not give up on us. God will keep coming back for you if you let him in. Although the enemy is persistent, God is bigger and he will keep come back stronger if we listen.

I pray that in difficult times, in times when we’re fed lies to make us want to be a lone that we can see that God’s love is bigger. God’s love is more persistent than the tempter and that we remember that we’re always children of God.

Who says it’s too early for a Christmas story….

So recently I’ve started studying the book of Matthew and the story that I came to was the story of Christmas. I even had to go back to this book a couple of days because I forgot the message I was going to share.

The difference we can see between Matthews version and the other Gospels is that it actually gives us the genealogy of Jesus. This might seem pretty odd at first but as you look closer one of the key messages from this genealogy is that many there were four women in this ancestry who raised ethical questions. There was evidence of prostitution and other raised questions, yet it is not excluded from the time line. It is equally important to the time line of Jesus. It all matters!

One way of looking at this is as sequel to the old testament and that Matthew wants to make it clear that all of the wars, immorality and other sin had a part in making a way for something special. No matter what the sins of the people, God’s plan was never defeated!

God used prostitutes, murderers and other sinners as part of the plan. What I’m trying to say is, no matter who you are God’s plan includes you!

So you could agree that Matthews account is quite scandalous! Particularly after already highlighting some pretty interesting people in his gene pool.  Another part of the scandal is that it talks about how Joseph wasn’t able to consummate his marriage with Mary because she became pregnant from the holy spirit. Joseph must have had many thoughts at this time but it talks about how he was tempted to divorce her quietly. Even though this thought entered his mind, the angel approached him and told him that he no longer needs to be afraid.

What’s the important message here in all of this? Joseph stayed faithful to God. Joseph decided he was willing to put up with possible ‘Jeers’ from people and to stay faithful to God. He listened to what God had to say and kept Mary and Jesus safe. How many of us are ashamed of what others might think? I’ve struggled with this in the past which is why I admire and long for the faithfulness of Joseph.

In the early chapters of Matthew, we see the faithfulness of Joseph and also the Magi. The Magi saw a sign and they were determined to seek out their king. They were also faithful in listening to the holy spirit and taking an alternative route back to avoid trouble.

In our day to day lives we’re given many signs from God. I have told a few people about these signs in the past but the day after my wife and I got married there was a rainbow over our flat and the radio station tuned itself into another station with the hymn ‘Lord of the dance’ playing. The Lord of the dance was one of the hymns from our wedding.

For me I need to remember that the rainbow is a symbol of ‘promise’. I think back to this now and see that God has always kept his promise in our marriage and even in tough times (yes we’ve all had them), He’s taught us new lessons to make us stronger and He’s kept us together, He’s our glue. Amen! I don’t need to say anymore than that really.

How much more should we seek him out and find out what he wants us to do? How much more should we pay attention to his voice. Joseph had an angel come to him in a dream but are we looking out for more signs? Are we listening to what God wants us to do?

I pray that we as Christians have the faith to listen to the signs and seek out our Lord in all situations whether they be calm or stormy. Are we listening to our own hearts or His?