The greatest battle you'll ever fight

There’s lots of battles you will face in life. Let me tell you what I think is the greatest.

To do it, I’ll turn to one of my greatest Biblical heroes. Joseph faced a cavalcade of terrible circumstances. He was betrayed by his brothers, sold into slavery, unjustly imprisoned for a long period of time, and then forgotten by Pharaoh’s butler who should have appealed for his freedom. Yet his greatest battle was not the fight for freedom, it was the fight for a right response to the injustice done to him.

Joseph had lost a lot. He had no freedom, no money, no wife, no family, no job. When we are denied what we want out of life – job, money, relationship, health and so on – we often become bitter, either at those who have stood in our way, cheated us or treated us wrongly, or at God himself.

From a human perspective, Joseph had reason to be angry with God. It was God who had got him into this mess by giving him these dreams. It was God who got his hopes up. Where was God when his brothers sold him into slavery? Even after that, he continued to honour God by refusing the advances of Potiphar’s wife – and where did that get him? He had that incredible prophetic word over the butler and it led to nothing. Even if Joseph got over those hurdles by acknowledging that the God who had twice saved his life should not be blamed for his circumstances, there were still his brothers, Potiphar’s wife and the butler. He had every reason in the world to hate them.

The greatest battle you’ll ever face is the battle against bitterness. The presence of bitterness means the absence of forgiveness. Why is forgiveness such an issue? Because it stands at the heart of the Gospel. The cross is all about forgiveness.  Salvation is all about forgiveness. The Christian life is all about forgiveness. Forgiveness is the cornerstone of everything we have in Christ. If we refuse to walk in the mercy that Jesus has showered on us, we will find ourselves back in prison. That’s what the story of the two debtors in Matthew 18 is all about.

The bitterness of unforgiveness is a deadly virus which captures our thoughts and infects our attitudes. It so warps our bow of intercession that we even find ourselves praying that negative things will happen to others. It magnifies the faults of others and minimizes our own weaknesses. Worst of all, it separates us from the God who is the source of all forgiveness. It makes us toxic to the body of Christ, which is why Scripture warns us to let no “root of bitterness” spring up in our midst. Bitter people pollute the church. Whatever anyone has done to you, the harm you do to yourself through the bitterness of unforgiveness will damage you more than what they did, no matter how awful it was.

But Joseph did not fall into this trap. How do we know? Bitter people have no interest in serving others, or in the fact that there is a bigger reality out there than the world of their own suffering. But Joseph, even in his dungeon, so impressed the prison warden with his serving spirit that he put him in charge of the prison. Bitter people could not care less about the needs of others, but when his two fellow prisoners had a need, Joseph was immediately sensitive to it: “Why are your faces so sad?” he said to them. Bitter people do not have a healthy relationship with the God they blame for their troubles, but Joseph immediately reached out to God to find an answer for his friends. In the midst of hardship most of us cannot imagine, Joseph fought and won a battle which saved him from spiritual, and probably physical death, and made him a source of life to others. His attitude enabled God to turn suffering into blessing.

Some people wind up in a spiritual prison of their own making. Joseph turned his literal prison into a place of freedom. Joseph’s biggest battle was not won the day he was brought from jail to the highest office in the land. His battle was won in the depths of that dungeon when he chose the way of forgiveness and found peace.

You too, by God’s grace, can win that battle. It’s a battle worth fighting -- your life depends on it.

How much power do you want?

Elaine and I have just spent a weekend in Niagara Falls with our friends at Niagara Community Church. Niagara Falls is an awesome sight, but it is more than that. Back 100 years ago, an engineer named Sir Adam Beck had the bright idea of installing underwater turbines to harness the incredible energy generated by the falls. When construction was finished, Niagara supplied most of the power in southern Ontario. To this day, electricity is called “hydro” in this part of Canada.

That’s a lot of power. But there is a greater power yet. According to Paul, the same power that raised Jesus from the dead is now at work in us (Ephesians 1:19-20). The power generated by Niagara lit a million households, but it could not raise anyone from the dead.

That power was not only for a single event two thousand years ago, albeit an event all of history hung on. That power is available to us today. In fact, it is working within us.

The sad truth is that, although the Bible itself tells us that, we still don’t believe it. Well, maybe we do as a point of theological truth, but not as an experiential reality.

Dr Francis Schaeffer taught many years ago that there is no dividing line between the natural and the supernatural realms, as if God lived in one compartment and we live in another, and never the two shall meet. God is all in all. He controls everything. As Christians, we are meant to live within the same realm as Jesus did. The same power at work in him is today at work in us.

How much power do you want?

My friend John Babu from the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, national security advisor to the Prime Minister of India, was converted through a personal encounter with Jesus Christ, in which he first heard Jesus speaking to him, and then experienced a miracle of healing. His doctors had given him 4 months to live, after 40 years of abusing his body with alcohol. That day the power of God invaded his body. He was instantly healed and stopped drinking. The power of God invaded his mind and will also. He never beat his wife or children again.

In his life and ministry, John saw 6 people raised from the dead. I wrote about one of these miracles last December (see the two posts titled India Calls).

How much power do you want?

Why should God give me such power? Can I be trusted with it? The short answer is he will give you the power you need to do his will. John needed that power to confront the demonic opposition he faced.  It may well be different for us. Yet beware of this trap: do not let your western rationalism persuade you contrary to the Word of God that his supernatural power is not available to you today, or that it has somehow ceased operating, as if God had retired to the south of France or to Florida to play shuffleboard instead of ruling the universe.

The church in the West is weak, and for many reasons. We don’t pray enough, our lives are too busy with other things, we have way too much stuff. All this gets in God’s way.

But the church in the West is weakened far more by this one thing: we have no power. In the face of an enemy who has no hesitation using supernatural power against us, we are power-less for one reason only. We refuse to take God at his Word.

We say we believe the Bible, but we don’t mean it. Jesus had a word for that.

I know I’m simplifying complex issues - that’s what happens when you only have a few hundred words at your disposal.

But please don’t tell me God did miracles then but not now, as if even the conversion of one lost soul could be achieved without the exercise of supernatural power.

How much power do you want?

Let me gently push you into an encounter where you allow God to adjust your heart and increase your faith.

The world needs that power today.

It can only be exercised through you.

The Kingdom advances - at a price

It was a great privilege to travel recently with the international chairman of our movement, David Devenish. He taught a powerful message based on the parable of the wheat and the tares. God has sown us as children of the kingdom into this world in order that the kingdom would advance. And advance it will, until that day when the gospel is proclaimed to every nation, and the Lord will return. Yet while God has been busy sowing, so also has the enemy. He has sown weeds into God’s field. The weed he sowed, darnel, looks deceptively like wheat in its early stages. By the time it can be recognized for what it is, it’s too late. It has a deep root system that means if you try to pick it out, it will take a lot of the young wheat shoots with it. And so it is with this world in which we live. For God to destroy the wicked would involve too much collateral damage. Instead, he allows the agents of evil to remain and to spread, along with the seed of the kingdom. He will deal with the evil later.

It was the application of the text that was so riveting. Dave has been involved in dangerous areas of the world, developing church planting teams for the last twenty years. Some of the places he is involved with cannot be named publicly. The good news is the kingdom is advancing! Hundreds of churches have, like the good wheat, been planted in areas we would not have dreamed possible. Many of these churches are sizeable. Thousands have come to Christ. But in the midst of this, pastors have been martyred. Leaders have been caught in the crossfire of war and violence and killed. Many have become refugees, fleeing areas of intense conflict. In the midst of it all, courageous Christians have kept the faith.

Christians seem to have a habit of alternating between triumphalism and defeatism. Sometimes we preach a sugar-coated gospel based on optimism far more than faith. Everything will come out just fine. We’re a bit like the Jews of Jesus’ day who expected the Messiah to drive the Romans out, not wind up hanging on a Roman cross. We, like they, have no grid to deal with disappointment or suffering. On the other hand, some preachers are gloomier than Winnie the Pooh’s Eeyore. The world is going to hell in a handbasket. The only hope is for a weak church to be “raptured” out of the world before it gets any worse.

What the Bible teaches, as reflected in my friend’s preaching, is something less simplistic but more accurate. God is at work, the church is expanding across the globe as never before, yet there is a price to be paid.

After hearing Dave bring this message at a leadership day in Newmarket (near Toronto), I asked him to consider preaching it again at the next church we were heading to, Firm Foundation in Centreville, Michigan. I thought it would resonate there, and for this reason. The senior pastor, my close friend and colleague Don Smith, felt at the beginning of January that he had received a promise from God of great blessings in 2016. Two weeks later, Don lost his grandson Camden. Camden’s dad Brian pastors the church planted out last year in Kalamazoo. The two churches could not have received a worse blow. Yet in the midst of such sorrow, the kingdom advances. God is moving in those churches, and I have not the shadow of a doubt this will be the best year they have ever experienced.  What I did not know in all this was that Dave himself had preached this message for the first time a year ago two days after conducting the funeral of his own two newborn grandsons.  

So what do you and I take personally out of this? Here’s the most important thing. We are called to follow Jesus and to walk in the way of the cross. The rest is up to God. Whatever the cost may be, humanly speaking, will be more than recompensed in this life and the next. Jesus said it: you may lose home and family, but you will receive more in this age, and in the age to come eternal life.

It isn’t the simplest or easiest answer, but it is the best answer, and it’s the truth.

Expect God to do great things in your life this year. Leave the rest to him.

The thin silence of God

How is it that we can have an amazing encounter with God, then apparently fall off the edge of a spiritual cliff? If it’s any encouragement, the same thing happened to one of my greatest heroes of faith, Elijah. Here’s why his story will inspire you anyway.

The story, contained in 1 Kings 18, of how Elijah vanquished the prophets of Baal is one of the great epics of the Bible. One man against 450! Even Bruce Willis couldn’t beat that.

At the day’s end, when the fire fell on Elijah’s offering and the prophets were slaughtered, it appeared that Elijah’s long battle against the wicked king Ahab had come to a triumphant conclusion. Even the three year drought, at the prophet’s word, had suddenly come to an end. But the story was not over. The very next day, Jezebel sent messengers to Elijah vowing to take his life in return for what he had done.

And Elijah fled.

Yes, fled! Hard to believe isn’t it? How can this invincible hero, who single-handedly destroyed the assembled powers of wickedness the previous day, have been in one moment so utterly vanquished?

God took him on a pilgrimage to find out why. Having arrived at Beersheba, God sent him on a 40 day journey to Horeb (another name for Mount Sinai). There, hidden in probably the same cleft of rock Moses found himself in many centuries before (Exodus 33), he witnessed three spectacular signs - a wind, an earthquake and a fire. Yet God was not in any of them. Then came what is usually translated as a still, small voice or a low whisper (1 Kings 19:12). The phrase in Hebrew is literally “a thin silence.”

God showed up, but not in the way Elijah had expected. And that was the point.

Elijah was expecting the triumph of God to arrive through manifestations of power, and when those manifestations did not stop Jezebel, his ultimate enemy, he gave up. Elijah’s identity worked in strength, but not in weakness.

Jesus understood this, even though his disciples did not. Surely his mission would overcome every obstacle through the performance of the most extraordinary miracles ever seen since since the days of Moses and Elijah. Every foe would bow in the face of such demonstrations of power!  That’s why the disciples were asking for the seats of power at his right hand and his left when the new revolutionary government was established in Jerusalem. Yet Jesus knew victory would not come through the power of his miracles. No, victory would come and the redemptive purposes of God would be released only through a naked man hanging in utter humiliation and apparently total defeat on a Roman cross.

Or, as another of my heroes put it: “When I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:10).

God can come in ways we expect and pray for -- provision, promotion, things going right, churches growing. But what happens when he doesn’t? What happens when we faithfully serve him and yet things are still hard, things don’t happen as we hoped, things even go wrong? Do we run or give up when it doesn’t work out the way we hoped?

For me, Elijah remains a source of massive encouragement. His works of faith lead to him being pictured in Revelation 11, along with Moses, as representatives of everything the church should be as the people of God.  And strangely enough, he’s encouraging to me even in his failures. When I fail, I’m in good company!

And failure, when placed in God’s hands, is never really failure. Elijah was commanded to anoint Hazael king over Syria, Jehu king over Israel and Elisha as prophet in his place. He lived to pronounce the doom of both Ahab and Jezebel, a task Jehu duly completed. Meanwhile, Elisha raised up a whole school of prophets to carry on Elijah’s work. And Elijah was transported to heaven in a whirlwind.

So here we have both triumph and failure and triumph, all in one package.

The secret to walking through it well is in finding God not in the whirlwind, but in the whisper. That’s where his presence is.

No matter what your circumstances, you will never fail to find him there.

How to know God's will - and why so many don't

Why is it that so many Christians are always struggling to know God’s will on some important matter? I think it’s because they are approaching the subject from the wrong perspective.

Paul prays that believers would be “filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding” (Colossians 1:9). And he prays similar prayers elsewhere. So to know God’s will is an important thing.

The problem is we interpret knowing God’s will as receiving a laundry list of instructions from God as to what we are to do about various problems we face. We don’t understand that to know God’s will is first and foremost simply to know God.

The world looks at knowledge as the accumulation of pieces of information. That is in truth the lowest form of knowledge. You can know a lot of information and be a very foolish person. Knowing information may have no effect on our lives at all, but knowing Christ changes everything. Knowledge in the Bible applied to God is a term of the closest intimacy, as in a man “knowing” a woman. We can know information about a person, but do we know the person? We can know information about Christ, even correct information, but this does not mean that we know Christ.

We should not think of the will of God as a kind of cosmic library of God’s opinions on things, and the knowledge of God’s will as the accumulation of information on those topics and how that can benefit us.

Sometimes we think of the Bible as a collection of information to be downloaded and applied. That is the wrong way to approach the Bible. You have to come to the Bible through Christ. Why? Because the will of God confronts us most completely, powerfully and accurately in the one person who walked completely and totally in it. If you want to know the will of God, look at Christ. He embodies God’s will. He came as God’s will in the flesh. The knowledge of God’s will is the knowledge of Jesus Christ. If you don’t know Christ, you cannot understand the Bible, no matter how much you study it, because the Bible is about Christ.

Knowing Christ unlocks the door to the amazing treasure house of the Bible and to knowing the will of God. Why? Because knowing Christ means receiving his Spirit. The more deeply we know him, the more powerfully his Spirit invades our lives. The Spirit unlocks the Word of God to us and applies it to our lives. He shows us how to live as Jesus did. He turns information into revelation. His will comes to us as we dwell in his presence. We know by his Spirit within us what we are to do if we are to follow Jesus with all our heart, and we avoid the consequences of the many mistaken and often self-centred actions we take as a result of being out of relationship with him.

So often, our attempts at seeking guidance are rooted in a crisis or problem in our life that has come about because we have been out of relationship with the Lord. Suddenly we find out we are drawing a blank when it comes to knowing what he wants us to do, because the heart has fallen out of our relationship with him.

I want to know Christ more than anything else, even more than what I am to do with my life. I want to know him no matter what it costs me to know him. In knowing him, I will for the first time truly know myself. And I will truly begin to know what he wants me to do today, tomorrow and the rest of my life.

This knowledge is pure gold. Be like the merchant who bought the pearl. Sell everything else and get it. It’s the best investment you’ll ever make.