Month: March 2018

Change your Damascus first.

Acts 26:20 “First to those in Damascus, then to those in Jerusalem and in all Judea, and then to the Gentiles, I preached that they should repent and turn to God and demonstrate their repentance by their deeds.”

First to Damascus. He was going there anyway. He was going to commit wrong. He was going to arrest or kill as many Christians as he could. Now he goes to right that wrong.

What wrongs need righting today?

It could be the wrongs you have committed or what others have done. In the past or present, the wrongs of commission or omission. Today, make it right. Speak and act differently. Clear up the mess nearest to you.

In Damascus:

• He met a close friend to be, Ananias, who prophesied over him.
• He was baptised in water here demonstrating his new beginning as a follower of Jesus.
• He preached about Christ fearlessly.
• As a result instead of giving persecution to the Christians he received it from his fellow Jews.
• Yet he grew even more powerful in his proving Jesus was the Messiah.
• He decided to change his name here, a new identity for a new day.

You can have a new day wherever you are.

You don’t need to start at the other end of the world. You can start now in your Damascus. Where maybe your peers are expecting certain results you can give different ones. You can shock them by declaring a new mind, a new heart and a new walk.

Damascus is one of the oldest cities in Syria and it has always been its capital city. You only have to google the name and up come horrifying images of a devastated city. It is ranked as the 7^th worst city for quality of life.

Wherever Damascus is for you today then don’t let it become like this. Stop the onslaught of the enemy. Start to right the wrongs and have a new declaration of life not death.

I WILL NOT SAY NO!

Acts 26: 19 “So then, King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the vision from heaven.”

When God reveals, speaks and directs your life, you can say NO.

You would probably not think you were saying NO to God.

When the sneers come, you might say NO.

When the hurt and rejection is felt, you might say NO.

When the door slams shut, when it seems impossible, you might say NO.

The list can go on and you may have a sentence you could write today which is very similar.

In each and every sentence, if the vision from heaven is not present in that sentence, then you might say NO.

If you allow the problem or obstacle to be bigger than the vision, then you might say NO.

If your eyes are diverted from the vision to something else, it would be then that you would in effect be saying NO.

Let us all join Paul today and say ‘I will NOT say NO!’

Amen. Let it be!

 

The power of serving.

Acts 26: 18 “I am sending you to them to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.”

Paul had been appointed to be a servant. What does that servant do?

Reading this verse we immediately recognise Isaiah 42:6 “I, the Lord, have called you in righteousness; I will take hold of your hand. I will keep you and will make you to be a covenant for the people and a light for the Gentiles, ⁷ to open eyes that are blind, to free captives from prison and to release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness.”

This is prophecy of the Servant Jesus and the call for all of us whose purpose is to serve.

Only the brave can serve like this. Paul says how he was called to turn people from the power of Satan. This is a battle against evil and deception. It is going into that battle not with all guns blazing using techniques of the world and shouting orders, taking command. No. It is taking a towel and a basin of water to serve and find a way to:

• Let people see it doesn’t have to be all gloom there is another way.
• Let people see that they don’t have to remain with feelings of guilt.
• Let people see that they don’t have to be outside the group of acceptance.

Gloom, guilt and group acceptance are still the continued attacks of the enemy on those outside and inside the Church.

Paul was purposed to battle against those things by serving. So are we.

The amazing rescue

Acts 26:17 “I will rescue you from your own people and from the Gentiles.”

“Are you ready to pay the price?” were my closing remarks to a Finnish couple yesterday who came to meet me to discuss Elim opening its first church in that beautiful  nation.

“We are already doing so,” was their reply.

Some of the most exciting church planters are those who are reaching their own. Boureima and Susanna Diallo are reaching their own in West Africa and face constant threats, they pay the price.

There is a price to pay and the accusations are many:

• You are one of us but you no longer behave or sound like us.
• You are breaking your own cultural norm.
• We invested in you; you were our hope, now you have become dangerous to our future.

But it is the same for those crossing culture:

In 1938 Kenneth McGillivray was the Pastor of Penzance Elim Church and in 1940 he became a missionary to Mongolia. He along with Elim Missionary Joseph Payne were arrested and subjected to physical torture (accused of being a spy) within an internment camp in Shanghai for 4 years, it was there he contracted Malaria. He survived and was released and in 1946 he returned on furlough, got married and then returned with the gospel! He and his wife Winnie paid the price for crossing culture continually.

There is a price to pay and the accusations are many:

• Fears and threats from those you are reaching out in love to as they think you are there to harm them.
• “You don’t belong here.”
• They do not want to change.

Paul would be trapped many times in his life between the rejection of Judaism and the Gentile world.

His own didn’t want him and those he went to didn’t want him.

Jesus told him right at the beginning that he would be rescued.

Maybe today you find yourself in one of those places or stuck in the middle and you are paying the price. Your own reject you and those ahead of you don’t want you. Maybe you simply need an amazing rescue from an amazing God. The promise of Jesus to Paul is still the promise to you. The promise is simply this: there is no place where you go or where you become trapped that my hand cannot reach you.

David was able to say in Psalm 116:6 “When I was in great need, he saved me.” Job said in 23:10 (Amplified) “he knows the way that I take.” (He has concern for it, appreciates it and pays attention to it). He knows where you are. You may be a long way off like the Prodigal son. You may be like Moses, someone who became a nobody. Your best days are over. Forty years ago you made the biggest mistake that altered your whole life. You may be like Elijah, running away, you’ve had enough and are asking what the point of life is. You may be like the woman who lost her husband and with that her future, her life, her security. The only thing she had in her house was a little oil. The Old Testament is full of these people needing the rescuing hand of God.

Don’t give up, don’t lose all hope. He knows where you are. He will always know where you are. God likens the Exodus to Him carrying His people on eagles wings (Exodus 19:4). Look back on the times when the only way you got through that time/event was because He carried you. Isaiah says He carried our sorrows (our punishment). On the cross Jesus carried your punishment of sin. Jesus walked the narrow path. It got narrower and narrower people left him, the disciples turned back, denied him, betrayed him, the road got so tight that his father left him. God took Jesus down the narrow path and into a ‘spacious place’ of the eternal home. It is a place of no restrictions and no limitations. He did all that for you to demonstrate that He is the rescuer. One day in eternity we will stand before a vast place, a timeless place and we will rejoice that the great rescue is complete. Today the spacious place exists in our hearts. A seed of heaven is in our lives. It is a place of freedom, a place of love, a place of power, a place of blessings and miracles. God has performed an amazing rescue already. But He can rescue you today and He will rescue you tomorrow. He will rescue you from your own and those who are not like you. He will rescue you from your friends and from your enemies. He will rescue from those you used to journey with and He will rescue you from those who would never join you. He will rescue you from misunderstanding and jealousy and He will rescue you from fears and prejudice. There is nowhere that He cannot reach you. He will bring you home.

5 levels of courage

Acts 26: 16 “Now get up and stand on your feet. I have appeared to you to appoint you as a servant and as a witness of what you have seen and will see of me.”

Get up

Stand on your feet

You are appointed

With a purpose to serve

With a purpose to witness of Jesus.

There are 5 levels to Paul’s commissioning. These are still levels that are put before each one of us. They are in order of the degree of sacrifice that is needed within any commissioning of God. It takes courage to move through the levels.

Get up. There are too many references to list of the times when Jesus told people to get up. With the instruction comes the power to do what he asks. However, it takes courage to change your position, to do what you have not been able to do. It takes courage to get up.

Stand up. Perhaps people have knocked you down or God did, but sometimes there is a safety in the dirt that prevents the change of stance. To change would be appearing to welcome another knockdown. To stand up means you are ready, you have strength, you will not be moved. It takes courage to stand up.

You are appointed.  Paul was a Pharisee, he was appointed by man to protect and promote Judaism. Man chose him for this task. He has the full backing of the Sanhedrin and the High Priest. Being appointed by man can be encouraging and even empowering. But that is nothing compared to knowing that the Lord has appointed you, that He has chosen you, that He knows you and wants you.  In the same way even if man rejects you, even if they don’t see the potential in you, even if they say ‘NO!’ as the friends of Jesus did when he tried to share with them his appointment, it matters not. God appoints where man disappoints. It takes courage to hold on to this and to know you are appointed.

With a purpose to serve. Paul wasn’t given a title, he was given a purpose. Man gives titles but God gives purpose. Purpose will take you further than titles will. Titles may open up doors for opportunity but purpose gives you the ability to do what needs to be done behind that opportunity. Notice it was a purpose to get back on the floor. He had just come from the floor and now he is being instructed to spend his life serving from a lowly position. It is a whole different matter moving to a lowly position of serving after God has dealt with you. It takes courage to serve.

With a purpose to witness of Jesus. This is the third time Paul gives his Damascus Road testimony, he was not afraid to witness of what he had seen of Jesus. But his life would be one of continually witnessing of what he was seeing in who Jesus is. This witness would ultimately lead to his death. Our witness may not lead to death but it will surely lead to our surrender. This is the highest call, surrender, it is not popular, you will have to lay things down, you will have to forego comfort. It takes courage to witness.

 

Knowing who he is reveals His ways and my ways.

Acts 26:15 ““Then I asked, ‘Who are you, Lord?’ “ ‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,’ the Lord replied.”

Paul couldn’t answer the question of Jesus, “why do you persecute me?” He couldn’t because he didn’t know that a) Jesus was alive and b) that his persecution of the followers of Christ is a persecution against Christ. So he thought of his own question to ask the questioner, “Who are you Lord?”

Paul didn’t know. He was blinded to the knowledge of Christ.

Throughout important stages of my life I have asked, “Who are you, Lord?” I ask because though I know He is alive I didn’t know what He was doing with my life. In my pursuit of knowing who He is I then understand His ways. My drawing closer to Him reveals what He is doing in me. This is my question to ask and me alone.

‘Who are you, Lord?’ is also a discovery of knowing who I am and what I am doing. Paul didn’t know he was persecuting Christ, but after he asked the question, he did. I want to know my ways or more importantly what He thinks of my ways, ‘who are you Lord?’

 

 

God will position you to speak to you

Acts 26: 14 “We all fell to the ground, and I heard a voice saying to me in Aramaic, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads.”

This was not falling into the arms of a lover. Nor was it anything like what we have termed ‘slain in the Spirit’ a quite unhelpful term I actually think. But the picture here is:

We all fell … this was not voluntary, but forced because of the display of light.

… to the ground … into the dust of the earth, where clothes and hands become dirty.

If God circumstantially knocks you to the dirt then it is because He wants to remake you, to recreate you, to begin again in your life and to do something new. It is a grace.

Not everyone who falls to the ground though actually hear the voice of the Lord. Paul says though everyone fell only he heard. It is a grace.

God will position you to speak to you. It is a grace.

So friends today you may have fallen in surrender willingly or by force, you are where God wants you to be, listen He is speaking to you perhaps a new directional word, a new revelation.

It is all a grace.

A moment of change

Acts 26:13 “About noon, O King, as I was on the road, I saw a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, blazing around me and my companions.”

It is easy to see a light in the darkness.

But Paul saw a light under the midday sun.

I have some questions:

When in the middle of the activity of your day…

When on the road you have been commissioned for …

When you have a team of companions journeying together …

When it is all going well ….

When you are doing what you think is God’s will …

Are you open to see a new revelation from heaven? Even if you don’t understand, can you see it? Are you someone who can be interrupted?

Paul was and it changed his life completely in one moment.

I’m trying to live my life like that aren’t you?

Right person, right process, right thing.

Acts 26: 12 “On one of these journeys I was going to Damascus with the authority and commission of the chief priests.”

Paul begins to share his testimony recorded for the 3^rd time in Acts.

Paul went on a Missions journey to the major city of Syria.

Paul was given authority to do the task set before him.

Paul was commissioned, he was sent off, cheered on the way perhaps.

The person can be right. Paul was a leading Pharisee, well trained, he knew the Scriptures, he was zealous for them, passionate for God and for the preservation of Judaism.

The process can be right. Damascus was chosen, the leading city of Syria. He was given delegated authority to do the task, maybe he carried the credentials for the task, a certificate to say he had the rights. He was commissioned, “Go!” He felt the full support of his colleagues.

The person was right, the process was right but the purpose was wrong.

I haven’t read the book for some time but Jim Collins wrote in ‘Good to great’ about this concept of getting the right people doing the right things.

Being the right person reflects on that person. They have to carve and be carved to become competent, have the right character and be able to fit.

But doing the right things is a reflection on the leader of the right person. How many right people do you know are doing the wrong things?

In truth, God would step in and reveal that nothing was right. Paul would be changed into the right person and go through a right process of refinement and then be tasked to do the right thing.

It was that simple and it still is.

Even enemies can become apostles!

Acts 26: 11 “Many a time I went from one synagogue to another to have them punished, and I tried to force them to blaspheme. I was so obsessed with persecuting them that I even hunted them down in foreign cities.”

Paul continues to describe the person that he used to be.

He repeatedly went hunting Christ followers.

He would search in every synagogue.

He would punish them in order to get a blasphemous charge on them.

He was obsessed in persecuting them.

He would travel long distances to find them.

He failed. They won.

Some may have lost their lives here on earth but the gospel continued.

Paul became one of them, a Christ follower. He failed in his pursuit of stopping the cause. The work of Christ continues. The work never fails.

Whatever is thrown at you, whoever comes against you, no matter how strong, dangerous or relentless, even if it costs you everything, the cause will continue, it will never be defeated.

This is His work, not yours.

You may wake today and the world may be on your shoulders, the voice of the enemy may be close, the surrender perhaps is painful, but it will not be in vain, even enemies can become apostles!