Category: Devotions

God’s mission to the sinner

The sin of those who deserve to be stoned is equal to those who carry the stone.
John 8

They were trapped. To throw a stone meant they were without sin and only God is sinless. To walk away was to admit they were sinners.
They tried to trap Jesus but in the end they were trapped by him.
What clinched it was what Jesus did in the writing on the ground.
No one knows but it hasn’t stopped people guessing what he wrote!
A Jewish custom of doodling when thinking.
A list of he sins of the stone-throwers.
Whatever it was they had never seen Jesus write on the ground and it dislodged them.
Maybe because Jesus was a walking Old Testament, we should look there for some help?
When Jeremiah was facing his own accusers offered a prayer to God and said (17:13), “those who turn away from you will be written in the dust because they have forsaken The Lord, the spring of living water.”
Jesus was showing them that they were the ones who were forsaking the living water that he had already been speaking about in chapter 7.
This is why the sin of those who deserve to be stoned is equal to the sin of those who carry the stone.

Elim are standing with Canon Andrew White who 30 minutes ago wrote “ISIS are now just 5 miles away from Baghdad. Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy. We need you.” Elim we need you to pray now.

God’s mission to the thirsty
John 7
We all know what it’s like to be thirsty. Our bodies according to some estimates are 80% fluid – and we need this, because if we stop drinking suddenly coherent thoughts vanish, skin grows clammy, and vital organs wrinkle. Our bodies need water in the same way a tyre needs air. Deprive your body of water and it’ll soon tell you.

Deprive your soul of spiritual water and your soul will tell you. Dehydrated hearts send messages. Waves of worry, feelings of guilt and fear, a sense of hopelessness, loneliness, insecurity, resentment, irritability. Symptoms of dryness deep within.

Treat your soul the way you treat your thirst. Take a drink. Where do you find water for the soul? Jesus gave the answer in John 7:37-38
‘if anyone is thirsty let him come and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.’

What water can do for your body, Jesus can do for your heart. How?

Like water. Jesus goes where we can’t. The spirit of Jesus flows down to the soul and gets rid of fears, regrets, insecurities. We don’t have to give him directions, just like we don’t give directions to water. Water just goes into our bodies and travels to where it is needed. So it is with Jesus. Jesus quenches our thirst.

‘If anyone is thirsty. . . come’

Let Jesus reach your heart. Let him penetrate it. Deep, deep inside. Welcome him in to the inner workings of your life. Drink Christ. Not church, not meetings, not activities, but Jesus.

We don’t have to live with dry dehydrated hearts. Drink from the bottomless well.

God’s mission of water.

God’s mission to the hungry

All around us people are hungry.
John 6
Empty inside, they lave lost happiness that they once had. They have lost friendship and trust of others.
Suicide occurs for the homeless and the one living in a mansion. Why? There’s nothing worth living for.
Just open your eyes, just listen carefully and you will see and hear hungry lives all around. Wasted people delving into other people’s waste for some crumbs of life.

I am the Bread of Life He who comes to me will never go hungry and he who believes in me will never be thirsty. John 6:35

“I am to the very heart of a person what food is to the body”.
Food is necessary, without it you die. Likewise Jesus is vital to every person, without Him, the person dies with no eternal life.
Food is necessary for everyone, old and young, rich and poor. Jesus is for everyone.
Food is needed daily. Jesus is for every day.

He comes and offers:
Acceptance – “Whoever comes to me I will never drive away” v37
Whether it be the type of things you have been involved in. Or the weakness and inabilities that embarrass you. Jesus will accept you. Jesus will never drive you away.
Satisfies – “He comes to me will never go hungry and he who believes in me will never be thirsty” v35.
These negatives are the strongest in the Greek language. They rule out not just the fact but the bare possibility of the fact. He outweighs the greatest desire.
Protection – “I shall lose none of all that He has given me” V39.
True believers may go wrong and fail more times than they care to admit, but they will never be eternally lost. Once you have received Jesus as the King and the Saviour of your life then your life is eternally secure. You are never going to hell. You will be raised into eternal heaven.

God is always on mission.
After healing a man on the Sabbath and facing the wrath of the religious, Jesus said these amazing words, “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working”, John 5v17.
God doesn’t take a Sabbath.
He doesn’t have a day off to rest.
He doesn’t need a conference to be refreshed.
On mission day in day out.
All over the world at every moment the mission of God reaching people who are helpless, healing the broken, saving the forgotten.
And today He simple invites us to join Him.
Never off mission. On it till the end.

The unusual missionary
John 4:29
This woman was an outcast according to the Jew.
A Samaritan, and a woman with a sinful past.
Yet she became a great missionary.
1. She left behind her water jar, v28.
Every missionary has to leave something behind. You cannot carry everything and be effective.
2. She went back to her home town, v28. Missionary work is not all far-off work.
3. She invited the people on a journey of discovery, v29. People don’t want the answer they want to be invited to find the answer themselves.
4. The invitation was based upon her own story which convinced her enough it was worth pursuing, v29.
5. Her testimony brought belief, v39. Faith can be birthed on the hearing of someone else’s experience not necessarily their own, Jesus didn’t tell them everything they had done, but they believed nonetheless because of the woman.
Everyone a missionary.

I am not .. but am … John 3:28

John the Baptist knew who he wasn’t. He wasn’t the Messiah.
John 3

Many are on a mission today. A mission of wanting to become someone, trying to make a name for themselves.
Many have tried to pretend they have something that has never actually been given to them, v27.
Many are trying to be great, anything less is failure, v30.
It’s time for the many to acknowledge who they are not.
I am not the be all and end all.
I am not the answer to everyone’s questions.
I am not the healer.
I am not the Saviour.

It’s not until you know who you are not, that you open up to who you are.
In every circumstance today, to be able to say I am not, is so important.

Shortly after this, John the Baptist was beheaded. He stepped into becoming I am not for the last time.

It always gets better

John 2

The house may be abused but zeal will birth prayer again.

When the wine is no more greater wine is coming.

Destroy the body of Christ and it will rise.

The mission of God is unstoppable!

Jesus was here before it all began. He has no beginning, He is outside of time. Before all time there was the Word. He is pre-existent before anything was existent.
In 500 BC the Greeks believed the abiding principle was to be found in one word, ‘Word’, the translation from Logos. Later the Stoics talks of the Logos as the world soul. At the time of Jesus, Philo developed this further by saying it is God’s firstborn son (but still an idea) and implying pre-existence.
John knew this when he wrote the gospel: John 1. But John also knew the Jewish thought:
The Torah was created before the foundation of the world.
God created through the firstborn and the firstborn was the Torah.
To the Greek, John says this principle you hold to is actually a personal being and has become human.
To the Jew, John says your thought of pre-existent logos is correct but there is more. This logos has personal attributes and He has been here and I have seen Him.
Jesus the Word walks into the beginning.
He is logos, the true meaning of life.
Because of this He will be there at the end. When the end ends He will still be there. He has no end.
There have been no accidents in your life. You might not know why some things have happened but He knows.
The promise is that not only is Jesus the meaning of life, not only is Jesus, God, but he is outside of time and because of this He is already in your tomorrow.
This is an enormous comfort. You will never be alone. You will never have to wait on Him to catch you up. He is not following after you. He is there.

What leaders need to know about leaving.

Luke 24:50-53
You need to know where to leave as much as when to leave, v50
Bethany was the home village of Martha, Mary and Lazarus and he and the disciples would often go to their home.
Bethany was the place where Lazarus was raised from the dead.
Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey from Bethany; a journey of victory.
He brings the disciples again to Bethany. A familiar place, but a place of miracles and of purpose. It is here that Jesus realises He must leave them.
Your where is as important as your when.

You need to know how to bless and leave at the same time, v51
Though everyone of them had failed him and some quite badly. Though all of them needed instruction on the cost of true discipleship which they had failed to pay at the cross.
Not many leave without lifting their hand against one another.
You need to leave during the blessing not the desertion.

You need to know that leaving is actually not about what is behind but what is ahead, v51 Jesus was taken up into heaven. When God steps in to take He leaves a worshipping community, great joy and a church praising God.