A Christian Perspective

Being a Christian goes far beyond biblical morality or a belief system:  it is a spiritual transformation brought about by the living God inhabiting a person who trusts in Him.  Exposure to the Word of God, partnership with other believers in the church, and walking in obedience to God lead to spiritual maturity and growth.  This relationship with God ought to have an impact on every aspect of our lives, how we view the world, and influence our interactions with others.  After being born again through faith in Jesus we continue living in a corruptible and mortal body of flesh, yet we can become more like Jesus in how we think and live.  Our new King, future heavenly country, and growing relationship with God forever alters our perspective for good.

As God opens our eyes to the truth of His Word and we grow in faith with obedience, the reality of our identity in Christ begins to slowly take hold in our lives.  Daily interactions, physical pain, conflict, failure, and apparent success - everything really - is filtered through this new consciousness.  There are more ways than I can count how a relationship with God has forever changed my life for the better.  Here are just a handful of truths which have encouraged me as a Christian:

• This life is not all there is.  I am a dual citizen on earth, but as a Christian I am a citizen of heaven where I will live forever with my Saviour, Jesus Christ.  Death for me is not so much my end as a new beginning of eternal glory.  Even as an infant grows in his mother's womb, this life is preparing me for a glorious future in the presence of God.
• God is in control.  As Creator of this world, God has the power to accomplish everything He has promised.  I don't need to be afraid even when circumstances are difficult, because I know God works all things for good in my life.  God can do the impossible!
• God's work doesn't depend upon me.  God doesn't need me, but He invites me to serve Him.  In my flesh I am only a hindrance to God, but as I am led by the Spirit God graciously works in and through my life.  The God who created the complex systems within my body to work together has assembled the church with Christ as the Head.  He will see His work done!
• Life is more than stuff.  Jesus said life does not consist in the amount of things I possess.  Jesus Himself is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.  Since I have Jesus I have all things and abound, for everything I have accumulated on this earth will be left for another.
• God hears and answers prayers.  If we respond to the requests of our children, won't God respond to the prayers of His beloved children?  The One who created ears can hear, and the One who created mouths can surely speak.  The God who confounded languages at Babel can understand the desires of our hearts and can supply our needs.  He bids us come boldly into His throne room at all times to seek mercy and help in time of need.
• Here today, gone tomorrow.  Life is short, so let us be about God's business.  During the day we ought to work, for night is coming when no one can work.  Make the most of the time you have with other people, for they might be leaving your fellowship or departing this world sooner than you thought.  Our life is like the grass which flourishes one day and is dry the next.
• Rest is found in Jesus alone.  Relaxation doesn't remove our responsibilities, and even long holidays come to an end.  In Christ we find rest for our souls and our weary minds.  Jesus can remove our burdens of sin, preoccupation, procrastination, and self-focus.  Jesus gives us peace nothing in this world can take away.
• My King is rich.  It is God's pleasure to give His children His kingdom, and what a bountiful kingdom it is!  It is rich in beauty and grace which is beyond price, love which will last for eternity, and great in mercy and power.  God has all things, and in Him all things consist.
• God is worthy to be praised.  Nothing on this planet is worthy of worship, but the God who created all things is worthy to be praised.  I do not praise Him only because of all He has done but who He is.  He is to be admired and I am in awe of His wisdom and ways.
• The Bible is truly God's Word.  The Bible is true and is food for the soul.  It is a guide which leads us to God and provides a godly perspective on people and all God has made.  It illuminates the ways of living and thinking which please God, explains the way of salvation through the Gospel, corrects, instructs, and encourages with great promises.
• God loves me.  Amazing, that such a God and Saviour would love me!  God has shown compassion and been gracious to me despite my faults and failings.  He has called out to me kindly when I was His enemy, and has adopted me as His own child.  How great is God's love for me, for God demonstrated His love by dying for my sins on a cross.

For the sake of time I did not include biblical references for all these points, but they are saturated with scripture!  Praise the LORD for His goodness and His grace unto men!

The Word Be Glorified

"Finally, brethren, pray for us, that the word of the Lord may have free course, and be glorified, even as it is with you: ²  And that we may be delivered from unreasonable and wicked men: for all men have not faith."

2 Thessalonians 3:1-2

The Word of God is critical in the salvation and growth of Christians.  The Bible helps us to place our faith in the God Who can actually save us:  faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God.  People perish for a lack of knowledge of the WORD who became flesh and dwelt among us.  Jesus warned against false prophets who posed as genuine, and Paul warned against ravenous wolves which would not spare the flock.  The idea is one of infiltration, not of attack from outsiders.  Paul desired prayer so the "word of the Lord may have free course, and be glorified."  There were people outside the church who resisted and flatly denied the truth of scripture.  Lack of faith in professing Christians hinders the free course of God's Word even in the church, and this is more concerning than satanic forces outside.  A single wolf in sheep's clothing with a carefully refined bleat poses a far greater threat within the confines of a fenced flock than a baying pack outside.

I think it was Alan Redpath I heard say, "You go through your Bible, but how long has it been since it went through you?  How long has it been since it burned like a fire in you?"  Agreement is not belief.  I can agree parachutes can safely convey skydivers from a plane at high altitude to the ground safely, but evidence of belief comes through testing.  Suffice it to say there are a lot of people on the ground who would agree parachutes are reliable and even safe when correctly deployed, but would never jump out of a plane with only a parachute strapped to their back between them and death.  Christianity and God's Word is life and death; it is all or nothing.  We are called as believers to allow God's Word to have free course in our personal lives and then it will be glorified according to the perfect will of God.

It is an unreasonable and wicked man who would hinder, distort, add to or make omissions of God's Word.  It is folly for a messenger to alter the words of his king to better suit the masses.  The Bible is quite plain and objective, yet because the desires and tendencies of our flesh run absolutely contrary to it things become quite complicated.  We quickly realise there is a difference between our thinking and practices and what the Bible says.  The Bible is complex and deeper than a man's understanding can plumb, yet plain meaning is provided which transcends all time, ethnicity, nationality, and languages.  It appeals to and correlates with the human conscience as noble and admirable.  Without faith in God, however, the truth of the scripture cannot be received.  Hebrews 4:2 says, "For indeed the gospel was preached to us as well as to them; but the word which they heard did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in those who heard it."  Isn't that awful?  A person can hear the words of God but not profit from them when they are not mixed with faith.

I pray the word of God may have free course within me and you and be glorified for Christ's sake.  Since faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God, how important it is for people to be exposed to the Bible being lived out by Christians who walk righteously.  People who will never open a Bible read your life like a book.  They listen to your words.  They note the subtlety of your facial expressions and try to discern your motives.  They will constantly see to balance your words and claims of scripture against your life.  The good thing is even though we fail, God's Word will endure and remain true, capable of piercing, instructing, correcting, and saving.  All men have not faith, but those will faith ought to live like men of God in whom the Word is glorified.

Look and Live

God does not always answer prayers in the way we expect.  He often does exceedingly above what we could ask or think!  Solomon asked God for wisdom, and in addition to wisdom beyond all others God granted Solomon long life, wealth, and peace from his enemies.  Paul prayed God would remove a messenger of Satan from his life, and God answered no:  it was in weakness Paul would realise God's strength exponentially.  God's ways are higher than ours, and His thoughts are greater too.

Recently I came across another example when God answered prayer in an unexpected, miraculous way.  Numbers 21 speaks of an instance when God's people were discouraged because of the way God led them.  They spoke angrily against God, Moses, and even against the manna God graciously provided them for their survival.  To chasten them, God sent venomous snakes among them which bit the people and many died.  Numbers 21:7 reads, "Therefore the people came to Moses, and said, "We have sinned, for we have spoken against the LORD and against you; pray to the LORD that He take away the serpents from us." So Moses prayed for the people."  Seems like a sensible request, right?  If God took away the snakes no one would be bitten.  Problem solved!  This is what God did for Pharaoh in response to his request when was plagued:  ask the God who sent frogs, flies, and lice to remove the problem and all would be well.  But God had something else entirely in mind.

Numbers 21:8-9 says, "Then the LORD said to Moses, "Make a fiery serpent, and set it on a pole; and it shall be that everyone who is bitten, when he looks at it, shall live." ⁹ So Moses made a bronze serpent, and put it on a pole; and so it was, if a serpent had bitten anyone, when he looked at the bronze serpent, he lived."  God did for the people what they did not ask.  The text does not tell us God removed all the snakes, but He desired to save all who had a death sentence upon them.  His aim was not to keep people from being bitten in the first place but to provide deliverance and hope for all who had.  This is earth-shattering truth.  When we are in "damage control" mode, God works to redeem and save.  All who exercised faith to simply look upon the bronze serpent would be saved.  God extended love, grace, and compassion to all those who faced the fangs of death.

I have heard people charge God with wrong for allowing sin to remain on the earth.  But hasn't God done more than we could have asked by sending Jesus to be the Saviour of the world, the One who can set captives free?  Everyone in the human race is born under the curse of sin, but God has provided a way through faith to be saved.  Jesus said in John 3:14-16, "And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, ¹⁵ that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life."  The fangs of sin have sunk into our souls, yet being born again through faith in Jesus not only removes the curse but imputes God's righteousness unto us.  We were beyond all hope, and God made a way of salvation by grace through faith.  What a wonderful God, who supplied a way of eternal salvation from the fires of hell before we ever realised it!

It's In Your Ticket!

In preparation for the discipleship course at Calvary Chapel Sydney I listened to a message by Edwin Orr called, "Sanctification."  In the message he talked about a poor young man years ago who traveled from a Baltic port immigrating to the United States.  His plan was to connect with family who lived in Chicago and start a new life.  He had been provided a ticket on the ocean liner but his parents knew he would not be able to afford meals.  So they kindly packed him a basket of bread and cheese.

Day after day the young man would hear the dinner bell and glumly eat his bread and cheese.  He cheered himself by thinking such mundane meals wouldn't last forever.  But before long, however, the cheese began to grow mouldy and the bread became stale.  In desperation he went to the kitchen and begged for a job for some better food.  "I am sick of cheese," he told the chef.  The chef saw this as most extraordinary:  a ticket holder asking for a job to work for food!  Seizing the opportunity, the chef made the man a deal:  "Don't tell anyone, but if you come in here every day and wash the dishes I guarantee you will eat what the captain eats."  "I work very hard," the young man assured the chef.  So for the rest of the voyage, the man in Orr's words "worked like a slave but ate like a king."

When the young man finally arrived in Chicago, he told them of the deal he made with the chef.  "Silly boy," his relative told him laughing.  "The meals were already paid for in your ticket!  You didn't have to clean all those dishes!"  Edwin Orr told the story with the aim of illustrating when a person is born again through faith in Jesus, we no longer are a slave to sin.  This victory is "in your ticket," so to speak.  Even as death had no power over Jesus after His resurrection, so sin has no power over a believer who has been born again.  Romans 6:11-12 says, "Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord. ¹² Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts."  A Christian can say no to sin and yes to God in everything.  It is not through the effort of the flesh but the power of the Spirit we are saved and sanctified.  As Corrie Ten Boom was fond of saying, "It is not try but trust; it is not do but done."  That being said, we must not shirk or deny our responsibility to seek God and intentionally make godly choices and sacrifices which are pleasing to Him.

If you would struggle to answer the question, "What does it mean to be sanctified?" I exhort you to listen to the audio in the link provided.  I trust you will find it practical and most useful in your spiritual development as you begin to comprehend the love of God and the real victory Christ has made available to you by His grace.  "It's in your ticket!"