Living the Message: February 2007

God is With Us

Today, Pastor Amy read from Judges 6-7 about Gideon who was one of the Judges in Israel. We can identify with Gideon in so many ways. Sometimes we may ask, “If God is with us, why is all this happening?” Or if God is calling us, we may ask, “Why me?” Or we ask God, “If this is true, will you give me a sign?” We “put out the fleece” as Gideon did.

Amy pointed out something significant in the stories of God’s people (Moses, the disciples, Gideon): He never called them to do something easy. However, He did promise to be with them along the way. God reveals Himself to us as someone who is with us. So those “be with so and so” prayers that we pray are powerful because we are putting our faith in what God can do. God being with us is HUGE! In Ephesians 6, we are told to put on the full armor of God, and that is what it’s like when God is with us – we feel His protection around us.

SO was there ever a situation when you couldn’t ask God to be with you? And is that more about what you believe about God or about the situation you were in? I was thinking of this and I thought, well no, because He has promised never to leave us or forsake us, so I think there is never a situation where we can’t ask God to be with us. But when we do ask Him to be with us, we are changed so that our purposes get more in line with His purpose for us.

How To Be a Good Intercessor

Pastor Henry read from Exodus 32 and Ezekial 22:23-31.

He especially drew our attention to verse 30 of Ezekiel 22: "I looked for a man among them who would build up the wall and stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land so I would not have to destroy it, but I found none. "

God was looking for someone to intercede on behalf of this wicked country, but he couldn't find any. What does it take to intercede in prayer? There are 3 qualities needed to do this:

1) Intercessors believe in the power of prayer. They believe that our relationship with God is one in which our communication with God matters. The devil makes us believe that prayer doesn't matter, and this separates us from God, but we need to believe that prayer does matter and that God actually governs the world through us as intercessors.

2) Intercessors care about others. They want to find where God's help is needed and wanted.

3) Intercessors know where to go for help - God is the one who has the power to forgive, heal and restore us.

What Would Jesus Eat?

Today we welcomed Pastor Bert Bolt who spoke to us about the Leviticus 11. Leviticus is a book of laws for the Jewish people and chapter 11 is specifically about dietary laws. God gave His people the law to guide them toward righteousness. In comparing the law to righteousness, Bert gave us the example of how righteousness is like playing a piano. Even if you get all the notes right, you still may not get the music right.

We now believe that since Jesus came and died for us, His righteousness was imputed to us. The Bible is so much more to us than a How-to manual - it is the story of redemption! We know that in Christ, nothing is neutral: everything matters. God should be involved in everything we do. We are no longer under Old Testament Law, but God still cares about the same things - even about the food we eat! He wants us to be people who show His character, His holiness. He wants us to stand out and to be noticeable. And now, we do this because we are thankful for what He has done for us.

I think it's good for us to be reminded of how hard it was to keep the law back in the Old Testament times because then Jesus sacrifice means more to us and we can be more motivated to live in gratitude to Him.