Thanks be to Jesus for another dayon earth
and in His Kingdom. Today is the
anniversary of the D.Day. On 6 June 1944, D-Day, Allied
forces landed on the beaches of Normandy, France. This successful action
signalled the beginning of the end of the Second World War ...The forces of
evil and oppression were defeated. Praise the Lord for the valor and gallantry
of so many young people who became known as the "Greatest Generation".
The Lord blessed us with beautiful Wednesday
evening Gathering of fellowship and Bible study. I was visiting a woman who had
been taken ill suddenly and will be going in for major surgery. She shared
about her doubts and how she is wrestling regarding her faith in the Lord. She
was born and raise in a beautiful Christian home by committed Christian
parents. In my own faith journey I remind myself that this world is not a
playground; for the Christian it is a battleground.
C.S Lewis wrestled with the Christian faith. In his wrestling with the Lord of grace and power C.S. Lewis discovered the battlefield connection that underlies Christianity. He came about that insight in a very personal way. When he was nine years old, his warm and loving mother contracted cancer. Within a very short time she was confined to bed, enduring harsh treatments, in terrible pain, and stinking because of the sores and horrible wasting of her body. At night she would cry out in anguish, and young Jack (as he was known) hid in terror under his covers. He had heard the minister say that God answers prayer, so he begged God for his mother’s deliverance, but to no avail. She died gasping and screaming, and his belief in God went with her.
Years later, as an Oxford professor, he began to rationally think through the possibility of Christian belief. Lewis finally understood what was going on in his mother’s painful illness. He came to see that this world is a battlefield between the kingdom of God and the powers of evil, and that Christianity was true precisely because it took this conflict seriously.
Our Lord Jesus told a series of
parables in Mathew 13. One of them, the Parable of the Net, reminds us of our
marching orders in the kingdom of heaven. We are not saved so that we may
politely pat ourselves on the back and smile at one another in the tiny corners
we occupy. No, we are part of a net that seeks and engages the fish of this
world who might be swimming to their own destruction. We Live in
Confidence.
Our Lord's parables in
Mathew 13 remind us that we are on the winning side in the battles of life.
When Jesus told the Parables of the Seed and the Yeast (Matthew 13:31-35), He presented a
picture of the kingdom of heaven that grows and dominates until it is the
primary factor shaping the world. The tiny mustard seed morphs into a tree that
provides a home for the birds, and the bit of yeast transforms the entire loaf
until it is utterly and completely changed. It is important to note that these
things happen rather automatically. The change takes place from within the seed
and from within the grain of yeast.
In other words, the kingdom of
heaven has the winning power within itself, and we are invited along on the
journey. We do not create the kingdom, but the kingdom creates us. Even though
it appears to be insignificant at the start, the essence of greatness and the
confidence of success lies within.
Scripture is filled with
testimonies to this fact. One in particular from the Old Testament is the scene
in Jeremiah 32 where the
prophet bought a field. Normally this would seem like an ordinary transaction,
just another day at the real estate office, but Jeremiah and the salesperson
were both holed up inside the walls of Jerusalem, while the battering rams of
Babylon’s armies were pounding the gates and walls to rubble. In the prolonged siege of Jerusalem, the invading armies
had killed and burned every living thing for miles, and made waste of whatever
farmland there had been in the region. Added to that is the sure promise of
God, spoke through Jeremiah himself, that Babylon would be successful and the
city of Jerusalem, along with the Temple, would be destroyed.
If there was ever a bad time to
invest in real estate, this was it. The land itself was worthless, the currency
inflated, the threat of destruction obvious and the future about as grim as any
could be. Yet Jeremiah bought the field because he knew the power of the seed
of the kingdom of God. He knew that God would have his way, even beyond the
threat of Babylon. He knew that in spite of the waywardness of the people, God’s
kingdom would rise again and thrust itself to the heavens until even the
Babylonian vulture would nest in its branches.
When we read Jesus' words as He
spoke of the kingdom of heaven, we recover our sense of values and outcomes in
the quagmire of daily events. We carry the passport of heaven. We live as
those who are under orders to be and do and make a difference, and we know Who
writes the last chapter.
In Christ the Victor.
Brown
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