Hello everyone!
Following on from the last post looking at whose voice we are following, I want to take a closer look at what it means to have Jesus as our focus and His voice as our command post.
From day-to-day living there are hundreds if not thousands of voices that we can be listening to from what somebody put on social media to what the TV stations are telling us to wear, buy or do that we can let the voice of God get swamped out by trivialities...
This is My Son, Listen To Him
In Luke 9:28-36 we read how Jesus went up a mountain to pray accompanied by Peter, James and John. During this encounter, by verse 34 we are told that a cloud descended and overshadowed them and at this point God's voice came from Heaven to identify Jesus, again, as His Son only this time the disciples present are given an instruction rather than bearing witness to a statement of God's acceptance and love of His Son (found earlier in Luke 3).
And there came a voice out of the cloud, saying, "This is My beloved Son: hear Him".
Compare that with what is found in Luke 3, we can see that at this point God was adding instruction to His own love acceptance of His Son. This was done by God pointing out that the words that come from Jesus' mouth are true and trustworthy enough to rely on, no matter the situation that you are in.
You can throw up obstacles here like your debt, your addiction, your pain but all you are really doing is taking your eyes off your Saviour who bore all your sicknesses and diseases (Isaiah 53:4) so a little reminder is necessary every now and then that all of our struggles have been placed upon the shoulders of Jesus who promises to ease us with a lightened burden (Matthew 11:30).
He doesn't promise to take away all of our problems but He promises us the following in John 16:33: -
These things I have spoken unto you, that in Me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.
Again, we can be tempted to follow after the voice of our sickness, our debt, our suffering and live under a "woe is me" banner, or we can lift up our eyes to the Heavens, where the Holy One of Israel resides. Precisely where the Psalmist says our help comes from in Psalm 121.
Stop, Look Up, Listen
God is clearly trying to say something to us here because if He was willing to stake His reputation on the goodness of His Son and the words that came from His mouth, could He not in actual fact be trying to tell us something that is completely relevant for us today?
That we are made in His image and He knows every single detail about us before we were even born (Jeremiah 1:5)!
People might try to argue that those words applied only to Jeremiah because God was talking to him and him alone. I disagree. If that were true of Jeremiah and Jeremiah alone then wouldn't that say that God has favourites?
Romans 2:11 tells us that this mindset is incorrect because God doesn't play favourites. If He did, it would imply that He has a grading system to those of us who are well-behaved and achieve loads of great things, compared with those of us who aren't and don't.
To get the full context of that Paul is pointing out the difference between those whose focus is on right believing compared with those whose focus is on right living. By verse 10 we are told that glory, honour and peace are granted to every man that work with the intention of pleasing God first.
Have a look at verse 11: -
For there is no respect of persons with God.
Does that spell it out for you?
The phrase "respect of persons" comes from the Greek prosopolepsia which by definition means to show favouritism.
Let me take this one step further by saying that if God really showed favouritism then would our uniqueness be celebrated in Heaven? Would God really have made us in His image if He was showing favouritism to some and not others?
No!
That implies that God is biased and He is not because He loves us all the same.
This term, prosopolepsia, occurs four times in the Bible and three of those occurrences are in Paul's letters to the Roman, Ephesian and Colossian churches. Each time, Paul is warning that because God doesn't play favourites then we can expect God to judge and act justly and fairly.
Our responsibility, as we battle to keep our focus upon the cross, is to treat our fellow man the same because if there are no favourites with God then surely there should be none with us.
Is that true of your life? I know I struggle with favouritism sometimes. I won't even lie about it because to show universal love is a hard thing because it says that no matter what happens, I am going to love you.
No matter what happens, I am going to love you.
That sounds like both a commitment and a foundation that many marriages are built upon, as well as many of our other relationships. We go a long way to doing that the moment that we start accepting people for just who they are as they were made that particular way for a reason, not just for a season.
Final Thought
In closing, I want you to think about what happens when you lose your focus on God, does your behaviour suffer? Do the people in your life get neglected? Do you feel neglected?
I left the last church I was at because, in part, that's exactly how I felt and despite making those efforts that I did, it really didn't change anything. So rather than sit, complain about it and ask for some cheese to go with my whine, I did something about it!
Sure, I'm not at church right now, but as readers of this blog will be able to clearly see, even in the midst of my trials, even in the midst of my difficulties, even in the midst of my struggles I am determined to lift God's Name higher than everything... everything... EVERYTHING!!!
If I don't do that, am I really representing an unbiased Kingdom?
What about you? Are you representing an unbiased Kingdom today?
Peace!
===TLP===
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